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What The Shuck?

Important Lessons From a Minor League Baseball Team

In 2015, the Biloxi Shuckers, the AA minor league baseball team of the Milwaukee Brewers, were forced to participate in an unprecedented experience.

A beautiful new baseball stadium was under construction in their Mississippi city, but construction crews weren’t able to complete the project until late spring. As a result, the team was forced to participate in a 54-game road trip to start their season. To add a little perspective, many professional baseball players complain when they are in the midst of a grueling eight or nine-game road trip.

For two months, the Shuckers traveled 2,800 miles through the south, hitting just about every town except Biloxi. They slept in countless hotel rooms, schlepping their luggage from hotel to bus to stadium and back to bus. Teammates gave each other makeshift haircuts in the clubhouse. The bus made nightly pit stops at out-of-the-way gas stations for a bathroom break at 3 a.m. (The life of a minor league baseball player might not be as glamorous as we imagined.)

What does a minor league baseball team with an unprecedented extended road trip have to teach us about the state of the Church in North America?

What does a minor league baseball team with an unprecedented extended road trip have to teach us about the state of the Church in North America? Many church leaders feel that we’re in a new era: we, too, no longer enjoy the benefits of a home-field advantage. In this cultural moment, we are always the away team, no longer privy to the comforts and luxuries enjoyed by previous generations of Christians.

The implication of this reality is that we have a decision to make regarding our posture. We can either deny we’re the away team or complain about our new reality. Or admitting that while things won’t be the same as before, we can be creative and think like Shuckers. In other words, we can engage in the “resident alien” posture that Peter wrote about in one of his letters.  

If we take this posture, it will require us to think like bilingual missionaries in our particular contexts – and to teach our people to do the same. We understand both the reality of the world and the invitation of the kingdom. Culture, of course, is what people do—the rhythms, values, patterns, symbols, taboos, priorities, and characteristics of the way a particular people group operates. Our missionary posture is to celebrate and affirm the good elements and speak into and call out the bad elements— and those bad elements always involve idols, which speak both to our hearts as individuals and to our cultural norms.

While we certainly are in a new era of Church like we’ve never experienced before in North America, we need space to grieve. But we also need to commit to a faith-filled, humble, courageous, and contextually intelligent posture of engagement. In some ways, we need to take on the posture of Daniel and his faithful friends who were living, leading, and serving in a foreign land.

The current reality is not a position or situation we would have chosen or preferred. But even still, there is an invitation to press into the purposes of God through creative mission, if we have the eyes to see it.

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Called to Stay or Called to Go?

There’s one question that everyone in ministry will be faced with at one point or another: the question of whether to stay or go. It’s one I asked myself at various times after planting a church (around year 7-  stay for another season, around year 14- let go and let others lead), it’s one I’ve coached numerous other pastors through, and it’s one that if you aren’t asking right now, you probably will be at some point in the future.

The first thing to realize about the question of staying or going is that it’s a normal and even in some ways a necessary question. Like many things in life, ministry (and our growth in it) tends to happen in cycles. Around 7 years into a position, again at 14 years, and again at around 21 years, most people begin to feel the desire for something different, something new, something more (or sometimes less) challenging. As I’ve coached a number of others for whom this question was beginning to surface, I have sometimes detected a certain amount of guilt around even asking the question, as if simply by contemplating moving on, they were somehow being unfaithful to the community in which they were currently serving. It always comes as a relief to hear that it’s a natural part of our growth in ministry, and more, that it’s something we ought to be asking.

I say “ought” to be asking, because I know that if we’re not watchful and mindful of our own growth areas, and the needs of the community we are leading, we can end up trying to lead in a community that has (praise God!) grown beyond our capacity as a leader. At that point, the first challenge is to see what’s happening, and then decide if we have the capacity to learn, grow, and change our own leadership to meet the needs of the church, or if it’s time for someone who’s better equipped to step in. In the words of Marshall Goldsmith: “What got you here won’t get you there.”

Now, knowing the question itself is a natural and even necessary question to ask, the second thing we need to be mindful of in asking it is that answers to that question will come from many, many directions, and we need to be careful about which ones we listen to.

For instance, a tough season in ministry is not an indication that it’s time to go. If that tough season has been caused by your own shortcomings as a leader, it might mean it’s time for someone more up to the challenge to step in, but it also might be an opportunity for exactly the kind of growth in leadership you need. If it’s just been a tough season in general, beware of stepping away from the formation of a tough season and into the honeymoon phase of a new situation. The problem with tough seasons is that they always come around again. We may get temporary relief from a fresh start, but soon enough, we’ll be back in the thick of things.

