M Div Dropout

shame, the death of a dream, and the god of the living

When my wife and I separated, I dropped out of seminary. My dreams for future ministry shriveled up and died inside me along with the death of my marriage.

After I resigned from being an evangelical pastor, I had returned to school for a second masters degree, with the intention of revisiting ministry from a more progressive perspective. I thought I would probably become a pastor again.

When we separated, I quit. Partly, this was because I needed to find a job that would help me provide as a single dad and could no longer be a full-time student.

But the main reason was shame.

When my marriage ended, I immediately and deeply felt that I could probably never be a pastor again.

I had been taught since I was a kid about people “disqualifying themselves for ministry.” When famous pastors returned to ministry after divorce (or, like Charles Stanely, who never quit, and kept pastoring right on through his divorce despite blistering criticism- unheard of for a Southern Baptist at the time! I don’t agree with his theology, but if you’re looking for an example of how to just do what you want and fuk da haters, it’s pretty impressive) I was told that they were in sin, that they were disrespecting not only the office of the pastorate, but GOD.

By this time, I no longer had a conservative theology. My beliefs made room for divorce. I didn’t believe I had made any grievous moral errors that would make it impossible for me to do ministry with integrity. But the voice of shame can drown out our actual beliefs. It can be difficult to move forward emotionally when you have been told your whole life the end of a marriage is a failure you are simply not supposed to recover from.

So you can see why at the moment my marriage was ending, I also felt the door closing on any possible future in ministry. I don’t want to be overly dramatic, but this felt like a death. I had been a pastor for almost a decade, and I thought I would always be some kind of pastor. My identity was wrapped up in it. I liked seeing myself this way. I was good at it. I didn’t know what else I was supposed to do. The author Frederick Buechner said, “the place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” For me, that had always been pastoring.

And I was having to bury that dream in the ground.

Again, not to be overly dramatic.

pastor brian at a church oyster roast circa Jan 2020, before a great many things changed very, very quickly

I got a normal ass job. Business job. Sales calls, spreadsheets, etc. I hated it. I eventually got a better one, but something still felt like it was missing. Part of this was very good for me. While many of my motivations for being a pastor were pure and altruistic, and while it was in line with my gifts and passions, there was also an element of self-importance. Pastors tell people in their church that everyone is in the ministry. That we pastors aren’t special. We teach “the priesthood of all believers.” But at the end of the day, many of us also strategically chose the job that made us the most goddamn important person in the room.

Jesus said, “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24). There is an evangelical version of “dying to self” that is unhealthy and masochistic, but I also believe that the principle of death and resurrection, woven into creation, is true in our lives. It is an important part of spiritual growth, and what it is to be human. Shame buried my dreams in the ground, but this death also gave me space to grow new dreams. I worked through my shameful feelings. I saw them for what they were. I saw both the good and the bad parts of my pastoral identity. I came to a place of further integration (and I’m still a work in progress).

And at some point, I started using my voice again.

When I started speaking up again, I showed up with nothing to lose. I felt a freedom and shamelessness to be my full, authentic self, in a way I don’t think I could have if I was still hoping to become a pastor again. That dream had to die before something new could grow.

I still don’t know if I’ll ever return to pastoring. I’m open to it! I’m open to a lot of things. The future feels wide with possibility, and shame isn’t going to hold me back anymore. What I do know is that I feel blessed (excuse my Christianese) at the great surprise (classic God, am I right) that I am now using my voice and pastoral experience to challenge and encourage more people now than I ever did when I was a pastor.

To quote Buechner again, “Resurrection means that the worst thing is never the last thing.”  That’s something I hold onto in my Christian faith. When I surrender things, and let dreams die, I am putting things in the hand of God, for as Jesus said, God is “not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto God” (Luke 20:38). I entrust my dreams to the love that governs the universe, trusting that love will bring back to life exactly and only what is meant for me.