Wow, has he been reading my diary?

I wish more people would have access to the book, “Shoulder to Shoulder , Strengthening Your Church by Supporting Your Pastor”,by Dan Reiland. I know some churches have classes for people before they join the church in order for them to understand the basic tenets of faith. Perhaps they could add this to their list of recommended reading so people would understand and be able to be supportive of their pastors. So many people love their pastors and appreciate what they have done and are doing, don’t let a few misguided souls keep you from helping those who really need you.You are the Lord’s beloved and He will take care of and reward those who are faithful.God bless you!

“For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like men condemned to die in the arena.  We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to men.  We are fool for Christ,...” 1 Cor. 4:9-10
I feel like this sometimes as well, but what an honor to serve the Lord and His people.  I would have it no other way, so I suppose I will remain a fool.

Much of what Scott says is realistic. I’ve been in the ministry for almost 37 years. There are days when I walk to my car, and I say, “It doesn’t get any better than this.” Then there are days I am counting toward my retirement. My guess is that people in just about every profession have their good days and their bad days. Over all, I can’t believe that God would choose me (out of the billions of people on the earth) to lead people to love and serve Him.

Thanks for the honesty and for sharing your heart in a personal, thoughtful way.  I retired from ministry at age 37 after planting a church, watching it grow to 2,000+ adults in four years, and then blowing out my life due to a moral failure.

And then God did the unthinkable.  He restored my wife and family, gave me the stength to walk through a two year restoration process that ended in a new ‘fit for ministry’ declaration, and yet didn’t put me back into a role at a church.

He did put into a my life a number of men that are daring to the impossible.  These are men who are leaving (or being fired from) ministry roles at churches and are having to find creative ways to financially provide for their families. 

We are beginning to really walk together around the Person of Jesus and simply love one another.  We are also beginning to invest our lives into a few men that Jesus has brought into our lives and doing the same thing with them.  We call it an Acts 29 experience - watching Jesus at work in the lives of His people. 

And the best part - we’re not down on the church.  We love the church - she’s the bride.  We love her people.  We feel called to bless and strengthen her people.  Problem is, there are many of her people that often don’t go to ‘church’ on the weekend anymore because they’re hungry for something real, vulnerable, and transforming.  And that doesn’t happen for the most part at ‘church’.  It happens as Jesus gets hold of our lives and teaches us to really love Him and love one another.

So we all still go to ‘church’ on Sundays, but we use it as a time to orbit and pray that God will bring us to others who are hungry to be agents of change in our world.  And we begin to teach and equip people to really walk with Jesus daily, walk with a few others in their life, and then to trust and wait on Jesus for direction and instructions on how to minister in His Name each day.

I’m having more fun than I’ve had in a long time.  I’m not called pastor anymore, but I minister more effectively than maybe ever before.

God’s not done with you as you move from being a pastor, maybe He’s apprehending you in a fresh new way.  Enjoy the ride....

Thank you for posting the blogger from Scott Williams. That is pretty much how I feel.
After 30 years of pastoring mainline churches I gave it up last July. I have served non-evangelical churches and was just tired of the continous progressive theology of the superiors and the institution of religion.
I love the Lord and am willing to come back serving a more traditional evangelical church. I am a good pastor and a good preacher. The last congregation where I served grew almost 200 in 6 years during my time there, but then I left and a more liberal pastor came and the spiritual growth that developed during those six years seemingly went down the drain.
God bless you for you service!

Bo L. Lange
Escanaba. Michigan

Man, this is what the church needs. . . transparency and authenticity.  Thanks for both because they are refreshing to me.  I haven’t decided if it’s a good idea or not for my church to see and deal with my brokenness--but I make sure they understand that it’s there.  It’s the only way I know how to be.  The duality of the fishbowl is too hard for me to live with otherwise.

When I left full-time ministry and took full-time secular employment, my interviewer was a fine Christian man who asked me why I had left the church to get an MBA.  I told him, “I guess I expected people to act their best at church, when in fact most of them acted their worst.”

They said things there they dared not say to their boss, spouse, parents, or children, and acted too often like immature children.  I felt like a paid punching bag.  I realized I could probably be more effective and happier as an involved layman than I could be as a minister.  And it certianly did away with my stomach problems.  In the end, I was right.  I have been a happy and active churchman on the other side of the pulpit.  Only in the last few years have I gone back to part-time ministry and I’m enjoying it completely.  But I can walk away at any moment—it’s not my livelihood. It gives me a freedom to do and say exactly what I think is right and if any one individual doesn’t like it...too bad.  Maybe that’s the whole problem in a nutshell.  Too many pastors feel tongue-tied by the fear of losing their job, so they can’t bring themselves to call people on the carpet for how they speak and act.

