Out of Darkness: My Idol of Missional Success
A WAKE-UP CALL
Of all of the lessons I’ve learned from being a pastor, perhaps the most important was recognizing the skewed standard I used to define my spiritual success. I remember it clearly—my wife had the most direct, bitter taste of this sin in my life.
On November 9, 2015, I found my wife crumpled on the floor. I recall the morning sun’s warmth on my skin contrasting with the chilly air. As I stood there, everything felt strangely surreal. She had collapsed in the kitchen of our two-bedroom apartment in Tokyo, buckling under the weight of a multitude of burdens. Mental stress, physical fatigue, childcare, money worries, internal and external expectations, spiritual thirst—all of these pressed down until she broke.
Depression was the doctor’s official diagnosis. This wasn’t completely out of the blue, since my wife had struggled with feelings of hopelessness and anxiety intermittently since elementary school. Those feelings hadn’t completely disappeared after becoming a Christian, either. Because I stuck to my own pace, I rarely noticed signals my wife might send my way about how she was struggling—the quintessential oblivious male. Until that moment in our kitchen, she had been forced to push along by herself as best she could. I had extended little compassion.
Early in our marriage, I gave perfunctory encouragement in response to her distress, saying things like “If you just rely on the Holy Spirit, you’re sure to find joy in life!” While I was saying the right words on the surface, I was actually thinking, “If we’ve received salvation, how could we not rejoice?” I secretly looked down on her, wondering why I had the joy of the Lord when she did not. Nursing a sense of superiority, my heart lurched to and fro in a queasy mix of joy and bitterness.
My oft-repeated mantra was “Follow the Spirit, and the Spirit will give you joy!” I viewed my pastoring job as a God-given vocation, so in a sense of misguided zeal, I pushed my wife’s needs aside to make way for what I believed was the ultimate priority. I believed my single-mindedness would please God. Unsurprisingly, this wounded my wife, who felt invisible to the person she was supposed to be closest to in the world. Despite being a part of my flock, she received little care.
As I repeated unfeeling religious platitudes to her, she gradually became embittered not just toward me, but also toward God. She couldn’t understand me, our marriage felt impossible, and she eventually labeled me a lost cause. No longer able to find hope in God or her spouse, she lost heart so completely that she physically collapsed. The doctor warned me that her condition was serious enough that it could potentially be life-threatening.
When my wife collapsed, all I could think was, “Don’t leave me. Don’t die.” At the same time, I was angry with God. Why would He let this happen when I already had plenty of struggles in church planting? I would only realize later the extent to which this reaction showed how idolatrous my heart had become. I had slowly come to believe that if I was working for the Lord, receiving blessings from Him was a matter of routine. My relationship with Him was transactional.
Five and a half years passed, and my wife’s condition improved. She wasn’t on such an extreme emotional rollercoaster, and we started learning to take care of each other more as a couple. We were making progress. But I learned a valuable lesson about how I conducted my spiritual life as a pastor.
A LIFE’S Calling
For the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable.
—Romans 11:29
What is the calling of a pastor? There’s the human side of the work—spreading the good news, interpreting the Word, pastoral care, fellowship, and Holy Communion. Then, there’s the institutional side of things—organizational planning, church management, cooperation with other churches, and administrative duties. Being a pastor can encompass a huge array of responsibilities.
The wise, biblical way to handle such a demanding position is to focus on walking with the Lord first and foremost. A spring of God-given joy then propels the believer forward in his work, even if there is much to be done. This was not what my life looked like.
I did what I thought I was supposed to do: I got on my knees every morning and started the day in prayer. I meditated on the Word and prayed for each member of my flock. I worshipped, I prayed, I sang, I gave, I fellowshipped—and so my pastoral life went, running along a well-worn groove. I gave pastoral support to as many people as I could, and whenever the going got hard, I found encouragement in focusing on the blessing of our church’s growth.
My goal was to be a great pastor. I did my utmost to reach this ideal. At the time, I believed it was a challenge given to me by God. It wasn’t that becoming a great pastor was a point of pride per se, but rather that in the dogged pursuit of this goal, the value I placed on my personal effort allowed the seeds of sin to begin to grow.
Instead of standing on the truth that God already accepts and justifies those who trust in Him, I began to act as if my efforts to attain excellence would get me the approval I craved. Whether the approval I aimed for was that of God or my fellow believers remained murky. In retrospect, my image of an ideal pastor proved not to be dictated by the gospel at all. I’d forgotten this essential truth: God’s acceptance of us doesn’t have one iota to do with our deeds. Only by Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, by the spilling of His precious blood, can we be received by our heavenly Father.
