It’s always too soon to quit.
V. Raymond Edman
Is it time to leave my church? Maybe even the ministry?
Those questions, though seldom spoken, are often thought. The Leadership survey showed nearly 40 percent of pastors have “considered leaving” the pastorate and “looked into other types of ministries and/or occupations.” That doesn’t include the nearly 10 percent who did indeed give it up. And the number who have wrestled with “Should I leave this current church?” probably approaches 100 percent.
The question is one of the most difficult a pastor will have to answer, for it is almost always, as one put it, “filled with lingering doubts, self-criticisms, and the pain of unfulfilled dreams.”
Though the question “Should I leave?” occasionally plays in every pastor’s mind, within the discouraged minister it puts on a full-court press. It dogs, it harries, it doesn’t let up. “There have been many times when I’ve questioned, ‘Lord, what are you saying?'” says a Lutheran pastor. “‘Does this mean my ministry is finished here? Or finished period? Are you calling me into something else?’ And sometimes in a fit of frustration I cry out, ‘Lord, I’m finished; I’m done!'”
Exit or Endure?
The question ultimately offers two options: stay or leave. There’s no middle ground. You can’t “halfway” leave.
Yet often emotions stay in the middle zone, attracted first to leaving, then to staying, then back to leaving. Each option holds pros and cons, and neither is easy.
At that moment you long for a direct, strong assurance from God that his will is one option or the other. But when you’re discouraged, that’s not easy to determine. Turning to Scripture for guidance may not clear your mind. On the one hand, Jesus “set his face like flint” to go up to Jerusalem. He didn’t turn away from difficulty; neither should I. But at other times Jesus left Judea and Galilee; he changed ministry sites to the other side of the Jordan to avoid further confrontation with the Jewish authorities. Stay or leave? Each is right — at the right time. But how do you determine what time it is?
Our ultimate goal, of course, is continued faithfulness to God and service of him. But given our current situation, could that be in a different church or even in a setting outside the pastoral ministry? Something has to give — but is that something an attitude within as God teaches us to endure? Or is that something the situation without as God shows us that “a bruised reed he will not break” and “he provides a way of escape”?
Pastors who have grappled with “Is it time to leave?” during their dark periods have learned they can’t answer that question until they first ask themselves several others. Here are ones they pose to themselves.
Questions Worth Asking
Am I free to pursue the essentials of ministry? No setting is without its limitations, of course. Harold Myra, president of Christianity Today, Inc., reminds us of Joe Bayly’s concept that “all of us find ourselves in a box. It may be a big box or a small one … but we all find ourselves in a box of limitations and opportunities. Our task is not to bemoan the limitations or strut because of the size of the box. If we’ve committed ourselves to the situation, we try to understand the box and fill it — every corner and cranny — with all the creativity and energy possible.”1
But sometimes a ministry “box” may have the lids closed and taped shut; soon it becomes difficult even to breathe. A pastor in the East realized that even after several years in a congregation, “I didn’t have any freedom to provide leadership. The board, though not where it should be in terms of spiritual maturity, had a tremendous amount of power and wasn’t about to give it up. I couldn’t see that changing in the future. My relationship was cordial with all of them, but in that situation, I couldn’t lead the church.” If our every move is blocked and it takes all our energy to survive, let alone minister, then it’s probably time to go.
The reason probably is a key word is illustrated in the experience of one Southern pastor. “I came to this church to build a ministry of discipleship. Yet in my early years, every effort in that direction was stymied. Inner pain began to build, and I became desperate to get out. I even had several opportunities to move. But I never had an inner peace about leaving, so I stayed. Now, ten years later, my discipling is growing.” The Lord often works through painful situations.
Overall, though, pastors have found help in candidly considering this question: “Given the inevitable resistance to change (and handful of cranky personalities) in any group, am I generally free to serve?”
Have I already left, internally? A friend of mine got swept up in a management war in his company some years ago. Even though he came out with only minor injuries, the months of rumors, firings, secret meetings, and reprisals made something snap within him. He suddenly realized one day, I can’t work for these people anymore. He had lost his respect for them.
He continued to work for the company for a while after that, but inside, he had already left. That period proved the most difficult in his business career. “When you get to that point of leaving within,” he realized, “there’s no sense prolonging the inevitable. Find another place to go as soon as you can.”
It’s possible as well to leave a church while still preaching every Sunday. But that usually entails, as one pastor put it, “becoming mechanical, going through the motions.” And it usually only makes us cynical or bitter within. For our own sake as well as the church’s, it’s better to leave. But if, despite the current difficulties, we still respect the congregation and hold a dream for our work with it, then staying is indicated.
