Saving Faith: Why I Left Vocational Ministry

"If anyone is interested or curious: After much thought, prayer, and many conversations with my wife, I have decided that for my own spiritual, mental, and physical health, I am (Lord willing) permanently leaving vocational ministry. The Call remains, but I believe I can answer it more effectively outside of the stress and heartbreak that accompany a pastoral position, as I've come to realize that "pastor" is an action, not an office."

Those were the only words I could muster almost 3 months ago, when I decided to announce that I was permanently (if the Lord is willing) leaving vocational ministry forever. I've been struggling to write this post since even before then, and I think it's time to just get it out. If I thought I was unique, I'd sit down and shut up, but I don't think that I am. In fact, I know I'm not. Being a member of the clergy hurts almost everyone who attempts it, and those are broken along the way (and I'm not ashamed to say that I am one of them) often get left in the dust.

The road that I was walking on for almost 15 years has come to an end, and not at all the way that I had expected. I always imagined my last day as a vocational pastor would be my last day on earth. But I've been stopped short. I'm starting to realize that the sacrifices that I would have to make to continue this journey are altogether too costly, mainly because I think that they are far beyond any sacrifices that God would expect someone to make in order to be considered to be faithful.

I was beginning to realize that I was growing a skin so thick that compassion was becoming harder and harder to practice. 

My mental health deteriorated from being able to function (along with some strong support) with the depression I've had since I was 14 to being dependent on heavy doses of antidepressants daily. 

I was losing my sense of humour; it was increasingly becoming something that I would put on in public but take off when I was alone because the wasted energy was just too great.

Stress was turning me into an absolute bear at home. 

Constant discouragement and depression sucked away my ability to concentrate on work; I was losing my motivation.

How does this kind of thing happen, and in a church? It would be much easier and more satisfying to explain if I had been surrounded by evil with nefarious intentions. But I wasn't. In fact I would say that I was, and remain, on good terms with almost every person in my previous church congregation.

What I was also part of, though, was a church that had its own unique culture, a culture which is influenced greatly by the interaction of the people in leadership. So, for whatever reason, I ended up in a situation where I was an excellent fit for the group that I was working with (teens), a great fit with the congregation in general, and a terrible fit, not with the individuals in leadership, but with the leadership culture. Not that it started that way, but cultures can change over time, just as individuals or our perceptions of them can.

I won't get into all the ins and outs of what that looked like; I'm not trying to be petty. What it boiled down to was this- for 5 1/2 years of a ministry lasting 6 1/2 years, I worked in a leadership environment where my gifts were rarely appreciated or acknowledged, any victories were scarcely celebrated, and yet my every flaw and failure were treated as fatal. In any project or undertaking, I found that I had stopped pushing for excellence and was instead, trying to simply achieve a stalemate. In 5 1/2 years, I received little affirmation from a leadership entity over me, be it board or boss, though criticism was always bountiful. Even though, on some occasions, two or three individuals in leadership made some effort to be personally encouraging, it did nothing to stem the flow of (mostly anonymous) negativity that flowed downhill to me; if anyone was going to bat for me, I had no evidence of it. I spent over half a decade with the painful realization that the very best feedback that I would receive from the "higher ups" would be silence, and the overwhelming feeling that in the leadership environment, I simply wasn't that well liked.

Perhaps I made affirmation or praise an idol. I don't know. All I know is that I was frozen out of the "inner circle". While the congregation members, as individuals, were often encouraging, I lived for those years under the heavy weight of unspoken disapproval that permeated my every interaction with my superiours. It was almost as if there were two separate churches at play. I tried my best to make any changes that were suggested, but those efforts received only token notice, if any at all.

At the same time, I was part of a youth leadership team that was overseeing a thriving and vibrant youth ministry. 80% of our kids were from a non-church background. Our combined youth group numbers went from under half a dozen in 2009 to near 40 by 2014. We had conversions. We had baptisms. We had conversations in a safe place where all beliefs and opinions were welcome so long as they treated others with respect. We saw broken kids become a little less broken through by the love of Christ and the love and caring of a supportive community.

