Take the Long View of Pastoral Ministry
By Jon Hawkins
I recently celebrated finishing my 6th year of ministry as a pastor of Arbor Drive Community Church. Now, 6 years might not seem like a long time and in the grand scheme of things, it’s not, but for a church revitalizing pastor who steps into an unhealthy church seeking to usher in life and heath, 6 years can be an eternity. For those in this context, 6 years is also (in my opinion) a milestone… or at least it was for me. Thom Rainer cited a Lifeway Research study that indicated that the median pastoral tenure in 2016 was 6 years. Yes, some stayed longer and some left earlier, but 6 years is not a long time. Yet, it would seem that on average 6 years is a milestone. As I’ve reflected on the last 6 years, I’ve been amazed to see God’s grace and faithfulness. No we haven’t experienced dramatic numerical growth or expanded to multiple campuses but we have grown in health. I’ve thought back on what I wish I had known walking into this and that is the genesis of this series of articles. 6 reflections on 6 years of church revitalization. Cute right? But wait… let me pause and give you some background.
I came to Arbor Drive while still in seminary. I had wanted to plant a church because, well, that’s what all the cool kids did, but then I took a class at Southern Seminary that was taught by Al Jackson on church revitalization. God used that course to change the trajectory of my ministry. I became convicted that God loves his established and struggling churches. He wants to use men to bring life back into them. Armed with that conviction and youthful vigor (read ignorance), I set out to find an unhealthy church to serve. After courting a few churches that I didn’t feel right about, Arbor Drive called and from the beginning God was working to bring me here. When I hit the ground, I had no seminary degree (I was taking classes online full time), no experience (I had preached a grand total of three sermons before coming here and had never been a pastor much less a “senior pastor”), and had no exposure to unhealthy church life (the church that sent me was a relatively healthy church). All of the ingredients of success right? All of that to say that I had no clue what I was walking in to much less how to deal with it. So this series of articles is really a letter to myself of the things I wish I had known with the prayer that this blesses some who are in the early stages of revitalization and maybe helps prepare some who will walk into revitalization. So, with that, here we go.
Take A Long View
The first thing I wish I had known was the importance of a long view. I knew it intellectually (which I guess is something), and even recited a quote by C.J. Mahaney that I had heard in my candidating Q&A. “Most pastors overestimate what they can do in 5 years and underestimate what they can do in 20 years”. That’s all well and good when you haven’t even started, but I realized quickly how true that was. Most revitalizations are not the ones you read about in books. They aren’t the ones that experience explosive growth and multiplication. They don’t grow in health over the course of 3 years. Instead, most successful revitalizations are a result of years of toil, labor, pain, and suffering (intermixed with momentary and fleeting successes and breakthroughs). Especially in the early years, it can seem like it is one step forward and ten steps back. That’s where a long view comes in. I’ve learned that God is not typically in a hurry to accomplish his purposes. We see that all throughout the Bible. In Genesis 3, Christ is promised, in Matthew 1 he shows up. In the Prophets the New Covenant blessings are promised, in the New Testament, they become a reality. God is not in a hurry and he is not working on our timeline. That means that to see change, it takes time. It takes perseverance. It takes faithfulness in the midst of adversity.
It took less than 6 months for me to become frustrated that nothing was changing. After all, I was faithfully preaching the word and teaching. I was shepherding the best I could and in spite of that, people were still not moving, the elder board was still a mess, we still had a church boss family, and there was constant conflict. This didn’t go away quickly either. I was 4 years in and was at the hospital with my wife after having our second child when I got a call from a church member informing me that there was an underground movement to get me fired. Exactly what one wants to hear while celebrating the birth of a child. It’s easy to quit in those moments. It’s easy to give up and think it’s better to move on… if you don’t have a long view. If you aren’t playing the infinite game. When I was in the Army, we had a saying that went like this: “focus on the front sight”. In other words, focus on the right thing. It’s keeping the goal in mind (the target) while focusing on the thing that gets you there (the front sight). I knew change takes time but there was a youthful arrogance that would continually whisper in my ear that I was the exception. Well I wasn’t. That led to frustration because I was focusing on the target and frustrated when the shot was missing. Front sight focus. Take a long view but focus in the right place.
When we step into a revitalization, we can be bombarded with a myriad of problems and issues and it can become overwhelming. We can work and labor and see very little fruit. We can see all the things we think need to change and miss that changing all of them might not move us toward our long term goal. So here are a few suggestions for cultivating a long view in an unhealthy church.
