Jim was sharing the rousing success of his church. In three years he had turned a dissension-torn church in the middle of nowhere into a unified, booming success. When he arrived, barely enough people attended to support the church. Now they are talking about two services. The church has made major building improvements while putting money in the bank-in an area with 15 percent permanent unemployment! I could almost feel horns of envy sprouting from my head.
Envy’s green eyes often glow in the ministry, but we don’t often discuss it. Are we afraid to admit we look at what other church leaders have-and feel sorry they have it and we don’t? It quickly leads to backbiting and gossip among church leaders.
As I left a conference on ministry in the eighties, a colleague fell into step beside me. He struck up a conversation about my former job as a staff member in a nearby church.
“I hear you relocated after a push from the church board, Chuck. I’m not surprised. From what I hear, Don was a very difficult person to work with. I sometimes wonder how anyone could successfully work with him.”
The bait was there. All I had to do was share a little dirt that is part of all staff relationships. But if I had, the trap would have sprung. Instead I said, “Don and I may have had our differences over the years, but I still think he’s a fine pastor.” Our conversation ended abruptly.
How easy it is, though, to justify envy’s critical comments about others in ministry. We aren’t condemning, we claim, simply “observing some obvious weaknesses.” We don’t mean to be critical; they simply don’t measure up.
I minister in a Baptist denomination that has been losing ground for the past decade. Our counterpart, the Southern Baptists, has grown rapidly during this time. People in our denomination sometimes rationalize that “quality is more important than quantity.” Or, “The methods they use to gain adherents are suspect because they don’t include the social aspects of the gospel.” Or, Their church-planting methods depend on stealing sheep or using unqualified people as ministers.” These comments reveal more about the speaker than the situation.
Envy also breathes flames of dissatisfaction with what we have, depression because we can’t have what we want, and even anger with God because he has deprived us while rewarding others.
At forty-two, with a Doctor of Ministry degree, I serve a church with an average Sunday morning attendance of sixty-five. Winter attendance occasionally slips into the thirties. As I read the alumni bulletins from the schools I attended, I get discouraged. The problem is not what I have. God has met every real need our family’s had. It’s what I have compared with what others have that generates depression. When I begin making comparisons, dissatisfaction spreads.
Paul ate breakfast across the table from me as we waited for our D.Min. classes to begin. I commented, “I have to admit, Paul, I’m jealous of your success. We’re the same age, have the same amount of pastoral experience, but you’re serving a church of twenty-five hundred while mine is only sixty-five.”
I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t for him to sit back in his chair and laugh at me.
“Don’t take me wrong,” he began. “I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing because every time I’ve seen you this week, I’ve thought, What a failure I am. Here we are the same age, but he’s already got a book published and all I get are rejection slips.” Suddenly we both realized the pitfalls of comparison.
Dissatisfaction leads to depression. As I contemplate what I don’t have, the more depressed I feel, which makes it only more difficult to do my job, which cycles lower into increased dissatisfaction. Occasionally I find myself telling God I’m angry with him: He hasn’t given me a position of greater responsibility, a better income, a better location than others have.
How can we deal effectively with envy? Here are three tactics I attempt to use.
First, I try to remember that we ministers are on the same team. On a team, each player is assigned a position, and when each plays the position well, the team prospers. When someone tries to stand out, the team loses.
At five feet, seven inches, I don’t spike the ball very often in our local volleyball league. Yet I frequently make a set from backcourt that yields a smashing, point-winning spike. The spiker gets the praise. I rejoice, though, because I’m part of a successful team effort.
Team play in Christian ministry, though less obvious, is just as real. When another minister succeeds, my team benefits even though I receive no applause. I try to remember we’re both on the same team, playing for the same Coach. I rejoice with God in the victories our team wins.
Second, I try to live by the motto, “I will not speak ill of another minister or ministry, because I don’t know how God is using the person or ministry in others’ lives.” That motto gets tested when I encounter methods of ministry I flat-out reject, hear a theology I think is deficient, or see what I think is unethical behavior. But I keep silent or speak privately with the colleague, while I rejoice with God in any success for the kingdom.
Third, I focus on my own responsibility before God. David Seamands relates how after ministering in obscurity in India for years, he noted many of his classmates advancing to higher and better positions. He became discouraged at his own lack of notice until he realized he was responsible only to do his best; God was responsible for whatever acclaim came his way.
As an associate minister in Saginaw, Michigan, I worked with one of the most effective preachers I’ve heard. Week in, week out, he spoke something valuable to me as well as to the lay people. Yet no one ever asked him to speak at a major conference. Only rarely was he invited to speak outside his limited area. As I compared him with the renowned preachers I’ve heard, I slowly realized that for his own reasons, God chooses to exalt some people and not others.
Those who receive attention aren’t necessarily better, just more visible. No matter where a person serves or what he does, he stands responsible to God for his personal best. God takes the responsibility for whatever acclaim comes his way.
That attitude knocks the legs out from under the green-eyed monster.
-Charles Cerling, Jr.
First Baptist Church
Tawas City, Michigan
Copyright © 1986 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
