Craig Brian Larson discusses the pitfalls of ministry with unusual honesty in Pastoral Grit: The Strength to Stand and Stay (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1998). “My eyes were opened to what had happened to me, or rather, to what I had done to myself, while pastoring,” he wrote after a five-year break from serving as a pastor.
Larson realized he measured success by the number of people who attended his church. He felt insignificant as the pastor of a small church. He tried to make his church grow, but became manipulative and angry the more he focused on numbers.
Anger is corrosive. We can bury anger under the surface with acting skills, but anger exhausts everyone it touches. Angry pastors wear people out, themselves included.
Anger fits some situations. “Jesus went to Jerusalem. There in the Temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and pigeons, and also the moneychangers sitting at their tables. So he made a whip from cords and drove all the animals out of the Temple, both the sheep and the cattle; he overturned the tables of the moneychangers and scattered their coins; and he ordered those who sold the pigeons, “Take them out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market place!” His disciples remembered that the scripture says, “My devotion to your house, O God, burns in me like a fire” (John 2:13–17, Good News Translation). Jesus continued to attract crowds in the Temple after his angry outburst, but the religious authorities began work on getting him crucified.
Anger is not always wrong, but chronic anger is a killer in all kinds of ways.
Larson moved beyond his obsession with numbers and pastors a small church today. He rarely worries about being insignificant anymore. Rather, he notices when his people are worried and responds to their needs like the good pastor he has become.
Larson needed a five-year break from ministry to come to terms with what had been going wrong in his work. Most of us can’t imagine devoting even an hour per week to self-assessment. No wonder we persist in unproductive ways as long as we do. But like Larson, we all need to step back from what we are doing from time to time to figure out if we are on the right track. If we don’t, the anger is likely to continue until it burns a hole in our lives one way or another.
www.mtmgeorgia.org published a version of this post previously.
Recent Comments