Whoever can weep over himself for one hour is greater than the one who is able to teach the whole world; whoever recognizes the depth of his own frailty is greater than the one who sees visions of angels.
Isaac of Nineveh
There is no failure except in no longer trying.
Elbert Hubbard
In the past five years,” wrote one pastor, “I have wrestled with doubt about my calling and with depression arising out of that doubt. In the depths of these attacks, I become very much a ‘people pleaser,’ letting others set the direction and priorities of my ministry, working frantically but finding no satisfaction in all I’m doing, becoming more and more drained and discouraged and doubtful. I tend to hide in the office, spending less and less time with my family. I withdraw from reading the Bible, from prayer, from reading of any type, from anything that’s just for my benefit.”
The pastor who made that statement is perhaps facing more severe doubt than most of us in the ministry, and yet given the difficulties of pastoring we’ve already considered, we can all identify with his struggle at one level or another. It’s just not humanly possible to do the job perfectly or to fulfill every expectation. Even when we know that, we can’t help doubting ourselves or our calling from time to time. It goes with the territory.
The doubt can begin right after seminary, upon entering the first pastorate. I liken it to what the people of Israel felt when the spies reported the situation in the Promised Land — like grasshoppers before giants. The people didn’t expect to face such a formidable-looking obstacle, and they were afraid. In the same way, some young seminary graduates enter the ministry unprepared for the reality of sons of Anak on church boards — powerful individuals with their own agendas. Young pastors may try to apply academic lessons to the situation, but when it comes to church politics, budgets, and personality conflicts, no one cares how well they can translate the Greek New Testament. Instead, the boards and skeptical parishioners want to see skills in diplomacy, motivation, fund raising, administration, and getting things done. The young pastor may think to himself, This isn’t what I was called by God to do!
The Whip of “Success”
One of the big reasons for doubt and feelings of failure in the ministry today is the glorification of “success,” meaning measurable growth in numbers or in some form of spiritual attainment. Articles, books, and television glorify the big churches, the fast-growing institutions, and the ones with innovative and exciting ministries.
Parishioners hear about these things happening elsewhere and ask why their church can’t be like that. As leaders, we read the accounts and go to conferences where we hear the techniques of the supersuccessful, and we come back wondering why God isn’t blessing our ministries that way. We wonder, Am I not working hard enough, doing everything I know how to do, and trying to be faithful? Our board members may wonder the same thing about us. The desire for growth becomes a whip wielded at various times by everyone in the church, ourselves included (or perhaps most of all).
“The success syndrome of American church life is hard to overcome in one’s personal life,” says one pastor. “After thirty years of pastoring, I rarely preach to more than two hundred people. This causes me to wonder if I’m doing anything right. My slowly waning physical powers cause me to wonder if I will ever reach the numerical goals of church growth.”
Says another minister, “When a pastor is highly committed to church growth, works hard, and applies growth principles, but the growth doesn’t come at the expected rate, it’s easy to get down on yourself. The tendency is to feel good or bad depending on the Sunday morning attendance.”
A perceived lack of spiritual growth on the part of the congregation can also lead to self-doubt, as it has for this pastor: “When my members constantly display their apathy toward their responsibility to the Lord and his Body, this creates frustration and doubt for me — whether it’s worth being in the ministry. At times I feel I could serve God just as well in another field of work.”
Another pastor expressed the feeling this way: “I know the Holy Spirit is real, but he’s spending most of his time at a few other congregations where the ‘action’ is.”
This self-comparison can be a harsh taskmaster, seemingly impossible to satisfy. It’s kind of like the question you ask a materialist, “How much is enough?” And the answer is always, “A little more.” In the same way, if we get caught up in the pursuit of church “success,” we have to ask how much growth is enough. The honest answer is that no amount is ever going to satisfy fully.
As if this weren’t bad enough, there are also some situations in which a church simply can’t be successful as the world measures it. It’s impossible. Suppose, for example, that you’re in an economically depressed area and many families are moving away in search of work. Such a church is probably not going to grow; the people aren’t there. The pastor’s job is to shepherd the remaining flock, and the ministry has to be judged not on its size or numerical growth but on the pastor’s faithfulness in nurturing the people spiritually. That kind of ministry can bear fruit, even if the results aren’t immediately obvious or measurable.
