In this episode, Gina’s guest Ken Baugh shares his journey as a pastor who found himself burned out, fired and faced with a decision; either run from his pain, anger and brokenness, or let Jesus meet him there to bring transformation.
Ken’s new book, Unhindered Abundance, weaves his personal story throughout a deep dive into spiritual formation, psychology and neuroscience—all of which reveal the beautiful invitation extended to every believer.
How we process hard things intellectually and spiritually recalibrates us toward either health and wholeness or bitterness and defeatism. Ken helps us rewire our brains by simmering in the Scriptures that remind us whom we belong to and what God has promised us. The result is a resilient, robust faith prepared to weather every storm and keep in step with Jesus.
Ken served as a local church pastor for 25 years and started IDT Ministries in 2014 to be a resource for Christ-formation and to gather a community of believers who desire to journey together in discipleship to Jesus. Ken earned his Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and his Doctor of Ministry in Discipleship from Talbot School of Theology.
Buy Ken’s book Unhindered Abundance
Learn more about Ken and IDT MINISTRIES
Listen below starting at 15:29
Biblical Church Structure
Gina:
Do you want to elaborate on that? I want you to go there. I want to go there because it’s really important. Like you alluded to, 2020 has been a grand disruption and disorientation in the world, obviously, but definitely in the Church in America. I would say in the last 20 plus years, and I’m generalizing, this isn’t an accusation, this is just a generality, but we’ve become very good at placing the entirety of our spiritual maturity, wellbeing, and health on leaders, on institutions, on organizations, on personalities.
We don’t allow them to be fallible, to have a bad day, to struggle. The collateral damage of that is many pastors and leaders hitting walls and falling out. What’s super powerful is for you, you’re a pastor, a leader, so many years experience, you have your doctorate, you’ve done your dissertation, you have all of this, you’ve been positionally in all these places, but you’re also a man, you’re also a son of God, who has been through a journey.
That journey has been painful at times. The choices we make in those critical moments determine how far we’re willing to let God into those places. I would love for you to share as much as you’re willing to, because it’s important for people to hear. Even as you were talking about the importance of relationship, the vertical and the horizontal and spiritual community and all those things.
One of the most insidious tactics of the enemy is isolation. Whenever I’m disappointed, I’m hurt, I am full of shame, I’m dealing with self-doubt or insecurity or fear, whatever the case may be the enemy just starts to pull me away, “I’m offended. I’m not going to go there anymore.” I’m hurt. I’m going to protect myself over here. I’ve lost that support system.
Those relationships that I was made for in people then ultimately the relationship I was made for with Jesus. I start to hide. One of the most heartbreaking verses in the Bible to me is in Genesis, where God says, “Where are you?” I would love for you to share your journey, the walls that you hit. I would assume that you were tempted to isolate or to pull away or run away. How did God meet you in those places?
Ken:
The role of senior pastor, as it exists in most churches, is really fraught with a lot of problems.
Gina:
I would go so far to say it’s not even Biblical.
Ken:
It’s a plurality of elders at best. Then even in Paul’s early church planting, he didn’t put elders in place at each church. It’s really a priesthood of believers we need to take a look at. The challenges that ensue is that everyone has their gifts and strengths and weaknesses and brokenness.
When you’re put into a role like a senior pastor, nobody wants to deal with the brokenness and woundedness, and the reality that you’re not superman. Some are gifted communicators, some are gifted administrators, some have strong gifts in leadership, some have stronger other gifts, empathy and pastoral counseling. But as a senior pastor, the unspoken expectation is that you do all of these things equally.
Lead Pastor Expectations
Gina:
There is the expectation that you’re the amazing teacher, you’re an amazing pastor, you’re the visionary, you’re strategist, you manage the staff, and the entirety of the organization lays on your shoulders.
Ken:
Even if you have a strong team, which we did, at the end of the day the expectation of those that you report to and in that situation was a board of elders. There’s expectations; there are metrics that they use, often unspoken, to evaluate if you’re doing a good job or not doing a good job. Not to mention the fact that every time I stand, after every sermon as I go through it, I’m visualizing people putting scorecards up.
Gina:
“Oh, I made that guy mad.” “Oh, I’m going to hear this comment this week.”
