Over the past year, my email inbox has included far too many articles with headlines like these:

Epidemic: Another Pastor Burned Out and Quit Last Sunday

Pastoral Stress and Burnout

Why Pastors Walk Away

The Secret Pain of Pastors

I could go on and on.

We can debate the numbers, but it’s not the numbers that are the issue: it’s the people. There are pastors who wrestle with themselves every day, working with all they have to simply keep on walking it one day at a time in the face of overwork, stress, discouragement, and burnout.

Two weeks ago in our most recent Journey blog post on “Pastoring Passed Down,” we contemplated the pastoring of 1^st/2^nd century martyr, Polycarp, who learned what it is to be a pastor from his pastor, the Apostle John, who learned how to be a shepherd at the side of the Good Shepherd, Jesus.

When arrested for being a Christian and offered the opportunity to save his life by serving both Christ and Caesar, Polycarp refused, choosing to live, and if need be, die for only one Lord.

Polycarp’s refusal to compromise led to being burned at the stake. But in dying, this pastor taught his flock how to live. And he taught young pastors how to lay down their lives for those whom they pastor so that they might truly and fully live in Christ.

But Polycarp’s affirmation this day that Jesus is Lord was nothing new. It wasn’t the first time. For 86 years Polycarp had faithfully lived for Christ. And he had long been a faithful pastor to his people. Nothing he had encountered in his entire life could stop him from faithfully shepherding the flock Jesus had entrusted to him: not time or trial, not favor or disfavor, not stress or celebrity. He had served at his pastoral station for over 60 years. He would not waver now.

Pastoral lessons these are not learned in university classrooms or from books. They are modeled in the lives of faithful pastors: Polycarp pastors. And they are passed down to us, refined in us and fired like steel in us as Jesus forms His call to pastoring and His way of pastoring in us.

Pastoring is passed down. From Jesus to John to Polycarp to . . . . . . to you and me.

With great appreciation, here are the second set of lessons my pastors passed down to me. This second set of Polycarp lessons speak of building for a lifetime of healthy and effective ministry.

 

1. Steward your life and ministry.

God has entrusted to you a message and a ministry. One message. One ministry.

And one lifetime.

“Entrusted” as in they belong to God. God owns the message and ministry He has entrusted to you – just as God owns you. He has entrusted them to you to use to the maximum for His glory, the good of His people, and the salvation of those yet separated from Him.

In the Gospels, Jesus tells us what God expects of us in entrusting these things to us: that each of us be a faithful steward – one who faithfully manages and uses another’s property for the good of the owner.

We steward the message by declaring and by living it fully and faithfully.

We steward the ministry by ministering as Christ ministered: doing nothing to harm the ministry, doing everything to keep it healthy, an instrument in the hands of God for His glory, the good of His people and the salvation of many.

And the two – message and ministry – are linked, one to the other. While the message never changes, our ministry can cloud the message or it can make it clear. It can even stop its proclamation.

After graduating from Edinburgh University at just fourteen years of age and leading a church of over a thousand at twenty-three years of age, Robert Murray McCheyne worked so hard that his health broke. Dying at just twenty-nine years of age, McCheyne wrote, “God gave me a message to deliver and a horse to ride. Alas, I have killed the horse and now I cannot deliver the message.”

McCheyne was saying that while he had been a faithful steward of the Gospel message God had entrusted to Him, he had not been a faithful steward of the ministry God had entrusted to him.

The deathbed confession of this man of God shakes me to my soul. I fervently and humbly pray God will help me to be a faithful steward of the message and ministry – the life – He has entrusted to me.

One day, God called on Polycarp to steward his life by laying it down for the cause of Jesus Christ.

But for Polycarp, there was no challenge in this call: today, as he had done every day all of his life, Polycarp would be a faithful steward of the life, the message, the ministry God had entrusted to him.

On the day of what we would call Polycarp’s greatest test, he simply walked in the force of those decades of day-in-day-out, moment-to-moment faithfulness: for 86 years of days, minutes and moments, Polycarp had been a faithful steward, he would again this day. In dying, he maximized the glory of God, the good of God’s people, and the work to bring salvation to those yet far from God.

 

2. Pastoring can easily become performance.

There are times when pastors can almost feel the strings reaching out to us from the hands of some invisible puppeteer, some great force that pulls us in directions we should never go: “Perform! Perform” the invisible signals tell us more and more insistently.

Is the invisible puppeteer the people we pastor? Is it our peers? Or is it our own ego and insecurity?

