Frustrations With God's Calling

How Pastoral Ministry Lost It's Appeal

A lot of people don’t know this, but in the Fall of 2021, I began tightening up my resume to look for a new job. I was done with pastoral ministry. This was not a decision easily reached but the culmination of thoughts and frustrations that had been simmering for a long time.

My frustrations began because after 10 years of pastoral ministry, I began to get the sense that I wasn’t really making a difference. Being a pastor comes with many responsibilities, but making disciples is not near the top of that list. It is a stated priority but not a practiced one. What is prioritized is "running the church."

Now, running churches is an important task, but it’s not a pastoral one. I tried many things to be more of a pastor to the people I was called to serve and experienced moderate levels of success, but I could never shake the feeling that being a pastor in a mainline denomination was dimming the light within me. So, I began to fantasize about leaving.

The fantasy first manifested in the form of an idea to create a nonprofit through which I could do ministry without the institutional restrictions that bog down the process. So I did. It’s called The Mark43 Institute. We did some great things, and hopefully, we will do more, but it has never led to a place where I could afford to quit pastoring and focus on the nonprofit full time. This only increased my frustrations. It just seemed like nothing was working, like I wasn’t making an impact.

Meanwhile, I kept doing my best to serve the church, but the joy was diminishing. I loved the small moments where I could do real pastoral work, but these moments were still too few and far between.

The pandemic introduced a new way for me to engage pastorally, as most pastors had to create an online presence to remain connected with their parishioners, so my YouTube channel was born. I love making videos, but there is a big disconnect on YouTube and other social media platforms that hinders real relationships from forming.

It was around this time that my new idea began to take shape.

"I could find a job in corporate America and pastor subversively." I thought.

This would not only increase my income, but I could bear witness to my faith in quiet but organic ways and see if discipleship opportunities are created from it. So, I began updating my resume, and a few months later, I remember being bored on a Zoom meeting (about administrative stuff!), I began searching the job sites. (I'm sure a lot of people did this during Zoom meetings.) I stumbled across a new role as the Executive Director for the University of Cincinnati's Ethics Center!

Surely, I thought, this is from the Lord! The job requirements almost matched what I currently did entirely; all I needed to do was tell a story of how work as a senior pastor in a mid-size church was on par with the requirements they were looking for. So, I applied. Then I began to wait.

While waiting, I perused the job sites some more. Once I opened that door, it was very easy to walk through it over and over again. Job as an HR director? Applied. DEI jobs? Applied. Sales? Applied. Disney corporate offices? Applied. Apple Store manager? Applied.

Denied. Denied. Denied. Denied.

Then I finally heard back from UC... denied.

My biggest fear was one day waking up and saying, "I guess I'll just remain a pastor for the rest of my life." That would have felt like defeat, like giving in to the system that was clipping the wings of its pastors.

In October 2021, I applied for one final job. Montgomery Community Church was hiring a Discipleship pastor. "Well," I thought, "It's pastoral work, but at least it's all about discipleship. That's what I want to focus on anyway." So I applied. And, please believe me, based on what they were looking for, I was the perfect fit! I was already preparing for how I would tell those in my chain of command that I'd be leaving the United Methodist Church to accept a role in another church.

I never even heard back from them. To this day, I haven't heard anything!

Sometime in November 2021, I was getting ready to call to see if they even received my application and resume, but I sensed God saying, "Let it be, it's not for you." So I let it be.

The frustrations were still there. I was increasingly looking for other opportunities to bring in income so that I could be a pastor with more freedom to actually do the work I felt I was called to do. "Maybe,” I thought, “I could build a following on YouTube and earn a living that way... that would free me up to..."

At this time in my life, vacations began to feel like an escape. Before the frustrations began, vacations were just fun getaways with my family. While on them, I would usually daydream about things we could do at church. But I vividly recall being on a cruise with my family and feeling weightless for the first time. The weightlessness was because the burden of ministry was a couple thousand miles away, waiting for me to return.

Indeed, when I realized that I hadn't thought about church AT ALL, I began to see how big the problem was. I was done being a traditional pastor, but I felt trapped in traditional pastoral ministry.

[Will link to part 2 once completed]