“Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.” This wisdom from Langston Hughes’ 1922 poem, Mother to Son, accentuates that even as life is strangely grueling and laden with rusty nails, trip hazards, barrenness, and the fresh tar of injustice, each day people relegated to life’s shadowy corridors decide to keep climbing. They hope and grind. They endure. Fueled by dignity, grace, and grit, they strive to make something out of nothing. As an emboldened tribute to the African American experience, this is also a gift to American literature that offers preachers common ground.

At their best, preachers are parts prophet, priest, and advocate, as truthtellers in the face of lies. Careful not to label evil good and good evil, we can astound, agitate, and inspire in one sermon. With a fire shut up in our bones, called as we often are to take God’s people the roundabout way (Ex. 13:18), our occupation is hazardous with no hazard pay in sight.

Beyond ordinary inconveniences and irritants, absolutely everyone has a tough go at life in one way or another, at one time or another. It is a certainty. We are bewildered by relationships, health, morality, technology, and finances. All of us. And Christians are on the hook like everyone else. However, to take it a step further, Jesus was clear that his followers will face specific pain and persecution. All of them.

The cruciformity received by grace through faith reveals new life. Whoever scoffs at carrying their cross and submitting to Jesus, he said cannot be his disciple (Luke 14:33). For the Christian then, agony interrupting life is inevitable. It represents a promissory note signed by heaven for our sanctification.

Therefore, since humanity suffers and Christians are not exempted from it, it is only logical (and biblical) that preachers too will face demons and darkness. Talk about how we are God’s untouchable anointed if you want to, but the last time I checked, I didn’t see an orb of bubble wrap safeguarding me. If anything, life’s obstacles tend to multiply for preachers.

People ghost us, cuss us out, and generally will give us hell without fear of consequence, which is bad enough, but they sometimes also boldly do it in Jesus’ name. Even when we are treated like dirt, however, Sunday still comes around again and again. There is always another sermon to deliver, funeral or wedding to officiate, counseling to do, or emergency to address. We endlessly juggle caring for others with little time for rest or to reasonably manage our own lives.

Moreover, we have little job security or return on the investment made pursuing graduate theological education and attaining ordination. Sadly, we are often underpaid and overworked, with families that crumble under the weight of excessive criticism, voyeuristically studied but not truly seen or considered. If no one has told you, we are highly disposable. If we are honest, high character and competence can be threats in the wacky world of ministry more than assets; and we like to eliminate threats, so you do the math.

Rest assured; I am a fellow ragamuffin. I am not the Answer Man. Still, I have some ways forward that I want to share, that speak to how we can better steward the call to preach.

No More Masks

Stop making excuses for the soft prosperity gospel of entitled upward mobility, recognition, or whatever else plagues your heart. If not, it will detonate a megaton bomb on your relationships and ministry. What you will not confess becomes virtually impossible to overcome.

Also, you do not need the microphone at every meeting. Remember, you are not a battle rapper forever prepared to drop 16 bars of lyrical fire at a moment’s notice, to show the competition what’s what. You are a preacher, so preach, yes, but do it with care and courage integrated with how you live.

I read And the Shofar Blew by Francine Rivers probably once every year and often revisit the work of Harold L. Senkbeil, Howard Thurman, M. Craig Barnes, Peter Scazzero, Eugene Peterson, and Gardner C. Taylor. These voices support me against settling for what is as dysfunctional as it is cheap and trendy. Preachers are good at wearing masks despite that God never tells us to be thespians.

Get a Life

On his 2021 album Spin, Aha Gazelle has this great line: “Quit waiting on somebody to care about your life and go write an autobiography.” Respectfully, if preaching is the most important thing you have going, something is majorly wrong. Preaching is cool and all, and you should take it seriously, but God has not asked you to sacrifice at a moldy altar of deformed self-esteem.

A biblical understanding of the Imago Dei says that you are first and most importantly a beloved child of God and that, furthermore, in Christ you have been purchased at the highest price because of your immense value to God. That’s it. Everything else gains its significance and marching orders from there.

It takes intentionality but investing in yourself is worth it. I read a ton of books that are not the least bit ministry-related and watch movies all the time that make me smile, cry, or laugh. For years, I have been practicing photography and you best believe that if National Geographic comes calling, inviting me to freelance for them, I will be on the move. My wife and I go on overnight or weekend trips, take long walks by the water whenever possible, and are always out hunting for ice cream spots that meet her thorough approval.

