A pastor colleague recently told me something I can’t seem to shake: “If I’m not on staff, pastoring or preaching, I don’t go to church on Sundays. I’m just not a pew person.”
At first, it sounded like honesty. The kind of honesty clergy groups are supposed to hold. But the longer I sat with it, the more it felt like something else. Not confession, but exposure.
Because beneath that statement is a deeper, more unsettling question: Have pastors and clergy stopped being disciples? Or have we convinced ourselves we no longer need to be formed as disciples? Have we somehow arrived?
Braxton Wade
Pastors are trained to exegete texts, navigate systems and hold together communities that often are one disagreement away from fracture. We are fluent in theology, we can name the Greek, parse the Hebrew, quote the scholars. We can share the joy of Advent and Christmas. We know how to lead people through Lent, preach resurrection on Easter, and stand at gravesides with something that sounds like hope.
But somewhere along the way, many of us stopped being formed. We kept leading, kept preaching and kept producing. But quietly we started to believe we had arrived, we had no more to learn.
Pastors, both conservative and progressive, can exude an arrogance of arrival. Not completely or perfectly but enough. Enough that we no longer sit under the weight of the gospel the way we once did. Enough that we no longer expect to be interrupted, corrected or undone. Enough that we know God in our heads, while avoiding the God who is still trying to reach our hearts. Enough that discipleship has become something we facilitate for others, not something we commit to for ourselves.
And maybe the clearest sign is this: We no longer know how to follow. We don’t follow a vision; we create those. We don’t follow a strategic plan; we write those. We often don’t follow Jesus in a way that requires us to not be in control.
We struggle to sit under a voice delivering a word that’s not ours, to receive instead of generate, to be shaped without proclaiming the final amen. Because discipleship, at its core, is about surrender. And pastors are rarely required to surrender.
“We name what’s broken ‘out there,’ but we protect what is stagnant ‘in here.’”
So now we have clergy gatherings — peer learning groups, cohorts, denominational meetings — that were meant to be places of formation. But if we’re honest, many of them have become places of networking, shaking hands and playing the political game. Most of our clergy spaces are better at connecting pastors than at discipling them.
We name what’s broken “out there,” but we protect what is stagnant “in here.”
And maybe we avoid it because to name it would mean admitting something we don’t want to say out loud: We have mistaken theological maturity for spiritual maturity.
We can interpret the text and still not be transformed by it. We can preach surrender and never practice it. We can call people to follow Jesus and quietly and often slowly stop following Jesus ourselves.
If we are not being discipled, what exactly are we producing? If we are no longer being formed, what exactly are we forming others into? If we have arrived, why do we keep walking? Congregations don’t just follow our words; they follow our lives.
Is it possible we have pastors who have learned how to lead the church but have quietly stopped following? Not because they don’t believe. But because somewhere between formation, deconstruction and reconstruction, they started believing they had arrived.
The church does not need more pastors who think they’ve made it. It needs pastors who know they haven’t.
Braxton Wade is a Clemons Fellow with BNG. He is a graduate of the University of Richmond and Chicago Theological Seminary and lives in Richmond, Va.