Courage

Have you ever ridden a roller coaster? Of course you have. Everyone has. What was it like?

It seems to me that there are two kinds of people when it comes to roller coasters.

The first kind of person - and this was me as a kid - is overwhelmed with fear. They close their eyes, they wrap their arms around the bar, they clench their teeth, they squeeze their legs together and they press their feet into the floor of the car, hoping that it'll all be over soon. They don't like the feeling of having their stomach fly up into their throat, but they are afraid to admit this to their friends and afraid of being left out. It's fun hanging out at the theme park all day with your friends, and all you have to do to be accepted is endure the occasional minute and a half of pure, nightmarish torture. But hey, if you close your eyes and curl up in the fetal position, it's not so bad, and you'll survive. Then you will be accepted by the other cool kids, with whom now (they think) you have several shared experiences.

The second kind of person - which is apparently everyone ELSE in the entire world other than me - rides roller coasters much differently. They don't grip the bar, they throw their hands in the air. They don't close their eyes, they fling them open. They don't clench their teeth, they throw their heads back, open their mouths wide and let out a primal scream.

The first person survives. The second person thrives. The first person passively endures. The second person actively enjoys. The first is tortured, the second is thrilled. The first clings to security, the second embraces uncertainty.

But both are afraid. The first person is obviously afraid, but the second one is afraid too. That's why they're screaming - but they're screaming with delight as well as fear (or so I'm told). This is an important point. It's not the case that the second person lacks fear.

Courage is NOT the absence of fear. If you are not afraid, you have no opportunity to have courage because courage requires fear.

This is because courage is, fundamentally, a certain kind of RESPONSE to fear.

Courage is not the absence of fear, it is a response to fear.

In order to exhibit courage, you must first be afraid.

Often times, when we are afraid, we think we are cowardly. To be cowardly is to be afraid, right? In the church, our pious-sounding, proof-texting platitudes play into this. We quote the Lord's words to Joshua, "Be strong and courageous," and we say, "God has not given us a spirit of fear", so we think being afraid is sinful. This means that as soon as we feel fear, we are instantly overwhelmed with guilt, which only makes us embrace fear ever more tightly, which makes us feel more guilty, and the cycle feeds on itself until we're curled up on the floor in the fetal position.

So what exactly is the difference between the first person and the second person? It's not that one has fear and one doesn't. 

It's their response to fear. That is the difference.

The first person hides from fear. They are overwhelmed by it. Their fear has mastered them. They are terrified of their fear. Thus fear becomes exponentially greater. This poor soul responds to fear very much like an abused dog, hiding and whimpering in the corner.

The second person faces their fear. They stand up to their fear. They are like the child on the playground who refuses to give the bully their lunch money, even if it means getting a bloody nose. They are afraid, but their fear has not mastered them. And that's not because their fear is any less, but because they simply refuse to accept its mastery over them.

We can call this refusal defiance. They defy their fear.

This is what courage actually is. It is defying your fear. It is refusing to give in to it. It is a choice, an act of will.

But there is one more key aspect of courage that we must pursue, and we're going to need the Lord of the Rings to help us investigate it.

If you look up courage on Wikipedia, you'll eventually get to a part about pagan notions of courage, and I found that I was drawn toward Tolkien's description of Norse courage: 

"J.R.R. Tolkien identified in his 1936 lecture 'Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics' a 'Northern theory of courage'—the heroic or 'virtuous pagan' insistence on doing the right thing even in the face of certain defeat".

Something about that notion appeals to me. Perhaps an illustration of this idea is the 300 Spartans, who stood against the army of Persia, though they were doomed to die. Or we can think of the Lord of the Rings movies, when King Theoden gives a speech to his men before the armies of orcs and calls upon them to "Ride now! Ride to ruin and the world's ending!" and then he screams, "DEATH!" and all the Rohirrim echo him. It's an amazing moment that, if it doesn't affect you, there's something wrong with you.

And it is so moving that we are tempted to say, "There, now THAT is courage!"

Is it?

When God commands Joshua to "Be strong and courageous," is this what God calls him to? "Ride to ruin and the world's ending"?

Let's cut to the chase. There is a bright, shining example of courage that I think is very different from that of the King of the Rohirrim, or of the Spartans, moving as these examples are.

Once upon a time, the King of all the universe took on flesh in order to go to the cross for our sins. That is the greatest act of courage there ever was. Look at what he left behind! Look at how much he suffered!

Would you voluntarily become a grasshopper so your two boys (ages 5 and 6) could rip your legs and antennae off and leave you to be consumed alive by hungry ants? That's kind of like what Jesus did for us.

Now - it is one thing to go into battle, though you are outnumbered, and engage the enemy, risking your life. But it is quite another to be God, who created all things, and knows the future because he MAKES the future, to take on flesh, to willingly go to the cross and suffer and die, KNOWING EXACTLY how horrible it would be ahead of time. Jesus knew just exactly how awful the tortures of the cross would be, and he faced it.

Oh, you say, but he wasn't afraid. He knew he'd be raised from the dead. He went to the cross "for the joy set before him," right? 

If he wasn't afraid, then why was he sweating drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane? That was FEAR. That was ANXIETY. He asked his Father to take that cup away from him. He asked to be excused from the assignment. But he knew there was no other way, and knew his Father would not take that cup from him. And he knew just how bad it would be. Wouldn't you have been afraid? Only a FOOL wouldn't have been, and Jesus was certainly no fool.

So he, knowing exactly how much pain it would bring him, was cut off entirely from his Father, abandoned by his disciples, tortured by his creatures, and put to death by his people, the very people he'd come to save.

That is courage. 

Now, you might be tempted to say that it's just the same as the courage of the 300 Spartans or the countless Rohirrim, riding into battle, doomed to die. But it's not. There's a very important difference.

"For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption."

The pagan unbeliever who faces their fear of death does exhibit courage in some measure, but it is an empty, baseless courage for courage's sake. Such men fight for their own glory and die vainly.

