Part I: Accidental Hypocrites
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live,but Christ who lives in me.
And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God,
who loved me and gave himself for me.
Galatians 2:20
Housemates
I once stayed in a condo on an Arizona golf course at a conference my denomination sponsored. They assigned rooms and I found myself with a very well-known pastor as a roommate. He led a 6,000-member church with one of the most beautiful buildings and one of the highest budgets in the nation. We were a mismatch, to say the least, but he was kind and didn’t appear as surprised by the assignment as I was. After some small talk, I caught us both off-guard by asking if he was happy at his church. “What a stupid question,” I immediately thought to myself, “he was living the dream.”
Except, he wasn’t. He paused, took a breath, looked past me to my left out over a fairway for a few moments and then said softly, “I’m not really where I thought I’d be.” I wasn’t ready for that answer and, sadly, wasn’t mature enough to engage his vulnerable melancholy. Not too long after that he confessed to a long, failed battle against opioid addiction.
I never spoke with him after that conference, but his story taught me something about my own ministry story, and probably yours. There’s no way to do ministry without dying to ourselves and opioids aren’t the only way to dull the pain, not by a long shot.
The Death of the Minister examines how we avoid the death Jesus and Paul called us to by becoming accidental hypocrites. Some of us are high-handed hypocrites, but most of us stumble into it unaware in a misguided effort to protect and prove ourselves. To understand how it’s possible to inadvertently fake our life and work, we need to understand the relationship between our Protected Self and our Heroic Self[1].
The Protected-Self
People in ministry, like normal people, instinctively experiences ideas, encounters, events, and objects as challenges to or empowerment of our sense of self and our desires. We can call the part of us that does this instinctive, real-time assessment the Protected-Self. The Protected Self is our core sense of “I” that feels the shadow of death when it’s frustrated and light of life when it fostered.
Ministry may not be on OSHA’s list of dangerous jobs, but it’s fraught with the most personal, and intimate hazards. That’s true of many vocations, but vocational ministry compresses the Christian’s friends, their children’s friends, their covenantal life, and they pay-check into single social, spiritual, and economic space called the Church.
The “ideas, events, and objects,” therefore, that the challenge or empower our Protected Self, almost always involve the people we work for, hang-out with, lead, shepherd, desperately want to like us, and need to accomplish our life dream. When the stakes are that high, the Protected Self has almost constant frient-or-foe signals to interpret.
Like everyone else, ministry types tend to see themselves in the most generous terms. Everyone’s “I”, that is their Protected Self, feels benign to them, but the church leader’s “I” can make a buttressed claim to altruism. We do this for Jesus, of course. That’s not altogether false, but there’s a lot more in that we don’t see that than faith, hope, love. Our Protected-Self is like the ocean floor. We know more about the surface of the moon than we know about self-scape deep inside of us.
Jesus knows what’s in there, however, and calls us to crucify it. Preserve yourself, he said and lose yourself. Relinquish yourself, find your true self. That terrifies us and calls our Heroic Self to action.
The Heroic-Self
The Heroic Self is something like the limbic system for the soul. The Protected-Self is mostly unknown until it’s broken open in God’s grace. Until then, we experience ourselves as the Heroic-Self. Others do as well. The Heroic-Self is our security detail, our passion, drive, core values, gifts, convictions, temperament. It’s our outward face, but we don’t put it on like a mask. It’s who we think we really are.
Its job is to keep us alive. Its heroism centers on courageously establishing defensive redoubts and offensive stratagem designed to preserve or realize our vision of a flourishing life. Expect for the scoundrels among us, our version of a thriving personal and vocational life is generally virtuous, but we’re unaware that the Heroic Self operates in existential not ethical domains. Its mission is simple: Guard the Protected-Self. It’ll do almost anything to win the war.
The threat of death in war always leads to intrigue. Paul said there is a war in us, so we should expect our inner battle to be fraught with it. Those plots express themselves in wearisome things like ministry despair or anger, but they’re just as likely to compel us ambitious drive, and manic excitement. Either way, it’s the Heroic-Self’s job to deliver the Protected Self by vanquishing threats and leveraging opportunities. The collateral damage of that conflict includes my famous conference roommate, his anonymous conference roommate, and every other church servant who wants to avoid dying.
