Today marks eleven years of service at my current church. What a patient, gracious bunch!
15 Years Later
I celebrate eleven years of service to my current congregation today. But these days also mark a more notable anniversary: fifteen years of vocational ministry.
I was ordained to the Gospel ministry on August 12, 2007. I fondly recall the distinguished men on my Presbytery Board (ordination committee): Jake Creech, James Earl Raper, Donnie Miles, Leroy Lowery, and Wayland Owens. On the one hand I think, “What were they thinking?!” On the other hand, I simply say, “Thank God for giving me such a careful, gracious, older group of men to shepherd me through the process.”
I spent my first four years of vocational ministry as Director of Christian Education at Tippett’s Chapel FWB in Clayton, North Carolina. I worked alongside two dear brothers, Dr. Eddie Moody and Rev. Bryan Hughes. Additionally, some very good deacons and older men in the church supported me and taught me a great deal about life and ministry. While the focus of my position was Christian Education, particularly CTS and young adult ministry, I was allowed to exercise the full range of my gifts and passions in pastoring people. It was a valuable four years of immersion in a local church, while also continuing my graduate education in two area seminaries.
Then in 2011, I was called to serve as the fourth pastor in the history of Grace FWB Church, just south of St. Louis, Missouri. The church was kind enough to allow me to work on my Ph.D. while serving as pastor, which I began just a month after beginning my tenure here. The church situation was quite different from my previous stop. Some of these differences were cultural, and some owed to recent troubles which the church had experienced. But ultimately the greatest difference was the simple fact that I now sat in “the big chair.”
I’ve often reflected with another senior pastor and mentor on this level of responsibility. We’ve discussed how I have more in common with him—despite being fifteen years apart in age—than with colleagues my age who serve in associate ministry roles. This is no way diminishes the crucial role of student pastors, music ministers, and so many other valuable ministry positions. It’s simply a different type and scale of stewardship.
At the risk of being predictable, I want to identify a few primary lessons I’ve learned about the precious work of pastoral ministry. Of course, there are three, but I’ll avoid any alliteration.
First, pastors need to see and experience the church first as members of the body, not as pastors. I’ve had to learn this over time, but thankfully I had a sense of it some years ago. I had a deacon at Grace present me for membership the Sunday I began serving as pastor. I realize the typical member probably thought, “Is this really necessary? Doesn’t he understand that voting him in as pastor entailed voting him in as a member?” I appreciate that sentiment, but I was trying to send a message to the people about my submission to them and place among them. Time has only confirmed my conviction that pastors must see themselves as not just over the flock, but alongside and among the flock, too. I cannot grow without them. Moreover, God intends to grow me through them.
Second, every good thing we intend to implement and hope to see happen will take longer than we think. I think this is generally true about all of life, but it’s certainly true in local church work. Given all the agricultural imagery in Scripture, it makes sense that good things take time. Things must come about “in their season.” A season of sowing is required, but so is a season of watering and waiting. Yet we occupy an impatient society. Our value is determined by our efficiency. This is certainly the tendency of younger, zealous pastors. We think if we work harder the work will get done faster. Yet God is shaping us through our ability to persevere, pray, and wait for Him to bring forth fruit.
Third, the spiritual quality and integrity of family life is the most important area of ministry stewardship. Amid all the discussion about the ordination of divorcees, we’ve missed a crucial part of the discussion: we cannot separate the meaning of “husband of one wife” from “must manage his own household well.” However, we interpret the former, it must be coupled with the latter. Through the years I’ve always noticed that even if things were going poorly in the church, but my wife and I were spiritually and emotionally in sync, I felt that I could face anything. Conversely, when things weren’t good at home, no amount of quality sermon preparation or success in counseling members that day could overcome the domestic heaviness and powerlessness. Whether a single pastor is trying to keep his eyes pure, or a married pastor is trying to love His wife selflessly, or trying to nurture and disciple his stubborn children, the most difficult and meaningful ministry begins in the home.
Looming Choices
American voters regularly ask themselves every other November, “Are these really our only options?” This trend continues as recent polling shows overwhelmingly that voters do not want another Biden/Trump faceoff in 2024. Specifically, only 29% of Democrats say they want President Biden to run again, and only 32% of Republicans say they want President Trump to run again. Yet the possibilities of such an electoral matchup are reasonably high.
Why do we find ourselves in such awful civic situations? Some of it is because the primary process that leads to nominees isn’t known for strategic thinking and choosing by voters, who tend to choose candidates for stylistic reasons over policy reasons. Additionally, people simply don’t show up to choose the candidates who take issues more seriously than slogans. This is nowhere more obvious than local and state primary elections, which regularly have participation rates as low as 10-20% of the electorate. Staying home comes at a cost.
