Hello my friends,

This Sunday marks 10 years of leading churches here in my home state of Idaho. I have carried a license to pastor since 2005. I was ordained in 2018 in one denomination, who would later demand it back in 2021. My current denomination graciously transferred me in before my credentials were taken, which is where I have been serving ever since. My current place in ministry has been a source of great healing, but there has also been deep grief and wondering about the future of my call and of Christianity as a whole.

If you haven't read this article by a pastor who just recently resigned, called "Why I Left." I encourage you to do so. While I am not resigning or leaving the church, I can relate to a lot of what he mentioned in his article.

​Barna did a national survey of pastors. It revealed that as of March 2022, 42% of pastors considered quitting. The reasons for this are numerous, but here are the top five reasons that were given:

1. The immense stress of the job: 56%
2. I feel lonely and isolated: 43%
3. Current political divisions: 38%
4. I am unhappy with the effect this role has had on my family: 29%
5. I am not optimistic about the future of my church: 29%

Given this 10 year anniversary of sorts, I wanted to just write a simple, honest list of wishes and reflections I have from the last ten years, in no particular order. As with all my writings and reflections, my hope is to foster broader reflection and growth within ourselves and Christianity as a whole. I pray that’s the spirit in which this list is received.

Looking back over the last 10 years of ministry

I wish people understood how isolating the pastoral role can be. So many people have all these ideas and assumptions about what a pastor does and even more about what pastors are supposed to do, yet very few people stop and actually ask, “what is it like being a pastor for you?” Being along side people in birth, death, marriage, divorce, celebrations, sorrows, legal trouble, financial trouble, family struggles—and so much more—all while being tasked with their spiritual development as you are navigating many of those things in your own life as well, it is incredibly isolating when people think being a pastor is all they see on Sunday mornings (which also takes a lot of heavy lifting to do well in a small church).

I wish I encountered more empathy and understanding as a pastor within the church. There are so many expectations on what a pastor must do and what we need to be, including having all the care and compassion for others. Yet, when someone has a complaint or disagrees with something you’ve preached or a decision you’ve made, it is often as if the pastor isn’t deserving of care and compassion in the expression of those complaints and concerns. We are human beings too. No one deserves to be treated with hostility and malice. Moreover, no one knows what it's like being a millennial pastor right now unless you're a millennial pastor or you ask and find out.

I wish my pastoral education prepared me better for finances, accounting, and business management. I wish leading a church wasn’t so centered on finances, accounting, and business management.

I wish the way I am now being taken care of as a pastor by my current church and my current denomination was the norm rather than the exception. I wish so much of my experience and experience of my peers didn’t leave us having to wonder if or how we would have health insurance or even be able to cover our basic needs.

I wish the church took better care of pastors. Rebecca and I have been married since 2020, so I was a single pastor for the majority of my career. My singleness was seen more as a problem to get over so I could be a “real leader.” While a few were very aware of this, the prevailing approach from leaders over me in the denomination, to fellow pastors, to those within my congregation was that I was “incomplete.” I would have my leadership ability, masculinity, and even my sexuality questioned all the time. I would also have my personal boundaries violated by the assumption that I had “all the time in the world,” because I didn’t have a “family” to take care of. Not to mention how so many thought it was their responsibility to get me into a relationship. I consistently felt like people refused to just accept me for me.

I wish the church took better care of its pastors (part 2). I went through all the requirements to become a pastor. A process that lasted from 2004 to 2018 and included acquiring the needed licensing, ministry experience, and degrees, all of which were not cheap, even with scholarships. Only to step into a senior pastoral role that would pay me less than my part time supervisor role at Starbucks. Because I was a “young pastor,” the denomination placed me in an old church in hopes that I would “revive” it and the church felt justified to pay me a salary that barely covered my basic needs. I would go years of overdrawing my bank account, not being able to save for retirement or start paying off my student debt, which I had acquired to get this job in the first place. All while also expecting me to pay for my own health insurance. Even Starbucks gave me health insurance. I felt this crushing sense that I would never own a house or be able to start a family, but I felt this certainty that God had called me to be there, so I just endured, hoping things would get better. This had such a negative impact on my sense of worth, mental health, and physical health. I’m 6’1” and I started that pastoral role in 2013, physically and mentally healthy, weighing in at 195 lbs. When I left that church in 2021, I had been diagnosed with PTSD, anxiety, and depression, weighing in at 250 lbs.

*I'm happy to share that I was able to return to my healthy weight just this last March and have been able to maintain it ever since!

