Pastorized

How 5 Years Helped Me to Be Less Spoiled

I used to be a pastor. And by ‘used to’ I’m talking about yesterday. Sunday, January 2, 2014, marked my last day, as far as I can tell, of official, vocational ministry. I was part of a team of young idealists who planted a church nearly five years ago. It’s been brutal, it’s been sweet. It’s been lots of things, and now it’s also been done.

I’m still sorting through my feelings and reflecting on all the various experiences that were had during the last half decade. Thus the comments, ideas, and (alleged) truisms that follow are all admittedly half baked:

1. Time flies. You really don’t need any qualifications for that statement. Sure, it flies when you’re having fun, it drags on when you’re bored. But, before you realize it it’s gone all the same. Pouring yourself into people can be a huge joy and it can be equally painful. In either case, time flies. I am astounded that it’s been half a decade already. Time flies when you’re living, no matter the particularities.
2. People can really suck. I mean really, really, really suck. It’s amazing to find how audaciously terrible humans can be to one another. Very often this was experienced as I stepped into the midst of a particular situation to help deescalate it, but I did have more direct contact with it than I’d have liked, too.
3. I really suck. You learn quickly—if you’re paying any sort of attention—that you’re not all that. Or the bag of chips. You can’t recognize #2 without very quickly recognizing yourself far too often. The more you realize this the easier things tend to get. Having a congregation around you is having a huge mirror in front of you in which you realize that, yes, these pants really do make my butt look big.
4. People are more incredible than you’d imagine. I had to mention the preceding people issue (people sucking majorly) before hitting this one because it ultimately eclipses it, and so I wanted you to see that reality before this one covered it up. There is more love, grace, understanding, and wisdom among the majority of the people I worked with/on/for/alongside than I could even begin to describe. Our congregation was small, yet a significant amount of people (~10%, give or take) had, at some point, brought someone into their home to live with them for an extended period of time. This is one of many examples of continued, persistent grace that our people showed to one another as well as those outside the membership. And, to be clear, having people bunk with you for however many months is never a cakewalk. Generosity ran deep because love ran even deeper. I had never seen such a community or covenantal love before Living Hope.
5. I’m not as incredible as I’d imagined. Very similarly to point #3, you learn a lot about yourself as you learn a lot about people. And, when starting out, you typically can count on being wrong in your assumptions. I thought I was gonna rock some faces. And not in some fully matured arrogance, just a fully immature idealism. I got rocked instead. In good ways, in bad. But all’s well that ends well, and the Christian narrative is predicated on ending well. Thank God my ending happened with me realizing a little better my place in this world. Humility is a beautiful thing, no matter the ugly process it may come by, and he gives grace to the humble so bring out the pie.
6. Life is really gray. The reason that a pastor needs to be so thoroughly steeped in systematic theology (systemic, categorical approach to biblical teaching) is precisely because they don’t fit on top of real life very well in most cases. A weak theology of X will fall apart completely when Y actually happens. A thorough understanding of various biblical principles is needed in order to get them to lay atop the mess that a fallen world throws your way. This is precisely why I have learned to encourage people, not least of all aspiring ministers, to dive headlong into biblical theology (studying redemptive history), not just systematic.
7. Ministry is tough. No doi. But I really don’t understand how people do it their entire lives. I had a (much!) better than average context in which to operate (i.e. our group, overall, wasn’t foaming at the mouth like so many you hear about) and it kicked my pants. People who are pastors their entire lives with terrible congregations are beyond superhuman. Or beyond stupid. Their actual calling determines which.
8. Mere talk is beyond cheap. Life and death are in the power of the tongue, and so is the ability to look like a fool. I am thankful to say that I didn’t experience it much, but unfortunately I did encounter the type of people who possess much more tongue (and gall) than motivation. Plenty of ideas with zero hustle. A mountain of complaints with absolutely no clue what the word “solution” means. You start to respect Moses a bit more considering he walked around the desert with a bunch of these pills for forty hellish years. At least I had air conditioning, right?
9. Polly is a monumental grace. We read in Proverbs that he who finds a wife finds a good thing. I tell couples that we do premarital counseling with that it’s all the more true for the fella who finds not just a wife, but a good one. I found a beyond great one. Seriously. This isn’t flattery. She won’t ever read this (one of her greatest qualities is that she doesn’t follow me around like a lap dog and hang on every tweet, post, etc. I make, it helps keep me humble). I literally couldn’t have done any this gig without her. I know that that will be true of all things in life ever since five and a half years ago, but this is a premier example. I can’t begin to describe how much grace she represents in my life. And no, I’m not going to capitulate to the cool “I have a hot wife” trend that so many blogging planters have fallen into…even if my saying it is 10x truer than theirs. My wife is incredible, period.
10. He really does give more. James has a beautiful little statement in his short letter, “and he gives more grace.” That he does. Again and again. New mercies every morning. More grace, every day. Even when [John] is faithless, yet he remains faithful. I learned to hang on these kinds of promises more and more throughout the journey.
11. Stories matter. I went into the job with systematics in a headlock. I knew my stuff. Nope, never attended seminary. Heck, hadn’t even graduated college yet. But I imbibed book after book, podcast after podcast, and every free seminary resource I could get my hands on. I was a sharp kid. But I was still a kid. As such, wisdom was lacking. Severely. The disconnect was story. I knew the facts, I had the bullet points, but I didn’t have a narrative. I didn’t understand the narrative as I ought to have. Wisdom is precisely that: the facts rightly applied to the story. I knew the facts, and I even understood them pretty well in more-than-on-paper sort of way. But I had no clue how to work them into the stories that people would bring my way. This is a close parallel with #4, as you can tell, but I felt it deserved its own point, that being that stories are a very powerful, ordained means of communication. And not just communication, but of gracious communication. There is a depth of truth that is hard (impossible?) to hit without a storyline. God has given us stories for a reason, and while general enjoyment is one of those things, it certainly isn’t the only one.

I’ve got about 57 other things that are swimming around in the ol’ head. Maybe I’ll save them for another post, or maybe they’ll never get written down. We’ll see. The big take away for me is that God uses a person to help other people, yes, but more often than not—and certainly in my situation—he puts them in that place to help them. So I’ve been ‘pastorized.’ It has been a means, Lord willing, of helping me to not spoil quite so easily as I would have otherwise. And with that in mind, there can be nothing but thankfulness for the journey I’ve been on.