It is certainly not the Great Good Shepherd who taught pastors not to perform for the sheep or our peers, but to serve Him by shepherding His people as He would shepherd them.

There were no strings on Jesus: He was no one’s puppet and He performed for no one.

Still, much of church ministry is performance-based:

Our conversations, conferences, and books say a deafening “no,” to this assertion,

But our conversations, conferences, and books also say a deadening, “yes.”

From the pastor’s study to our pulpits and the platforms of conventions, we seek to perform. And then we reward performance with recognition – awards, acclamations, and official approvals as leaders of the pack.

From the pastor’s study to pulpits to seats in conventions, we punish ourselves when our performance isn’t good enough to be recognized on the platform – no awards, no acclamations, no approvals as the leader of the pack. We find it uncomfortable, even unjust, that we are called on to applaud from the back rather to be applauded at the front.

But the “big dogs” of ministry, the really “big dogs” of ministry – whatever their ministry numbers – have long ago ceased measuring themselves by performance – how they compare with others, by how many or how big (II Corinthians 10.12). They’ve settled into measuring themselves by the only measure that matters: God and His grace. Paul plants, Apollos waters, but it is God who gives the increase.

Because this is true, the minister can refuse to perform. She can rest in grace. Whatever the reviews.

She can give herself grace and let it empower herself to be a faithful servant in whom the great Good Shepherd is well pleased.

And she can look forward to one day hearing the Good Shepherd’s review: “Well done, good and faithful servant.” That’s the only “performance review” that really counts anyway.

At least that’s how Polycarp saw it: his decision to resign his position by dying was anything but a performance. His life and pastoring were a “No Performance Zone,” not only the day he publicly stood up for Christ in dying, but every day for decades as he privately lived and publicly led for Christ.

 

8. Accept the difference between idealism and realism.

I can still see the pictures: the young woman screaming in pain as she is mauled by a polar bear.

No, not in the wilds of the frozen north, but in the safe confines of a zoo. No, the polar bear had not escaped from its enclosure, the woman had willingly jumped over a fence to be with the bear. Why? She later said that she simply wanted to hug the creature. In her idealism, she thought it would be wonderful to hug tje cute, cuddly, walking ball of fur. Her idealism was crushed in the jaws of reality, the teeth and claws of a one thousand pound meat-eating mammal. Cute? Undoubtedly. Cuddly? No, deadly. Just as scissors takes paper takes rock, realism takes idealism. Every time.

I recently read an exchange between young ministers on an issue related to human nature. “Human nature is this way” . . . “But things should be this other way” . . . “But human history proves this to be reality” . . . “Reality hurts my feelings, so I’m going live and minister differently.”

The “should be’s” won the day. But not the argument. These well-meaning ministers betrayed their inexperience and their ignorance as they passionately argued for fairy tales to be found faithful: they refused to accept human nature or to accept the wisdom of centuries, insisting instead that church leaders accept a new “truth”: deny reality and choose idealism as a functioning system in the world.

Like the young lady who hugged the polar bear because polar bears and people should be friends.

A day of reckoning is coming to my young friends in ministry. I only hope it will not be at a ministry-crushing cost. The collision between “should be” and “reality” can be painful.

And the truth be told, the collision can’t be avoided.

But its impact can be minimized.

Better to navigate the collision from the front as we approach it, rather than the back as it runs us over. Like accepting the pain that polar bears are not huggable, and so, we make the decision to accept reality over idealism and stay on the safe side of the fence. It’s nice to dream, but nicer still to go on living.

Many a minister has quit over this very issue, unable to accept what is, even as they work for what can be. May God give us grace to recognize polar bears for what they are and to be content with it.

Polykarp faced a question I may never face: What do you say to someone who shows you a burning stake and says “Deny Christ or die?”

He could have chosen idealism, saying, “This shouldn’t be happening to me. I love God, therefore, God should understand and accept my decision” to worship Jesus and offer the sacrifice to Caesar.

But realism won the day and Polycarp chose the reality of God’s rightful place as Lord: God has said that if we deny Him before people – whatever we idealistically say we believe – He will deny us at the door of eternal life. If we acknowledge Him before people, He will open to us the door of eternal life. Reality.

But this was not the first time Polycarp had made this same decision: every day for at least six decades he had chosen to die to self that he might fully and forever live in Christ. He chose the real promise of God over the idealism idol others offered him.

