Lessons in Ministry

Lessons from life in ministry

June 2026

What our Struggling Church Taught Me About Ministry

Jasmine Young

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ome lessons in ministry just can’t be learned in classrooms or conferences. They are learned around church pews, in hard meetings, laborious prayer, long drives home, and the quiet ache of realizing that loving the local church also means telling the truth about the church and her condition.

In the final years of the small Yonkers congregation we had known so well, I learned lessons I don’t think I could have learned any other way. And I learned them as one who loved the church, served the church, prayed for the church, and grieved over what the church had become and what it could no longer carry. On the frontlines instead of the sidelines; certainly, no outside critic.

This reflection isn’t a postmortem or a list of mistakes made. It’s also not an indictment of the members, leaders, or anyone who passed through the life of the congregation over those 28 years.

Jesus’ church is always made up of people in process, including me. We are all being formed, healed, corrected, and called forward by the mercy of God. But ministry does require reflection. If we do not learn from the places where we have been, we risk repeating patterns that harm the very church we are trying to serve in the future. And if we cannot tell the truth with love, then we have not yet learned how deeply Christ loves His Church.

Here are some of the lessons I carry with me from three years of loving a struggling church in her legacy years.

Fellowship Must Serve Discipleship The prevailing lesson: the church is not a social club.

That sounds obvious enough, but it is one of the easiest truths to forget in practice. Fellowship is a beautiful gift.

Members share meals, welcome familiar faces, laugh after worship, and enjoy the comfort of being known. All that matters. There is a reason the early church broke bread together. There is a reason Christians are called brothers and sisters. The “family” language of the church is not accidental.

But fellowship was never meant to sideline discipleship.

When fellowship becomes more important than discipleship, your beloved local church might still feel warm, but it will slowly lose its fire.

What I mean is people can enjoy being together without being formed together. They may preserve relationships without practicing repentance. They may keep routines without growing in obedience. They may love the feeling of church without being shaped into the likeness of Christ.

A healthy church is not merely a place where people like one another. It must, foremost, be a people learning to follow Jesus together.

That means the church must be willing to ask deeper questions than, “Are we comfortable here?” The church must ask, “Are we becoming more like Christ?” “Are we learning to forgive?”

“Are we bearing fruit?” “Are we making disciples?” “Are we growing in love, holiness, courage, generosity, and mission?”

Fellowship is not the enemy of discipleship. In fact, fellowship is the place discipleship happens best for most of us. We are meant to be together. But Christian fellowship must be more than shared history, or shared preference. It must become the kind of life together where we encourage, sharpen, correct, forgive, serve, affirm, and send one another.

If our fellowship helps us become disciples, it is holy. But if our fellowship distracts us from discipleship, we are in trouble.

Plurality Protects the Body Another lesson I learned is that plurality matters.

A church is at risk when too much depends on too few people. One giver cannot sustain a whole church. One faithful servant cannot carry an entire church ministry. One studious leader cannot embody the wisdom of the whole body. One family cannot be each the volunteer base, the financial base, the prayer base, and the emotional base of a congregation forever.

And probably not for very long, either.

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What our Struggling Church Taught Me About Ministry Plurality also enables discipleship and mission. A church that has been making disciples should eventually produce more people who pray, serve, give, teach, lead, reconcile, and care. If the same few people are always carrying everything, it might be a capacity issue for the rest, but it’s more likely a formation issue.

A faithful ministry asks, “Who are we forming to do the works of the ministry when we’re gone?”

Healthy churches invite people beyond attendance into responsibility. Not everyone will carry the same load, and not everyone is in the same season of life. Much grace is needed there, for certain. But a church can’t remain healthy if most people see themselves only as recipients of its ministry and not participants in its mission.

There is another confusion that can grow in that kind of environment: people may begin to believe that the pastor works for them and their preferences, rather than understanding that the pastor serves Christ as an under-shepherd of his Church. This isn’t a small distinction, it’s fundamentally night and day. Yes, shepherds must love the people, listen to the people, and serve the people faithfully, but they take their direction from God. When a congregation begins to treat pastoral leadership as though it exists only to fulfill personal preferences or preserve familiar patterns, the church slowly drifts into consumerism. And often, people do not actually know what they want as much as they know what they fear losing. That is why shepherds must remain prayerful, humble, and anchored in God’s direction. The pastor is not called to ignore the sheep, but neither is the pastor called to be led by them. The pastor is called to follow Christ while caring for the sheep entrusted to them.