I ended up loving my work but hating my job.

So when the layoff came due to the congregation's financial issues, I was actually more relieved than anything else once the initial shock and hurt had worn off (nothing quite like finding out that, out of a quarter million dollar budget, you are the most expendable line item). First of all, it meant that I wouldn't have to use the resignation letter that I, out of sheer frustration, had carried into every meeting for over half a year. It's been 7 months since I found out about the layoff, and 6 months since I turned in my keys, and I'm still healing.

I'm getting my sense of humour back. I'm spending fewer and fewer days hiding in bed until suppertime. I'm rediscovering that serving in churches can be an unequaled joy when you aren't being watched by a group of people who seem intent on waiting to see you fail. I can sometimes even talk about this without falling into a depressive spiral for a week. If I see former congregants in the grocery store, I'm quite a bit less likely to hide in the health food isle until I'm reasonably sure they're gone. Sometimes, I even find myself believing on a heart level that Christ's grace is sufficient for me, and that He has effectively gifted me to serve Him, and serve Him joyfully.

So why am I not going to just heal and then step back up to the plate?

Because it could happen again. I have watched a church's leadership turn toxic, and it can happen very quickly. What's more, there are absolutely no safeguards to prevent anything like this from happening in any church in our denomination. And we can't kid ourselves. There is a mental health crisis among current and former clergy; depression is extremely common, and even PTSD is not unheard of (and I'd be lying if I said that seeing certain people, hearing certain songs, or evening being in certain places didn't bring me to the point of having a panic attack). While it helps a little to know that I got hurt doing a job that hurts almost anyone who does it, it doesn't help enough to make me willing to put myself in a similar situation.

I should also add that, at this stage in my life, I feel permitted, even called by God to serve the church from outside a vocational ministry role. On top of pursuing skills that I believe will benefit both church and society, I believe that by not being beholden to a church congregation for my livelihood and yet having spent many years behind the pulpit, I'm in a unique position to speak to the relationship between church and pastor.

Here are the questions that I am currently asking myself:

Why should I place myself in a position where I could face the same variables that have led me to uncontrolled depression, discouragement, and burnout?

Is it reasonable to expect that nearly 100% of the opposition that a pastor faces will come not from the "secular world" that we are so quick to accuse but from the very believers that we are trying to love and serve? The closest thing that I have ever experienced to "secular" opposition was a small bunch of middle and high school principals who never returned my phone calls.

Is it reasonable to expect that most members of the clergy actually have lower self-esteem than they did when they entered vocational ministry?

Is the division between sacred and secular work at home in the Bible; aren't all believers "called" to ministry, and not just the clergy?

Shouldn't Christian services be an opportunity for all believers to practice their spiritual gifts, and not just a handful of teachers, a few musicians, and a preacher?

The little voice in the back of my head tells me that I'm not being spiritual enough in this entry. Maybe I should talk about spiritual warfare or something. All I can say is that, it seems clear that the Devil is intent on disrupting the healthy functioning of the Christian Body, and many (well-intentioned) congregations are culpable of helping him do this. We destroy our pastors through petty and indirect criticism. We starve them for affirmation when they don't meet our narrow and selfish expectations.

I'm about to start ranting, so I'm going to sign off.

Go hug your pastor and tell him/her that he/she is doing a good job. They probably need it.

Sometimes Someone Else Says It Better II

With weary steps I loiter on,

Tho’ always under alter’d skies

The purple from the distance dies,

My prospect and horizon gone.

No joy the blowing season gives,

The herald melodies of spring,

But in the songs I love to sing

A doubtful gleam of solace lives.

If any care for what is here

Survive in spirits render’d free,

Then are these songs I sing of thee

Not all ungrateful to thine ear.

Be near me when my light is low,
When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick
And tingle; and the heart is sick,
And all the wheels of Being slow.

