God opened the door for my first pastorate in the summer of 1989. I had no seminary education, and two dormant years toward a bachelor’s degree in Bible. The president of the small college I had attended was an interim pastor at a small country church. He recommended me, and, following one trial sermon and a three-question interview (no lie), I was called to be the pastor.

I thought I was ready, but I was so green Crayola could have named a new crayon after me. 

The church had a strained relationship with former pastors. As I recall, the average pastoral life expectancy was approximately 2.5 years over the previous 40 years or more. As it turned out, I was less than average. 

Many years and many conversations with pastors later, I have confidence that the things I didn’t know as a young pastor are common among young pastors. Here are a few of them.

That people really meant they wanted the church to grow.

Almost everyone wants their church to grow, but few pastors know what Sister Suzette means by it.

Many people mean, “Help me get my kids back in church.” Others mean, “Help us get our former, very disgruntled members back.” Others mean, “Let’s try to reach more people like us.”

People who haven’t experienced the lava-hot blast of Kingdom growth rarely suspect the messiness it entails. Many pastors haven’t. I’m not suggesting people were lying when they said they wanted the church to grow. But what people say and what a young pastor hears are often different things. 

That my best and worst sermons never were that.

If you’ve been preaching longer than five minutes ago, you likely have the experience of thinking, “Wow. That was a solid sermon. I was firing on all cylinders. God surely used it!” Conversely, “Man. What a dud. Even I was bored with it. God will need to work a miracle.”

Rarely are those extremes ever true.

I always tried to be prepared. I never remember “phoning one in” because I didn’t want to study and pray. Usually, it paid off. At the least, it was coherent, biblically faithful, and reasonably on point. On occasion, I didn’t have any heavy critique to level at myself.

Other times, I wanted to quit before I got through my notes. Preaching with a distracted mind, or a sermon you can tell in real-time isn’t hitting the mark, is akin to running barefoot on Legos. Yet, invariably, someone would come to me after a “terrible” sermon and say, “Pastor, God really spoke to me today.” God always reminded me that His power is in His Word, not in what I say about His Word. Whether or not I feel effective in presentation neither elevates nor quenches the dunamis (dynamite) of the gospel.

That I could preach without my personal preferences and baggage.

I was in ministry for a long time before I learned to search myself for preconceptions and baggage from my own life and experiences that affected my preaching. Being entirely naïve, I believed (mainly because I had heard it preached) that I could be a ship without barnacles sailing the gospel sea. 

I’ve since learned that scraping the hull is hard work. 

The fact that I spent years in a fundamentalist church affected my preaching. The fact that my formative years were solely influenced by “fire and brimstone” preachers affected my preaching. That I was repeatedly warned, “Touch not God’s anointed,” affected my self-perception and that of my congregation. 

That lack of self-examination, repentance, and renewal affected me. And them.

That the theology I had been taught isn’t all the sound theology there is.

My early Bible college studies were at an Independent Baptist school where one specific eschatological stream was taught. “Taught” is inaccurate. More accurately, it was elevated to Mississippi or Amazon strength. 

In fact, I never learned theology from American theologians outside of those my pastors agreed with. No Asians, South Americans, Ugandans, Kenyans, First Nations peoples, or modern Europeans need apply, save John Stott and Martyn Lloyd-Jones. 

Again, to my frustration and shame, it took years of ministry for me to read outside the theology I’d always been taught. If I had looked more broadly earlier, my congregations and I would have reaped the benefit.

That I shouldn’t try to emulate the well-known pastors in my tradition.

Not long after I answered the call to preach, I remember, boiling over with the hubris of youth, saying to my mother, “I want to be the next Adrian Rogers.” With wisdom, she replied, “God doesn’t need another Adrian Rogers. He needs a Marty Duren.”

Without debating whether God “needs” a particular preacher, her point was clear: God called me, and He knew what He was getting into when He did so. The impact was so lasting that, years later, when a couple I had known from our teenage years told me, “You preach just like (our pastor from those years),” I immediately sought to let God shape me as me, not as our former pastor. 

Clearly, there are practices, nuances, and study habits we can learn from preachers of every era. But, if Phillips Brooks was right in that “Preaching is truth communicated through personality,” then God’s calling is for my personality, and yours, to be a unique channel of gospel communication for His glory.

What are some things you thought you knew as a young pastor but got wrong?

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