As I stood on the peak of Observation Hill, I caught my breath and shuddered at the steep drop. A friend had said, "Once you can see for 80 miles in every direction, you're never quite the same." Now seeing Mount Aurora, Mount Discovery, the Royal Society Range, the Olympus Range, and the Ross Sea together for the first time, I understood what he meant.
I took dozens of pictures trying to capture this expanse: Antarctica! After a while I turned and refocused my eyes on the towering wooden cross next to me on that summit, taking pictures of it too. Struggling to climb back down, I prayed that somehow during my time on "The Ice" I would see my calling as a pastor with fresh eyes.
My mission field for two months in 2011 was McMurdo Station in Antarctica, a world away from my pastorate at Goodwill Church in Montgomery, New York. My journey was, in part, an attempt to deal with the pain of being a broken pastor.
A Church's Crash
In 2005, Goodwill Church won our denomination's "Church Vitality" award; we had grown from 95 to 895 in seven years. But it all crashed for us on December 7, 2009—our own version of "a date which will live in infamy." On that day, we received news that a grand jury had handed the district attorney a felony indictment against one of our pastors, accusing him of beating a woman. I wouldn't have believed it, except I saw the bruised woman's pictures of herself. News of the charges came while the accused pastor was telling 14 of our staff members—some who had been with me for my entire pastorate thus far—that, due to a budget crisis, we had to lay them off. This terrible day ended with all our elders and pastors together in tear-filled prayer.
That day's events touched off an avalanche of repercussions that would last for months. The accused pastor initially denied the charges, forcing everyone to take sides. Eventually, he confessed to having multiple affairs with women in the church as well as those he met online. This, coupled with the layoffs, led to bitter, church-wide division.
I had considered him a close friend. Shannon and I had left our children to him and his wife in our wills. Fingers pointed in every direction, but all sides agreed on one thing: I was pastor over the whole mess. Betrayed or not, I had led us into this abyss. I was at my wit's end. Now what?
As Far Away as Possible
My answer came two years later in the form of an e-mail invitation to apply for a two-month tour of duty in Antarctica in my capacity as an Air National Guard chaplain.
"Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success."
The mission was called Operation Deep Freeze. I would experience extremes in temperature. I would meet some of the smartest, strangest, most interesting people on earth per the Warner Herzog film, Encounters at the End of the World. Because the National Science Foundation was behind all the funding for America's efforts in Antarctica, I would meet leading scientists, including those working on experiments in a cubic mile of ice at the South Pole to track the movement of a single neutrino. (About 65 billion neutrinos pass through the tip of your nose every second.)
I would also work alongside some of the finest mechanics, carpenters, accountants, cooks, and doctors in the world. The problems they each had to solve exceeded anything back home. And for each and every person on the entire continent, my Catholic priest counterpart and I would be the only counselors and clergy.
When I first learned of the opportunity, I remember staring in disbelief at the computer screen inside the green fabric walls of my cubicle at the base where I served. Who was I kidding? Antarctica?
The wording of the e-mail resembled an ad that legend claims Ernest Shackleton put in an Argentinean newspaper to hire the crew for his now famous, failed Transcontinental Antarctic Expedition:
"Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success."
Sounds like the pastorate sometimes.
Stewart Pohlman, my predecessor and mentor at Goodwill, called being a pastor "the worst job in the world, but the greatest calling." Lately, it had just felt like the worst job. Maybe if I got as far away from home as possible I could rediscover the "greatest calling" part. So, I printed the e-mail, walked through the application requirements, and a few months later was on my way to Antarctica.
No Escape in Antarctica
From the first step I took out of the C-17 onto the icy runway to begin my 60-day tour, God made me face hardship that was more emotional and spiritual than environmental. To say that I had to have an open mind and an open heart is an understatement. I discovered it was rare to find anyone down there with anything resembling a biblical worldview. Yet my job would be to run the chapel, preach, offer sacraments, lead Bible studies, lead worship, counsel, participate in meetings and ceremonies, and be everywhere people might need me.
McMurdo Station, my base in Antarctica, is located on the south tip of Ross Island. It's the largest community on the continent and feels like a college campus on steroids. When fully populated—under 24 hours of daylight—they have boxing lessons, science lectures, yoga classes, knitting circles, movies like Casablanca showing at a coffee house, two empty gyms, four crowded bars, and of course, one little church: the Chapel of the Snows.
A century ago, Ross Island was the staging ground for one of the most famous and well-documented explorers; a legend that I owned at least a dozen books about and in whose footprints I was now walking: Ernest Shackleton.
Failing Well
God has blessed us pastors with the grueling, inspiring biography of Sir Ernest Shackleton. At first he was as ambitious as Robert Falcon Scott, Roald Amundsen, or any other Antarctic explorer of his day. His ship, Endurance, was trapped in and destroyed by ice just a few months after the October 26, 1914 launch of his expedition. On May 20, 1916, long after the world assumed that he and his men were dead, he and two others appeared at the Stromness whaling station on South Georgia Island, having survived an impossible quest for help via ice, sea, and land. From there, he returned to rescue all his men by late that August.
Not one of his 27 men perished.
This accomplishment eclipsed all his failed expedition's goals and most other explorers' accomplishments as well. More documentaries, films, and books have been produced about Shackleton than any other explorer. His character and leadership helped his men survive 634 days in the coldest, driest, windiest climate on earth.
Juxtaposed against Shackleton's inspiring story is that of another explorer who used Ross Island as a staging ground. Three years prior to the grounding of Endurance, Robert Falcon Scott died with his team trying to make his way back from the painful experience of being the second explorer—behind Amundsen by five weeks—to reach the South Pole.
