We mount to heaven mostly on the ruins of our cherished schemes, finding our failures were successes.
A. B. Alcott
Yesterday’s errors let yesterday cover.
Susan Coolidge
Animals have a marvelous instinct: after a major trauma, they nest for a while, allowing life to return to normal. For days after our cat’s encounter in the neighbor’s house, she hung out in the bushes. Katie not only lay low, she walked low, slinking around like a tango dancer. It took about a week for her to become her old self again. But Katie’s tactic for recovery made good sense.
Errors inflict grievous wounds — in a pastor’s confidence, in a congregation’s regard for the pastor, in a church’s progress, in interpersonal relationships, in a pastor’s family. A kind of depression can set in (sometimes actual clinical depression), making recovery appear only a fleeting hope. I’ve blown it; I’m a failure! No one will want me now.
One pastor recalls his feelings after a devastating church split: “Early on in ministry, my confidence was strong. Every church I was in grew, and I developed a success syndrome. But a denominational change tore our church apart. We decided to part from the denomination, and in that decision I lost many of the people I had pastored for years. We even lost title to the buildings we had built. I began to doubt myself. When two of the elders closest to me opted for the denomination, I felt like quitting.” After a few years of turmoil, this pastor recently moved into a beautiful new facility with an enthusiastic congregation. Life goes on.
Wounded pastors sometimes want to crawl into a hole and die. A Band-Aid and a stiff upper lip usually will not patch up the damage imposed by a mistake. Often only a period of recuperation will restore a wounded pastor.
To make the most of mistakes, to survive and even thrive in spite of them, the restoration period is crucial. Any pastor can make mistakes, and most pastors can hobble on after all but the most drastic; the idea is to grow through a mistake, to emerge from the experience the better for it.
Pastors who have reflected on their successful recoveries offer several steps toward mending.
Step Back
When mistakes hit, most ministers need a little “space” to think straight — a twenty-four-hour retreat, a weekend away to think and pray, a long drive with one’s spouse, a day with close friends to sort out options. By finding time for contemplation, the quality of their decisions rises dramatically. Like counting to ten when you’re angry, popping out can eliminate the emotion-laden snap decisions that many live to regret.
As one pastor advises: “Don’t make any major decisions when you are under emotional distress. You are least equipped to decide well when your emotions are at play.”
Some churches grant a pastor a leave of absence to sort things out. If the mistake was severe, this respite allows the pastor time to work through personal problems, obtain counseling, quiet a trembling heart, regain perspective, and seek the Lord. A prayerful month walking the beach, or a couple of weeks back at the seminary talking with mentors and fellow strugglers, can often work wonders. One who remains enmeshed in a problem may not find a reasonable way out.
Although stepping back briefly may be appropriate for some mistakes, other major mistakes may call for a hiatus from vocational ministry. Robert Millen and Gordon Weekley wisely removed themselves from their prominent pastorates. They understood full well their present unfitness for continued pastoral leadership. Millen’s sexual misconduct and Weekley’s drugs had destroyed their credentials as leaders.
Neither man was knocked out of life, or even ministry. Their personhood, their individual worth before God, remained intact. Soulful repentance and spiritual rescue salvaged both Robert and Gordon to continue the work of the Lord. But for the immediate future, they had to step down.
John Mark was in the same position following his desertion of Paul and Barnabas in Pamphylia (Acts 13:13). It appears he slunk back to Jerusalem, frightened over the rigors of the apostolic mission and embarrassed by his apparent lack of fortitude. We don’t know what he did in Jerusalem for the following months, but we do know he recovered from his humiliation and felt ready to answer a second call to missionary service. Barnabas must have considered this exile sufficient, for he took Mark with him. Paul didn’t, even splitting with Barnabas over the matter (Acts 15:36-38). However, later Paul warmly involved Mark in ministry, considering him necessary for his own ministry (2 Tim. 4:11). Ministry can resume after a necessary period of stepping back.
