Editor’s Note:  The author of this article, Josh Havens, is co-founder and co-director of the online discipleship ministry, Daily Growth Discipleship, a ministry whose mission is perfectly described in its name.  He serves at Global University, a worldwide distance learning pioneer, integrates education and service in 150 countries. He is also a member of Journey Pastoral Coaching and represents Journey to ministers and ministries across the country.  

I never thought I needed a deep and intimate relationship with other Christians. Growing up in the Church, I somehow grabbed onto the idea that the Christian life was something it was never intended to be. I thought the Christian life was simple. Do the right things. Say the right things. And, in the end, you’ll hear, “Well done!” But none of this required walking with someone else in a meaningful way.

The Horizontal and Vertical Beams of Coaching

Journey Pastoral Coaching emphasizes two coaching relationships that are vital for the minister. Picture a cross with its vertical and horizontal beams. The vertical beam represents a coaching relationship with a more experienced coach. Think of this person as a sherpa, leading less experienced climbers to the summit of Mt. Everest in the Himalayan mountains. They’ve been there before. They know the pitfalls along the way and they know how to survive in the harsh environment of life above 20,000 feet. However, these coaches don’t climb the mountain for you. The horizontal beam represents a peer coaching relationship with someone who’s walking through life at your own level. They’re learning the same things you are and have many of the same experiences you have.

Both of these relationships are vital. Sadly, I’m finding a lot of ministers neglect them both. If they’re among the minority who walk with someone, they only choose to walk with a more experienced coach, the vertical relationship. Few engage in the kind of horizontal relationship that I’ve found to be life-changing.

I Thought I Didn’t Need to Walk With Someone

I grew up all over the place as my parents moved around with the Air Force and then participated in some missions work in Germany. Springfield, MO, has been home since around 2000 though. So I’m a midwest boy through and through. I’ve got an M.Div from the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary. And I’m currently on faculty at Global University of the Assemblies of God, a distance education school for ministry that serves hundreds of thousands of students around the world. I’ve also partnered with my best friend, Chris Lamberth, to create an online discipleship platform called Daily Growth Discipleship. At Daily Growth we want to help people create a lifestyle of discipleship that’s more than just a program. It’s really about finding opportunities to grow and become more like Christ in the everyday moments of life

In both of these ministries, I’ve found that people who want to follow Jesus weren’t made to do it alone. At Global, students who participate in a class or a group of students are far more likely to complete their studies than those who study independently. At Daily Growth, we’re finding that successful disciples of Christ who walk with him for a lifetime typically have a lifestyle that consists of five things: 1) They know their identity (who they are in Christ). 2) They practicing the basics of spiritual formation like prayer, Bible reading, confession, and other spiritual disciplines. 3) They walk with someone else in a close, peer-coaching relationship. 4) They serve others from their God-given purpose. 5) They make disciples by investing in the lives of others. In both of these settings, it’s becoming clear to me that I wasn’t made to walk alone.

I thought I was exempt from these practices. I’ve been through all the ministry training I could ever hope to get. I grew up in missions, served as a youth pastor for a few years, as an associate pastor for a few years, and worked in Christian higher education for a few years. I assumed that was about as much preparation as anyone could hope for.

Finding the End of Myself

It’s taken over a decade of prayer, thinking, and conversations with some close friends to really discover and understand my calling and the fact that I can’t live out that calling alone. I’m called to be a disciple maker. At Global University, that looks like building software for the university and helping students work through their course content as they pursue ministry. At Daily Growth it looks like writing, podcasting, and one on one discipleship conversations with other people. That decade of discovery though had a lot of tough times and some of the darkest holes I’ve ever experienced, partly because I wasn’t walking with someone else in a meaningful peer relationship.

Back in 2014, my wife and I were at a rural Assemblies of God campground in Ogden, IA, where I served as the program development coordinator. We just found out that we were pregnant with our first son, Noah, and were both working about 70 hours a week at the time. It was that winter I hit the darkest place I’ve ever been in my entire life. God led me away from home and allowed me to experience what it was really like to be in ministry in near isolation.

As I reached the end of myself in Iowa that winter, there were several times I bundled up and went for a walk in the 10 below weather at night after work. It wasn’t until after we moved back to Springfield that Elisia told me each time I walked out the door on those walks she was afraid I wasn’t coming back.

It took three months of depression and anxiety like this to lead me to a point where I finally told God I didn’t know what was happening, but that I needed his help to understand it all. God helped me realize I was trying to do it under my own power and without anyone’s help. And that’s not how he wired me to work. Over the last 5 years, God’s been teaching me about myself and about the way he’s created me to work in community in the body of Christ.

All that said, I’m learning that everyone in ministry (really everyone who’s following Christ) needs a close relationship with someone who will walk with them through life toward Jesus. I’m learning there are four primary benefits I gain from walking with others in ministry and in the Christian life. And I want every minister to experience these benefits for themselves.

Benefit 1: It Teaches Me I’m Not Alone

There’s something comforting about walking with someone who’s going through the same experiences you are. And it’s painful when you feel like no one understands you. A great way to tell if you’re feeling alone and isolated is to catch yourself thinking, “I just don’t feel like anyone understands the pressure I’m facing,” or “I must not be doing things right because I’m struggling, and everyone else has it all together.”

