Generally speaking, ministry success seems to be gauged by how many people attend your church, by how large your ministry budget is, by how “state-of-the-art” your facilities are, or by how many books you’ve written and sold. And, it’s all very easy to draw comparisons and conclude a measure of worth or success from how we, as pastors, stack up against each other in those categories. And to be fair, it’s very human to assess our personal success based on the comparative successes and failures of others. And yet, something about this evaluation process has become progressively more uncomfortable for me.

I’m staring down my 35th year on this earth and have been a pastor for ten years now. After a decade of serving the church, I am at a place where I feel a strange disconnect with the typical church growth model of success. Though I think I can honestly say that I have been groomed for ministry “influence” all of my life and have intentionally pursued it for the last ten years, I am at a place where I now feel rather disillusioned with the status quo. Admittedly it would be easy to say so if I had never tasted any real ministry success, but I think that I have experienced and enjoyed some influence during these past several years and yet even still feel restless. So, it’s not that I’m being openly critical of something that I secretly envy, it’s what I have already actually experienced that has left me wanting.

I suppose some of this restlessness is intrapersonal conflict within myself over my own natural ambition. I feel like I am waged in an internal conflict of sorts over my lifelong desire to make a “maximum impact” on the church and the world, which really is just pastoral code for “recognized success”. Though we tend to shade our language with spiritualized terminology, the truth is that pastors struggle with self-actualization issues just like the rest. Well, I confess that I have struggled for many years contemplating what would finally qualify me for perceived success among my peers. And, what I have found is that the answer to this question is strangely evasive.

What I have observed is that there is no real path to ministry success or model for ministry growth that one can walk down knowing where it leads. The reality is that there is no rhyme or reason to explain who rises up and who goes down the ladder of ministry notoriety. Though it seems that there are certain people who come with the right message at the right time, there is no guarantee when or where that person or his message will get noticed or heard. From what I can see, there really is no explanation except to conclude only that God sees fit to promote certain people at particular times for His own undisclosed purposes.

Honestly, I don’t really understand why some leaders have such loud voices in the church and culture while others don’t. It may simply be that they just speak up more or just that they happen to speak up when people are actually listening. I’m not sure of that and probably never will be. I am quite sure, though, that there are people who have much to say who aren’t being heard and that there are others who have very little to say but are. Just browse the latest shelf of hardbacks in your Christian bookstore and ask yourself whether any of those author’s words will outlive their own generation and then spend a few hours with someone you respect who has much wisdom to share but no invitation to pass it on and you’ll understand what I mean.

Knowing this, the whole experience of life often feels like a chasing after the wind. Once you’ve chased it and not been able to grasp it, you begin to tire and wonder why you are running in the first place. That is where I now am. I’ve been wondering why I’ve been running so hard, and after what anyway? Solomon observed that much of the success we go after in this life is really just vapor, disappearing before we touch it and certainly voided even if we do. Having pursued and tried to touch the vapor, I can honestly say now that it wasn’t worth the chase.  The feeling is a lot like going in circles and ending up in the same place you started, only many times over.

The critical question for me now is what part of the pursuit, if any, is worthwhile? In other words, I’m considering whether the exercise of the run itself has ontological value for me. That is, I’m asking myself about what things I do on the journey that have inherent worth in and of themselves regardless of whether they ever get recognized or rewarded in this life. And, I’ve discovered that there are a few things for me that give me true joy and satisfaction in midst of the chase. And, because there is value and enjoyment simply in doing these things, my satisfaction is not tied to any success or influence that comes with them. For me, the things that I find to be intrinsically satisfying and worthwhile are studying and teaching God’s Word, sharing life with and serving others, and preserving and contributing to God’s goodness in the world.

I have finally figured out that I would spend my time engaging with the Bible, serving the lost and the least, and working to restore beauty in the world whether I was compensated to do it or not. Meaning, there need be no reward or recognition attached to any of these things for me to be fulfilled by them. And, therefore, I have decided that I intend no longer to invest myself into things that must be framed by success in order to be enjoyed. For me, that means easing back on the throttle of personal ambition and professional success and getting used to the quiet and often obscure road of personal contentment.

Now, this doesn’t mean that I intend to purposely avoid opportunity and invitation to success, it just means that I will no longer seek it. I am more convinced than ever that influence or success is not something that I have any control over and that seeking it is really a meaningless waste of my energy anyway. All things considered, I believe that Mother Teresa was right about the whole thing…success is vanity, but faithfulness isn’t.