Measuring Up

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The heart that recoils in shame over failure to achieve potential tends to swell up with pride over success.
— Larry Osborne

Dave was a gifted leader, though not a great preacher. During his second pastorate, he took a dead, inner-city church and turned it around. Under his guidance the church grew into a vibrant ministry, and attendance soared to over five hundred.

Then a call came from a large suburban church. Many things in him said stay: he was enjoying his ministry, his wife and kids were happy, the church was ecstatic with what Dave was doing. But his drive to be all that he could be in ministry won out. So he went.

The next five years were the worst of his life. He'd gotten in over his head. Of the two skills necessary to succeed in a large church — leadership and a strong pulpit presence — he had only one.

Before long, people began to leave, many of them parting with those famous last words, "I'm not being fed."

Dave was devastated. He'd seldom heard those words before. He'd been more than an adequate communicator in a smaller setting, where people could hear his words and watch his life. But in a setting where people knew only what they heard in the pulpit, he was in trouble.

Today, Dave is out of ministry — a victim of what I've come to call the Potential Trap.

Apparently, Dave is not alone. The results of one survey examining the personal and professional lives of clergy claimed that 50 percent of us feel unable to meet the needs of our jobs, and 70 percent of us say our self-esteem is lower now than when we first entered the ministry.

Something has gone terribly wrong. I don't believe for a moment that God has failed to equip half of us for the tasks he's called us to, or that 70 percent of us need our self-esteem lowered. ...

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