 

9. You need the same grace and Gospel you offer your people.

God does not place a large red “S” or a flowing red cape on Christian leaders. Christian leaders are human, that means fallen, that means in need of a Savior, and, yes, even in need of infinite grace every day until we meet the Savior face to face. And it’s ok. More than ok, it’s good – it is exactly how we experience the goodness of God.

God’s grace. It’s a constant topic in pastoral coaching. Constant.

Here is how I often share this liberating, simple and sweet truth: God gives us grace so that we won’t sin, but, knowing that we will sin, He gives us grace again, grace to live forgiven and free.

God hates sin: it’s the only thing that separates people from Him in this life and eternity. Therefore, sin is something He does not take lightly.  Yes, Jesus loves me, but to live in sin is to die. The Bible tells me so.

The Bible also tells me that each of us is undeniably unable to overcome our sin: sin isn’t just what we do, it is our nature, it is in our very DNA. Even if our will is strong enough to stop committing a certain sin we have still not overcome sin; we have merely contained the disease that still sets in our cells. Only grace, given to us in the blood of Jesus Christ is able to cleanse us of our sin-disease. And only grace can empower us to not sin, and then, if we do sin, that same grace is available to us, giving us forgiveness and cleansing to walk in freedom as full sons and daughters of God.

It’s a lesson every pastor needs to know and live in daily.

Paul David Tripp: “It is my sense of need (of grace) that leads me to tenderly pastor those in need of grace.”

Pastor, let us drink freely of the divine grace we so desperately need. And then let us pass the cup to those whom we pastor.

Polycarp did not face the burning stake with a large red “S” on his chest or a flowing red cape on his back. He was no Superman as he faced the fire, and he possessed no super powers as was bound by his persecutors. His only resource and strength in that moment was God’s grace, the same grace Polycarp had preached to others. The walk from life to death that day was not a long one for Polycarp: it was as short as the same steps in grace he had taken every day of his life. The same grace he had lived in, he could now die in, ever confident in the God who gives it. Even in death, Polycarp’s life declared and demonstrated the grace of God.

 

10. Keep your alarm set to the proper time: eternity

Os Guinness writes, “Our timeliness lies in the untimeliness of rejecting modern timeliness.”

The church of the 21^st century is undeniably more “au courant” with contemporary culture than with the eternal Word of God. Fitting in and being relevant to our world, once touted as the means to an end are now the end, whatever the means.

But fitting in can come at a cost: where people spend eternity can become a casualty of “cool”.

The clock is ticking. Jesus Christ is coming again, this time not as Savior, but as Judge. And all of us will stand before Him for judgment. Eternal judgment.

Dean W.R. Inge: “The Church that is married to the Spirit of its Age will be a widow in the next.”

Therefore, be sure your alarm is set to the proper time: eternity.

Again, who chooses to die? Who chooses to be burned alive when he can choose instead to live? Answer: only those whose eyes and heart are fixed not on the things of this earth and time, but he things of eternity. Polycarp saw the burning stake not as the end of his life, but only its beginning! The shadows were about to be swallowed up in the substance. The stake was but the door to that life for which he had been created in the first place: life eternal, full and free in the presence of His Lord and Savior.

 

CONCLUSION

Polycarp knew what it was to be a pastor. He knew it from the inside out as he lived out his pastoral calling. But his pastoral training began in what his pastor, the Apostle John, passed down to him, lessons that became more than knowledge: they became heartbeats.

So, Pastor, who’s pastoring you? Who is your Apostle John? What has your pastor passed down to you of life and ministry?

And, Pastor, given the opportunity to take the easy way out or to continue, which will you choose? Not just on the day of death, but in every day of real life?

We know the name of Polycarp because he faithfully fulfilled His call as an undershepherd of the Great Good Shepherd Jesus Christ – the day he died and every day of life before he died. The fire he needed to carry out his ministry was given to Him by the Holy Spirit, defined in the instruction given him by his pastor, the Apostle John.

The life and death of the 2^nd century pastor and martry Polycarp reminds us that while pastoring begins with a call it does not end there. Pastoring is passed down.

“The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.” II Timothy 2.2

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

Saddled with large student debt, just beginning to set up homes and start families, and serving in low paying first and second positions, Millennials are those who most desire but can least afford to pay for pastoral coaching.

So we offer it to them at no cost.

We are able to do so through the faithful and generous gifts of friends who want to see young leaders not only enter the ministry, but remain in the ministry. If you or your church would like to help Millennial ministers in 21 US states and 5 nations build strong for a lifetime in ministry, please click here to contact us by email or to support Journey monthly or with a one-time gift. Thank you.