Pastoral health and leadership consulting.
Confidential work on the parts of a pastor's role that are organisational rather than spiritual: load, delegation, isolation, boundaries and decision rights. It starts with how the role is built, not with how hard someone is carrying it.
The evidence points at structure more than at effort.
Isolation and role design appear to bear on exhaustion more reliably than hours worked. So this service does not begin by asking a leader to try harder, rest more or pray longer. It begins by drawing the role as it actually is — who decides what, who can say no, who the leader can be honest with, which parts of the week nobody else could do — and then asking which of those lines the church is willing to redraw.
It is consulting and coaching, not licensed mental-health treatment. Where a leader needs therapy, medical care or a crisis service, we say so and refer; we do not improvise. And it is for a leader who is coping — the one who does not intend to still be coping this way in three years — more than for one already in collapse, who needs a different kind of help first.
Convient à
- un pasteur qui tient le coup et n'a pas l'intention de tenir encore ainsi dans trois ans
- un conseil prêt à changer la forme d'un rôle plutôt que la personne qui l'occupe
- un responsable qui préfère savoir comment son équipe le perçoit plutôt que de l'apprendre plus tard
Ne convient pas à
- quiconque a besoin d'une thérapie, de soins médicaux ou d'un service de crise
- a church using an outside consultant to avoid a conversation
- un employeur qui veut des éléments pour un entretien d'évaluation ou un dossier du personnel
What happens
The same six-stage shape as every engagement, read through one role rather than a whole church. Each stage has a stated input, a stated deliverable and a stated measure.
A forty-five-minute conversation, no charge, about whether the role or the person is the thing to work on — and whether we are the right people for it. If what is needed is a therapist, a doctor or a denominational process, that is what you are told.
The Leadership Health Assessment, answered by the leader about themselves and, where the leader agrees, by the team about the leader. Small readings are suppressed rather than published with a caveat. The role is drawn as it is: decisions, hours, who can say no.
The reading is worked through slowly with the leader, and then — on terms the leader has agreed beforehand — with the board or team. The question is not whether the leader is tired. It is which parts of the role make tiredness inevitable.
A redrawn role: what is delegated and to whom, which decisions move, where the boundaries are and who holds the leader to them, and the one honest relationship the leader will keep. Each change has a name and a date, and the list of what the church will stop doing is written alongside.
The church makes the changes. We return at intervals agreed in advance and not between them, because a consultant who is always available becomes one more thing a leader has to manage.
Someone inside the church learns to read the role, so that the next adjustment does not need us. The measure of the engagement is whether the leader is still in the role, and well, a year on — and whether the church could do this again without us.
A role drawn as it is and as it will be; a written list of what moves, to whom, by when; the names of the people who hold the leader accountable and the one the leader can be honest with; and a date for the second reading.
There is no separate tariff for this service; it is priced on the published scale. A first conversation is free. Where it runs inside a full engagement — Diagnose, Discern, Design — the published range is €2,500–4,500, and an implementation partnership of six to twelve months is €300–650 a month. The price of a specific engagement is confirmed in writing before work begins. Prices exclude VAT.
What the instruments read here
The Leadership Health Assessment measures a person; the Church Health Index measures the organisation around them. Three readings bear on this service directly, and all three carry the Restore-precedence rule.
Whether leaders are supported rather than isolated, can rest, and have people able to question them. Below 55, Restore leads whatever else the report says.
In the leadership instrument: who can tell this leader no, who checks on them, and whether anyone would know if they were failing quietly.
Whether real decisions are given away and not overturned, and whether the leader is the only person who can do most of what the church does.
Leaders exist to equip the body, not to perform for it.
That is why the instruments measure leadership development rather than leadership performance, and why this service redraws a role instead of rating a person. The Foundations page attaches Isaiah 61:1 to Restore — binding up the broken-hearted — and the method applies it as a rule: the leaders' own health comes before anything strategic, and a consultant who makes a tired leader busier has misunderstood the assignment.
… for the perfecting of the saints, to the work of serving, to the building up of the body of Christ.
Ephesians 4:12 · Efesierbrevet 4:12
Questions churches ask first
Is this therapy or counselling?
No. It is consulting and coaching on the organisational parts of a leader's role — load, delegation, isolation, boundaries, decision rights. It is not licensed mental-health treatment, and where therapy, medical care or a crisis service is what is needed, we refer rather than improvise. If someone is in danger, this is the wrong door: contact your local emergency services and your denomination's safeguarding officer.
Is it confidential?
The work is confidential. Two practical notes: the booking form is not a confidential channel, so keep it to logistics and bring the substance to the conversation itself; and the Leadership Health Assessment, if you use it, is scored in your own browser and transmits nothing. What a board is told, and when, is agreed with the leader before anything begins.
Can our board commission this for our pastor?
Yes, if the board is willing to change the shape of the role rather than the person in it, and the pastor wants the work. It is not a route to evidence for a review or a personnel file, and the Leadership Health Assessment is printed with that refusal on its face. A board using an outside consultant to avoid a conversation with its pastor should have the conversation.
Where do we start?
Two free steps. The Leadership Health Assessment in self mode takes a leader about fifteen minutes, scores in the browser, and names the dimensions that are carrying the strain. Then a forty-five-minute conversation, at no charge, about whether the role or the person is the thing to work on. Many leaders stop there with a clearer picture, which is a good outcome.
Why does Restore come before everything else?
Because a church cannot be recalibrated while its leadership is unwell. The published method says so in code: when leadership health, trust or a perception gap crosses its threshold, the report leads with Restore before any strategic recommendation, whatever the overall score. A strategy laid over an exhausted leader becomes one more thing that leader carries.
The Leadership Health Assessment, in self mode: fifty items, about fifteen minutes, scored in your browser. Nothing is transmitted.
Read yourselfThe Leadership Health Assessment document, with the four things it refuses to be, and the article on why the shepherd also needs a shepherd.
Ressources gratuitesForty-five minutes with Daniel, no charge and no pitch. We say which movement we would start with and why; you decide later.
Réserver un entretienThe other services: Direction et priorités · Vitalité et mission · How we help, in full