How an Internship Drove Me from the Ministry

Well, here goes.

When I graduated seminary, I took an internship as a way of easing into the ministry. I thought it would make the transition easier. I thought I would be under the care of a more experienced minister who would take me under his wing, guide me, shape me, patiently correct my mistakes and gently show me those more excellent ways.

I couldn't possibly have been more wrong.

In some churches, Sunday School classes are a very solemn, quiet affair. The pastor presents some teaching, everyone takes notes, and the class ends on time - with enough time for everyone to use the bathroom and chug a cup of stale, weak coffee before the worship service.

Other churches are a bit more...spontaneous. Colorful. Stressful for interns.

I was used to the former, but this church fell in the extreme fringe of the latter. When I began my Sunday School series on the world's least controversial topic, ecclesiology (ahem), several people complained quite passionately to me afterwards that I hadn't allowed for more discussion. You see, I had printed out handouts with room for note taking and even brought a bag of pens. And I timed the lecture perfectly, and had even allowed 5 minutes for questions.

What I would soon discover was a very powerful culture of contentiousness that permeated that church completely. My strong statements defending presbyterian church government and other classic reformed doctrines regarding the preaching of the Word and the administration of the sacraments proved to be like chum in the waters off the coast of Australia. Every Sunday was like a feeding frenzy. Boy did those folks like to argue and pick things apart.

Now if you've ever been in an adult Sunday School class, you know that there's almost always someone whose questions aren't really questions, but more of an attempt to teach from their seat. Often they try to prove the teacher wrong by logically backing him into some corner and forcing him to admit his mistake.

If you're well educated in seminary, have strong critical thinking skills, and most importantly have done your homework in preparation for the lesson, it's usually not too hard to handle such hecklers. A smile, keeping your cool and remaining respectful goes a long way. Not everyone acts that way out of malice - some people, that's just how they learn. And if it's a layman, most ministers, even some interns, can probably handle it just fine and the class is none the worse for wear.

But when it's the elders, that's when things get dicey. To disagree publicly with an elder immediately turns up the heat immensely. To say that this has to be handled delicately is a tremendous understatement. Many young wanna-be ministers have had to abandon their aspirations for the pulpit because a Sunday School class turned into an embarrassing scene from which there was no recovery.

And the elders of this church knew what they were about. They were well read and very sharp. Some of them were professors, some were executives, etc. And they wanted to see every single disagreement - of which there were shockingly many - to its bitter end.

And yet, I could have even dealt with that if the pastor had helped me. Had he rescued me from uncomfortable situations by defusing them, that would have been a huge relief. Had he taken me aside afterwards and made sure that I understood why it went down the way it did, and how I could avoid it next time, I would have been so grateful.

In fact, had he but prayed with me once in a while, or even just offered me a few meager scraps of encouragement, that would have been at least something.

But to my horror, the pastor was the worst of the bunch. He never encouraged me. He never prayed with me. Well, ok, I think he prayed with me 3 times over the course of the 2 years I was there; I shouldn't say never. That's unfair.

Instead, he led the charge. He led the people of this congregation into regularly publicly humiliating me. Almost no one in that church attended Sunday School hoping to learn something. They attended Sunday School to listen very, very carefully to see if there was something in what I said that they could take issue with. They were honestly constantly on the prowl, seeking to find some chink in my armor, some weak spot that they could attack.

And if the elders knew what they were about, this guy totally had me out-gunned. I think I'm a pretty smart guy. I did well as an undergrad and went to a very difficult seminary and obtained an MDiv with over 100 credit hours. And what's more, I did my homework in preparing these lessons. But this guy was scary smart. He had a PhD. He had a photographic memory. He could read his Greek or Hebrew like you and I read children's books. He'd forgotten the content of more journal articles than I'll ever read in my whole life. And his mind worked at the speed of light.

So naturally, my best answers came to me only after stewing on things he'd said for 3 days.

I learned extremely quickly that arguing or even appearing to argue or defend myself in any way was not only pointless but dangerous. I learned to just take the criticism, whatever it was, and smile and thank whoever it was. Anything to end the feeding frenzy.

Of course, it wasn't just Sunday School. No, this was one of those rare churches that actually had a question and answer time as a regular part of the evening worship service. So in the evening service, after finishing your sermon, you prayed and then took questions from the floor about either the evening sermon or the morning sermon.

And this was usually a bigger crowd than Sunday School. I usually preached about 3-4 times a month in the evening service, and I taught a Sunday School series that lasted about the first 5 months of my year-long internship. When that series was over, they decided to give me a break from Sunday School, and I politely declined to do so again.

