Why I'm Still in Ministry - Christianity Today

Our plan was to hit the trail head at 6:00 in the morning, hike eight miles in to an alpine lake in the Bitterroot Selway Wilderness, fish the late morning and early afternoon, and hike out that afternoon, carrying plastic bags full of monster cutthroat trout with flesh as pink as salmon.

Six miles up, at seven thousand feet, it began to rain. We kept hiking. Frigid air screamed down the draw. We hid under a tree, but it was raining sideways, so we got soaked through our shorts and T-shirts.

My teeth started chattering, so we ate some snacks we’d brought along, thinking some calories would help. I reached down to unsnap my canteen from my belt, but I couldn’t manage the simple task; my hands wouldn’t work.

“I can’t feel them,” I told my friend with a laugh.

Fortunately, my friend, who was also beginning to shiver, realized that we were in trouble. He suggested we head home immediately. I stumbled behind him numbly. There would be no fish today.

I was in hypothermia, a deadly condition in which your body’s temperature drops off a cliff. Once the tumbling begins, the body can’t make up enough heat to break the fall. Unless an outside source of heat intervenes, you die.

After about two miles of hard hiking, I still wasn’t warming up. But the wind died, the clouds broke, and a hot summer sun blasted us. We propped ourselves up against a south-facing hillside and let the sun warm us to the bones.

I have no idea how long we lay in the sun, but I remember what woke us. My friend glanced at the bush beside him and saw fat, purple Rocky Mountain huckleberries. The sun had plopped us down into a thicket the size of a football field. For an hour and a half, we foraged that hillside like a couple of bears. We sauntered home warm and dry, stomachs and bags full of huckleberries. What sweet pies they made.

In the wilderness we are unprotected. Our normal systems of shelter are not operative. Our walk through the wilderness is subject to the agenda of providence. This can be dangerous and delightful–often it is both. But the crucial feature of wilderness wandering is being out of control.

Unless we wrest control of our lives through religious hucksterism, the pastoral ministry is a pilgrimage through the wilderness. We go about our work unprotected, in a spiritual environment of great fishing, sweet thickets, storms, and wild beasts. We have little control over what we encounter when. As we walk we are subject to providence, and we are not in control. But we are tempted to rip our lives from the hands of God at every point.

It’s easy to say that we want to follow Jesus in our ministry–until we hear Jesus tell us about the wilderness. Notice how he responded to another well-intentioned but ill-informed would-be follower: “Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, ‘Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.’ Jesus replied, ‘Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head'” (Matt. 8:19-20).

The thing that teaches us not to marshal our lives and tear them away from God is our appointed fast. In our fast we learn obedience and trust. We learn to trust each day, and each ministry opportunity, to God. We must learn to trust the Holy Spirit, and so we are led by the Spirit into the wilderness for our fast.

HAVING TO HAVE

The pastoral ministry is a fast, and it lasts our whole life. We squirm under the pressure of it, and we become vulnerable to temptation because of it. From it we learn to trust God, to obey God, and never to quit. In our wilderness fast, we become a parable of Jesus.

The pastor’s wilderness fast is to continue to live in the wilderness under its terms, to refuse to turn stones into bread. To live on what is provided, to partake gladly in what comes along, to allow the Lord to provide for all needs.

In other vocations men and women turn stones into bread. They apply their sweat and their talents to till the soil, to ply their trade, to sell their goods, to make their living and raise their families. From Genesis through Proverbs and into Jesus’ parables, we see the hard work of men and women trying to make a living, migrating when necessary, succeeding and failing, but with every encouragement to pray for their daily bread and then go out and work for it.

Pastors don’t get to do this. We live on what providence provides in the wilderness. Our “fast” consists of eating what is provided. We do not apply our hands to the business of providing for our needs.

The pastor’s fast is a necessity for ministry because it trains pastors in love. It teaches obedience through suffering, even as Jesus had to learn obedience through suffering. “Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered” (Heb. 5:8).

In our society we have transformed the legitimate feeling of life-or-death need for “our daily bread” into a feeling of a life-or-death need for boats. We know we don’t need boats, but it feels like we need boats. The feeling that we need bread to survive is transferred to other things, so that procuring these things becomes a life-or-death issue. We expand the need to have bread into the need to have in general. We have become a people who must have in order to be.

