The End of Ministry

By Scott Yi

What do you do when you realize that the life you always thought you were going to live has disappeared? When your ca­reer, your future, your hopes and your dreams, all of it has turned into an insubstantial mist that vanishes in the morning light. This is the same revelation that burdens the writer of Ecclesiastes when he laments: “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity” (Ecclesiastes 1:2).

This past year, I learned just how insubstantial my past achievements really were. I have finally come to the understanding that after doing 15+ years of ministry in all sorts of capacities and roles, this part of my life is truly over. I am no longer a minister, no longer a pastor, no longer a spiritual leader in any sense. And I guess I’m okay with that.

To be clear, it’s not how I wanted things to work out. I look back fondly at all the Christian communities I was blessed to be a part of. When I was heavily involved in campus ministry and dis­cipling college students to see the spiritual reality be­yond their busy schedules, I thought it was all I ever wanted to do. When I tran­sitioned to an assistant pas­tor role and helped create outreaches in the inner city, ranging from neighborhood block parties to homeless shelters to refugee resettle­ment, I thought it was all I ever wanted to do. When I became the head pastor of an Asian-American church tasked with the role of expanding our community into a multicultural and multigenerational congregation, I thought it was all I ever wanted to do. I had such good fortune to be part of these and so many more opportunities to advance the Gospel that it would be a chore to have to list them all here.

What I want to make clear is that when I look back at all the good work we were able to accomplish, it didn’t happen because I was special or because I was more talented than anyone else. I always thought, if Jesus can use anybody, why can’t He use me? What I believe is that when Jesus died on the cross, He died to raise up those who weren’t at all special, those who had no qualifications to speak of, the nobodies and the nothings (cf 1 Corinthians 1:27-29). Therefore I took up this vocational path­way because it was one small way that I could say thank you to Jesus for the new life I had been grant­ed. In other words, I’m a nothing who was able to accomplish something because I would do anything for the One who gave me His everything. But as it stands now, I am overwhelmed with sadness when­ever I reflect on the American church today. I know many of us have become too well accustomed to the bitter schisms and the unsettling interpersonal conflicts within our local congregations, and I don’t want to get too bogged down in the details because I do write these words out of a place of hopeful­ness and not negativity; but for the sake of clarity, the two primary reasons why I cannot in good con­science entrust my mental and emotional well-being to a ministry-based career anymore is due to:

1. The still unaddressed epidemic of white supremacy[1] in the western church, and

2. The lack of sincerity or urgency by the Christian community to alleviate the world’s actual problems

In regard to white supremacy, I look back at all the ministries I was a part of and I can count no few­er than three different circumstances in my life in which a white man unilaterally decided to kill off a program that directly benefited people of color. In one instance, the senior pastor had decided to move the church to a more commuter-friendly lo­cation, and when I asked what we were going to do about the dozen or so kids in the neighborhood that we were in the middle of mentoring, he simply shrugged his shoulders and said: “I’m sure they’ll be fine.”

In regard to the lack of urgency about what’s hap­pening in the world, I simply ask, how has the church at large addressed the historical events that we are all experiencing right now? What is the west­ern church’s concerted stance on income inequality, on skyrocketing housing costs, on climate change, on police reform, on illegal immigration, on Gen Z alienation, on critical race theory, on transgender care, on war aid, on artificial intelligence? When the pulpit is silent on so many of these monumen­tal questions, the congregation looks elsewhere for answers. Even when churches do focus on lo­cal outreach, they are shockingly unequipped and untrained to make any sustainable impact in their cities.

On the flip side, I currently work for a secular non­profit organization in Providence that understands the complexity of systemic change and responsibly uses their funding to address problems at their deep­est roots. The difference in their outcomes versus what local churches are managing is night and day. My workplace provides low income housing, a dai­ly soup kitchen that has served over 200,000 free meals this past year, a job training program, finan­cial literacy coaching, and in the coming months we will be converting a wing of our offices into a certi­fied behavioral health clinic, which would make our agency the only one in the entire country to provide all of these services under one roof. I love working there because I love learning about better ways to help people, from the people who are at the front­lines and who are from the communities that are be­ing directly affected. I guess you could say that as I get older, I want to play chess, not checkers.

So where does that leave me in terms of my spiritual vocation? The other day I was going through some old photos from my early days in campus ministry, and one thing I noticed right away was how often I was smiling and laughing. It was a stark contrast from my demeanor in later pastoral roles, in which being a paid minister meant that I had to look the part—I had to look serious and reverential at all times. But the mundane business of weekly programs, building repairs, and other peripheral duties were constantly impeding the actual relationships I wanted to invest in. I suddenly realized that I had disconnected my­self from a core component of my Christian iden­tity. Before the paychecks, before the demands of church membership, I had so many fond years of just building relationships with people. It’s one of the reasons why the closest friends I have today are the ones I made outside of a brick-and-mortar congregation: we had no allegiances, just each other.

So that’s the advice I want to give myself as I look toward the future, and maybe it could be helpful for you as well. When your ministry is over; when you’re forced to acknowledge the reality of your church’s dysfunction; when you check out other congregations, hopelessly wondering if it’s going to be more of the same—what is there left? What is the work of God’s Kingdom in your personal life supposed to look like? What are you supposed to do now, as a heartfelt believer in the Gospel of Jesus Christ?

Just be a good friend.

Jesus didn’t want people to join an institution. He didn’t coach the Apostles in the five secrets of how to be a successful leader. He didn’t tell them His pre­ferred style of worship music or anything like that. He said: “I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15b, NIV). Most people interpret Jesus’ words to mean He had given the Apostles special revelation, speaking to them about His di­vine plans and revealing the foundations of Chris­tian theology. Yes, it is true that Jesus had “made known” such things during His earthly ministry, but there is so much more to what He wanted to teach them—He wanted them to be friends. They learned to forgive (Matthew 18:22). They learned to bear with one another (Ephesians 4:2). They learned to share their possessions (Mark 6:37). They learned to look beyond their biases (John 4:27) and love their enemies (Matthew 5:44).

We don’t have a very robust theology of friendship in the church, do we? I mean we have small groups and mentoring programs, but those are shallow af­filiations tied to continued church allegiance. This gap in our theology is very strange, considering that right when Jesus gives us His New Commandment of Love in John 15 (“Love one another as I have loved you”), literally His very next words are a New Commandment of Friendship (“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends”). I would go so far as to say that if there’s one ministry that Jesus is impressing upon the hearts of every person He is dwelling inside of, it is the ministry of friendship. God only knows how many people out there feel lonely and unloved. I’m not that old, but I’ve already forgotten most of the suc­cesses I’ve experienced in full-time ministry. I had to look at photos to remind myself of all the things that happened. And that’s true for most people— we don’t remember programs. We don’t remember songs. We don’t remember ceremonies. What stays with us ten years later, twenty years later, are the people who were there for us.

Be a good friend. We can’t do much to change the world, but at least we can try to do that. 

Resource

[1] To read more about what “white supremacy” can be defined as, please check out our related article at https://www.projectarctos.com/archive/69/white-supremacy.

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Scott Yi lives in Providence, Rhode Island, where he writes and teaches literacy to underserved populations. Scott is a former medical student, former pastor, and current cat dad.