Scale Down
Pastoral ministry stretches incredibly wide in scope. At any given time, a pastor might take on any number of new responsibilities or move the church in any of several directions. Alternatives abound; possibilities pile up. This fact of pastoral life dictates a second course of action for the recovery period: scaling down the scope of pastoral activities.
After an inglorious belly flop, the next dive is not the time to introduce a new twist or an extra flip. The diver needs to reconfirm her ability to enter the water safely and gracefully with a well-executed, familiar dive. It’s time to regroup around the basics.
“Any coach knows if your team gets in trouble, you go back to fundamentals,” Alan Taylor explains. “If you lose your perspective, return to what you know.” During his stressful days at Broadmoor, Alan found therapeutic satisfaction in the basics — trying to preach his best sermons, visiting, counseling. He did these well and received warm response in return. They gave him needed satisfaction when it was lacking in other areas. These were safe activities, known ruts worn deep by years of practice.
On the other hand, it would have been ill-advised for Alan to launch a TV ministry or an experimental worship service. He was already on unstable ground merely by being at Broadmoor. He didn’t need to stand on a skateboard.
Attention to pastoral care is also wise because following many ministerial mistakes, the people especially need to know they are loved. The mistake may well have angered, disappointed, or stung them. The personal touch of their pastor soothes sore feelings. Gene Owens, pastor of Myers Park Baptist Church in Charlotte, says, “You’ve got to lean on your sense of faithfulness to the gospel. Settle on the basics, and keep your pastoral bases covered.”
Covering those bases, caring for others, may be the last thing we want to face, caught up as we are in our own failings. Yet such basic pastoral warmth and care are necessary if we plan to remain, and they carry rewards few anticipate.
Many parishioners seem to wait for a reason to again affirm a pastor. Given that reason, they surprise their pastor with love and genuine forgiveness. Owens says, “When my people know I love them and am giving them the pastoral care they deserve, the mistakes I make don’t mean as much. They say, ‘Oh, he’s a jackass, but he’s our jackass!'”
Scaling down the complexity of ministry and centering on pastoral basics helps stumbling pastors regain their stride.
A Ministry Regained
Sometimes stepping back briefly or scaling down isn’t enough. Some pastors require a major recovery period. Stan was one of these.
Stan entered ministry as an associate pastor in Louisville. It wasn’t long before he noticed a glaring imbalance in the senior pastor’s relationship with his wife.
“It was obvious to everybody,” Stan relates. “She’d stuck a ring through his nose. He was nothing more than her errand boy. She’d call him in the midst of a counseling session, and he’d dismiss the counselee and go pick up a loaf of bread for her. It was pathetic, and his ministry suffered for it. People were laughing behind his back. I thought to myself, That’s not going to happen to me! I’m not going to let my family stand between me and my ministry.“
So Stan decided he would hang his life on Matthew 6:33: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” He plunged into the ministry and let God take care of his wife, Marj, and their family.
Four years later Stan received what he considered a big break: a call to pastor a Baptist church on the outskirts of Hartford, Connecticut. When he arrived in April, there were thirty-seven people in attendance, but Stan was determined to make it the Baptist congregation in New England. By summer the attendance had tripled, and within two years they were averaging four hundred in Sunday school and had plans to construct an auditorium that could seat a thousand.
All this didn’t come from wishful thinking. Stan labored night and day to produce the fifteen to twenty who walked down the aisles following a typical Sunday’s invitation. More than once he broke down in tears on a Saturday evening because it was too late to call on any more people that week!
Meanwhile, Stan’s “widowed” wife wasn’t all that thrilled with his success. She had married a bright young man she thought would be her companion. Sure, he was planning to become a pastor, and preachers don’t keep bankers’ hours. But she didn’t expect him to be gone all the time. She was raising their children alone, barely feeling Stan’s touch as he brushed by with his daily, “I’m off!” Most days she wouldn’t see him again until he slipped into bed late that night.
