Coming out of seminary, Kyle McClellan was considered a “five-talent minister.” In comprehending that term, think of a five-tool baseball star who hits for a high average, flashes plenty of home run power, runs fast on the bases, plays great defense, and throws with a cannon arm. If you’re old school, think Willie Mays. If you’re new school, think Mike Trout. When these players are young, observers often say they “can’t miss” becoming a hall-of-famer.
In a similar way, men like McClellan are supposed to lead their churches to ministerial greatness. But as he relates in his transparent and provocative new book, Mea Culpa: Learning from Mistakes in the Ministry, McClellan crashed and burned. As the title—Latin for “my fault”—suggests, he largely sees his own sin as the culprit. He admits in one of the earliest paragraphs, “I plowed quite a bit of ministerial ground with my chin.” Indeed. Between 1996 and 2006 he pastored four churches, beginning with a three-year stint while in seminary. He remained at one church for two years and two others for three each. “Only one of those congregations was sad to see me go,” McClellan recalls. “Two of them ended with me resigning and pitching a fit on my way out the door.”
Brutally Honest
The greatest strength of this book is its honesty: McClellan’s confession is no half-hearted exercise in false humility, no exercise in serving up facile platitudes. In a clear and everywhere colorful fashion, he blames no one but himself for his decade of sojourning in pastoral ministry.
Mea Culpa: Learning from Mistakes in the Ministry
Kyle McClellan
Presently McCellan serves as pastor of Grace Church (PCA), a church he founded in his hometown of Fremont, Nebraska. He is learning to apply seven valuable and hard-won lessons he learned during his first decade of ministry. These lessons make up the heart of the book and show he’s indeed learned hard-to-come-by virtues of humility and wisdom—all while smoldering in the cauldron of ministerial affliction caused to a great degree, he says, by ministerial malpractice.
Insightful Lessons
All seven lessons are helpful, particularly for those in their first few years of pastoral ministry. But perhaps the four most valuable are these:
1. A head full of (even sound) theology does not make a godly minister. McClellan recounts his days in seminary as a top-notch student. He learned sound doctrine easily and argued his case ably. To say he was “always ready to give a defense” seems a vast understatement for a man who admits he was a theological pugilist. Thus, as Brian Croft writes in the foreword, McClellan entered his first pastorate with “guns blazing.” One close friend called him a “theological bouncer.” Not exactly the nickname for a tender shepherd, as McClellan now knows. He’s learned that sound doctrine must also seep deeply into the pores of the life of the one professing it and then must issue forth in love, humility, and graciousness. Otherwise, it’s nothing more than worthless noise (1 Cor. 13:1–3).
2. Know your place. It’s vital to know yourself and superimpose your personality over your church’s to see if they fit. Ministering in a place where your gift set, personality, and personal intangibles do not fit the congregation can lead to disaster, as McClellan learned firsthand. This is often an overlooked but important factor when a young man is seeking a pastorate. Know yourself and know your setting.
3. Find your own preaching voice. You are not John Piper. You are not Tim Keller. You are neither Charles Spurgeon nor Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Therefore, don’t try to emulate them. Preach like yourself. As McClellan writes, “When I try to be the Great Plains version of Tim Keller, I’m a phony and a loser. Furthermore, the folks at Grace don’t need Keller to pastor them. They need the guy Jesus has actually called to be their pastor.”
4. You’re called to be a good husband and father before you’re called to be a pastor. This is, after all, one of the qualifications for eldership in 1 Timothy 3:1–7. This is the most vital lesson of all; stumble here, and ministry is no longer an option. Within this lesson, McClellan helpfully derives two sublessons: study your wife’s family because, it will help you to understand her more fully, and prioritize your family over the ministry. “Pursing one’s work at the expense of your wife and kids is not an available option,” he writes.
So in addition to the seven lessons, what’s the overall take-home for the reader?
Dangerous Calling
McClellan presents an accessible and not-so-rosy picture of what can—and far too often does—go wrong in pastoral ministry, particularly during the early years. In a witty and colloquial manner, Mea Culpa warns and teaches lessons every young pastor needs to hear and heed:
- To borrow the words of Paul Tripp, pastoral ministry is a dangerous calling. McClellan says seminary didn’t prepare him for this reality. In fact, seminary cannot adequately prepare you any more than basic training can thoroughly prepare you for the flying shrapnel and armed grenades of live combat. Pastoral ministry is not a nice middle-class living or a pastime for the theologically curious. It is only for those whom God has called and fitted in a manner consistent with his Word (1 Tim. 3:1–7; Titus 1:5–16).
- Every pastor is a Christian in the middle of his sanctification. This is sometimes difficult for both pastor and layperson to admit, but it’s true. And McClellan is hardly alone. All who have pastored have felt the weight of preaching and ministering to others out of the middle of their own sanctification.
- Pride is the deadly enemy of gospel ministry. Pride infects every son of Adam. Pride is to the minister what stage four cancer is to the human body. God warns that he opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. That alone should freeze us in our tracks. McClellan observes that the root of much of his sin was pride. That’s true of us all. And those who would stand before God’s people and presume to preach his Word must pray daily that he would put their pride to death.
In both its writing style and brusque transparency, Mea Culpa is by no means your typical pastor’s manual. But it should be required reading for every man wrestling with a call to preach the Word of the living God. The book is an expert guide to the sin that remains unmortified in the heart—sin that can grow like kudzu around a ministry and ultimately cut off its lifebreath. McClellan has done us a great service by writing about his experience and giving us an excellent example of theology applied to both our hearts and our ministries.