PODCAST | Lead With Clarity: The Resilient Pastor (Feat. Glenn Packiam)

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Christa Neidig:
Welcome to the Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Christa Neidig, senior marketing coordinator here at Vanderbloemen in today's podcast, our executive search consultant, Rick Callahan talks with Glenn Packiam, senior pastor of Rock Harbor church in Costa Mesa, California. Glenn is also an author of several books, including the resilient pastor. In this conversation, Glenn gives pastors much needed energy for a new season of ministry and insight into pastor's desire to be a faithful shepherd in the midst of a turbulent world. We hope you enjoy the conversation.

Rick Callahan:
Well, welcome to the Vanderbloemen podcast. I'm Rick Callahan, one of our consultants and I have the privilege to be by the Reverend doctor, Glenn Packiam. He's probably cringing that I said it that way. Glenn was a time pastor at New Life Church in Colorado Springs. He's part of the Anglican communion. I'll let him talk a little bit about that. He's a senior fellow with the Barna Network and he just recently stepped into a new role in Southern California at Rock Harbor. And so welcome Glenn. Well, how are you doing?

Glenn Packiam:
Thanks, Rick. Great to talk to you today, man. Yeah, we're doing good. We're doing great. We're a couple weeks into this transition here and we're so grateful.

Rick Callahan:
Yeah. So tell us a little bit about what you're doing now.

Glenn Packiam:
Yeah, so I get to serve as the lead pastor of a church in Costa Mesa, California called Rock Harbor Church. And I started at the beginning of September. In October, I'll have an official commissioning service. So kind of this whole month of September, I've been given the gifts of having the time to really communicate with the staff and to sit down for these long one-on-ones with the team and find out kind of their story, their passion, and how they feel about their roles. So I'm filling up my days with appointments with staff and elders and congregants, and it's a really, really wonderful, wonderful season.

Rick Callahan:
That's great. I'm curious. What have you learned about yourself? What have you learned about transitions that wasn't really on your radar in the middle of all this? Because you were at New Life for two decades, right?

Glenn Packiam:
Yeah. 22 years at New Life and in a variety of roles. Most recently in the last 10 years at New Life, I was the lead pastor of one of our congregations New Life downtown. And then for the past five years had served as associate senior pastor where I was helping to oversee the congregations development for the pastors and staff church-wide.
So I mean, I think what I've learned about myself is that there's a tendency that I have to maybe say everything that I see. That you come into a situation you're assessing, you're learning, you're discerning. And I've learned that my notebook is my best friend, because I'm writing down lots of notes. But recognizing that you're kind of writing, metaphorically speaking, you're writing in pencil because your early observations may not be the actual accurate observations. And so learning to go slower in not saying what you see, I'm also learning, Rick, that I really like this warm weather here in Southern California.

Rick Callahan:
Yeah. It'll keep won't it?

Glenn Packiam:
It'll keep. Yeah.

Rick Callahan:
Yeah. That's great. Yeah. I've always found even the transitions I made in pastoral ministry, to never make the assumption that it's going to be exactly like where I was before, but everything that I had experienced, the Lord kind of allowed me to, that I can bring to the table, but not necessarily to duplicate. And so it's really hard when you had success someplace to go, well, this is how we do it, but it's a completely different context.

Glenn Packiam:
That's right.

Rick Callahan:
We move from a different city in the US. It's hard to think missionaries when we probably should.

Glenn Packiam:
Well, what a gift you are to pastors who are making that transition because I can feel that temptation of, well, let's just bring a playbook, but I'm not doing that. And I know that that isn't right. And there is this sort of tension of, okay, if I'm called to this role, then there are certain sort of experiences and maybe even skills that have been honed or scars that have been earned, whatever that are required for the task here for the call here and at the same time saying, but how might the Lord reshape that? How might the Lord pull on some of those same threads, but we have a different tapestry, if you will, in this context.

