Ryan Kwon: Why Character Matters Most in Pastoral Ministry

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Ryan Kwon: Character will be tested more than your competence. I think seminary builds up the competency of an individual, but I just didn’t know that what would matter more would be character. Okay, so the biggest mistake that I’ve ever made as a brand new pastor is I had a wardrobe malfunction that I did not know that I had one, and my fly was completely open, and I thought the whole time as I was preaching that I was just bringing the Thunder Down, and people were just being super convicted of everything that I was saying, and little did I know that they were just being so compassionate and kind to this new pastor by not saying anything, but they they didn’t say anything until it was over, and I had realized that my fly was completely down the whole time, and that was probably the biggest mistake that I’ve ever made in my pastoral ministry, especially early on. I still haven’t recovered yet. It’s true. It’s horrific. I’m glad my misery is giving you some pleasure.

It was tragic. Yeah, my call to ministry was, I was called to, I thought, the medical field, I was studying medicine to be a doctor and and and then I got converted and became a Christian, and I met my very first missionary, who was also a doctor, who transitioned into full time ministry. And I didn’t know that that example existed. And so that was really powerful for me, somebody who would just lay down his life and his career for the call of God, and I was just so inspired by it. But he did a couple other things that really solidified in me a calling from the Lord, which was first he gave me permission to say, I think you can do it. You can do this. And then over months, it transitioned to this prescription to say, I think God is calling you. I think you’re the guy. I think I’m tapping your shoulders to say, I think you’re called to ministry.

This is what I believe, that this is a call on your life. And I never forgot that. And ever since then, one of my favorite things to do is to do the same tap on people’s shoulders and say, I think you can do it, and then I believe you can do it. What I like about being a pastor, gosh, there’s, there’s so many things to love. I know a lot of it’s kind of like sexy to talk about things that you don’t love, especially after the pandemic. But I love so many things about it. I would say my favorite thing is to see people illuminated by the gospel. I think that’s that’s just my favorite thing. You see it in their eyes first, and you see it in their hearts, and you see it in their obedience. And over and over again. I love the regenerating effect of the gospel. I love the brilliance of the gospel. I love I love people like this past Easter, we had 152 people respond for the first time to surrender their life to Jesus. That just doesn’t get old, you know. And I get to see that from the front seat, and that’s just incredible.

And then also for people to be renewed by the gospel, over and over and over again, to hear saints say, you know, I’ve been a believer for 50 years. I’ve never seen the gospel this way. I mean, that is just captivating. I would just tell the pastor who is discouraged and not seeing a lot of fruit. I would say there are a lot of fruits in the kingdom that you don’t get to see, but there are fruit and and and that maybe it will come, but maybe it won’t. But I’ve seen even in my own life, in my own ministry, where God was doing something that I just didn’t think he was doing anything. I thought he was distant, but he was far more near than I realized, and I would say that, I would tell them, keep faithful. The journey is about being a soldier.

The illustration is one of a farmer and the harvest season is coming, and be faithful to the task. And don’t tie your emotions to the results. The results are left to the Lord, and this is how he could exercise that in his own heart, the reality of the gospel that we do the work we do, the harvesting, but God ultimately works in ways that only he could produce the fruit you. I would miss the most seeing the possible in the impossible in me.

I just every time I always am blown away by how God would still choose to use who I am and I know who I am. I mean wife, my wife thinks she knows who I am. I’m far more wretched than she could ever imagine, even though she has a pretty good idea. But I’m always profoundly impacted by the grace of our God, of how he could perfect his strength through my weakness. I’m always profoundly affected by that, and I’ll never get over that, and I’ll miss that deeply. I deeply on difficult days of ministry, I cling on to the reality that I’m being forged of something that I could not get otherwise, that suffering uniquely teaches something in me and Forge is something in me that success can’t the most important thing that I learned as a pastor, that I didn’t learn in seminary, is That character will be tested more than your competence.

I think seminary builds up the competency of an individual, but I just didn’t know that what would matter more would be character, that there would be more temptations surrounding my ego and my anger and my disappointments, my sadness, my isolation, my my licking my own wounds and saying, Woe is me. And nobody taught me that we were we were prepared to execute passages and counsel people and to lead better. But it’s no wonder that First Timothy three and Titus one tells us that to be an elder is mostly character, and I’ve discovered that the hard way.