Life is incredibly short, so it only makes sense to prudently apply your attention in a stratified manner. Learn to play the drums like Sheila E. Go bowling. Get to the gym. Enjoy unabandoned play with your kids. Stop worrying yourself to death stressing to be so productive every waking moment. It isn’t worth it. It is worth it, however, to be a well-rounded human being.

Get Your Hands Dirty Building Real Community

Who are you accountable to? Who in your spiritual family love’s you enough to tell you the truth? Where are the people who could care less about your ecclesiastical title or degrees, but you know have your best interest in mind.

I would not be the man, husband, and preacher I am apart from a reliable cadre of peers and seniors, some preachers and some not, who represent a safe space to be my full self. Despite the frenzied lives we all face full of mounting, complex responsibilities, these people thoughtfully respond to my e-mails and letters. They take my phone calls. They don’t treat me like a discretionary afterthought. But relationships take time to grow. They are more marathon than sprint and demand a degree of mutuality, so I make it a point to set the tone by sowing good seed with them while also mentoring the younger generation.

Preachers benefit from having a Nathan, Deborah, or Mordecai being in their corner, to roll up their sleeves when the going gets tough and walk through the fire with them without pushing an agenda of avoidance, toxic positivity, or legalism. We should pursue adopted sisters and brothers who respect but do not worship us and are not clones whose looks, disposition, ideas, or voting always match our own. Unity not conformity is vital.

Stop Trying to Explain Away or Flee Every Hard Moment

Let’s keep it real. Suffering stinks. There’s no other way to say it. Sometimes causative elements from us trigger a calamity that knocks on the front door, but I imagine more commonly it merely reflects the fallenness of life on this scorched earth.

Uninvited guests like cancer or rheumatoid arthritis show up. Automobile accidents happen. Our mental health is taxed. Income becomes scarce. We return from vacation to a burglarized home. Maybe it’s relational strife that looms large. And valiantly preaching Jesus’ gospel does not shelter you from any of it.

Dr. James Earl Massey authored 18 books before his 2018 passing. Serving as a professor and pastoral leader, he left a fantastic legacy of scholarly and canonical rigor, interdenominational collaboration, humility, and cross-racial ministry. On October 25, 2022, his dear widow joined him in glory 13 days after turning 93.

But life for them was no cakewalk. In 67 years of marriage, they were childless and suffered five miscarriages not to mention considerable displacement, serving in Detroit, Jamaica, Indiana, Alabama, and elsewhere for ministry assignments (see his book Aspects of My Pilgrimage: An Autobiography). I am blessed to have known the Masseys as sage mentors. They could encourage like nobody’s business.

Concerning suffering, in our conversations Dr. Massey would reference the mysterium tremendum to symbolize that we can faithfully serve God without vacillating to solve what is beyond our paygrade. Christ is our portion, that we know and that is enough. If the ministries of Jonah, Elijah, Hosea, Jesus, and countless unnamed, forgotten preachers were not trouble-free, common sense says we must embrace hardship as part of how God cultivates shalom within us.

Conclusion

Tom Hanks’ character from the 1994 film Forrest Gump is widely know for repeating a line he attributed to his momma: “Life is like a box of chocolate; you never know what you’re going to get.” A preacher’s life can be viewed similarly.

Though most of them cannot be sufficiently planned for, we deny the arrival of life’s worst moments to our peril. Regardless, they are coming and sometimes they will stay, and fester, and reproduce. It is healthy to lament in those moments. It is equally appropriate to lean on your support system, hobbies, and ongoing commitment to being fully human.

None of this assures that hardship will apologize, pack its bags, leave a check for restitution, and go on its merry way. It does, however, help position you to suffer for God’s glory and faithfully harness the experience, agonizing though it is, to then shepherd two-legged sheep and rightly handle the word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15).

As we part ways, let me ask one final question: “Can I get a witness?”

Editor’s Note: If you would like to dig deeper into this topic check out James’ book An Inward-Outward Witness: Suffering’s Role in Forming Faithful Preachers.

James Ellis III is an ordained Baptist pastor and the author of An Inwasrd-Outward Witness: Suffering's Role in Forming Faithful Pastors.