A church is not sustained by spectators. It is built up as every part does its share.

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Generational Participation Isn’t Negotiable A church without generational participation may still have history, but it is quietly losing its future.

I say that gently, because older saints are an absolute gift to the local church. They carry memory, testimony, endurance, and wisdom. They remind us that faith is not a trend. They have prayed through things, survived things, and seen God’s faithfulness in ways younger believers still need to hear.

But the church isn't called to be one generation remembering what God did.

The church is called to be one generation declaring the works of the Lord to another.

When children, youth, young adults, young families, and emerging leaders are absent, the issue is not simply demographic. It is discipleship. It means faith and doctrine and missional commitment is not being transferred. It means leadership is not being shared. It means the church is more than likely maintaining what exists rather than preparing for what comes next.

Generational participation doesn’t happen by accident. It requires humility from older generations and commitment from younger ones. It requires churches to make space, not only for young people to attend, but for them to belong— to contribute, ask questions, use gifts, and grow into responsibility.

It also requires us to be honest about what we have normalized. Sometimes we say we want the next generation, but we only want them if they preserve everything exactly as we remember it.

Sometimes we want young adults to come, but we have not built a church culture where they are discipled, trusted, or heard. Sometimes we grieve their absence without asking what kind of community they would be entering if they returned.

A church must care about who is missing, not for the sake of optics, but for the sake of mission.

If the next generation is not being reached and formed, the church may continue for a time, but it is biding time.

I’m not suggesting that the church chase youthfulness or abandon elders. The call is to become a true household of faith, where spiritual mothers and fathers make room for sons and daughters.

Discipline Is Love That Tells the Truth Church discipline is often misunderstood. Many hear the word “discipline” and think of punishment, control, embarrassment, or exclusion.

But biblically, discipline is an act of love.

It is correction for the sake of restoration. It is truth-telling for the sake of holiness. It is protection for the sake of the body.

And it cannot be neglected.

When harmful patterns by people or groups in the church go unnamed, they don’t disappear, they mature. And when dysfunction is repeatedly excused, people mis-learn that peace equates to avoidance. When sin is justified, minimized, or ignored, the whole body eventually pays the price.

I have learned that avoiding discipline might feel compassionate in the moment, but it can be deeply unloving over time and leave a lot of damage in its wake. It leaves the person uncorrected, the wounded unprotected, the leaders unsupported, and the congregation confused.

Of course, discipline must be handled with humility and care; leaders can misuse their authority. Churches can become harsh, suspicious, or punitive, and lose the plot entirely. Correction without love can wound people terribly.

But love without correction can also wound people terribly. We all must act with discipline.

What our Struggling Church Taught Me About Ministry Sin requires correction.

What has God placed in our hands now?

Jesus is full of grace and truth. Not grace without truth. Not truth without grace. Both.

What needs to be pruned, released, repaired, or rebuilt now?

A healthy church needs the courage to say to the errant, “This pattern is not good for you, and it is not good for the body.” It needs the maturity to restore gently when correction is well-received. It needs to hold in balance the patience to walk with struggling people while delivering the clarity necessary to protect others.

And it needs the humility to remember that every act of correction takes place among people who are themselves dependent on the Lord’s mercy.

Discipline is never about proving who is right or wrong in a conflict. It’s about helping the church become whole. And as one friend* in ministry put it, it's about time we “agree with God about what sin is.”

Mission Must Be Stronger Than Nostalgia Every church has a story. This church had a story. There were years of worship, sacrifice, prayer, preaching, family connections, community presence, and memories that mattered. Those things should be honored. Gratitude is holy. But nostalgia can’t displace mission.

A church can love its past and still lose clarity about its present assignment. It can remember what God did while no longer discerning what God is doing now. It can preserve its name, building, schedule, or tradition without asking whether those things are still serving the kingdom.

Mission asks different questions.

Who are we called to reach now?

What fruit is being produced now?

Who is being discipled now?

*Pastor Yolanda "Loni" Shinault

Love-from-a-distance may be genuine, but it cannot do the work of the body gathered in a particular place with particular needs.

