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Finishing well: How to keep from becoming a negative has-been

Pete Unrau

Many Canadian churches are facing a crisis in leadership. Many pastors and Christian leaders are faltering in the race. Of those who began pastoral ministry in their 20s, only a very small percentage are retiring as pastors. Many of them have quit the ministry all together. A pastor told me recently: “There were 19 of us men who graduated from seminary together. All of us went into pastoral ministry. Today, in my 40s, I’m the only one left who is still pastoring a local church.” That is tragic. Most of these former pastors are too good to lose. They were trained; they are gifted; they were hurt and quit, or they made some mistakes and were turfed out. They don’t realize that there is value in hurtful conflict if we respond to it rightly. God prefers leaders with battle scars, that have healed rightly. Give me a “wounded healer” any day. He will be able to minister with much greater compassion and understanding to the world of hurting people around him.


Lyle Schaller, when he was 78, said: “I did one thing right. I pastored when it was easy to pastor and hard to travel. Now I am travelling when it is easy to travel and hard to pastor.” Bill Hybels, pastor of the large Willow Creek Church, speaking to pastors at a leadership conference, said: “Pastoral ministry is the most leadership intensive entity in the world. You have all the expectations of leadership as in other enterprises, but you have very little of the power. You are working largely with volunteers. You can’t fire them, but they can fire you.” Stuart Briscoe of Elmbrook Church in Waukesha, Wisconsin, put it this way: “As pastors, we are hired by our employers in order for us to make them our employees. They hold our purse strings in their hands, and yet we are the ones who in our preaching and teaching have to tell them what they are doing wrong. That is suicide, unless there is mutual goodwill in both directions.”

The four things that I keep hearing from the over 4000 pastors I have met with personally throughout Canada during the last five years are: “I feel isolated. I feel lonely. I feel inadequate. I feel insecure.”

Richard Foster, in a letter to pastors and Christian leaders, lamented the cultural pressures that pastors, especially of larger churches, face: “Mega churches, though most impressive, also have in them the seeds of perpetual superficiality. By its very nature, this kind of church must gravitate toward an entertainment religion, which turns worship into a constant effort to keep people occupied and happy. It must pour the bulk of its time and energy into the ABCs of church success: Attendance, Buildings and Cash. Nothing will fail us like success. People are attracted to success, but the addictive nature of a success mentality effectively hinders any real progress in the spiritual life.” My understanding of God’s ABCs of true church success focus more on the three words: Availability, Brokenness and Communion – communion with God and communion with people. We need to focus more on church health than on church growth. Anything that is healthy will grow. The coinage of earth is dollars and numbers. The coinage of heaven is relationships. Seeking to live and minister by heaven’s rules in earth’s arena is tough.

Steve Berg, pastor of South Abbotsford MB Church, speaking at a recent Oasis Retreat for weary and/or wounded pastor couples, talked about five reasons why pastoral ministry is so demanding:

Changing Times. We are in competition with the world. As pastors, we are obviously not the only voices that our people hear. Material Distractions. On average, 30% to 40% of church people are not there on Sunday morning. Pastor Jan Hettinga of Northshore Baptist Church of Seattle told a pastors’ retreat: “I used to be able to count on the faithful members of our church to be there at least three Sundays a month. Now, because of the affluence and the distractions, that is down to about two Sundays a month.” Consumer Congregations. The expectations are higher, and the commitments are lower. The attitude of “What have you done for me lately?” is rampant. Generational Compression. We are ministering to people all the way from the Y generation to great-grandma. How can you have music in the church that excites the youth without panicking the old? This is an all-consuming challenge. Confusion over Shifting Paradigms. Many pastors appear to be standing in front of a wall of levers, pondering which one to choose. Will it be “seeker sensitive”, “contemporary”, “flowing in renewal” or “natural church development”? Os Guinness has said: “We have come to rely on the tools, rather than the Lord. Don’t be intimidated by modernity. Forget what’s happening down the street, and find satisfaction in knowing that God is pleased with you and your ministry.”

In a book entitled Finishing Well in Life and Ministry, Bill Mills and Craig Parro say: “Apart from the sustaining presence of God, the pressures of the ministry are more than any man or woman can bear. We, as church leaders, battle against a host of enemies: unrealistic expectations, unrelenting schedules, resistant people, a morally bankrupt culture, and spiritual forces of darkness. How are we to survive this onslaught, let alone flourish in the ministry?”

In the face of the above challenge, how can those of us who are more in the home stretch years of our ministry keep effective and useful without becoming negative, sour, old “has-beens”? Whether we are officially retired or not, we still have much to offer. The following principles will help us to finish well in life and ministry.

