Considering “Unsuccessful” Ministry

I made a joke on a friend’s Facebook wall the other day.  He lamented playing too much ping-pong in seminary.  I joked that his ministry would be more effective if he hadn’t.  It’d be more like mine …

I figure he’s having a pretty effective ministry.  The church I pastored closed (lots of reasons for that).  I, by no means, took Winter Haven by storm for the Gospel.  But I had some meaningful ministry over those 9 years, and in the 1 1/2 years since then as I’ve done pulpit supply.

Lest we make too much of that (failure), let’s consider the Apostle Paul.  I did while trying not to wake up this morning.  Paul didn’t take every town he visited by storm.  Yes, he saw conversions- I saw a few of those.  He saw Christians grow- saw some of that too.  But he was run out of more than a few cities.  There were riots, a stoning, death threats and more.  Being run out of town might say something about you, but it also says something about those who ran you out of town.

In Paul’s case, it meant that he was faithfully preaching Christ and Him crucified which the flesh finds offensive.  It meant that the people who ran him out of town hated God and God’s gospel.

The “success” or “failure” of a pastor is not just about the pastor, but also the receptivity of the people.  Sometimes a church fails because a pastor is not faithfully preaching the gospel.  Or perhaps he preached it in a way that was unnecessarily offensive.  By that I mean the offense was not in the gospel itself, but in the way it was presented.  Some pastors do not contextualize the gospel for their people very well.  So, they are not heard.

Sometimes a church fails because the church is not receptive to the gospel (and sometimes that is because a previous pastor didn’t faithfully preach the gospel).  Those churches are more concerned with guarding a cultural institution or human traditions than embracing and sharing the gospel.  This was why Jonathan Edwards was run out of Northampton, MA.  He sought to end the Half-Way Covenant and its resultant opening of communion to people who were not professing Christians.

At times it can be both.  These pastoral relationships often don’t last long.  There is an explosion if the pastor refuses to contextualize the gospel.  However, if both the pastor and the people are conspiring to preserve an institution or human tradition, the church and pastor can remain together for quite some time- peacefully- until they die of old age.