Confessions of Corporate Pastor Failure

Truth be told, I couldn’t cut it as a corporate pastor. I hate business meetings, could care less about the budget, have no aspirations to build a building, don’t care if I preach to two people or two thousand, would rather be outside working than in an air conditioned office any day, and quite frankly don’t generally like most pastors I have met, though there are a few exceptions. 

I have a tendency, if you haven’t noticed, to chide Christians, can’t stand the powerbrokers, and favored people considered the rejects in the church. I tend towards insubordination with leaders I didn’t respect and hated with a passion any anything that stank of corporatism. 

When I am honest with my self, I realize I don’t belong as a pastor in the modern American church. As I write this, you have to understand that I believed God called to the pastoral ministry ever since I was a small boy, and worked most of my life to fulfill that calling. 

My theology compels me to believe God ordains our free will choices so my path as a seminary student and ordained pastor for the last 33+ years could not be in vain, but I struggle to understand God’s purpose for my life and ministry in spite of my failure to succeed in the corporate church.
Perhaps some of my acrimony at times is due to my sense of failure to accomplish what I truly believed was God’s divine plan for my life. I confess feeling jealousy over guys who I went to seminary with are now pastoring large churches or acting as pastor superintendents. And I won’t even get into the shame and embarrassment I still feel over my divorce of my 31+ year marriage, and all that led up to it along with sabotaging a 12+ year non-incorporated church plant I pastored.

Be that as it may, I know God created me unique and brought me into this world, saved me, and called me to do the work that only I can do, even if that work is to fail as a pastor, even to His glory and my good.