1. Make sure that you keep spiritually vibrant.

Yesterday’s faith will not win today’s battles. Keep a healthy, steady, regular inflow of Scripture (Psalm 119:11). Keep reading good books. Keep a teachable spirit. Methods keep changing, even though our theology remains the same. The ultimate character quality that God is wanting to produce in all of our lives is that of a soft heart (Psalm 51:17). The only goal in life that no one else can block is the goal of becoming more like Jesus. Seek the Lord wholeheartedly and regularly. We dare not neglect self-care. There is only one God – and it is not me.

I began a practice several years ago that is still my daily habit. Each morning, before I get out of bed, I raise both my hands up to God. This is the sign of surrender all over the world. In this symbolic way, I begin each day with a full surrender to the Holy Spirit’s control of my life.

2. Make sure that you are real and vulnerable.

A pastor who came to an Oasis Retreat on the verge of burnout, wrote near the end of this five-day retreat: “I came to Oasis thinking that my greatest need was rest. I now realize that my greatest need is to be real: real with God, real with people and real with myself. Life gets hard when you’re not authentic. The load gets heavy when you are not real. It is a terrible thing to wear a mask, because if worn long enough, it begins to not just hide but to distort the face that it covers.”

We must learn to be appropriately transparent. Charles Swindoll put it this way: “The older that I get, the more l fear God and the less I fear man.” 1 Corinthians 11:2 tells us to be fully congruent – authentic inside and out.

Authenticity shows up first and best in your home life. Your family is your secret weapon. What you say is theory until your people see it lived out in your marriage and family. Your family is your laboratory and your recommendation. Success anywhere else will never compensate for failure at home. At home, you are known for who you really are. There is no such thing as being a saint in public and a demon at home. No professional pose can last long in the manse. Your children will be your ultimate success in the ministry.

3. Make sure that you quit nursing and rehearsing all the injustices that you have faced in your life and ministry.

There is no way that you can be an effective, godly pastor without having faced some deep hurts (2 Timothy 2:3). Paul calls them the “marks of Jesus” (Galatians 6:17). False accusations are especially hard to face. In 2 Corinthians 10-13, Paul tells of four false accusations that he faced. He was accused of being a hypocrite (10:10); of being carnal (10:2); of being a poor leader (11:5); and of being a poor preacher (11:6). Charles Swindoll suggests three principles that Paul followed in responding to false accusations: Readily admit where you know that you are wrong; humbly stand firm where you know that you are right; and calmly rest your case with God, who alone judges justly (1 Peter 2:23).

4. Make sure that you accept your changing role graciously.

Keep a servant attitude. Retired pastor Loren Fischer put it beautifully: “Do a small thing in a fine way, and thank God for the privilege!” You were once a big fish in a smaller pond; now you may feel like a little fish in a big pond. Once you were in the spotlight regularly; now you’re behind the curtain most of the time. You know that those who have followed you are standing on your shoulders, even if they have a hard time acknowledging that publicly. Sometimes you may even feel that you have been put on a shelf, and you feel unappreciated after all the years of faithful service that you have so sacrificially given. As opportunities come, keep serving humbly with a shepherd’s heart. The shepherd metaphor sounds strange in the cyberworld of our daily experience, but the metaphor shows up more than 500 times in Scripture. If we want to understand the biblical model for leadership, we must embrace the concept of “shepherd”. Shepherding in a world of CEOs is no easy task. In his book They Smell Like Sheep, Lynn Anderson says: “Biblical shepherds are those who live among the sheep; feed, water, and protect the sheep; touch and talk to the sheep – even lay down their lives for the sheep. Biblical shepherds smell like sheep.” Shepherding requires costly commitment of self, time, energy and the building of open, authentic relationships. That involves mutual vulnerability, which in turn demands availability, commitment and trust.

5. Develop a good relationship with younger people.

Take an interest in their interests. Listen to their questions. Beware of too simplistic answers. Listen to their music, even if that is not your personal taste. Scripture does stress that the older are to teach the younger (Titus 2:3-5; 1 Peter 5:1-5), but that will not happen effectively without mutual respect and appreciation for each other. Respect cannot be demanded; it has to be earned.

Remember that finishing well in God’s sight is often very different from our definition. Jesus refused to define success by the number of His followers or by the weight of His reputation. He felt secure in His Father’s agenda and timing. Jesus’ brothers were bothered by the obscurity of His ministry. They argued that a larger ministry was more desirable. But the longer that Jesus served here on earth, the more His crowds dwindled. Effective ministry in the eyes of God does not depend on the response of the people, but on faithfulness to God’s message. Habakkuk 3:17-19 may well be the ultimate model of finishing well from God’s perspective: “Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD. I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign LORD is my strength.” Here is joy at its best even when circumstances are at their worst. That is finishing well.

Pete Unrau is now director of Oasis Retreats for hurting pastors, a ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ. He and his wife Shirley have many years of experience in pastoral ministry, most recently as senior pastor couple of Central Heights MB Church in Abbotsford, B.C. More information on Oasis Retreats is available on the Web site.

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Last modified July 19, 2002.

© 2002 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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