When there have been harrowing storms to weather in ministry, the remembrance of God’s original call to me — to preach — is one thing that has helped me stick to it.
— Ed Dobson
The week after Easter, I received this letter:
“This was [written] after considerable prayer. My husband and I are submitting to the will of God and the urging of other Christians by walking away from your church.
“While we could easily slip out unnoticed and certainly never be missed, which is definitely one of the problems here, I feel that our reasons for leaving are important enough to share with you.
“From the pulpit recently we heard you comment that there’s not enough unity between our church and other denominations. This, Pastor Dobson, is ecumenism, and ecumenism is of the anti-Christ.…
“With which of these apostates would you suggest we unite? Our church in one broad sweep is trampling the grace of God and mocking the gospel. The church is the body of Christ, Pastor Dobson, not the unsaved masses of humanity you’re trying to attract. Our church offers a program for every aspect of society that sets its foot in its walls — single moms, single dads, fatherless children, divorced women, substance abusers, but virtually nothing for believers.
“Although the church may be growing, you are losing the true saints of God. If this has been your goal, you are to be congratulated because you’re achieving it. If not, there’s still time to turn away.”
It was signed, “In Christ, a saint.”
At the bottom of the page, it read, “And thou, Capernaum, which are exalted in the heaven shall be brought down to hell. For if the mighty works which had been done in thee had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I say to you it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for thee.”
The same week I received another letter, a response to my sermon, “Smile; It’s Easter and God Loves You.”
The letter said, “Greetings. Visits to your church have left the following impressions.… [There was] a vapid, soft, and comfortable presentation on Easter with the emphasis on smile rather than our sinfulness driving the Suffering Servant to the Cross. This was so irreverent and out of place as to make one ashamed, not of the gospel, but of its hapless, harmless, one-sided view.… God help us. Whatever happened to the offense of the Cross?”
It was signed, “An Unhappy Camper.”
After the high of Easter Sunday, this was not pleasant reading. Unfortunately, criticism is a regular part of Christian ministry. Sometimes it makes us wonder, “Is this job worth it?”
Add to those times in ministry when nothing seems to be happening, and we’re sure it isn’t worth it!
Now add to that our culture’s presentation of clergy on TV, movies, and in magazines — meek, mild, irrelevant, and out of touch with the “real” problems of the world — and one’s very calling can be thrown into sudden and wrenching doubt: “Is ministry something I should be investing my life in?”
Yes, sometimes it’s hard to remember why we’re in ministry, or whether it’s worth it. So periodically, we need to think about our call afresh.
Reviewing Your Sacred History
“My spirit grows faint within me,” wrote David. “My heart within me is dismayed.” So what does he do? “I remember the days of long ago, I meditate on all your works and consider what your hands have done” (Ps. 143:4-5).
This is how David renewed his own sense of call. It’s not a bad idea for pastors to do the same from time to time — to remember what God has done in their lives and ministries.
I find it especially helpful to remember the origin of my call to ministry. I grew up in a pastor’s home, so there were some subliminal expectations from church people that I would follow my father. Though my parents never pushed that agenda on me, others did, and I reacted to it. As far as I was concerned, it was none of their business what I did with my life.
I was 16 when I went away to a Bible college with the understanding that, after two years, I would transfer to a state university and pursue medical school. I had my sights set on being a surgeon.
But at college I was continually confronted with the question “What does God want you to do?” I had never really given the notion much thought. Then passages of Scripture that dealt with preaching and ministry began to stand out during my devotional times. When individuals spoke in chapel on the subject of ministry, something would stir in my heart.
Halfway through my sophomore year, my struggle became more intense. It reached a crisis point one evening when I attended a little church outside of my own denominational background. The pastor spoke on Jonah. His thesis was simple: Jonah was called to preach, but he ran away from God. The message seemed to point straight at my life.
He then invited those who believed God might be calling them into ministry to come forward. I disliked public invitations so I didn’t budge. But later that night, I met the pastor in the basement of the church. By then I had made my decision. I said to him, “If the Lord wants me to preach, I’ll preach. In fact, whatever he wants me to do, I’ll do.”
Though the shape and nature of that call has changed over the years, this remains my call: to preach. And when there have been some harrowing storms to weather, the remembrance of this original call is one of the things that has helped me stick to it.
Busting the Four Myths of Ministry
Another tactic when the call to ministry seems in doubt is to remember the four myth-busters of ministry. The first three I heard from Truman Dollar; the last I added from my own experience.
1. It is never as bad as you think it is. Even when things seem darkest, circumstances are usually not as hopeless or awful as they first appear. For example, after one particularly tough committee meeting in which I was left with the impression people didn’t trust me, I received a call from my wife.
