Death and Life among Grizzlies

Some things are worth dying for

Werner Herzog’s captivating documentary Grizzly Man follows the passion of Timothy Treadwell into the Alaskan wilderness to live among grizzly bears. Sounds like pastoral ministry to many. For sure, the views are unmatched and the sunsets spectacular. There are perks. But the grizzlies. It’s the grizzlies that keep them awake at night. It’s the grizzlies that make them run.

And the buzz around pastoral circles these days is that the grizzlies are winning. A recent Christianity Today cover story confirmed that pastors are tired, weary, frustrated, and broke. And many are getting out.

There is no shame in that. One can only be mauled by grizzlies for so long. With apologies to Jim Eliot, he is no fool who in realizing he has nothing left to give, runs to keep what he fears he might be losing.

But really, is all this actually that new? Covid and politics have focused our attention on the matter, but I probably wrote six letters of resignation before the calendar hit 1990. In 2010 an overwhelmed JetBlue flight attendant grabbed a beer and slid down the emergency chute into another career. I think there have always been pastors looking for such an exit. This may be a part of what it means to be a pastor. It may be why we take vows.

We’re well familiar with the succinct summation of discipleship given by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his book The Cost of Discipleship: “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die,” Bonhoeffer says.¹ No doubt many of us have flung these words at our congregations. Perhaps we need to fling them at ourselves. When Christ calls us to ministry, in this, too, he calls us to die.

He calls us to die, for example, to visions of success. Today’s ecclesiastical culture challenges us to leverage vision and passion into a large and prosperous church. When this doesn’t happen, the shame of failure is death to us. To pastor stable (read: not growing) churches requires us to die to the illusion of professional “success” as it has been defined for us.

That wouldn’t be so bad if the sheep we do gather didn’t bite. I’m conflict avoidant and that is not a good trait for a pastor. To be a pastor is to be in a place of conflict. A pastor dies to peace.

Further, to commit to a place, to a ministry, to a people, is to die to options. A pastor has no corporate ladder to climb, no career trajectory to pursue, no ten-year plan of professional growth. Pastors may be called to other or different flocks where their gifts may better flourish. But to pastor a given flock is an end worthy in itself. Some have refused calls to greener pastures because their work in caring for their current flock was not complete. And those who do find it necessary to leave do not find that step to be easy. Engineers or nurses or teachers can change companies or hospitals or schools with minimal disruption to their lives. Often they can stay in their own houses and keep their kids in their schools. When pastors consider a change, the change is ordinarily hugely disruptive.

Most pastors die to wealth. Of course, some churches pay their pastors what I consider to be an obscene salary. But most churches struggle, and struggle sincerely, to pay a good living wage to their pastors. We are not going to grow rich doing this, and the temptation to leave ministry for a better paying gig is a real one.

I know that there are many pastors bearing heavy burdens. You are living among grizzlies, or you feel them lurking in the trees. In the end, all that was left of Timothy Treadwell was his watch. I don’t wish that on anyone, pastor or not.

Nevertheless, the call to pastor is a call to die. So we have to remember that lying on the other side of death is always for the Christian life. And for that we persevere.

One recent Sunday I sulked my way to church. I texted my self-pity to Barb, my long-suffering wife. I gloomily told our children’s ministries director, Elizabeth, that I was ready to chuck it all. Both Barb and Elizabeth were sympathetic. They also know me well enough to know that these feelings would pass.

The day ended with my realizing, once again, a vision of life. What an awesome privilege it is to be trusted to enter the inner spaces of peoples’ fears and hopes and brokenness. As a pastor I get to walk with people through some of the hardest, and yet most glorious, periods of their lives. It’s scary at times, frustrating at others. But always, it’s an honor afforded to few.

It’s a privilege, I’ve come to realize, that is worth dying for.

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1. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (United States: Touchstone Books, 1995). p. 89.