She tried to talk with Stan about his hours.
“Stan, do you realize that in the last month, we’ve had exactly eight breakfasts, two lunches, and three dinners together as a family? You’ve been home only one evening, and even then you were phoning the deacons and reading your journal. When’s the last time you read to the kids or tucked them into bed?”
She wanted to add, It’s a miracle you found time to have kids, but she bit her tongue.
“I know I’ve been busy,” Stan murmured, “but what else can I do? I’m a pastor!” And he was off to yet another appointment. Part of him wanted to understand her feelings, but another voice cautioned: It must be Satan’s hindrance. He’d like to have you tied down at home rather than winning New England to Christ. So Stan would try to placate his wife and get on with his real business: growing a thriving church.
After a while Stan noticed that Marj seemed to back off from her pleas for his time. He was relieved that she had finally resigned herself to his schedule. Then one evening Stan dropped by the house to pick up a commentary he needed to complete his sermon. No Marj. That’s odd, Stan thought. She didn’t say she was going anywhere. He found the book and camped in his office with it until after midnight. Marj was asleep when he finally tumbled into bed, so he didn’t wake her to ask where she had been. By morning he forgot about it.
Over the next several weeks Stan picked up a sense of distance between himself and Marj. She kept her own counsel, even during the brief times they spent together, and a foreign light lit her eyes. But Stan brushed it off. The kids are happy and fed, the home is clean, and Marj is at church on Sunday. Surely everything’s okay.
But everything wasn’t okay. Mark, one of the men Stan had visited during those evenings out, had begun coming to church. Mark was experiencing one of those life transitions that make people more receptive to the gospel. Recently divorced, he was hurting badly over the breakup of his marriage. Stan’s concern had touched him, and Mark depended on him for periodic rebuilding.
One evening Mark chanced by Stan’s home hoping to talk with him about his loneliness. Stan was out, but when Marj saw Mark’s disappointed expression, she invited him in. They talked a couple of hours, and Mark went home feeling much relieved. Marj felt happy that she could help him, and besides, it was nice to talk with an adult after a monosyllabic day with toddlers. She was going to tell Stan about the evening, but he didn’t get home until after she went to bed.
Mark and Marj hit it off in the following weeks. He’d often call to chat during the day, or drop by in the late afternoon or evening, on the pretext of catching Stan at home. Stan’s mammoth work schedule left plenty of vacant hours for Mark and Marj to fill. What began innocently enough developed into an overly intimate situation. Eventually the affair came to the attention of one shocked workaholic.
After a flurry of How-could-you’s followed by a wave of You-don’t-understand’s, Stan and Marj decided to leave New England. Stan could hardly face the church, and Marj knew she had to move away to stop seeing Mark. They hastily accepted a call to a smaller church in Indiana and tried to piece their life back together. They attended marriage counseling, Stan altered his hours some, and Marj tried to forget Mark.
Five months later, Marj and the kids moved back to Hartford — and Mark. In spite of an overwhelming congregational vote for Stan to remain, he was so devastated from this turn of events, he felt unable to continue in Indiana. He trundled himself off to Charleston for a brief stint as a youth pastor, but even there, some pastors said that as a divorced man he was a disgrace to the ministry. Before long he was back in Louisville working as an investment adviser.
Stan did well and earned good money. He actually became rather wealthy, and he tried to sell Marj again on their marriage. It was dead, however, and for the first time in his life, Stan had to accept bitter defeat.
“The whole thing was extremely painful — more like dying than anything else. I had made evangelism everything; I put aside my wife, my family — everything — to build a church. Now I was a divorced ex-pastor. It was like denying all I once believed in.”
Stan felt guilty for his failed marriage. He was racked with regret and nearly obsessed with getting Marj and the kids back. At that point, Stan would have been an emotional cripple as a pastor.
