by Rev. Jessica L. Paulsen
May 5, 2026 is my ordiversary–the anniversary of my ordination as a Minister of Word and Sacrament in the PC (USA). It’s number 13. Thirteen years of serving as an ordained minister, leading worship, funerals, weddings, pastoral care, serving as a witness to peoples’ most joyful and most tragic moments. My ordination service that day often feels as if it was a lifetime ago. A lifetime of hospital visits, cups of coffee, thousands of miles driven, and countless meetings and conversations.
Over these thirteen years, I’ve been yelled at about taking time off, told I’m not a “real pastor” (whatever that means–pretty sure it has something to do with my gender), touched inappropriately, called a Pharisee, and faced the demands and trials of a global pandemic. I’ve watched many of my friends and colleagues leave church ministry, some for a period of time and some for good. In March 2022, Barna reported that 42% of pastors had “given real, serious consideration to quitting being in full-time ministry within the last year”, and while I can’t say I’ve given it real, serious consideration, I can say the thought has crossed my mind. Or at least the question of How do I continue to do this work? has entered my thoughts.
For there is a cost to this type of work, this calling. It’s a cost I didn’t understand the first time I took my ordination vows on that day thirteen years ago. A cost that words try to capture but that must truly be experienced to be understood. A recent description of it that resonated with me came from pastor and writer Trygve Johnson and his article “Why So Many Pastors Quietly Burn Out”. He writes:
There is a man in Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks who has always stopped me cold. He sits alone at the counter of a late-night diner, his back to the street, half his body in the warm light of the room, the other half dissolving into shadow. Outside is darkness. Inside, a light burns against it. And this man—this solitary figure—seems to live in both worlds at once, belonging fully to neither.
Martin Luther called this condition simul justus et peccator, we are sinner and saint simultaneously, held in tension, never fully resolved. Solzhenitsyn put it another way: “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” Hopper painted it. And every leader I have ever known has felt it.
That tension—inhabiting the light long enough to serve others, then stepping back out into the dark—is, I think, the truest picture of what pastoral leadership actually feels like. It is not a picture of triumph. It is a picture of faithfulness in difficulty. It is not depressing. It is, if you let it be, quietly inspiring.
[Yet] pastors are leaving ministry at an alarming rate. The statistics are not secret, but the reasons behind them mostly are, because we have not created the kind of culture where a pastor can tell the truth about what it costs to lead (emphasis mine).
People don’t want to hear about the sleepless nights, the hours spent reflecting on your own leadership decisions wondering if you let your own biases influence the guidance of the people, or the wealth (and weight) of information you have, good, bad, joyful, and sad, about the people you serve. They don’t want to know the jolt you feel when the manager of the funeral home shows up on your caller ID, even if he is a church member just calling about worship for Sunday. Or the ball in the pit of your stomach as you watch the helicopter come into your rural town to airlift someone to a larger hospital, wondering how soon the phone might ring. There is a cost to this type of work and ministry.
It’s a cost I didn’t know about or understand on my ordination day thirteen years ago, but it’s a cost I now know intimately. And while occasionally I have wondered how I am going to keep doing this work, how I will keep paying this cost, I continually find myself saying, “Yes.” Yes, I will bear the weight. Yes, I will pay the cost. Because even as I experience the depths of human suffering, and the mark of human judgment, I also get to revel in the heights of human joy and the gifts of human gratitude. I get to watch and know God’s Spirit, the presence of God here on earth. I’ve had a visceral experience of loving my neighbor and caring for them even as I was in active conflict with them. God showed up. I’ve sat with people as they have made peace with their mortality and died. I’ve held newborns and watched children light up with joy as they join me in the words of institution and shout in the middle of worship, “He broke it!” God showed up, even as the work of ministry left its marks.
So today, thirteen years after my ordination, I’m in the midst of a week of rest. Because that is how I am able to continue to say “yes” and accept the cost of ministry–by having intentional periods of rest. A time when I can set aside the weight of ministry, the weight of having to always be available and ready to answer when someone calls, the weight of the calendar with all its meetings and gatherings, the weight of worship, the weight of leadership. I take the time and set down this weight so that soon I will be ready to bear it once again.
At my ordination on May 5, 2013, as part of the ordination questions, I was asked, “Will you be a faithful minister of the Word and Sacrament, proclaiming the good news in Word and Sacrament, teaching faith and caring for people? Will you be active in government and discipline, serving in the councils of the church; and in your ministry will you try to show the love and justice of Jesus Christ?” Confidently, I answered, “I will, with God’s help.” A week later, on May 12, 2013, at my installation as minister for Pickford Presbyterian, I was asked the same questions. Again, confidently, I answered, “I will, with God’s help.” Then, on January 27, 2019, at my installation as minister for First Presbyterian, Corning, I answered these questions for the third time. “Will you be a faithful minister…in your ministry will you try to show the love and justice of Jesus Christ?” This time, my answer came with the weight and knowledge of almost six years of ministry, “I will, with God’s help.” Now, after thirteen years, I rest and set down the weight of ministry for a period so I might return and continue to be able and willing to confidently answer these questions once again, “I will, with God’s help” knowing that even as ministry leaves marks, God shows up.
Rev. Jessica L. Paulsen is in her eighth year as pastor at First Presbyterian Church, Corning, IA. She is a graduate of Union Presbyterian Seminary, Richmond, VA and spent her first five years of ministry in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan before moving back to Iowa where she grew up. Besides ministry, she loves to read, crochet, swim, and spend time with her dog, Brownie, a wonderful German Shepherd/Mastiff mix.