Has my desire to leave been building for a long time, or is it a sudden response to recent events? “Today I feel as though I’d like to quit, take a leave of absence, resign from the world, or something!” wrote Don Bubna, pastor of Salem (Oregon) Alliance Church, in his journal several years ago. He’d been hit by a boxcar full of discouraging events. “We had just received another turndown from a potential youth pastor. The church seemed to be on a plateau, the elders stuck on dead center.… A young man from our congregation who had recently gone to Africa was killed in an automobile accident. A missionary pilot from our fellowship had been attacked by South Pacific islanders with machetes and almost died. A retired missionary, our esteemed pastor of visitation, passed into the presence of the Lord after a very brief illness.
“During this same period, I received four letters in one day marked Personal. This kind of envelope seldom bears good news. One was a complaint from a long-time attender who felt I had gotten soft on the gospel. The person was leaving the congregation in order ‘to be fed’ elsewhere. Another was the resignation of a staff member with whom I had served for more than two decades.”
When the discouragement comes like a horde of locusts, the natural feeling is to run. But Don stayed; he realized he’d had many great years with the church that the current events couldn’t change. And there was a future beyond these events as well.
Immediate events don’t tell the whole story, so “we need to not make a hasty decision,” counsels Maynard Nelson, pastor of Calvary Lutheran Church near Minneapolis. “With all the clamoring around us, it takes time to quiet ourselves to hear the still, small voice of God.”
Do my gifts and philosophy of ministry generally match my church’s? A California pastor I know went to a small church and found his approach to ministry differed vastly from theirs. They wanted the standard format of midweek services and programs; he wanted to build the fellowship through a decentralized model of home groups. They wanted traditional music; he felt more contemporary music would aid outreach. “But I had been called to be their pastor,” he said, “so I tried to be everything they wanted me to be.” As a result, discouragement set in. When he went their way, he didn’t feel happy; when he didn’t, the congregation let him know it. That kind of incompatibility usually calls for a new start. In the words of one pastor who is involved in his denomination’s placement work, “One of the big secrets of staying power is getting the right person in the right place. Conflict and discouragement inevitably come with a mismatch.”
But in this California pastor’s case, he decided to stay despite his discouragement. Over time he was able to communicate his vision for ministry to the board, and now, seven years later, they have embraced it wholeheartedly. The pastor and congregation now work together well.
Recognizing the studies that show it often takes seven to ten years for a pastor and congregation to fully mesh, it’s also true, as one consultant writes, that “if the friction constantly produces sparks or if adaptation demands a major part of your energy, it may be an indication change is needed.”
What is my normal inclination in tough situations? Andre Bustanoby describes his experience leading a church in California in the early seventies: “I was battered with discouragement because it seemed that nothing I did would stop the guerrilla warfare in the church. About 10 percent of the congregation was determined to get me out. I had 90 percent of the congregation with me and I felt, I ought to win the war. I have the troops to do it. It did not even occur to me to resign. I never give up. That’s just not part of me.
“But then one night we were in a congregational meeting and charges were being thrown back and forth. I remember sitting there watching this when I sensed the Lord saying, ‘Andy, get up in front of that congregation and resign.’ The reason why I knew that was God’s voice is because I never would think anything like that. That was too atypical of my personality. But inside I knew, That’s your problem, Andy: you don’t know when to stop hassling people to win. You’ve got to win regardless. You’ve done it in your marriage; now you’re doing it in the church. When are you going to quit doing this?
“That day marked a great advance in my spiritual growth. I discovered the marvelous truth that when I gave in, I was not destroyed. I had always feared I could never emotionally survive a defeat or even a strategic withdrawal, so I fought tooth and nail. At the time my marriage was in trouble for the same reason — I had to win every confrontation. My wife had stopped talking to me. But God led me against the grain of my personality. I resigned and gradually developed the ability to retreat, to give in, to surrender.
“From that whole experience I learned a principle that has helped me make major decisions. I call it the ‘Bustanoby Rule of Thumb.’ That is, listen extra hard to the idea that goes against your natural inclination, because that may very well be the voice of the Spirit. If you are like I was, a fighter and a never-say-die person, really scrutinize those inner urges to fight on, because you can do that too well by yourself. On the other hand, if your tendency is to walk away quietly, to never make waves, the Rule says, ‘Watch out for that inner voice that is urging you to pull up your stakes, pack your tent, and move on. God’s voice may be saying something very different.'”
