The End of Ministry
What do you do when you realize that the life you thought you would lead is gone? What do you do when your career, your future, your hopes and dreams, everything becomes an invisible mist that disappears in the morning light? This is the realization of the author of Broken Heart: “Vanity of vanity! All things are vanity” (Ecclesiastes 1:2).
Over the past year, I have finally understood how fragile my past achievements are. It finally dawned on me, after more than 15 years of ministry in various forms and roles, that this part of my life was truly over. I am no longer a pastor, I am no longer a spiritual leader. I guess I'm okay with that.
To be clear, this is not the result I want. I miss all the Christian communities I have been privileged to be a part of. When I threw myself into college ministry and guiding college students into spiritual realities beyond their busy schedules, I thought that was all I wanted to do. When I transitioned into an associate pastor role helping to build inner-city outreach, from neighborhood block parties to homeless shelters to refugee resettlement, I thought this was all I wanted to do. When I became the senior pastor of an Asian American church charged with expanding our community into a multicultural and multigenerational church, I thought that was all I wanted to do. I have been privileged to be a part of it, and there are so many more opportunities to preach the gospel, it would be a chore to list all of them here.
What I want to make clear is that when I look back at all the good work we were able to do, it wasn't because I was special or because I was more talented than anyone else. I always thought, if Jesus can use anyone, why can’t he use me? What I believe is that when Jesus died on the cross, He died to uplift those who were not special at all, those who had no qualifications whatsoever, those who were nameless and jobless (see 1 Corinthians 1 : 27-29). Therefore, I chose this career path because it was a small way I could express my gratitude to Jesus for giving me new life. In other words, I am a nameless person who can do something because I am willing to do anything for the One who has given me His all. But for now, every time I reflect on the American church today, I feel incredibly sad. I know many of us have become too accustomed to bitter divisions and troubling interpersonal conflicts in our local churches, and I don’t want to get bogged down in the details because I write these words out of a place of hope, not negativity ;but just to be clear, the two main reasons I can’t kindly entrust my mental and emotional health to a ministry-based career are:
1. The still unresolved epidemic of white supremacy in the Western church[1], and
- The Christian community’s lack of sincerity or sense of urgency in solving the world’s real problems
As far as white supremacy goes, I look back at all the ministries I've been involved in, and I can count at least three different situations in my life where a white man made the arbitrary decision to eliminate programs that directly benefited people of color. In one case, the senior pastor decided to move the church to a more commutable location, and when I asked him about the dozen or so neighborhood kids we were doing, he just shrugged and said, “I believe they It will be fine."
Regarding the lack of urgency regarding the current world situation, I'm just asking, how is the church as a whole responding to the historical events we are all experiencing right now? What is the clear position of the Western church on income inequality, soaring housing costs, climate change, police reform, illegal immigration, the alienation of Generation Z, on critical race theory, on transgender care, war aid, artificial intelligence, and more? When the pulpits remain silent on many of these big questions, churches watch as their congregations search for answers. Even as churches focus on local outreach, they are shockingly unequipped and untrained in making a sustainable impact in cities.
On the other hand, I currently work for a secular nonprofit in Providence that deeply understands the complexity of systemic change and uses their funds responsibly to address the root causes of the problem. Their outcomes are nothing like what the local church can manage. My workplace offers low-income housing, a free daily cafeteria that provided over 200,000 free meals last year, job training programs, financial literacy training, and in the coming months we will be converting a wing of our office As a certified behavioral health clinic, this will make our agency the only one in the country to offer all of these services under one roof. I loved working there because I loved learning ways to better help people from those on the front lines, from the communities directly affected. I guess you could say that as I got older, I wanted to play chess rather than checkers.
So what should I do in terms of my spiritual vocation? I was looking through some old photos the other day from my early days in college ministry, and one thing I noticed immediately was how much I laughed. This was in stark contrast to my later attitude in my pastoral role, when being a salaried pastor meant I had to show up—I had to appear serious and respectful at all times. But weekly routines, building maintenance, and other outside responsibilities constantly got in the way of the real relationships I wanted to invest in. It dawned on me that I had become disconnected from a core component of my Christian identity. Before I got paid, and before the demands of church membership, I spent many years just building relationships with people. This is one of the reasons why some of my closest friends today are people I know outside of the physical church: we have no loyalties, only each other.
So here’s the advice I’d like to give myself, and maybe it will help you too. When your ministry ends; when you have to admit that your church has a problem; when you go to other churches and desperately wonder if the same situation will ever be the same—what else? What should God’s kingdom work look like in your personal life? As a person who truly believes in the gospel of Jesus Christ, what should you do now?
Just be a good friend.
Jesus did not want people to join an institution. He did not instruct the apostles on the five secrets of how to be successful leaders. He also didn’t tell them His preferred style of worship music or anything like that. He said, "I no longer call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master does. But I call you friends, for everything I have heard from my Father I have made known to you" (John 15: 15b) . Most people interpret Jesus' words to mean that he provided special revelation to the apostles, talking to them about his divine plan and revealing the foundations of Christian theology. Yes, Jesus “already told” these things while He was here on earth, but He wanted to teach them more – He wanted them to be friends. They learned to forgive (Matthew 18:22). They learned to be patient with one another (Ephesians 4:2). They learned to share their possessions (Mark 6:37). They learned to rise above their own prejudices (John 4:27) and love their enemies (Matthew 5:44).
In the church, we don’t have a very rich theology of friendship, do we? I mean, we have small groups and coaching programs, but those are just superficial connections to ongoing church allegiance. This gap in our theology is very strange, considering that after Jesus gave us His new command in John 15 (“Love one another as I have loved you”), His next words were literally the new words of friendship. Command ("Greater love has no man than this, than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends"). I would even venture to say that if there is one ministry that Jesus is stamping on the hearts of everyone in whom He dwells, it is the ministry of friendship. God only knows how many people feel lonely and unloved. I’m not that old, but I’ve forgotten much of the success I experienced in full-time ministry. I have to look at pictures to remind myself of everything that happened. That's true for most of us—we don't remember those plans. We won’t remember the songs. We won’t remember the ceremony. Ten years later, twenty years later, what remains in our hearts are the people who were around us at that time.
Be a good friend. We may not be able to change the world, but we can at least try.
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[1] To learn more about the definition of “white supremacy,” check out our related article at https://www.projectarctos.com/archive/69/white-supremacy.
Scott Yi lives in Providence, Rhode Island, where he writes and teaches literacy to underrepresented populations. Scott was a former medical student, a former pastor, and now a cat lover.