Now, I also had to turn in every sermon outline, every lesson plan to the pastor the Thursday night before so that he could rip them apart on Friday and I'd have a day to make changes before Sunday came around. Every sermon. Every Sunday School outline. Youth Group lessons. Anything. And he would provide his criticism, which was always scathing, blunt and rude. No exceptions. And, also without any exceptions, I made the changes to accommodate his criticism and sent the materials back to him to give him an opportunity to be satisfied that I had listened to him before Sunday. Sometimes I was even treated to a second round of criticism. All via email of course.

You'd think that that would have prevented him from having any criticism left for Sunday, but you'd be wrong. There was no end to how much criticism this guy could generate. And it wasn't like, "Hey, you need to be more careful to uphold the doctrine of the Trinity." Instead, it was always nit picky, debatable stuff that he really should have allowed me liberty on.

Constant, regular, public humiliation. If every time the intern preaches a sermon and the pastor and elders constantly critiques it and makes him out to be a fool in front of the congregation, the intern has zero credibility. And I could feel it. There was an abundance of evidence of it. Yes, every now and then some lady would whisper a word or two about how horrified she was to my wife at how I was being treated, but this was very rare. And while those brief moments were like a drop of water in the desert, I was still dying of thirst.

To make matters much worse, about halfway through the internship, there was a vote in the congregation about keeping me on for another year as part of voting on the next year's budget. To make a long, painful story short, the pastor botched it by blindsiding the elders with this plan of his to keep me under his thumb another year. And having been blindsided, they obviously didn't support it, especially because they were all sure that I was a moron. (Ironically, when I was licensed in the presbytery, I passed unanimously and every single man present went out of their way to say how well I did and how impressed they were. Even my pastor felt constrained to say good job! Only time he ever did in two years.) And of course, I wasn't there when the congregation voted on it, but I imagine the pastor was too embarrassed to speak about it, and even if he did, he said something blunt and unhelpful that half the people present interpreted as hostile. I doubt any of the elders would have said anything supportive of the idea. And so of course the congregation voted no. It really couldn't have gone any other way, given the way that pastor handled it. (Which totally floored me, because when he brought it up to me, he said we shouldn't bring the idea up until my internship was almost over, and we could add it to the budget at that time. He blindsided me along with the elders.)

Of course, none of this poisoned the atmosphere at all. Nope, not one bit. Sigh.

I couldn't help but see everyone in that congregation as a wolf that voted to ruin my job prospects. My wife and I had no friends while we were there. We were far from family, far from friends, and everyone in our church became an enemy ready to stab me in the back as soon as they had an excuse.

After my internship ended, I was stuck there for about another year while I waited to move on and become a pastor. I filled pulpit still about 3 times a month or so. I would have left that church and attended somewhere else if there was anything remotely close by and if I thought I could do so without burning bridges. But no such luck. And of course I didn't have two pennies to rub together, so moving was out of the question.

Surely now my story is over and I've told the worst of it. No. Would that it were so.

During my internship I had preached a sermon series on a certain book of the Bible. You can't imagine the shock I felt when I came to church one Sunday morning - I had stopped attending Sunday School at this point because it honestly just sickened me to watch people fight over what Dietrich Bonhoeffer meant when he said: whatever - insert random unclear statement here. Who cares what some theologian in love with flowery expressions meant when he said some nonsensical thing that scholars have been debating for decades? What does the BIBLE say??? But I digress...

You can't imagine my horror when I opened the bulletin one Sunday morning to look at the sermon text and saw that the pastor was starting a new series...on a book I had just got done preaching through. I suddenly had a lurching feeling in my gut. This was going to be bad.

But, you say, it wasn't that bad right? I mean, he just really liked that book and it just seemed to fit with where the congregation was at and where he wanted to go, etc. ...right? I mean, maybe he's just that oblivious and insensitive.

Wrong. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined someone would ever have the nerve to do what he did.

I couldn't be more serious when I say that it was painfully obvious to everyone that he was preaching through that book in order to do it justice, since I had fumbled it so horribly. He not only preached it completely differently than me, by which I mean that he took a completely different interpretation in every single passage, but he also preached in a very aggressive manner so that he was laying out an improper interpretation and then knocking it down by proving it wrong. And what was getting knocked down was MY position that I had just preached from that very pulpit 6 months ago. Every. Sunday. Morning.

Several times he even said, "It has been said that..." and then what followed was my interpretation of the passage (which by the way was in keeping with guys like, you know, Calvin). He frequently mocked how laughably wrong it was and how totally out of touch with the passage such views were. Just when I thought I'd heard the worst, the next week would be something even more outrageous. It became almost comical, cartoonish, yet in a creepy clown, horrifying sort of way.

Yes, instead of hearing the Word of God preached to me on Sunday morning, I got a sermon full of accusations of my incompetence and lack of fitness for the ministry. He never actually said my name, though he hardly needed to, so I'm not sure how much of the congregation actually knew what was happening. Probably not many of them, come to think of it. Doesn't matter. I knew.

