Luke and his wife Emily were special. Despite only being twenty-two years old, they were often the most spiritual persons in the room at both their church and their college ministry. After being given some preaching opportunities, Luke was confident he’d been called to vocational pastoring—a sentiment encouraged by so many older saints in the church who told him they were sure he was “the next Billy Graham.
Luke and Emily arrived at seminary with purpose. She worked full-time so Luke could finish the ordinarily three-year M.Div in two years. Despite getting straight A’s, Luke’s pace through seminary was extremely busy. He and his wife put off having children. Their involvement in their local church never really moved beyond simply showing up on Sunday mornings. Luke never cut corners, but his classwork was more about checking off assignments than deep meditation.
When Luke graduated, he applied to about 100 churches. He quickly learned that most congregations aren’t interested in hiring a twenty-four-year-old pastor. Without a job, and with his adult responsibilities expanding, their financial needs began mounting. Finally, one congregation showed interest—a small church that had five senior pastors just in the last ten years. Luke accepted the call. And after six tumultuous years—worn out, underpaid, and now caring for a family of five—Luke left the church convinced he didn’t want to be in pastoral ministry. At the age of 30, looking for a new career in the tech industry, his resume listed two work experiences: Senior Pastor and a part-time job at Chick-fil-A during his college years.
Grim but True
Luke and Emily may be fictional characters, but sadly their grim story is one I’ve seen play out time and again. I serve a congregation that gathers just a few miles from one of the world’s largest evangelical seminaries. My church is filled with young men eager to enter into vocational ministry. I’m thankful for them and their presence in our church. It’s a happy stewardship pastoring aspiring pastors. I want them to succeed.
At the same time, I’m convinced there are more and less wise ways to pursue vocational ministry. One of the most frequent errors I witness is impatience and haste—the type represented by Luke above. A myopic focus on developing yourself as a pastor can actually lead to misshapen priorities and unwise living—one that doesn’t create the type of platforms in life that cultivate perseverance in the pastorate.
Aaron Earls, commenting on a recent Lifeway Study, noted that among those who left pastoral ministry, “More than two in five (43%) never made it to a second church, leaving pastoral ministry entirely after their first. The same percentage (43%) served as a senior pastor for 10 years or less, including 21% who served five years or less.”. As the study notes, no monocausal explanation accounts for the attrition rate. But I would submit at least part of the reason has to do with failure to prepare for ministry wisely.
Of course, this short article doesn’t address every life situation. My advice below certainly isn’t meant to bind consciences. Everyone’s giftings, life circumstances, and opportunities are different. We each need wisdom for our distinct circumstances. Nonetheless, I do want to encourage aspiring pastors to consider how some of the principles below might influence their pursuit of pastoral ministry.
Play the Tortoise
In the famous story of the Tortoise and the Hare, the Tortoise wins the race by slow, patient plodding—inch by painfully-slow inch. Among the many applications of this legendary tortoise tale, I’d suggest the Tortoise serves as a model for how to pursue preparation for vocational ministry.
I’m sure that there are some who approached ministry preparation like Luke in the story above are nevertheless now in their third decade of a happy ministry—and that’s wonderful! But I’m also convinced that more often, the hare-like journey into vocational ministry isn’t prudent. A wiser approach is more often a Tortoise-like slow plodding, with far more attention given to building a life that looks like 1 Timothy 3:1–7, rather than simply getting credentials.
What might that approach look like?
First, embrace seminary as an opportunity to learn rather than a roadblock to vocational ministry. Your time in seminary should be about learning content not just earning credit. If you’re not absorbing what you’re learning, you’re not digging the well of theological maturity you’ll need each day of pastoral ministry.
Second, build a life, not just a ministry. Developing yourself theologically and honing your preaching skills is important work. It just can’t be your whole life. By all means, do that work, but don’t do it myopically. Pursue marriage. Have children—even while in seminary. Start building a career. Those things may seem disassociated from the pursuit of ministry, but in reality they’re an important foundation for launching into ministry in a healthy way. Marriage steadies us. Children humble us. Gainful employment teaches us how to submit to authority, manage personal finances, and cultivate the discipline of giving. Pursuing the gift of an ordinary life of faithfulness at home and at work can teach you a thousand glorious things you will never learn in seminary. Did I mention how humbling children are?
Marriage, children, and employment create the type of life-structures that allow aspiring pastors to pursue ministry without panic. You don’t have to go to a toxic church because it’s the first one that shows interest and you desperately need a paycheck. You can instead exercise a prudential patience in your circumstances. At the same time, building a life (and not just a ministry) is part and parcel of how a young man becomes elder-qualified. Pastors are men who have proven they can “manage a household,” men who live lives that are “respectable.” The elder qualifications deal with ordinary life because elders must model the Christian life to their sheep (1 Pet. 5:3). Being able to diagram Romans in Greek is a valuable skill for a future pastor. But if that’s all you’re able to do, I’m not sure you’re living “respectably.” In fact, I’m convinced one of the reasons the elder qualifications focus so much on “ordinary” parts of daily life is because those are the parts of life in which it’s hardest to be godly. It’s easy to be (or at least appear) godly while doing exegesis of Romans. It’s much more challenging to model godliness when managing your household well includes shepherding an eye-rolling pre-teen.
Third, aspire to be a lay elder. I’m convinced many aspiring young men would live much more wisely if they made it their ambition to first become a lay elder before entering vocational ministry. Doing so often helps them pursue ministry at a more reasonable pace and reorients their primary concern away from “how can I get a job after I get my M.Div” to “how can I become the type of person described by the elder qualifications?” Aspiring to serve as a lay elder first makes men far less concerned with being hireable and more concerned with being “respectable” (1 Tim. 3:2)—the type of respectability one accrues by managing a family, holding down a job, and doing spiritual good to others even if you’re not yet being paid for it.
Build a Life, Not a Ministry
Consider with me another spiritually ambitious couple. Matt and Lindsey, like Luke and Emily, were celebrated members of their home church. But when Matt came to seminary at age twenty-two, he didn’t have pastoral ministry on the immediate horizon. He found a job with potential for growth that allowed him and his wife to begin growing their family. He stretched a three-year degree into six years. He wasn’t fast, but he was deep. He read his assigned books to be mastered by them, not simply to get a grade.
At the same time, Matt and Lindsey threw themselves into the life of their church—practicing hospitality, serving children in Sunday School. Matt even spent a year doing a pastoral internship. By the time Matt was cresting 30, the church was recognizing him as an elder. Financially stable, Matt patiently looked for the right vocational ministry opportunity. At 35, when he took the step into full-time pastoring, he didn’t just disappear from a congregation that hardly knew him. He was sent out by his church with love and prayers to pastor a church in need of revitalization. In fact, by the time he left, he was so respected as an elder, a father, and a preacher that several church members went with him to join the church as faithful members.
Conclusion
Not everyone who follows Luke’s path quits the ministry. Nor does everyone who follows Matt’s path ends up in a happy, 30-year pastorate. And I’m certainly not suggesting that the Bible mandates a particular path into vocational ministry. But as someone who has witnessed the perils of the hare-like pace into ministry—and as someone who has committed a lot of mistakes along my own path to being a pastor—I’m convinced we would do well to learn a few lessons from the tortoise.
