Recently, a good friend of mine, who is a pastor, sent me an email and described his discouragement and frustration regarding his church (and the lack of attendance, lack of spiritual desire and growth, and even an empty parking lot on a Sunday night).
No one is immune to discouragement. Everyone gets discouraged, no matter their occupation, but in the ministry it is all too common because we work with people and we love them and take care of them and we want the very best for them in their walk with God and in their personal lives. But it can be discouraging and frustrating when they don’t respond to what God desires for their lives and they don’t respond to what the Spirit of God wants to do in their hearts.
I replied to the email:
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Dear Pastor:
Thank you for sharing with me about your discouragement. One of the most important things you can do in dealing with discouragement is to talk to someone, especially another pastor. After 20 years in ministry, this is one of the areas in which I have fallen short in the past and so have most of the ministers I have known. We think we are supposed to be strong and not let things bother us but our experience is that sometimes we aren't strong and things do bother us but it is hard to talk to others and admit our frailty and weakness.
There have been many times when I have been discouraged. I can remember when I was a pastor at a small church. On a good Sunday we had around 40 people in worship and 20 in Sunday School. There were times my wife and I bought fuel oil so that we could have heat during the winter. I can remember one Sunday, as we were going home, my wife started crying in the car because she didn't think the church was going to make it financially. On Sunday nights and Wednesday nights, we had 9 people (the same 9 people) every night. And this happened the whole 4 years I was there at the church.
So I have been where you are and I know what you are feeling as you describe your discouragement.
You wrote: "I have been very discouraged in my ministry here at my church. The people here just seem so content with the way things are, no growth, no commitment."
Part of your discouragement is good because you are not content for the people of your church to stay where they are in their relationship to God. Never be satisfied with where the people are spiritually-continue to challenge and set an example for them to follow. Also, please know that most pastors deal with the same issues you are dealing with. You are not alone in your frustration and discouragement. It might help you to reach out to other pastors who are also struggling in their churches. This is what the director of missions of your association could be doing (and he may well be doing this). But, again, maybe you can reach out to other pastors who may be discouraged.
You wrote: "I don't know why things are like there are here. My fear is that I am the problem and that the reason the church is declining is me. I don't want that."
Dear brother, be sure that you are right with God and that you are growing in your relationship to Him. Then, if this area is settled in heart, if you think you are the problem then you are not the problem. The only time you might be the problem is when you don’t think you are the problem. The pastors who are the problem don’t have a clue that they are the problem; therefore, they don’t even consider this as an issue.
Because I am assured that you are growing in your relationship to God, you are not the problem and you are not the reason that things are the way they are. The decline of the church is not your fault. These issues are a result of sin. You cannot make people get right with God and you cannot make people stay right with God. You must take care of the "sheep" by feeding them and giving them something to drink and you must "shepherd" them but you cannot force them to follow you and you cannot force them to seek God. Ultimately, they have to grow up and seek God on their own and take responsibility and ownership of their own spirituality.
You wrote: "My want is to preach the word of God, to expound the scriptures and allow God to grow the people."
I urge you to continue preach the word, expound the scriptures, and let God take care of His work in people's hearts and lives. It takes time for the word of God and the Spirit of God to break through the icicles and barriers in hearts that have grown cold and indifferent. But it can happen and it does happen all of the time!
You wrote: At this time there "appears" to be no growth.
Just because you can't "see" growth doesn't mean it is not taking place. When we preach, we are communicating the word of God. And the word of God is "spiritual" in nature. By that, I mean, we can't always see what the word of God and the Spirit of God are doing in people’s hearts while we are preaching because He is working in the area of the spiritual realm and our physical eyes can't see that work going on.
We must trust God that when we preach, He is doing His work. "So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it." Isaiah 55:11. Also, there are all kinds of “growth”; yes, numerical (membership), but other areas like ministries, missions, maturity, etc. Don’t gauge the growth just on the numbers and what you see. Look for other indications.
And remember what Paul said, “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.” (First Corinthians 3:6). Sometimes there are seasons of planting in the ministry; sometimes there are seasons of increase. Set your heart on planting and trust Him for the increase.
You wrote: "My greatest passion is to honor God, to please Him with my ministry so that His name is honored, so that He is magnified and glorified. I'm just not sure that is happening. Does this make sense???
This makes all the sense in the world to me. I admonish you to please keep your passion to honor God and seek to please Him. You wrote that you are not sure this is happening. I know it is happening because that is your passion and your desire. I would worry about you if this wasn't your passion. If this wasn't your passion, and if you weren’t honoring and pleasing God, you would not mention it nor would you be concerned about it. The pastor who isn’t honoring God and pleasing Him is not concerned about this in his life.
Discouragement is common to most people and it is sometimes difficult to know how to deal with it personally or how to help someone else deal with it. When someone is discouraged, their attention is focused on themselves or their problems, just like a pastor can become discouraged with his church and focus on the problems in his church. This is normal but this is not healthy.
