I was ordained to pastoral ministry at Liberty Baptist Church in Sweetser, Indiana on January 24, 2016. I had been a pastoral intern for about three to four years prior to that point, but didn’t become a full fledged pastor until 2016.
I still remember that day.
The Senior Pastor delivered a sermon and frankly, I don’t remember what it was about. But I do remember how I felt. I felt nervous. Really nervous. I felt like I was standing on the precipice of a new frontier. An adventure so beautiful and dangerous that I wasn’t sure if I should be excited or scared. So I ended up somewhere in-between.
After the sermon, all the pastors and deacons present came to the front of the church. I knelt down in front of them, and they laid hands on me to pray.
I’ll never forget that.
I remember thinking, wow, this is real. Like, I’m actually going to be a pastor. It was one of the moments in life where you didn’t need hindsight to tell you how special of a moment you were in after the fact. I knew this was a special moment. Sacred, even.
Ten years have gone by since that holy moment. In some ways, its felt like 20. In other ways, it feels like yesterday. But as I think back on that time and all that has transpired in my life since (namely: pastoring at three different churches in three different locations), I can’t help but reflect. So, I want to share ten lessons I’ve learned over the past ten years of pastoral ministry.
1. Pastoring is a calling.
I know that the ‘calling’ word gets thrown around a lot. But I still like it. It’s an important word because it implies that there are some vocations in life that choose us. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been discouraged as a pastor, wondering if I should do something else, and then BOOM—I remember January 24, 2016. And I think about all of the events in my life that led me to feeling called to pastoral ministry. And in that moment I remember that my vocation is bigger than me. God called me to do this. And because He called me to this, He’s going to help me get through whatever it is I’m facing. Pastoring isn’t a job we find. It’s a calling that finds us. I’m so glad it found me.
2. Learning how to pastor well happens more outside of the classroom than in it.
I love school. To have the privilege of learning from gifted professors is a blessing, and I think most would-be pastors would benefit greatly from having a robust educational experience. However, my experience has been that many professional theologians and scholars really have no idea what it’s like to pastor a church. Some do. But even those who pastor on the side and teach full-time are still a bit detached, in my opinion. Their churches are often rooted in seminary communities which results in their congregations being made up of seminary students and professors. That’s a far cry from a pastoring a congregation where most people think you are speaking another language when you talk about Penal Substitutionary Atonement. The result of this dynamic means many professors are teaching their students about something they truly don’t understand themselves. Does this mean they have nothing to offer? Of course not. Does this mean they will end up teaching about pastoring in ways that are idealistic and unrealistic? Absolutely.
My educational experience was beneficial, don’t get me wrong. But I personally learned more about what pastoring is *actually* like through my internships in local churches than through a three-year Masters degree in an esteemed seminary.
3. Preaching is the easiest part of pastoring.
Okay, a few caveats here…
I love preaching. And for whatever reason, God has given me the gifts to do it—including a mind that processes information rather quickly and a semi-photographic mind. So, when I sit down to work on a sermon, it comes easy for me. I enjoy the process of studying, creating a clear homiletical structure, developing illustrations, and tracking down quotes I remember highlighting in books. It’s fun. I know everybody isn’t that way, and I totally get that. Again, I’m just speaking from my experience.
But from MY experience, preaching is by far the easiest part of pastoring. I think this is in part because preaching is very black-and-white. On Monday, I have a blank Word document. By Saturday night, I have a sermon. Point A to point B. I know when my job is done.
This isn’t the case with most other things.
People need your care and attention. Conflicts are sometimes challenging to know if they’re resolved or not. New people to your congregation want to know their pastor (as they should!). And on and on the list goes. On any given day, I can feel like a counselor, coach, mediator, CEO, CFO, and a shepherd. Pastoring requires you to have to wear so many hats on any given day, and not all of them are fun to wear. I don’t enjoy mediating conflict. I don’t enjoy having difficult conversations with people (especially if I know they won’t respond well). I don’t love spending time combing through a budget determining how we ought to reallocate funds to pay for this or that project. But that’s what it means to be a pastor—stepping into situations that are complex, seemingly unending, and in some cases, draining. Preaching is the easy part.
4. Most of the mistakes I’ve made in ministry were due to either my personality, immaturity, lack of wisdom, or a combination of all three.
It was Martin Luther who said, “All pastoral failure is due to two things: hardness or softness.”
It was his way of saying that most pastoral blunders are due to your instincts. Some pastors are pretty hard-nosed naturally. Others are more meek and mild. And depending on which you lean towards will most likely determine what mistakes you will make as a pastor. I think that’s true.
As I look back on the last ten years, some of the mistakes I made as a pastor—and there are MANY—were due to my personality. I didn’t have enough self-awareness to know how my natural instincts and proclivities shaped my pastoral leadership. And it took years for me to finally understand and accept this reality before I started to make the necessary changes to be a healthy pastor.
On the whole, however, most of my mistakes have been due to my immaturity and lack of wisdom. Some of this could have been helped, some of it could not. Part of being young is thinking you are wiser than you are. There are so many decisions and ways I carried myself over the years I wish I could do over. But maybe that’s what grace is for—changing us through our failures, not in spite of them.
5. Mentors + wise friends have shaped me (and my ministry) more than anything else.
I can’t understate this. The people you ‘look up to’ and try to emulate will shape you and your pastoral vocation more than anything else. I’ve been in so many situations where I’ve thought, what do I do now? and I pick up the phone, call a friend, or imagine what one of my mentors would do if they were me in that particular moment.