His legacy, fair or not, is that his personal ambition and thirst for glory killed him and his men. His hut lies a short hike from McMurdo Station, in the shadow of Observation Hill, where a large cross was erected in 1913 as a memorial to him and his party.
I vividly remember the day I took a tour of the inside of Scott's hut. It was filled with cocoa bins, socks hung to dry, shelves stacked with cooking supplies, and all manner of related items. It was a museum, but more; it was like being inside a coffin.
As I looked over the century-old, well-preserved contents of this shack, I felt the Holy Spirit give my heart a wake-up slap. Scott prioritized his personal ambition over the lives of his men. Shackleton, on the other hand, quit his personal goals and all hope of glory for the sake of not quitting on his men. He led well after the group's utter failure. When things went horribly wrong, he focused on what mattered most.
My life's road parted in front of me. It was time to decide. Scott or Shackleton?
In this moment, the purpose of my time in Antarctica came into focus. God wanted me to lead in failure's aftermath, not escape from it. He wanted me to persevere in my vocation as pastor of Goodwill Church. It was the path of Shackleton for me. My decision made, I was free to learn the lessons God wanted to teach me, from the life of Shackleton, about not quitting.
1. I won't quit because people matter to me more than what they do for me.
Shackleton put people first. Sir Edmund Hillary, another renowned Antarctic explorer and the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest, put it best, "For scientific discovery, give me Scott; for speed and efficiency of travel, give me Amundsen; but when disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton." So, for me as a pastor, with success like Amundsen's out of reach, I had to choose how to deal with failure back home.
My choice not to quit the pastorate mirrored many choices in my life; it was a choice between what I wanted and what others needed. In the harsh climate of Antarctica, personal choices are often limited and nearly always tied to survival. You can't even go for a long walk away from the station without checking in before you leave and checking back in when you say you'll return. If you fail to check back in when you said you would, it won't be long before they send a cavalry of helicopters and rescue personnel after you. Every year a few people forget. When they're found, usually in their rooms, they learn—in an embarrassing way that gets talked about for weeks—that they are worth far more than what they do.
After seeing this, I was convinced that this needed to be my posture for pastoral ministry. Ministry may involve accomplishing tasks, but it is always about rescuing people. Quitting a ministry may—for some pastors in some situations—be the only sane choice. For me, however, quitting the pastorate was my version of what Scott was known for: putting self first and others last.
Not quitting was the Shackleton choice. Did I want to win an argument with a divisive parishioner or did I want to win the parishioner for Christ? Why was I a pastor to begin with? Was it to serve my cherished vocational goals, or was it to serve God and his people? With failure like sea ice having crushed my ministerial ship, I had to decide that people mattered more to me than what they did for me. Ironically, choosing the best way to fail can lead to another kind of success. This is the second thing I learned from Shackleton.
2. I won't quit because with the right priorities failure can become success.
Shackleton teaches us that the hidden blessing of a crisis is that it clarifies priorities. Though I felt like quitting, quitting is not an ingredient in what I recognize as the calling to ministry. Acts 20:24 (ESV) makes it clear: "But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God."
I am not alone in having felt discouraged enough to quit. Like you, I've read the statistics: "35-40 percent of ministers last less than five years in the ministry. Many statistics show that 60-80 percent of those who enter the ministry will no longer be laboring in the ministry 10 years later." Statistics like these are not easy to digest. They point to what I believe is the one of the biggest problems in Christianity today: the demise of the pastor. I wonder if misplaced priorities is one of the culprits.
The crisis that began with losing the Endurance clarified Shackleton's priorities. The glory of a successful expedition across the continent was gone. All he cared about was saving his men. Experiences in Antarctica helped me see that I needed to return to this kind of simplicity. If I'm thinking about ministry as a career, a successful church my glorious goal to achieve, then I'm already a statistic. My calling is about my need for redemption as much as anyone else's.
My temptation to quit was rooted in a professional view of the pastorate and my need for accomplishment. I thought ministry was about me helping people—with God using and making the most of what I was good at. The congregational difficulties I experienced were made worse because of my expectations. Failure helped me see my inward calling as a pastor with new eyes, to clarify my priorities and expectations. This led to the third lesson from Shackleton.
3. I won't quit even though staying in leadership might cost me.
Shackleton did not know he would survive his journey in search of help for his men. It is hard to exaggerate how much the odds were against him. His ocean journey in a small boat from Elephant Island, where he left most of his men to wait, to South Georgia Island is the pinnacle of sailing annals.
A PBS special was recently aired that featured an attempt to recreate this navigational miracle through the world's harshest seas. Most commentators—religious or not—credit divine intervention. The success of his voyage was that doubtful.
As I stood next to Scott's memorial cross on Observation Hill, my return to pastoral ministry looked as hopeless as his fateful attempt to return from the South Pole. But God used my adventure in Antarctica to preach a two-month sermon to my spirit and completely change my perspective.
Wanting to quit is where my journey to Antarctica began, but I left that desire in Scott's hut. I know most people don't have to travel so far from home to find a way back home, but this is what God did for me. He showed me that, just like with Shackleton, failure could be transformed by faith into a story of perseverance.
Now, years later, I have more than great pictures and souvenirs from my journey to the end of the earth; I have a restored calling. In my heart I feel like I carry around a permanent 80-mile view as well as the clearest picture of the cross I've ever had.
Together, we at Goodwill Church have been through the coldest, driest, windiest seasons one could imagine. Shackleton's party survived; so did we. Now, we're back to experiencing growth of every kind, anchored and inspired by the unmatched, breathtaking horizon that is the gospel of Christ.
John Torres is senior pastor at Goodwill Church in Montgomery, New York, and a chaplain with the U.S. Air National Guard.
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