“You won’t believe it, Ed, but you just received a beautiful bouquet of flowers,” she said. “Let me read the card to you. ‘To Ed Dobson, Pastor of the Year.'”
The flowers had been sent by a couple who had been separated for nearly two years. Through the church’s ministry, they had been won to Christ and had decided to be reconciled. I had conducted their marriage renewal service. The flowers were a way of saying thanks.
The bouquet was a dramatic reminder that I should never let church politics or conflicts obscure my vision of the bigger things God may be doing in the church.
2. It’s never as good as you think it is. There are times in church ministry when everything seems to be going marvelously. That’s when you need to be careful. It’s only an illusion. As Jerry Falwell used to say, “In ministry I’ve never had two good days back to back.”
As I mentioned, the letters I shared at the beginning of the chapter were written the same week I was riding high from our tremendous Easter Sunday experience. They were sullen and dramatic reminders that not everyone saw the service as I did.
3. It’s never completely fixed. Ministry is a process; it’s people. To say, “I’ve taken care of this problem. It won’t recur,” is to live in a fool’s paradise. Problems can come back to plague you long after you thought they were resolved.
4. It’s never completely broken. Not long ago, a pastor from Kenya spoke in our morning worship service. He pointed out that during the first thirty years of missionary efforts in Kenya, more missionaries died than the number of converts who were won. In the remote inland regions of the country, missionaries sometimes arrived with their belongings stored in coffins. They were resigned to the fact that they would never make it back to the coast.
In spite of the difficulties and slowness of progress, these men and women were still convinced that Kenya wasn’t completely broken. And so they kept at their callings, knowing that someday their work would bear fruit.
They were right. Thanks to their efforts, today 82 percent of Kenya is at least nominally Christian. Evangelicals alone number nearly 9 million.
Handling Criticism
When I was younger, rather than using my call as a pillar to lean on during times of criticism, I used it as a baseball bat to confront my critics.
Part of that was due to my training. It had been drilled into me during college that regardless of the cost, you have to take a stand. If the whole world is against you, take a stand. So during my first pastorate, I interpreted that to mean I should stand up to my critics.
When I encountered conflict in board meetings, I would bring up the issue in my sermon the next Sunday.
“God called me to start this church,” I would remind the congregation. “If you don’t like it, there are a number of other churches in this town you can attend.” I declared the authority of the pastor and expected that to end the issue.
As I look back, that was stupid. While we ought to stand for what we believe, Paul says we are to teach and admonish others in a spirit of patience and gentleness.
Many pastors don’t run aground in ministry because they lack legitimate calls. Rather it’s because they haven’t been adequately prepared to work with people. They may have been trained to handle the Greek and Hebrew text, but they aren’t equipped to deal with imperfect people in an imperfect world. Sometimes, opposition isn’t a sign you don’t belong in the ministry, it’s simply part of the call to “Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me.”
I believe I’ve grown in this regard. Here are three ways I handle criticism today.
• Accept it as part of the package. Some people are attracted to ministry because it seems to be a place of power, influence, and authority. Others think that if they become pastors, “I can read the Bible and pray all day.”
Paul was much more realistic in his description of the ministry, and his description is something I need to read from time to time: “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Cor. 4:8-9).
The ministry is sometimes pressure, discouragement, disappointment, heartache, criticism, and conflict. I try to communicate that to all who are considering the job. If they don’t believe me, I just show them my mail.
• Don’t believe everything you hear. Recently a woman shook my hand after one service and said, “Good grief, Pastor! Your hand is soft. I bet you haven’t seen a good day’s work in your entire life.”
She grinned, turned, and walked off. She obviously didn’t know how such a statement can hit pastors. I just stood there thinking to myself, Thank you very much. Good day to you as well!
A lot of criticism people throw our way is based on ignorance or misconceptions. When it’s appropriate, I try to educate people. But when it’s not, I find it best just to forget the comment.
• Ask God about it. When I encounter tough opposition or a stinging criticism, I ask myself, “Is God trying to show me something in this? Is this a process of character development in my own life?”
So I sometimes take these criticisms to the Lord in prayer: “This is what they’ve said about me Lord. Is it true? Help me to be honest with myself and determine what truth, if any, lies behind their comment.”
I will actually read to God the letters critical of me. Sometimes I discover God is trying to say something to me. Other times, he reassures me that I’m on the right track and not to become discouraged.
Listen for God’s New Leading
Sometimes when we’re doubting the call, we’re merely doubting the call to a specific ministry. And sometimes the doubt is justified: God wants us to move on to another ministry.
How we know that, of course, is no simple process. Here are the steps I take to discover if God is leading me to a new ministry.
