I have witnessed more than a few good men step away from the ministry having been chewed up and spit out by some carnal church. Much has been written about abusive pastors but not enough ink has been spilled describing toxic churches and battered pastors. Both camps dishonor the reputation of the Christ they claim to represent.
While I am sure there are some good reasons for pastors to leave the ministry, I can think of three negative factors that contribute to this very sad statistic:
- Many men who drop out of the ministry were never truly called to begin with.
Let’s not make this first point more complicated than it needs to be. When the going gets tough, ‘hired hands’ typically find something easier to do. For some it means becoming a postman, or working as a security guard, or doing landscaping the rest of one’s life. Anything other than the pastorate.
As the Shepherd par excellence, Jesus put it this way in John 10:11-13
:
“I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. He who is a hireling, and not a shepherd, who is not the owner of the sheep, beholds the wolf coming, and leaves the sheep, and flees, and the wolf snatches them, and scatters them. He flees because he is a hireling, and is not concerned about the sheep.”
A man truly called into the pastorate lives out convictions like this, “I would rather pay to study and preach then be paid not to study and preach.”
Or this, “I would rather pastor in McFarland, USA than pastor nowhere at all!”
Charles Spurgeon was said to have told his pastoral students, “If God calls you to be a minister, don’t stoop to be a king.”
It seems likely that many men who drop out of the pastorate or who abandon the mission field were never truly called to begin with!
- Some men who are no longer in pastoral ministry were victims of Corinthian-esq behavior(emotional, mental, physical, & verbal abuse).
As one who has grown up in the church I have learned that “professing” Christians can act far worse than the world (2 Cor. 12:20-21)!
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