Why I Failed in Church Ministry

I had a conversation yesterday with a few of my co-workers as we drove back from a meeting in Denton. We were talking about leadership and dealing with difficult people and I found myself once again thinking back to my days in full-time church ministry.

I’ve not worked in full-time church ministry for six years now, but I still think about it almost every day. You see, I still miss it (or at least parts of it). And at one level, I was very, very good at it.

I miss studying for and crafting messages that educated and encouraged people in the deep places of their hearts, helping them imagine a deeper, richer future with God and each other.

I miss being a vibrant part of a body of believers working toward a common goal.

But perhaps most of all, I miss helping hurting, broken people untangle the twisted places within them and learn to rest in the love of the Father. This was my strong suit.

And that, you see, is why I failed. I failed because I have a tender, sensitive heart. I, like many others, bruise easily. I failed because I suck at being ganged up on by church leaders. I’ve often been told in my life that I needed to grow thicker skin. I’ve decided that’s stupid advice. The truth is that I don’t have thick skin. I never have and never will. God didn’t make me, as he does some people, with thick skin. My skin is thin and my soul is sensitive. It’s how he made me, and, it’s what makes me so good at helping hurting, broken people.

Telling someone to grow thicker skin is like telling a fish he needs to learn to breathe on land. No, I will never have thick skin.

And that probably means I’ll never work in church ministry again. And that makes me sad. But since most churches, at least in my experience, seem to require Timex ministers – you know, guys who can take a licking and keep on ticking – and since that’s clearly not me, I’ve little choice but to find other ways to use my gifts . . . and other ways to earn a living.

I’m learning to be okay with that. Still.

And God is helping me.

The Power At Work Within Us

One of the issues raised by the situation I described the other day is the old issue of providence and suffering. It goes like this: If God is all good and all powerful, how could he allow the innocent to suffer? I’m not sure this is a great way to frame this question, because in the face of suffering, it only really leaves us with two options: either God is not good, or he is not all powerful. Said another way, either he can’t prevent bad things from happening, or worse, he doesn’t want to. I don’t know about you, but I’m not comfortable with either of those choices. Perhaps we need to think a bit deeper here.

But first, let’s make a few things clear. The Bible strongly affirms both God’s love and God’s power. Here are just a few of many examples:

“How priceless is your unfailing love! Both high and low among men find refuge in the shadow of your wings” (Ps. 36:7).

“Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you” (1 Pet. 5:7).

“I am the Lord, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me?” (Jer. 32:27).

“With God all things are possible” (Matt. 19:26).

So if God is both loving and all powerful, how do I make sense of the pain wrought in so many lives by my friend’s actions? Well, in part, I don’t try. Sin and its resulting devastation is not a sensible thing. Throughout this ordeal, I’ve heard people say, among other things, “I just don’t understand how someone could do such things to children!” While I sympathize with those feelings of confusion, sin is not a logical endeavor. Child molestation (along with premarital sex, or infidelity, or drug/alcohol abuse, or murder, or any of a thousand other sins) is not a sensible or logical act. Sin never is. We will never completely understand what makes people engage in the kinds of deviant and destructive behaviors they do. So in part, I need to stop trying to make sense of this.

We could talk, as I did on Thursday, about the fact that we all live in a world where free will is allowed. God apparently places a high value on free will, as evidenced by the fact that he designed it into creation. The pros of a free-will system are that when we choose to love one another (and when we choose to love God), it is love freely given, and there is no more beautiful part of creation than this. The dark side of free will, unfortunately, is that people will hurt each other occasionally, sometimes intentionally, and sometimes unintentionally.

We could spend time discussing this in a number of ways from a number of perspectives. But what has occupied my thoughts recently is thinking about how, and particularly where, God chooses to exercise his power. Certainly he can intervene in creation and alter the forces of nature if he so chooses (the parting of the Red Sea, for example). But I’m not sure that manipulating externals is God’s preferred venue for exercising power. Nor am I convinced that such demonstrations are even the strongest or most persuasive uses of God’s power.

The book of Ephesians has been helpful here. Chapters 1-3 contain a lot of what scholars call indicative statements, which are statements about what God has done on behalf of the believer. Chapters 4-6, on the other hand, contain a lot of imperative statements, which are the covenant obligations; the things that God expects in the life that’s worthy of the all these things that make up the indicative. In Ephesians 3:14-21, in a transitional passage between the indicatives of chapters 1-3 and the imperatives of chapters 4-6, Paul talks a lot about the power of God. What’s interesting here is the venue of God’s power; where God is exercising power.

In this passage, Paul tells the Ephesians that he’s praying for them in some specific ways. First, he’s praying that “out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being” (Eph. 3:16, emphasis mine). Just a few verses down, Paul closes this section by saying, “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us” (Eph. 3:20, emphasis mine).

See, we typically want to see God using his power to fix the external messes of life. I want to believe that God “is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine,” and I want to see him do it . . . usually now! I want to see decisive action. The sweeping away of my enemies. The innocent rescued from evil and the crushing of the opposition. Abundant provision. Sadly, I don’t typically see God doing things like that. Occasionally he does, to be sure, but not nearly as often as I’d like! Things like rape and domestic violence and emotional abuse and child abuse are far too common.

