As we prepare to leave Bahrain and hand over the leadership of the church there are things to share that I learnt, some the hard way. At one point it was turning into a nice “Things You Learn In Your First Pastorate” book, but then I questioned who would ever read it and did nothing with it. So, as we now prepare to leave Bahrain are some excerpts from it in no particular order.

Things I Learnt – Personally

I had read that being the pastor, the person in overall leadership of the church, was quite a lonely endeavour. Given my own particular circumstances here and the fact that I had been part of this church family for more than five years before taking up office, and that I had served in church for four of those five years (the majority of which time in leadership roles), I genuinely thought that this would not apply to me. During those four/five years I had built some pretty solid friendships and relationships. So, I thought, I won’t be lonely when I transition from assistant pastor to the pastor.

I was wrong.

It seemed that almost overnight I went from being always invited and always encouraged to attend various get-togethers, to being the guy that sees people doing things on Instagram and wondering “Huh, perhaps they forgot to invite me?”

I felt like I went from being everybody’s best buddy when I was the youth pastor and “that guy who plays the piano”, to friends with some when I was “that guy that preaches once a month”, to then being the guy that not many people want to hang out with socially because they need to keep up appearances in front of the pastor of the church. Honestly, this really hurt.

I guess I understood. I know that the Bible speaks really clearly about the importance of leaders in Christian churches (Hebrews 13). For the previous five years I had wanted to show my then-pastor how much his teaching and influence and input was impacting my life. I would like to think, however, that I never excluded him from my life for fear of being too human and fallen in front of him. Perhaps though this is just rose-tinted perspective?

Part of me has always known that I really wanted to be in vocational ministry: I had told my Sunday school teacher at the age of five that I was going to do it. I knew I really wanted to do this, and I very much still do want to do this in some way, shape, or form. I also want some friends. I also want people to be themselves around me and not put on their Friday face (we do church on Friday here).

This is really a very fine balance isn’t it, because you do want people to be conscious of their conduct and character when they see you, you want them to associate you with the right and proper teaching of the word of God which in turn influences how they live. I also want some friends. All of this to say that something I learnt in my first two years is the paramount importance of having a handful of good, decent, proper friends: those who interact with you as you, not the pastor. Those who want to grab a coffee with their friend James, not Pastor James from the church. This is so important and I can’t overstate it. It’s certainly something I learned during the first two years.

Things I Learnt – Intellectually

I had this somewhat vague conviction that because I have taken advanced degrees in academic Christian study that people would be at least somewhat interested in my newly acquired knowledge. Whilst I was studying for a Master’s Degree with Calvary Chapel University I had the odd person asking about my studies and the even odder person who wanted to help me financially (this was unbelievably appreciated in our family and will never be forgotten). However, I found an overwhelming indifference from the majority. People at either end of the spectrum seem to be polarised. There were those who thought that advanced study was an absolute essential and without said degrees “How dare you presume to tell me how I should think/act/feel.” At the other end of the spectrum were those people who clearly could not care any less about what initials I’m able to put after my name or what certificates I have in a drawer somewhere, and where my academic papers and articles may or may not have been published. Most people fell somewhere in the middle, meaning that there seemed to be no great opinion about whether I can accurately exegete the hymn of Philippians 2, whether I can spot heresy as heresy now I can read Greek, or whether I can write a ten page term paper on one particular attribute of God.

I learned pretty quickly in those first two years that the majority of those in our church family barely gave a second thought to my academic qualifications. There I was planning my weeks down to the singular hour in order to accommodate this and that lecture, taking my books on plane journeys to conferences so that I could maximise my study time, and listening to this or that podcast whilst exercising because, you know, I need to learn this stuff for the people at church. Honestly now I look back, I’m not sure that most people cared that much about what I was learning during the week. Those classes have been great for me and I am one hundred per cent glad that I took them, but for me mostly.

Is that selfish? Is that the wrong thing to say? Too late. I loved my study, but in hindsight I now know that I was learning for me, for me to be able to confidently and assuredly fulfill the call on my life. Yes, there have been times when I have pulled some obscure piece of academia from the farthest recesses of my mind in order to answer a question that I’ve been asked. But, more consistently, it gave me a vast and pretty varied overview of the world into which I was taking my first serious steps. Honestly, I feel that with an M.Div. I’ve barely scratched the surface. I’m glad I did it, I’m glad I did the study, but I know now that (almost) everyone in church wasn’t using it as a yardstick with which to evaluate my pastoral prowess or my ministerial magnitude.

To myself ten years ago I would say this: enjoy your classes, but don’t worry that without them people won’t take you seriously. Some people already do, some never will. There are people whom I see most weeks that still don’t. Most, honestly, pendulum between the two and there’s nothing you can do about it. That’s certainly something I learnt during the first two years.