Chapter 6 When Leaving Is Faithfulness

Sometimes the Most Faithful Thing Is to Go Not every ministry is meant to last forever. Not every fit is permanent. Not every difficult situation is the one God is calling you to stay in until it changes. There are situations in which the most faithful, most courageous, and most God-honoring thing a pastor can do is leave. When the ministry environment is genuinely toxic and destructive. When the congregation has made a definitive corporate decision to reject the pastor's leadership. When God has clearly opened another door and is clearly releasing you from the current assignment. Leaving in those circumstances is not failure. It is obedience. And it can be done with integrity, care, and the same kind of faithfulness that staying would require. The Life After Ministry Some pastors, for a variety of legitimate reasons, leave pastoral ministry permanently. This is not the end of their story. The gifts God gave them do not evaporate. The calling to love people and serve God does not disappear. It may simply be expressed differently — through a different career, a different kind of ministry, a different form of service. If you have genuinely discerned that you are being called out of pastoral ministry, walk forward with your head up. The church needs people who have been shaped by the pastoral experience in many roles beyond the pulpit. Your formation was not wasted. Your future is not over. Go where God sends you — and go well. The faithfulness God asks of you is not to a title or a role. It is to Him. Sometimes faithfulness to God looks like staying. Sometimes it looks like going. He will make it clear if you are willing to listen. TRENCH WORK SERIES Volume 26 The Pastor's Marriage Protecting Your Most Important Partnership in Ministry PART 3: THE PASTOR'S FAMILY Pastors Connection Network pastorsconnectionnetwork.com Your Marriage Is Not a Ministry Asset Your congregation loves your marriage. They hold it up as a model. They reference it in conversations about what a godly relationship looks like. They take comfort from the fact that the person leading them appears to have gotten at least one significant thing in his life right. They do not know what it costs. Most pastoral marriages carry a weight that no one outside them can fully see. The schedule that invades everything. The emotional bandwidth drained by other people's crises before the pastor gets home. The expectations placed on the spouse who never applied for a ministry role. The fishbowl existence that allows very little privacy. The loneliness of being married to someone everyone else seems to need. This ebook is for your marriage — not as a ministry asset to be managed, but as the most important human partnership of your life, worth protecting, investing in, and fighting for with everything you have.