I appreciate Braxton Wade’s BNG piece, “When the Church Confuses Vocation with Calling” and his challenge for churches to open themselves to the Spirit’s unveiling of a pastor who comes clothed in skin or gender not usually recognized as conveying the word and ways of God. Well said, indeed.
Now, I would like to build upon his opening sentence: “Across several denominations, pastors are leaving congregations at accelerated rates, citing burnout, conflict and misalignment between their sense of calling and the realities of congregational life.” The ecclesiastical circles I walk in demonstrate the truth of Wade’s statement.
Paul R. Gilliam III
Furthermore, as a pastor who has experienced a disturbing end to what had been an otherwise satisfying pastorate then followed by an almost from day one troubled pastorate that lasted a year and a half, I know firsthand the reality that pastors “are leaving congregations at accelerated rates.”
In addition to Wade’s diagnosis of the problem then, I offer another. I can point to numerous examples, although specificity would be inappropriate here, of church members engaging with the pastor and the wider church as they do in their own professions. The lawyer views the pastor as a lawyer. The educator views the pastor as an educator. The banker views the pastor as a banker. The coach views the pastor as a coach. And so on.
There are two major problems with this one-to-one career approach to lay engagement with the pastor as well as lay engagement with the broader church.
“It is a grave mistake to simply superimpose the skills acquired from one line of work onto the work of the church.”
First, while there are points of contact, and sometimes significant points of contact, between the day-to-day life of the church and the running of a law firm or school or bank or an athletic program, the church is fundamentally a different entity from anything else just as the bank is a different entity from the local high school. It is a grave mistake to simply superimpose the skills acquired from one line of work onto the work of the church. At its worst, this practice leads to premature pastoral departures as well as nasty endings to otherwise productive stays.
Second, and complementary to Wade’s emphasis on call, when laity lose sight of the reality that the church is a different institution from the institutions they are most familiar with, the pastor becomes simply an employee of the church to hire and fire and figure out how much their Christmas bonus should be for the calendar year. In other words, in the day-to-day operation of the church, the pastor is no longer a God-called woman or man.
Let me unpack this second problem a bit. It is true, of course, that God calls people to all lines of work, not just vocational ministry. I believe passionately that God calls plumbers and electricians and elementary school teachers and lawyers and coaches and bankers and fast-food workers and on and on and on. However, it is not a requirement for any of these above professions, and many others not specified here, that the person is also a Christian.
Thus, the Christian plumber sees her or his profession as other than a means to nutrition and shelter. However, the plumber who is not a professing Christian has a different view. Therefore, in most other professions the concept of a call from God is not explicitly verbalized in day-to-day tasks.
However, in the church, God’s call is front and center — always. Or, at least, it should be. When laity interact with the pastor primarily as they would their professional colleagues there is a real danger that the sense of call is lost in the church. And this can lead to all sorts of unfortunate problems within a congregation.
My comments here not only complement Wade’s writing referenced above, but they also complement an earlier piece I wrote for BNG in 2023, “Who Exactly Is the Pastor?”. There I suggest the pastor and parishioner, while sharing an intimate relationship, are not buddy-buddy. Furthermore, I contend the pastor is not the church’s chief executive officer who is supervised by a governing board of volunteers.
Now I urge caution, to the laity, in relation to a prominent church dynamic that leads to heartache for the pastor and a damaging reputation for the church: Please do not carry out your church responsibilities in a manner that directly mirrors your professional life.
“Please do not carry out your church responsibilities in a manner that directly mirrors your professional life.”
I currently serve as pastor to Trinity Baptist Church in Newton, N.C. April 1 marks our one-year anniversary. Yes, I know, perhaps we didn’t think through the April Fools’ start date! It has been a good first year — excellent even. The congregation and I are optimistic about a healthy partnership well into the future.
Several months ago, an inactive deacon, but very active church member, stopped by to see me. He was concerned that a happening within the life of the church had upset me. I assured him I was in good shape — no harm had been done. In the course of this conversation, he shared with me a part of his understanding of the deacon’s role. It is his opinion that the congregation’s leadership should allow the pastor to labor without restraint unless there is a concern the pastor is about to take the church off a cliff.
This insight was made by a man who understands the concept of call in the life of the pastor and in the life of the broader church. If more churches took this approach of let the pastor lead unless she or he proposes something clearly out of bounds with the identity of the congregation, the rate at which pastors leave congregations would decline — significantly so.
Paul R. Gilliam III is a minister and an academic. He serves as pastor at Trinity Baptist Church in Newton, NC. He is also the author of two books: Ignatius of Antioch and the Arian Controversy and William Whiston and the Apostolic Constitutions: Completing the Reformation. His current book project is tentatively titled, Simon Browne, Salters’ Hall, and the Trinity.