October 22, 2024
I recently received my first Social Security check. Having served in interim pastorates and freelance research, writing, and speaking in recent years means there will be no “formal retirement” or closure to ministry. In fact, I hope to continue doing all these things as the opportunities avail themselves. Yet, a wave of nostalgia has swept over my soul during this transition.
I began wondering what had happened to many of those, especially those who I began this journey in ministry with. This journey through the Christian life is compared in the Bible to “a race.” Recent surveys have confirmed what we were told over 40 years ago in seminary. Fifty percent of those who were with us in seminary at the time would not retire from the ministry. At times the race may seem like more of a gauntlet.
Ministry has always been hard, indeed that it is why it is a “calling.” At some difficult point in ministry everyone has asked the question, “What am I doing here?” Retracing one’s steps the answer usually is, “God called me!” At times that sense of “God’s call” is virtually all that gets one through difficult seasons.
So, what has happened to those friends in ministry?
Several of them I have kept up with through the years, especially those from my home church in Virginia. Ed and I have known each other since we were boys, he is still pastoring in Mobile, Alabama. Doug was a naval officer and my Sunday School teacher when I was a teenager, before the Lord called him into ministry. Today, after decades of full-time ministry, he is retired, battling health issues, but still maintains a healthy ministry as a prayer warrior, he lives near Savannah.
Barry, Steve and I were part of a quartet when we were in high school and college. We were all groomsmen at each other’s weddings. Barry has pastored and is currently serving as a hospital chaplain and teaching music in a Christian School in Indiana. Steve is a retired pastor, having served his last church for over 30 years. Today he is mentoring church planters in North Carolina.
I met Brian in a Classical Greek class at Old Dominion University. Always quick to flash a warm smile, he was a year ahead of me and headed to Southwestern Seminary in Fort Worth after college. In my first year of seminary, while still single, he and his wife Donna were gracious to invite me into their home for meals and fellowship. We had not been in touch in at least 25 years. Tracking him down I discovered he is still pastoring, teaching, writing, and living in Hampton, Virginia.
David and Jojo were guys I knew casually in seminary but became better acquainted with after moving to Georgia in the 1990s. I have admired David’s writing as I came across articles he published over the years. You may have read some of them too; David recently retired from a pastorate south of Atlanta and usually publishes a commentary every few weeks in The Christian Index. Besides sharing an occasional hike together, Jojo and I shared a mentor and friend in the late Bill Long. Jojo serves as the Missions Strategist with the Chattahoochee Baptist Association.
There have been others who began the race that have unfortunately dropped out along the way. Some became discouraged and left the ministry. Some resigned because of health issues. A number struggled with moral failures. Ethical lapses forced a few to go in other directions. One friend had to leave because of conflict in the church and a decline in giving meant they could not pay him. Others, I discovered, had burdens that some of us didn’t realize at the time.
I was the first person to greet him on the Southwestern Seminary Campus. A cab had just dropped him off from the airport in front of the men’s dorm as I was walking out. We were both from Virginia and immediately hit it off. A few years after seminary I recommended him to a church in the community in Virginia where I was pastoring. We became neighbors, our sons went to preschool and played together.
In time we both moved on to ministries in other states but managed to email, talk, and occasionally get together for a meal when I was traveling through his area. One day as I was traveling through, I called him, but he did not answer. After trying to reach him several more times over the next week I called his local association office to inquire. I discovered he had been carrying a load heavier than I could have imagined. Only a few weeks before I reached out his ministry had ended, when he took his own life.
There are others who had truly finished the race.
Bill and I met as coworkers at the Southwestern Baptist Seminary Bookstore in 1979. He became the manager of the store after graduation. He retired from that position and moved back to his home state of Alabama. I found his obituary stating that after living a full life of ministry and service he had passed away in early 2023.
Phil was also from my home church and my younger brother’s best friend. He was an Area Missionary in Cleveland, Tenn. He helped conduct my father’s funeral. I called him last fall because I had an extra ticket to the Georgia/Tennessee football game in Knoxville. Turning me down he said, “I can’t believe I’m telling you this, but I’ve been dealing with a cough for several months and just haven’t been feeling well.” When he died over the summer, I told my wife I felt like my brother had lost a brother, and in truth, I had too.
Finally, there was Bruce. He and my sister Martha began dating in high school. A gifted Bible teacher and one of my mentors, even though only two years my senior. They served as IMB missionaries in Kenya and Uganda. In the latter they were once ambushed as they traveled across open country and managed to drive the vehicle to safety. They returned to the states, and he was a pastor, until cancer did what militant rebel’s bullets failed to do in Uganda.
Phil and Bruce served and did not have an opportunity to retire, but they ran the race, and the scripture says they have earned their reward.
October is designated as “Pastor Appreciation Month.” The purpose of sharing these memories is to provide a perspective of ministry from the other side of the pulpit. Ministry is difficult. It is often lonely, which recent research also backs up. It puts a tremendous amount of stress on a minister’s family and often on their physical, spiritual, and mental health.
A few simple heartfelt words of encouragement this month or any month can go a long way. About 15 years ago we hit a rough patch in ministry. After resigning the church, I received an encouraging email from a church member in the military who was serving in Afghanistan at the time. It is the oldest saved email in my inbox. Those words and the heartfelt sentiment behind them still mean a lot more to this pastor than a few words in this column could ever express.
Granted, no minister is perfect and by that same measure, neither are local churches. Ultimately the goal in ministry is not to survive running a gauntlet until retirement. The goal should be mutual, a covenant between God, a pastor, and a congregation. The scripture states a strand of three cords is not easily broken.
That goal is to fulfill the Great Commission in a local church setting. In doing so, a pastor seeks to bring out the best in a congregation. At the same time, a congregation should have the goal of seeking to bring out the best in their pastor!
Pray for your pastor and family, provide for their needs financially, and share heartfelt words of encouragement regularly. Take care of your pastor and family and they will be in a better position to take care of you!
___
Charles Jones is a Southern Baptist historian and a retired pastor.