Be near me when the sensuous frame
Is rack'd with pangs that conquer trust;
And Time, a maniac scattering dust,
And Life, a Fury slinging flame.

Be near me when my faith is dry,
And men the flies of latter spring,
That lay their eggs, and sting and sing
And weave their petty cells and die.

Be near me when I fade away,
To point the term of human strife,
And on the low dark verge of life
The twilight of eternal day.

- Alfred, Lord Tennyson (Selections from In Memoriam)

Saying what goes unsaid

Sometimes words are hard to come by. While I've never been an avid blogger, and I realize that there are few who probably have any interest in what I would have to say (as the quote about the internet goes: Never have so many people had so little to say), I have been somewhat at a loss for words in recent months. For the sake of my own privacy, as well as for the sake of my time, I won't go into great detail about what has been going on, at least not in such a public forum. Maybe someday, when I have been able to travel a little further down this road a little longer. But not now. Not yet.

Needless to say, the past few months have been a hard road and an uphill battle. Sometimes, it is a far easier thing to simply let things remain the way that they always have been. Healing sounds like a wonderful concept, but we seldom realize in advance how much pain the healing process can bring. I have been aware of certain issues in my own life for the better part of 15 years; while not issues of sin, about 5 months ago, I became aware of just how much they had infected the whole of my being- from the way that I relate to God, to the way that I work, to the way that I make and maintain friendships. For nearly a decade and a half, I have subconsciously pushed people out of my life- usually because of the assumption that I have maintained for a long time: they simply did not care. It's not true. I know that. But the link between knowing, believing, and acting is so, so delicate.

I have become aware of how much of my life has been dominated by silence. Due to varying factors in my life, I have come to labour under the assumption that if I were needed or wanted, I would be requested. The problem with our culture is that it is more than willing to affirm such assumptions. Much like our spirituality, we often find our friendships and our relationships to be a mile wide and an inch deep.

Every day, we ask and are asked the question, "how are you?", and we all, invariably, answer "fine", regardless of our actual condition. In the name of privacy, we seal ourselves off from the very people that God intended for our support and mutual edification. We settle for wallposts on Facebook, while some of can't even remember the last time we were hugged, went out for a cup of coffee, or truly were able to pour our hearts out to someone who we knew wouldn't care how silly our cares were, because they care more about us more than they care about Farmville, Youtube, or homework. Listening to each other and interacting with each other has become a lost art. These days, if you want someone to sit and listen to you, you have to pay them by the hour.

And what have we gained?

We have become disconnected from one another. We are losing our ability to listen and be listened to as surely as a bedridden patient loses their ability to use their legs. Some of us have become so desperate for attention that they feel the need to tweet or post every minute thing they do as a Facebook status update. I think, if anything, this comes from our need to be noticed, to feel that somehow what we do matters. Instead of picking up the phone and making a call or taking the time to send an actual card to wish someone a happy birthday, we graciously make the effort to type those 14 characters into a text box, click post and count our duty complete, regardless if it's for our dearest friend or that strange guy we have a hazy memory of from high school. And we wonder why depression is the most common diagnosis in the western world.

We've become the punchline of a sad joke: like the proverbial fool who gets locked in a grocery store and starves to death, we are starved for real connection and friendly intimacy while the scientific community frets about overpopulation. It breaks my heart to think that even when we do engage in real social interaction, we seldom even see the people that we are spending time with because we are constantly barraged by the buzzing and singing of mobile devices ushering in a flood of text messages and notifications that constantly beckon us to rejoin our virtual lives. Perhaps virtual is the wrong word. Artificial might be more apt.

Despite what you may think, I am not a Luddite. In fact, I think that all of this technology can be a great asset. That being said, short of pointing a gun at me, you won't be able to convince me to buy a cellphone. I'm simply a man who is tired of the status quo. I am prone to isolation and, to be frank, I have found it disturbingly easy to hide from the rest of the world. While on the one hand, it seems as though the world is kicking my door in and inviting itself into my home through the internet, it can also take an exceptional amount of work to make any kind of real connection, since most of us only have about enough patience to sit through a video on Youtube. If there's anything I've learned, it's that real people can't be connected with in less than 10 minutes, or in 350 characters or less.