Ken:
You can’t make everybody happy. I get to mentor a lot of pastors nowadays, and I don’t know one guy who ever went to seminary or whoever went into ministry for any other reason, but to love on people and teach God’s Word and encourage people in the faith. They didn’t go into this to make money, they didn’t go into it, because they were power hungry or they wanted to dominate people. There’s good intentions.
You go into these situations, and even though when I went in as the senior pastor, I had 15 years of ministry experience at a very large church, with a very large staff and team. I was the associate senior pastor at McLean. The senior pastor and I had an incredible friendship and relationship. But I still didn’t sit in that seat. When you sit in the seat…
Gina:
The buck stops.
Ken:
It does. That’s everybody’s expectation. Here’s the irony, you’re in an elder’s meeting and you’re looking at spreadsheets. Nobody ever taught me how to read a spreadsheet, ever. You don’t get a class in seminary that takes you through an elders meeting and says, “Here’s the budget, here’s how you do a budget, here’s how you look at it here.” Nothing. You have to pick all that stuff up on the street.
When Church becomes a Business
Gina:
I would add too, and this statement isn’t to be an accusation, it’s just an observation that as the Church in America has grown and these larger and larger churches have become mega churches. Most board of elders that I’ve experienced are chosen first for their cultural gifts, attorneys, entrepreneurs, finance guys. We have an organization and we need people who are the best of their field here.
But the spiritual gifts, or the spiritual qualifications of elders are secondary. That doesn’t mean they’re not people who don’t love Jesus. I’m friends with a lot of guys who have been, are or are going to be elders someday. It doesn’t mean they’re bad people. But oftentimes you have a group that collectively will face a decision, an emergency, and their first knee-jerk response is, “How would I take care of this from my profession standpoint?” Not necessarily from the pastoral, spiritual care standpoint.
Again, that’s not an accusation, that’s more just lack of experience and awareness. But that combination of a pastor being thrown in a position where suddenly the buck stops with them, suddenly the expectation of the entire health of the organization is on their shoulders. You have an elder board that’s experienced heavily on one side, but not as much on the other side, and the combination of that is really responsible for a lot of hurt and a lot of fallout in churches. It’s just an unfortunate thing.
Ken:
Not to mention the fact that Sunday always comes. I remember years ago hearing Bill Hybels say, “I’m either preparing for a sermon, delivering a sermon, or recovering from a sermon.” There’s a very real dynamic of that, because we were at a large church. We had multiple services. At the end of Sunday afternoon, I’m on the couch, exhausted, because I spoke Saturday night, all day Sunday, stayed after and talked to everybody that wanted to talk.
Then you go into Monday and everybody’s like, “What are you talking about next weekend? You’re on the programming team, so you are a part of the problem.” So then you take Monday off, but you feel so terrible on Monday that it’s not restorative. You hit the ground running on Tuesday. Now you’re already behind because everybody else has been there since Monday. Now everybody’s looking to you to go, “What are we doing next weekend?”
And you’ve barely started thinking about it, because you’ve got an elders meeting that’s going to be Wednesday night, so you don’t even start thinking about your sermon really seriously until probably Thursday afternoon. Now you’re already four days behind because your programming team needs the direction so they can start, because they’ve got rehearsals and they have to get music together and I get it.
That was our dance. It’s just rife with opportunities for frustration, tiredness, weakness, exposing itself. Then you have financial pressures that every church that I’ve ever been a part of, has. There’s never enough money to go around. I don’t care how big a church it is or how big your budget is, there’s always limitations. You’re always having to make staffing decisions. Then you have the crisis dejo. If you’ve got a large staff, we had over 30 people on staff at one point.
In Virginia we had 300 people on staff. My staff alone was 22 people, just in our young adult ministry. The pressure is unbelievable then every time you step into a spotlight, regardless of whether it’s showing up at the women’s ministry, because they want you to promote something, or the men’s ministry, or Sunday morning, or go down and encourage the children’s workers, it’s just all of this expectation that you are the person that has to go breed life into everybody.
When Pastors aren’t Pastored
Ken:
The sad thing is, most pastors don’t have anybody breathing life into them. Even if they did, in order to let that happen, they have to make themselves vulnerable, that’s where it’s just not safe. It’s a really challenging situation at best, it’s a disaster at worst. Sadly we experienced the disaster part together.