Nostalgia remembers what was while This is not meant to shame anyone. mission discerns what’s required.

People leave churches for many reasons.

This is hard because churches aren’t Some are called elsewhere. Some are merely organizations. Churches hold wounded. Some move away. Some age. memories, and they hold grief. They host Some enter seasons where participation weddings, funerals, becomes difficult or baptisms, baby impossible. Life is complex, dedications, altar calls, and and grace is necessary there. testimonies. To change or But for those who remain release something that connected to a church, there Digital reach is not shepherds life change can is a difference between the same as embodied feel like dishonoring the affection and commitment. church people who built it.

There is a difference between But sometimes the best remembering and way to honor the past is participating. There is a not to rigidly preserve its difference between saying, “That is my form. Sometimes the best church,” and helping that church live on. way to honor the past is to carry forward its faith into a new form.

The church is incarnational and it always has been. It is local. It is visible. It takes The church belongs to Jesus. That shape through actual people offering means we are stewards, not owners, of actual presence in actual time. We its history and future. We don’t get to cannot build the church in theory. We preserve something simply because it is must be present to one another in precious to us. We are called to discern practice. whether it is still bearing fruit for Him. So, I’ve concluded that the most faithful And sometimes faithful stewardship representation of the church is still one means rebuilding. Sometimes it means that is present, personal, and communal. replanting. Sometimes it means repenting. Sometimes it means Digital ministry can serve the local releasing. It means acknowledging that church. It can extend encouragement. It an ending can still be holy if it is can help people stay connected through surrendered to God. seasons of transition, sickness, distance, uncertainty, or discernment. It can be a doorway, a bridge— and it can be useful Presence Matters to God’s purposes. I am grateful for the One of the quieter lessons I learned is ways technology allows the Word to that presence matters. travel farther than the room.

People can love a church sincerely and still be absent from its life. They can speak warmly of it, remember it fondly, and feel emotionally connected to it. But a local church cannot be sustained by sentiment alone. The church body requires embodied participation.

Presence.

A church needs people who show up, pray, serve, give, reconcile, encourage, invite, and carry burdens together.

But digital ministry cannot truly become the church in its own merit.

Because church is more than content to be consumed. More than a livestream people watch, a page people follow, or a message people click. The church is a gathered people who worship, belong, submit, serve, give, reconcile, bear burdens, practice the ordinances, and grow together under Christ.

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What our Struggling Church Taught Me About Ministry Time and time again across all walks of life and many organizations, we are learning that clicks don’t equate to commitment, and, certainly, only the latter can sustain a ministry.

At the same time, I learned to love the visitors. There will always be people who benefit from your ministry from a distance. Some are curious. Some are wounded. Some are discerning. Some are carrying internal struggles that make commitment difficult. Some may never become members, but they may still be genuinely helped by the ministry. They may listen, pray, receive, visit, and be shaped in ways you may never fully know.

All this requires wisdom from shepherds. We must appreciate the journey people are on without confusing persons in our influence to be persons under our authority.

Influence and authority are not the same. A pastor may influence many people through preaching, teaching, writing, prayer, or digital presence, but pastoral authority belongs most properly among the people who have actually entrusted themselves to the life, care, accountability, and shared mission of the local body. Both must be stewarded well.

Those under our authority need faithful shepherding, clarity, discipline, protection, and care. Those within our influence need generosity, truth, hospitality, and patience. Our mistake, often, is either to dismiss visitors because they have not committed, or to build the church around people who have not actually joined themselves to this local expression of Christ’s body.

A healthy church can welcome the visitor, serve the distant, bless the curious, and still understand that the church is most fully expressed where people are present, known, accountable, and committed to one another in Christ.

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Learn to Hold Some Things Lightly

people in ways that serve their growth rather than overwhelm their attention.

I also learned to be flexible and to not take myself quite so seriously.

There were times when I was carrying distinctions that mattered deeply to me— licensure, appointments, training, ordination, denominational protocols, and the formal language of ministry.

There is a kind of maturity in knowing what must be held firmly and what can be held lightly. Doctrine must be held firmly. Christ must be held firmly. The mission must be held firmly. Integrity, accountability, and faithfulness must be held firmly.

These things are important. They have shaped my process, my accountability, and my understanding of how ministry should be stewarded well, as they have for countless ministers before me.