Jesus did not face a certain, painful and shameful death this way. Instead, he trusted his Father, that he would not abandon him to the grave, that he would not leave him to be consumed by death forever.

Now there is a very important distinction that is theologically necessary to make here. Jesus trusted his Father, but not for grace or mercy. Jesus earned the right to be raised from the dead by his righteousness. Death had no claim over him, once he had been baptized into death to pay the price for the sins of his people. Once that happened, he had a right to life that he had justly earned by his own righteousness, by his own merit. Jesus earned eternal life for himself by being sinless and perfectly righteous his whole life. He earned what Adam failed to earn.

So when I say that Jesus trusted his Father, do not take the silly route that many have taken in recent years and draw the conclusion that Jesus was therefore justified by faith. That's nonsense. There's a gigantic difference between us and Christ. We're sinners. He's not. It's that simple. He trusts in his Father's just response to his righteousness. He knew God would respond with raising him from the dead.

We too trust in God to raise us from the dead, even though we're sinners and should die eternally. Death has a claim on us sinners. But because Jesus was baptized into death for us, on our behalf - therefore we can be raised from the dead. Therefore we can be given eternal life, based not on OUR merits, but on the merits of Christ, which merits are granted us according to the terms of the eternal covenant of redemption between the Father and the Son, according to which the Father says of the Son, "You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizadek."

So.

Jesus rides the roller coaster like the second person. He stands up and leaves the Garden of Gethsemane, where he anxiously sweat drops of blood, and walks out to face his false accusers. He faced the men who would torment him. He loved the men who abandoned him. And he trusted in his Father to raise him from the dead.

You see, the second person trusts that the bar will do its job. They're afraid, yes, but they also know that the bar will keep them from falling. That knowledge is their weapon against their fear, and THAT is how they stand up to it and defy it to its face.

Jesus' weapon was knowing his own and his Father's character. He knew he had been perfectly faithful. He knew his Father would reciprocate. He trusted his Father. Jesus truly said, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust him." And boy he owned that, and he proved that he owned it. He took the words of Scripture and owned them for his own because they are his. He IS the word incarnate.

And HE is our bar. Well, he and the Father and the Spirit, all three, working on our behalf. We trust the Spirit's testimony who promises that the Word of God is true, that his promises are real. We trust Christ's merit by which he earned eternal life for us. And we trust that the Father will be true to his Word and give us eternal life based on the righteousness of Christ, and not condemn us for all eternity based on our sin. This is our bar. The triune God in whom we trust. This is the foundation of our courage.

We can face our guilty fears because we trust that our sins are forgiven in Christ.

We can face our fears of death because we trust in God to save us by grace through faith in Christ.

We can face our fears of job loss because we trust that the Lord will make good on his promises to take care of us and our children.

We can face the fears of our children abandoning the faith because we know the Lord knows what he's doing.

We can face our fear of pain, of torments of all kinds, of hard work, of missing out, or any other fear that plagues us a thousand times a day, whether reasonable or completely irrational - all of it - we can face ALL of it because we trust in God.

Courage is the defiance of fear based on trust.

When I walked away from the ministry at last, in my own small way, I too owned those words: "Though he slay me, yet will I trust him."

Yes, walking away from the ministry definitely felt like riding to ruin and the world's ending.

But it wasn't.

I am still here.

And the church will survive without me in the pulpit.

And I'm certain my family and I are better off in myriad ways.

And you know, I still haven't quoted what the Lord ACTUALLY said to Joshua. He didn't just command him to be strong and courageous. He said:

"Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:9)

Why can you face your fear? Why can you exhibit courage? BECAUSE something is true: the Lord, who is YOUR God, is with you wherever you go. HE has commanded you, HE has directed your steps.

Courage takes practice. It takes cultivating. It is a worthy pursuit. Find ways to exhibit courage today.

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Have you left the ministry? Would you like to tell your story anonymously on this blog? Email us at new2pew@gmail.com. We're always looking for more stories.

Preaching to Satisfy Your Ego

Simplicity. Clarity. Brevity.

These are the very top virtues for any sermon.

Of course, you have to be true to the text you're preaching. That's absolutely important. But assuming you understand the text at all, then your sermon needs to aim at: simplicity, clarity and brevity.

If you are not aiming at those virtues, you are doing your congregation an incredible disservice. And why are you doing it? To satisfy your ego.

Yes, that's right. I'm posting anonymously and I'm about to say something that many ministers will consider an unfair, unjust judgment that lacks all the facts.

But I'm doing it anyway because I've been in that pulpit. I know what tempts ministers and their egos.

If you are not aiming at simplicity, clarity and brevity as your top three goals after doing justice to the text, it is because your ego has gotten in the way.

Why do I say this? It's quite simple really. Suppose that your number one concern after doing justice to the text was your listeners. Suppose that you were most interested in their best interests. What would that look like?

It looks like this: simplicity, clarity, brevity. When your biggest concern is being understood by your hearers, what isn't your biggest concern?

Impressing your audience.

Now stop and think about that for a minute. If you are concerned about impressing your audience, what will you necessarily NOT care about? You won't care about whether or not they actually understand what you're saying. You won't care if they get it. They don't need to get it to be impressed.

In fact, it's usually helpful if they don't get it, if you want them to be impressed. After all, all they really need to know is how smart you are, or how well read you are, or how good a job you do of crafting an excellent sermon. And if they come away saying, "Man, he knows so much! I'll never know as much as him!" then they're impressed with you, even though they didn't understand.

Who, you ask, are these crazy ministers who care more about impressing their audience than communicating with them? Well, frankly, most of them.

Oh, now I've got you agitated I suppose. But it's true. They want you to think they're brilliant.

You don't believe me do you? Ok, I'll prove it. This Sunday, after the service, when you're shaking your pastor's hand, tell him, "Hey, thanks for that sermon, it was really simple and easy to understand!"

What kind of reaction do you think you'll get?