Once we have a boat, it is inconsequential. We use it out of guilt. “I bought it; I’d better use it.” Using the boat does not satisfy the desire that prompted the purchase of the boat. When our eyes were fixed on the boat unpurchased, the boat commended itself as the terminal solution to the ever-nagging longing to have. Once owned, the boat is superfluous. Some satisfaction was gained in the process of procuring it, but once the boat is had it is irrelevant. The essence of life today is not having–it is having to have.

The pastor’s fast is designed to reshape (by force) someone who must have in order to be into a person who may have or may not have, because the pastor’s being proceeds not from having but from the call of God to be love in all circumstances. Paul addresses us with surpassing clarity on this issue from his prison cell. He writes: “I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength” (Phil 4:11-13).

The pastor’s fast forces us to learn that God provides us with all our daily bread so that we can be content in any and all circumstances and in no way have to take control of our own life and destiny. Of course this makes us feel as if we’re going to die. We want to quit.

THE ESCAPE CLAUSE

The temptation to quit comes early.

“The tempter came to him and said, ‘If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread'” (Matt. 4:3).

Pastors really do have the ability to turn stones into bread. Anyone smart enough to pastor a church successfully could pursue almost any career for better money and fewer hassles.

But it’s not just money. I’ve never met an ex-pastor who didn’t like his or her new job better. Some miss the profound privileges of the ministry, such as being with people at significant times in their lives. But they don’t miss the privileges enough to return to the ministry. I’ve never met anyone who had left the ministry but was tempted to go back.

Meanwhile, almost every pastor I know is tempted to get out. Every pastor is tempted to break the fast and turn stones into bread.

I was exhausted from fighting against my wilderness circumstances. I was vulnerable at every point and not in control. One summer twilight my head lay in my wife’s arms; I wept bitterly and told her I was quitting the ministry.

I began interviewing at the university to enter the Ph.D. program in psychology. I wanted, finally, to make a living. I studied for the GRE, not wanting to resign until my acceptance at the university was assured.

My shattered call lay in my conscience like a corpse on a battlefield. It stank the place up. Many of my expectations for ministry and many of my reasons for entering pastoral ministry had been proved to be foolishness and were offensive to me. I had a theology of the cross, but I despised myself when it was time for me to hang there.

Then, unaccountably, the clouds cleared. I did nothing to revive my call, but God’s face shone upon me–partly through the love of friends who listened but did not judge, partly through the wise care of the area minister of my denomination, partly through a few books. Mostly, though, I can’t explain it. The revival of my call was like lying in the sun and being warmed after being cold and wet.

The wilderness of the ministry brought me both: the cold endangering storm and the warming, reviving sun. I lay there and was revived by the glory of the Lord. I felt called to preach from Jeremiah.

So I preached from Jeremiah that fall. I laughed with joy as I foraged the fire and brimstone of the weeping prophet. I gave up fighting with boards over money and my “rights,” stopped fighting against life in the wilderness. I began to feed on the Word.

“Jesus answered, ‘It is written: “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God”‘” (Matt. 4:4).

THE SOURCE OF THE QUIET

As I entered the birthing room of the hospital, the first thing I saw was her eyes. I wasn’t ready for them yet, so I scanned the surroundings.

She was on the bed, in a hospital gown. Nurses were around, her husband was there, she had an IV in her arm pumping in the drug to induce labor. But there was no possible happy ending. We knew that the seven-month-old baby inside her was dead. Today she had to deliver it.

As I walked closer, I felt the power of the Spirit of God’s love. But my blood pressure felt as if it were lowering. Something was telling my body to slow down. Nothing was demanded of me but to be there. I was as important as the doctors and nurses, but I had nothing to do. My role was to be quiet.

No one told me I was supposed to do this. I didn’t know I was supposed to do this. I just entered the room, and as soon as I saw her eyes, I knew that my role today was simply to be the source of the quiet.

Now I could look at her.

I looked into her eyes. As I got close, she reached up for an embrace, and I returned it.

I told her: “I love you, dear, and I’m going to be here today.”

“Thank you,” she said, and her eyes softened.

I don’t think I’m the one who said it; I don’t think I’m the one she heard say it. I think we both just listened to it and knew who said it.

Now, it was just a lot of hard work. The contractions began, and the father and the nurses assisted her as I watched. Later the father and I went out to lunch. We made small talk, but mostly I was quiet. Being quiet was my job that day; so I gave him some of my quietness.