Living with Doubt
Sometimes the feelings of failure can manifest themselves in drastic ways. This is especially true if a pastor feels like a personal failure, unable to be the kind of model of Christian living people expect. We know our weaknesses and failings. This tension between being holy and accepting our humanity can create tremendous stress and self-doubt that, if unchecked, can cause a pastor to snap.
In my days as a pastor, I got a call one night from a policeman friend in our community. He asked if I could come to the station, and when I got there, I learned that he had another friend, a pastor, locked up in the back room. This pastor had exposed himself to some young girls.
“If you would deal with this, and promise me you’ll get this fellow some kind of help, we won’t have to run this through the blotter,” the policeman said. “It doesn’t have to get out to the public as long as it doesn’t happen again.”
I couldn’t imagine what would have prompted this pastor to do something like this. His life had been smooth. He had married the “right” woman; his church was strong; he had seemingly done all the right things in ministry up to that point.
When I asked him what had happened, he said, “I’m so tired of being on that pedestal. I can’t stand it any longer trying to be perfect.”
He had finally decided he was going to come off the pedestal in such a way that no one would ever have to ask why he had left the ministry. I was shocked; he, on the other hand, was greatly relieved. I felt that the worst had just happened; he felt the worst thing was living what he considered to be a lie.
His tragic experience points again to the need for confidants, people with whom we can be honest without risking the relationship or possible disclosure. We all feel the tension he felt, but we can’t let it build to the point his did.
I’ve also found that self-doubt and feelings of failure can grow out of an unrealistic attitude toward life and work. Some young pastors, I’ve found, have an illusion that life ought to be glorious most of the time, that 80 to 90 percent of life should be filled with enjoyment and fulfillment.
Very quickly such an attitude is going to run into the brick wall called reality. My experience suggests that maybe 15 percent of the time you get to do things you love; another 15 percent of the time, you have to do things you hate but that your responsibilities require. The remaining majority of the time is spent just doggedly getting your work done, going through the routine, fulfilling obligations, and keeping promises.
What this unexciting bulk of life calls for is perseverance, plain and simple. We hang in there and slog it out, getting done the things that have to be done. It may seem pretty dull compared to the perceived life and ministry of the media superstar, but it’s the stuff of which real life and real ministry are made.
It’s that persistence that eventually wins out when nothing else would. Think of what would have happened if Hudson Taylor had given up and gone home after spending years in China without a single convert. But he persevered and saw great fruit from his ministry in the end.
I always try to bear in mind, too, that when Satan decides to attack a pastor, it’s often in this area of self-doubt. It’s a great way to render a pastor ineffective or even to remove a pastor from ministry altogether. Here again, the only real answer is to persevere, to keep doing what we know needs doing. Faithfulness is a far better response than to be felled by feelings that will pass.
The attitude of persistence we all need was captured well by this pastor: “I find myself in this pastorate fighting an uphill battle. For every success, a failure is sure to come! Yet, I’m still at it after ten years in the ministry. This means I have more than a job. It’s a calling.”
Like this pastor, I’ve also been sustained by my sense of calling. I’ve never doubted my calling to ministry. Yes, I know many pastors who never have had that definite sense of calling, who believe the ministry is where God wants them but can’t look back to a specific point in time when they felt a call. The lack of such a clear sense of call can be another source of self-doubt when life in the ministry gets tough. At such times, a person can easily wonder whether God doesn’t in fact have some other line of work in mind. I know that in my own life I’ve gone to the want ads any number of times to see what other jobs were available. Fortunately, I’ve always ended up reaffirming my call and my sense that there’s no other work I could be happy doing for very long. In a way, perhaps the fact that the want ads appear so barren can itself be a reaffirmation of our calling to ministry.
Recently I was talking with a pastor who said, “I haven’t had that sense of calling, and I find myself thinking life must be better in some other line of work.” I encouraged him to try something else for a while.
