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I was mad. And the more I thought about it, the madder I got.

I had attended a seminar entitled "Ministry in the Small Church." I had pastored small churches, but this was my first study of the concept. Now, heading home from the conference, I was mad—at the denomination, at the seminary, at my superintendent, even at myself.

I was mad because I wasn't at all ready to hear what I heard. I wasn't prepared to see myself as a career small-church pastor, enduring low status among colleagues, locked into a lifetime of poverty.

The financial pinch was the toughest. I'd been on food stamps for two years, the kids were being fed by wic and free lunches at school. I had cashed in my life insurance policy, and when the old Toyota died, it was replaced by a bicycle. I didn't know how much longer we could survive. This was not what I expected.

Until entering the ministry, my experience was in mid- to large-size churches, full of educated, professional people. After college I moved to the city and became an advertising executive—house in the suburbs, sports car in the garage, dinner out three nights a week, and vacations in Tahiti. I admit it, I was a yuppie.

When I responded to God's call, it was one thing to leave behind the house, the car, the exotic vacations; I still figured that God would have me lead a church full of people like me.

Until that conference, I had always thought of myself as a Big Church Pastor on temporary assignment, just passin' through, paying my dues, awaiting discovery and the call to the big leagues. I was slapped in the face by the realization that many pastors, and just possibly I, would never get a call to the big leagues.

We were worshiping in a hundred-year-old building and managing all our ministry on a $40,000 budget. I was less disillusioned with everything the church was than by what it was unlikely to become.

What I needed more than anything else was the wisdom to cope in a place like this. I desperately desired someone to show me how to survive in the small church.

What I learned in seminary may have enabled me to be substantive in my preaching and teaching, but somehow I missed the class that taught me how to translate all that into small-town ministry.

Even if it is possible to shed the personal expectations, pastoral success is measured in numbers—conversions, members, attendance, budget, Sunday school enrollment, offerings, building programs. The reward is increase—bigger churches, higher salaries, more perks, finer housing, fancier offices, denominational recognition and, ultimately, a bigger pension.

The yuppie in me cringes at the realization: none of that will happen here. Do I have to transfer out of this great little place in order to feel successful? Must I interpret our smallness to mean that I'm a failure of a pastor in a failure of a church? The thought of bailing out occurred to me often.

Those who knew of my struggles were sympathetic. They told anecdotes of trials in the small churches of their past. But no one offered counsel from the position of common struggle. They said, "Hang in there, buddy, and sooner or later, you too will move up and out to a bigger and better church—just like me."

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