Then the next Sunday, shake his hand and say, "Wow, pastor. Just WOW! That was absolutely brilliant! You're so well read! Pure genius! Just the way you have with words is astounding!"

I bet you'll get a much more positive and lively reaction. You may even have to excuse yourself from the conversation.

Look, Pastors are sinners just like the rest of us. We can forgive them for it, right?

But they are tempted with a desire to impress their audience. And this leads to all kinds of foolishness that would have no place for those seeking to communicate with simplicity, clarity and brevity.

I have actually heard people speak glowingly of a minister, "I never had any idea what he was saying till the last 2-3 minutes of his sermons, when it would all come together." And there are many ministers who foolishly and recklessly seek to mimic that style of preaching.

Really?

Most ministers aren't quite that far gone, but just about any minister can be tempted to use jargon from time to time. Or maybe they drop some names of some famous authors or ministers and quote them. At length. And no one has any idea what they said, because it's a translation of a Latin text written several hundred years ago. But boy, that minister did his homework, didn't he? We won't doubt his credibility will we? Never mind that we have no idea what he actually said.

But what if ministers sought to impress their hearers with the text instead?

What if their number one goal was for you to understand what this text was saying, even if you were only a child? What then?

You know, we Protestants are very quick to say that the Roman Church was crazy to conduct services in Latin for so long after Latin became a dead language. Why do we think that's so crazy? Because no one knew what they were saying, and therefore what was said was of no value.

Isn't that Paul's criticism of the Corinthian church in 1Cor 14? Verse 9 says, "So with yourselves, if with your tongue you utter speech that is not intelligible, how will anyone know what is said? For you will be speaking into the air."

Ministers - I wish you would actually stop and THINK about that. If no one knows what you're saying, it's of no value to the people you're speaking to. You're speaking into the air. It doesn't matter if you're babbling in some nonsense baby talk and claiming it's the language of angels, or if you're speaking in Latin to people who don't speak Latin, or if you're just arrogantly using big words and complex sermon structures because you have a fancy seminary degree and you want everyone to know it.

A lot of ministers like to say, "My sermon this morning has 3 points, and they are..." and then they proceed to list them. This is ridiculously helpful for people taking notes.

And yet, one minister once said to me that he never does that, and he never does it very deliberately because it insults the audience's intelligence. It's not that he had 3 points and just failed to disclose them, it's that he was against having points at all. His sermons were like one gigantic run on sentence.

My eyes were opened when I invited a friend to church one Sunday, and he actually came. And the sermon text was some passage from the Old Testament that was 3 chapters of genealogies. Yes, 3 chapters.

My poor friend walked out absolutely bewildered. He had no idea what had just been said and learned NOTHING. He certainly wasn't about to abandon hope in anything and everything but Christ.

What a shame.

Yes, I know. The genealogies are Scripture too. I get it. But seriously, muster a bit of courage. If you can't preach an intelligible sermon on some passage of Scripture - SKIP IT!

Oh, but my conscience won't let me do that! That'd be like saying that this passage isn't Scripture!

No, it's not like saying that at all. It's admitting that you can't preach a coherent sermon on that passage, and you're sparing your flock the pain of having to endure an incoherent sermon.

And seriously, WHERE is the principle of lectio continua found in Scripture? Or do we not believe in Sola Scriptura anymore?

For those of you who don't know the jargon, what I just said is that the principle of lectio continua - which just means preaching through a book of the bible, chapter by chapter, one passage at a time until you finish the book and move on to the next one - is not found in the Bible anywhere. Nowhere does God command that in Scripture. However wise the principle might be, it's nowhere to be found in Scripture. And Sola Scriptura is a Latin phrase that just means Scripture alone. The point is that the Bible alone gets to tell us what to do, not some stupid principle that men made up, no matter how wise.

So for Christ's sake, and the sake of your hearers, SKIP that passage you can't preach. Maybe no one can preach some of those genealogies. Then maybe no one should preach them.

Or is it better to speak into the air and waste an opportunity to drive the point of the gospel a little deeper into someone's thick skull this week? Or actually communicate to those visitors who aren't sure if they should be there?

Because if you're trying to impress your audience with what you know, with your mastery of the Old Testament canon, with your familiarity with the famous authors of the church, your knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, or the subtle nuances of how to craft the perfect sermon according to the coolest theory you've ever heard - then you aren't preaching the text anymore at all.

You're only preaching yourself.

You're not saying, "Hey, look at Jesus!"

You're saying, "Hey, look at me!"

I know how strong the temptation is. I have felt it. You want them to listen to you. You have to establish your credibility. They have to accept what you're saying. They shouldn't question you. They need to just do what you tell them...right?

No.

No, you don't need them to listen to you.

They need to fall in love with Jesus.

You need to decrease, he needs to increase. You need to DISAPPEAR in the pulpit.

Preach the WORD.

As long as you're preaching the Word, what you're saying has all the credibility your sermon needs. It's the Word of GOD.

It has been proven by Christ's resurrection from the dead and ascension into heaven. It has been proven by the apostolic authority bestowed on the men of his choosing. It has been proven by signs and miracles of all kinds performed at the time when the foundations of the church were laid.

The Bible's credibility has been MORE than established.

I have news for you, preachers. You HAVE no credibility in the pulpit except that which you BORROW from the text! No one gathers to hear YOU on Sunday morning. They gather to hear from GOD.

To the extent that simplicity, clarity, and brevity are NOT your goal in the pulpit is the extent to which your preaching is simply to feed your ego. To that extent, you are not preaching the Word of God but only preaching yourself. To that extent, you put up your own ego as an obstacle between your flock and Christ Jesus, their only hope for salvation. You are risking peoples' eternal salvation for the sake of your EGO.

I don't envy ministers on judgment day. 

This is one of the reasons why I no longer envy them for today. I know that temptation. I am glad I no longer have to face it, at least not with such high stakes.