But time continued on, and lives mend. Stan gained confidence through his work. He found he could succeed, and having proved that, he even mellowed somewhat the irrational drive that was his undoing. He enjoyed a comfortable job and a handsome salary; he met another woman and remarried.
Passing thoughts entered Stan’s mind about returning to ministry. Would I be free to minister again? Did divorce and remarriage cause me to lose my call? Or is God’s call permanent? Would anybody accept me as pastor? But he squelched those thoughts. Stan considered himself “a guy who was down for the count in ministry.”
He was doing fine in his secular employment, yet the satisfaction wasn’t there. Once he shared his restlessness with his pastor, and the pastor told him, “Stan, you’re out of the will of God. You’re called to be a pastor, and the way I see it, if you don’t get back into the pastorate, it may kill you.”
That was all Stan needed. He resigned his job and returned to seminary for more education. While still in school, he was called to pastor a small church in a neighboring rural community, and the same month his wife bore him a son — “Something else I thought I never again would have,” Stan says. The people at the church assured Stan he could indeed pastor again.
“I had felt like an outcast with reject stamped across my forehead,” Stan explains, “but this parish received us so warmly, so graciously, that I felt raised from the dead as a pastor. We had two great years in that loving church.”
Stan graduated from seminary, and now is ministering in another congregation, feeling accepted and effective in the pastorate. Like John Mark, Stan dropped out but returned.
“I still struggle with how much to give my family and how much to give my ministry, but I’ve learned my lesson,” Stan states. “Although I may never become as ‘successful’ as I once thought I had to be, God has given me a dear wife, two sons, and a satisfying ministry. I am blessed.”
Change Patterns
Something precipitates a mistake. That something often can be fixed, and the period of recovery is the time to do it.
Stan’s pattern of emotional neglect combined with Marj’s weakness and sin’s opportunity to produce devastating results in his ministry. During the difficult years of Stan’s recovery, he began to sort out his priorities. He dealt with the heart of his mistake — his unrelenting drive that caused him to substitute personal ambition for what began as zeal for the Lord’s work. When Stan later reentered the pastorate, his first thoughts were on keeping his ministry and home life balanced. Stan used his hiatus from ministry to alter his patterns of living.
Gene Owens says, “After I make a mistake, I need to do my homework. I should have done it before the mistake, but if I didn’t, now’s the time to study the issues enough to make a better decision next time.” That’s what Stan did.
Mistakes as sin cry for new patterns to head off temptation. A Sunday school superintendent who was caught embezzling church funds was removed from office. As the church stuck with him and helped him mend his life, they also knew enough to remove him from the temptation of church funds.
A couple of years after his confession, he briefly served as usher. A parishioner, however, halted that with a brief note: “As long as this man is ushering, I’m not going to put any money in the offering. I love him and I’m thankful for him, but to put an offering plate in front of him is like putting a bottle in front of an alcoholic.” He didn’t usher after that. The church leaders decided he needed to continue to build a pattern of honesty in an area unrelated to finances. Why place him in harm’s way?
Rebuild Credibility
The recovery period is a time of reestablishing credibility. The fallen one is being watched. It’s definitely a time to mind the store.
Peter, the fallen leader of the disciples, returned to his companions following his denial of Jesus. They were used to his leadership, but I suspect they all were wondering, Can we trust this guy? I doubt he regained full trust until his outstanding leadership at Pentecost or his subsequent courage before the Sanhedrin, and these only after Jesus had gently forgiven him and challenged him three times to feed his sheep. Even Peter had to regain credibility.
A negative credibility quotient bankrupts a pastorate. When mistakes drain the account, the ministry goes into a kind of Chapter 11 status until the reserves again accumulate. This time of rebuilding allows little margin for error, and several suspicions demand attention.
