Pastoral Boredom is My Own Choice!

“Weren’t there people who drove you crazy year after year?”

“Did you ever recycle your sermons?”

“Didn’t you get bored with the same old problems, the same old community, the same old coffee shop?”

These are the usual reactions I hear when people find out that I pastored the same church for 35 years.

“35 years?”

Yup. 35 years. And in New Jersey, no less!

I began as Senior Pastor way back in 1985. There was an initial honeymoon; it lasted maybe…a year? And then the edge wore off, things frayed, and around year 5 I was getting a little fed up and a lot bored. The same problems, the same community, the same coffee shop.

But during year 6 I learned what would become the most strategic lesson of my 35 years: pastoral boredom is my own choice.

Let me be clear: the boredom I was feeling at year 6 didn’t go so deep as to be a holy discontent. It’s not like I was feeling a sustained call from the Lord toward something else. My longing for greener pastures just didn’t hold up in the presence of the God who called me. I was too easily bored. I’m a creature of newness; I thrive on novelty and innovation, on opportunities to grow and be stretched. And yes, the same problems, the same community, the same latte—they all had their impact.

But one morning I wondered, “does God ever got bored with me?” The question came from a paragraph by G. K. Chesterton, an early 20th century cultural icon in London who lived his Christianity big and large. I was put on to GK through the late Rich Mullins, whose song “Creed” borrows a line from Chesterton’s Orthodoxy. “God,” Chesterton argues, “never gets bored with a sunrise: God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”

This paragraph hit me right where I needed it. God never gets bored with the same sun, the same moon, the same flowers, the same world. So why am I getting bored with preaching the gospel week after week, with leading a congregation to greater kingdom effectiveness, with impacting lives and a community? Six times in the Book of Psalms we are commanded, “sing to the Lord a new song.” On one occasion (40:3), it is clear that God has done something unusual that warrants “a new song.” But in all the other cases, there is no obvious wonder, no new and powerful work that has triggered the command. Rather, the psalmist is exhorting the people to take a fresh gospel look at the same situation, the same Temple ritual, the same truths, and out of them sing a new song.

I am not a victim of my sameness. My boredom is a choice, especially as a leader of God’s people. Recognizing that truth and allowing it to rebuke me hard has shifted my mindset time and again. I have realized that among my habits of godliness there needs to be an intentional pulling out of busyness, a connecting of my to-do list to God and his purposes, an opening for the Holy Spirit to lead me to “the rock who is higher” Psalm 61:2) than my little world and all its routines.

Because of my 35 years, not despite them, I too can sing a new song.

How about you?