I grew up in rural Alabama, where my dad pastored a wonderful church in a small town. He served there faithfully from the time I was in the third grade until he passed away in 2021. I moved to Springfield, MO for Bible college in 2008. As most young adults do, when I branched out on my own, I began to think I knew more about the world than my dad.

My experience was particularly challenging because I went to college to study for ministry. While my dad was an avid reader throughout his life, he had to drop out of Bible college and, for various reasons, never finished his degree. So it didn’t take long for my theological and ministerial training to surpass my dad’s… or so I thought at the time.

While I attended Bible college, I had the great privilege to listen to some wonderful preachers. My dad was a fine speaker, but he didn’t have the homiletical training or the professional polish on display when well-known pastors, professors, and missionaries spoke in chapel.

One day my dad asked me to compare his preaching with what I was hearing at Bible college. I hated that question. I didn’t think my dad’s preaching held up all that well to these famous speakers. To be fair, I was his son, and I’m pretty sure only my mom and older sister had listened to more of his sermons. It’s tough to judge someone’s public speaking when you are so familiar with it.

I don’t remember how I answered his question, but I’m sure he saw through whatever polite response I offered. I wish that uncomfortable conversation was the extent of my youthful pride. Unfortunately, I made a critical mistake during those early years of theological training and ministerial vocation. I equated polished performances with the pinnacle of pastoring. That’s a mistake I’d like to highlight and help you correct if you happen to make it yourself.

The Allure of Polished Performances

When you attend Bible college, you acquire all sorts of knowledge about the Bible, theology, and ministry. In retrospect, one of my favorite aspects of Bible college was the daily chapel services. It was a unique season of life filled with corporate worship and powerful preaching. Since my college was located in the same town as my denomination’s national office, we were fortunate enough to hear well-known national figures preach in chapel on a regular basis.

It’s hard not to be mesmerized by polished public speakers. If you’ve ever listened to an eloquent orator, you know what I mean. They use rhetorical techniques, strategic gestures, and clever wordplay to communicate their message. Couple this regular exposure to professional-level public speaking with classes on homiletics, and you can’t help but feel a certain amount of inspiration and aspiration.

In the context of Bible college, the bright lights, elevated stage, and microphone make the art of public speaking seem like the pinnacle of pastoring. Many of us worked hard on our speaking skills. We listened to podcasts and watched videos of the best preachers. We copied their mannerisms and speaking rhythms, trying to acquire some semblance of their skills. Whether or not we voiced this thought, many of us assumed that developing our skills as orators would lead to the best ministry positions in the future.

It’s hard to return to a rural church and listen to your dad preach when you’ve spent the past few months listening to national speakers. It’s easy to become judgmental and assume that something is missing because the lights aren’t as bright and there’s no green room to rest in before preaching. But the allure of polished performances is problematic. I just wish I had seen it sooner.

The Mirage of Polished Performances

As I mentioned, I wish I had realized polished performances were not the key to ministerial success much sooner than I did. Unfortunately, I had to come to this realization through the school of hard knocks.

My wife and I took a missionary position with a unique church plant in the Rocky Mountains. We were enamored with the mountainous geography and the prospect of taking a different approach to church ministry. We had come across this opportunity while listening to a talented speaker talk about a house-church model of ministry. The stories were well-crafted and the theological framework was well-articulated. We were drawn to it.

That ministry turned out to be something far different than we expected. For various reasons, the polished speaking performances did not translate to practical ministry in the way we had expected. Fourteen months later, we left the Rocky Mountains bewildered. We had missed some critical detail that should have warned us about the difficulties we would face in that experience.

Not only did that ministerial experience reveal the mirage of polished performances, but it made me reconsider my evaluation of my dad. Whereas I discovered that talented speakers did not always make for good pastors, I realized that whatever I thought my dad lacked in public speaking skills, he made up for in spades through the substance of his pastoring.

