From Fighter Jets to Jackasses
Redefining Ministry Success Beyond the Numbers
Becoming a pastor is the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done. I assumed seminary would provide the foundation for pastoring, leadership, and life—and, if successful, I would celebrate several accomplishments: growing church attendance, increasing income, and more baptisms each year. And this would be fulfilling— because, based on what I have seen, these were the things that fulfilled successful churches and pastors. As a junior in seminary, I distinctly remember our then seminary president angrily challenging us would-be ministers:
Are you a fighter jet pastor or a hot air balloon pastor?
Are you a Ferrari or a Prius?
Are you a racehorse or a jackass?
Like most evangelical graduates, I didn’t want to be a jackass (or a Prius). I had clear goals when it came to ministry, and I knew that being a great pastor meant that I would have to achieve these goals.
I’ve been pastoring for over two decades now, and guess what? I might be a jackass. These goals haven’t fulfilled me— they’ve strained me. I’ve become even more uncertain about what being a pastor really means in this ever-changing landscape of the American church.
Not only because of the strain to perform, but also due to stories of abuse (money, sex and power), shocking secrets and podcasts like “Bodies Behind the Bus”—to divisive denominational outcomes, and the realities that have followed the 2020 pandemic, my deconstructing peers, there’s a whole bunch of stuff I could dive into and dissect regarding our American church.
We're really good at naming and recognizing the damage inside the church-- and if we articulate or double down with more vision, more events, more strategy, we are adding to the trouble. No. We need healing-- we need Jesus-- we need to say God's name.
But we also need to understand what has happened in ourselves and within our churches.
Pentecostal scholar, Cheryl Bridges Johns, bottom lines the straining very well.
By the mid-twentieth century, the immanent frame of modernity, the assertion that lives should be primarily natural, was fast becoming a core part of the Evangelical world. Seeker-friendly churches seemed to be working hard at blocking out transcendence and any sense of the sacramental. The emphasis on meeting individual needs and programs facilitating "purpose-driven lives" made it difficult to imagine divine action. Excarnation became normative.
Excarnation is the opposite of incarnation. Instead of God becoming human, humans have been unsuccessfully attempting to become fully god, which drips with original sin. THIS EXCARNATION is the problem that pushes us into strain rather than strength. What I have had to realize is that I have lived within the EXCARNATION more than the INCARNATION— and man, have I missed His Holy Presence— and the Holy Presence of his church.
Eugene Peterson offered me an imagination for what pastoring without straining could look like:
Pastoral work is fundamentally creative work. …If we in fact believe in the Holy Spirit, then we must not at the same time try to moonlight as efficiency experts in religion. We cannot nurture the life of the Spirit in a parishioner while holding a stopwatch. We cannot apply time management techniques to the development of souls.
There is more to pastoring than the straining. There is strength and healing for our hearts, especially those of us, like me, whose hearts have already been damaged.
The pastoral vocation isn’t something that is achieved, only lived. Holy presence is incredibly elusive when it is reduced to a task or a goal. Here are a few grounding perspectives/wonderings that I have found helpful— imagine us having a conversation, and I lean forward and ask you a few things:
I wonder how the ministry has strained you?
Tell about a time in ministry when you had a certain expectation that didn’t align with the reality of what God had called you to do.
I wonder what it looks like for the church to be a holy presence for you?