“See if you can be happy apart from the ministry,” I said. I confessed I’d never actually done that myself because of my conviction that no other line of work offers the type of challenge I most enjoy, and because of my belief in my call. But I believe that if a person can be happy doing anything other than the ministry, he ought to do it. Earlier, I quoted the old adage that if you’re called to preach the gospel, don’t stoop to being a king. Now, however, I’d add a corollary: If you’re not called to preach, you’ll be a lot happier as a peasant.
I’ve found, too, that I struggle more with doubt when I forget that life and ministry are a process and a partnership with God — when I focus instead on individual accomplishments and individual battles, on individual transactions with people and with the Lord. (In other words, when I try to keep a scorecard on my ministry.)
The process-oriented person, on the other hand, the one who sees that we’re all in a process of growing and maturing, and that God is working out his purpose over time, can back off from a difficult situation and say, “Well, I just have to stay with this. My task is to be a faithful pastor, to do my best, to take the downs with the ups, and let God take care of the results. After all, he put me here, so a big part of the responsibility for how things turn out is his; the weight isn’t all on my shoulders.”
Doubt and Faith
There’s one other kind of doubt that I believe we need to address because it’s so important and because it happens to those of us in the ministry more than we might like to admit. I’m referring to spiritual doubt.
One painfully honest pastor put it like this: “Sometimes I am hit with the flash: What if all this just isn’t true? What if there is no God? I sometimes wonder if I should quit preaching and go ‘looking for reality.'”
You preside at the funeral of a little girl killed in a tornado, and despite all the explanations you’ve heard and given yourself for why God allows such things, none of them is really satisfying.
A teenager in your church is blinded in an auto collision. The drunk driver who hit him walks away uninjured.
You look at the poverty and misery in your community, and you wonder if the work you do makes any difference. Why do wicked men prosper, and why are they allowed to take advantage of the weak and powerless? Isn’t God listening to our prayers? Will he never bless our efforts?
Or you struggle with some habitual sin of your own, and knowing the added responsibility of your position, you find yourself feeling guilty much of the time. Is this the life you want the members of your congregation to imitate?
Most of us have doubts like these at times. Let me describe briefly the perspective I’ve learned to bring to questions of doubt and faith.
I find that many pastors begin to feel guilty or afraid if their minds start entertaining doubts like these. They think such thoughts indicate a lack of faith. There was a time when I felt that way, too. My understanding now, however, is that most men and women of great faith down through the centuries have entertained such doubts. The psalms, for example, are full of expressions of deep doubt, especially those of David, “the man after God’s own heart.”
Why do we doubt? Because we’re not blind or stupid. We can see clearly that whereas God is good and loving and sovereign, this world is full of evidence to suggest that if such a God exists, he seems to be on vacation much of the time. One of the most pointed expressions of this ambiguity is the exclamation attributed to General Eisenhower when he saw the Auschwitz extermination camp: “Where was God?”
On one level, that seems a faithless statement — “I’ve seen the evidence, and it appears God was nonexistent.” But on another, deeper level, the question shows the evidence of faith.
Faith is the conviction that there ought to be justice, that in some larger context there must be an answer. Eisenhower’s question and all the similar questions we voice are actually expressions of a longing for satisfaction, a longing implanted by God. When we see evil triumph, the truly godless response would be to say, “So what else is new? Why shouldn’t the world be that way?”
One of the signs of faithful people is that they’re troubled by evil and injustice — even when they seemingly come about as “an act of God.” So such “doubt” is actually a seeking for God in the midst of confusion, and that’s a profound kind of faith. In fact, I might wonder about you a little if you claim never to ask such questions.
I don’t mean to sound irreverent, but humanity has struggled since the beginning of time with the attempt to reconcile the love and power of God with the pain we see around us every day. And it is a struggle if we’re honest.
Faith, as I have come to understand it, is not an absence of doubt. Only those who refuse to look at the world realistically never doubt. Rather, faith is acting in obedience to God in the midst of ambiguous, even strongly contrary, evidence. Faith is an insistence on trusting God even though he often seems, on the basis of outward evidence, to have turned his back on the world.
The writer to the Hebrews said, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” And very often what’s not seen in this life are the love and power of the Lord. Some wag started a saying that has gained current popularity and contains a large measure of truth: “Life is hard, and then you die.”
