Leadership Longevity

Life in general will give you opportunities to be offended, and ministry will give you even more. If you want to have any kind of longevity in ministry, you have to make sure you are guarding your heart from offense. Over the years I have had multiple opportunities in ministry to get offended, and I have sadly seen too many pastors and leaders, some of whom I was close to, burn out, quit, or disqualify themselves because they held on to offense.

There will be times when people question your actions, your results, and, worse, your motives and integrity. People will say things about you that aren’t true or that have only a shred of truth in them. People will undermine your leadership, and probably there will be times when people question the legitimacy of your calling. In those moments you will be faced with a choice. This choice will determine your longevity in ministry. If you allow yourself to be easily offended, you will miss out on everything that God wants to do in and through you. Please, please, please DON’T BE EASILY OFFENDED! There is too much for you to accomplish. There is too much that God wants to do in and through you. Guard your heart above all else. Don’t let offense in. When you face those moments in ministry or even in life, I want to encourage you to check your heart. Take it to God. And then keep going.

The other side of guarding our hearts is about personal integrity. One of the most disheartening things I have experienced in ministry is seeing peers and friends fall into sin and disqualify themselves from ministry. It breaks my heart because the “callings of God are irrevocable,” which means that even if you do something to disqualify yourself, you still have a calling that you now can’t live out. If you are young in ministry I want to encourage you to deal with character issues now. It’s a much bigger deal for a skyscraper to fall than a one-story building. I want to encourage you never to forget where you came from. I think moral failure often starts with pride. And when pride takes root, it opens the door for moral failure. Don’t be a celebrity and not a pastor.

The most dangerous time in your ministry is when you are experiencing success, because it’s easy to get to a place where you start to justify sin in your life. You might start to think, “I am doing so many great things for God, what’s the big deal? It’s just a little sin.” if you ever get to a place where you start thinking like that, get your heart right. That is a dangerous place to be, and we can’t afford any more casualties in ministry.

Longevity in ministry is achieved intentionally, not just by chance. God has called you and we need you to be in it for the long haul.

Matt Moore

Pastor & Author of Intentional Youth Ministry