6. Finding your own voice behind the pulpit takes longer than you think.
I remember Tim Keller saying something like it takes 1,000 sermons to find your own voice. I have no idea where he came up with that number—and it feels really high to me—but his point is that it takes a long time before you feel comfortable being you behind a pulpit Sunday to Sunday. And man, isn’t that the truth. For years, I parroted people I adored and looked up to. I’m sure people could tell. Thankfully they didn’t say anything or, oh my, that would have been embarrassing.
I’ve been preaching for ten years now and most of my preaching reps have come in the last two years. And if you asked me how to describe my preaching style, I’m not sure I could. I have no idea. I feel like a combination of several styles put in a blender. And maybe that’s how you’re supposed to feel when you become ‘you.’ You can’t pinpoint who you sound like because you sound like a combination of a lot of people. That’s probably why JD Greear said, “If you listen to one preacher, you’ll sound like a clone. If you listen to two, you’ll sound confused. But if you listen to many, you’ll be wise.” Listen to many voices, but be sure to not lose yours in the process.
7. People can use your position (sometimes unintentionally) to get what they want.
This was so hard for me to detect early on, and got me in a lot of trouble as a result. Some people are so insecure and desperate to feel on the ‘inside’, they will do whatever they can to be in proximity to you and the power you have. They’ll compliment you, say you’re the best pastor they’ve ever had because you _______, appear to be willing to do whatever is needed to make your pastorate a success. Beware of those people. Sometimes, those people are genuine. Often times they are not. And the more I pastor people, the more I see the deep human desire for power—to be in proximity to it, use it, and possess it. I couldn’t detect who these folks were early on, which led me to being too vulnerable too quick, and led to lots of problems later on. The Navy SEALS have a saying they put on repeat for new SEALS in training: slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. Take it slow with people. Let their character unfold over time. If you don’t, you might get more than you asked for.
8. Pastoring is less about preaching, teaching, leading and more about praying, discerning, listening.
To this point, my pastoral journey has two testaments. The first testament is preaching, teaching, and leading. Those words summarized my view of pastoral ministry. My main job is to preach biblical sermons, teach people about God, and lead the church to be a healthy organization. So I spent hours (days) crafting sermons, leading meetings, ideating the next big church program that will help people take their faith seriously, and so on.
Much like the story arc of the Old Testament, this testament of my life was good and helpful, but incomplete—and at times, misguided. Pastoring IS about preaching, teaching, and leading—but it’s not MAINLY about those things. And oddly enough, because I didn’t understand this, I spent an inordinate amount of time on things rather than people. How many weeks did I bury myself in an office, only to show up on Sunday morning ready to preach to a people I didn’t know? How many times did I hastily move in and out of encounters with people so I can rush to the next meeting, only to realize now that sometimes the most important meetings are the ones you don’t plan for?
My perspective changed when I started reading Eugene Peterson with arguing with Eugene Peterson. Rather than reading his work and saying, ‘Well, that worked for HIM, but would never work for ME because etc., etc., etc…’ I read his work and thought about it. Wrestled with it. I even tried it on. And I must say, I love how it fit.
Because for Eugene Peterson, pastoring was less doing things FOR people and more about being WITH people as God worked in them. The Peterson-way of pastoring is marked by praying for your congregation as if you actually believed God hears us and acts when we pray, discerning how God is at work in the church and people’s lives—and informing people of what you’ve discerned, and listening to people’s stories and pain so you can be a co-sufferer—modeling what it means to share in Christ’s sufferings.
I wish I would have learned all of this sooner. I would have been a much better pastor.
9. Accept and learn from your failures. You’ll be a better pastor (and person) in the long-run.
Janet Hagberg wrote a great book years ago called, The Critical Journey. It’s a book about the stages of faith (most) Christians go through as they follow Jesus. One of the most insightful things she writes about is this concept known as “The Wall.” Here’s how she defines it:
“[The Wall] is a profound spiritual crisis or disruption in which a person’s previously reliable ways of relating to God, self, and the world stop working, often accompanied by disorientation, loss of control, and a deep questioning of identity and faith; God may feel distant or silent, effectiveness and certainty fade, and the false foundations of competence, success, or spiritual performance are exposed, not as punishment or failure but as a necessary passage that invites surrender, deeper trust, and a transformation from a doing-centered, ego-driven faith into a humbler, love-shaped way of being with God.”
In other words, there are circumstances we fall into through our lives that are incredibly disruptive and disorienting. Things like getting fired. The death of a loved one. A leader lets you down. A church split. A deep betrayal. Your marriage crumbles. The list goes on.
And Hagberg says we have two options when we hit The Wall: 1) you accept whatever the circumstance is, and do the deep work of transformation which often involves self-discovery, grieving, and repentance—usually accompanied by a wise guide who can help you walk that path. 2) you deny reality, reframe your circumstance, and go back to living comfortably—usually by leaving and starting fresh somewhere else. Hagberg argues most people do #2. Few take the path of humiliation of #1.
Speaking as a person who took the option #2 route for years, I don’t recommend it. Choosing to walk the path of humiliation several years ago was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and yet, it’s also been the most rewarding. I wouldn’t be the person (or pastor) I am today without willingly entering into a season of unraveling.
10. Being a pastor is a gift.
For all of the talking heads out there who bemoan the vocation of pastor because of it’s difficulty, I’ve always wanted to be the guy who shouted from the other side of the fence: THIS IS BLESSING!
Now, don’t get me wrong—pastoring is hard work. It will require all of you to do it well, and it will break your heart as you vulnerably step into the lives of people. But in spite of all the difficulties, pastoring is a pure gift. To be able to get a sideline pass to people’s lives and cheer them on as they follow Jesus is unlike any other vocation I know of, and I am thankful I’ve had the privilege of doing it for ten years (and counting).