The burden of pastoral leadership is tremendous.
For Moses, a reluctant leader from the start, the burden was so great that he asked to be relieved of his duties on numerous occasions. In the aftermath of the golden calf scandal, Moses demanded that God let him off the hook. Unless you go before me, I will not go… Remember, these are your people. A veritable temper tantrum. The thought of quitting ministry is a very common release from the burden of pastoral leadership.
I’m part of an online cohort that has been meeting once a month for the better part of a year. During a recent Zoom gathering, one of the pastors confessed that he daydreams about quitting ministry and working at Home Depot as an employee who cuts wood in the lumber department.
When he confessed this daydream, I felt a relaxing ease upon my neck. The thought of a burden-free career was so intoxicating that my body instantly reacted at the mention of it. My glasses drooped as tension released around my ears and scalp. Luckily I was muted and the rest of the cohort didn’t hear my very audible sigh.
How great would that be?
I would be able to clock in, do my job, clock out, and go home. My weekends would be free and my nights would open up. I could finally detach myself from the burden of leadership and maybe, just maybe, I would be able to resume a normal sleep schedule.
How great would that be?
The Zoom call ended and I lingered in the enchantment of this Home Depot fantasy for the next few hours. But a funny thing happened as I was raptured into this daydream. The Holy Spirit turned my reverie into a reality check.
Because the reality is that I would be content with a clock-in-clock-out job for about two weeks, tops. The first week would be amazing. I’d put my airpods in, keep my head down, and get to work. Then I’d go home and brag to all my friends who are still in ministry about how much sleep I’m getting.
But the second week would be different. It would probably start with a customer complaint. I’d notice a bottleneck in the customer relation service chain and I wouldn’t be able to dismiss the inefficiency. I’d notice communication breakdowns between my supervisor and our team. I’d notice all the ways the job could be improved. Together, they’d be nagging loose threads that begged to be pulled and after a while, I would yank one of them out.
I’d realize that in order for real change to happen, I’d need to be more than a store clerk. I would need to move up the corporate ladder. Pretty soon, without realizing it, I would wake up in middle management, frustrated that more change isn’t happening, yet burdened once again by the thought that things could be done so much better. And I’d lose sleep over it.
But the real smelling salt to my fantasy stupor wasn’t the need to fix Home Depot’s organizational issues. It was something else altogether.
Here’s how this daydream ran its course in my head:
“Hey Daniel, how was your weekend?” Greg asked as he was tying his orange apron around his waist.
“Great! I went to one of my kid’s sports events, then my family and I went to church. After service we tried that new pho spot. Then I went home and took the greatest Sunday afternoon nap of my life. How was your weekend?”
“Okay, I guess.”
“Just ‘okay’?”
“Well. My wife and I are having some issues…”
“Aw, that’s too bad. Welp, gotta go. I think there’s a customer who needs to cut some plywood. Talk to you later.”
“Yeah, no. Okay, talk to you later.”
Would I be able to dismiss Greg so easily? Would I be able to wash my hands and turn a cold shoulder to an obvious attempt at human connection? Even though Greg is an NPC in my Home Depot fantasy, my heart still aches for his fictional predicament.
Pastor Richard J Lee writes in Missio Alliance about the feeling of being stuck in ministry.
“With every story of a leader leaving ministry, too often, lurking in the shadows, is that unshakeable feeling of that pastor feeling stuck, or worse, feeling trapped.” He continues to write a note of encouragement for those who are on the brink of leaving their ministries, specifically noting how our leadership skills in ministry translate well into the secular workforce. “Strong communicator, strategic thinker, event planner, experienced leader, community mobilizer…I don’t want pastors to feel like they should leave, just because they can. Instead, I want them to feel like they can stay, even though they don’t have to.”
He’s right. We have many skills that will transfer. But I believe our greatest transferable asset is one that is most directly linked to our ministry calling: our desire to be a shepherd. In the deep recesses of my heart, I know I will be a shepherd of people wherever I go. Whether it’s to be a pastor at a local church or as a fictional Home Depot, self-appointed chaplain. Pastors, we are under-shepherds for Christ’s flock through and through. The nature of our calling is not contingent upon our particular career. It is a burden we will carry for the rest of our lives.
So the question that remains is a simple one to ask but a difficult one to answer.
How do we know we must stay in vocational pastoral ministry?
I’ve been wrestling with this question for quite some time and while I cannot speak to everyone’s situations, here is my conclusion after much prayer.
It comes down to what my role as a parish minister requires of me. In other words, as a pastor, what do I owe my congregation? For me, being a pastor means my congregation has a stake in my life. As their spiritual leader, they own shares of me. And because I have chosen to serve in Asian ministry contexts—where blurred boundaries are not only expected, they are encouraged—they are stakeholders of my conduct, my schedule, and even my finances. That’s the reality. But at a bare minimum, even if I wasn’t a pastor of an Asian American church, what I really owe my congregation is access to the more vulnerable pieces of my soul. At least, offering more vulnerability than I’m comfortable giving.
My life, the goings-on in my heart, the things that trouble me, the things that cause me to question my faith and doubt my convictions, and how all of these are placed at the foot of Christ, who has already gone before me…that is what I owe to my congregation.
Throughout my 45 years of life, I have picked up baggage and pain-points along the way. My natural inclination is to hide them and instead present an image of what I think a pastor should be. To present myself as someone who is already whole, rather than someone being made whole. Aorist, not present passive.
But for me, my call to be a pastor of a church is directly tied to my call to be uncomfortable in vulnerability—whether that is through the sermons I preach, the counsel I provide, or even the emails I write. My congregation gets varying degrees of insider access to it all. Some days, the access will be great, other days just a peek. But the day I cannot give any of it to a congregation is the day I stop being a pastor of a church.
For those of us in the trenches of vocational ministry, especially those of us in immigrant church trenches and are close to waving the white flag, give yourself the luxury of unhurried time and answer the following question for yourself: What do I owe my congregation? We might never know how long we will be parish ministers, but we do know that our calling will extend far beyond the pulpit. Taking the time to answer this question will help us discern if our call will keep us in the pews of a church, or take us to the aisles of Home Depot.
Photo Credit: Nagesh Badu