First, I listen to my journal. I’ve found that journaling has helped me hear the voice of God for my life. For years, I’ve taken time to write out, several times a week, what I’m learning from my study of Scripture, my circumstances, and my ministry experiences.
As I was considering Calvary Church in Grand Rapids, I had also been contacted by a church in New York City. New York looked like an attractive option. I would be downtown, in the midst of several million unchurched people.
During that period, I spent a lot of time reviewing my journals. I would notice, for instance, that I would jot down something like, “I’m going to delay Grand Rapids. New York is really where I want to go. Logically, it seems the right place.” Then I’d go home that night and get a call from the board chairman in Grand Rapids, inviting me to fly in the next day. Being caught off guard, I would say, “Okay. I think I can do that.”
In fact, I noticed that every time I decided to close a door to Grand Rapids, something unusual like this would happen, which would open it up even wider. At the same time, the church in New York would ask me to jump through one more hoop: get another reference, send another sermon, whatever.
As I reviewed my journal, the pattern became obvious, and eventually I followed God’s leading to Grand Rapids.
In addition, I think it’s appropriate to “lay out the fleece,” not in the sense of testing God but only to assure myself that, in fact, God is leading.
For example, before coming to Grand Rapids, I decided I needed to have 95 percent of the congregational vote if I were to come.
“We don’t vote unanimously for anything,” a board member had warned me. Nonetheless, that was the precentage I needed to feel secure in accepting the call.
I ended up with unanimous calls from the committee and the board and a 99.7 percent vote from the congregation. I’ve never seen that happen again in this church, even when we have voted on mission candidates or ordaining someone to the ministry.
I’ve also begun praying with my wife about such decisions. That’s not the way the previous generation often went about it. My father operated much more on a priestly model of leadership. God speaks to the priest (the man), and he leads the family, with or without the spouse’s consent.
Dad, much to his credit, went from a large church in Ireland “downhill” to smaller and smaller churches. By the time he reached his last church, it had approximately eighty people. While he was always confident of these moves, it usually took my mother approximately a year and a half to adjust to the change.
At the beginning of our life together, Lorna and I agreed that wherever God called me, we would go together. But through the years, I have felt it important to bring her more and more into the decision-making process. I’m grateful I have done that. When the moment of truth arrived regarding ptl or Grand Rapids, she said, “Ed, there’s no need to even pray any further about this. Calvary Church is where you belong.”
Finally, sometimes we just have to go out on faith, and if we’ve misread God’s will, then that too can lead us to the real calling he has for us.
When I was first starting in ministry, I believed God had called me to become the heir apparent to Billy Graham. I honestly believed I was going to one day take over for him. So right out of college, I set up the Eddy Dobson Evangelistic Association. My wife and I sent out hundreds of letters advertising our availability. If I could summarize the general response, it was, “Paul we know. Jesus we know. But who are you?”
The end result was that we moved into a one-bedroom apartment, and I took a job digging graves. My wife went to work for a temporary employment agency. I was severely disillusioned by the response to what I perceived to be my call.
But this turn of events eventually led to my being offered a position at Liberty College working with Jerry Falwell, and that, in turn, led to my becoming the pastor of a small, mountain church in West Virginia, my first full-time pastoral experience.
When It’s Time to Set Aside the Call
Though most of the time the call to ministry is intended for life, there are situations when the call must be set aside, either temporarily or permanently.
• A breach of trust. When serious violations of trust occur, involving moral default, dishonesty, or some other significant compromise of personal integrity, it creates a situation where the person, at least for the immediate future, is disqualified from continuing to serve.
Why? Because he can no longer exercise spiritual leadership. That’s one of the unique aspects of our calling. A surgeon can be a good surgeon without being a moral individual. A pilot can be a good pilot and lead a reprehensible personal life. But a pastor can’t be a good pastor without living a consistent walk of purity and moral integrity.
At the same time, I’m committed to the principle of restoration. It doesn’t happen immediately, or without cost. It requires a process of slowly rebuilding integrity and trust. It occurs in progressive fashion, building from one level to the next. Those steps are: restoration to God, restoration to your family, restoration to the community of believers, restoration of the exercise of your spiritual gift, and finally, restoration to leadership.
The first four levels are always possible. But the final level, restoration to leadership, is something left to God and the group of people considering the person for a leadership position.
In recent years, several prominent Christian figures have been restored to their previous ministries. In some cases, they have even gone back to serve in the churches they left following their moral lapse. Still, once trust has been betrayed and your reputation is no longer without reproach, it’s difficult to regain the same personal influence you once had.
• A pause for refreshment. At any given time, we have sitting in our congregation at least half a dozen pastors recovering from burnout. They are all in various stages of healing. Some just need a place to come and find anonymity. Others need friends and counselors to walk with them through their hurt. They all have one thing in common: ministry has temporarily overwhelmed them.
