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See my Christianity Today online piece about pastors resigning after book success

Jim Belcher, Francis Chan, N.T. Wright, and Others Leave the Pastorate to Write and Speak

Why church planters often quit their congregations.

Andy Rowell | posted 5/06/2010 09:23AM

In this piece I wrote yesterday morning for CT, I am trying to be intentionally vague about the pastors' different motivations while trying to find some common factors in their journeys. I hope it is thought-provoking but also hope the article comes across as benign and modest in its aims.  

12 replies on “See my Christianity Today online piece about pastors resigning after book success”

Andy,

Congrads on CT publishing the article. Good work at finding some common themes in the author’s paths.

Could have you included Alan Hirsch, Alan Roxburg (do they fit this path?) and other people who have become quite widely known because of their publications?

Jeremy Griffin

As an “ex”-pastor myself, there are all sorts of reasons and circumstances, as well as the “voice of God” that moves pastors out of the pulpit and into other vocations.

I think your reflections on those who are particularly successful church planters moving out of the pulpit has unique factors in the American landscape that differs from other locations, and yet I think the timing of these prominent pastors leaving the pulpit this year may be mostly coincidental. Now, if several of these men open up a consulting practice or coaching network, then that might be telling 🙂 j/k

JKA Smith and DJ, you know these worlds well–thanks for your comments.

People are also commenting at the Christianity Today site.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/comments/allreviews.html?id=87670

I just put this comment there.

Thanks for your continued commenting. I think the issues are important: spiritual formation, accountability, Spirit, mission, balance, sustainability, gender, and succession. But I’m pained by the impressionistic nature of the piece. Here are some of the main complaints and I agree with all of them. (a) Maybe Chan is not going to write and speak. (b) Rollins’s ikon is an artists’ collective not a church plant. (c) We have no idea of the real motivations and situations of these people. (d) Wright and Rollins were influenced by an American phenomenon but aren’t American. (e) Age: Peterson and Wright were in their sixties. (f) Wright and Piper aren’t church planters. (g) There are a lots of other people who are doing academic, publishing, activist, journalistic work who started as pastors (John Stott, Ed Stetzer, Alan Hirsch, Alan Roxburgh, Phil Ryken, me!). (h) And there are some that start in those spheres and move into pastoring (Louie Giglio, Will Willimon).

Nice piece, Andy.

I’ve been a student of Roxburgh’s for the last four years. He was a pastor of a church, and he no longer is a pastor of a church. But I’m not sure that he left his last church in order to write books. He’s been quite prolific of late, with two new books that are both worth reading.

Andy,

Thanks for the list of other names and the link to the comments on the CT website.

I did not mean to ask the question to sound as though you left out certain people. I was adding to the list of names that may have been in a similar category. You can only cover so many people in an article and I think you were trying to cover what was happening with people more recently.

You did tie together some common factors, yet you were, I think, purposefully unclear or vague about what was dissimilar between everyone.

Again, it was thought provoking and well written.

Great article Andy. I think you may be on to something here. Sure, some of these people are leaving for the right reasons and God is using them. But I think the underlying factor here is an inferior view of the pastorate. It’s not just from successful writers. I hear it from seminary students as well. “If I can’t get into a good PhD program and teach, they I guess I’ll just settle and pastor a church.” What’s the deal with that? We need great leaders leading local congregations more now that ever.

Thanks, Andy. Your connections bring to mind questions about the vocation to pastoral ministry – if that’s the right word for it.

I confess I haven’t given these much thought myself:

What does “ordination” mean? What does it signify? How is it discerned? Who discerns it – the individual, the denomination, the church elder board?

Can you be ordained temporarily? (Or is it “once ordained, always ordained”?)

If you are ordained to pastoral ministry, under what circumstances is it permissible to walk away from your flock – from any flock – and become a professional writer or speaker?

If you want to leave pastoral ministry, does the group that discerned that you were called to pastoral ministry have to agree with you before you leave?

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