If you think that temptation didn't have a strong pull on me, just look at how long all my posts are on this blog! Terrible! Sorry readers!

What is Wisdom Worth?

As a child, I struggled - as we all do - to be assured of approval. I was desperate for it. Whose approval did I want?

Well, of course, as is the case with any child, I wanted my parents' approval. But I also wanted the approval of teachers at school, Sunday School teachers at church, and perhaps more than all of this - my peers.

Yes, I was a little people pleaser growing up. Not because I wanted everyone to be pleased with me for its own sake necessarily. It wasn't really praise I was after. Mostly I wanted to avoid getting in trouble with anyone in authority, and wanted to avoid being looked down upon or teased by my peers. I was ruled by fear - the fear of the consequences of a lack of approval.

My desire for approval, however, was a red herring. Have you ever heard of where the term "red herring" comes from? Well, ok, first and foremost, it's one of those secret terms that only well educated people are familiar with, so they use them as much as possible in order to impress their audience with their erudition. The word erudition is another such word. It just means you want to impress the audience with how smart you are or how well read and well educated you are. To be all those things is to be erudite. See? Now you too can be in the club, and can dumbfound your audience with how stupid they are in comparison to yourself...

Yes, I'm talking to you, preachers.

But I got off topic. I was talking about red herrings. Actually, I just succumbed to a bit of a red herring myself. A red herring is simply a distraction. The term comes from when people would train hunting dogs or blood hounds or whatever to track by scent. They'd give the dog a scent to track, and then they would use red herrings (a particularly pungent kind of fish) in an attempt to distract the dog from the scent they were tracking. This taught the dog to be disciplined and focused on the task at hand.

So my desire for approval from literally everyone (anyone) was just a red herring - it was a distraction. Whose approval did I actually want? God's of course.

When I had no choice but to walk away from the ministry, THIS was the most painful aspect of it. I was just absolutely sure that I did not have God's approval anymore, if I had ever had it at all.

This is the most difficult part of abandoning the ministry, and it is especially difficult if it comes in the context of also being rejected by the church.

At any rate, back to childhood. I can remember being so desperate for approval (or rather, some assurance of approval that might penetrate my thick skull) that I grew quite frustrated with my entire life situation. I remember quite vividly crying myself to sleep growing up, often accompanied by pillow-muffled screams.

Now, you may think that's a little unusual. But then again, maybe you don't. Or maybe you do, despite the fact that you can probably relate to it. But the truth is, I was THAT kid growing up. You know, the one no one wanted on their team (I sure hope teachers have figured out by now that letting kids pick teams is just an awful thing to do), the one the other kids always made fun of. Kids can be cruel.

So you'll understand why the story of Solomon appealed to me so strongly.

You see, one Sunday, I went to church, and heard the story of how Solomon became king of Israel. When Samuel anointed Solomon as king, he told him on behalf of the Lord that he could ask for anything - ANYTHING - he wanted, and it would be granted.

Well, Solomon apparently gave the best answer one could give when presented with such an opportunity. He asked for wisdom. I didn't remember the details. I only remembered what he asked for and how the Lord responded. The Lord, I was told, was PLEASED. So pleased, in fact, that he bestowed great wealth on him and wisdom and he became Israel's greatest king.

Of course, as a kid, the riches was totally lost on me, and I certainly couldn't understand why anyone would want 1,000 wives (what's a concubine?). However, I did figure out that Solomon asked for wisdom and it pleased the Lord.

To me, this was a magic formula. To me, it was as simple as putting two quarters in a soda machine (remember that?) and getting a can of Coke. The request for wisdom was two quarters and the Lord's pleasure with me was my can of Coke which I desperately wanted.

So every day from that day on - well into high school I think - I prayed for wisdom when saying my bedtime prayers and thought of Solomon.

Now, you might say that my theology was all screwed up. It was. You might also say that I was trying to manipulate God into approving of me. I was. But I was also just a kid. As tainted with sin as that prayer was, it wasn't ONLY sinful. After all, I just wanted God to be PLEASED with me. He himself told me in his Word that it's good to ask for wisdom, and I believed it and asked him for it myself. So it wasn't all bad, nor was it all good. But that's pretty much all I can say about the prayers I said this morning.

For example, I recently helped a friend get a job. He thanked me profusely. He assumed that I had gone out of my way to help him simply because I was being kind to him. After all, he needed a job and I was able to help and I gave it to him. And when he thanked me, I looked at him with a smile and said, "Are you kidding? I didn't do it for you. I did it to feed my ego." Of course, I was joking. But the best jokes have an element of truth to them, and this was no exception (and yes, we both laughed - it's all about the timing). The truth is, the help I provided him was not purely altruistic. In some sense it was about feeding my ego. When I was a child, I idolized the idea of the mafia don who bestowed favors on people all the time, who then owed him a favor in return, along with their loyalty and their love. This is one of those ways that I've just always been tempted.

However, it would be wrong of me to withhold that help from my friend, simply because my help would be tainted with sin. Sure, I took some pride in having helped someone. And knowing that in advance, maybe I could (should?) have refrained from helping him to avoid the temptation. But then he wouldn't have been helped and wouldn't have a job. So I did it, and yes, I did indulge in a little secret self congratulations. But the Lord used it anyway to provide my friend and brother in Christ a job that he really, REALLY needed.

In the same way, the Lord used my sin-tainted prayers as a child to bring about his purposes. He did answer those prayers. He did give me wisdom.

You know, when I was a child, I was pretty sure that Solomon was given wisdom in much the same way that Neo learned Kung Fu in the Matrix. If, for some reason you haven't seen the Matrix, please correct yourself as soon as possible. In it, Neo basically downloads knowledge like a computer. In 10 seconds, he learns Kung Fu. Anyway, it seemed very much to me that in the story of Solomon, he asked for wisdom and then was instantly wise. In Solomon's case, that may be how it happened.

