Recently I had lunch with a friend whose wife is midway through cancer treatment. I wondered if her cancer is the central feature of his daily life, the hub around which every other logistic and emotion turned. He said it is. It impacts his job, his day-to-day activities, his children’s lives, their ability to attend church, everything. A predominate theme in our conversation was life seldom looks like you expect it to look.

When you’re young, you expect things like marriage and career to look one way, but so often it looks different. Like walking around the Byzantine hallways of a sprawling shopping mall, you sometimes stop, look around, and think, “Wait, how did I get here? Where am I?”

So in the life of a pastor. Entering the pastorate, you have one set of expectations. Then ministry takes you down strange pathways, whole seasons you didn’t anticipate. Every once in a while, you look around and think, “How did we get here? And, goodness, I’m tired.”

Having folks one or two steps ahead is helpful for moving through different seasons. They can explain what to expect. Satan fools us into thinking our situation is unique, our temptations unusual, our exhaustion beyond reckoning, like lions isolating an antelope from the herd. Yet how reassuring for an older brother to come along, place an arm around the shoulder, and say, “Don’t worry. I was there. And I got through it. Here’s what God taught me.” Ah, yes, maybe I can make it through, too.

Our goal for this edition of Church Matters is to have a number of men offer that arm for the shoulder. What should you expect for getting started, for the early stages of the race, for the many laps which follow, and for gliding gracefully through the finish line? Different seasons impose different challenges and afford different opportunities. Brother, pastor, are you ready for the next season?

I turned fifty last September. It gave me the opportunity to stop and reflect on the timeline of my life and its seasons. Mostly, I feel gratitude for all that God has given. Yet one thing a man generally possesses at fifty that he does not possess at thirty is a stronger sense of his limitations and weaknesses. More and more I find myself thinking, “Lord, just help me to make it to the end in good shape.”

Then I read Mike Bullmore’s piece. He might call this Hezekiah-think. Hezekiah, you might remember, was happy the kingdom of Israel would be spared in his lifetime, never mind what happened after him.

Have I been succumbing to one temptation common to pastors and elders somewhere in the middle of their race, the temptation to fight just hard enough to preserve yourself, but maybe not hard enough to build the next generation?

We pray this edition of Church Matters might help you to discern where you’re at, so that you might better prepare for what’s ahead.

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