In many of the peer coaching conversations I’ve had with others in ministry, I’m astounded by how similar our struggles seem to be. Sure, our ministries are different, we live in different locations, and we serve different people. But we all struggle with the same fallen human condition, both internally and externally. And from what I’ve experienced, that seems to work its way out in similar ways regardless of the setting.

Connecting with others in ministry and walking together is vital. It’s more than just networking or ministry connections. It’s about real, intimate connections where you talk about the tough things in life and ministry. These conversations open the door for you to have the revelation, “I’m not alone. I’m not the only one struggling right now.” That’s a liberating place to be as a minister.

Benefit 2: Walking With a Peer Keeps Me Humble

I’m also finding we tend to avoid meaningful peer relationships like this for one of two reasons, either we don’t feel we have anything to offer, or we don’t want our peers to see our brokenness. Both of these betray a false view of ourselves that contradicts the Gospel.

If you feel you don’t have anything to offer a peer, remember God made you a member of his body and your purpose in life is to serve others with who you are, not just with what you do. You have a purpose. You have something to offer that’s valuable to the body of Christ. Sometimes the most valuable thing you can offer a peer is a shoulder to cry on and an empathetic ear. Plus, every struggle you’ve faced in life becomes an opportunity to let someone else know their struggles aren’t unique. I’m finding there’s nothing in my life that God can’t use as I serve my peers.

If you feel you have no value and don’t want others to see the real you, remember, God showed you grace while you were a sinner. And he continues to show you grace even at your worst moments in life. He values you. He values the you that struggles with a sense of inferiority. He values the you that struggles with pornography. He values the you that is scared to death to tell someone you’re depressed and don’t have a clue what you’re doing in ministry right now. He values you. Could it be that what you’re really feeling is shame, thinking you have no value in your broken state? Remember, even Paul was able to boast of his weaknesses because he knew who he was as a child of God and co-heir with Christ.

Walking with a peer in a healthy relationship is a dose of humility for both of these feelings. It allows God’s love and grace to come into the middle of your life and speak the truth about reality, who you are in Christ and what he’s done for you.

Benefit 3: Honest Conversations Let Me Experience God’s Grace

I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of a “means of grace.” Initially, I thought about it in the sense of a sacrament. Think the Catholic or Lutheran Eucharist. But I’m coming to understand it in terms of a way God’s grace hits us in a moment and leaves us feeling awestruck, humbled, and grateful. It leaves you stunned and asking, “What just happened? And why did something so good just happen to someone so unworthy like me?

Peer conversations like those I have with other Journey members or through Daily Growth do this for me. When I can open up about my struggles and triumphs in a trusting, grace-filled environment with a friend, God does something great. He reminds me of his grace for me when I don’t feel worthy of grace or forgiveness.

Humanity has a propensity for forgetfulness. It’s why throughout the Old Testament God commanded his people to put up memorials, observe feasts, and keep traditions. He knows we forget. It’s how we can go from seeing the Red Sea part to building a golden calf a few months later. Conversations with peers like this remind us of God’s work in our lives. They are an opportunity for our closest friends to remind us of God’s grace.

Benefit 4: I Gain Perspective on the Big Picture

These relationships also move us outside our own little world and give us a bigger picture of what God’s doing in the big world. It’s really easy in ministry (at least it is for me) to get caught up in thinking our little corner of the world is the central work of God on earth. Now, we know better than that. I’ve done missions work in Germany, India, and Sri Lanka, as well as all over the US, and It’s clear God is doing incredible work in the world around us. But that doesn’t stop me from grabbing onto this view of my own little world as the primary work of God.

Walking with others allows me to hear what God is doing somewhere else. When I hear they’re going through similar struggles, we experience God’s grace together. Then we talk about some of the things God’s doing in our unique situations. It’s another way to take our eyes off ourselves and put them on Jesus and what he’s doing.

When you get this big picture a little more clearly in focus and see how God works, it really starts to motivate you and inspire you. You get a sense that you’re a part of something bigger than you could ever do on your own. What you really start to see is the scope of God’s kingdom and just how massive it really is.

Conclusion: You Were Made to Walk With Someone

One in five ministers leaves the ministry in the first five years. They leave because of burnout, because they’re depressed, because they have moral failings, and the list goes on. I’m finding none of these situations need to be fatal for our ministries though. Walking with a peer coach, someone you can trust with your toughest struggles isn’t a cure-all for these problems. But it does serve as another anchor when these kinds of storms hit. And believe me, they will hit.

You weren’t made to walk alone in ministry or to handle the burdens of ministry by yourself. When you try, you will eventually fail. You’ll find yourself in a place of loneliness and isolation, wondering why the world around you is falling apart. And your gut response may be like mine: put up a facade that tells the world you still have it all together. If you’re in this place now and don’t have someone to walk with, I want to challenge you to find both a vertical-beam coach and a horizontal-beam coach. You need the wisdom and experience of someone who’s been there before. But you also need the benefits of walking with someone beside you as you both head toward Christ.

Walking with a peer coach will remind you that you aren’t alone in this fight. It will keep you humble and keep that facade from going up. It will allow God’s grace to transform you as you open yourself up to another person. And it will give your life and ministry deeper meaning as you see how it fits into the bigger picture of what God’s doing in the world.

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NOTE: Journey Pastoral Coaching provides pastoral coaching to young ministers.

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“In the early years when I was becoming a pastor, I needed a pastor.” 

 Eugene H. Peterson, The Pastor: A Memoir