Shelf Life

I'm a 48-year-old professional minister. I have two master's degrees and a doctoral degree in Bible and practical theology.

And I'm out of work.

I possess six years of experience as a senior pastor, 12 years preaching cross-culturally, and nine more teaching in a Christian college.

And I'm out of work. Again.

This isn't the first time I've been in this position. It may not be the last. But it sure is frustrating.

Some ministers go an entire career without any downtime between their places of professional service. Ministers like them may find it unthinkable to imagine that God would ever shut the door where they currently serve without already having lined up their next assignment.

Truthfully, I envy those ministers. A long-term, full-time ministry position provides a sense of identity, stability, and success. Being able to say "I am the senior pastor at such-and-such church" or "I serve as associate professor of Christian ministry at such-and-such university" makes you feel like you've arrived, that you're a person of value. When you can't make those sorts of claims, especially after obtaining all the credentials that should have positioned you to be able to make them, it leaves you scratching your head and wondering, "What the devil is going on here?! Why did God call me to the ministry only to place me on the shelf?"

Vocational Presumptions

We who grew up as males in traditional homes with working dads and stay-at-home moms, reached adulthood assuming, "When I get married, it will be my job as husband to bring home the paycheck." That's what I presumed. Dad worked outside the home. Mom worked inside. He brought home the bacon. She fried it. I'm not necessarily saying that's how it should have been. It's just the way it was. And it seemed biblical to us. After all, didn't God tell Adam that by the sweat of his brow he, and presumably his family, would eat? Didn't Paul say, "If a man will not work, he shall not eat?"

I also assumed that if God called me into ministry as a career, I should be able to expect to support my family through the ministry. Again, the Bible seemed to back it up. "If we have sown spiritual seed among you, is it too much if we reap a material harvest from you?" Paul asked in 1 Corinthians 9:11. Then, in 1 Timothy 5:17-18: "The elders who direct the affairs of the church well are worthy of double honor, especially those whose work is preaching and teaching. For the Scripture says, 'Do not muzzle the ox while it is treading out the grain,' and 'The worker deserves his wages.'"

How can it get any clearer than that?

The summer after I graduated from college, I worked as an intern at a small town church in Alabama. One of my responsibilities was to take our kids to camp and work with them there for a week. One of the little boys who went with us attended our church semi-regularly but did so without his family. Consequently, he knew little about how churches operate. At lunch one afternoon we talked about where his mom and dad worked. He then asked me what I did. I told him, "I'm a preacher."

"No," he said, shaking his head, "what's your job?"

"I'm a preacher," I repeated.

"No," he said again, "what do you do for a living?"

Once more I told him, "I work at the church. I'm a preacher." Wide-eyed and incredulous, he exclaimed, "They pay you for that?!"

I smiled at him and whispered to my wife, "He'll make a good deacon someday." I understood his confusion. He hadn't grown up in the church. He didn't know how ministry is supposed to work.

Harsh Realities

As difficult as it's been to have my ministry expectations unmet, I'm hardly alone. The following stories are all true. Only the names have been changed.

Donna served the Lord for 18 years as a single missionary in South America. Afterwards, she felt led to return to school, earn a master's degree, and begin a career as a college professor teaching other would-be missionaries. She picked a great graduate program, earned her degree, and began applying for work. I met her many years later. Despite her experience and academic credentials, no school had ever hired her. Donna possessed a sharp mind, pleasant personality, and good sense of humor. There was nothing terminally weird or off-putting about her. But she just couldn't find a job in her chosen and, what she believed to be, divinely-ordained field. Was it because she was a woman, single, or something else entirely?

Ken earned his Ph.D. a couple of years before I earned mine. Upon graduating, he found work as an adjunct instructor at a local college, where I eventually joined him. We worked side-by-side for two years until the school had enough money to eliminate our adjunct positions and add four full-time faculty members to the department we were serving. The provost invited us both to apply. In the end, the school hired three people from out of state and me. Ken was left out. To this day, seven years later, he supports himself and his wife as a school bus driver and adjunct instructor at another local college.

Tony answered the call to ministry, and attended a fine Christian college straight out of high school. After, he completed seminary, then moved to Europe for a doctorate. He returned to the States and landed a job teaching within a few weeks. Tony still teaches in that same college, but he's miserable. He loves working with students but hates the fact that his school has changed so much over the years that it is now a Christian college in name only. He has looked for openings at other schools and even been one of two finalists on four separate occasions. Great guy, brilliant mind, hard worker, but he just can't find the kind of job he believed God was calling him to so many years ago.