Rick Callahan:
Yeah. That's great. We're praying for you, man. I'm really excited that you're there. I know we as a team at Vanderbloemen are excited that you landed there and prayed for wisdom as you kind of weave that new tapestry because I found people who've been places a long time, it was an art to introducing change. Well I'm really excited to talk to you about a new project that you're a part of that got released earlier this summer called the Resilient Pastor. I'll hold that up for us here. And it's a book that you did in conjunction with Barna, the Barna Group. And I'd love to just hear about how this project came about.

Glenn Packiam:
Yeah, yeah. It's great, Rick. I mean, I'm so grateful for the partnership with Barna and how it began was February of 2020. I had a coffee with David Kinnaman the president of Barna. He was coming through town in Colorado and wanted to get some time together. And he presented this idea and said, "Hey, I'd like to partner with you to write a book about the challenges that our pastors are facing in kind of a changing world." And I had, at that time, was two years removed from finishing my doctoral work in the UK, which was a research approach that blended situational analysis using some good qualitative research tools with it. It blended that with theological reflection. So I kind of got excited at the idea. I said, "Man, David let's run." And I started outlining these eight challenges, four for the pastor and four for the church and then low and behold, the pandemic broke out a month later.
And I thought maybe the Lord tricked me into saying yes to this. Because I certainly would've felt not up to the task had I known, but I'm so grateful for the amazing Barna team. And so in the fall of 2020, and even in the spring of 2021, I worked with their team to design some question surveys that went out to hundreds of pastors that they sent out and I got to work on crafting or assisting in crafting some of those questions.
And then I did focus groups of my own, Rick. I put the word out there on social media and had three different sets of focus groups about eight or nine pastors in each one from the US, from Canada, from the UK and spent about 90 minutes kind of talking through some of the challenges with them. And so again, four that are facing the pastor, four that are facing the church at large.
And so then the book released in February of this year and because of some of the data that Barna has discovered, especially over the last couple years of the rising rates of pastors who are seriously considering quitting full-time ministry, it was 29% in January of 2021. It was 38% in October of 2021 and it's risen to 42 or 43% in March or April of this year. So because of that, if nothing else, it's an indicator, maybe it's a warning light that there's a discouragement and strain.
Barna and I, we decided to actually make this more than a book and to launch a whole array of initiatives. So we've started the Resilient Pastor Podcast. We're doing the Resilient Pastor City Round Tables, which we've done three already. Two in the spring one this month, we'll do six in the fall total in different cities. It'll be free thanks to sponsors. And then we've just launched the Resilient Pastor Cohort, which is the six month journey. 150 pastors or so are part of it. So just so many of you like you guys at Vanderbloemen, like so many other ministries and organizations, trying to find ways to encourage and equip pastors for this particular moment.

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Rick Callahan:
Yeah, I so appreciate that. My sense, I was actually in local church ministry during the pandemic before I joined Vanderbloemen. And the sense that I had was the pandemic didn't necessarily cause this, but it probably accelerated a whole bunch of things that surfaced. And there were a lot of us who were like, I don't think I want to do this anymore for a variety of reasons. What were some of the reasons that you saw in the research that pastors were like, I think I might tap out?

Glenn Packiam:
Well, even when we were doing the early stages of the research for the book in 2020 and 2021, it was the divisions, it was political tensions. It was the unrealistic stacking expectations of the job. And when I unpack that for people and I start to name it, maybe it decades ago, the expectation was the pastor was the Bible answer person or maybe the resident theologian or they handled the sacraments. But then you add to that, they're supposed to be really an expert therapist and they're supposed to be able to rescue your marriage or help you reach your teenager who won't talk to you. And then it was no, no, no, the pastor's a CEO or an entrepreneur and they're supposed to be amazing at organizational leadership. And then more recently the pastor's supposed to be a political commentator or a social activist, and they're supposed to parse out the very complicated history of power dynamics or social pain.
And it's not as if, Rick, it's not as if these expectations have just substituted one another where we've switched from one paradigm of a pastor to another. I actually think these have sort of compounded. It's like compound interest. They just sort of stacked on top of each other to where a pastor feels like, no matter what I do, I can't get up to zero. I can't get up to level ground because I'm already behind in people's expectations.
And then I think that you add in the extra layer of the digital age that we're living in, and you're right about the pandemic. There were not many things that the pandemic was the instigator of, but it may have been the accelerator or maybe the revealer of, and in one of those ways, when we were all sitting at home watching online church, or maybe at least we did for the first month or two, and then the numbers, that data really plummets. I think people figured out, man, if I'm watching a church on YouTube, I can pick which church I'm watching. And so then the comparison game just sort of turned up the dial on that, where it was like, "Well, wait a minute, my pastor's not talking about race or about politics or about justice." And so then you take this already impossible sort of stacking expectations. And you add in the social media dynamic where we feel like we're in everybody's backyard looking over the fence. And it just of felt like the local pastor couldn't keep up.