God Works In Steps, Not Leaps
God is in the business of big changes over a long period of time. Stop and breathe that in. That was a profound insight for me. I read once that it takes 10,000 hours of doing something to master it. The same is true in our Christian lives. Think of yourself as a young Christian. How many dumb things did you believe? How many bad habits did you have? How aware were you of subtle sins in your life? The Christian life is like the stock market. If you look at a graph you will see hilltops and valleys but the general trend is up. God works on people that way. Consistency and exposure are the tools God uses to change hearts. It’s the fertilizer in the soil that the Spirit uses to cause growth. As Paul said, we plant and water, but God gives growth, and he does so in his timing. We can’t fabricate authentic heart change. That has to be a work of the Spirit and he does it line upon line. Precept upon precept. Here a little, there a little (Isaiah 28:13). Brothers, a long view allows for healthy growth. Growth that is brought about by the work of the Spirit at the heart level. Don’t be content with behavior modification. It might seem like a win, but it is short lived. We spend 18 years as parents preparing our children to grow up and launch. We start small and build, giving them more responsibility and expecting more of them as they grow. Be that kind of pastor. Don’t expect your people to act like 30 year olds when they are spiritually toddlers. Give space for God to work and don’t try to manufacture it on your own.
Be Strategic And Do Theological Triage
Brothers, not everything that needs to change needs to change right now. Even now, that’s a hard sentence to write. In fact, most things that you will see that need to change are merely symptoms of a deeper issue that needs to be addressed. Understand that every decision you make either gains or spends leadership credit. There is a line in Top Gun that is apt for this: “Son your ego is writing checks your body can’t cash”. If you will allow me some literary license, I would change that to “Your preference is writing checks your leadership can’t cash”. Are there things that I wish were different still today? Sure. Are they worth the leadership credit to change them? More often than not, no. I’ve learned a couple of things over the years. First, dealing with symptoms never solves the problem. The easy solution is to change the songs you sing wholesale and upset a bunch of people. The harder solution is to help people see that singing is preaching and the theology we sing matters not only in proclaiming truth but in equipping people to preach (or sing) truth to themselves. Second, many of the things I thought were a big deal really weren’t as I look back. It’s much better to deal with big issues and let little one’s slide than deal with small ones and have no credit to spend on big ones. Third, patience has a way of winning the day. I’ve seen God work out all kinds of issues that needed to be worked out with me simply being patient and waiting because I had a long view. If I hadn’t it would have cost more than it would have gained. That allows you to use your credit on big things. Stay long enough and most if not all of the little (or at least the things that aren’t massive) will end up changing on their own. Consistency and exposure. Triage means we deal with the sucking chest wound before worrying about the splinter in the finger. Master triage and being strategic. Always think through what this will cost, how it will move toward the goal, should it be done at all, and what secondary or tertiary consequences it will have.
Celebrate Small Wins
Having a long view can be exhausting. It can seem like nothing is changing and no one is moving. You will be tempted to abandon this philosophy and move to something more quantifiable and pragmatic. Something that “works”. Well, if you believe the first premise (God works in steps not leaps) then it gives you something to look for to celebrate. We celebrate milestones in our child’s life. We celebrate the first time they smile or the first time they get on all fours or the first steps. No parent says “man, why isn’t my 2 year old playing basketball yet”? That’s insanity. Yet that’s how many pastors view the church. They don’t celebrate small wins. Become a master of celebrating small wins. Things like a person coming up to you and saying they had never seen that in the Bible before or someone going up to a new person and greeting them. Look for small things if you want to see God working. A long view forces us to see change as incremental. So celebrate incremental change. I remember when we had my first baptism here at Arbor Drive. It was the first baptism this church had seen in over 6 years. I made a big deal of that. I saw that as God’s faithfulness and evidence that he was working. When I challenged the church to get out of debt by raising $60,000 in 6 months, there were a lot of barriers and things that stood in the way of that, but when I stood before the church 6 months later and reported that we had sent our last check into the bank and all of our property was debt free, it was a win. We could have done it in 4 months, or before I got here, but it was a win. Celebrate small wins.
Keep Plodding
The last thing I will say about having a long view is keep plodding. In a marathon, you hit walls (or so I’m told… I don’t run that far unless being chased by a bear). You come up against moments where you feel like giving up. You are maybe 5 miles in and you look ahead and see how far you have to go and it seems impossible. In Ranger School there is a saying… “I’ll quit tomorrow”. No matter how hard it is, you say “I’ll quit tomorrow”. You know what you say tomorrow when you feel like quitting? You get the idea. Ministry is plodding. Sometimes it’s falling forward. Sometimes your feet feel so heavy that you don’t think you can go another step. You just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Here is the unique thing. You don’t do it by your own strength. You keep the long view and keep going with confidence that Christ loves his church. He died for her. He cares for her… not you. It doesn’t depend upon you. The results are not yours to own if you are walking in faithfulness. You get the liberation and freedom of knowing it doesn’t depend on you and the strength to keep going from God working in you. One day you will die and will stand before God. I don’t know about you but I want a legacy of faithful plodding that is done in his strength and dependence upon him. This relates to other things I’ve learned in future posts, but for now just remember this; when you cross the finish line you don’t focus on the walls you hit. You enjoy the euphoria of finishing and all the toil was worth it. Paul told Timothy to stay in Ephesus and not give up (1 Tim 1:3). In the cave David strengthened himself in the Lord (1 Sam 30:6). Take a long view and that enables you to keep going.
Jon Hawkins is husband to Carlee and they have three daughters Finleigh, Ainsley, and Olivia. Jon earned his Master of Divinity from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and he is the Pastor of Arbor Drive Community Church in York, Nebraska.