4 Bad Reasons To Become A Pastor
How I learned to lose my reputation, care less about my title, use my intellect to serve others, and achieve true ministry success.
When I was first called to become a pastor 18 years ago, it was a surprise to me, so obviously, I wasn’t prepared for it. But the Lord graciously lined up a lot of on-the-job training for me in the early years. This was the most effective training I could have asked for, even though it was painful in the moment and I often didn’t understand the purpose.
All of this training helped me recognize some bad reasons to become a pastor. Here are four:
1. To Build Your Reputation
In the early days of social media, I followed a satirical account on Twitter. When this account posted a satirical story that was way out of bounds, an elderly couple in the church confusedly accused me of producing the content. During a phone call, I tried to explain how social media worked, thanked them for pointing out the article, and deleted my connection to the satire account so this confusion could never happen again.
I thanked them for calling and thought that was the end of it. Sadly, it wasn’t.
It turned out they were doing oppo-research on me and collecting material for a slander campaign. Even after I explained, took action, and thanked them for their concern, they spread the falsehood that I not only wrote the article in question but that I was involved in producing other explicit material and profiting from it.
My reputation never recovered with some of the seniors in our church. I remember meeting with one man in particular who was a family friend and had known me since birth. He was caught in a quandary of not wanting to believe what he heard about me but not wanting to call the people slandering me liars since they were widely respected in our community. He was a faithful and founding member of the church but he left and never returned.
So my reputation took a hit, but I learned to trust God to bring good out of this type of evil - which he did often!
Reputation is fickle and trying to manage it is futile. I’m thankful that the Lord cured me of the love of reputation early in my ministry. If you seek to build your reputation by leading a church, you’ll probably become disillusioned.
2. To Climb the Ladder of Title and Position
A few months into my first assignment, a friend expressed an assumption that I was merely biding my time while I positioned myself for a promotion. He assumed my end goal was to make successive steps toward “better” positions a rung or two up the ladder.
Honestly, I had never entertained the idea and was mildly offended. I eventually became the Lead Pastor but it wasn’t my goal at the start. I was surprised to be called to pastoral ministry in the first place, so “moving up the ladder” was not on my radar at all.
In the body of Christ, we are assigned gifts to build up the body. Some move into pastoral ministry, others don’t. Of those that do, some move from associate to lead, others don’t—and that’s OK, as I have noted previously.
But purpose and significance are not found in grasping the next rung. “If I can just become a pastor… a lead pastor… an executive pastor… a pastor to pastors!”
Pursuing a better title and higher position—climbing the corporate ladder—has no place in pastoral ministry. If this is your goal then pursue positions in the marketplace.
3. To Flex Your Intellect
I brought an aptitude for writing into ministry so my early sermons were well-written and solidly structured and I was improving on my delivery. I believed I had a winning formula and planned to keep doing what I was doing and continue improving.
Until one Sunday when Loreen Sawatzky, a bright young woman who attended the church, offered a compliment that changed the trajectory of my preaching. Loreen said, “Pastor Michael, I really enjoy your sermons, but I often have no idea what you’re talking about!”
Her compliment was full of wisdom and insight that I needed to hear. My preaching was geared to an imagined audience—other pastors or academics—rather than the people God had placed in front of me. It was an important lesson: my intellect should serve God’s people, not my own pride.
A strong intellect is a gift from God, but even this gift must be used to build up the body to which you are assigned—not the body you wish you were assigned to. God places you in a position to serve his people, not for them to serve you.
4. To Achieve Ministry Success
I attended a conference in Calgary in my first year as a pastor. I had seen Aaron Armstrong “live blog” conferences and decided to try it. I typed furiously during the sessions and then organized, edited, and posted my content within about 15 minutes of the end of each session.
Many attendees noticed my posts. One of them was Doug Koop, the editor of Christian Week—a nationally distributed weekly paper. He asked me to begin writing a column for the paper.
The acknowledgement was intoxicating and I immediately began foolishly calculating my trajectory: If I could make this much progress so early in my first pastoral assignment, I reasoned, maybe not too long from now, I could be one of the presenters on stage that others wrote about!
I was blinded by the prospect of platform and stage which I saw as a “greater” success. Thankfully, I came out of that fog to realize that God had called me in that season to serve a particular people in a small town, not a general audience from conference stages in big cities.
Properly defined, success is good; even ministry success can be good. But the unrelenting pursuit of the “ministry success” of bigger stages, higher book sales, and increasing visibility are measures of success we’ve imported from the world.
Gratitude
As I look back on these now-distant experiences, I am increasingly grateful. Yes, grateful. What was painful—even what was meant for evil against me—turned out for my good.
I learned not to idolize my reputation, to care less about title and position, and that my intellect must be used to serve others.
Most importantly, I learned this: Ministry progress is found in long obedience, not in quick success.
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Michael Krahn is a pastor, the husband of Anne Marie, and the father of Madeleine, Olivia, and Sophia. Make a connection on Facebook, X, or Instagram.