I had an astounding thing happen to me the other day, and as a result I have taken two steps to reclaim territory in my life on behalf of other people.

I had spent a considerable amount of time in recent weeks speculating on what I would say if someone were to ask me how I was doing who really wanted to know the answer, and was willing to take the time to listen and understand the answer. In a more cynical (or perhaps realistic) moment, I concluded that such an occurrence was a statistical near-improbability, and it was foolish to even think about it.

The very next day, I received an email from a former youth who, at the age of 17, has a wisdom beyond his years. He asked me, quite simply, how I was doing, and informed me that just saying "O.K." was not a sufficient reply.

I stared at the flashing cursor for a few minutes, and debated coming out of hiding or putting up my usual disguise. After all, it was an easy thing to joke about how busy life had gotten, being involved in vocational church ministry, as well as a being a full-time graduate student. I could tell him about the growing menagerie that currently dwells under my roof (currently sitting at four cats and a dog), and talk about how much I enjoyed being in youth ministry, and regale him with stories of the youth in my current ministry who remind me of so-and-so from our days together in youth ministry when I was his pastor. I could totally and cleverly avoid the question without even having to lie.

But to tell the truth, I've grown too tired to lift the disguise. Only half of the fun in a game of hide-and-seek is the actual hiding. So I wrote him a short novel explaining what I had been going through the past 15 years, especially the last 4 months. In the process of writing, something inside of me broke, and I found myself weeping over my keyboard because I was able to share myself with someone who actually wanted to listen, even if the only connection that we were able to access was email. The late Mike Yaconelli once said that our tears live where our longings are, and I had opened a floodgate.

I realized that I was faced with a simple choice. I had managed to take of the face I show the world for someone who had offered to listen, and I had come away unharmed. Would it be such a crime to offer that same ear to someone else, and to ask for the use of theirs? Would anyone be offended to be asked to listen, and to be listened to in return?

A few days ago, I took my second step and asked a friend that very thing, a guy who I've known for years, and has been like another younger brother to me for a long time. Part of the fear of doing something like that, for any of us, is our fear that somehow the people we love and respect will somehow think less of us if they become aware that we are human and can bleed like anyone else. The funny thing is, they've known we were human all along. Odds are, if your heart is longing for a connection, theirs is, too.

So where am I going with this wandering, borderline epic (in the literary sense) of a blog post?

You're not alone. Sometimes, it's so easy to feel that you are adrift on a sea of faces and dying of thirst. Social media and cellphones with unlimited texting so often feel like a big old mouthful of salt water: it seems like a good idea at the time, and you keep drinking and wondering why on earth you are still so thirsty. It's a shadow of real, personal connection. What it's so easy to forget is that you are surrounded by people who long for the same things you do.

"It's not good for people to be alone." That's one of the first statement that God makes about people in the Bible- we are custom designed to interact with each other.

As usual, the best advice I have to give you is biblical- I really believe that the Golden Rule applies in places and situations like the ones we find ourselves in. Show someone else the love that you so deeply crave.

Reach out and touch the life of someone else. Speak the words that you yourself long to hear. Ask the questions that you wish someone would take the time to ask you. I think that sometimes it really is that simple.

Lonely travelers in the world, unite. You have nothing to lose. Period.

Sometimes Someone Else Says It Better

Oh yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;

That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroy'd,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete;

That not a worm is cloven in vain;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivell'd in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another's gain.

Behold, we know not anythingl
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last - far off- at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.

So runs my dream: but what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.


-Alfred, Lord Tennyson
In Memoriam (54)

Musings and Mutterings

Yesterday was an interesting day. It's funny how getting bad news tends to launch us... or at least me... into a preoccupied state where we fluctuate back and forth between fixating and almost forgetting, if that makes any sense.

