Starting Out and Staying In - Christianity Today

I’ve sometimes wished I could hibernate for about ten years and emerge as a more mature, experienced pastor. While our culture idolizes youth, most churches also desire the wisdom and experience of age. The perfect pastor is thirty-five with at least twenty-five years of experience!

Age and experience are, of course, significant in many careers, but the ministry possesses an age dynamic different from other professions. Young pastors are immediately thrust into positions of leadership with people their parents’ and grandparents’ age.

In my second year out of seminary, I was invited to speak at a church renewal weekend. After my first message Friday night, an eighty-two-year-old member told my wife, “When I saw how young he was, I was sure he wouldn’t have anything to say to me. Fortunately, I was wrong.” When my wife relayed the message to me, I winced because I understood her initial impression. After all, what right do I have to teach a person nearly three times my age?

Three primary issues challenge the young pastor’s self-concept from the start: idealism, inadequacies, and intimidation. How we respond will do much to set the tone for future ministry.

The Test of Idealism

“My idealism was shot the first week I arrived at this church,” one friend told me. A trustee had taken him aside his first Sunday and said, “I’m sure you have great ideas for things to do here, but most of the people will be happy if you just stick to preaching.”

Graduates leave seminary and Bible college ready to change the world. They carry a pocketful of programs to lay on some unsuspecting congregation. Visions of superchurches dance in their heads. All this is fine. In fact, this energy and motivation stoke the engines necessary for ministry start-up. J. I. Packer once said, “A task without vision is drudgery; a task with vision is ministry.”

But how does the congregation view a young pastor’s idealism? Much depends not so much on the ideas themselves but on the tone with which they’re presented. If the people sense condescension-“Have I got a plan for you!”-they’ll likely reject the plan. A congregation is really asking the pastor, “Do you understand us?” They want to see that the pastor truly knows them and is seeking their best interests. They won’t simply sign up for the pastor’s ego trip.

Another concern is the cost. Congregations want to know if these plans and their implications have been clearly thought through. They realize that they may be left with a half-built program tower that can’t be completed.

Whether a congregation responds with outright rejection or the subtle frustrations of heel-dragging, the young pastor’s ideals will be challenged. This is natural, and this realization alone can be a comfort. Nevertheless, the wrong reactions to this testing time can undermine effective ministry.

One negative response is resentment. The lack of receptivity can breed impatience and a spirit of accusation. In Life Together, Bonhoeffer counters this attitude: “A pastor should not complain about his congregation, certainly never to other people, but also not to God. A congregation has not been entrusted to him in order that he should become its accuser before God and men.”

A second negative response is shifting the accusing gaze from the congregation to yourself. Unrealized ideals may germinate seeds of disillusionment. Initiative erodes. The call is questioned. The pastor is tormented with doubts: Am I doing enough? Is this really where I belong? Am I being wasted here? The choice seems to be between forsaking the vision or moving on in search of a more fertile field.

But there’s another alternative: refashion the vision. Shared vision involves lots of time, study, and discussion. The foundation must be laid. One pastor came to a church and within his first year proposed they begin the Bethel Bible series for adult education. The congregation thought differently. The defeat hurt, but he took a different approach. He began to whet their appetites for Bible study through small groups and short Bible courses. Three years later, they eagerly entered the Bethel program.

The joy comes from seeking God’s will together. We learn from each other. One of our elders said to me recently, “I began to get more excited about my church work when I realized you ministers didn’t have a corner on the market of God’s will.”

The Exposure of Inadequacies

The weaknesses of even the most capable pastors are exposed on the barren heights of ministry. How can I call these people to prayer when my own prayer life is so erratic? How can I expect to lead God’s people when I can’t control my anger? I can hardly balance my own checkbook; how am I supposed to understand the church budget? Where will I ever get the wisdom for these counseling problems? What do I do when I run out of good sermon ideas?

Soon the realization dawns: the ministry is an impossible task. The magnitude of the responsibility is staggering-to minister to the spiritual, intellectual, social, and emotional needs of people of all ages, in all stages of spiritual development. Eternity hangs in the balance.

In the plan of God, realizing our inadequacy is actually the stepping stone to effective ministry. We remain mired in discouragement only until we realize that we are inadequate and always will be. God planned it that way! Feelings of inadequacy loosen their chilling grip when we see that they are actually messengers of God’s grace. In The Person Reborn, Paul Tournier writes, “In this world, our task is not so much to avoid mistakes, as to be fruitful. To be more and more able to recognize our faults, so as to be better able to understand the price of God’s mercy, and to devote ourselves more completely to him, makes our lives more fertile. … Our vocation is, I believe, to build good out of evil. For if we try to build good out of good, we are in danger of running out of raw material.”

