Alexander Lang and the Great Pastor Resignation

A leadership crisis or a spiritual crisis?

Alexander Lang was the Senior Pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Arlington Heights near Chicago, Illinois until Sunday before last. That’s when he stood before his congregation and resigned his position, citing the stress and isolation brought on by Covid as the main reasons for his leaving. But it wasn’t just his job at First Presbyterian Church that Lang quit. He told his people that he also would be leaving the pastorate altogether. In a widely read article explaining his decision, Lang framed his action as part of the epidemic of similar pastoral resignations around the country. Pastors are leaving in droves, he said, because churches have become so dysfunctional that they’re almost impossible to lead:

I have become part of what is known as the Great Pastor Resignation that came in the wake of the pandemic. Barna did a national survey of pastors and, as of March 2022, 42% of pastors considered quitting. The reasons for this are myriad, but the top five reasons given are as follows: The immense stress of the job (56%), feelings of loneliness and isolation (43%), current political divisions (38%), unhappiness with how the role of pastor has affected the pastor’s family (29%), and no optimism about the future of the church (29%). I can relate to all of these, but in particular, the top two are the ones that figured heavily into my decision. Being a pastor is like being a parent. You can imagine what it’s like to have a child, but until you are in the role, you cannot fully appreciate what it’s like to shoulder the responsibility of caring for a life 24/7. The same is true for being a pastor. You think you know what to expect, but the lived experience is very different from your imaginings of what it will be.

I’m not judging Lang for leaving the pastorate. I’ve thought about it myself a few times. But since Lang discusses his situation in such a public way, he invites a public response. So in this post I want to dig into the deeper reasons of why pastors walk away from their churches and what can be done about it.

To start with, I need to acknowledge the obvious truth that there are many legitimate reasons for a pastor to leave a church. God may call him to another congregation. Family issues may require a change of scenery. Financial need may drive him to seek a more generous ministry. A congregation may be so brutal that to stay endangers his family’s emotional or spiritual well-being. Sin on his part or the congregation’s part or both may lead to a separation. Physical health problems may require him to step aside. Mental health issues (as real in ministry as in any other vocation), exhaustion or anxiety may become so debilitating that he has no choice but to leave. He may reach the age where retirement is appropriate for him and his church.

For all the good reasons for a pastor to resign his church, though, the Bible makes one thing clear. He should never quit because the work is too hard, the world too confusing, the congregation too demanding or the responsibilities of leadership too great. And that’s just what Lang did.

Yes, the post-Covid church is challenging. Yes, congregational expectations today can be hard to meet. Yes, ministry is changing so fast today that pastors struggle to keep up. Yes, many people today don’t agree with biblical truth. So what? When we pastors signed up to minister the gospel to sinful people, did we expect it to be easy? Maybe Covid changed some things, but it didn’t change the spiritual landscape any more than, say, the Civil Rights era, the Great Depression or the Civil War. And in all those previous seasons of cultural chaos, pastors somehow found the wherewithal to cling to their calling, love their people and do their job. But not now. Today, pastors are bailing out in droves, although not all of them in so public a fashion as did Lang.

What changed?

The answer to that central question gets clearer when you read Lang’s article. The reason for his change of heart regarding the pastorate, he says, lies in the combination of unreasonable congregational expectations, the emotional weight of bearing his people’s problems, his own anxiety and the political fragmentation of his church resulting from the pandemic lockdowns. When taken altogether, he says, it was too much for him to deal with. What stands out about those factors is that they’re all in a human or horizontal dimension. In fact, they’re no different from the pressures faced by leaders of secular organizations and businesses in the aftermath of Covid.

What Lang doesn’t mention is anything in the vertical dimension of ministry, those spiritual methods and practices that are vital for church leadership. The anointing of the Holy Spirit, prayer, the power of the gospel, the Word of God, the practice of faith, patience, humility, endurance—these are just a few of the pastoral gifts necessary for us to fulfil our calling. Pastoring a church was never meant to be done purely in the horizontal dimensionl. No pastor is so smart, driven, persuasive or organized that he can make a church do what he thinks it needs to do. For a pastor to be effective—in this age as well as any other—requires a ministry oriented not so much to the horizontal dimension but to the vertical dimension.

When I dug deeper into Lang’s background and beliefs, I began to understand more about his decision. Lang is also a writer and in the preface of his book, “Restorative Faith: Christianity for the 21st Century Rationalist,” he describes his personal theology. It turns out that his focus on the horizontal dimension of ministry to the neglect of its vertical dimension is no accident. In fact, it’s in line with his oveaall rejection of historic Christiainity:

Our journey [through his book] will begin with an effort to disassemble the Bible. Through Chapters 1 and 2, we will look at the various ways the Bible is interpreted by Christians in the U.S. and provide an alternative that is compatible with contemporary reality. This new approach to the Bible will allow us to reconfigure our understanding of God in Chapters 3 and 4. With this foundation in place, the remaining six chapters will be dedicated to wrestling Jesus away from the outmoded doctrines of the Christian faith that are strangling his message. Together, we are going to breathe fresh life into this ancient religion that is relevant to our lives in the present and vital for a sustainable future.