But rather than ask God to fix all the pain in the lives of the Ephesians, Paul is asking him to exercise his power in the inner lives of the Christians in Ephesus. In fact, my experience is that the venue in which God is most eager to exercise his power on our behalf is in our inner lives. God is most willing to move with power in our hearts. To what end, you ask?

We skipped a few verses earlier. Let’s go back and look at them. Paul is praying for the Ephesians that God may grant them to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in their inner being “so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.” He goes on to say, “And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power [there’s our word again], together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge — that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (Eph. 3:17-19).

Okay, important stuff here. Let me try and synthesize this: Paul’s praying that they’d receive power, again, in their inner being, so that Christ may dwell within them and show them how expansive (wide, long, high and deep) is his love for us. And he tells us that knowing his love will do far more for us that knowledge (or understanding).

The most life-changing way God can use his power on our behalf is to dwell within us and to help us come to see and experience his desperate, intense love for us. Sounds so simple as to be ridiculous, doesn’t it? Yet I believe this to be the most profound impact of Christianity, one which many, many Christians have never experienced. This intimate experience of God’s everlasting love is what absolutely transforms and energizes and heals our broken and desperate lives.

Does this fix all problems? Nope. Does it settle all scores? Not even close. But it gives us a safe, warm, peaceful, and even joyous place to stand amidst the chaos. Make no mistake, this is not life inside a little joy bubble. Life with God is not a disengagement from the pain and messiness of real life. Nor does it constitute escape. It is, rather, power. Strength to be able to walk through this life secure in the certainty that somehow, in ways you cannot yet fathom or even see, Father, who loves you desperately, has got this. Your security comes from the certainty of his love, not from the certainty of how this mess will work out. You are certain of his love because it is a love you will have experienced, not just read about.

I have been a Christian for twenty years this year, and for much of that time, I’ve been in full-time ministry. Yet it’s only been in the last three years that I’ve fully begun experiencing this for myself. Were the previous 17 years a waste? Not at all. But they were incomplete. I was living far below my privilege, and was far more dependent on my power than on God’s. Paul’s right in his prayer. I’m sure what he asked God for is exactly what the Ephesians needed. It’s exactly what I needed. I’m learning to live differently now, and having tried it both ways, this way is much, much better!

Peace.

Real Life in a Fallen World

I’ve known for a long time that I tend to be powerfully affected by the weather. This summer has, nonetheless, tried me in new ways. This summer has been extraordinarily dry and hot in Texas. The heat and drought and relentless sun has done its best to suck the life out of my soul. Two weeks ago, though, the weather began to change, and with it, my countenance. Then, the bottom dropped out.

Two weeks ago, one of my best friends was arrested for child molestation. It would be nice to believe the accusations were unfounded, but they’re not. He’s admitted to years of destructive behavior involving children, and named all his victims.

It would be difficult to describe the whirlwind of shock and pain this has set in motion for all of us. His family, who I love as my own family, is facing the majority of the pain, as are, of course, his victims. My friend has ministered to numerous churches over his career, and they are all hurting too.

Emotions involve the usual suspects: hurt, betrayal, anger, sadness, and rage, but also include frustration, pity, fear, empathy, confusion, and love. Some are more intense than others, but all of them are appropriate, and all of them are understandable.

Of course his faith has been called into question in all this. Was it genuine? Was he masquerading as a real Christian all these years? Was it all just a lie?

My own take on all this is that it perfectly illustrates the destructiveness of sin. The truth is, we’re all victims here, my friend included. Sin got hold of him, he gave into it, and it took on a life of its own. And many have paid and are now paying the price. It’s what sin does. It’s how Satan works. My friend was not innocent in this, but he’s not the devil either. His faith was and is  real, in my judgment, but so was his sin. The two are not mutually exclusive in him, as they are not mutually exclusive in any of us. This is real life in a fallen world, and it’s tragic . . . horrible . . . devastating.

And yet all of this is redeemable, but it’s not redeemable by us. God is the only one who can right all wrongs here. Some of those wrongs he may right in this life for some of us. But some of those wrongs will not be righted this side of heaven. But they will all be righted in the end, by a loving God whose heart is grieving in all of this with all of us. Christians talk a lot about free will at times like this, and I think with good reason. God has allowed us, in his wisdom, to maintain an absolutely free will in this life. One of the consequences of that decision is that we have tremendous capacity to hurt others. This has always been true, and as long as the earth keeps spinning, it will never change.

The key, I think, is not to look for God to fix any of this, or even explain it, at least not yet. In the midst of crushing pain, explanations wouldn’t do us any good anyway. Instead, I think the best we can do is to look for him in the midst of our grief to come alongside us, reveal himself to us in the ways he chooses to reveal himself to us, and to heal, by his love, our bleeding, broken, desperate hearts. We need to also remember that there is space in all this for the full gamut of human emotion — hurt, anger, rage, frustration, and even joy and peace and hope. God is bigger than this, of that I’m sure. But nothing will happen quickly here . . . .

More to come . . . .