I found out last night that a friend of mine from university passed away yesterday. I hadn't really seen her since she graduated, but news like that still hits me hard. I think it comes down to the fact that I view friendship as being a permanent thing. In my mind, it doesn't matter how long I go without talking to someone or seeing them... friendship doesn't fade. I will always remember her positive attitude, even in the face of illness. She was one of those people who could always make me laugh, often without even saying anything... she just kind of radiated humour, along with compassion, kindness, and empathy.

It makes me want to get mad at the world sometimes, the way it just keeps going on. A life has ended, but the dog still needs to be walked, the cats still need to be fed, and morons will still race down my street in ugly pickup trucks blasting rap music. Maybe it's a mixed blessing, I don't know.

I'm not even worried about making sense today. I guess this is just a way to put some thoughts out there without really having to talk to anyone.

But the world goes on... I mentioned the dog earlier and right now, he's about to start chewing through the bars of the kennel so it's time for a little trip outside.

God bless.

The Peace Passing Understanding

It's hard to believe how fast the past couple of months have gone. I guess the belated update would be that the trip home was successful and quick... made it from the Vancouver area to Oromocto, New Brunswick in just a little over 5 days, thanks to great weather and a wonderful second driver.

I arrived in Oromocto May 14, and started working at the church on May 18, making yesterday a bit of a landmark- I've reached the one month mark. I find myself almost feeling like I'm deflating... in a good way. The thought of having a permanent position, working with and among people without anticipating a farewell has allowed me a great deal of peace of mind. To look at some of the kids I've gotten to know here... in one family that I have quickly become attached to, in particular, and to know that I will (Lord willing) see their 13 and 14 year-old sons, and their 9 year-old daughter graduate from high school is like a breath of fresh air. I finally feel as thought I have arrived in a place where I am able to build some kind of a legacy... and Lord willing... a family.

The truth that I have learned over the past few months is that the will and calling of God is something which so often transcends our own understanding, and even appears to trangress our own desires, at least in the short term. The reality is, though, that God often leads us more through the doors he closes than the doors he opens. I've found over the past year or so, that there about 3 or 4 closed door for every open one. The closed doors are frustrating, but when we take it as a sign and move on, we do eventually come to the open door, and are led into a place of peace and rest... at least for a season. I maintain no illusions that the next years (or decades) of ministry in Oromocto are going to be free from trouble, stress, or closed doors. But all of these things I can face with confidence and in peace knowing that I am in the place that I am meant to be, at least for this season of my life.

Catching Up

Over the past couple of months, I have been remiss in updating this blog.

Normally, I have used this blog to transmit my views on concepts and ideologies, however I feel that I will be taking it in a different direction over the next while.

On May 9th, I will be leaving British Columbia and heading back east, where I have been called to a position of Associate Pastor of youth and church life at Oromocto Baptist Church. I am deeply excited for all of the opportunities that the Lord has provided and will provide over the next few years.

First of all, I can praise God because he has already been taking care of details. I have a place to live when I move, and he has also provided me with a "travel buddy" in the form of a dear friend and fellow pastor, who is looking to make the trip as far as Ontario. So I have a destination, and I know that it will be an enjoyable trip, since I have company as well as a brand spanking new GPS, so I won't get lost on the way. Those of you who are familiar with my sense of direction will be aware of how valuable of an advantage that would be for me.

So it's pretty much all over here except for the packing. I will be shedding tremendous amounts of baggage, as well, so hopefully driving the car won't be like trying to steer a rhinoceros this time.

Well, that's about all for me for now. I will be updating the blog with details over the next few weeks. The week of the trip, I will most likely be posting daily progress updates, as I'm sure there are some people who are interested tracking my progress (not to sounds presumptuous or arrogant, but there IS an entire congregation of people I have never met waiting for me on the other side of the country).