This isn’t to say that a fresh start, a new beginning after a tough season is a bad thing- it’s simply to say that as we are listening to our own hearts, and even more so, for the voice of the Spirit, we often have a tendency to infer from hard seasons that which is not being implied- namely that it’s time to move on. Sometimes, hard seasons mean exactly the opposite: that we’ve finally broken through the “niceties” of church life and are beginning to see real growth, the kind that comes with growing pains and even opposition.

Some other voices to take with a grain of salt when considering a choice between staying or going:

1. Your critics- not that there’s not something to be learned from our critics, but we don’t let them steer our lives.

2. Your ambition- Be careful of wanting, and especially of feeling entitled to “more.”

3. Your tiredness- Being tired or burned out isn’t necessarily a sign you need to move on. It’s a sign that you don’t yet know how to do ministry in a sustainable way. Better to learn that lesson now, where you are, than putting it off with a move and having to face it again in a couple of years.

4. Your opportunities- not every open door is an invitation from God.

So, whose voice should you be listening to? Obviously, God’s, but not in the vacuum of our own minds where discerning the difference between “God wants” and “I want” is often made more difficult in times of stress and tiredness, or even boredom and mundanity. We listen for God’s voice, and we ask others to help us listen. We ask our spouse to pray and listen, we open up to some (or all) on our elder team and staff as to how we’re feeling (as scary as that sounds), and we ask them to help us discern.

It was a scary thing to ask my team of elders to let me know when I had tipped from an asset to the church I planted over into being a liability. But the funny thing is when they finally did tell me that, I had already been there for 6 months, and it came as a confirmation from some folks that I knew loved me. Because I invited that kind of feedback, I could welcome it when it came.

If you are in a season of discernment, widen your circle. Engage with a coach or a spiritual director. Take advantage of our Ecclesia staff- we’ve all been where you are and more, have observed and learned from many others who have navigated that same season. Lean on the wisdom and learn from the mistakes of others. Don’t make these kinds of decisions in a vacuum. Give your leaders and even your community as a whole (when it’s appropriate) a good model of how a follower of Jesus makes big decisions, in community and in dependence on the Spirit.

One last thought. My personal practice is to attempt as much as possible to give God the glory but take the blame for myself. In other words, the last thing I want to do is drop a life-changing announcement on folks and tag it with “God is leading me to…”

This kind of “God told me to” tends to invalidate the feelings of others, cut off any questions and discussion, and generally make people feel like God is doing something to them.

In situations like this, even when I feel like I have the leading of God’s Spirit, I try to preemptively take most of the blame. I will let people know about the prayer and discussion that preceded it, and the various factors that went into the decision, but ultimately, unless and until I can point to real, tangible, fruit, I want to avoid saying pinning the blame for something that I know will be difficult for some or many to hear on God.

Later, when we’re able to look back and see all that God has done, we can begin describing the leading we felt, the promptings of the Spirit we listened to, and give God the glory He deserves.

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Fresh Eyes: Why You Need a Coach or Consultant

Recently I texted some friends a few “anti-inspirational” quotes about consulting, including my favorite: “If you are not a part of the solution, there’s good money to be made in prolonging the problem.” But this applies to much more than just consulting.

How many of us have started to do some remodeling and found out it would be harder, more expensive, and much slower than we thought? Or we take our car in for something that seems small only to find out that this “small issue” is connected to something much bigger and more expensive? 

So the question remains: why would we seriously consider voluntarily inviting a consultant or a coach into our church if there is a chance they will make things more complicated, not less? 

If you’re asking this, I get it. I was on staff and a pastor of our church for 25 years. What makes pastoring so difficult is not that we have complicated pastoral, personal, organizational, or theological issues to navigate; it’s that those issues are confronting us all at once.

So then, why would you ever invite more potential complexity or challenge by inviting a ministry coach for yourself or a consultant for your church? 

The first reason is that consultants, physicians, contractors, and mechanics, who have expertise and integrity, are not inventing the issues; instead, they are directing your attention toward the areas and issues you might not be able to see. You know those times when you’ve driven to work or the store and you don’t actually remember driving there? We weren’t in a trance or asleep; our brains were processing thousands of micro-decisions along the way, and we weren’t overtly aware of them. We can easily look past things that are important because we do not see them as immediate needs.  An experienced coach and well-trained consultant can help us notice what we have probably noticed at a certain level before, but they can bring it into our conscious awareness. And with that awareness, we can be in the best position to address those issues head-on.