But I also learned that the people we serve may be blissfully unaware of the things we hold doctrinally, denominationally, or procedurally distinct.

But not everything needs to be explained with the same intensity.

Sometimes the faithful thing is to do the work, honor the process, and spare the people unnecessary weight. Sometimes leadership means giving direction without giving the whole lecture.

At times, I found myself trying to discern whether people did not understand the formality involved or simply did not care about it in the way I did. Eventually, I realized that perhaps I could care a little less too—not because the process did not matter, but because it did not always need to be the burden I placed in front of the people I served.

The people didn't need a lecture on every polity distinction when they misspoke or mixed words. They needed faithful ministry. They needed prayer, clarity, presence, preaching, care, direction, and love. When they needed explanation, I gave it. When they needed direction, I offered it. But I learned that I did not need to make every internal process visible or weighty for everyone else.

Some things are necessary for the leader to carry without requiring the whole congregation to feel the full weight of them. Once I accepted that, it was freeing for me.

It helped me focus less on being understood in every detail and more on serving well. It helped me release people from the burden of formality I was imagining for them. It helped me remember that shepherding requires translation: taking what is complex, formal, or weighty and offering it to the

Leaders Must Tell the Truth Early Hard truths don’t become easier because we delay telling them. In fact, delay often causes more pain because by the time the truth must be spoken, fewer options remain.

Leaders must be willing to name the reality of the struggle: decline, exhaustion, lack of capacity, unhealthy patterns, financial strain, relational fractures, absence, and mission drift. Not to shame the church, but to shepherd it.

Truth-telling is pastoral work.

When leaders avoid hard conversations, members and friends may assume things are healthier than they are. They may not understand the urgency of the church’s condition. They may not realize what is being carried behind the scenes. They may not be invited into responsibility soon enough to respond faithfully. And they’ll certainly be unpleasantly surprised when they find out late.

But when truth is spoken in love, the church is given dignity in the struggle.

People are allowed to pray with clarity, repent with specificity, serve with understanding, and discern with maturity what God is doing next.

What our Struggling Church Taught Me About Ministry Hope isn’t built on our pretending, and we must be careful to avoid sentimental bypassing when we’re telling the truth about the struggle.

Christian hope can look directly at what is painful because our hope is not in our strength. It is in the God who raises the dead and preserves His church.

The truth told in love is not an enemy of hope. Sometimes it is the beginning of it.

There Will Be Casualties Another hard lesson I learned is that even faithful obedience can leave wounds.

We sometimes imagine that if we pray enough, discern carefully enough, communicate clearly enough, and follow God’s direction sincerely enough, then everyone will come through the process unharmed. But ministry has taught me that this is not always true.

There will be casualties no matter how careful the church's leaders are.

Casualties don't happen because people are disposable, or because God is absent. But because change is costly, grief is real, and the church is made up of people with histories, hopes, fears, wounds, and attachments that are not always visible at the beginning. And most people are suffering from things they can’t even name.

No matter how faithful we are to God’s direction, wounds and weariness will come, often in ways that surprise us all.

Some people may feel confused. Some may feel abandoned. Some may misunderstand what is happening.

Some may carry pain quietly. Some may need more time to grieve than the process seems to allow. And leaders, too, may discover that carrying the work faithfully does not mean carrying it without bruises.

This is one of the sobering realities of pastoral ministry: faithfulness does not exempt us from sorrow. But faithfulness allows us to carry sorrow honestly. It teaches us to move slowly

where we can, speak gently where we must, repent quickly when we miss something, and refuse to treat people as obstacles to a decision. Even when a decision is right, the people affected by it still need and deserve care.

I have learned that faithful leadership is not measured only by whether we obey God’s direction. It is also measured by how tenderly we tend to the people impacted by that obedience.

The goal is not to avoid all pain.

Sometimes that is impossible. The goal is to remain shepherds even when the path is painful.

"There is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her."

- Luke 10:40 There Were Also Hidden Gifts But the final years of Faith Mission did not only teach me through grief. They also gave me gifts I could not have anticipated. These gifts were intangible, but they were no less impactful.