And through it all, I did not defend myself. I did not argue with anyone's negative opinion of me or something I said or did. I simply accepted the criticism and sought to incorporate it as best I could going forward.

One Sunday night service, he apparently crossed his threshold. He took great offense to something I said and questioned me about it extensively in front of the congregation, but suddenly backed off and dropped it. It was very odd. As soon as I dismissed the people, he rushed up to me and said, "I didn't want to gainsay you in public but..." he wanted to know where I had learned such crazy ideas. So I mentioned a very well respected and recognized commentary on the passage in question which took the position I had, and mentioned some of the evidence that that author had very carefully amassed. He demanded that I let him see it. (The dispute was quite subtle, I assure you.) Naturally, I agreed to bring it by his office that week. Clearly he didn't believe that what I claimed was in that commentary actually was. So annoying and so typical.

Well, that week was Thanksgiving, so I thought I might be able to use that to delay bringing my commentary to him until the next Sunday, because I just really didn't want to deal with it. By Wednesday, he was calling me, wondering where I was, but I ignored him. Friday night there was a knock at the door. The peep hole revealed that it was...you guessed it...my pastor. Wow.

So I opened the door and let him in. He had come to demand to know why I couldn't return his phone call. He was clearly extremely upset. By this point I was so used to his bizarre behavior that it hardly affected me at all. I calmly led him to a seat and explained that I was hoping to avoid this conversation. And he demanded that we discuss what's going on.

So I did. I let him have it. I said he had done nothing but criticize me and humiliate me every chance he got. I said there was a culture of contentiousness in his church and that he had clearly fostered it. "You didn't want to gainsay me in public? You make opportunities to do so on a regular basis! No encouragement! No help!" On and on I went, telling him the truth.

In that one moment he responded with humility. I was totally shocked. He said that he had interpreted my silent acquiescence to his every criticism as defiance and so was always resolving afresh to be yet more hard on me in hopes of breaking me. He said from day one he viewed me as a threat and he labored against me. I couldn't believe it. Submissiveness is defiance and the weak intern is a threat to the PhD with the successful church, the books, a nice house, etc. It made absolutely no sense. What on earth was wrong with this guy?

But he actually prayed with me - one of the three times he did so - and confessed to God that he was ashamed of himself for how he had treated me.

About a month later, my barely pregnant wife began having contractions and had to go on bed rest for the rest of the pregnancy. I was totally unemployed, waiting for a call. Our only source of income was my wife. Which didn't bother me at all. I loved sitting around on my butt all day while my pregnant wife made a living. Sigh.

I began to think that there was a reason no one was calling, and it was my pastor. I began to think about how it might go down. Suppose someone had been interested in me as a potential candidate. Do you think I'd be the first one they'd call? Probably not. They'd probably call my current pastor first. And what would he say? I was absolutely sure what he would say: not ready. He had said it often enough to me.

I realized there was no way I would ever get a call to a church as long as I remained a member of this congregation. But until I got a job, I couldn't afford to move. Stuck.

And that's when I had no choice.

That's when I threw it all away. That's when I tore my heart out of my chest and cast it out into the sea. That's when I gave up and simply commended myself and my family to God. That's when I abandoned the ministry forever, with no hope I would ever return and no idea what I might do to make a living.

I had a horrible time getting a job of course. I couldn't even get a call back from McDonalds. I finally got 2 minutes of face time with a manager of Starbucks who told me that she had 700 applicants for one opening. When the shock wore off, I asked her how I could get to the top of the stack and she said that I needed to spend a lot of time there, buying coffee, making friends with the other workers, hanging out, being cool. Blogging about how cool everything is. Singing songs I wrote myself about how much I love Starbucks and having the Youtube video go viral. You know, nothing much.

I didn't bother buying a latte. I couldn't afford it anyway.

Eventually I did get a job. An awful manual labor job in a factory for minimum wage. I had several deep tissue injuries in most of my joints and a sprained knee by the time I found a real job on the other side of the country 2 months later.

But I did figure out how to put my training and experience as a ministerial candidate to work for me. Don't worry, I'll post about that too. That's one of the main reasons for creating this blog - to help you figure out how you can recover from this devastating blow. But this is not that post.

Before we moved at last - before our exodus - my pastor had my wife and me over for dinner, along with several other couples. Not to say goodbye to us, of course. He just had some system that allowed him to have everyone in the congregation over about 2-3 times a year. It was just our turn.

And since I was leaving, and I knew I'd regret not saying it, I grew bold during that dinner conversation. Several elders were present as well. I was trying to help my pastor understand why I was abandoning the ministry. He couldn't understand why I wouldn't want to remain unemployed indefinitely and be his whipping boy. He really didn't get it.