The second reason: a good coach and consultant can give you a discerning partner in looking at the issues that you both notice. Even with 25 years of pastoral experience, I still needed an outside voice and perspective who could bring expertise that I did not have into our context. I needed someone to see things were fresh eyes because it was too “normal” for me to notice issues that could arise. I wanted them to bring their experience, training, a greater breadth of options or responses, and their awareness of structure. But they needed to appreciate that I and the other members of our church were the keepers of the story of God in our community. We knew the hurts and joys people had gone through, and those needed to be honored as well. 

A good coach or consultant will appreciate that dynamic and it becomes a conversation from these different inputs where we discern together. If you want a good, quick test of whether your coach or consultant is interested in this conversational approach, just see how many questions or conversations they have with you before they start sharing with you what you need to do.

One pattern I’ve noticed: the majority of leaders I coach spend about half of each coaching session talking about how they are navigating the challenges they are facing. Having a safe person to let our hair down with, and a safe place to vent and openly share challenges we are facing is essential for pastors and leaders to navigate pastoral ministry in a healthy way. With great frequency, the coaching sessions with leaders start in one direction – and then a question will come up or a thought will be shared and the conversation will go in a completely different direction entirely. Having someone with whom you can share the whole story of how life is going, without having to assure them afterward that you really do still love Jesus and have hope for His church (we all know that feeling don’t we?), is incredibly important. 

There are many more reasons, for sure: navigating the morass of ideas and strategies that are out there, helping you figure out the order of issues to be confronted, assessing whether what you are doing is working, developing the steps to take/having someone that will ask about your progress through them, or just talking to someone that has navigated what you are confronting multiple times in multiple contexts. These are all important benefits provided by a coach or consultant.

A good coach or consultant should have experience in what you are trying to do, needs to have a strong faith life themselves, and needs to be willing to listen as much as speak. 

Ironically, when those elements are present, it doesn’t feel like coaching or consulting; instead, it feels like ministry. And that is what I love about it. 

Jim Pace

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East Coast Regional Gatherings 2023

This year Ecclesia leaders gathered across the country in various regional gatherings for connection, equipping, and encouragement.

The most recent regionals were in March- one in Blacksburg, VA at NLCF and another in East Windsor, NJ at Next Gen Church.

During the Mid-South Regional in Blacksburg, we were joined by Mitch Marcello and spent our time learning how imagination and creativity can enhance our leadership and enrich our teams and ministries.

During the Mid-Atlantic Regional at Next Gen near Princeton, we were challenged to think about how we are teaching and discipling our youth and children.

Both gatherings included great times of worship together, time connecting around the table, and encouragement as we connected with friends both old and new.

Look for more Regional Gatherings in 2025!

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Pentecost Offering: 2023

Ecclesia’s Annual Fund for Church Planting and Pioneering Mission

Late April – Mid June 2023

The Pentecost Offering is Ecclesia’s annual campaign across all of our churches and ministries to support church planting and pioneering mission.  Each year around Pentecost, the Ecclesia family remembers this profound moment in salvation history by taking a collective offering to support new work in and among our family.

Over the last several years, congregations across Ecclesia have helped to support multiple new congregations and provided important training to aspiring planters and missional leaders. In 2022, the Pentecost Offering helped 3 new congregations give birth – Mustard Seed Church outside Baton Rouge LA, the Storehouse in State College PA, and Center Community in Fredericksburg VA. 

This year, funds from the Pentecost Offering will help provide needed training and coaching support for a crop of new church planters emerging through Ecclesia. 

Would your congregation consider participating in the 2023 Pentecost Offering?

Contributions can be received through the Ecclesia website or by mail at:

            Ecclesia Network

            P.O. Box D

            Grantham, PA 17027

For more information contact Chris Backert, National Director, at chris.backert@ecclesianet.org

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Leading in an Era of Upheaval

Shortly after the onset of the Covid-19 Pandemic, a friend who has spent years working in Disaster Relief in Recovery remarked to me that they expected a major vocational transition among ministry leaders in the years following. 

