I'm reeling from these voices that keep screaming in my ears
All the words of shame and doubt blame and regret
I can't see how You're leading me unless You've led me here
Where I'm lost enough to let myself be led
Rich Mullins, Hard to Get
I’ve only ever wanted to be a pastor. I don’t think I really ever dreamed of doing anything else. Maybe it was a desire planted in my mind after years of watching Billy Graham on TV when I was a little boy. It’s hard to say. All I know is that I have never been able to see myself, and still can’t see myself, doing anything else.
I’ve been blessed with opportunities to do ministry vocationally for 6 years now. My home church has given me more opportunities than I could ever imagine, and I can’t put my gratitude into words.
Starting out in ministry at a young age means dealing with all the folly of being, well, young. There’s already a tendency among young folks to assume that we know more than we actually do. Not to mention that only a couple years of experience allows you to know enough about ministry to think you know what you’re doing, but not enough to know that you really don’t.
Nothing brought this to light quite like the events of 2020. No one knew how to handle what was going on. A once-in-a-century pandemic really leveled the playing field of experience among ministers. Whether someone had been a pastor for 5 years or 50, we all had to figure it out together. Suddenly, we were answering questions we never thought we’d have to ask. Plus, many pastors faced congregations who were split on what the church should do, with all sides feeling very strongly.
But I don’t want to talk about the minds of the congregations this past year (by the way, my congregation was amazing through everything). I want to reflect on the mind of the pastor. Specifically, mine.
The church I just said goodbye to was my first pastorate. I was 23 when I took on the role of teaching pastor. I was about a third of my way through seminary. I had been married for two years. I had a 10-month-old son and a daughter on the way (both of whom were surprises). Oh, and also the church was across the ocean in Brussels, Belgium.
The year and a half I served the church before Covid was marked with struggle, but also with great joy.
My family learned how to live and thrive outside of our hometown. We came into our parenthood without the direct presence of our own parents. Some of my sweetest pastoral moments happened as I laughed, wept, and lived alongside my people. My co-elders and I learned how to work together, each of us coming from different backgrounds and having different personalities. I made some of my dearest friends, hosted mission teams and interns, and preached nearly every week.
It was hard. Homesickness would get pretty intense at times. There would be normal conflict between the team. Culture shock doesn’t really stop as the years go on, even if it gets less intense. But for what it was worth, life and ministry were good. We loved our people, they loved us, and we were daily trusting the Lord to lead us forward.
But once we got our first letter from the Federal Synod of Churches in March 2020 telling us that we had to cease meeting due to public health measures, we were faced with something we didn’t know how to respond to.
At first, I staunchly refused. How could I do that? How could I allow my church to not meet, no matter how dire the circumstances? But remember that this was when we were told that it would only be for a few weeks to “flatten the curve.”
I’ll spare you the details of the first lockdown because it’s probably not too dissimilar from what you experienced.
Let’s jump forward in time (three lockdowns later for us in Brussels) from March 2020 to April 2021.
Holy Week 2021
I remember sitting on a terrace outside our church building and feeling utterly defeated. We hadn’t had a real church service in over a year.
We had a brief amount of time during the summer of 2020 where we could meet at the church, but the Covid requirements sucked nearly all the joy out of the whole experience.
I knew specific ways that my people were suffering after not being in church for all that time. It was something difficult to try to articulate to many of my friends and family back home in Tennessee. It’s hard to describe what it felt like to be separated from the body of Christ for that long.
How do you even put into words what it feels like to not have gone to church in a year and a half?
How do you describe what it feels like to preach to a camera every week for that long? How do you describe the turmoil of being a pastor through this… and wondering if you’re making all the wrong decisions?
How do I even explain the soul-crushing irony of standing before a camera and telling my people on our second Easter Sunday in lockdown, “Jesus is alive and He rules and reigns over all powers that stand against Him,” while looking at an empty sanctuary because the Prime Minister decided that churches had to stay closed?
I loved my people, and I honestly wanted to do what was best for them. I knew that they were suffering while being separated from the body for so long, as I was. But the alternative wasn’t so simple either.
It’s easy for some folks back in the US to paint me, and pastors like me, as cowards.
Just open your church up and let the government do what they’re going to do.
Why are you letting the civil magistrate tell you whether or not you can publicly worship God? Are you afraid of going to jail for the sake of Christ?
You’re dishonoring God for the sake of following wicked laws.
To be honest, these are all things I’ve thought to myself. I remember praying, just days before Easter, Lord, how long will we have to wait to meet again? only to be overcome with the idea that maybe it was actually my fault that we weren’t meeting.
After all, is the Prime Minister of Belgium the pastor of my church? Why not defy the Covid rules and give my people what they desperately need?
But things aren’t always as cut and dry as we’d like them to be.
For example, I wasn't a citizen of Belgium. There were rights that I didn't have by virtue of being a foreigner. Let’s say we did break the rules, meet together, get caught, and then my visa gets terminated, along with the visa of my co-pastor. Then what happens? The church will be left in limbo with its two full-time pastors gone.
Or let’s say that breaking Covid rules could lead to our church's non-profit status being taken away, which would mean that we couldn't legally take tithes anymore, nor could we employ anyone. If we can’t employ anyone, then say goodbye to the work visas keeping me and my co-pastor in the country.
So which would be worse? Like I said: Things aren’t as simple as we’d like them to be.
But this didn’t shake the guilt for me.
My conscience still condemned me for going so long without meeting with my church. I felt, and sometimes still feel, like I failed my people by keeping the doors closed for so long. As much as I want to rightly blame the government for their appallingly selective and arbitrary Covid rules that kept churches closed, it was still me who told my people to stay home.
And no amount of consolation from my family, co-ministers, or friends could quiet the condemning voice in my head. I wondered then, as I sometimes wonder now, whether or not I will look back at that season and think that I did all that I could to remain faithful or that I was simply a coward who withheld from my people and my God what was rightfully theirs.
Why am I even writing this? What’s the point of sharing this?
I guess I wanted you to know that there are times in our lives when there are no simple choices. And no matter what you do, you feel like you’re going to fail. In those times, all we can do is attempt to be faithful with what God has given us, weighing all the options and doing what seems the most right.
God seemed silent to me during this season. It wasn’t that I thought He abandoned me or that He wasn’t real. It was that I didn’t feel like I was being led by Him toward anything specific. I felt like I was going to risk the health of my church no matter what I did, with no comfort, direction, or clarity from Him.
Of course, God is always working and active in our lives, even when we don’t realize it. I know that God wasn’t silent. I just felt like He was.
Life isn’t simple. Ministry isn’t simple.
When you’re young, it feels like it should be. It feels like saying that things are “complicated” or “not so black and white” is just flowery language to describe compromising your convictions. And maybe my youth is what still causes that little voice in my head accusing me of doing just that.
Usually, at the end of something like this, there’s some kind of application. But not this time. I don’t have any answers for any of your toughest problems here. I can’t point you toward anything specific. Easy answers are hard to come by in a fallen world.
All I have to offer you is testimony that says you aren’t alone. Christ is faithful, even when He feels far. Take comfort in knowing that Christ doesn’t condemn you, even when your conscience does.