For the rest of us, however, it's not. I had little idea what I was actually asking for. It turns out that the road to wisdom is paved with suffering. For example, see Heb 5:8, which says that Jesus learned obedience through suffering.

Now, I've often had quite a bit of trouble understanding that. How is it that the sinless Son of God had to LEARN obedience? Well, I don't think it really means that he had to learn HOW to obey, so much as he learned what it TAKES to obey. In suffering, Jesus learned specifically what it COSTS to obey.

In the same way, I think, wisdom has a price. You aren't born with it. You suffer and then become wise. Perhaps Solomon had a rough childhood. After all, his mom and dad had an adulterous affair, after which his mother got pregnant, which caused his father to have his mother's first husband killed so that their adultery wouldn't be called to account.

It may be the case that Solomon's brothers, and possibly even the people of Israel gave him a hard time about that. In fact, it's probably quite likely. The Jews thought that bloodlines were a very big deal. And everyone probably knew at the time what happened. We still know all about it 3,000 years later! I think Solomon probably had a rough time of it. Maybe he even screamed himself to sleep a time or two. Perhaps that's where his humility came from, as exhibited by his response to the prophet who anointed him king.

But whatever the case, I'm pretty sure wisdom is learned through painful experience. For instance, if you get an adjustable rate mortgage that you can just barely afford to make the payments on today, and the payments skyrocket tomorrow because the interest rates finally rose, so that you eventually have to foreclose on your house, chances are you will wisely avoid anything but a fixed rate mortgage going forward. Thus a tiny seed of wisdom is planted in someone's heart and nourished with suffering.

If you ever have a chance to go to visit someone in the hospital who has been battling some disease for a long time, please do so. You'll find that they're very wise. They care very little for the things of this world, and they look to the age to come. What a pleasure and joy it is to visit some sweet little old lady, barely alive in her hospital bed, who is nonetheless sweet to the nurses, kind to the other patients, worried about taking her pastor's time, grateful that he would come see her, etc. Wisdom. She knows from her suffering that what really matters is not this age, but the age to come. She's ok with suffering in the body for a time because she is looking forward to being raised from the dead.

And so it is with those who have been badly burned, spurned and abused by the people of God, the church. You see, they have been exposed to the ugliness that persists in every church of every denomination, no matter who the pastor is, no matter how godly the elders, how high the offerings are, how many people sit in the pews, etc. Every church everywhere is tainted. Every church everywhere is impure.

And every pastor, at any time, can find himself suddenly shepherding a flock of wolves, bursting and belching because they have eaten all the sheep and have turned their greedy eyes to their shepherd (or the shepherd's intern).

God promised to meet your needs. God promised you salvation in Christ. He did NOT promise that you could always be a pastor.

Oh, how I hoped in my own desires as if they were promises of God! I graduated seminary, I landed an internship, I endured the worst that that minister and elders could dish out during said internship, and I even endured the seemingly required year or so of unemployment while I waited for my first call. But that call never came. Was God being unfaithful to me? Was God being mean or cruel?

No.

At what time did God promise me in his Word that if I did all the things just mentioned that I would earn the right to be a minister?

Without realizing it, I had devised my own covenant of works and assumed that God had entered into that covenant with me. According to my covenant, I'd check all the boxes required to be a minister and if I checked all those boxes, I'd become a minister. That was God's responsibility to me. We each had our responsibilities in the equation. I did my part, he did his.

But that's not how it works, is it?

God promised us that if we would just worry about seeking his kingdom and his righteousness (whose righteousness - mine or God's?), then he would take care of the clothes on our back, the roof over our heads and the food in our bellies. It may be that he'll give you a job, or it may be that the deacons will help you.

God promised us that if we have faith in Jesus Christ, he will impute the righteousness of Christ to us and permanently unite us to his Son by his indwelling Spirit, who will be at work in us, conforming us to the image of his Son, growing us in righteousness and reforming the desires of our hearts. And he promised to do this completely by his grace, by his mercy, not for anything done in us, or by us, but simply because he chose us.

Oh, they say, but God is love! How can he choose only SOME? When I choose to marry my wife, am I being unloving to all the other women in the world? And at the same time, if I choose every woman in the world, what makes any of them special? As they say, when everyone is special, no one is.

But I digress. The point is, God promised us salvation from the condemnation earned by our sin, the condemnation of eternal death, and instead has promised us eternal life by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. And he has promised to provide for our needs.

But he never promised I could be a minister. He never promised any former minister that that man could retire a minister. In fact, the Bible says in Jude that "certain men have crept in among" us, and that those men are up to no good. They're here to cause trouble, and trouble they will cause.

For you ministers out there who want to believe that your church will never turn on you, or that your ability to make the people in your church like and appreciate you is the source of your security, think again. Who killed Jesus? Who was screaming, crucify, crucify? It was not those outside the church. It was the church.

Who was it that threw Jeremiah into a sewer? Who persecuted Paul? Who murdered the prophets? On whose heads did Jesus place the guilt for all the prophets?

It has ALWAYS been the people of God who had the most hostility toward the prophets, toward those who speak to them on God's behalf.

We are always so concerned about the evil outside the church. Who cares? It's all small time compared to the evil WITHIN the church. The church contains the greatest evil that has ever been on earth. They are Satan's hidden sleeper agents, walking among us, pretending to be one of us. They're so good at it they have begun to believe their own lies.

And they are everywhere.

What price would you be willing to pay to gain wisdom?

God asks us all to pay different costs, but make no mistake, we will all suffer to gain wisdom. We have to. There's no other way to learn. You cannot learn that debt is dumb until you get deep into debt and have to work your butt off to get out of it. You cannot learn to be wary of office politics until you've been stabbed in the back.

God wants us to be wise. Christ is our wisdom, says the Scriptures. But he learned through suffering. We do too.

And God sure did answer those many prayers as a child.

He has answered those prayers many, many times over.

But there is one time when he answered that prayer the loudest, the clearest.

When I was left with no choice but to walk away from the ministry, that's when God answered the prayers of a child who once desperately asked God for wisdom, just because he only wanted to please his God.

