Longevity

The word of the day is "Longevity." What does it mean? Well it has two definitions, the first means long life, but the second is the one that I'm most interested in right now and it means a long duration of service. Last night I attended the Men for Christ gathering, which is a men's fellowship meeting, where they recognized all of the Sr. Ministers who were present. You know what impressed me the most about that group of men? It wasn't there seminary degrees or the size of their congregations but it was their longevity in the ministry. Each minister was asked to tell how long they had been involved in full time ministry and with great consistency many of them said 15, 20, 25, 30, 40 even 50 or more. You know that's a long time to do anything!

It's especially lengthy when considering the following statistics according to the Schafer Institute: 70% of all ministers consider leaving the ministry. 35-40% actually do leave the ministry and most after only 5 years. Only 26% of ministers feel that they are adequately fed spiritually and only 23% of ministers said that they were happy or content in who they are in Christ, in their church and in their home.

It has been estimated here in the U.S. that 1500 ministers leave the ministry each month. The stats don't get any better for youth ministers (what I do) either. On average youth ministers leave the ministry after a little over 4 years in the ministry and on average they stay at one church for about 3.5 years (not 18 months).

Longevity in the ministry (all ministry) seems to be something that is hard to attain anymore even for the best ministers. In May of this year I began my 12th year of full time ministry (all in youth ministry). But there have been times when I strongly considered quitting the ministry. There have been times when I felt betrayed by the very people I was called to serve and there have been times when I felt like the only friends I had were either other ministers or people in the church who were only my friends because I was a minister at their church.  But here's what I have found to be true, that whenever I was in a time where I was ready to quit ministry it was because there was something going on with me. It has never really been that I thought the church was unfair to me, or that I was being a victim of some conspiracy to oust me from the church. When I look back it is clear to me now that every time I've been ready to leave the ministry I was in a spiritual valley, my relationship with God had become weaker and my time in His Word had become less. What I find most often is that the more consistent I am in the Word and in my relationship with God the stronger that my ministry is.

Many of those men whom I saw last night are men that I greatly admire and men of Godly character whose relationship with God I often try to imitate. So to many of you I say thank you for your longevity in ministry but also to two very special men who were not there last night but I also have the utmost respect for, one being my Grandfather Bob Jones who has faithfully preached for more than 50 years and the other being my home church minister Greg Bowen who has served the church in Willisburg for almost 30 years now. Thank You!