The glory of God is his use of frail, earthen vessels to bear eternal treasures.

A friend of mine became senior pastor of a 600-member church at the age of thirty. In spite of his outward success, he was plagued daily by feelings of inadequacy. As he prayed about this, he felt led to call two of his lay leaders. When they arrived, he said, “I’d like you to lay hands on me and pray for my healing.”

They were somewhat taken aback. “Pray for your healing? Why? What’s wrong?”

“I’m shattered by a feeling of inadequacy.” He went on to describe how this feeling focused his attention on himself. It robbed him of all freedom and confidence in the Lord.

“When they laid hands on me,” he told me sometime later, “I was healed of my feeling-but not of my inadequacy itself! My inadequacy is a fact; we’re all inadequate. But God released me from my fears and discouragement to be a servant to the body of Christ.”

In addition to stimulating dependence on God, our inadequacy also calls us to rely on others. As much as pastors may preach on community, it will not happen without interdependence. And interdependence cannot happen without the disclosure of weakness and need. The pastor-on-the-pedestal ends right here.

We admire successful people, but we don’t feel close to them unless we know about their struggles. Perfection, real or perceived, imposes distance; weakness unites. Someone said, “The only nice thing about being imperfect is the joy it brings to others.” Beyond the cynicism, there’s a profound truth: when we admit our inadequacy, it helps forge a mutual ministry between pastor and people. Far from being a curse, openness about our shortcomings can strengthen all involved. We can call forth others’ gifts to compensate for our weaknesses.

The Threat of Intimidation

A young pastor can feel intimidated by the pillars of the church-the large givers, the successful professionals, any number of people. Few young pastors are paralyzed by intimidation, but there’s usually one group or person the pastor perceives as a threat to his leadership. Often these thoughts aren’t rational. But neither is intimidation. Evidently, Timothy struggled with this. Paul wrote, “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young” (1 Tim. 4:12). The greatest danger of intimidation is that we begin to devalue ourselves.

To compensate, some young pastors use distance. They become formal and careful to “follow the book” so that there’s no risk or cause for accusation. Others respond with drive. They turn on the bravado and forge ahead with great shows of confidence. Others respond with reluctance to take up God’s call. We see this reticence in Jeremiah. When God called him, he cried out, “Ah, Sovereign Lord, I do not know how to speak; I am only a child” (Jer. 1:6). But the critical factor in God’s eye isn’t chronology; it’s call.

Our identity in Christ is our greatest asset. When we let go of defensiveness, we can enjoy the freedom of accepting ourselves and others and building a partnership with the people of God.

Rob is a sixty-two-year-old businessman in our congregation who I always felt was antagonistic. During my sermons he would sit with arms folded and brow wrinkled. He seemed to be saying, “I dare you to say something to me.” After about a year, he seemed to soften. Following a service he said to me, “I think you have what it takes to be a preacher. I’d love to hear you in twenty years.” I could only think, Do I write off my preaching for the next nineteen years?

Then last Christmas I received a note from Rob in response to a sermon I preached on peace. He wrote:

At age sixty-two, I’ve probably got at least thirty-five years on you, and time and circumstances have had a better chance at me. So I was pleasantly surprised to listen to your sermon and application of John 14:27.

I’ll not be around when you reach age sixty-two, but if I could, it would be interesting to hear you preach again on this verse. You’ll probably say about the same thing, but with pauses as you remember all that has happened in your life, and those you have known and loved-and what peace they have found in this life.

Rob has taught me much. He has shown me the need to consider the depth and breadth of experience in the people I serve. “You’ll probably say the same thing, but with pauses”-what a profound insight into the meaning of maturity. The firmly believed but quickly spoken words of youth will grow weightier and fuller as we experience God’s faithfulness over the years. It will be time to slow down and savor his grace.

Youth is something we all outgrow-much to the regret of many. Personally, rather than fight the fact of age, I want to enjoy the process of maturing daily in Christ. I don’t expect the problems of idealism, inadequacy, and intimidation to disappear with the passing of time; they’ll just change clothes. One principle remains: when God calls, we dare not let youth, or age for that matter, be a barrier. There’s no time to hibernate, only time to grow.

Douglas J. Rumford is pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Fairfield, Connecticut.