In his own words, Lang’s pastoral theology excludes the possibility of a supernatural God providing help for pastors. Instead, ministry is a matter of “disassembling the Bible,” re-interpreting it in a way “that is compatible with contemporary reality” so as to “reconfigure our understanding of God” and leading finally to “wrestling Jesus away from the outmoded doctrines of the Christian faith.” No wonder Lang quit. I’d quit too if I believed as he does.

Of all the unncessary beliefs and empty practices exposed by the post-Covid church, the most important one may be the futility of liberal Christianity. It literally has nothing to offer. For that reason, Lang’s resignation is best understood not as the victimization of a good man by a dysfunctional church but as the consequence of a belief system that excludes the very God it claims to represent. G.K. Chesterton’s famous response to liberal critics in his own day—“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried”—could be restated in Lang’s case to read, “The biblical ideal of pastoral ministry has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”

Pastoral ministry is so important that the Bible goes to great lengths to describe what it is, how hard it is, who’s qualified to do it, the motivations behind it and what a pastor should expect from his congregation.

“Not many of you should become teacher, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.” (James 3:1)

“Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money.” (1 Timothy 3:2-3)

“Him [Christ] we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.” (Colossians 1:28-29)

“Obey your leaders, and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.” (Hebrews 13:17)

“Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing hime with oil in the name of the Lord.” (James 5:14)

“Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.” (2 Timothy 2:3)

“He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it.” (Titus 1:9)

“Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” (Jude 3)

The problem is, I think, that we’ve allowed two great de-stablizing and counter-productive influences to affect our understanding and practice of the office of pastor. The first is professionalism and the second is the redefinition of the Christian faith by modern culture.

Today’s pastors are often trained to think of themselves as professionals in the same sense as doctors, lawyers, teachers, counselors. We go through years of education and training then are entrusted with the care of people during the most challenging times of their lives. And it’s certainly true that education and training are critically important to succeeding as a pastor. But when we lump ourselves in with other professionals we lose something of critical importance. We lose the God-shaped identity and Holy Spirit empowerment that makes ministry possible. While a doctor, lawyer or teacher is expected to apply certain standards of professional expertise to whatever circumstances they encounter, ministers must do the same while operating at the same time on an entirely different level. Being a pastor isn’t a rational enterprise (despite what Lang claims); it involves that mysterious inner encounter with God that’s at heart something much deeper and harder to pin down. It has to do with the spirit. That’s a region that goes beyond rationalty and requires a greater functionality than that which can be established by a degree, validated by a certification or explained by human reason.

I love John Piper’s prayer that captures the kind of pastoral commitment I’m talking about (the prayer is found in his book “Brothers, We Are Not Professionals”):

Banish professionalism from our midst, Oh God, and in its place put passionate prayer, poverty of spirit, hunger for God, rigorous study of holy things, white-hot devotion to Jesus Christ, utter indifference to all material gain, and unremitting labor to rescue the perishing, perfect the saints, and glorify our sovereign Lord. Humble us, O God, under your mighty hand, and let us rise, not as professionals, but as witnesses and partakers of the sufferings of Christ.

The second factor at play, I think, is the cultural understanding of Christianity that many describe with the phrase, “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism”. In this view, the Christian faith is robbed of its biblical truth regarding sin, grace and redemption and redefined according to more culturally accepted categories. It’s seen as moralistic in that we should live as moral people who choose the good over the bad. It’s seen as therapeutic because it claims our purpose in life is happiness. It’s deistic in the sense that the God of the Bible is replaced with a deity who, once having created the world, withdrew so that we could make of the world whatever we think is best.

It’s not hard to see how the liberal theology embraced by Lang and many others bears more resemblance to Moralistic Therapeutic Deism than with historic Christianity. It’s a horizontal religion well suited for horizontal pastors. But the downside of it is how, as a practical framework for ministry, there’s no room for the dynamic God of the Bible who calls and equips pastors to the extraordinary work of caring for his people. Lang’s real problem is less about the challenges of pastoral leadership in the post-Covid age than about the spiritual maturity necessary for pastoral leadership in every age.

A ministry based on horizontal factors like culture, congregations and our own egos leads to disaster. Pastors resign. Congregations have no vision. Churches close their doors. Denominations fade into irrelevance. On the other hand, when a pastor chooses a vertical approach, when he looks up, sets his mind on the Kingdom and holds in his heart the spiritual tools given to him for the work he’s called to do, well, that’s a different situation altogether. That’s just what the apostle Paul has in mind when he tells the Corinthian church of his own practice of pastoral leadership in terms that might scare those pastors uncertain about the reality of spiritual authority but thrill those of us who yearn to stay faithful to the end of our ministry:

“For though we walk in the flesh, we we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:3-5)