Do I have the physical and emotional strength to stay on? Says a pastor in his thirties about his decision to leave, “I had to gauge how much more I could take personally. I decided I could take some more but I probably wouldn’t last until the church turned around.” For the sake of his long-term health and service in the kingdom, he found a much different church and today is feeling strong.
On the other hand, if you feel well physically and emotionally, it’s an indicator for staying.
How much can my family endure? One veteran pastor wrote on the Leadership survey, “Once, when the board was being bossy and difficult, I did resign, but only because my wife was suffering from the conflict. It proved to be a good and wise move.” Spouses and children may need emotional relief from a discouraging ministry situation. But if they’re holding their own, it’s another sign to stay.
Answering these questions may still yield a split decision — some factors that indicate staying, others that say it’s time to leave. But ultimately, as Robert Norris, pastor of Bethesda, Maryland’s, Fourth Presbyterian Church, suggests, “You must rely on your own human spirit.”
Two pastors, both of whom were discouraged and longing to leave, chose entirely different paths. Here they explain their decisions.
One Who Decided to Stay
Eugene Peterson has served more than twenty-five years as pastor of Christ Our King Presbyterian Church in Bel Air, Maryland, northeast of Baltimore. That remarkably long tenure, considering the national average is somewhere in the three-to five-year range, has not exempted him from the time of decision.
“I can think of three times since I’ve been here,” he admits, “when I was ready to leave. I tried my best to get out of here. I thought I had done everything I knew how to do and people were unappreciative. They didn’t know how good they had it, and so I was going to show them. Those times weren’t for just a couple of weeks; they lasted for seven, eight, or nine months.
“But as I’d search out other options, either nothing would open up or nothing would appeal to me. And finally, still in a funk, I’d sort of give up and think, Shoot, if I’ve gotta stay here, I’ll just stay here. And then I’d see changes. I found myself working with the same people, working on the same things, but suddenly it was different — deeper and better. I’d notice significant changes in my life in terms of my understanding of spirituality and pastoral work. I take no credit for it, because I tried my best to leave. I’m so glad that by the grace of God I didn’t. If I had left precipitously, I don’t think I would have gone into these new areas in my life.
“In those times, my wife wasn’t sure that staying was the right thing, because I wasn’t much fun to live with. But now I’m so glad I didn’t move.”
One Who Decided to Leave
Another pastor we’ll call Eric was in his fifth year of ministry with a particular church when he hit bottom. “Pressures kept building in the church and in me,” Eric says. “The board and I couldn’t agree on anything. The only way to get anything done was to go around them, and that didn’t go along with my philosophy of ministry. I was not doing the kind of work I thought I should be doing. And I didn’t have anybody I could share with. No one in the congregation even knew I was having any problems.
“The aloneness was deadly. I tried to talk to my wife about problems in the church. She loved me, but she couldn’t do anything. So when I would tell her what people had done to me, she’d get angry. One night she said, ‘I want to scratch their eyes out!’ That wasn’t a godly thing to instill in her, so I just quit talking about things.”
Eric’s relationship with his wife became strained. “Kelly said I wasn’t the same person anymore, that my personality was changing. It was probably true, but I didn’t know what to do about it. Sexual temptations skyrocketed for me. They were tough feelings to fight. Finally I got a little counseling. I didn’t want to get counseling; I kept thinking, Hey, I give counseling. But I knew an older man who had been a pastor and who had kind of been keeping an eye on me anyway. I invited him over and spilled out everything. He mostly listened, and then he made a few objective statements about what I could and could not do in the situation. ‘You can’t change every situation, Eric,’ he told me. That freed me.
“I had gone into the church thinking, It’s not the kind of situation I enjoy, but I’ll work with it and change it. I can change pretty much anything if I just have enough faith and enough elbow grease. Now I had given them five years of my life, and things hadn’t changed at all. I realized it was going to take years to turn the church around. And I wouldn’t last that long.
“Then I saw a telephone commercial, ‘Reach out and touch someone.’ The commercial gave me the idea to call an old friend, a dear friend. We were atheists together, were converted together, and went to seminary together. He was the best man at my wedding. So I called him and said, ‘I’m not going to survive here, Don. I don’t know what I’m going to do.’
“He kidded me, ‘Well, I’m planting this church down here; why don’t you come down, and we could work together?’ We both laughed about it, but I couldn’t get the idea out of my mind. I started pursuing it, and things worked out.
“People in the church had no notion I was having problems. They were sorry to see me go; it was all very nice and nostalgic. But I came here to save my marriage and to see if I could save my ministry. I went from being the senior pastor of the largest church in the district to being an associate pastor in a mission church. Everybody thought it was a step down.