Suspect intentions. Perhaps the most damage a major mistake inflicts is upon the church members’ perception of the leader’s intentions. Did she mean to speak that way to us? Does he really want to make this church fail? Is ministry a game without rules as far as he is concerned? When people question our actions, it’s hard enough, but when they doubt our very intentions in ministry, that’s a credibility crisis. Unless they are assured that we want to please God through our actions, we cannot minister.
One church began to think the pastor was pulling a power play to dismiss an associate simply because they couldn’t get along. In truth, however, the pastor had withheld much of the damning information about this associate out of courtesy, not wanting to besmirch his name publicly. But when the associate started making power plays of his own, the pastor had to act.
“I told the people they were deciding about the propriety of the dismissal on insufficient information,” he recalls. “Since I didn’t want to make a formal announcement, I promised to talk to people privately if they wished. Then I tried to deal with people in small groups, and that didn’t work. I needed to talk one-to-one to keep things conversational and let them ask me questions or even argue with me without making a ruckus in a group. Even with all my efforts, people distrusted my motives for some time.”
Another pastor trying to handle a doctrinal dispute in his church personally called on people who were upset with the stand he and the board had taken. He patiently explained their reasoning and did his best to educate the people. “I took the ‘weird’ out of their concept of our decision,” he says. It saved the day for that church. People needed to read his intentions for the church and his concern for their opinion.
Suspect morality. Once pastors have rebuilt credibility concerning their intentions, the next step is to model those intentions through their morals.
People never once doubted Gordon Weekley’s intentions for the church. They knew his love for it and the effort he had expended to help it prosper. However, when his inability to beat his drug addiction became known, Gordon had to regain moral credibility. Alcohol and drugs rode him to the depths; Jesus Christ rescued him. At least that was Gordon’s claim in September 1976. What remained to be seen was if he could stay clean.
For about two years Gordon worked at Rebound, the rescue mission he was in when God redirected his life. For those years Gordon completely abstained from either drugs or alcohol. He worked hard to prove his competence and sincerity.
With recaptured credibility, Gordon has served as executive director of Rebound since 1978, helping transform it into a model agency with a program that truly rescues men and women like himself from chemical bondage.
Sin, even dark, ugly sin, does not necessarily signal the end of ministry; continuing that sin does. Whatever sin a pastor has fallen into, the recovery period is the time to show consistent, sterling avoidance. Church members, colleagues, and the public at large must witness a repentant and changed person.
Suspect ability. A third area requiring rebuilt credibility is competence, especially when the mistake is one of judgment. When a pastor’s competence quotient is low, nothing succeeds like success.
A hard-driving young pastor found himself having difficulties with staff he had not managed properly. A renegade minister of visitation was creating havoc by the disloyal remarks he was making during calls, and the pastor had not handled the situation decisively. When the man began undermining the pastor’s plans for a major evangelism festival, the pastor finally stepped in and dismissed him.
Some people sided with the visitation pastor. Others, who didn’t particularly care for the man but didn’t know the reasons for his dismissal, decried the apparent suddenness of his firing. Most of the leaders stood behind their pastor; they knew the circumstances.
So what was he to do? “I had slipped in the way I originally handled this staff member,” the pastor confides. “Even though I inherited him, I should never have allowed him to undermine me the way he did. So what I lacked in prevention, I had to make up in cure.
“I tried to remain as positive as possible. Had I labeled it a gross error, people would have picked up on that. Instead, I went to work in my area of strength. I’ve always been good with people. I seem to understand them and can get them to understand my position on things. So I began to use those skills. People seemed wary at first, but when they were apprised of our reasons and then saw things were actually going better with this man removed from the scene, the battle was won. They’re solid supporters again.”
To regain skill credibility, most pastors return to their greatest skills. Chapter seven told of a preacher accused of an affair. He quietly and persistently denied it, and what rescued him was the success of his preaching. He threw himself into that task, and when people responded well to his ministry, the clouds of doubt dispersed. His credibility as a competent pastor was restored.
Take Time
Time, as one humorist put it, wounds all heels. It also heals many of those wounds a mistake occasions.
