WHEN I WAS THIRTY-FIVE, I was asked to be host for a well-known preacher who was the featured guest at a conference. My job was to transport him to and from his speaking engagements. During one session of the conference, this “pulpit prince” said that most ministers he knew lived with a deep sense of desperation.
That statement did not square with what I knew of my acquaintances and friends who were pastors. Was he simply using hyperbole?
Later, when we were in the car together, I asked him to elaborate on his comment. As I listened intently, it became clear to me that desperation was a factor not only in the lives of his friends but occasionally visited his own soul as well. At the time, I simply could not grasp the concept of desperation, much less why someone of his stature would struggle with it.
I do now.
He was nearly fifty years old, and, without intending to, he summed up the spiritual plight of the middle-aged pastor—loneliness of soul.
Mid-life can bring a string of losses, and these can trigger loneliness. It can seem as though all our dependable supports, the foundations upon which we have come to count, are knocked out from under us. We lose the youthful energy that allowed us to stay up all night to prepare for a major presentation and still appear fresh the next day. Our body does not bounce back the way it used to, and we can no longer cover our lack of preparation with youthful passion. An overly enthusiastic fifty-two-year-old can come across as an aging vacuum cleaner salesman.
Nor can we rely on family the way we used to. When we arrive home in the evening, the kids are either out or busy with their own interests. Our spouse has a life of her own, too. And the congregation that supports a young pastor (“He’s new at this, he’s going to make a few mistakes”) may be less tolerant of a middle-aged veteran. More subtly, we realize we cannot count on being able to figure everything out. A younger pastor may struggle with the issues of his calling, but he assumes deep down that with time and experience he will be able to correct his mistakes. Years ago, even when I felt discouraged, I was still confident that with more time and more work I could remove the source of the discouragement. I firmly believed that someday I would get it right.
By fifty, I realized there were some things I would never get right, some problems I would never solve. That, among other things, created within me a sense of desperation—the same desperation described by the well-known preacher at the beginning of this chapter.
A retired pastor who served the same congregation for thirty years told me of a defining moment in his ministry. When he was forty-two, a woman in his church was angry with him over a decision he had made regarding vacation Bible school. At the height of her emotional outburst, she said, “I will still be here when you are gone!”
He smiled, knowing he planned to stay and she was at least fifteen years older than him.
She was still working in the vacation Bible school program when he turned fifty-four, and he remembered their conversation. He sensed she was still angry with him, even though he had performed her daughter’s wedding and officiated at her husband’s funeral.
He told me it was at that point that he realized he could not spend the rest of his ministry trying to fix what was broken. The woman was present at his retirement reception and her feelings for him had never changed.
These types of situations are what contribute to loneliness of the soul, which in turn can create a kind of quiet desperation that can dog us for years. A few pastors who are not able to cope with this, deal with their loneliness in a way that destroys their family and their calling.
Loneliness can be a spiritual issue that plays itself out in tangible ways. An older minister once told me that sexual drive does not necessarily decrease in middle age but common sense often does. Some lose their place of service because of inappropriate conduct in interpersonal relationships. In previous chapters I have focused on calling and character. Here, I would like to explore our relationship with God and how the desperation of mid-life can be an opportunity for spiritual renewal, for creating a new hunger for God and for writing a new chapter in our lives.
Taking ownership
There comes a time when a Christian leader realizes that he or she must take responsibility for his or her own spiritual development. While ostensibly this should have occurred years earlier, it is easy to operate parasitically off the spiritual life of others, and so this revelation may not come until mid-life.
Paradoxically, the nature of the ministry can make it easy to avoid taking this responsibility. At seminary we are surrounded by professors and peers who stimulate us and encourage our spiritual growth. When we enter the local church, we discover that the people we serve often minister to us as much as we minister to them. Then there are colleagues and mentors, speakers and seminars, that contribute to our spiritual development. If we have a healthy marriage, our spouse will be a significant partner in the Christian journey.
Somewhere along the line, however, we have to own responsibility for the state of our soul—or we run the risk of one day looking into it and finding it empty. Accepting this ownership can be a wonderful but frightening step.
I’ve experienced several moments in my ministry that raised questions within about my spiritual health. A few years ago I met with a group of high school seniors from our church. During a question-and-answer time, one guy asked, “Do you really believe all the stuff you say when you preach on Sunday morning? Do you have to have experienced the truths from the Bible that you’re speaking on?”