While we must attempt to understand that life is never perfect and people are never perfect, it is easy to allow our attention to be focused on our problems and our feelings. As a result, we become discouraged and we begin to lose our joy and our peace in our relationship with God. Many times I have lost my joy and my peace because of my discouragement and because I focused on my problems and focused on my feelings.
But what can we do to deal with the discouragement?
In attempting to allow God to deal with me in this area of my life, He led me to Matthew 6:25-34 and specifically to verse 33: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you”.
As I studied this passage, I began to try to gain an understanding of what it meant to “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness” (Matthew 6:33a) and to understand what Jesus meant when He said, “Take no thought” (other translations read, “Do not worry” or “do not be anxious”).
The Greek word translated “take no thought” or “do not worry” is the word “merimna”. “Merimna” means to be drawn in different directions, to have a divided mind and to have a two-sided mind. “Merimna” would result in confusion and chaos in the mind. An example of “merimna” would be: a believer knows they should trust God yet they worry about the situations they face. That is “merimna” and the result is doubt, confusion, worry, fear, anxiousness, and fretting.
If Jesus said not to worry about life, food, clothing, and drink then what should we do? Jesus said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness”. Therefore, we conclude that our priority should be to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness.
Also, there is a promise in Matthew 6:33. Jesus promises that if we will seek first His kingdom and His righteousness that He will care of “all these things” in our lives. What things? Food, clothing, drink, and everything else in our lives and those “things” are His responsibility.
Whereas, our responsibility is to seek Him first, His responsibility is all of our “things”. As long as we pursue our responsibility of seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness then He will take care of His responsibility of “all these things” in our lives. Our business is to seek Him first; His business is all of our “things”.
Several years ago, I finally realized why, so often, I was discouraged and why I would lose my joy and peace. I would find myself worried, confused, afraid, anxious, and fretting about “things” in my life (circumstances, situations, issues, people). The Lord began to convict me that I had been trying to take care of His business by worrying over the “things” in my life! When I realized this, I was appalled and disgusted with myself.
How dare I try to take care of God’s business and God’s responsibility? He had always been very capable of handling things on His own (like the creation of the universe, for example J) without my help and (shock!) He had never consulted me on my opinion as to what He should do about “things” in my life or anyone else’s life.
As I tried to process this, I discovered that the worry, confusion, fear, anxiousness, and fretting about “things” were red flags or signals given by the Holy Spirit to tell me that I was trying to take care of God’s business. My distracted mind resulted in discouragement ant that was evidence that my desires did not match up with His desires about the “things” in my life. What was His desire for me in dealing with “things”? To seek Him first.
Whenever we are confronted with “things” in our lives, we have two choices: God’s way or our way.
If we do it our way, we will be attempting to take care of God’s business and we will begin to worry and fret and become discouraged. As a result, we may then find ourselves starting to doubt God and wonder if He really cares about us. And then, some people go so far as to think that God is punishing them for something.
What is God’s way of dealing with “things”? He says to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and He will take care of “all these things”. How will take care of “things”? We don’t know how but He promises He will.
One other note on this subject of discouragement and seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness: I have also discovered that if I try to take care of God’s business then I can interfere with Him taking care of my “things”. He will quietly let me try to figure things out on my own and, as a result, lose my joy and my peace. Then He waits until I get frustrated enough with myself that I turn to Him and ask for His help.
Another part of this process of “seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness” is submission. We must come to the point in our lives that we submit to the Almighty hand of God; that He is all-powerful and all-knowing and that anything that comes into our lives has been filtered through His hands (Job is the best example). God can do anything He wants, He can cause or allow anything to happen in my life, and He is able to fix anything in my life.
Now, what does all of this have to do with your situation as a pastor and discouragement? It has everything to do with your situation. The way to handle “things” (like pastoring in a church) is take care of your responsibility, which is, to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. That should be your pursuit, your passion, and your priority. But, you may ask, “How do I do that”? I have learned to do this by asking the Lord to teach me what it means to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and then asking Him to teach me what He means by “all these things shall be added unto you”. Also, it helps me, when I find myself worried and discouraged over something, to quote Matthew 6:33.
Seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness includes taking care of your relationship with God. The Greek word for kingdom is “basileia” and in the context of the passage in Matthew 6, “kingdom” means the rule and reign of God in a person’s life. “Righteousness” in the context of the passage means the rules, regulations, standards, and expectations that God sets before us.
Therefore, we are to seek first the rule and reign of God in our lives and we are to seek first to submit to His rules, His regulations, His standards and His expectations. These two principles can be summed up in the word “Lordship” (which is a word that is not used in our “religious circles” much anymore because “Lordship” makes us uncomfortable).
God’s desire for us is to understand that He is in control and we are not. When we try and attempt to take of His business, we lose our joy and our peace. The way to get the joy and peace back is to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. I have found that when I do this, God has a way of working all the other “things” out in my life the way He wants to and He begins to change my perspective on “things” to His perspective. When I pursue the kingdom of God and His righteousness, I find that I really can trust Him to take care of all my “things”.
Hope some of this helps. Keep in touch.