Accidental-Hypocrisy
The Protected-Self operates without our active-volition something like our metabolism functions. We don’t consciously will our biochemistry to function, but it still does. Similarly, our life with the Protected-Self leads us to act inauthentically in ways that we may not be aware of for decades. This can be insidious in ministry. When a ministry leaders’ Heroic Self deploys the tools of the trade on behalf of their “Protected-Self” they betray both their life and calling with the divine instruments of true renewal. Rank hypocrites know they’re doing that, but most of us do it accidently. Our message and ministry aren’t stained by high-handed scandal or heresy, but by a stealth hypocrisy not even we perceive.
As Paul David Tripp warned us, it’s a dangerous calling. We stand in special relationship to sacred tools that have an intimate access to our soul. The Heroic Self of a well-trained practitioner can deploy them in stealthy service of their own deep issues. To make it more complicated, the minister’s drive is often outwardly sanctified by their position and so hidden from himself and others.
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These aren’t sinister shepherds who are so lost they don’t even know they are wolves in sheep’s clothing. Ministry people mostly do what they do for genuine, loving and often selfless reasons. The problem is that the Protected-Self and its guardian hide right out in the open, and not just from others. Accidental hypocrisy hides itself even from the its host.
In part two, we’ll see where accidental cloaks itself in us by seeing how the Heroic Self uses the servant’s character, methods, techniques, and especially God’s truth itself to cloak our issues and keep us from our cross.
Part II: Trying Not to Die
The Heroic-Self’s heroism performs in variety of setting, including our cultural context, ministry circumstances and the values of our ecclesiastical communion. The following array represents standard elements experienced by church leaders in North America and commonly follow the its progression.
Truth and What We Know—
The first work of everyone’s Heroic-Self is to find the truth or at least, or “my truth”. If the Protected-Self is to have any security, it’s guardian must know what really is. Whether that answer is absolute or personal, it becomes the individual’s protection against absurdity. Even if they embrace the absurd, that itself becomes a meaning-paradigm. So, regardless of whether one’s Truth is inspired or an improvised riff of epistemological jazz, it functions as the grammar and story of one’s life.
This puts the orthodox minister in a vulnerable position. His truth is truly true. It claims absolute and universal validity and authority. Our Heroic-Self builds its defensive and offensive weapons with the Words of God himself. This is true of every Christian and every non-Christian, although the latter uses a different meta-grid. But the problems are multiplied in ministry. For us, truth becomes the instrument of our life’s work, as well as our life. With that double-value in mind, the Heroic-Self sets about the business of mastering the content of truth as comprehensibly as possible. Of course, that’s a good thing and well-trained shpherds leaders can be a rich blessing to the Church, but that expertise also operates within the Heroic-Self’s mission. The seminary student stays up late studying in service of both Prophets and the Protected-Self. Life and work are fused, and Truth becomes an instrument of self-validation and vocational aptitude. With truth identified and “mastered”, the Heroic-Self has its first bit of leverage.
Method and What We Do—
Even pure theory serves a practical purpose, even if it’s just to make the theorizer feel smart. Certainly, the minister’s truth needs to be used to good purpose. To that end, our training includes categories of practice that transfer truth to others. Traditionally, this includes preaching, teaching, liturgy, pastoral care, church polity, leadership and other core disciplines. Before we learn to identify the methodological department headings of the calling and integrate their purpose into the overarching framework of truth. This may seem perfunctory, but it’s an essential part of legitimate ministry as well as the illegitimate protection of self.
The expectations placed on ministers today are far more expansive and fluid than in previous ages. Many need to be rejected and others need to be moderated. Regardless, one of the most foundational decisions a minister must make is just what his job entails. That is, what the truth he knows says he should be about doing. Naturally, that decision will define the scope and sequence of his life’s work. It’s a necessary good when done rightly, but even when a minster gets the list right, the Heroic-Self instinctively emphasizes methods that suit the Protected-Self’s temperament, fears, lusts and skill biases. The result is that the minister’s approach to ministry almost always has more to do with their Meyers-Briggs than they want to admit.
Technique and How We Do It—
With those headings defined, the minister now needs to be able to do his job effectively. The work of the pastor demands a wide-ranging skill set. He won’t excel in every area, but he must be proficient in all and he’d better excel in at least two core competencies. The margin of error can be slim and the minister spends more time working on the art (and science) of the craft than most members imagine. Or maybe he doesn’t. It only take on 46 minute interminable sermon, to realize that technique matters. Without unpacking the particulars, the Heroic-Self’s next (and ongoing job) is to learn the skills of priestcraft.