I always encourage hurting and tired pastors to find the healing and renewal they need inside a church. The first steps are to seek out the leadership of a church, admit your need, and ask to come under the church’s care. After a period of healing and renewal, you need this group’s affirmation that you’re spiritually and emotionally ready to reenter pastoral ministry.
• A new calling. Sometimes God wants a person in pastoral ministry for only one period of life. One man I know was happily serving as a pastor of a congregation in California. He had been writing on the side for a few years, when suddenly one journal he had written for asked him to become an associate editor.
The first time the journal offered the position, he turned it down. He felt he was called to church ministry, and that was that. But when the editor of the journal called six months later with the same offer, he felt a pull to do it. Still he debated: he was happy in ministry, but he thought he could be happy in journalism. Finally what determined his choice was that mysterious inner leading that God sometimes gives us.
Since going into Christian journalism, he has lost his passion to pastor, but he has been given more and more passion to see God’s truths communicated in the printed word. A couple of years after the move, he decided to forsake his ordination, partly because he had always believed that ordination implied ministry in the local church, partly because he felt God had opened a new calling for him.
Preventive Medicine
Pastors sometimes are frustrated in their callings because they’re waiting for someone to intervene and help them out. They honestly believe that the board will one day approach them and say, “Pastor, you need to take some time off with your family for personal and spiritual renewal.”
It won’t happen.
Fortunately, I was given this blunt but life-saving advice when I first arrived in Grand Rapids. Our city has a strong Dutch community, so my first year a member of my board met with me on a weekly basis. His goal was to help me understand the Dutch people and the peculiar culture of our church.
“One of the things you need to know, Pastor,” he said, “is that we will sit in the board meetings and discuss the tremendous pressures you face, how hard you work, how you are away from your family too much, how you need to slow down, and how important it is you take regular days off and get away for your full vacation each year. Then we’ll go home saying to ourselves, ‘My, aren’t we taking wonderful care of Ed Dobson!'”
Then he leaned forward and said, “The truth is, Pastor, despite our pious lectures and good intentions, we will cheer you right into your grave. We will bury you, and then get someone else to replace you, just as we always have.”
He was not being cynical. He was simply warning me that if I didn’t take care of my own physical, spiritual, and emotional health, no one else would.
In particular, I need to monitor my physical health and emotional stability. While we may carry the treasure of the gospel with us, we need to remember it’s stored in clay vessels. I need to be in touch with the limitations of my clay body.
First, that means proper exercise and diet. I run between three and seven miles a day, for instance, and that leaves me refreshed and pumped up for preaching or teaching, particularly midweek when my energy can lapse.
Furthermore, I know I need a minimum of seven or eight hours of sleep each night to function well. When I traveled with Jerry Falwell, I noticed he rarely needed more than three or four hours of sleep a night. Though he did all the interviews and speaking, I came back from those road trips dead tired. If I tried to keep that same schedule, I’d get sick.
As Bill Hybels has suggested, I also watch my emotional gauges. I work hard to keep my schedule in balance so that I don’t go from one emotionally draining situation to another. For example, I sometimes plan golf games between stressful meetings. I also accept the fact that on Mondays I’m drained from the day before. So I don’t accept any appointments other than lunch. I read and avoid seeing people or dealing with tough issues. It’s a day I use to study and begin preparations for the next Sunday.
Part of emotional monitoring means staying in touch with my spiritual limitations. That means I try and operate primarily in the realm of my giftedness. My limitations are in the area of counseling and administration. As much as my board would love to see me be more assertive in administrative matters, I’ve told them, “If you want to make me miserable, make me an administrator.” They understand my limitations.
Finally, a great way to renew my own sense of calling is to help train others in their callings to ministry. I give to young people materials that will help them sort out whether God is calling them to ministry. I correspond with many seminary students, and I make it a priority to meet with young people who are planning to enter seminary or are home on break from seminary. I also try to give the pulpit to our potential pastors, because I want our high school kids to see this is an option for their lives.
I was struck by a recent interview with Billy Graham in which he said he felt like a failure. I’ve always admired his simplicity and single focus, so it was disconcerting to hear him express disappointment in himself. He said if he had it to do all over again, he would travel less, study more, and spend more time with his family.
Oh, rats, I thought to myself. There’s no hope for me. Even my greatest hero thinks he has fallen short.
That was a good reminder. No matter how hard I work at ministry, I will always feel as if there is something more I could or should be doing for God. That is an ongoing frustration of our unique call.
But Billy Graham said one other thing: he believes he did the one thing God called him to do — preach the gospel.
My hope is that forty years from now I can look back and say the same thing.
Copyright ©1994 by Christianity Today
