In recent months, God has opened doors for me to bring the Good News in the form of preaching the Word of God to three different churches. It’s been quite a humbling experience for me honestly, and it’s led me to pray a lot and ask God for His good pleasure to be revealed for the good of others and glory of God. It’s also brought up a lot of my wrestle with God through the years over the topic of pastoral ministry. In particular, the lead pastor role has been something God has put on my heart many times, and yet I’ve felt I’m not godly enough or not smart enough or not interested in being so tied down to all the expectations church members often have for their lead pastor.

In recent months, God has point by point challenged me on this and given me some very special moments with key folks, giving me opportunities to discuss possible filling of this role a couple of different times. Part of the situation is that there is a great need for Jesus following men to consider this role partly because it’s a “dying trade” so-to-speak. There are fewer and fewer men stepping up and raising their hand and saying, well if you need this done, I’ll give it a go, friends. I believe there are a number of reasons for this but one of them is not written about much from what I’ve seen. Of course I’m less of a consumer of periodicals than a consumer simply of God’s Word and books on theology and business, or maybe a western novel here and there.

The reason I believe fewer and fewer pastoral candidates are showing up to be considered when churches ask for them is this: As an older, wiser, and newer friend of mine recently said, there is no such thing as part-time pastors, just part-time pay. This sounds materialistic, but I genuinely think the especially unrealistic time and emotional demand from pastors, especially full-time pastors is a big reason guys just keep away from it. Another reason is … all the other typical reasons. However, this one key reason I believe keeps guys particularly far from considering this role. What I believe would hugely help lighten this would be for churches to re-consider “bi-vocational pastoral ministry” under what I’ve recently learned to be called co-vocational pastoral ministry. The book where I learned about this unfortunately slid into some woke stuff, so I’m not thrilled to recommend it specifically. I do think there are some great things being said in the book however specifically in this nuance, and it’s something the church should take very seriously. Pastors are humans like the rest of the body, and if we would consider the key aspect of humanity when we consider the role we hope to see filled, we would call humans to the pulpit, maybe starting with elders in the existing body. As we sit under their preaching we would remember the humanness of potential lead pastors and their need to live out normal Jesus following life well, respond personally to God’s Word well, be model believers, yes, but also have realistic time and emotional expectations. When we do this, we will find ourselves drafting job descriptions and taking co-vocational folks into consideration. My newest mentor pastor is 87 years old. Honestly, I’m very inspired by his story and current continuing ministry. I’m leaning into learning from him with periodical phone calls and face-to-face checking in times. My son and I sat with him not too long ago and he is just such a shining light for Jesus in pastoral ministry. He understands this need for churches to understand a healthy view of bi-vocational pastoral ministry, and that’s refreshing. That to me is evidence of the Holy Spirit working in him to discern the need for churches to work along with their pastors and elders – see Ephesians 4:12.

If a regular preaching ministry does enter my world, if one of these churches does call me as their lead pastor, I think getting back to blogging here may very well become a reality. To be honest, after our house church closed down which had grown to a pretty good size of two house churches, I got pretty discouraged. Greg Boyd here in Merced has been an encouragement as well as other pastors and friends. I’ve also regularly asked for God to humble me, and the result has been more and more desire to be a steady Jesus follower, husband, father, relative, neighbor, and friend before getting back around to considering a lead pastor role. God has however been humbling me to realize that churches don’t need perfect pastors. They need humble pastors. So, there is another humbling from the Lord which is honestly what I want above all, not to have a label of humble from anyone, but to be brought closer to God daily, to be drawn nearer still to our Maker, trusting Him with everyone and everything and taking my cues from God Almighty.

Much love, friends.

Torrey