Quit Pastoring Your Church

The story of a small church making Jesus their pastor

Aaron D. Gerrard

• Publisher: New Leaf Network Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780995305434
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Jesus is real. He is with you. He is for you. He is your pastor. And he wants to be the pastor of your church. These statements might seem obvious, but what if we all took them seriously? Aaron Gerrard did just that in his journey to plant a church in Ancaster, Ontario, Canada. In the new book, Quit Pastoring Your Church. The story of a small church making Jesus their pastor, Gerrard shares candidly about his journey to start a new kind of church by allowing Jesus to be the guide and it radically impacted the story of this new congregation. Part memoir, part church planting guide, part leadership model handbook, join Aaron Gerrard for the journey he went on in an attempt to quit pastoring his church.

Introduction: A couple of times a year I get to work with men and women whoare considering starting a new church. We call it a Design Shop.It is a project of the New Leaf Network, a collaborative groupof Christian leaders from a broad spectrum of denominations.These people are working to help the Canadian Church discovernew potential, with new conversations, new leaders, and newinitiatives. Some attendees participate with merely an emergingidea and a sense of new purpose, some have started a project, and some are far enough along into an initiative that they arestarting to question their sanity. Regardless of where a personfits, these are my favourite people to hang out with. They aredreamers, risk-takers, and innovators. In the face of our currentculture and many of the obstacles therein, these people arewilling to try. Something. Anything. It may be something that lastsa while. It may be something that ends quickly. But they are goingto push forward. And I love it.

Before starting my work as a church planter I attended the Design Shop. It was so helpful and inspiring that I took it againas a refresher course a few years into my church's new life. Soonafter that, I was asked to come on board as one of the instructors.I agreed, but on one condition: I wanted to develop a new sessionabout the centrality of Jesus. Thankfully, whenever you phrasesomething like that, you make it extremely difficult for someoneto reply with a "no." My idea was accepted and now, amongother things, I conclude the Design Shop by teaching a session Ientitled, "Jesus as Pastor."My problem with teaching this session at the Design Shop wasthat I only have 45 minutes to unpack it. Which is why I find myselfhere, writing a book. This book is what I wish I could say in my 45minute session.

1
The Way

Many a good speaker on the leadership speaking circuit has recognized this truth: that everything rises and falls on leadership. I agree with that assertion. You would have to have been living under a rock for the last 25 years to not notice that this has been a rally cry within Evangelicalism. Authors and speakers have made a living off of this topic and that statement. To an extent, it would seem, I am just another person adding to an already crowded field of commentators. My approach, however, is a little different. While I agree that everything rises and falls on leadership, my question is whose leadership? Mine? The title of this book suggests otherwise.

If I am to lead well, then I need to point people to the real leader. If I am to have a church that is infused with the Spirit and power of God, then I need to help shape an environment where God can demonstrate those things. Which means that I am more convinced than ever that leadership matters, but only when Jesus is afforded a place to be the functional leader in our churches. My leadership matters only in so much as I point to Jesus as our church’s pastor. It is about me, but not in the way that many of us have been led to believe.

I believe that almost all pastors agree with this — in theory. I cannot imagine anyone suggesting that her or his leadership is more important than the leadership of Jesus. But the functional leadership of Jesus in our ministries must go beyond mere lip service. I believe that allowing Jesus to lead is markedly different than putting a Jesus-slant on secular leadership models. Unfortunately, in my experience and from observation, many traditional leadership models and structures, at best, simply forget that Jesus can and wants to lead us, and at worst, work to remove the functional leadership of Jesus from the equation. A pastor or church can be quite successful if they follow the advice and teachings of the Evangelical leadership machine. They actually do not need Jesus. Many a church has thrived according to many of our Evangelical metrics without involving Jesus at all. But are these churches really living? Are they experiencing the very person of Jesus in their midst?