Gina:
I would say 90% of people who get up and go to church on at their church that they’ve belong to, have no grit or understanding for everything you just articulated. You look at 2020, you add to that all of these pastors from tiny churches to mega churches leading through this year of division and uncertainty and division in the Church.
“If you make me wear a mask, I’m not coming on Sunday.” “If you don’t make everybody wear a mask, I’m not coming on Sunday.” “If you gather, I’m not coming.” “If you don’t gather…” The amount of weight that our leaders have had to stand under. It’s also exposing right now in 2021, January, 2021. All these things you were mentioning, don’t they sound ridiculous?
The importance that we’ve put on all of these programs and expectations and making an announcement at a women’s study. Give me a break. But those are the idols that we’ve really constructed in the American Church. All these little things we’ve created have utmost importance. In the meantime, leaders are being crushed under all that weight of expectation.
They’re not being shored up and not being cared for, not knowing how to care for themselves. They’ve never been taught how to care for themselves. Now we’re in this year that’s unprecedented in all this crisis. How do they lead? Because they’re not leading out of the overflow. They’re leading in depletion and now here we are.
Ken:
It is pretty crazy. Sadly, I would say most pastors, if they’re being honest, are not leading out of their overflow. They don’t even know what an overflow would be, because they’re having to constantly give out and cannot take in what they need. That’s not okay. There’s just these weird unspoken expectations that over time I heard one person describe as “death by a thousand paper cuts.” One paper cut is not going to hurt you, but after a thousand you’re going to bleed out.
Sadly, the reality is behind the curtain, it’s a thousand paper cuts. That is the hardship of ministry. Part of the reason it’s so hard is because of how we have set it up, how we do ministry, how we do church today. Hopefully it will give us some insight into what we can stop doing. We can start doing some things that might have a different result as far as how many people are in the seats, but may have a greater result at how many lives are actually being transformed.
Gina:
Yes, amen. Going back, you got to that place where we’re in the rat race. The relentless cycle of week to week ministry and what happened?
Ken:
I just burned out. I didn’t realize I was burned down. Susan saw it in me two years before I got fired. You have enough energy to get to the next Sunday, then deliver the message, go home, lick your wounds, try to rest up as best you can. It’s like going into battle over and over again.
Then it didn’t help because I had an executive pastor, who was a great guy, very gifted, but I’m trying to share how I’m feeling and his response is, “You’re not gifted to do this.” How is that helpful? And how is that even a part of this conversation? It wasn’t just him and frankly as I look back on it now, I don’t think I am wired to be a senior pastor.
Gina:
I don’t know that anybody is. That’s the problem again, this is not to point fingers. The point of this conversation is to bring awareness. We need to wake up. It has to go farther than just, “Oh, we can’t gather on Sundays like we used to because there’s things that are broken.” It’s so ironic that a place that is supposed to be a place of spiritual community and discipleship and care and relationship, is the farthest thing from that for the people that are leading and providing the care for it.
Most people would not understand or have grit or realize and would probably be surprised to hear that. It is probably the least safe place for anybody in ministry trying to maintain something you think you’re supposed to maintain, that’s another form of isolation.
Isolation isn’t just isolating from something, you can be isolated in the middle of a lot of people. You can be isolated on a staff. Because the enemy just convinces you that you just got to keep going. You just got to keep pretending. The tragedy is he’s probably right because as soon as you say something, that’s the end of it.
Ken:
That’s what happened. You were in the room when I told you guys. We were trying to plan a new series and I basically had a panic attack the night before, which I’d never had before because I couldn’t come up with anything. I was so completely depleted and exhausted. I had no creativity. Now I understand what was going on, both in hindsight and just in further training.
I understand how the brain works now. I understand the dynamics that were going on and so forth. But I was just done and I’m sitting in the room and looking at you guys, and that was the beginning of the end. Sadly it resulted in a termination. Because, the leadership in place. This is how I saw it, the way they were going to go about telling the congregation that I was done, I didn’t feel it was genuine. I wasn’t in agreement with what they were doing.
I wanted to identify the problems. Then let’s put a plan together. If I can’t turn it around, whatever the agreed upon issues are that we need to resolve, then I resign and move on. That was never the deal. I was already so broken in their opinion that they couldn’t put that in place. How is it possible that the first time I’m hearing that there’s a problem it’s too late? How does that work?
Check out the rest of this conversation: Unhindered Abundance & A Fractured World
Check out the Dwell Meditations