Bless the man for his willingness to reveal truth. I recall a Saturday broadcast from a Jewish radio show in NYC, where someone talked about writers. Paraphrasing an old memory: “The only things that merit being written down are the things that nobody can afford to talk about.”

I’m just a church music director, but am capable of understanding many of the expressed emotions. An old friend I used to work with used to say this (regarding criticism from a boss): “You don’t hesitate to me me when I’m wrong. Why don’t you tell me when I’m right?” I think church members would be well-advised to express encouragement to their leaders more intentionally.

Last, consider Robert Frost: “… So when at times the mob is swayed to carry praise or blame too far, we may choose something like a star ... to stay our minds on, and be staid.”

Thank you for being vocal about how many pastors feel inside. My wife and I have been in youth ministry for 7 years and we quit completely in Sept. 2003 because of the frustrations that you described. We had to deal with a lot of anger issues and a lack of desire to even go back to church. Thankfully God is not done with us. He has restore our minds and has called us to minister to those who some how have been wounded by the church. It is remarkable how many people we run into every day. We still love the church and believe that one day we will be as one. It is our goal to help bring restoration and healing to those who are struggling outside of the church body. I am in a Senior management position with a Global IT company and understand how business operates and communication. It just amazes me how all of the professionals that get together for church and forget everything they know about resolving conflict, taking care of employees, and compensating staff for a job well done. My prayer is that the church will open their eyes and see that the Pastor and his family are just like the rest. It hurts me to see Pastor’s wives and children suffering because the church demands so much from one man. May the Lord open our eyes to see.

I too have left pastoral vocational ministry a few years ago, and share some similarities. Would be so good if we could just get more honesty, transparency, and vulnerability, as you greatly exemplified, among pastors and their humanity.

Having had a brief experience in professional ministry soon after college, I sympathize with the stress created by the double standard in our congregations. 

Yes, the people in the church need to learn to encourage and thank as much as they offer their criticism.  That would help, but it will not happen over night. 

I found that I am just not cut out for pastoring.  It is not in my heart.  A pastor is someone who loves his church to the level that he acts as Christ’s hands for his people.  Jesus took a lot of abuse and was betrayed even by his own people.  He forgave them.  In some cases, he just ignored the criticism.  Pastors have to have thick skin toward the silly criticisms otherwise those comments will be used by the enemy to discourage and tear a Pastor down.  The best pastors I know are people who are energized by serving their congregation.  They aren’t superhumans.  They do need their rest, but they can’t wait to get back with their people after they have had a break.

You also choose who to loose.  Stay on course with doing the right thing as well as you can within the strength of God’s spirit and if someone else isn’t satisfied - so what!  They are either with you or against you.  They either support you in your struggles or they are against you.  Jesus didn’t hesitate to make the distinction clear and at the same time showed them bottomless love. 

If God has not put it in our hearts to love in that way, then it is not our time to be in pastoral ministry - find something else productive to do for the kingdom while he gets you ready.  I don’t beleive that people should jump into pastoring just because they have the degree or its the right time in their career track.  If you don’t have the heart, it will betray you burn you out.  Jesus didn’t conduct any ministry until he was well into adult hood.  Knowing what I know now at 30 years of age, I wouldn’t have touched pastoral ministry when I did until I had matured and really had the heart for it. 

In a quick conclusion, perhaps the blogger really needs to search his heart and either ignore the sheeps’ complaining or tell them what they are doing wrong.  Setting the flock straight will quickly tell you who is loyal to you and who is there to just pass their personal guilt on to you.

It pains me to over and over witness the pain of persons trying to serve Christ’s church.  Anyone who has tried it has had his/her share of the same sort of feelings that Scott expresses.
We all know that there is a calling to rise above the human frailties that are a part of the church and to walk in the heavenly instead.  Unfortunately, that, too, sometimes proves a vicious circle for me.  I am hurt by what something says or does toward me and my ministry.  Then I remind myself of the need to rise above it all and to hear the voice of God.  If that, however, is not immediately reassuring or reaffirming, then I start the blame game of “what’s wrong with me that I can’t rise about this?”
In the end, however, that is my salvation.  God calls me to listen to him, to serve as he calls me to the best of my ability, and then to turn the critism, the hatred, or whatever the negative over to him.