expound: leaving vocational minsitry

everything has pros and cons

This one is going to feel weird to write. It might be rambling, but I have learned that if I feel compelled to write, I must write it.

Beginning of 2022, I started feeling uncomfortable in my job. The things that used to bring me joy, made me frustrated. The days felt long, we often had events after full working days, and working a differently weekly schedule than my husband was getting to our marriage. I had also learned about some salary discrepancies between employees that didn’t make me feel valued. And on top of all that, we had a deep hurt happen from a senior team member. That wasn’t the reason I left, and the bulk of it isn’t my story to tell, but it was a factor in my leaving.

I worked for a large church (about 8,000 attendees between 6 locations) as the social media coordinator. That was the job I ended on, I had two other roles at other points within my almost five years there.

[Let me stop here and say this. I love the people I worked with. My feelings about large/corporate church have evolved as I get older, but I still believe in the power of gathering. I still think church has a place in the world. While it is no longer my place of employment, or the place I go to for God exclusively, I still attend that church.]

I applied for many jobs, searched for new career paths, and finally did get a different role. But as I reflected on my time, I realized the hardest part for me in ministry life was this:

You are told over and over again to not promote yourself. You are told it’s all about purpose over position. You are told that it’s about something bigger than yourself. That ambition doesn’t have a place. So you don’t raise your hand a lot. You don’t speak up. So when you aren’t asked to lead, speak at an event, or to go on that missions trip; when you aren’t promoted, or given the raise, it feels like a direct to who you are as a person. It feels like since you can’t raise your hand AND no one asked you, something is wrong with you.

So then you are so tempted to perform. To offer to pray even when you don’t have the words, to overwork yourself to be noticed. To go to every single event even if your marriage or friendships outside the church suffer because of it. Because you want to grow and you want to be seen. It isn’t like this anywhere else in the working world. Everywhere else you grind and hustle and raise your hand, your ambition is rewarded instead of asked to be set aside.

I haven’t talked a lot about my transition away from ministry. Rachel has been vulnerable and honest about her experience. and while my story isn’t as difficult as hers, I’m still unraveling the ways that working in ministry as effected me- positively and negatively. Because every single place you will ever be- every experience, will use something Connor & I say all the time, “everything has pros and cons.”

It’s our duty as humans to examine those pros and cons, to dissect them, and learn from them as they integrate into our daily lives. By acknowledging this truth, it helps me know that no job, no person, no situation, is every going to be perfect. It aids in seeing the positives and negatives. It is one of my more Leslie Knope qualities, but knowing your pros and cons helps me feel prepared.

There are days I miss the pros of ministry: purposeful work, getting to see stories of life change, working alongside friends and incredible people.

But there are instances the cons outweigh the pros and it’s time to find new pros and cons to live with. My new role has plenty of both, but they are the current choice I am making.