The Substance of Pastoring

My dad realized that public speaking is not the pinnacle of pastoring, and in that way his theological and ministerial training far exceeded whatever I had gained up to that point. Preaching is a critical component, and he worked hard to do it as well as he could, but he knew ministry required so much more than public speaking skills.

My dad was known for leaving the church office on a regular basis to go into town to do what he called “fishing.” For my dad, the pinnacle of pastoring happened in the everyday moments of life spent with other people. He loved to be with people in their good and bad moments.

I can’t count the number of times I went to bed while my parents counseled some young couple in our living room. They would spend hours talking to people, sharing godly advice and encouraging them in the faith.

After my dad passed away, his phone would light up throughout the day with reminders to pray for people. Each reminder was labeled with a different name. He prayed for people specifically and regularly.

On numerous occasions, my dad arrived at the scene of a car crash or some tragedy before the family had even made it there. He served as the chaplain for the local police department. In the aftermath of some crisis, he would pastor both the policemen and the people who had experienced the tragedy.

I didn’t know or fully appreciate just how much my dad did for people when I was younger. It wasn’t until I was much older that I began to see the fruit of his years spent pastoring the same community. When I returned home as an adult with a family of my own, I frequently hesitated to go into town with my dad. I loved spending time with him, but our quick trips to the grocery store would inevitably turn into two-hour excursions. He loved to talk to the people in the community, and he seemed to know everyone. It’s not that hard to know most people in a small town, but my dad took great pleasure in knowing people personally. He was never in a hurry. He was never too busy to talk to someone. And he almost always found a need someone had he could help meet or offered to pray with someone.

Though I had realized the foolishness of my youthful perception of my dad years before, I remember one trip into town when I felt a fresh wave of foolishness for ever judging him based on the eloquence of his sermons. After we left a conversation with a man I had never seen before, I asked my dad who he was talking to, and he informed me that he had helped the man through a suicidal episode.

I had never heard that story before. It would have made a great sermon illustration. But it never occurred to my dad to use that man’s story as an illustration. It’s not that doing so would have been inherently wrong. But it does reveal a fundamental philosophical difference between someone who thinks polished performances are the pinnacle of ministry and someone who thinks fishing for and shepherding people is the true mountaintop of the pastoral vocation.

Conclusion

November is always a special month for me. My dad was diagnosed with leukemia on November 11th, 2004. As the years wore on and God proved the doctor’s prognosis wrong, my dad came to view that date as his real birthday. Toward the end of his life, he liked to describe himself as a teenager. If you pressed him, however, he would acknowledge that he didn’t know how long God would preserve his life. He considered every year after his diagnosis as a gift from the Lord, and he refused to waste it.

His priorities over those final 18 years of his life revealed a man who developed a deep understanding of what really mattered in life and ministry. I don’t know if it had more to do with my deeper appreciation for my dad, distance making my heart grow fonder, or my dad’s continued habit of reading and studying the Bible, but I came to think that my dad’s preaching was really good toward the end of his life. If truth be told, however, I think my affinity for his preaching grew because I saw it in the context and the substance of his pastoring.

These days I still appreciate a polished sermon. I just don’t think it matters nearly as much as I once thought it did. I’m much more interested in the substance of the pastor’s life. What happens between the sermons? Does the pastor go fishing for people? Does the pastor shepherd the sheep? Substantive pastoring is the pinnacle of ministry, not polished performances. May we never forget that.

Bio: Tyler Fulcher is an Editor at Gospel Publishing House in Springfield, MO. He earned his Ph.D. in the Old Testament from Baylor University and writes a weekly newsletter about the Bible, Theology, and Church History at mybibleschool.com (http://mybibleschool.com/ ). He is married to Julie Fulcher and has three young daughters.

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“Of all vocations, surely the gospel ministry is the one whose paradigm is most radically formed by the dynamics of godly mentorship.” 

Stephen Baldwin