I understand the plight of pastors differently now. Not theoretically, not from the outside, and not as someone simply observing leadership from a distance. I understand what it means to physically carry concern for people who may not always understand what is being carried for them. I understand the quiet weight of decisions, the complexity of shepherding people with different expectations, and the loneliness that can come when leaders must obey God while still caring tenderly for people who may not see the whole picture.

I also learned to steward the spiritual care of my children with more intention. Ministry is never only happening in the church building. Our children are watching. They are listening. They are absorbing how we speak about the church, how we

endure disappointment, how we pray, how we forgive, and how we remain faithful when things are hard. I learned that I can’t focus only on leading publicly and assume they will be well privately. Their hearts need care too— the church was the best place for that care despite its struggles.

Gabe and I also grew in ministry together. We learned more about who we are as a serving couple: how we discern, how we carry burdens, how we cover one another, how we recover, and how we keep choosing faithfulness together. Some rhythms are best developed in the pressure of real obedience. In that sense, this season helped shape our shared identity in ministry.

I learned, too, how to choose the better portion, like Mary. There were many moments when there was more work than capacity, more noise than clarity, more concern than answers. And yet again and again, the Lord invited me back to His feet. Back to listening. Back to presence. Back to the reminder that ministry for Christ must never become a substitute for life with Christ.

This experience also deepened my discipleship. It strengthened my prophetic voice, my curiosity, my capacity to ask better questions, and my willingness to see what is really happening beneath the surface. Loving Christ’s church faithfully formed me in ways that comfort never could have. It taught me to grieve and hope at the same time, to speak truth and remain tender, to discern patterns without despising people, and to keep seeking the heart of God in complicated places.

And somewhere in the process, I healed.

Old wounds, including wounds from spiritual abuse, began to lose their power over how I saw myself and how I understood the church. God used people to recognize gifts in me before I could fully recognize them in myself.

They called things forward, affirmed what I could not yet name, and helped me see more clearly what God had been forming all along. I gained lifelong friends in the process—

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What our Struggling Church Taught Me About Ministry people who have become part of my healing, my courage, and my becoming in ministry. In all of this, I learned again that Christ truly redeems all things. He does not waste pain. He does not abandon broken places. He gathers fragments and makes them witness.

And perhaps most of all, it strengthened the muscle for more ministry.

I didn't come through this unscathed, if I'm being honest. But God met me in the work. He expanded something in me. He made me more sober, more compassionate, more discerning, and more ready. The experience did not make ministry look easier. It made the call feel weightier. But it also made me more convinced that Christ's church is worthy of the weight.

What I Still Believe After all of this, I still believe in the local church.

I still believe Jesus loves His bride. I still believe small churches matter. I still believe aging churches matter. I still believe struggling churches matter. I still believe God is present in congregations that may never be impressive by worldly standards. I still believe that two or three gathered in His name are not insignificant to Him. But I also believe the church must be loved truthfully.

To love the church well, we shouldn't romanticize it. Love does not ignore or excuse regression and decline. And love doesn't preserve every structure indefinitely, confusing activity with fruit or familiarity with faithfulness.

To love the church is to want her to be whole. To want her to be formed. To want her to be faithful. To want her to be surrendered to Christ, not merely sustained by memory.

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The final years of Faith Mission taught me that the church is both precious and fragile. Fragile because it is made up of people like us. Precious because all those fragile people belong to Jesus.

And maybe that is why the work of ministry must be so deeply dependent on grace.

The local church isn't built up by sentimentality. Neither can we sustain it with big personalities, or try to preserve it by avoiding hard things.

We serve the church by returning again and again to Christ: his truth, his mission, his discipline, his mercy, as part of his body, and his bride.

I didn't walk away in those final years convinced that a fragile church is not worth loving.

I learned that this fragile church is precious, and therefore must be loved truthfully.

Jasmine Young is a licensed minister, Bible teacher, and missional leader who writes about faith, formation, justice engagement, and the real work of following Jesus in complicated seasons. She holds an M.Div. in Bible Theology and Missions from Alliance Theological Seminary and serves as the Kingdom Justice & Mercy Coordinator for the Metro District of the Christian & Missionary Alliance. Through The Vinecast®, Jasmine equips everyday disciples to be rooted in Christ, formed by the Word, and sent on mission.

Jasmine and her husband, Gabriel, served as the transitional pastors of Faith Mission Christian Church in Yonkers, NY from 2023 to 2026.