In the afternoon the time came for the delivery. I stepped out. The father, the nurses, and the doctor were in the room. Meanwhile, some friends from church had showed up. We sat quietly and prayed.

After about an hour, the doctor and the nurses came out, and a nurse asked me to go in the room. They wanted me in the room. I walked in, and there were mother and father holding the baby, huddling over the baby’s body in awe and anguish. I came up to their side and looked too. Her skin was grayish-green and beginning to blister off. She had Mommy’s chin. Her name was Bonnie Jeanne.

Some friends from church came into the room. We all gathered in a circle and held hands for prayer. I prayed:

“O Lord, we worship you. We thank you and praise you, for you are a good and loving God, full of goodness and lovingkindness, which you have shown to us in many ways over many years. We do not understand this event, but we ask your presence and your peace and your healing with us now as we gather at this sad time. … “

God was there. We all felt God, we all knew God was there, and we all worshiped. Somehow, in the utter absence, with all of our possibilities at an end, our hope used up, when for all practical purposes God had forsaken us all and abandoned us to death along with the child, God was there.

THE SCENT OF ETERNITY

Here is the reward of the pastoral ministry: being with people and bringing the love of Christ to them. Being in that birthing room. Just being wanted in that room. Being with the brothers and sisters in Christ, and with them feeling and knowing and experiencing and trusting God’s loving presence: that is the reward a pastor receives.

When I leave a church, it doesn’t owe me anything. I’m not its employee; it doesn’t owe me a gold watch. Looking back, I feel like I owe them. I owe them for giving me the opportunity to be their pastor. They provided for my family’s needs so that I could wander around praying, visiting with people, studying the Bible, teaching it and preaching the Word of God. They allowed me to serve them. They allowed me to be with them in the deepest moments of their lives. I have become their friend. I will be friends with that mom and dad for the rest of our lives. We will be friends on a level that is unobtainable to other people–certainly unobtainable to professionals, whether medical or psychological.

Doctors and nurses and therapists and counselors and friends and family and all others do wonderful things and have invaluable roles to play. But I’m the only one who brings God. I bring God by doing nothing technologically or professionally significant at all.

I was just there. The technological and professional people were at the end of their resources. The baby was dead. All they could do was mop up. But God wasn’t done. We didn’t know what he was doing. I didn’t try to speak for him. It wasn’t my responsibility to say what he was doing. It was my responsibility to bring him and let him work. That’s why I had nothing to do. That’s why I had to be quiet. I had to be quiet so that God could be there in that inscrutable place of absolute absence of anything godly at all.

When you do that for people, when you show up and when God shows up because you are there, and God heals in the most impossible places, that person’s soul is forever linked with yours in a way that extends from this life into eternal life. It’s love with the scent of eternity. Somehow in that birthing room it was impossible not to believe in eternal life. It was quite literally impossible not to believe in God.

When you are with people at times like that, when together you experience God’s presence so powerfully that it is impossible not to believe in him, your souls become bound in a depth experience that changes you all, forever. We become brothers and sisters because our souls are forged together within the same womb and we emerge from the same womb of suffering.

That’s why pastors have so many brothers and sisters in so many places. By definition, brothers and sisters come out of the same womb. We have gone into death with people, into the valley of the shadow of death with many people, and through Christ we have emerged whole, new people. These people are our brothers and sisters now, and they will be forever.

God said to his greatest pilgrim and the father of all who believe, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward” (Gen. 15:1).

God is our reward. Crying out in the wilderness, we taste our tears and lick resurrection life. We taste eternal life in a living parable. We are encountered by God in a person who is called by God, formed by God, and empowered by God to do absolutely nothing but be there in his name. The metaphor comes and goes, but the effect remains. The issue of the pastoral ministry is solved: God exists, and he exists for us in Jesus Christ. There is no other issue for pastoral ministry, no other question to be answered. Job’s answer suffices for us: “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God” (Job 19:25-26). Job lacked one thing: he never had a pastor.

And when I think that God was in that hospital Job-room partly because I was there–not because of anything I did or said, but merely because I showed up and stood there with that mother and father–I can’t imagine doing anything else my whole life but be a pastor.

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David Hansen is pastor of Belgrade Community Church in Belgrade, Montana.Â