Last month I was asked to interview for a faculty position that had opened unexpectedly. The opportunity felt like an answer to prayer. The school is one that I have long admired. The position was perfectly suited for my academic credentials, professional experiences, theological leanings, and it was near where my aging parents live. It was all so perfect. My wife and I flew there excitedly and returned home confident. We just knew the president would call with an invitation for me to join the faculty. After all, when we walked out of his office, he shook my hand saying, "You're the most prepared candidate that I've ever interviewed." How could they not hire me after a comment like that? I don't know, but they found a way. When the school's dean emailed me one week later to break the bad news, he admitted he couldn't explain exactly why they didn't want me. "There were no red flags," he said, "just not enough green ones, I suppose." What does that even mean?! "Intangibles," he said.

Behind the Scenes

I believe that God cares where his ministers serve. Ultimately, it is up to him to decide who goes where. In Psalm 75 Asaph declares, "No one from the east or the west or from the desert can exalt a man. But it is God who judges: He brings one down, he exalts another" (vv. 6-7). Joseph earned his position in Pharaoh's court because God gave him wisdom and favor in the king's sight (Acts 7:10). Nehemiah obtained Artaxerxes' permission to lead a major rebuilding campaign in Jerusalem and to fund it from the king's own coffers because God's hand was upon him (Neh. 2:8). Ezra received a similar permission earlier for the very same reason (Ezra 7:28). When Esther was invited in her husband-king's presence, I think we can safely assume God was at work behind the curtain, orchestrating events (5:2). He brought Daniel into favor with the prince of the eunuchs (1:9), and we all know where that eventually led. As much today as then, I must believe that the hearts of those making decisions that affect us in ministry are in the Lord's hand. He can still turn them wherever he pleases (Prov. 21:1).

N. T. Wright has suggested that God sometimes gives us ambitions knowing that we won't fully achieve them but that we'll accomplish other important things in their pursuit. As an example, he points to Paul's ambition to visit Spain. According to Wright, there is no reliable evidence that Paul ever made it that far. But in order to make such a trip, the apostle would have first needed to establish a western base of operation. That would have been Rome. But before he could start counting on the Roman Christians to support his missionary efforts, he needed to iron out some things to help stabilize their churches. And that's why he wrote his epistle to the Romans. Without Paul's ambition to visit Spain, we might not have what many consider his most important theological work.

That's a helpful insight. I think about the juvenile correctional facility that I served as chaplain for 12 years. It started out as a way for me to satisfy a practical ministry requirement of the seminary I attended. It became something more. Looking back now, I count those years among the most significant in my ministry. I never would have experienced them had it not been for my ambition to obtain a doctorate so that I might teach in a Christian college some day. Only the Lord knows whether I'll ever be a professor again. But no one can take away those 12 years of sharing the gospel with young inmates.

As I've considered where I should go next, God has been reminding me that I'm part of a ministry team. My wife has stood by me through everything for almost 27 years now. When she was only a teenager, she felt God calling her into a very specific type of ministry—that of a preacher's wife. Afterwards, she would only date guys who felt called to preach. Fortunately for me, I fit the bill. Patti is one of the smartest people I know. She holds a graduate degree in educational research and works as a data analyst for a healthcare corporation.

She currently earns more than I ever did as a pastor or professor. Up until now, we've always assumed that our place of residence would be dictated by where the Lord wanted me to serve. Unless things change, the next period in my career may consist of a bunch of adjunct online teaching assignments and a handful of other part-time and volunteer opportunities—the kind of work I could do anywhere. My wife and I are now considering the possibility that we may be entering into a new phase of ministry where she'll be our primary breadwinner, freeing us up to move to where she'd like to live and work next.

Some preachers serve bi-vocationally. Perhaps God wants us to serve as a bi-vocational ministry couple. He will provide for our needs through her job. And because of her willingness to sacrifice for our family, I'll be able to minister wherever without worrying whether the salary is enough to feed us.

In Mark 3:14 we read, that Jesus, "appointed twelve—designating them apostles—that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach." The call to ministry is first and foremost a call to "be with him." Only afterwards is it a call to pursue whatever work he assigns. It's up to him to decide the "who, what, where, and when" of those assignments. He may decide to move us from one career field to another or one place to another without any break between assignments. Then again, he may see fit to pull us out of ministry at varying times for indeterminate durations. But as frustrating and confusing as the ministry journey can be, I can't imagine wanting to do anything else.

Gregory K. Hollifield, Ph.D., currently serves as an itinerant preacher, lecturer, and adjunct professor while awaiting his next major assignment from the Lord. He is also author of Preaching in Red and Yellow, Black and White.