The Cost of Pastoral Ministry: A Psalm
A PSALM OF BENJAMIN WHILE RESTING IN A CAVE. TO THE SEMINARY CHOIRMASTER. TO THE TUNE OF DO NOT DESTROY.
A few years ago, I read the book Diary of a Pastor’s Soul, a fictionalized account of a pastor’s final year at his church before retirement. Each week the main character, the soon-to-retire pastor, writes a short reflection about what he learns during his last year.
The author of the book, Craig Barnes, had recently retired after thirty-seven years in ministry. In the preface he wrote lines I keep thinking about even now several years after reading his book. The lines relate to the cost of pastoral ministry. He writes,
What most pastors are thinking about as they drive home from their retirement party is not how excited they are to be free from working for the church. They’re thinking that it all went pretty fast, cost so much more than they could have anticipated, and profoundly changed them along the way. And they’re reassuring themselves that they made a difference with this use of their lives.” (M. Craig Barnes, Diary of a Pastor’s Soul, 12)
Oh, how ministry decades all went by pretty fast, he writes.
Oh, how ministry cost so much more than anticipated, he writes.
Oh, how ministry profoundly changed us, he writes.
And I get it. Sometimes, oh Lord my God, all that ministry commotion and chaos, all that ministry cost, all that deep heart and life change that come with local church leadership, all the bulls of Bashan, make me wish I made widgets for a living. The experience of grains of wheat falling to the ground and dying hurts so much, even if we know dying daily is the only way we live.
Selah.
I confess, Heavenly Father, a dark daydream often pops into my head when ministry gets challenging, and it’s about that time of year when I get a visual reminder. Each spring in our neighborhood, huge street-cleaning trucks come by to clear away the winter salt and other debris. I see someone driving the trucks at three miles an hour for eight hours a day for five days a week. I can literally see the difference they make in the world; everywhere they go, they leave behind visible blessings. And I imagine while the drivers work they can listen to audiobooks. Oh, how I envy them, Lord.
I want to be one of those drivers because sometimes I feel like I drive in ministry slower than three miles per hour and work more than eight hours a day and don’t get to listen to any audiobooks or hold an actual book and when I’m done with a day’s work I struggle to see a single area of the world that’s demonstrably cleaner and better for all that effort. I find myself even now resonating with the author’s comment in the preface about retiring pastors and how they reassure “themselves that they made a difference with this use of their lives.” We have to reassure ourselves because it’s not always obvious.
Selah.
Near my house, there’s a certain street that I drive almost daily. On that street live several families who no longer attend our church. Now that years have gone by, you’ve helped me get to the place where I can drive to the four-way stop on that street and pull away and not think as often as I used to about how they found other churches or no churches, and how we might have done things differently together to make it work.
Yes, Lord, the people who continue to attend a church continue to abide in a pastor’s heart. Yet so do those people who leave.
Selah.
But then, as in the psalms of lament, this I call to mind, and I have hope. I remember your kindness, oh God. I remember the people you have changed, and I remember that I am one of them. In all the doing of ministry stuff for others, I remember you are also doing stuff to me, in me, for me.
During one low moment or another, I remember and reaffirm my trust in 1 Corinthians 15:58 that, in light of the resurrection of Jesus, no labor in the Lord is in vain. One day the heavenly records will show that a single cup of cold water given to the least of these was done unto you.
This also I try to remember: the kindness and courage of other friends and leaders who know me and care for me and pull me back from the despair of walking fifty miles barefoot along the smoldering edge of burnout, how they remind me of what is most true, of who I am in Christ and who I’m not and what really matters most, both now and in the end of everything.
I call to mind these truths, and I have hope.
Inside and through and despite all the pain, all the sorrow, all the tears, all the depression, all the wormwood and gall, and all the sin of others—and all my own sin and insecurity—I sit still and know that you are always God and you are always working all things for good and always building your church and calling that which does not exist to exist even when what exists seems as good as dead. Your steadfast love never ceases; your mercies never come to an end. They are new every Sunday morning. And Mondays too.
The Lord has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up, and his going out is as sure as the dawn.
So I press on. We ministers, we press on in our calling, loving widows and widowers more than widgets and taking hold of Christ for that which he took hold of us, becoming like him in his death. And like him in the power of his resurrection.
Behold, in dying we live, having nothing and possessing everything.
Selah.
* Photo by Madara Moroza on Unsplash