Character and Who We Are—
Obviously, the Heroic-Self’s service to the Protected-Self is an existential exercise, however, it usually isn’t experienced that way until God undoes us. The Heroic-Self operates un-reflectively so even when it focuses on interior issues like character it’s intent is functional. The minister’s truth paradigm makes necessary claims on one’s character in additional to one’s accuracy in matters of knowledge. Every faithful minister knows that who they are matters.
Every Heroic-Self knows that the Protected-Self expects to be guarded by its virtue. The Heroic-Self, therefore, is driven to godliness, if not in substance then at least in appearance. The Heroic-Self is about making it all work and virtue is part of the job. That puts character in the business of the Protected-Self’s vision of thriving rather than God’s vision of authentic humanity. Thankfully, this doesn’t invalidate the totality of our life and ministry. We are not only messed up. After Christ works in us, something real changes, however deeply and incrementally it grows.
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Diagrams, like analogies, all break down, especially illustrations of the soul. But admitting the hubris of portraying the mysterious complexities of invisible souls, we use the categories defined above to protect ourself from the death Jesus said would give us life. Those are formidable redoubts defended by a committed and very capable Heroic Self, but as we’ll see in Part III, they’re no match for God’s grace.
Part III: The Last Stand
Godliness: The Heroic-Self’s Last Stand—
In the ministry leader’s common experience of self, the categories we outlined in Parts I and II become the agents and tools of his work and being. They form the What, Why, How and Who of our calling and receive intense thought and effort. That’s good. What kind of minister is casual about ministry? However, taken under the rubric of the Protected-Self, truth, method, technique, and character became the Heroic-Self’s negotiating leverage in a quixotic attempt to fulfill his dream to live well for God.
Unfortunately, in the true Covenant God’s people are supposed to live by dying, which is something God insists on rather tenaciously. In his gracious severity, God makes sure we all die, but the Heroic-Self is, after all, heroic and the journey to death of self usually takes decades and hurts, a lot.
The Heroic-Self will spend an entire career pursuing its assigned objectives with zeal, or at least diligence. Thousands upon thousands of pages will be read to learn truth. History will be reviewed to find practitioners worthy of emulation. Conferences will be attended. The duties, boundaries, and essence of ministry will be defined as epically as possible, so the Heroic-Self can begin the life-long mission of becoming very, very good at a very, very important job. .
The opportunities for excellence are tantalizing, and exhausting. Few callings span such a wide range of skills. Church leaders are expected to be proficient at rhetoric, management, counseling, ancient languages, history, philosophy, theology, academic argumentation, crises intervention, project management, fund-raising, cultural analysis, demographics, and more. Of courses, that’s not to assume the minister masters any of them, but with every set back and every new vision they can pivot to a new dimension of work and aim for some heroic improvement. Over time the minister becomes general practitioner or specialist, depending on what his Protected Self.
All the while, he thinks he’s just doing his job, but after a few decades without anything dramatic to show for it, most leaders wonder if they’re any good at it. By now they’re deeply discouraged and probably a little, or more than a little, angry. It occurs to them that this is as good at the job as they’re going to be, but the Heroic Self isn’t done yet.
He begins to think he’s being humbled. Yes, humility is everything to the follower of Christ. So, the Heroic Self runs fearlessly toward lowliness. This job is about character, after all and cannot be done without godliness. Indeed, good shepherds want to be godly! Character matters, especially for the minister. So, in an earnest, final act of courage, he begs God to show him what needs to change about himself in order to be more like Jesus. It is a secret sin, a cancerous motive, harshness at home? By now the Heroic Self will face anything as long as it means avoiding another decade of inert ministry like this. “Search me,: he cries, “O God and show me if there is any offensive way in me.”
He means every word of it, but he’s clueless to the sad reality that what’s really happened is that the Heroic Self as turned the quest for virtue into a kind of professional development scheme in service of the Protected Self. He also doesn’t know that this is his last stand. He’s about to lose, thank God.
All that’s left is to learn the difference between heroism and crucifixion, which is what we’ll explore in Part Four.
Part IV: Don’t Die A Hero
Death versus Heroism
I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself,
if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus,
to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.
Acts 20:24
The shadow death is now cast long upon the spiritual leader. Every truth they studied, every responsibility they faithfully accepted, every skill they honed, every virtue they cultivated was part of a life-long mission to keep the Protected-Self safe and satisfied. Except for flashes of momentum here and there, it couldn’t ever work. That’s just now how God made this made this job to be done. But even if there was a way, the Heroic-Self is just too tired by now.
