“We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”
— C.S. Lewis
When I was still an Evangelical pastor, a common idea was that ministry was a higher calling. The idea was that since we’re doing God’s work, it somehow mattered more than other things. In some sense, this concept can come from a sincere and authentic place: we get that if we’re going to be messing with people’s souls and attempting to do work on Earth that aligns with the Divine, then, of course, pastors and ministers better take it seriously and have their crap figured out. There’s a weight to it—a pressure that rightly demands integrity. In essence, if you’re going to take that mantle, you better be serious about having met and walked with God (Micah 6:8).
I felt that higher calling, too. And then I was confronted early on with the truth of Ephesians, 1 Corinthians, and Jesus’ clear demands that “the least will be the greatest,” and the “exalted will be humbled.” When Dallas Willard’s The Divine Conspiracy and Greg Boyd’s The Myth of a Christian Nation cycled through my reading, this “higher calling” concept became clearly wrong to me, at least as it was back then.
This higher calling thing was also reinforced and often encouraged. There were old-timer congregants who would insist on calling you “pastor,” or you would encounter the opposite idea (“ministry is a high calling”).
I remember shortly after moving to Missoula, before I completed imploding, I was attending a local game tournament, and when a conversation would get going, inevitably the question of “What do you do?” would come up. When people heard “pastor,” they’d suddenly feel like they had to apologize or shift their manners and behavior with me. It got old. Christianity couldn’t make up its mind on what the right posture and relationship were for ministry, until it was apparent that the whole thing was upside down and inside out. My childish immaturity and narcissistic personality could see it then, but couldn’t deal with it selflessly or see my issues unraveling internally.
“Ministry” means service. Full stop. The pastor is no different than the plumber, parent, or prisoner. It got complicated by humans, not by Scripture.
So, in 2025, after God had brought me around the block, and with all the hoopla going on out there, let’s crack open another subject that is still out there, and an idea that needs to be taken seriously—by pastors and Christians, seekers and spiritual leaders, and by every human who wishes to walk in freedom and power, in grace and truth.
Warnings to Would-Be Leaders
Scripture is full of such warnings for leaders to humbly and honestly consider their position and responsibility. To be in a position that leads and influences groups of people—especially in matters of spirit, ethics, and identity—a person better make sure their words and actions are selfless, even “godly.”
This word, “god,” makes some people cringe. It’s common in AA, too. Here is the fundamental and psychological truth that every human must get over, but especially people who want to be in positions of influence: you have to learn that you are not God.
Spirit, Truth, Love, and Change are not yours to control and own, but to participate with. And to be a leader and teacher means to dare to wield and speak Truth and declare how Reality works, daring to diagnose and direct other human souls. Such people better do their damnedest to own and die to self, if they’re sincere, genuine, and authentic.
To lead well and fully, humility and humbleness are a must if you’re going to be able to listen, learn, and love and genuinely model it for people.
“Of all the passions, the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things.”
— C. S. Lewis
The Weight of Teaching
James commands, “not many people should desire to become teachers,” because our tongues are slippery bastards that betray our dualistic and unresolved hearts. “A little yeast leavens the whole loaf,” so we’d better be amazing “bakers.” And, as a leader or teacher, if we spread our baptized, unhealed sin into the bodies we’re entrusted to care for, that sin is doubly on us—we’ve just set a forest fire ablaze (James 3:1ff). If the world burns down, it will be because of our lips…it’ll be an…”apocalips“…
(It’s funny!)
When God’s leaders forgot their calling in Scripture, there were devastating consequences. So, such a position demands humility and an honest, non-performative security in one’s calling and work. A teacher cannot teach what they do not know, and a leader cannot lead where they have not been. This is how we end up with the blind leading the blind and people with ears that can’t hear. And if a leader’s error isn’t lovingly corrected—but instead protected or pathologized—truth begins to invert. Saints devolve into sinners, and the gospel turns into ghost stories.
“According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Power is what Pride really enjoys.”
— C. S. Lewis
Every Human’s Calling
So, yes, there is a “high” calling on ministers, but we’ve misunderstood it. It is upside down. Paul made it clear in Ephesians 4: the purpose of church roles is to equip the saints for their ministry. Ministry doesn’t happen within the church—ministry is what the whole church does. Every human is called into ministry. Every one of us bears the imago Dei. Each of us carries a path that’s already been written into the structure of the cosmos. We each have the capacity for direct union with God.
He also made it clear what leaders must do to not mess it up. Paul professed and modeled to his disciples—“I die daily.” It’s the same basic call for the beginning of discipleship, and also for initiation into the Christian doctrine of salvation and spiritual transformation: “If any man will be my disciple, he must take up his cross, die to self, and follow me.”
“Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.”
— C. S. Lewis
Leadership as Descent
Jesus was emphatic that His role was one of service. He invited people not just to follow Him, but to die to their false selves—the egoic projections, immature fixations, butt-hurt entitlements, and sins we either inherited or clung to. His was the highest calling because it was the lowest descent: “how can the Son of Man rise if he did not first descend?“
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.”
— C. S. Lewis
A minister, pastor, or leader over people carries a low calling. In our modern, dopamine-addicted, ego-driven, pseudo-spiritual culture, the only way it seems like a “high” calling is because people use it like a drug. Just like politicians, business owners, influencers, social workers, and activists—”ministry” becomes a hit. The real high only emerges when that drug is put down. Until then, it’s nothing more than vicarious living—a performance we put on so the crowd feels better about their so-called “lower” callings.
And this opens up another layer: the massa populi’s complicity. This is the hardest and perhaps most painful truth our world is ready to hear and accept. Every single person is called to lead their own self. You are responsible for your life, even if you’re not at fault for all the circumstances and consequences.
Ego trips are how human history has arrived here.
“Everybody can be great… because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.
No Kings but Servants
Ironically, bastardized gospels preached today offer exactly this: a one-sided, egoic salvation trip that skips Earth entirely and projects heaven into an imagined, ungrounded future. It scapegoats our insecurities. It sells a king or judge who’ll save us, so we don’t have to take ownership of our inner world.
It’s not real. That king is a myth. That judge is a projection. That gospel is a mask—stitched from trauma and theology and ego—that wraps itself around your soul and whispers, This is necessary. This is safe.
It’s not.
No emperor has clothes. No king is God. Ministers have the lowest calling. And the massa populi? They carry the highest calling. Because it is in them, in us, in the Body, that the truth of what is preached becomes what is practiced.
Leaders should model this first and last. They could. If they didn’t fear the people they serve so damn much. And if it didn’t cost some of the brand, empire, and storehouses they’ve built up. Either way, it’s all ego and shadows. Leaders bear a torch so others can see by it, not to be seen by.
True leaders step into the light when their flock is in the dark. And the higher the calling, the lower the descent.
“We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.