This is why I start here, with a theology of the pastoral office. We need to get this right. We need to quit being all that we have been told we need to be. We need to get out of the way. We need to see ourselves, not as replacements to Jesus’ pastoral ministry, but as those who can direct people to it — to show people to Jesus’ leadership, not our own.

________

I do not like to fail. Sometimes when I play sports I hate to lose more than I enjoy to win. There was a day when I was much younger and far less sanctified that my victory celebrations of smiling and raising my arms in the air paled in comparison to my fits of rage upon losing. There are a few broken hockey sticks, helmets, and nets laying around to prove it. For the record, I do not think that this is a noble characteristic.

During one summer of my undergrad degree I, like many brave women and men before me, decided to go tree planting to make large sums of money in a short period of time. If you are unfamiliar with tree planting, allow me to explain. It is not landscaping. It is not gardening. It is hell. If I told you there was a field nearby and that at every metre/yard in straight lines there were dimes sitting on the ground, and all you had to do was walk along picking up dimes all day that you could keep, would you do it? Perhaps. That does not sound too bad. Except then I tell you that until recently there had been a forrest on this field, but the forrest was harvested leaving a landscape of uneven terrain, debris, rocks, holes, and stumps. And some of it will be on a mountainside. And there will be millions of black flies each with a personal mission to drive you insane, so much so that although it is incredibly hot and humid outside, you will need to wear a black coloured bug screen over your head to keep them off of you. And then when the sun goes behind a cloud and you experience life-giving reprieve from its hot rays, mosquitos the size of bumblebees will attack you as if you are the last source of hot blood on earth. Oh, and do not forget the bears. Yes, bears. Bears that might eat you. And you will pick up these dimes, stuck in the debris of trees and rock, from sun up to sun down, stopping only to eat the lunch you packed yourself in the morning, which was the last time you saw a human being before you were dropped in the middle of nowhere to pick up those stupid dimes.

That is tree planting. Except replace the picking up dimes with slamming your shovel into the ground and planting a 10-inch tree every metre/yard that you carry around by the hundred in a bag hanging off your waste. Yes, the money can be great, but the job is beyond terrible. That is tree planting.

Well I did it. Sort of.

I remember one of the first weeks I was out “on the block,” as we called it. One of the tree planting veterans told me, a rookie, about “the wall.” He spoke about it like he was a great-grandpa telling his great-grandchild about a battle in which he fought during a great war. He told me about “the wall” like it was living thing which he had encountered but could barely bring himself to talk about aloud.

“Aaron, one day you will be out there planting, and you are going to feel like you know what you are doing. You are going to start believing you can do it; that you can be the greatest tree planter ever. And then you will come across it. You will not see it coming, but when you come to it you will wonder how you never saw it in the distance. Because it is huge. It spans as far as you can see in both directions and as high as the sky. You will not get around it. It will stop you where you stand. It will laugh at you. You will try to keep going, but let me give you some advice: embrace ‘the wall.’ Do not fight it. Do not get angry. Just admit you cannot do it. Sit down. Give up. And wait.”

I thought the description sounded a tad dramatic. But then I learned it may not have been dramatic enough. It was midday with the sun beating down on me. I had put about 125 trees in the ground and was starting to feel like I might hit my goal for the day: 200 trees which equaled a $200 payday. Then I ran into a section of earth where beneath about two inches of soil there was rock. Everywhere, rock. Every time I slammed the blade of my shovel into the ground to create the 6-8 inch slot needed to slide the little tree root into, my blade rung off the rock like a tuning fork. Pain would shoot up my arm and my whole body would shake as I questioned the goodness of God in creating this stupid rock. (Your mind goes to a lot of dark places while you tree plant.) Flies ate me. They took my blood and seemed to bite me for the fun of it. It was at least 30 degrees celsius and it was unbearably humid. I was sweating to the point it looked liked I had just stepped out of a shower, only to then stop sweating completely after all of my water reserves had emptied. And to make matters worse, that morning on the way to the area in which I would be planting, I had stepped in a huge hole filled with disgusting swamp water that had flooded one of my boots and soaked my sock and foot (growing up in Manitoba we called these “booters”). The dampness in my boot was creating a rubbing effect that was now making me think I would be better off without that foot.

