Staying Put

By Mark Mitchell

I was 52 years old when I almost made a very bad decision. At the time, I had been pastoring the same church for over 20 years. I was tired and maybe even a little bored when another church came calling. Everything about it was “more” and bigger — more people, more money, a bigger platform.

But then I met Wendell Berry and decided to stay put.

Wendell Berry is a writer. He was born in 1934 in Henry County, Kentucky, where he now lives on a farm. He's the author of more than 40 books and has won numerous awards and honors. Although he has written many nonfiction books, my favorites are his fictional Port William series. The New York Times has called Berry the "prophet of rural America."

I first learned about Wendell Berry from fellow pastor Eugene Peterson, who writes, "Wendell Berry is a writer from whom I have learned much of my pastoral theology. Berry is a farmer in Kentucky. On this farm, besides plowing fields, planting crops, and working horses, he writes novels and poems and essays. The importance of place is a recurrent theme — place embraced and loved, understood and honored. Whenever Berry writes the word 'farm,' I substitute 'parish': the sentence works for me every time."

I like Berry as a guide to being a pastor because of his commitment to place. Berry's character Jayber Crow says, "To feel at home in a place, you have to have some prospect of staying there." Berry committed to staying on the farm. Somewhere along the way, I decided that I needed to do the same. So I said "no" to “more” and "bigger" and stayed put another decade and a half.

We live in what Berry calls the culture of "the one-night stands," and pastors are often no different. Yes, sometimes God calls us to move to another church, but many of us will admit that occasionally we move because we're climbing the evangelical success ladder. Furthermore, to really know how to love, serve, and disciple a particular group of people takes a while. You can't just take what works somewhere else and use it in your church any more than you can use New England farming methods in California. The soil is just different.

So I encourage young pastors and leaders to consider staying put. And maybe pick up a Wendell Berry book and give it a read. Start with two of my favorites: Jayber Crow and Hannah Coulter.