Daniel Im

Pastor + Author

Eugene Peterson

Pastor, Here are 3 Reasons to Leave Your Church (according to Eugene Peterson)

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After (what is typically) a long season of discernment and transition, starting a new role in pastoral ministry is exciting.

A new context with new people often results in new ideas for ministry! It’s also a time to re-try ideas (with adaptation) that didn’t work in your previous context. Plus, you have the chance to share all of your stories to people who have never heard them.

And while I would never advise any pastor to start their new role with their hand on the rip cord—just waiting for any sort of reason to leave—there are some reasons to leave.

I came across these three reasons to leave your church from A Burning in My Bones, Winn Collier’s biography of Eugene Peterson.

So, here are Eugene Peterson’s 3 Reasons to Leave Your Church (with additional commentary by yours truly):

1. Your Marital or Family Life is in Danger

If your marital or family life is in danger the sooner you get out the better. You can be a doctor or banker or professor and have a lousy marital/family life but not as a pastor. A valid reason to leave.” – Eugene Peterson

No one is perfect. We all mess up and make mistakes. And I’m so grateful that the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ can cover over all of it. He is so merciful and loving, and he is definitely a God of second-, third-, fourth-,… seventy-seven times seven chances.

But there’s a reason that Paul exhorts Timothy—a young pastor—to “Pay close attention to your life and your teaching” in 1 Timothy 4:16. Or you might know it as, “Watch your life and doctrine closely.”

You can be a doctor or banker or professor and have a lousy marital/family life but not as a pastor. – Eugene Peterson
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If your marital or family life is in danger, you can only hide it for so long. They are more important than any title, paycheck, or sense of calling. Don’t neglect them. Leave your church, get a job elsewhere, and invest in the health of your soul, your marriage, and your family.

Before you can re-enter the ministry as a pastor, you need to have processed questions like the following:

  • How did my marriage or family get to this point?
  • What did I do to contribute to this? What am I doing to continue to contribute to this?
  • What have I neglected about myself and those around me?
  • Where do I find my sense of worth?
  • If I never re-enter the ministry as a pastor, will I still love God? Will I still believe that God loves me?

A lot of these are identity questions.

Another resource that can help you process this is my book, You Are What You Do: And Six Other Lies About Work, Life, and Love.

2. Your Congregation is Dysfunctional

Another danger symptom is a dysfunctional congregation that has a history of dysfunction. Some congregations are absolutely toxic and it’s usually a toxicity that has a history. Sometimes it can be disguised for three or four years, but not indefinitely. An urgent reason to leave.” – Eugene Peterson

Now before you declare your congregation dysfunctional, be sure that you’re not reacting to someone or something, or making this declaration in isolation. Talk to your denominational leader (if you’re a part of one), talk to previous elders and pastors, and talk to congregants who have left.

Some congregations are absolutely toxic and it’s usually a toxicity that has a history. – Eugene Peterson.
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Dig deep and mine what’s going on. Don’t make this declaration yourself.

I love how Henry Cloud reminds us that the past is the best predictor of the future, unless there is significant change.

So, if your congregation has a history of dysfunction, and if there hasn’t been significant change (like a heart of repentance, or a major change of stakeholders or the core), and if God isn’t asking you to stay and work through it, then leave.

3. You Aren’t Up To It Anymore

But maybe the most common reason for leaving is a sense that you simply aren’t up to it anymore—fatigue or depression or a chance that you aren’t equipped to deal with.” – Eugene Peterson

I think some of us fall into the trap of thinking that if you leave your church, there will never be another opportunity. Or if you need to take a break, you’ll never come back.

What a lie.

In life, we walk through different seasons don’t we? Sometimes things must die and go dormant (winter), in order for new life to sprout and begin (spring). Maybe this is your winter season? Or perhaps this is your summer season where all you want is to go inside and hide from the sun, when in fact you need to be out in the field watering it.

What season of ministry are you in?
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Don’t make the decision to leave in isolation.

Bring this up to your elders, to your leadership, or whoever you are accountable to. Maybe the right decision is to leave, or maybe the right decision is to go on a Sabbatical or leave.

A Letter from Eugene Peterson on Christian Celebrities, Transition, and the Megachurch

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Eugene Peterson has deeply shaped my outlook on life, spirituality, ministry, and pastoring—probably more than anyone else. He will be deeply missed.

I’m not here to give you a synopsis of his last days, if you want that, you can read it here. If you want to hear ministry lessons on the life of Eugene from a wide range of church leaders, you can click here. And if you want to read about the one sermon Eugene preached, you can be inspired here.

What I want to share with you today is a letter that Eugene wrote to one of his friends after his friend had told him that he wanted to change churches because he felt that his gifts were being wasted where he was. His friend wanted more of a challenge and an opportunity to multiply his effectiveness. He wanted an opportunity that was more promising, so he was going to leave his small church for a larger one—one that was three times larger than his current pastorate.

Letters like this are precisely why I love Eugene Peterson.

When I came back from Korea—bruised, hurt, devastated and in the desert, thinking that I wasn’t called to ministry anymore—God used Eugene to pick up the pieces in my life (you can read about it here). Not personally, but through his lectures at Regent College and his book on the life of David, Leap Over a Wall.

It’s sad that I never got the chance to personally thank him for just how much God used him in my life, but I guess now that he’s in glory, it doesn’t really matter.

I came across this letter from Eugene as I was preparing a talk for an upcoming conference.

I’ll be speaking at Exponential—a conference for church planters, pastors, and ministry leaders. So while I was writing about the shift that needs to take place so that we can move from being the hero to becoming hero-makers, I immediately thought of this letter that he had written to a friend in his Memoir.

Although it had been several years since I read the book, for some reason, this letter had been seared into my soul as a warning. And am I ever glad that it was—and is—because I don’t want my story to go the way of the recent implosions of pastors that you might’ve come across in the news.

Here it is, it’s from page 156 of his Memoir:

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