After 30 minutes of walking around in this state, slamming my shovel into rock and not making a cent, it appeared. The wall. It grimaced at me like some crazed animal from a horror movie. I paced to the right and to the left looking for a way around it. But no luck. I could not get around. I was done. The wall had won. I threw my shovel to the ground, took off the bag of trees weighing me down, and collapsed. The eery description the veteran planter had given me came rushing to my mind. He was right. There was nothing I could do but sit there and wait. It dawned on me then that I did not know what I was waiting for. Then it hit me. It was a moment of decision. Will I get up and keep going, or will I quit?

I am proud to say that I stood up, picked up my shovel, and quit. Yes, I was a quitter. Okay, so this is not the story I will tell my kids someday to encourage them to keep going when life gets tough. This will be the story I tell them when they need to know that sometimes life kicks your butt. Within days of this terrible event I was on my way home, tail between my legs, admitting defeat at the hands of the evil wall.

The point of sharing this flattering story with you is simply to point out what we all know and would confess if we had the guts to be honest and vulnerable with each other: we have all hit the proverbial wall at least once in our life. Likely the circumstances vary, for sure, but we all know about the wall. It is encountered in those moments when we come to the end of ourselves, our own strength, our own capacity to keep going, and we realize that something must change because the status quo no longer works.

Maybe the way we best grasp new paradigms and make substantial changes in our life happens when we realize the failure of beliefs or practices to which we previously clung. The wall might be terrible or painful, but it demands change that can sometimes be life-giving. I thought I could be a good tree planter. I had planned to make lots of money. In this case, my new paradigm and the substantial change prompted me to quit and return home; I soon found a job driving an air-conditioned tractor all day making the same amount of money. It turned out okay. But there are far more serious and substantive shifts we make in our life.

After a decade in full-time ministry as a youth pastor in an established traditional Evangelical church, and working on higher education, I ventured out on my own as a church planter. It could be assumed that one’s personal faults and misconceptions about ministry when you are an assistant pastor are less visible than in solo leadership. Whether or not that is true, for me, moving into a solo ministry was a recipe for a huge personal shake-up. I quickly realized that I would not be able to get the job done unless something changed. It was another wall moment, but this time a far more serious one than a frustrating summer job.

________

I moved to Ancaster, ON, believing some pretty ridiculous things about myself and what I was going to accomplish as a church planter. Ancaster is a white-collar town. It is home to educated, high-capacity people. Doctors, lawyers, professors, teachers, CEOs, CFOs, entrepreneurs, business owners: these are the types of people who live in Ancaster. I was convinced that we — that I — was going to do church in such a sophisticated, intellectual, and clever way, that people would be flocking to be baptized. I would preach in ways that would put hearts on fire for Jesus. This particular demographic of people would be amazed at the intellectual integrity of my faith. I fancied myself a smart guy for smart people.

My fingers tremble writing this. How ridiculous. How arrogant. How misguided. How wrong I was.

It was over coffee with my friend, mentor, and key leader in our new church, Dr. Lee Beach,1 that I hit the wall, or that I at least recognized it was right there in front of me. We were talking about the future of our infant church, the potential we had to see people come to faith, the possibility of Christians joinin...

Table of contents

• Cover Endorsements Contents
• Foreward
• Dedication and Thanks
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 - The Way
• Chapter 2 - Do We Believe Jesus is Alive Can Speak and Lead
• Chapter 3 - Who Are Your Prophets
• Chapter 4 - Of Robert and Discernment
• Chapter 5 - Can Jesus Lead You to Consensus
• Chapter 6 - New Models for Leadership
• Chapter 7 - The Table
• Chapter 8 - A New Unity
• Chapter 9 - The Bible
• Chapter 10 - Nurturing a Life with the Pastor
• Conclusion