Our municipality will be holding primary elections tomorrow. Apparently, many across the country are holding them this week or soon after. Without exaggeration, I must have received 75 pieces of mail at my home in recent weeks. Candidates are running for everything from County Council to County Clerk to State Assembly to State Senate to U.S. Senate.
As an aside, Missouri has an interesting political history. For decades it was a national bellwether, not Ohio or Florida. But this has changed in modern times. While for many years moderate and conservative Democrats ran successfully in local and statewide races, the state has been trending red for years. It’s almost inconceivable that we’ll ever see a two-term Democratic Governor again, like the one who was in office when I moved here in 2011. The influence of labor unions has waned, and the near-total realignment of rural America toward the Republican party has made Democratic success outside St. Louis, Kansas City, and Columbia an aberration.
On Tuesday my attention is on two races in particular: State Senate and U.S. Senate. On the latter, a field of candidates are scrambling to replace retiring Senator Roy Blunt (R). Three candidates lead the way, each with different kinds of baggage.
“Baggage” seems too weak a word to describe former Governor Eric Greitens, who threw his hat in the ring despite resigning in disgrace in 2018 after credible charges were made concerning both personal conduct and campaign finance law violations.
Nevertheless, Greitens has held his own, even leading in the polls for months. It leads one to ask, “What’s the appeal? What has he done since resigning to make you ‘change your mind’? And is making him the Republican nominee worth risking a vulnerable candidate against a credible Democrat in November?” Apparently, for anywhere from 15% to 25% of voters, it is. Head scratch*.
While I'm deeply concerned about the outcome of the U.S. Senate race, I’m more interested by the campaign for my area’s State Senate seat. Four Republicans are in the race. Wait for it…each is campaigning as “the true conservative.” Very original, indeed.
Two of the candidates have termed out of serving as State Representatives, so they’re trying for higher office now. Another candidate has served two terms as a Representative, but is trying to make the leap now. Another candidate was a Democrat just a few years ago, but is now running as a conservative Republican.
Many dynamics characterize the race. There’s a rural-suburban element given the region this seat would represent. There’s a criminal justice layer, given the surging violent crime nationwide, and the backdrop of St. Louis malfeasance in the District Attorney’s office. Two of the candidates also have extensive law enforcement backgrounds. Another element is the pro-life angle. Missouri is a very pro-life state in terms of abortion law, yet each of the four candidates are marketing themselves as “100% pro-life.” In practice, it’s hard to know what this means given the state's existing laws.
Perhaps the other angle that’s most noticeable yet ambiguous is the national angle. Each candidate is running against “the Biden record,” and are presenting themselves as “100% pro-Trump.” Conversely, the attack ads have managed to somehow link various candidates to Nancy Pelosi—though I’m fairly confident none of these people have ever met the woman. Someone in a basement somewhere has been doing overtime with Photoshop!
It's no doubt the case that national politics has real-world consequences for those of us here in Jefferson County. Yet the careful citizen eventually wonders, “What do these would-be Missouri legislators intend to do here, on the issues facing us on a day-to-day basis?”
Two candidates knocked doors in my subdivision, including mine. When I asked one about his views, I appreciated the fact that he commented on the very thing that had been troubling me: all the candidates were talking about whatever Washington is talking about, but not saying much about the needs of our county, district, and state.
Let’s face it: it’s easy to be a conservative Republican running against President Biden, who isn’t on the ballot. It’s easy to be a progressive Democrat and run against President Trump, who isn’t on the ballot. It’s much more difficult to get into the weeds and talk to people about the things they’re seeing and experiencing in their local communities. Of course, some times these issues do intersect and overlap with the policies of D.C. But many times candidates avoid answering hard questions about local issues because they’re running against a bad man two thousand miles away.
If we want to love our neighbors well, this requires that we show up and vote when the opportunity arises. It means we ask the hard questions candidates rather not answer. It means we demand better than slogans and tired cliches.
Election day is coming. Are you ready to exercise your stewardship, or set yourself up for more bad choices in November?
Currently Reading:
Robert W. Merry, President McKinley: Architect of the American Century.
Quote of the Week:
It doesn’t matter what you choose; what matters is that you choose. Freedom is getting to make up what counts as the Good for yourself. This is not unlike what Augustine thought freedom was when he first made his way to Carthage and later to Rome. What he hadn’t anticipated, and what he tried to ignore even as he was experiencing it, was the exhaustion of it all. What he envisioned as freedom—the removal of constraints—started to feel like a punishment. The obliteration of boundaries looked like liberation to the young Augustine; but he could feel himself dissolving in the resulting amorphousness. . . Freedom to be myself starts to feel like losing myself, dissolving my own identity slipping between my fingers.