So I finally looked at him and said, "I'll tell you why. Because if some church is interested in me as a candidate, who's going to be the very first person they call? You. They're going to want to call you. You're the authority on me. You're my pastor right now. And so your opinion matters the most as to whether or not I'm fit for ministry. And if you were to get such a phone call, what would you say?"

At this point, he started to fumble his words - I had finally caught him off guard. Only time that ever happened. But I cut him off.

"I know exactly what you would say, and so do you. You'd say, 'Not ready,' wouldn't you? You'd say not ready."

The room is totally silent now and all eyes are on us. The elders have gone pale. One of them in particular looked totally shocked at my boldness, like he had seen a ghost.

He admitted it. "Yes, I'd say you're not ready."

I said, "Yep, I know, and so would the elders. But you know what? I don't buy it. Either I'm called or I'm not. This whole 'not ready' business is nonsense, pure nonsense. If I'm called to the ministry, then I'm called - warts and all. No minister is perfect. If I have flaws, then I don't need to get rid of them before becoming a minister. If I'm called, then I'm called as a flawed man. If you guys are so sure I'm not ready, then maybe the truth is simpler than that. I'm NOT called. I can't wait forever. I have a family to provide for and seminary to pay for."

I stayed another 10-15 minutes to be polite. Then I got up and left that godforsaken place forever.

Was I called to the ministry? Lots of people thought so. I thought so. For a long time I remained convinced that I was, and that this man had simply stolen that from me.

Many times it was his name that my screams of hateful rage formed into when I was alone with my thoughts on my long commutes home. I eventually realized that I needed counseling. It helped. A lot.

I actually felt guilty and ashamed because of it all. I figured I wasn't called, and therefore I must have quite arrogantly lusted to be in the pulpit, lusted for my own glory, lusted for an audience to feed my ego. I was arrogant and selfish to go so deep into debt, especially with my wife working so hard to pay the bills. And I wasted a lot of our very scarce resources on food and booze and cigars. Anything to make the pain subside for a while. How wrong I was for even pursuing seminary!

The counselor I saw said something very, very wise one day that clicked. "You may not have been called to become a minister, but you definitely were called to pursue the ministry. The proof is: that's what you did. You didn't sin by pursuing the ministry. In fact, 1 Tim 3:1 says, 'If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task.'

"There's nothing wrong with wanting to be a minister. That's a good thing! It's virtuous! It's noble! It is to be commended! So you didn't ultimately become a minister. You did no wrong in desiring this noble task. Of course, we know our intentions are always tainted with sin. Perhaps there was some arrogant lust for an audience. But no minister's motives are ever pure. We're sinners! That doesn't disqualify you from office!"

And then I remembered. How has the church always treated those who brought the Word of God to them? How did Israel treat the prophets? How were the apostles treated, and by whose hand?

How did the church react to Jesus?

Being mistreated by the church does NOT mean you are somehow unworthy of the ministry for some sin or other. In fact, it's precisely the opposite. If you've been mistreated by the church, it's probably a good sign that you are united to Christ, whom they crucified.

Being mistreated by the church doesn't disqualify you from ministry. More likely it qualifies you to inherit the kingdom of God, because you are being made to look like Jesus, who came unto his own, but his own did not accept him.

The book of Hebrews makes some very interesting comments about Melchizedek. It says more or less that Moses shaped his story to make him into a type of Christ, to make him resemble the Son of God. How? Just in how Moses speaks about him: not mentioning his lineage, his mysteriousness, the fact that his death isn't mentioned or what his religion was like, etc. Little details are omitted, questions are asked. And this is so powerful that Psalm 110 comments on it as well, saying that Christ (as we know now from Hebrews) is a priest after Melchizedek's mysterious priesthood that we know nothing about at all.

And here we are talking about it still to this day. One man's story was told in such a way to make him, in a very subtle way, resemble Christ. And thousands of years later we still marvel at it.

What would you be willing to suffer for the same to be said of you? What would you be willing to go through in order to bear witness to Christ as powerfully as Melchizedek did?

Or what would you be willing to suffer in order to gain wisdom? Or to gain eternal life?

There is no price so great that I am not willing to pay it, if only it means I can look a little bit more like Jesus.

When I was a child, I prayed that the Lord would give me wisdom. For some reason, it stuck that God was pleased when that's what Solomon asked for, so every night for years that's what I prayed for: wisdom.

God answered all those prayers when I was forced to abandon the ministry.

I was victimized by wicked shepherds who prey upon the flock. Like a lamb to the slaughter, I didn't fight them. Like Jesus, I did not defend myself. I bit my tongue. And it cost me everything. And it hurts. A lot.

But I guarantee that when we all get to glory, we won't regret it, you and I. Not one bit. Our scars will be badges of honor.

Christ is our wisdom. And he said, "Do not be surprised when the world hates you."

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