When I was thirty-eight, I received a call to what would be considered a “leading church.” It had just relocated to a 11-acre tract of land on the growing edge of a major metropolitan area. The facility was state of the art. It had sufficient financial resources to build a quality staff team and truly impact a community. It was a “plum assignment.”
When you look at the track record of the previous decade I’d spent in ministry, there was nothing about where I’d been that qualified me for such an assignment. My first two assignments had been a church plant where we spent three years developing a nucleus (we’d gone from one family other than my wife and me to about 30-35 in attendance on an average Sunday) and a setting where the church had been in decline for twenty years from around 300 to the 60-70 who were still sticking it out when we arrived. I learned there is something more difficult than planting a church … and that is trying to turn around a declining church! The Lord helped us and, while the numerical breakthrough didn’t really come, we put some things in place that positioned the church to embrace a new day.
I left this church to join the staff of a congregation that ran around 325 … only for the pastor to resign and accept another pastorate eight months later. Our family—our boys were 4th grade and kindergarten at the time—had moved almost 3000 miles. We’d just bought our first home two weeks before my Lead Pastor informed me of his pending move. I was convinced we were not only going to have to move again, but we are also going to lose our shirt financially. I could have shot him!
Bottom line: After a 4-5 month interim, the board recommended and the church called me to be the new Lead Pastor, and we had a good ten year run in that ministry setting. But as I said, there was nothing about where I’d been that qualified me for that position. I had never so much as had a secretary, and here I was overseeing a multiple staff. The growth curve was enormous. But God helped us and we saw some great things happen in the next few years.
Fast forward twenty years. At age fifty-eight, I found myself in a position where I felt like the church I was pastoring would benefit from a change. I had been there for a little over seven years and led the church through the exceptionally difficult transition of a long-time staff member who had family in the church and remained in the community post-resignation. While I felt like I was still doing a good job, I also felt like the church would benefit from a “fresh voice.” I opened myself up to a move and had a number of exploratory conversations. Long story short—I really couldn’t get those churches to look seriously at me because of my age. I think many folks had a stigma about what a pastor pushing 60 would bring to the table.
Also—I was tired. Pastoral ministry is an emotionally draining enterprise and, when you do it for three decades, it takes a toll. That’s why so many drop out. My sense is, for long-haul guys like me, there are three possible outcomes: (1) The denomination promotes you to a supervisory or administrative position … or a local church creates a staff position for you … or, if you have the educational credentials, an academic institution invites you to teach … where your background and experience is an asset. However, there are more guys who have the experience and could do these jobs than there are slots to put them in. (2) You ride it out pastoring where you are because, even though you’re tired, you’re living where you want to live (i.e., close to family or where you’ve developed some meaningful relationships). But—if the first door doesn’t open and you find yourself living someplace you don’t really want to be, you fall into the third class which means (3) you have to figure it out. That’s where I found myself. I really believed, deep in my heart, that the church would benefit from a change in leadership … that having a different captain of the ship would be good after having been through a traumatic, painful season in the wake of a poorly executed and emotionally histrionic staff resignation. But I couldn’t get anyone to really take a serious look at me. So, I “retired” from pastoral ministry … moved away to be closer, and more accessible and available, to aging parents … and got a job working part-time with a family member in hopes that opportunities for transitional or interim pastoral ministry will emerge in time. Perhaps my experience will serve me well by stepping into congregations during times of transition, diagnosing things that need to be addressed and shored up, and implementing change so that the new pastor doesn’t have to confront those situations early on in his or her tenure
Certainly, the transition we’ve just gone through places a burden on my wife, as she must be the “primary breadwinner” for the short term. Fortunately, she is a credentialed schoolteacher and has job skills that are readily transferable. But I feel bad that a lady who has been so supportive and dealt with some of the residual hardships that accompany ministry … who has moved with me across the country for three decades … who is at a stage in life where she’d like to relax a little bit … finds herself in a situation where she’s got to carry the load because (1) pastoral ministry has paid considerably less than other professional occupations over the years to where we need to work for the next 5-7 years, and (2) the system is such that it’s really hard to get a move when you’re approaching sixty. (In fact, my wife had a Facebook conversation the other night with a friend/pastor’s wife whose husband was more or less forced out of his position and he’s trying to find a place to land at age 62. They are really, really scared!)
I understand that what worked for me at age thirty-eight worked against me at age fifty-eight. As a result, my advice for pastors is to be where you want to be by age 55 because, if you aren’t, you may really struggle to find a move after that time. That’s not to discount the call of God or anything like that—I’m a firm believer in His call. But I also believe that God’s call isn’t so restrictive that there is only one place for us at any given time. I believe His call is for us to be a certain kind of person and, if we are, He can deploy and use us in a variety of situations.