And as I reflect back on all that anger, all those feelings of betrayal, how I felt so hurt and rejected by God - I have actually been taught something by that little boy I used to be once upon a time. That little boy was willing to do ANYTHING to please God.

Well, one day, God asked me to walk away from a career I had been carefully cultivating for about a decade. All that effort I put forth, all the sweat, tears, money, stress - not to mention the price my wife paid - all of it had to matter less to me than pleasing God. I had no choice.

My God asked me to lay it all aside and, like Abraham, to go to the land which he would show me later.

That's when God answered the desperate pleas of a little boy. Because when I said, over and over, "Please give me wisdom," I was really saying, "Please just let me glorify you."

It's a privilege to have walked this road. It really is. I have learned more than I could ever possibly articulate in something like a relatively incoherent blog post. I have gained some small measure of wisdom through what I have suffered.

And it was all worth it.

What is Wisdom Worth?

The price I paid was small. I would pay much more.

I am tempted to wish that God would ask less of you, but then, that would be to wish that God would give you a smaller measure of wisdom. And I wish you a large measure of his wisdom, and I hope he gives me much more.

And I know what it costs.

Translating Ministry Experience Into the Language of Training

So you want to apply for a job in training and you want to know how to translate your ministerial resume into the language of training. Here's some (hopefully) helpful tips.

Begin with research. To translate, you first have to learn the language. Do so here: http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/sat.html

The material available for free at that link will teach you about the ADDIE process of curriculum development. This is also known as Instructional Systems Design. Having read and studied that material, you can now claim familiarity with ADDIE and ISD in your skill set.

Structuring Your Resume
You always want to structure a resume so that you highlight what you want to draw peoples' attention to. For example, new college grads put their eduction first, right at the top, because that's their biggest achievement. On the other hand, if you're a good 10 years out of school, you for sure want to put education last.

Most people include three basic parts to their resume: Summary (or Objective), Experience and Education. So let me ask you, which one of these do you want to highlight? If you highlight your education, most employers will think it's irrelevant and they'll immediately become disinterested in your resume. They may finish looking at it, but you've gotten off on the wrong foot. If you highlight your experience, you'll probably have the same problem. And if you highlight your summary, sort of like your resume's thesis statement, you're just highlighting everything you've already determined you don't want to highlight.

In the case of a minister/licentiate/seminary student attempting to cross over into a new career such as training, I have a slightly unconventional recommendation for you.

Get rid of the summary. Cut it out altogether. You don't need it because it won't help you.

Replace the summary with a skills list. Literally start with the word "Skills" followed by a colon and underline it. Then on the next line, just start adding in your skills and separate them with commas. Like this...

Skills:
Microsoft Office, critical thinking, public speaking, writing, linguistic analysis, ADDIE process (since you clicked the link above and read it), adult learning, classroom management, committee management, collaboration, leadership, client relations, ethics, editing, presentation creation, project management, training, masters degree

Something like that. And you'll want to put them in order of relevance so that the most significant ones come first. This may be different depending on what job you're trying to get. Make sure to include as much as you possibly can in this list. Any skills you have, regardless of your proficiency, belong here. It's ok if they're overwhelmed (which is synonymous with impressed in this context).

Anyway, think about what this does. It gets right to the point. Your experience and education are significant. But it's a lot of work to get people to really, truly understand that right? So don't ask them to climb that mountain. Start right at the top of the mountain. What are they going to figure out about you if they can get past the whole ministry confusion? Your skill set is what they're actually looking for anyway. Don't play hard to get. Give them what they want right up front. Then you'll simply spend the rest of the ink in your resume justifying and supporting the claims you make in your skill set.

After your skills, put your experience first. If you're fresh out of seminary, put your education first, making sure to include dates. Avoid large gaps in your dates. It's ok if the dates aren't too specific, but be prepared that some might become suspicious at this. If you were unemployed for a year after seminary but you were studying for licensure exams, don't put unemployed or leave a gap. Add this time as an item in your experience and include dates. Call it under care of presbytery or something.

Bullets
Use bullets to say what you were up to when you had that job or were engaged in that activity. Keep it very concise and simple, using as few words as possible. Like this:

Under Care of Presbytery            (3/2010 - 9/2010)

• Conducting licensure exams
• Attended meetings of local/regional/national governance boards

You may be a little concerned to put that on your resume. But it's vastly preferred to leaving a gap or saying unemployed. If you were a student, you can put student if you want, but this is why you put dates on your education.

I've looked at resumes before and conducted interviews. I asked about a gap and it turned out to be a period of unemployment resulting from the candidate's inability to pass the (several months long) background check. He began working for the company before the check was completed, and when he didn't pass, they let him go. Experienced interviewers will always ask about these things.

But they won't even ask about what I suggested above. They have no idea what a licensure exam is, or a Presbytery for that matter, but it sure sounds very involved. And it took 6 months! If they do ask, you can just begin to describe the licensure process, and after 3 sentences or so, they'll be overwhelmed and impressed enough that you can move on to the next thing.

Specific Tips

Ok, down to the nitty gritty. Here's some specific tips on how to word those experience bullets.