One of the most beneficial aspects of a period of recovery is the passage of time itself. As the sands trickle through the glass, anger dissipates, memories blur, new impressions intervene, doubts disappear.
Time well used in the restoration process is on the side of the pastor. If pastors and churches are willing to forestall immediate closure, many mistakes will resolve themselves through good will, dogged determination to make things better, and the intervention of the Holy Spirit.
In chapter five we read the beginning of the story of Richard Kew, the Episcopal priest whose well had run dry. His story doesn’t end in burnout, with his resignation from ministry and alienation from his wife. Here is how Kew concluded the story:
“Where does my mistake leave me? Right now I don’t know. In a couple of weeks I will find myself sitting alone in a pew as an ordinary member of another congregation. There I will have time to lick my wounds and adjust to my ‘laicized’ state and the single life again. Now my responsibility is to allow the grace of God to work in my life and restore me to wholeness. The rebuilding process will be long and painful, I fear, but I am eager to step out in faith to discover the new me that will surely result from this incredible process.”
Two months later, after time intervened, Kew was able to write: “Today is the sixteenth anniversary of my ordination, two months since I resigned my pastorate. What a period of agony and ecstasy!
“The days have been a kaleidoscope of ever-changing patterns. Depression has followed hard on the heels of heady joy, the product of my release from the burden of responsibility. I am at sea, having lost my professional identity, the one that cloaked me through my whole working life. Stripped of wife, family, and parish, and living in rented rooms, I have been forced to look myself squarely in the face and ask some fundamental questions about the man I am and the person I want to be. As bitter as it is, I am attempting to grasp it as a God-given challenge and not an unmitigated disaster.
“The clergy continue to be my greatest source of strength. I could not have survived without their love and care toward me. Their nurture is helping transform my burnout into a fresh beginning.”
Then another two months later: “Rereading what I wrote eight weeks ago, I am staggered at the speed with which my life has been restructuring itself. If ‘necessity is the mother of invention,’ my invention is career counseling. I thought a practice would take months to come together, but it is coalescing more rapidly than I imagined possible, though it is not providing a large enough income yet.
“Perhaps the biggest surprise is to find my wife and me living together again. The investment in counseling has begun to pay off. The tide began turning soon after we separated, although it took time for the necessary breakthrough to happen. We still have a long way to go, but many old, destructive patterns have been broken, and a new style of marriage is being instigated.
“In a few days we will reaffirm our marriage vows in the sight of God, friends, and family. Yet reuniting has not been without its pain, and there are still nights when we weep together. We’ve each made and continue to work on some significant changes in attitude, so now we can fulfill the vow we will repeat: ’till death us do part.'”
And finally, six months from the fracture: “I almost feel embarrassed to put pen to paper. So many good things have happened since I last wrote, I hardly know where to begin.
“First, I can report our marriage gets healthier week by week. My wife and I enjoy each other’s company as never before, and I can’t wait to get home in the evenings to be with her. Our children have picked this up and are more settled and content than we have ever seen them.
“But it is on the career front that the biggest changes have taken place. I am about to return to church work — although not parish work. I’m not sure I could handle that again. However, as my faith has returned, refreshed and rejuvenated, I have found it frustrating to look in on church life as an outsider. Soon I will return to the mainstream as executive director of a denominational organization.
“I can’t tell you how good it feels to be functioning at full throttle again. I feel less like a middle-aged man recovering from burnout and more like an excited teenager with the whole of life opening up before him. One of my final clients as a career counselor was a burned-out pastor, a gifted and devoted man who has lived beyond his limits for too long and was forced to resign. When he left my office the other day with a brand-new résumé and plans to pursue therapy with a first-rate counselor, there were tears in my eyes. He is where I was less than a year ago. I pray that he may experience the sovereignty of grace that has brought me to a new beginning.”
Copyright ©1987 by Christianity Today