The basis for the prediction was their experience that 50% of pastors in an area hit by a major disaster often moved to a new location in the ensuing years. The theory was that at least one out of every two ministry leaders simply could not absorb the impact of ministering through such a period of intensity.

Of course, the circumstances of the last few years are enhanced by the fact that the “disaster” has been prolonged, and the implications have been much more extensive and all-encompassing. Each and every day the cultural shifts that were initiated in the last few years have become more apparent and they present significant challenges to the church. 

Leading during such periods requires certain characteristics that are not necessarily essential in other seasons.  As I have both observed the last few years and considered the ones ahead, there are three characteristics of church leaders that will likely rise in importance in the days to come.

  •  Tenacity

I cut my teeth in ministry in the area of church planting.  If there is a handful of defining characteristics that make a fruitful church planter, tenacity is certainly among them. Simply put, you must have a willingness not to give up, to keep going, to keep fighting, to stay afloat, and to stay faith-filled. Now, tenacity is not the same as resilience. Resilience has been a much-discussed aspect of leadership over the last few years, but it has a major distinction in dimension. Resilience implies a capacity to hold your ground and not give up. In juxtaposition, tenacity is the will to keep moving forward in the midst of our resilience. 

Having planted multiple churches myself, and having coached and catalyzed dozens of others, it has been my overwhelming experience that a tenacious love for the gospel and the power it can have in people’s lives is a requirement for not only surviving but thriving through the difficult and challenging obstacles of starting something from nothing. That same tenacity can also flow over into our will to keep taking new ground (or not conceding ground) in our efforts to bring to life a new community of faith. 

  •  Conviction

For most of my career in ministry, I have cast a skeptical glance toward those that would make comments like “One day we might have to choose between going to jail and following Jesus.” I can remember when Andrew Jones first made that comment in the early 2000s; such a thing seemed implausible to me. However, in the year 2023, such comments, while still seeming a stretch, no longer feel like the leap they would have even been in 2019. Perhaps because of the political polarization in our nation, the co-opting of the church by ultra-right ideologies, or the unilateral activism based on secular progressive thinking, now even basic Orthodox beliefs and practices held by generous centrist-type evangelicals seem to be at odds with the social power structures of the day. Some church leaders have tended toward a posture of “relaxing” their previously held convictions in response. I see this particularly in areas related to human sexuality, but also related to core Christological beliefs.  Just before Easter, I read a post by an Asbury Seminary graduate who was musing on the prospect of hope for those who did not enter the kingdom of God during their human living experience. Such views of course are not new as they are not far off from the Catholic doctrine of purgatory. However, what is striking is the lifting up of such beliefs as an apologetic to the wider world as a “backdoor” for historic Christian views on salvation.  While there may indeed be a “backdoor” into the kingdom based on what we know about the abundant and confounding grace of God revealed in Jesus, as Dallas Willard would say, “it is surely not the gospel.” We should hold forth the gospel because the gospel is what we can have confidence in, the “backdoor” is merely a hopeful conjecture even if it is based on a heart of love.  The church of the future that will be in existence will be in existence because of the gospel and nothing else and it is our responsibility to hold to Orthodoxy with conviction.  After all, if church history teaches us anything, it is that Orthodoxy prevails. 

  • Faith

The church leader of the future will quite simply need faith. This is not a day of ministry for the faint of heart.  Even if we can’t recall it ourselves, we’ve heard plenty of stories about pastors who served on hospital boards, as the trustees of colleges, as advisors to mayors, and in other positions of influence and prestige in communities. When I first moved to Richmond, Virginia in the mid-2000s, the major local paper still gave out an award for “pastor of the year.” The role of the pastor in any community has always taken a certain level of faith, but for the most part, pastoral ministry over the last several decades has not required the “God providing, unless God acts” kind of faith we’ve been told stories about. For sure, every Christian leader has likely had some experience in their calling and career where God simply had to come through and they had to step out in faith, trusting that God would act on their behalf. But in the days to come I expect that kind of faith will be an ongoing, at least annual reality in some form or fashion. It is likely that we will experience more stories of pastoral ministry similar to the era of the frontier period in North America than the Post World War II period that has shaped so much of our ministry context and imagination. In truth, we will grow in our faith because we will need to see God act in power and provision more than we are currently accustomed to. 

Tenacity.

Conviction.

Faith.

This is a short list and so much more will be required. Yet without these, whatever practical ministry skills we need or other elements of character and Christian formation that is required will be lost without these essential foundations.