• Use the language of ADDIE (see link above)
• You didn't write sermons or Sunday school lessons - you wrote lesson plans, you developed curriculum
• It's not a session/consistory/whatever - it's a governance board
• It's not a presbytery, it's a regional governance body
• You've used sophisticated computer software (Accordance, BibleWorks, Logos) to conduct complex academic and linguistic searches to aid in historical and grammatical analysis of ancient texts in multiple languages
• You conducted textual analysis of ancient texts in multiple languages
• You translated ancient texts from multiple languages into English based on grammatical, historical, cultural, linguistic analysis, consulting cutting edge software and the latest modern scholarship
• As a pastor, you can say that you moderated a session chaired a committee that oversaw a $150k annual budget (or whatever it was - numbers in your resume are always a plus)
• Use the word leadership a lot - helps you come across as strong and confident
• You regularly contributed thought leadership at meetings of local/regional/national governance boards (if you ever gave a speech at presbytery - or if not, silence can be thought leadership too)
• For education, be sure to include that your seminary degree involved 100+ credit hours (typical masters degree is 32)
• Use Calibri font because it's easier to read (yes, I know this isn't Calibri)
• Start each bullet with a nice, strong, main verb from the higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy. Definitely be able to talk about Bloom's Taxonomy in any training job. Google "Bloom's Taxonomy verbs" to find a list of verbs appropriate to each level of the taxonomy.
• Don't feel constrained to one page - that's just not a rule anymore. But don't try to fill it up with a lot of words either. Be concise. If you need the space, use it, but only if you need it. The longer it is, the less likely someone will read it carefully, if at all.
• Don't try to hide that you had some horrible minimum wage job. There's no shame in taking whatever work you can find when going through a difficult time.

So that should be about it. Send your resume along with a pain letter. Send enough of these, and you'll get a call back.

One more thing
When asked why you left the ministry, just say simply that you left voluntarily. In Christian circles, we appreciate honesty and being vulnerable and confessing weakness, but not so in the world. Obviously you can't lie, but you don't have to offer the whole story either. You can just say that you decided you needed a change or that the ministry wasn't for you. No one will want to ask more. If they ask why you left, it's most likely out of genuine curiosity, not to quell their suspicions. And if they are suspicious, then they'll just want to know that you didn't go to jail for molesting a kid or something. So as long as you say something that's not very interesting or revealing and assures them you didn't go to jail, their question will be sufficiently answered. I mean, most people can't understand why you'd want to be a pastor in the first place. Walking away from it is something that actually makes more sense to them.

Do NOT worry that they're going to call your old church and they're going to say something that ruins your chance of getting the job. Pretend you're an unbeliever. Would you want to make that phone call? Not only do they just not want to, but they'd probably also be afraid you'd sue them and the company for prying into your religious beliefs and practices with the intent to discriminate against you.

No need to include references.

Remember, this website is purely anonymous: both those who post and those who comment. Comments that name people (including the name of the commenter), churches or organizations will be deleted.

Training: the Perfect Career for Former Ministers

So you've walked away from the ministry, and now you're thinking, how on earth am I going to make a living? If you're anything like me, you have a mountain of college and seminary debt and the very last thing on your mind is adding any more education to that mountain. You're ready to earn a paycheck. Besides, your wife is probably sick of working nights in the hospital, right?

But what do you do? Who appreciates the skills of a minister/intern/seminary student? What good does it do you? There's pretty much no application for these skills outside the church...right?

When I walked away from the ministry, I couldn't even get a call back from McDonalds. I ended up taking a job in a factory as a general laborer for minimum wage, despite having a Masters degree that required about three times as many credit hours as a typical Masters. I was just desperate to take whatever work I could find.

To be honest, I was scared. I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to provide for my family. I was extremely discouraged and sure we were doomed to poverty forever.

I reached out to literally everyone I've ever talked to and asked them for ideas or leads. Would you believe that about a hundred people between them couldn't come up with even one job opening that might work for me? But at least half of them said I should be a teacher.

A teacher?! My mind raced back to my days in public school growing up. Those poor teachers! Overworked, underpaid, unappreciated, forced to teach from lousy curriculum. No way! Not me. Besides, I had actually thought about that before, and like everybody else, I knew several guys in seminary whose wives were teachers. So I knew enough to know that if you want to be a teacher, you need to be certified, and to get that, you need an undergrad degree in education - which I didn't have and had no intention of getting. And even then, you'd have to start as a substitute teacher or a teacher in some tiny, non-accredited Christian school for about 25k a year. No chance of supporting a family on that income, especially with my school debts. Teacher indeed!

So all those people, those many people who knew me who said I should be a teacher - they received a snarky response about how they were uninformed or hadn't really thought their idea through and why can't you give me a useful idea? Like me, they didn't think my skills were of any use either outside a classroom.

And then it happened. Someone forwarded my email to someone I used to work for in my distant past who remembered that I did good quality work, and they said, hey, I'll give you a job doing training! And it wasn't a job offer for 25k either - in fact, it was more than three times that! I felt like I won the lottery!

It turns out there is a kind of teaching you can do that's actually fairly lucrative. It's just not called teaching - it's called training.

You see, businesses employ people, and those people need training. They need training in simple things like: writing, critical thinking and public speaking. As a former minister, you wouldn't know anything about those things would you?

Now, you may not be all that confident in your thinking and communication skills. After all, there were people in your church that criticized you, and you weren't as good as the other guys in seminary, and you're just not sure that you are capable of very much whatsoever.

Well, I'll tell you a secret. If you could examine the thoughts of most people, you'd find that they're mostly completely confused and incoherent. This is why they'd just rather watch sports or Fox news or something. Trust me, after graduating seminary, you're pretty much a samurai master of critical thinking.

And no matter how bad you think you write, you're probably light years ahead of most people. I'm convinced that most people stop learning anything about writing somewhere around junior high. They begin with incoherent, inconsistent thoughts, so it's probably no wonder that their writing is a mess. Ask any college graduate to show you one of their papers from college. I'll bet you won't even be able to discern the point of the paper.

And let's talk about public speaking. Jerry Seinfeld has a great comedy bit about it. He points out that surveys consistently show that public speaking is peoples' number one fear, ranking even higher than death itself. That means that, for most people, at a funeral, they'd prefer to be in the coffin than delivering the eulogy.

You've no doubt mastered public speaking. Even if you think you have room to improve (of course you do), just being willing to do it at all puts you ahead of most people. You can stand out in a crowd, literally and figuratively, just by being willing to stand up in front of people and speak.