Rick Callahan:
Yeah, that's a lot. And as I read the book, I went, okay, you're putting words to what I was sensing. And I think a lot of pastors say like something's off. And I think you do such a great job identifying here's what the data shows is off. So in that data, obviously there are some alarming things, anything that surprised you?

Glenn Packiam:
Yeah. There were some encouraging signs about, so let me name some of the challenges, the four challenges facing the pastor that I outlined were the challenge of vocation. The sense of confidence in our calling. Surprising in a negative way is that fewer pastors are more confident in their calling today than when they first started. So it used to be when Barna asked this question five years earlier, pastors tended to grow in the confidence in their calling. At least that percentage of pastors who felt more confident was a larger percentage. Now it's fewer. So fewer pastors have more confidence. And then in a parallel way, more pastors have less confidence. So there's a shakiness to our calling.
The second challenge is about our life with God. This one was sort of encouraging. I think pastors have learned that, hey, it's important that I prioritize my life with God. And so they would, pastors do have these regular rhythms of a day alone with God or other prayer practices. So that seems to be okay. I wouldn't say it's excellent, but it's not in dire straits.
The third one was the challenge of relationships. And Rick, I'll say, this was another one of those, oh, hang on a minute, where pastors would say, yeah, I've got people in my life and yet maybe they don't have the right people or maybe they don't have the right amount of frequency of contact with those people because a significant percentage of pastors report feeling lonely and isolated.

Rick Callahan:
I encounter that in our day to day work. We had a meeting today, even, where we were talking about as consultants I know I'm brought in for a specific task, but what I find happening more and more these days and actually where I could get to tap back into my own pastoral roots is being a companion and even a pastor to pastors where they can talk about things without a filter. And it's amazing just to watch the weight that gets lifted when they feel like somebody heard them and gets that.

Glenn Packiam:
That's right. Well, and what a blessing to have you and to have the team at Vanderbloemen, Rick, because for so many of the pastors, including the ones in my focus groups, they struggled to find someone that was safe, someone that they could talk to outside the realm of the church and in the book, I kind of outlined five different types of relationships that we ought to have. I mean, it's great to have a really close friend, a confidant, a peer or a friend. It's great to have peers, like other pastors that you can compare notes to. That's why pastors join cohorts and go to conferences. But we also need a sage type of voice. Someone who's been there. I mean, think of Lord of the Rings, where a Gandalf type of figure. Someone who shows up at key moments in your journey that you can just say everything too, and they'll say, "Yeah, okay, hang on."
And then maybe another voice that's sort of missing for pastors is the voice of a therapist or a counselor, the voice of a healer. And so there is a gift for that, but I will say that pastors struggle in identifying who those people are.

Rick Callahan:
Yeah. So used to having to be the one that has the answers. I've encountered lots of times where no, I serve people. I don't need to be served when that's just death. So it's just death. Those were, I think, three of things that were, what's the fourth?