I wish the church took better care of its pastors (part 3). In 2016, because of the overwhelming stress of ministry, growing political divisions, and the personal financial strain, I had my first ever experience with suicidal ideation one night. It scared me so much that I scheduled an appointment with a doctor the next morning, even though I knew I wasn’t going to be able to afford it. I was diagnosed with PTSD, anxiety, and depression. I didn’t feel safe to tell my board or my district superintendent. They had shown me that I wasn’t “complete” because I was both “inexperienced” and “single.” They had also made dismissive remarks about others who had mental illness. How on earth could I trust them with this news? Again, I had to walk that road alone. It was only after I was down the road of healing that I would feel open to share it with my church. The rugged individualist expectation put on pastors, that they need to “do it all on their own,” and “lead the charge,” especially in a role where you are not being provided for already, can—and has—led pastors to take their own lives.

*The Clergy Health Initiative at Duke Divinity School found that pastors experience depression at rates double that of the general population—and yet the resources available to them specifically are few. https://today.duke.edu/2013/08/clergydepressionnewsrelease

I wish I’d had the courage to advocate for myself better. As a first born, a perfectionist, and a dedicated people pleaser at the time, I always framed the problems I was experiencing through the lens of my not measuring up or doing enough to make things right. I’m haunted by one of the most manipulative and hurtful people on my church board saying to me, “you really do have the gift of long suffering.” They knew better than most as they were very aware of the intentional suffering they were causing me. Suffering I justified enduring because “God had called me here.” I wish I knew that I could have—and should have—walked away from that church. I wish I had believed in myself enough to know that the problem wasn’t with me. I wish I hadn’t cared so much to the point of almost losing my life about a church and denomination that cared so little about me.

I wish I still had the same hope and drive I did when I first graduated from seminary. I wish it hadn’t been taken away by the church.

I wish the church actually believed it needed to change. Life isn’t the same as it was before covid and all the other things our world has seen since 2020. But even before that, life immediately before covid wasn’t the same as it was for the previous generations of clergy and the church. Yet our institutions, our church culture, and the expectations of the congregation seem unchanged by these realities. The church is already in decline for so many of these reasons. The church is going to decline even more by not changing structurally and institutionally to rise to meet our changed reality. I think this is why so many of us feel stuck between what the church is and what it needs to be.

I wish people knew how important church actually is. In our current—and needed—criticism of the church, I wish people didn’t forget about all the ways the church feeds, clothes, provides life giving community, provides financial help, and needed spiritual formation for people. My experience as a pastor has been more painful than healing, but the moments of healing and community I have seen and been able to experience myself have been so needed and good. I wish this was remembered and built upon.

I wish all people could see how beautiful scripture actually is and how healing and relevant it is still today. I wish it hadn’t had been turned into a weapon by so many against other people.

I wish the Christian movements that have tied their identity to authoritarians, to demagogues, and their extreme ideologies could even see half of the damage they have caused to people on the front lines of ministry in the local church. I wish these movements would repent from worshiping themselves. I wish that instead of our culture hearing so many Christians demand that our nation be “Christian,” it saw far more Christians being like Jesus.

I wish the church didn't protect its institutions more than people, because people are the church.

I wish other Christians didn't make it so hard to still want to be a Christian.

I wish I could always write in a way that reveals my deep love for the church and my country, that even my criticisms are done out of a deep desire for them both to live up to their incredible potential.

I wish we Christians repented from the collective damage we have seen in our culture with the same passion we so often use to demand that our culture repents.

I wish everyone could meet the people I have met who have been hurt and pushed out by the church. I wish everyone could hear their stories. Especially the churches that pushed them away to begin with. I wish everyone could see the incredible things God is doing among the people the church has pushed away. I wish everyone had the opportunity to gather weekly in community with the kind of people I get to gather with week after week. I wish all my pastor friends were taken care of and could thrive.

I wish restoration and healing would happen soon.

I wish I knew where all this was headed and my place within it all, but I’m thankful for all the loving, kind, compassionate, and committed people I have the pleasure of building community with, both in the past and present, and both within the physical church and online.

I wish, no, I hope that we will see God reclaim the church and the church return to God.

How does your own journey resonate or differ from mine? Where would you say your relationship is with the church? I would love to hear your thoughts, if you are willing to share.

If you do not have a church home right now and you are looking for a place to worship, even if it's just online, you are always welcome at Cathedral of the Rockies. I serve as the pastor at our Amity Campus.

If you benefit from this project and would like to support it through a recurring gift, you can do so here: There's a $5/mo, $10/mo, and a $25/mo available.

If you’d like to support it through a one time gift, you can do that here: one-time-gift.​

Thank you all for reading and for all the ways you support me and this project every week.

I deeply appreciate you all,

Ben

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