Now when it comes to training, it turns out that in order to do it well, you need these skills in spades. You need to have sharp critical thinking skills because you need to be able to understand the material and explain it to others. You also have to be able to handle odd questions from students and recognize that they're asking it because they didn't really understand a concept properly that you had taught earlier. As a samurai master of critical thinking, you can see how the concepts all hang together in a coherent system and how pulling out a piece here or there will affect the whole.

Obviously, training involves a lot of public speaking in classrooms, so skills in this area are super valuable and essential. Your skills are so sharp, in fact, that you can probably train the trainers.

It turns out that you need writing skills as well. In the training world, we write lesson plans. You used to write sermon outlines or manuscripts. Now you can write lesson plans. And lesson plans have to be well written.

But, you say, I don't write well at all! My writing is quite atrocious! My seminary professor said so. Yes, but your seminary professor held you to a very high standard. Most people today write like 13 year olds. No, I'm not just being funny or even exaggerating.

I'll tell ya what. Do this little test. Ask someone at random who has never been to seminary if they can explain when to use I or me in a sentence. Oh sure, any child can probably tell you which one is correct in just about any given sentence, but I sincerely doubt any adult can explain it to you conceptually in the abstract, with the possible exception of a few over-acheiving alumni from some storied private school run by very old and very strict Dutch people or something who still hit kids on the hands with rulers.

But perhaps some of you may not know either eh? Shame on you! You can translate Greek and write exegetical papers, but you can't explain when to use I or me in a sentence? Ok, I'll tell you, but you're going to feel quite silly. It's simple really. You use I when it is the subject, and me when it is the object. See? I told you it was simple and that you'd feel silly.

Now here's where you'll really be surprised. Again, choose any adult at random. Ask them to explain when to use I or me. When they can't tell you, explain it just exactly as I did above. No cheating. Do you think it will help? I have taught writing classes to recent college graduates. Granted, most of them were math, science and engineering majors, but some of them had humanities degrees. I have yet to come across anyone who can tell me the difference between the subject and an object in a sentence.

And of course that means they can't tell you what the passive voice is, but they're pretty sure it should not be used by them (ahem). You recognized that that sentence was a lame attempt at humor. Most people wouldn't get it if you held a gun to their head (nor if a gun was held to their head by you).

Not only can you write, but you can concentrate, you can focus, and you're not lazy. This means it's possible for you to write curriculum from scratch. Lots of people out there claim to be curriculum developers, but they accomplish very little. Almost no one volunteers for this either. It's tedious, labor intensive, requires a lot of intense focus for days or weeks at a time, and it's not sexy. There's very little glory in writing curriculum. Most people simply won't do it, and those that do take about 3 times as long as it should take because it's just that hard to concentrate. Worse, the finished product is often boring, not detailed enough, incoherent and largely the same as the old curriculum.

If you go in and make a concerted effort to the glory of God, you'll be a superhero and they'll still be using your curriculum 10 years after you've left. Most curriculum developers don't write new curriculum from scratch, they just make small changes to pre-existing curriculum and repackage it. It's the blind leading the blind in most cases. They spend a lot of time surfing the internet.

Alright, I know what you're thinking. I'm not saying all this to be arrogant and make fun of the poor, unenlightened souls who haven't gone to seminary (not exclusively anyway). I'm trying to encourage you. You're far more educated than most people, much more so than you realize. You have amazing, marketable skills. Your critical thinking and communication skills in particular are sky high. These are highly prized in the marketplace.

Once you've established a little training experience outside the ministry, and you do an excellent job and can prove it, you'll be able to get an even better job, possibly even managing other people conducting training. Training can be very rewarding and satisfying.

One area that you should really consider is software training. Did you know that people can make a really good living training people how to use Microsoft Office products like Word, Excel and PowerPoint? In a big enough organization, this is a full time job. Yep, they'll hire you to update their curriculum and teach whoever needs it. You'll probably teach 2-3 days a week for about 4 hours and "update curriculum" the rest of the time.

There are all kinds of software companies coming out all the time. Many of them are trying to sell their product to enterprises, organizations of various kinds. Were you a teller once upon a time before you went to seminary? That experience, believe it or not, plus your training experience as a minister makes you a very strong candidate to teach tellers and other bank employees how to use the new software the bank just purchased. Why? Because you understand their job and you understand training. The software company will most likely be able to train you how to use the actual software - that's easy. But you'll probably get trained by a software engineer who has no idea how the actual end users will use the software. But you do, because you used to be a teller. Sure, it was a long time ago, but you could pick it up quick. The job hasn't changed that much and you've experienced it for yourself.

Or maybe you were a paralegal. You can train software to lawyers and paralegals.

Heck, maybe you worked in a McDonalds in high school. You know what? You can train people at McDonalds' corporate headquarters when they send their store managers to learn the newest version of their software so that they can return and train their employees.

The point is, you can take your education/training for the ministry and any ministry experience and call it training experience. And that's certainly not dishonest by any stretch. You have those same skills. And you can pair that with just about any other experience you have on your resume, and you've just become the golden unicorn that someone's been seeking for their training team. It's your job to figure out who these people are.

Don't go searching on Indeed or Glassdoor. Go to Google and find the companies selling the software you want to train on. Find the hottest new Silicon Valley darling in the industry, go to their website and look for the tiny link at the bottom of the page that says Careers. Click it and apply.

In another post, I'll talk about how to rewrite your resume and talk about your skills in a cover letter and interviews in the language of modern training. First, build a list of companies who might be interested in adding you to their training team.

And by the way, it's ok to dream again. And it's not a bad thing to want to make money either. You have debts to pay, no doubt, and a family to provide for, not to mention your poor wife's night job. The sooner you pay off those debts, the sooner you can make a bigger monetary contribution at your church. Maybe you can even buy a house someday and be free from the sound of neighbors' feet over your head and the deep bass line that's felt as much as heard.

There is life after the ministry. You can survive. You can even thrive.

Remember, this website is purely anonymous: both those who post and those who comment. Comments that name people (including the name of the commenter), churches or organizations will be deleted.