I don’t have hard data, and what little data’s out there is sketchy. But the surging, sustained wave of resignations and widespread discouragement tell us many pastors are toying with the idea of resigning. Recent conversations I’ve had with pastors of troubled churches reinforce the notion.
Why? Why are we seeing so many stories, opinion pieces, blog posts and social media reports of pastors quitting and churches closing?
It’s a complex problem with plenty of variables to isolate. Here’s my take.
Naiveté
Many of us, perhaps most, answer the call to ministry with naive expectations and false hopes.
We mistakenly believe that pastoral ministry is a cloistered life surrounded by our books and Bibles. Or that we anoint church members with love and grace, which they gratefully return. Or that the highlight of our ministry is the Sunday sermon delivered with thundering authority that leaves a permanent mark on the audience.
We expect—and need—affirmation, love, and the visible success of growing audiences, public influence, and the feeling that we’re good at our jobs.
But that’s not the call. That’s not pastoral ministry. It is the worst variety of Pollyannaism.
We are called to a life of self-denial, sacrifice, hardship, strife, and long periods of self-doubt when the results of our efforts are meager or invisible.
Consider the biblical metaphors for pastoral ministry in the Pastoral Epistles.
- A commander giving orders (1 Tim 1:3, 4:11)
- A soldier waging war (1 Tim 1:18 cf. 1 Co 9:7, 2 Co 10:4, 2 Tim 2:3-4, 1 Tim 6:12).
- An athlete training hard for godliness (1 Tim 4:7-8, 15, 2 Tim 1:5).
- An athlete or soldier engaged in intense struggle (1 Tim 6:12).
- Suffering shame and hardship (2 Tim 1:8).
- A skilled working continually improving his craft (2 Tim 1:15).
- A diligent teacher who patiently instructs the willfully ignorant, rebellious, and fools who reject the truth (2 Tim 4:1-5.
Then there’s the call itself. Jesus calls us to follow, obey, and serve by denying ourselves, suffering hardship, and losing our lives. He admonishes us to carefully count the cost before putting our hands to this particular plow.
26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. 27 Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. 28 For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? 29 Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, 30 saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ 31 Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? 32 And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. 33 So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple (Luke 14:26-33).
We may gladly endure the crucible of church ministry for a time in the vain hope that things will soon get better. All we have to do preach better sermons, produce better worship, and offer wide spectrum programming just like the “successful” Christian celebrity pastors.
Other factors
Naive expectations are just one part of the problem. I’ve got a couple of other posts in the works that address the lack of or poor training for pastoral ministry (hint: you rarely find that in Bible college or seminary), the corrosive Christian celebrity culture that’s foisted on us in media channels that have to keep an eye on the P&L, the aimless drift into what became known as Clinical Pastoral Education, and perhaps a few other factors that have contributed to the woeful state of the American church.
Bottom Line
For this post the bottom line is:
- Study the metaphors and descriptors for pastors and pastoral work.
- Lean into the suck because the hardship you’re enduring IS the call.