Mark Vroegop: How to Persevere in Ministry

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Mark Vroegop: That’s so helpful, knowing that my long term perseverance isn’t entirely based on my ability to make it on my own, that Jesus is the one who’s going to help keep me trusting. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve encountered scenarios in church ministry when I thought I have no idea how I’m going to make it through this. I’m not sure how this is even sustainable, and yet somehow, by God’s sovereign grace, he keeps helping me to trust Him, and He sustains my trusting by keeping me trusting in Him.

I talk a lot in pastoral ministry and with other pastors about the ministry of absorption, trying to give a category for what pastors are supposed to do. Part of our role is to live out a Christ like life and to help people in their darkest, hardest moments and proclaim the beauty of who they can become with a relationship with Jesus. But that’s complicated and it’s messy, it’s broken and absorbing the pains of people and their challenging questions, their difficulties, is a part of the calling. Now, not all of us understood that when we signed up for pastoral ministry, we thought we could change the world, and we could have churches that could just change, and if we love Jesus and love the Bible, it’s all going to go amazing and Well, the reality is that’s just that’s not how it works. The apostle Paul said that death is at work in us so that life can be at work in you. And hardship and difficulty is central to what good pastoral ministry is.

So when I find a guy who’s really discouraged, I want to help him by not saying, Hey, this is part of the calling. Get over it, but help him understand this is actually part of the vision of making much of Jesus, not just through your public proclamation, but also the way in which you get to absorb the pain of other people and the pain of ministry, so that Jesus can be platform, not only in your preaching, but also in your living and In your pastoral ministry. So I think that calling of both proclamation and absorption is central to what it means to be a pastor. It’s essential.

It’s central to what Jesus did, and it’s central to how the church lives out what it means to follow Jesus well together. So I have a little unusual call to ministry, in that my call to be a Christian, put my trust in Jesus and my call to ministry happened at the exact same time. I don’t remember a time when knowing Jesus, I didn’t have a burning desire to be in pastoral ministry. In fact, my earliest memories as a kid was sitting in church, seeing a pastor give a sermon, and literally feeling in my heart like a burning reality. I didn’t know how to describe it at the time, like that’s what I want to do with my life. I don’t even know how to describe except the sovereign work of God from a very early age, that this was what I was going to do with my life. And it’s been a beautiful, hard, glorious journey of following that calling of pastoring the local church.

The most important thing about being a pastor that didn’t learn at seminary is that I have to love my people more than I hate where they’re at. I learned this lesson at my first church. It was bit of a turnaround, kind of a story, a church renovation story, amazing place, but it was independent, fundamental King James only Beulah Land, singing, kind of church, and I landed there as a senior pastor at age 26 they took a risk on me and I on them. And I remember is that church started to change, that there were times it was really frustrating, of because there were so many things that we wanted to change and so many things that there needed to be changed taking place in but these were folks who love Jesus, but they needed time. And I remember in one particular staff meeting, a staff member expressing frustration about all of these things, and it just sort of came out of my mouth. Look, we have to love our people more than we hate where they’re at, because most people can’t be led to some place if they feel like you’re angry with them.

And I think pastors can become angry. They can become frustrated. I have this vision of how the church should be, and you’re the barrier that’s in the way, and yet loving them in light of their story, their history, being patient, helping them to grow in grace. I never learned that in seminary, and I actually said it accidentally in a staff meeting where we were trying to figure out what to do. And yet it’s become a bit of a personal mission to love my people more than I hate where they’re at. And I bet my people love me more. And they hate where I’m at.

Sometimes I think my wife would say that about me. Think that’s what marriage was, relationship. It’s what loving people is. So the church is just the same thing. It’ll love people more than you hate where they’re at. If I had to stop being a pastor tomorrow, what would be the thing that I miss the most? I would miss two things I would miss the corporate gathering of God’s people when I know as we’re singing what’s on my heart to share and preach, and we’re about to move from singing to proclamation of the Word, and the anticipation of what God might do in this collective moment is unbelievably exhilarating. I would so desperately miss that, but even more so, I would miss the conversations afterwards, like a woman that I talked with this weekend and prayed with after a service, who’s trying to figure out she’s how to live. She’s living with her parents, she’s unemployed, she has a special needs son, and she just wants me to pray for her, because she’s in a hard place, and she needs somebody with skin on who has proclaimed the gospel to her to actually pray over her that she might be able to make it another seven days and then come back, and then you get to see The incremental change in people’s lives over time. It’s amazing. It’s awesome. That’s why I love being a pastor on difficult days of ministry.

What truth do I cling to? Let me tell you, when I texted a fellow pastor on Easter Sunday morning, he’s going through a hard time, he and I talked over the the weekend and just tried to help him process some pains that he’s working through. And I texted him a statement that actually John Piper had sent to me after the death of our daughter in 2004 and it became a bit of a a pillar in my life. And this is what I texted to him, keep trusting the one who keeps you trusting. And the reason that I love that statement is because it hits the two fold reality of pastoral ministry.

I think how discouragement and difficulty is overcome, one by a deep commitment. I am going to keep trusting Jesus. I don’t know what’s happening. I can’t figure this out, but I got into this by trusting Christ as my savior. I’ve pursued pastoral ministry because I trust that the work of ministry does something in people’s lives. I’m going to keep trusting and then the other side is the one who keeps you trusting. That’s so helpful, knowing that my long term perseverance isn’t entirely based on my ability to make it on my own, that Jesus is the one who’s going to help keep me trusting.

And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve encountered scenarios in church ministry when I thought I have no idea how I’m going to make it through this. I’m not sure how this is even sustainable, and yet somehow, by God’s sovereign grace, he keeps helping me to trust Him, and He sustains my trusting by keeping me trusting in Him and to me. What I come back to when things are really hard is I’m going to trust Jesus, and I’m going to trust that he’s going to keep me trusting all the way to the end, yeah, when I was younger in ministry, I thought that difficult challenges with the right counsel could change instantly. We just brought the right Bible verse, the right principle, the right moment could happen in someone’s life, and everything could change, and that happens, um, but more often than not, spiritual growth and change in a church and a person’s life, in my life, is incremental.

It’s slow. I’ve compared it to adjusting the rudder five degrees, and then over time, you realize, wow, we’re in a different place. Church has changed like that. People change like that. And what I underestimated as a young pastor is the amount of time that it takes for people and churches and even for me to change. And the priority of pastoral patients is really, really important. I was an impatient pastor. I wanted to change the world. I wanted to reach people for Christ. I wanted my church to really be helpful in the community, and I wanted it to happen now, now, now. And I think a lot of people like me get into ministry because they have a vision of, I want to be a part of seeing God change the world.

And I want to do it. I want to happen well, often it takes a lot longer than what we would think. And I wish I had understood that earlier. I understood it over time, but unfortunately, I understood it the hard way, as change was difficult and church reformation and renewal took a long time, and as well, the Lord had to kind of chisel away. At my own aggressiveness, if you will, to change the world for Jesus, when the reality is, well, Jesus has done a pretty good job of ruling the world without me and being patient is, I think, central to the calling of what it means to be a pastor.