My Personal Story

As the son of a bi-vocational business founder and pastor, I somewhat naturally assumed this challenging pathway as normative. I was only 6 years old when my father started the family business and simultaneously ordained in a fledgling church startup. Bi-vocational pastors were the norm in the Amish world of my childhood. As such, it wasn’t unusual to hold similar expectations for myself were I to be called to serve the church in some capacity. In fact, not only was this model of church leadership normative, it was held up as the biblical model – an ideal to ward off the sinister “minister-for-hire” who would most certainly succumb to the urge to preach to please people so they would pay him. Little thought was given to the fact that Paul’s charge against preaching for the money could only be a potential problem if there was, in fact, money involved.

Now let me be clear. I think there is a place for this sort of bi-vocational role. The Apostle Paul clearly modeled it and offered a defense for why he chose that path in specific circumstances. He also makes it rather clear that this was a voluntary choice and not normative. But more on that at a later time.

Several motifs framed my own entry into bi-vocational ministry at the age of 25. While I was in a situation (foreign church plant on visitor’s visa) that required my primary source of income to be from ministry related activities, I held to the ideal that one should also be involved in the marketplace with the goal of generating one’s primary income from such endeavors rather than from pastoral ministry. Wouldn’t a salaried ministry position ultimately compromise the integrity of the minister?

By the time I was in my late 40’s, I was the president of a growing business and senior pastor of a growing church. Both positions felt like they ought to be full-time jobs. My perspective had begun to shift toward seeing the role of a pastor as ideally being a vocational role rather than a second job done from the margins of time – after work hours and on the weekends. I began to feel the enormity of the task as the church grew toward 300 people in addition to launching a second campus that required a fair bit of attention. Resolved to make it work for a few years until I could hand off the senior pastor role to a full-time pastor, I worked hard to establish leadership teams in both the business and the church where I could increasingly serve as a coaching leader rather than being deeply immersed in the day-to-day details of the church or the business.

Time management was the issue that drove my most passionate quest for learning. Calendars, both ideal work-week calendars and actual calendars with meetings and tasks scheduled, became the focus of my attention. And yet it seemed as though my effectiveness was diminishing.

One day my executive assistant in the business (who also served in some facets as a personal assistant) told me I should really get some help sorting the pressures and stress I was increasingly facing. The business had hit a glass ceiling of growth and increasing spending had only led to losses rather than the desired break-through. Challenges increasingly surfaced in the church – I wasn’t adequately available for people (emotionally or with my time), details were falling through the cracks and significant levels of discontent were emerging. The stress was intense. My assistant gave me an application and multi-page questionnaire from a local Christian counseling ministry and offered to make an appointment for me with a counselor they had found to be very helpful in their own journey. I consented.

Within a few short weeks, I was seated in the office of a man who was to become a dear friend. John was a seasoned counselor. Nearing retirement years now, with degrees in both counseling and theology; years of experience initially as a law enforcement officer and then an elder and counselor in the church, and now founder and administrator of the third counseling center, John had seen a lot. Within the first hour of our conversation he gave me the reassuring line – “I’ve seen a hundred pastors like you.” Knowing I wasn’t alone and that someone actually understood the intense pressure I was under was an incredible consolation. He also warned me that unless I made some pretty radical shifts I would likely face a health crisis of some sort within the next few years. And I did. Only a few months later my emotional dam burst as wave after wave of emotion – locked up for years behind the dam of a stoic need to “carry on” – now burst out uncontrollably. Grief, anger, pain and tears. Oceans of tears. What was going on? John agreed to see me almost immediately and explained in simple terms that I was facing extreme emotional fatigue and there was no alternative but to take an extended period of complete rest. It was then that I found out who the two teams I led in business and church really were. And for the next three months the business team carried on with no more than a few emails. The team at church gave me a complete sabbatical for nearly 7 months. And the church – likely with no real understanding of what was going on other than my counselor John showing up at a members meeting explaining I needed an extended period of rest due to extreme emotional fatigue. The church stepped up in remarkable ways, which I will explain at a later time. What they did serves as a model for other organizations finding themselves in such a moment of crisis.

The initial stage of rest was wonderful. Providentially, several months prior, I had scheduled a week-long retreat at a monastery several hours away that was to start about two weeks after the initial crash. I was initially uncertain as to whether I could go or even should go. But I did. It was a silent retreat where meals and chapel times were shared with a small group of other people but all in silence. I slept for 12 hours at night and took multiple naps every day. My mind was in such a state that I could scarcely read, even the Bible. Prayer was merely a groan. What I started doing that provided significant nurture for my soul was copying scripture. It gave me something to do physically while also engaging my mind in a slow and deliberate reading of biblical texts. I copied a selection of Psalms, the Sermon on the Mount, the Pastoral Epistles and a variety of other passages. The chapel services in the small, but beautifully remodeled chapel were an oasis of prayer and reflection comprised largely of singing and praying from the Psalms coupled with other scripture readings – five times a day.