“But here I wasn’t alone. Don and I built a team ministry where there was genuine respect. He left a year ago now, to plant another church, but we talked about everything. We would talk about sermons we were going to preach.
“I found I could have friends in the church. I have people I can talk to. In fact, just the other night I told the board I was getting discouraged about our long-range planning, and we talked it out.
“And the marriage is fantastic. The last years have been tremendously healing. We have become intimate with each other the way it should be. I can talk to Kelly about the church.
“I was kept in the ministry by coming here. There is no question about that. One of the more mature decisions I ever made was to leave.”
Leave the Pastorate Altogether?
It’s one thing to leave a church. It’s quite another to leave the pastorate altogether.
When all strategies and prayers seem to have failed and you stand on the precipice wondering whether to jump and leave it all behind, there’s a terrifying loneliness. Has anyone — ever — faced what I am facing? Do they know my pain? What did they do?
Indeed others have been there — and have survived. Here, briefly, are the true stories of three pastors who stood on the edge and wondered, Should I give up the ministry? They made very different choices.
“I felt like I had been beaten up,” Allen (not his real name) says of his closing days in a New England pastorate. “I used to wake up on Sunday morning and dread going to church. My favorite time of the week was Sunday night because Sunday morning was behind me for another week. I wanted to leave the pastorate — just get out.
“I started looking around and found a good opportunity working with a social-service organization. The position connected several interests and skills I had. At the same time, I was asked to consider a position with a small church in another state. I thought, Why bother? I don’t want to go through all this again. But somehow — and it’s hard to explain this — I felt like I was being swept by a wave back into the church. All my circumstances and feelings began to move that direction again. So I did take the church interview. They extended a call, and after more deliberation, I decided to accept it.
“I was ready to leave the pastorate, but now after more than a year here at the new church, I can say there has been such healing. I would never say, ‘I’ve learned how to deal with discouragement; I can forget about that now.’ It’s an ongoing struggle. But I wake up Sunday morning and look forward to going to church. I learned through this that God is watching over our decisions more than we think.”
Don, a minister in Tennessee, came to a new church and found that one elder in the congregation opposed everything he did. After Don had been there three or four months, a bald lie about him began to circulate in the church. Eventually Don was able to trace the source of the lie directly to the troublesome elder. When the other elders confronted him with the facts in an elders’ meeting, he admitted he had spread the lie, and he resigned. But then they rallied around the liar: “You don’t need to resign,” they said. “Stay on.”
Don thought, Is this the kind of elders I have? I don’t have to put up with this. He resigned immediately.
A registered nurse, Don took a position as supervisor of a nearby nursing home. “But in three months I was unhappy,” he says. “I came home one day and told my wife, ‘I’ve just got to go back to preaching.’ I realized that I really did enjoy the ministry and that my decision to leave had been a spur-of-the-moment response when I was disgusted. Well, I guess it had been building: my previous congregation had not given me a salary increase in years, and the conflict in the elders’ meeting touched off all that.”
A nearby church became open, and within a month Don was back in the pastorate. “It’s a smaller church, but very productive in many ways. It’s been a happy ministry here.” Don is now in his thirteenth year with the church. “I haven’t regretted coming back,” he says. “And I really haven’t thought of leaving again.”
Roger Landis, the pastor whose descent into discouragement was told in chapter 1, came to the point of considering suicide. In his desperate pain he cried out, “Lord, I just can’t hack it, physically, emotionally, or spiritually. Lord, get me out of this place.”
“And yet I could never consider leaving the pastorate,” he says. “That summer I was approached about a position as a nursing home chaplain. ‘No way!’ I said.”
Roger began meeting often with Dick Berger, his district superintendent, to try to get a handle on the situation at church. They called a meeting with the church elder and the church chairman. “Both the elder and church chairman were supportive of me,” Roger says, “but they realized the conflict in the church had gotten totally out of hand. For the sake of both the church and me, they thought it would be good if I resigned.” They decided to let Roger stay in the parsonage with full financial support for several months or until he found another position.
Both a board member and administrator from the nursing home approached Roger about the position as chaplain again. Roger was offered the position. “I had until the end of the year to make a decision, and I had gotten a number of inquiries from churches, but somehow I sensed God was in it. God had softened my heart, and my feelings about nursing home chaplaincy had completely changed.”