I do not remember how I answered his question, but that was one event that triggered my reevaluation of the state of my soul. Pastors cannot experience every truth they preach, of course, but how often was I able to say, “I know this to be true because I’ve lived it”? I thought about the questions of that student for a long time.
I can still remember an Easter sermon I preached when I was thirty years old. The sermon included two great stories, one of which I knew would bring a tear to every eye. That Sunday the congregation was full, and I felt the air of excitement that comes upon a church in the spring—but as I preached I sensed within me very little spiritual passion. The week had been an emotional one for me. I had received a form letter from a search committee considering my résumé: “You have wonderful gifts, but God has led us to a different person.”
I preached my Easter sermon knowing everything I said was true but there was no fire in my soul—even when using an emotional story to generate response. I felt as if I were delivering a lecture. I remember thinking, Is this what happens when you get older? And what about when I hit fifty-five? Will I have to deal with this every week?
In one of the lowest moments of my life, a church member told me I was petty and did not evidence spiritual maturity. I felt sorry for myself, and my conversation with him revealed fear, cynicism, and unresolved anger. On the way home from that meeting, I rationalized all the reasons I had a right to be lagging in spiritual development. But soon I became convicted for blaming others for my lack and confessed my immature spirituality to the Lord. I also knew I had to confess this to the person who had made me aware of it.
I balked. How could I, the pastor, admit to my critic that I had been wrong? I did not even like this person. But I suppressed my ego, asked to see him, and said simply, “Your comments about my spiritual maturity were hard to take. But you were right.”
Later when I told an older minister the story, he said, “The primary difference between the spiritually alive minister and one who died in his soul long before he was buried is the ability to say ‘I’m sorry.’ ” It’s doubly hard to say it at mid-life.
Spiritual authenticity and development do not come automatically with age. We know this, and may have preached on the subject, but it does not mean we will not wind up at mid-life bereft of vitality and spiritual passion. The good news is the best can be yet to come.
Holy man lessons
In 1983 I met a minister who exemplified spiritual authenticity. He pastored a rural congregation and asked me to conduct his church revival meetings—a very Baptist and very southern practice. He had a slight speech impediment and had suffered at the hands of his church constituents in ways most of us cannot imagine. I knew that some people in that church had deliberately tried to humiliate him and had not only crossed the line of public decency but had sinned against the man. In any other profession he would have had grounds for legal action, yet he stayed on as their pastor.
In all the revivals I have preached, I have never seen as much response as I did in that country church. I do not believe it was the result of my preaching or methods. Rather, the pastor had laid the foundation. I just happened to be the guy who could articulate some of what had been happening in the life of that church. There was the sense that God was honoring this truly holy man.
What made him what he was?
For one thing, he was publicly open about his feelings and insecurities. Rather than try to bluff his way through a situation, as so many tend to do, he admitted when he did not feel secure in a given area. He knew that because of his speech defect, the large pulpits would never be open to him. He was not as ambitious as I was, but he would be quick to admit that this lack of ambition was not necessarily a virtue, that he had to fight being satisfied with mediocrity. He wore his speech impediment as neither a crown nor a cross, but simply as a part of who he was.
His strong spiritual disciplines included prayer every day on his knees and Scripture read aloud from both Testaments. He was the only pastor I had met up to that time who had a real “prayer closet”—a quiet place for himself and God alone. He never publicly trumpeted his prayer life, which I happened to know included reading prayers from the saints and writing his own prayers. This was unusual, given our Baptist tradition, which honors spontaneous spoken prayer.
That pastor modeled for me the connection between what I preach and what I experience. I had always worked hard on what I said and how I packaged it, but this man’s desire was to live the truths of the gospel. He became a mentor to me, a long-distance coach.
Today we do not converse often but we do keep up with each other. He is now serving a church in a community that suffered severe economic devastation shortly after he arrived. He chose to walk with his people through the fire, turning down opportunities to leave. He felt his obligation was to stay and shepherd. Now the church and the community are feeling the frustration of numerical decline, and my friend is again facing tough days. But I know he will survive because he is a model of someone who has taken responsibility for his spirituality.