Glenn Packiam:
Yeah, the fourth challenge facing pastors is the challenge of credibility. And this one has the most sort of alarm bells to me, not in a, oh my gosh, let's get back to how things were. But just to recognize the nature of the changing world. There's a declining sense of credibility. And so among non-Christians the question was posed do you consider a pastor a trustworthy voice of wisdom? And between the 4% who said yes, absolutely. And the 18% who said yes, somewhat, that's still a meager 22%.
And maybe you say, well, we kind of expect that. I mean, look at general attitudes of non-Christians toward pastors, but what was maybe more concerning was the percentage of Christians. So about 71% of Christians said yes, absolutely. Or yes, somewhat that a pastor is a trustworthy source of wisdom, which means about a third of Christians are saying, yeah, no, not really. Or no. And when I share this in some of these live events we're doing with the Resilient Pastor stuff, pastors will chuckle around the room. Because they resonate with this. It's like, yeah. About a third of the people in your church on any given weekends kind of listening to you and saying, yeah, I don't know. Pastors chuckle, because they're like, yep. I get those emails. Or I can see those looks from people.

Rick Callahan:
I remembered times feeling like, oh, I feel like I've now got lumped into the group with politicians and referees and head coaches. Everyone thinks they know how do my job better. And they have their invisible scorecards that they're holding up. It's [inaudible 00:16:25] in the form of an email.

Glenn Packiam:
Yes, exactly. And then I think what's hard and maybe this, some of this and in the chapter, I kind of say, look, the way out of this is not to kind of launch a PR campaign and reclaim credibility. We have to do the right thing for the right reasons. That's one of the phrases we said at New Life a lot. You do the right thing for the right reasons for a really long time. And you got to do that whether or not it results in a restoration of credibility. But I think we've not been helped by the broad brush sort of media conversations about evangelicals or evangelicals in politics.
And so I've talked to a lot of pastors and I certainly have experienced this where I'm sitting for a coffee with a young person, a 20 something. And they're like, "Yeah, I haven't given up on Jesus. And I like you guys as a church, but I'm just not sure how I feel about being associated with the church or the evangelical church in today's world." And so there is a little bit of, it's not guilt by association, but it's sort of this loss of credibility by implication. And again, maybe some of that's like, let's take our medicine, we deserve some of that. And so I've said to pastors where there are moments that we can take the posture of being low and saying, I'm so sorry for the ways that Christians in Jesus' name have used the Lord's name in vain, those things that we can do.

Rick Callahan:
Yeah. That's good. And then you alluded to obviously as a pastor with the credibility gap, it's a suspicion of the church. And so I know your next section has to do with challenges for the church. What might those be?

Glenn Packiam:
So the four that we chose to focus on are the challenge of worship. Meaning why do we gather? And is it even important? And I think every pastor in America right now is saying, yeah, no kidding. I'm trying to do a teaching series or whatever this fall to help people recognize why the gathering is not everything, but it is important. It is a significant thing. So that chapter in the book deals with that, there's some data there about why people are drawn to a gathering.

Rick Callahan:
I found that was a very, very insightful chapter. One of the metaphors I've found that's been helpful in this season was I would say to folks, "Hey, let's stop thinking of our weekend gathering as the Super Bowl instead of why don't we look at it as halftime?" I mean, I'm really into sports. I know you and your kids play soccer and I'm like half time's really important. You get recalibrated. You get refreshed. There's sometimes really good snacks. Good music. I'm going to the Notre Dame game this weekend. So all those kinds of things are important, but that's not, that's all so that we can then get back into the game.

Glenn Packiam:
That's right.

Rick Callahan:
Let's right size our expectations here.

Glenn Packiam:
That's so good. Yeah. I have found it helpful. And I'm doing this here with the team at Rock Harbor where we talk about these three words, encounter formation, and mission as it relates to the gathering, even. So we gather to encounter, there is an expectation of meeting with God. And by the way, that is the number one reason people named when they said I'm coming to church, it's with an expectation to meet with God.
But secondly, it is about formation. So we are trying to wrestle with their questions that they're coming in with. They're not here for sort of a cheap show. They could find that better elsewhere. They want to really know that the issues and the fears and the longings and the questions that they have will be addressed in some way. But then like you said, mission, we gather not for the sake of ourselves, but so that we can be sent back into the world.
So that's challenge one. And then the other three are the challenge of formation itself. So how do we make disciples? And in an age where there's the counter formational voices from culture from media, social media, TikTok for crying out loud is so obnoxious in our faces. How does the church invite people into an alternative way?
And then thirdly, the challenge of mission, what really is our mission in the world? I mean, Rick, it was discouraging to see people take a narrow view of that on either side to say it, no it's only activism or justice, or it's only just preach the gospel, which was reduced to conversion, sermons, alter call sort of moments. And how do we reclaim the large expansive of kingdom mission that Jesus had in the gospels?
And then fourthly the challenge of unity. I mean maybe one of the things we're all feeling pretty acutely in the American church, especially is this necessary disciplinary corrective work and yet you're my sister, you're my brother. Our baptism has to be stronger, has to be a stronger factor than our political allegiances or whatever else.