The position didn’t start for several months. “That gave me months of no responsibility, and after what I’d been through they were heaven-sent. The first month or so I hardly did more than sleep late and go picnicking with my wife — whatever we felt like doing. We went to a church where we didn’t know anybody, and it was a joy to go anonymously, sit together, and worship. I didn’t have to think about any responsibility, even praying in front of anybody. It was grand. Those months were very healing.”
And his new position? “I still feel I’m in the ministry,” he says. “I feel very much at home here; I’ve learned to love these people. I’ve never had a more appreciative and sensitive congregation in my life. We’ve seen two come to know the Lord. We’ve started some programs, and I look forward to work each day. But I look forward to going home at night, too.
“One of the greatest delights about this work is not having to meet with the board of deacons or trustees. I don’t have to juggle one hundred ‘bosses.’ So through it all, I’m so thankful for the hand of God. He kept me from self-destruction, and through that deep depression he showed me his grace in such a wonderful way. He still has use for me; he has fulfilling service for me to render.”
In his own way, each of these three pastors demonstrates remarkable staying power. As F. Scott Fitzgerald has said, “Vitality shows not only in the ability to persist but in the ability to start over.”
None would have chosen the events that led him to the point of considering leaving the pastorate. Each was driven to the decision by a hungry pack of circumstances that threatened his well-being. But are there common lessons that can be learned from these pastors’ diverse experiences?
God was still there. Reflecting on his experience, Roger Landis says, “God was there. I praise him for that. I can’t fault the way God has dealt with me. I love Jeremiah 29:11, ‘”For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”‘ Without a sense of hope for the future, life is grim. But God was with me even then.”
Healing from the events that led to the decision takes time. For Allen, it has taken over a year. Roger, now a year and a half from his resignation, says, “I never questioned God’s love and his wisdom through that. But I’ve questioned a lot my own abilities. I saw how weak I was. I feared circumstances were going to get to the point where I couldn’t handle them. But I’m beginning to rebuild a fair self-image again now.” As one pastor explained, “If we’re worn out, it’s usually come over a long period of time. If we’re going to be renewed, it takes time for that also.”
God could and did use it for their ultimate good. In a recent study of ministers who had left the pastorate and then returned, one researcher found that two-thirds felt they were more empathetic with people as a result of their time away.
Andre Bustanoby, today a successful psychotherapist, writes that as he began his practice following his leaving pastoral ministry, “it required that I listen, be empathetic, and care about the pain of others, something I lacked in the pastorate. As a pastor, I could be warm and empathetic with people who liked me and whom I liked, but it was a new experience to truly care about people I didn’t know, some of whom were positively unlovely.”2
“Now I can understand someone who’s lost all hope in life and who’s depressed to the point where he wants to end it all,” says Roger Landis. “Before, in my arrogance I might have thought, Hey, come on, straighten up. But now I understand.”
Through God’s grace, many who have left the pastorate do not think of their leaving strictly as an end but also as a beginning. They gradually have come to focus less on the pain than on what resulted from it. They encountered God’s grace in a new way. They found they could serve him effectively in another calling.
The Unmistakable Decision
The decision to leave a church or the ministry will never be painless. But pastors have drawn comfort from a simple, surprising truth that Corrie ten Boom captured in the words, “Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.”
Writes Calvin Ratz, pastor of Abbotsford (British Columbia) Pentecostal Assembly: “Once I had two options to consider. For some time I couldn’t make up my mind. My head said one thing; my heart said another. In talking with my parents, my mother commented, ‘I don’t know what you will do, Cal, but I know you will do the right thing.’
“At first I brushed it off as the confidence any mother would have in her son. But that wasn’t what she meant. She went on to explain, ‘If your motives are right, and you are prayerful in making the decision, God will not let you make a mistake.’
“She was right. If you honestly want to move in God’s will, he won’t let you foul up a decision that affects his church.
“That doesn’t mean all will turn out glowingly. There may be hard times ahead in the church to which we are sure God sent us. Our ministry may even be rejected there after a while. But we will not be outside the larger channel of God’s purpose for our shaping and growth.”
Our decisions, no matter how difficult, can never take us beyond the loving reach of God.
In Thoughts in Solitude, Thomas Merton captures that most assuring of thoughts in a prayer called “The Road Ahead.” It might be the prayer of every pastor who agonizes over the question, “Is it time to leave?”
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going, I do not see the road ahead of me, I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore, I will trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.3
Harold Myra, ed., Leaders (Carol Stream, Ill. and Waco, Tex.: Leadership/Word, 1987), 18.
Andre Bustanoby, A Reason for Hope When You Have Failed (San Bernardino, Cal.: Here’s Life Publishers, 1986).
Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1976).
©1988 Christianity Today
