Recently, a letter abounded around social media. It was a missive from a minister noting the many reasons why he was leaving the ministry. The note struck a nerve, no doubt, because the soon-to-be-former-pastor was correct in many of his critiques. Too many clergy, churches, and denominations have capitulated to the demands of the market, configuring the Body’s ministry in ways that are both unmanageable and, frankly, unbiblical (i.e., Pastor as CEO/Counselor/Fundraiser/Human Resources Director).
Candidly though, I read this colleague’s epistle and I lamented how little mention he made of the gospel and its enlivening message of grace. In his characteristic bluntness, Martin Luther insists in his lectures on Galatians that only those on fire for the gospel, who are also absolutely convinced their lives have been hijacked by the Risen Christ, should ever dare preach. The call cannot be a summons vaguely felt or reluctantly followed.
Reading this letter that was making the rounds on the Christian internet, I thought of Dr. Robert Dykstra, my Jedi Master from Princeton. Just before I graduated, “Bob” lamented that I was about to serve in a denomination whose system of appointing pastors “contradicts everything we know about psychology.” I asked what he meant and he replied by explaining how it’s a given that people in congregations wear masks, keep up pretenses, and are reluctant to let others see what’s behind the curtain of the self they show others.
He then offered me this wisdom: “If you’re going to stay a Methodist, then you should tell your bishop you’ll serve wherever they send you so long as they’re willing to leave you there for at least seven years. It takes that long for people to reveal who they are behind their masks, warts and all.” In other words, it takes time to see grace at work in people’s lives.
It takes patience to bear witness to the slow ways God works in the world.
But seen it I have, and that — by a long shot and then some — is not only the best thing about ministry, it’s what keeps me at it.
The truth of the gospel is not self-evident. It requires exemplification. So, for instance, I could tell you about the woman who I knew for a decade before Jesus made her a completely different person in the last years of her life. Her name is Shirley. To be honest, our relationship back then was often marked by mutual frustration. Today, though she’s joined the company of heaven, I think of her as something of a cross between a friend and a surrogate grandmother. What accounts for the change in her? She credits it with a spiritual discipline she started practicing a couple of years ago, intentionally praying the shema every day and daily committing herself to loving Christ and through him, others.
Grace has changed her.
Maybe that doesn’t strike you as a Road to Damascus type of story but it’s real and it’s just one example of many I could give.
I could tell you about the woman who, having been cared for tenderly by a black nurse, at the end of her life confessed and repented of her racism.
I could tell you about husbands and wives who, after much painful work, have forgiven one another of adultery, abuse, addiction. You name it.
I could tell you about prodigals who’ve come home, mothers and fathers who’ve worked at welcoming them and elder brothers who’ve looked themselves in the mirror to finally confront the nasty self-righteousness in them.
I could tell you about people who’ve come to faith by dirtying their hands serving the poor, and I can tell you about individuals who’ve given over hundreds of thousands of dollars for the poor because God Christ has been generous to them.
I could tell you about people who’ve lost a child.
And lost their faith.
And found it again.
Even then, I’d only be scratching the surface of what I could tell you. Not only was Dr Dykstra right. His point has turned out to be the best thing about being a pastor. If you give it time, you do get to see.
I can’t prove God exists. Any God worthy of our worship is a God who can only be known through self-revelation. And, sure, I count myself under Luther’s criteria for preachers; nevertheless, there are those dark days and dark moods — usually when the caskets are four feet long or less — when I wrestle with my doubts and fear I’ve given my life to a fool’s errand. But what I can prove, what I can point to and say “See, there it is,” what I know without ever a day of doubt, is that grace is real.
It happens.
And so I persist.
Jason Micheli regularly writes in his Substack, “Tamed Cynic,” which can be found here.
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