In “Departure: Why I Left the Church,” former pastor Alexander Lang (2023) shares why he chose to leave pastoral ministry. He candidly names some of the realities facing leaders in today’s church culture. These realities leave many called, gifted people stressed out, burned out, and leaving ministry in droves.
As Lang points out, ministry is difficult, without exception.
Some of what makes ministry so hard in this “Church in decline” season is the toxic culture that backflows from the frenetic rat race “out there” and into the church.
This culture often comes from denominational leaders, congregants, and peers. Many of whom buy into a narrative that if leaders just run fast enough, they can outrun the decline of the Church as we’ve known it.
The Christian faith is knit together by a series of interruptions. The messiness of Jesus’ incarnation interrupted the story of a God who could only be accessed through particular rituals. The embodied grace of Jesus’ interactions interrupted oppressive systems of status, privilege, and exclusionary religious practices. Jesus’ resurrection after a grisly death interrupted the power of death with the infinite power of an uncontainable love.
These interruptions were transformative for those who bore witness, and they remain so for Christians today, because they are wholly unlike anything experienced previously. Throughout history, interruptions are one of the primary modes through which God’s activity is evidenced in the world and the Church.
God is calling for an interruption in the Church’s culture.
But God won’t force you or your faith community to respond. Instead, the living, breathing body of Christ (the Church) is invited to reimagine how you do ministry by turning away from the rat race. The Church is being invited to lay down its to-do lists, jam-packed program calendars, and traditional ministry metrics that count only numbers and dollars. You’re being called to listen deeply to the people God places in your midst first, and develop ministry ideas second.
There really is a choice before you.
You are not actually tethered to the toxic ministry treadmill, endlessly sprinting at a pace no one consented to run.
You can push the emergency “STOP” button and take a step in a new direction. You can choose to be interrupted so that your faith community, guided by the Holy Spirit, can pursue ministries that prioritize transformed lives over simply full church buildings.
We can choose to believe that more in ministry is not always better. We can adopt new narratives of ministry success that transcend traditional metrics of money and attendance. By doing this, we can tell the full story of God’s work in the world today.
At the Ministry Leadership Center, we know embracing interruption is hard, counter-cultural work. Yet it’s vital, but not because the survival of the institutional Church is what matters most. Interrupting Church culture is essential because the body of Christ still has something transformative to offer the world by witnessing to the radical love of Christ.
Our staff journeys with faith communities around the country that are realizing that heavily programmed ministry models are no longer effective. They’re realizing that their people’s exhaustion and anxiety aren’t actually a sign of fruit in ministry. Instead, they’re looking beyond attendance figures and measuring signs of transformation in real people’s daily lives.
We’re helping them learn a process for engaging with people in new ways in their communities. In most cases, this leads to radically simplifying their ministries and boosting their impact.
An interrupted Church, that embraces transformed lives over numerical growth, sabbath over endless striving, and radical welcome over exclusion, is the only way forward.
God is calling for an interruption in Church culture, and the time is now. Called people like you and those in your faith community can find joy in ministry, not stress and burnout.
We’d love to support your faith community as you shift your ministry. Schedule a free consultation with us today.
About the Author— Meghan Hatcher is the Senior Director of Ministry Strategies at the Ministry Leadership Center. She has served diverse faith communities through pastoral leadership, youth ministry, new church development, community engagement, and ministry innovation. Meghan has a Bachelor of Journalism, a Master of Science in Sustainable Development and Applied Sociology, and a Master of Divinity.
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