Part 3: On Being a "Faster Pastor"

When the Race Became a Wreck

This article is part 3 of 4 in a series titled On Being a "Faster Pastor".

You can read part 1 of 4 by clicking here.

You can read part 2 of 4 by clicking here.

In this article, I highlight something that I had never experienced before but have since discovered is common to many.

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No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't slow my internal motor.

Like Don Quixote chasing windmills, I found myself chasing after unimportant things. Internally I began to have an elevated desire to be respected and seen as successful by my parishioners, peers, and those above me in church leadership. 

I was increasingly aware that the internal RPMs of my life were running at an unsustainable level, but I didn't know how to slow the train down. 

Then came something new to me, something that left me wondering, “What just happened?”

A panic attack. 

I will spare you the play-by-play but it wasn’t pretty and I was left wondering if I had just had a heart attack or the beginnings of a mental breakdown.

To make matters more challenging, a panic attack became multiple panic attacks which became increasingly more frequent and ill-timed leaving me winded and in desperate need of some answers on how to stop or slow these waves. 

In hindsight, it was almost as if once my internal RPMs reached a certain point, I was physically unable to dial them back. Anxiety increasingly took over and my mental hum was far too often a steady stream of anxious thoughts and worst-case scenarios. 

I wanted to slow down. 

I longed to move at a more measured pace. 

I no longer wanted to be the "faster pastor."

Even more, as I was freewheeling internally, I increasingly witnessed a series of pastors I had looked up to crash and burn. Whether it was sex, money, or power, ultimately the castles they were building crumbled into a heap. These were the ones who I looked at as having the “more” I was looking for and now so many were left to pick up the pieces. 

As I watched these events unfold and read these stories, I quietly thought to myself, "I don't want that to be me.” 

I was fearful that the road that I was on was leading to a similar destination and I couldn't shake the pressure that I felt that I had too much to do and way too little time to do it. I felt as if I was always rushing…in prayer, in reading, in preparation, in daily life. I became overwhelmed with what people thought about me and over time I became increasingly unenthusiastic and even threatened by the success of others and eventually…I crashed.

The circumstances surrounding my crash involved the ways that I sought to manage the internal speed of my life and the fears that were growing inside of me. The external demands of my ministry post were sizable, but the internal demands that I was experiencing felt insurmountable. 

My soul was warped and it all came to an abrupt stop.

What followed has been a lengthy journey to reset my soul, break the grip of the pursuit of “more”, rediscover who I am in Christ, and unlearn some ugly patterns and practices in my life.

The crash woke me up and reconstructing the crash with a trusted counselor has given me greater clarity on what exactly happened to me and what exactly was happening inside of me. The healing journey since has been deeply therapeutic and sharply painful but most of all deeply transformative.

I do not write these words as someone who claims to be fully freed from the relentless pursuit of more, but I do write as someone who can say with confidence that there is a better way forward than the way that I was running the race of my life. This way forward involves pace and patterns being set by our Savior and life is found to be increasingly abundant. 

It is not a popular path and likely it won’t make the headlines of any church growth journals. But it is the path that I am seeking to walk and I will detail it further in part 4 of this series.