So tired, in fact, that he is ready to give up his quest and actually die as the gospel told him to. That seems odd to him, though. He’s been dying to sleep, and money and friendships and honor and days off and mercy killing parts of vision ever since he got hired. But those are all the deaths of a hero. Hero’s die with dignity and in ministry the kind of deaths just listed are vocational euthanasia, not crucifixion. That kind of “death” generally helps the pastor’s brand, more than it hurts.
It’s easy to read Paul’s famous words to Corinth that way, but Paul was talking about real death, not the choreographed death of the Heroic-Self. To really die, the Heroic-Self must abdicate its life’s work of guardianship while the self it protected dies a very real, inelegant death. The true death of self is uncontainable, unmetered, untamed, humiliating. It mocks virtue and skill and calling and even Truth, it seems.
Despite the brilliant hope promised on the other side, or maybe because of it, this death is just dark. And it’s slow. It creeps through the patient like cancer with long seasons of deterioration punctuated by nausea and pain with some good days here and there. It’ll make the soul wish it could die of a spiritual heart attack; a few moments of acute anguish followed immediately by new life.
We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed;
always carrying in the body the death of Jesus,
so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.
2 Corinthians 4:8–10
If this sounds a bit dramatic, there could be several reasons.
It might be that your path is different. Good for you. Some are led where they do not want to go, while others might just remain until he returns. But eventually even John died and before that he saw all his friends die and who knows what dreams he saw die. Would one whom Jesus loved miss out on the love of dying to self? The charmed life is the stuff of our prayers and some seem to have them answered, but no one gets a pass on dying to self.
It might also be that your Heroic-Self still feels strong and is satisfied with (true, but misused) theological domestications that tame your cross into a mere concept and co-opt death into yuor story of sacrifice. Some of us think we die when we don’t answer a mean email meanly. One of our most common conceits is to secretly calculate how much we gave up by becoming a minister verses what would have, naturally, be a successful and lucrative career in the marketplace. Well, whatever all that is, it is not death of self any more than stubbing one’s toe is a death.
Another possibility common among my tradition, is that you believe maturity is emotionally stable, as if genuine faith is a gyroscope that centers us. The sanguine generally don’t do angst. This is a steady way to live, but it may not be the best way. And it doesn’t seem to have been a common emotional matrix among the heroes of Scripture; Moses lost it. David was a crier, Elijah something of a whiner, Jeremiah surely felt bad things deeply, Nehemiah erupted, Amos was indignant about injustice. And then, of course, there is Jesus who cleansed the temple and was familiar with sorrow. He was sorrow to the point of death. Considering those examples, it could just as likely be emotional asymmetry as emotional maturity, that keeps us from freaking out about taking up our cross.
If we have the faith to truly read Paul’s words to Corinth, we won’t skim past the awkward first word of every couplet our rush to the noble second word. We want our Apostles to be mighty men under burden, hopeful, secure and indestructible because that’s what the Heroic-Self has built its life on. Good, but before (or actually while), Paul was those things he was also afflicted, perplexed, persecuted and struck down. Not very heroic, it seems.
But neither is dying. Death is a fierce, foreign invader more like the Nazi’s over London than the “cycle of life”, whatever that is. It’s a force we were never intended to stand before. Still, everyone gets flattened and only the numb don’t mind.
There could be scores of other reasons why the drama seems overdone, but this much is incontrovertible. In God’s grace and time, by some instrument of providence, you must die if you follow Christ. What’s more, you weren’t just told to die well when it came. God told you to take action; take up your cross and die to self. That’s an imperative. You must engage, pursue and foster your death-to-self every day and then one day fully. If that seem all that bad so far, maybe you’re not doing it right.
We don’t talk about it, but ministry is born of ambition. It also dies of it. The life-cycle begins when a grateful sinner falls in love with the God. For leaders, that love has them showing up early for all the church things. Then volunteering becomes habitual untile they land a job doing what they do for free.
Eventually the newbie’s awe wears off and they know just what this ministry needs. Sadly, however, despite our brilliance reality is unimpressed, and discouragement sets in. But discouragement is not humility and twenty years of static ministry takes more faith (or denial) than they can muster. If anyone could see inside, they’d know the pastor is fading, but they’re no escaping the work. The Sundays just keep coming until they realize there are only two choices; the Heroic Self can keep being heroic, or it can realize the Protected Self needs to die.
There’s no pleasant way to die. Jesus knows that and knows what your death will be like because you’re sharing in his suffering. But the real comfort is that he is sharing in yours. What’s more, you will share in his glory because he died to redeem your True Self.