I’m not trying to be gloomy or to suggest that life is always painful or that God’s love is never to be seen. Of course not. But the fact remains that there’s no shortage of pain and evil in this world.
Like many a young evangelist, I started out with a heavy emphasis on apologetics. I figured that if I did a good enough job of showing people the evidence for Christianity from the orderliness of creation, the reliability of the biblical documents, and so on, they would be compelled to accept Christ as Savior.
What I learned, however, is that the evidence for Christianity does not compel a person to follow God. Math compels; unless you’re irrational, you have to agree that two plus two equals four. But a reasonable person can look at the evidence for Christianity and still ask tough questions and make strong, contrary arguments. I found I couldn’t give a perfect, irrefutable answer to every philosophical question or everything in life that happens contrary to the nature of God. But I also found my faith was something other than evidence that demanded a particular verdict.
The evidence is helpful. It does demand that a person make a choice, but it doesn’t compel the person to decide for God. Once a person hears the case for Christianity, he or she must either accept or reject the work of Jesus Christ.
In that light, faith is not the absence of doubt. Faith is looking squarely at the evidence — the statements of Scripture as well as the confusing realities that suggest life is capricious and there is no loving God — and choosing, by faith, to continue in obedience toward God.
In addition to that understanding of faith, the other thing that’s helped me deal with doubt is my view of God. The Bible pictures him as a father, the best father there is. I think the reason Jesus portrayed him that way is that a father doesn’t relate to his child on the basis of the child’s ability to understand systematic theology. He doesn’t give up on the relationship each time his child does something wrong.
Rather, a good father loves and is loyal to his child whether the child is smart or stupid, handsome or plain, good or bad — and even if the child does something the rest of society hates. When the parents of a mass murderer are interviewed, what do they say? “He was a good boy. We don’t understand how he could do this.” And then when the son’s crimes are described in court, the parents sit there and weep, as much for their son as for the victims. Such is a parent’s heart.
God has a parent’s heart, the best and the strongest. I am utterly sure that no matter how we’ve sinned, he sticks with us. His heart can be broken, but never his love. This is not to say our Christian faith is emotional and irrational. I am saying, however, that nineteenth-century rationalism has failed to satisfy the human heart. Our Christian gospel rests with one foot in heaven and the other firmly on the earth. I believe this is the reason that the Bible uses human terms, describing God in the role of father. Other attempts to explain God, including systematic theology, however helpful, fall short in their ability to carry the whole weight of human experience. The story of the prodigal son is one of the most powerful in the entire Bible. Picture that son going off to a far country deliberately to spite his father and to live wantonly. Picture that father standing atop the hill near the house every afternoon, looking hopefully to see if his son will come home today. And then picture that father when he finally sees his son. He runs down that hill with open arms and tears streaming down his cheeks, and he embraces his son who “once was lost, and now is found.”
My faith, my security as a Christian, rests not in my impeccable logic and my ability to remove all doubts. It rests not in getting God all figured out. Rather, my faith rests in knowing God’s nature. As I have come to know him as a loving father, I can be assured of his forgiveness, his goodness, and his power.
In my own life, I have come to a point of being able to say that even though I still have doubts, by faith I will hold my logic and suspend judgment until God can explain it to me some day. That doesn’t mean I don’t want an explanation of why the little girl dies in the tornado. I do. But I concede that he is much bigger than my ability to understand.
That’s not the way logic or systematic theology works, but that’s the way you relate to a loving father.
This is precisely why we are told to bring men and women to Christ rather than to a system, and it’s why Jesus stood against those greatest of systematizers of faith, the Pharisees. Putting God in a box will eventually let us down as our rigid formulations are forced to fit real situations. Those who deal with theology in the hypothetical do not feel this to the degree that pastors do, who face the ambiguities, crises, and inequities of real people. Pastors must learn to trust God, not their ideas of God.
As one pastor said, “I have to be on speaking terms with God as a living personality. He often calms my doubts with a touch of his Spirit rather than an answer to my question.”
Our path is bounded by the twin ditches of rationalism, with its legalism, and antinomianism, with its lack of certainty. Following Christ, staying on the path and out of the ditches, is our great challenge.
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