“My goal was to be a great pastor…in the dogged pursuit of this goal, the value I placed on my personal effort allowed the seeds of sin to begin to grow.”
Once we understand this acceptance not only in our minds but also in our hearts, we become capable of obeying Christ. Instead, I gave up the joy of the Lord in favor of parsing my life and the world around me with my own manufactured standards. In reality, we as sinners are incapable of obeying God in our own fallen nature, however galling that truth may sometimes seem. In light of this, there is no room for even the smallest seed of pride in our hearts. We can do nothing apart from God’s enabling grace.
It is easy to grow complacent, convincing ourselves we are following God more faithfully than we really are. I simply turned a blind eye to this sin taking root in my life. Perhaps even that is giving more credit than is due, since I suspect it was more a lack of awareness of my own sin. The initial seed—placing undue value on my own effort—sprouted into a habit of comparing my work to that of other pastors I knew. This pride rooted more and more deeply in my heart until it bore vile fruit. I began to mercilessly evaluate everyone around me based on the standards I had made, blind to my own foolishness. For all my Bible study and time in prayer, getting back to the heart of the gospel was no simple matter.
The Golden Calf of Mission
When our community heard about what happened to my wife, a number of friends came to visit us at our apartment and offer support. One of these friends happened to be connected to City to City Japan. In the midst of our chaos, he continued to stay alongside me and my wife with patience and compassion. He made time to counsel us in our marriage, gently guiding us back to the Lord. This gentleness was particularly important for my wife, as our friend encouraged her to only participate in church life as she felt able. To simply soak in worship time was fine, if singing felt too much to bear.
During this time, I entered a season of self-discovery and reckoning. I was exhausted with the effort of promoting God’s mission. I no longer found joy in following the Lord. As I listened to biblical teaching, I began to be convicted of the way mission had become an object of worship for me. To be clear, I do not mean that God had somehow handed me an idol. Rather, in the course of carrying out the work I had been given, I assigned ultimate value to the mission of being a pastor. I threw myself utterly into ministry. I gave whatever I felt the position demanded because I believed it would please God.
“My idolatry had hardened my heart: the success of our church had become more important than everything else. God’s promise to dwell with us in all things was no longer at the center of my life.”
As I poured myself out on this self-appointed altar, I became spiritually dry. The joy of being accepted into God’s family dimmed, became distant. I lost sight of the truth that God welcomes us as sons and daughters because of Jesus, not anything we offer. Rather than being filled with gospel grace, I sought meaning in my success as a pastor.
When my wife collapsed, it felt as if the door had slammed on the plans I had for ministry. I couldn’t see my sin, only my broken plans. It completely crushed me. I wanted to know why God would allow such a thing. My idolatry had hardened my heart: the success of our church had become more important than everything else. God’s promise to dwell with us in all things was no longer at the center of my life.
As John Calvin said, “The human heart is an idol factory.” What was going on inside me was nothing new. This tendency is not limited to the areas of mission or calling, either. My wife’s good health, my children’s relationship with God, our financial security as a family—any of these things could easily turn into an idol. Humans instinctively tend to idolize. We may try to hide our idols away on some high shelf, but every time we point out the idols in others’ lives, it points us back toward our own sinfulness. Confronted by our brokenness, we are pushed toward repentance. The Holy Spirit holds the power to begin dismantling the idol factory inside each of us, but perhaps we will only see it completely destroyed on the day we are called home to the Lord.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
—John 1:5
If my heart produces idols so easily, I have nothing to hope from myself. The good news is, my hope or despair need not hinge on my own bankrupt heart. As believers, we know it is not God’s will for us to simply focus on our brokenness. Why? Because God has redeemed us.
Wherever we are, we need not rush or worry as we labor. Instead, we should keep close watch on our hearts as we walk with the Lord, and He will show us what is good and true as He unfolds His mission in our lives. We need only to turn from the idols in our own hearts and return to Him whenever we begin to feel the seductive pull of self-reliance. God is faithful to hold us and keep us.
Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.
—Psalm 20:7
There is no mistaking that we live in dark times. The troubles of the world can often feel like a relentless onslaught. Yet the light burns all the more brightly in the midst of darkness. We can rest assured in this: the light of the world has already secured the ultimate victory for us. As for my wife and me, since that day in 2011, we as a couple have continued to be renewed in the light of God’s grace day by day. The fruit of the gospel is truly sweet. Jesus gave His life on the cross so that every person would have the chance to enter into the grace of the gospel. We move forward, propelled by grace.
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About the Author
Tetsuya Hashimoto pastors the Chiba Peace Christian Church, affiliated with Jesus Japan World Mission. As the founder of Fukumame Coffee, he also works to support coffee farming by the Akha ethnic minority in Thailand.