Rick Callahan:
It's such a challenge. I know every time I've been in a developing world for an extended period of time working with churches, that's one of the things that's palpable to me is the absence of that. And when I talk with them about that, they're like, we don't have the luxury not be unified.

Glenn Packiam:
Well, and Rick, you and I have both spent some time in the UK, you more than I maybe, but you recognize that I've seen this in my friends over there. It's like division is a luxury of a church in power. But as faithful Christians become fewer and fewer, we don't have the luxury of sticking with our tribes here. Not only do we need the gifts of one another, this isn't the way to faithfully steward the faith in our generation by reducing it to fewer and fewer tribes.

Rick Callahan:
So challenges are clear. Anything that left off the page that you'd say is encouraging.

Glenn Packiam:
I think my reason for hope is you alluded to this, is the global church. I would say in two directions, the historic church and the global church. So reasons for hope are not necessarily found in the data they're found in the story. They're found in the narrative. They're found in the thing that were part of. It really grated on me when people kept saying "We're in unprecedented territory. We've never been here, we've got to reinvent everything." And I get it. Look, I'm not one for sort of digging in our heels and trying to clinging to old ways, just because they're old ways.
At the same time, it depends. How old are we talking? Are we talking 1990s strategies? Are we talking the 390? Are we talking hundred? Because there's some about the witness of the church that has been through schisms and the [inaudible 00:22:54] controversy and other pandemics and persecutions that we can say, hang on a minute, what can we learn from the church in Carthage, for example.
And so the book has insight into our current context, but it has wisdom from the ancient church, from the historic church.
And then of course the global church, which you've alluded to is to say, okay, this might be a shift for us in the west, but actually the church in the global south, they've been living on the margins for a while now. And how have they found hope and courage and what can we learn from them in those ways?
So there's the historic church, the global church, and then maybe a third sign of hope here, Rick, is the collaborative church. There's a very real sense in which the places where you see life emerging, even here in the west are where bleeding in streams. You and I were talking about how the charismatic and the liturgical. So that's a convergence of streams that I think is it's a kind of collaboration. It's a collaboration that looks like gleaning from the gifts of different streams and traditions.
But also in a smaller level during the pandemic, many cities and many churches in those cities had stories of collaborating together for food drives, for visits to care facilities and correctional facilities. So that kind of breaking down the walls, even on a micro level of our own local communities, those are signs of hope to me.

Rick Callahan:
Yeah, that's great. I know you even allude to that in your third section, you have a whole chapter on the collaborative church. Even in the midst of this, with the work that we do, I often remind search teams or elder teams or pastors when they're getting anxious. And that's all part of the journey for all of us is just not letting the anxiety rule the day. I just want to remind you of something that you already know is that at no point in this equation, is the father going, "Yeah, I got nothing."

Glenn Packiam:
That's good.

Rick Callahan:
Which I think leads to your final chapter about hope. So what I found that super encouraging, what would you elaborate on the future there?