Attending church was problematic. I simply couldn’t walk into the doors of the church without feeling the weight of responsibility overwhelm me. – a responsibility I simply was not in a place to assume. It was not a place I could meet God. He seemed to be nowhere near that space. It felt like the epicenter of where God had abandoned me. I didn’t fully understand all that was happening emotionally,

and I still don’t. I just knew I couldn’t show up there. So for the next several months I attended other churches in the area. I quickly settled on a church where a good friend pastored who had gone through a similar experience earlier in his ministry and understood empathically where I was. Those were healing services. The songs, scriptures, and sermons were important. But what nurtured my soul, and sustained my faith was the weekly food at the Lord’s table. Often weeping, I received the bread and the chalice in open hands from Aubrey who looked into my eyes and said, “The Body of Christ, for you.” My earlier understanding that the Lord’s table was intended to be a central part of the worship of the church settled slowly into a deeply held conviction. It was a weekly, tangible encounter with Jesus. Often the only one I had that seemed at all like he might still be around and maybe had not abandoned me in the darkness of this persistent night. Returning to a worship service where this is not a central component of our community life remains one of the deepest griefs of my current ministry.

Another activity I undertook was hiking. I would drive up into the mountains or to a scenic river valley and walk for hours. Occasionally I carried my fly rod along but rarely used it. I gradually learned to allow my mind to slow down, to let go of the frantic mental activity of sorting, processing and striving to understand. I learned increasingly to see, to actually observe the birds, bugs and buds while tuning in more and more to the sounds in forest and pasture, the whisper of the wind and the warmth of the sunlight.

Moving into this season of rest was difficult. All sorts of questions began to emerge. Who am I, if I’m not being productive? Suppose I never regain the emotional fortitude to return to leadership and ministry? Would I simply limp into old age from my mid-life crash? And, probably more than any other questions, what about me had allowed me to fail to see this crisis looming?

Overarching all of these questions was a deep abiding sense that God, the God whom I thought I was serving through sacrificial ministry, had abandoned me and left me abandoned at the moment of my deepest crisis.

From the vantage point of rest, I began to remember stories I had heard from other men that now seemed to be resonating with me from my own place of fatigue. I sought out a few such conversations and discovered my journey was not as rare as I had initially thought. I was not alone. Others had gone down this pathway. Such resources gave me both hope and help. I was able start back in business slowly at first and then with increased energy. Knowing I faced some major life decisions ahead led me to selling a majority stake in the company as one way of relieving some of the pressure I was facing and working under someone else’s leadership with the hopes of regaining a level of personal confidence as I moved toward recovery. Returning to the intense demands of pastoral leadership came much more slowly and with much greater difficulty. I struggled with a desire, even a sense of calling, to remain bi-vocational – involved in both the church and the marketplace – but I knew it would need to be at a very different level of involvement than where I was at the time of my crash. That decision finally came about a year and a half after the crash. The church granted me a release from my role as senior pastor. I would continue to serve the church in a limited role, as I felt able and as the leadership team requested.

I was not prepared for the deep emotional pain that I experienced over the next few years. I had no idea emotions were so real, so unrelenting, so insistent on being heard. The slightest incidents would trigger anger – less in the form of outbursts and more in the form of cold, retreating silence. I continued having regular conversations with John and I’ll never forget the moment I understood for the first time what was going on. I was going through a grieving process. In the most unexpected times, a random comment from my wife would trigger a deep grief and sense of loss over what I had to let go and the pain of that grief would trigger anger as a protective mechanism. I knew then I needed to learn to grieve my losses along with the sense of failure and disappointment. The language of lament, particularly from the Psalms became the language of my heart and prayers. But this anger and the emotional pain behind it was not to disappear quickly. Seasons, long seasons of darkness and depression followed – and still haunt me.

One of the most important parts of this journey was the slowly developing understanding of who I am – in my frailty, weaknesses and sins but also in my strengths, abilities and relationships. The journey inward was not a natural one for me. While I do process things internally, I am not naturally introspective. It took John’s continued guidance. I soon realized John knew me like an open book though he was only telling me little bits about it as he felt I was able and ready to receive – much like Jesus in this regard. Pride is nearly always a way in which we actively deny owning the less complimentary aspects of ourselves – and I was no exception. This journey of true self-discovery unearthed a new perspective on my faith, my relationship to God through his son Jesus.

This journey was undertaken in some measure by meetings with the sabbatical group the church provided for me as I stepped back from ministry and they stayed with me, meeting nearly once per month for 2 ½ years. These four couples walked with my wife and I during the season of rest and reordering that was to take place: one deacon and his wife, one elder and his wife, one couple who had been friends over the years and one older couple – he had been a mentor of mine for nearly 4 years along with his wife who was a nurse. The conversations felt a lot like a typical doctor’s exam – I get naked and they poke and prod – emotionally and spiritually in this case though the physical was certainly not excluded. It was hard but helpful. The wisdom and insight I received around our dinner table with these friends is impossible to measure and I will never be able to repay the debt I owe to their steadfast and persistent love during this time. Classic Christian discipleship, I suppose.

Changes were slow in coming. Old habits die hard. And yet, I have learned so much about myself, about God, about life and leadership during this season. Probably more than anything, this particular facet of my pilgrimage is propelling me into a new season of life where I hope to serve fellow travelers in ways I have been served. Not as an expert or a guide but as a fellow traveler.