Looking for rainbows
My recurring theme here has been the temptation to give in to the entropy of age. Why create pain for ourselves at mid-life? Who wants to own up to the fact that while morally pure, we can be spiritual hypocrites?
When I was in my forties, I drifted into a spiritual twilight. I felt my prayers ineffectual and was spiritually numb. For several years I could see enough to move forward but not enough to function effectively. From the outside, I appeared to be the successful pastor of a large church. I had never violated my marriage vows, my wife and I had never been the subject of a scandal, and our three daughters gave evidence of vital relationships with God. From a financial perspective, we felt comfortable. But when I looked deep into my soul, I saw less than I wanted to see. I felt as if my soul had shriveled. What people saw outwardly did not match how I felt inwardly.
In May 1993 I had been at the church for less than two years. The move from Texas to Alabama had been more difficult for my family than I had anticipated. Mowing the lawn one morning, I began second-guessing our move: Had I interpreted the will of God correctly? I struggled under the assumption that if I were truly in God’s will bad things would not happen to me. I began to feel sorry for myself and my family.
Yet the more I thought about it the more I felt convicted that my life was the opposite of what I preached. I had recently told my congregation in a sermon that you cannot measure the will of God by the circumstances of your life. The sermon drew a strong response—there were more requests for cassette copies than usual. That morning, rolling my lawn mower back into the garage, I made up my mind to never again feel sorry for myself about the move to Alabama—and that, I discovered, was my first step out of my spiritual twilight.
The next incident happened almost four years later, in January 1997, when I was driving to another church to lead a retreat for church leaders. I felt discouraged because I was not as prepared as I wanted to be. Ministry emergencies and poor time management had destroyed my study time. And I felt I needed to review my material one more time.
In the car I listened to Harry Chapin, while kicking myself for not being better prepared. I was scheduled to lead a two-and-a-half-hour session that evening and another one the next morning. I sent up a prayer that God would help me deliver a good presentation in spite of myself: “Lord, I’ve got to have some help. Don’t let me embarrass myself; more important, help me make a good presentation for the sake of those who have sacrificed their time to come to this retreat.”
After my prayer I spotted in the distance a bright rainbow against the clouds. It had not been raining. It was as if God were saying, “Gary, it’s going to be all right. The flood is past. Noah found grace and so will you.” I have not had many such experiences before or since, but the moment affirmed me as a son of the Father. I came away with a deep sense of God’s reassurance and presence: I could trust him even when I did not sense him near. God’s grace extended even to preachers who mismanaged their time.
On a larger scale, I came away from that trip with the assurance that my years in the gloaming, in the spiritual twilight that had settled over my soul, were over. I finally understood that every day does not have to be sunny, that even when my soul feels shrouded in darkness, I know that God is still leading me. I do not need a clear day to feel confident God is leading me.
Big picture
The gifts of spiritual authenticity in mid-life—amid the loss and quiet desperation—are wisdom and perspective. We discover that even though circumstances change, God does not. He can be trusted. We become less result-oriented because we can look back and see that while some situations have not worked out, God is still at work. The work of the ministry is not solely on our shoulders. In our youth we see what we are doing for God, but as we grow older we see what God is doing through us.
For me, another gift of spiritual passion and health in mid-life has been less cynicism about local church work and a deeper conviction that I need the church more than it needs me. In a sense I have become “converted” to the church. I used to see it as a place to preach, an avenue for my ministry. Now I have begun to see it as more important than my individual ministry. The gospel tells us not only how to become a Christian but how to become part of the community of faith. Increasingly I find I need the fellowship of the saints, the singing of the hymns, the observance of the ordinances, the reading of the Scriptures—for my soul.
Richard Foster, author of Celebration of Discipline and Prayer, spoke at a conference at our church not long ago. While not as well attended as I had hoped it would be, the meetings attracted people from many denominations. I was impressed with how Foster endorsed all the authentic Christian traditions, identifying each as a stream in the great river of faith.
As I sat through the conference, my emotions moved from disappointment with the people who did not attend to surprise at those who did. By their presence they had brought to me a gift. I began to reflect upon how many streams of worship there are and the various churches I had served; each had contributed to my understanding of God, which can never be taken away. I was moved with gratitude for the variety that is in the body of Christ.
Now well into mid-life, I can say with conviction that God is clearly present. He is at work. It is well with my soul.
Copyright © 1998 Gary Fenton