Glenn Packiam:
I love that you say that to pastors because we do get kind of myopia. We get a small tunnel vision here of our situation and our crisis. And the resurrected Jesus is always lifting our heads to a longer timeline than we might imagine. So first Corinthians 15, Paul says, look, if Jesus hasn't been raised from the dead, our preaching is in vain. Our faith is in vain, everything's in vain. But then he goes through this whole long section of why Jesus actually has been raised from the dead. And one day he's going to return and reign and conquer death and will be raised from the dead. So there's our future resurrection. And then after all of that, he says, so now be steadfast and immovable, excelling in your work for the Lord, knowing that your labor and the Lord will not be in vain.
And so it is our faith, our preaching, our labor will not be in vain. Why? Because Jesus Christ has risen from the dead. And that reminds me of that great quote from the British missionary, Lesslie Newbigin, I'm neither an optimist nor a pessimist. Jesus Christ has risen from the dead.
And so I think that does a number of things. I think one, it says to us as pastors, there's no situation that is too far gone. There's no circumstance in which you can say, oh no, the worst thing imaginable has happened. We serve the God who raises the dead. And so that's our reason for hope even today. But it also has this kind of dual horizon. There's a further horizon of hope, which is to say, we won't even know the impact of our ministry until the other side of our resurrection. One day, we're going to see that. So we need to take not the five year view or the 10 year view. We need the thousand year view that says we're all going to be interim pastors. And we're all interim pastors. We're all sort of stewarding the moment in these churches. And one day on the other side of the resurrection we'll know how our labor has really not been in vain.

Rick Callahan:
Yeah. I always want to be reminded that this is his church, it's not mine. And it's the spirit's power that is at work. It's Jesus who builds his church. And ultimately all I'm called to do is follow him and walk with him in sync. And if we do that, that's the best news in the world that God is with us.

Glenn Packiam:
Exactly. Amen.

Rick Callahan:
The King is with us. I mean, that's the good news, right? Jesus is king let's live like that.

Glenn Packiam:
Yes, yes. And you said it he's with us. He's with us through the power of the Holy Spirit. The book ends with the chapter's called the presence and the power to recognize man, the greatest reason for confidence, the reason we can wake up every morning is not because we've cracked the code on a discipleship program. Lord knows we haven't, but the Holy Spirit is at work in his church. And Jesus is the head of the church.
John Wesley, his final words on his deathbed to his band of not followers, but the guys that were with him on the journey, his final words were, "And best of all, God is with us." And that's what we have to keep reminding ourselves of.

Rick Callahan:
We need to continue remind each other. Well, this has been great to connect with you, Glenn. I know as you're getting started in a new season, you've got a lot on your place. So to take some time out to visit today, I really, really appreciate it. I think this will be a gift to folks who are able to tune in. Remind us again, how they can tune into what you are offering for pastors who want to get reinvigorated and stay in the game here.

Glenn Packiam:
The best way for pastors to keep up with all of the efforts, initiatives, resources we're creating, many of which are free is theresilientpastor.com. Theresilientpastor.com. And there's a link to the podcast, which is free, of course, the city round tables, which are free, the cohort's already going, so there's nothing there in terms of it's joining in with the fee and all of that. So everything else is up there and we just want to come alongside one another and see the Holy Spirit bring his work in us.

Rick Callahan:
That's great. Can I ask you to do one more thing, which is just pray a blessing over those who tune in.

Glenn Packiam:
Yeah. Yeah. I'd love to. Rick, thank you for your work. Thank you for this effort here. And let me just pray over everyone who's listening. Father, we're so grateful to you for who you are. We're grateful for your faithfulness to us. Jesus, you are alive. You reign and I thank you that you're at work in the world by the spirit. And so Holy Spirit I'm, I'm asking you now come and renew your work in our hearts for everyone. Who's listening, wherever we're listening from our cars, our maybe airplanes or while they're walking or going on a run, I should pray that you would help us to pause even in this moment and just receive the renewing work of the Holy Spirit. Keep our love for Jesus burning brightly. Keep our hearts soft and tender. Keep our minds engaged and meditating on the word of the Lord. Keep our relationships strong. If we're married, keep our marriages strong and our families, friendships. Lord, I pray that you would help us to return to our first love, to reorient the relationships in our lives and to remind ourselves of the hope that we have in you. We pray these things, the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Rick Callahan:
Amen. Amen. Thanks. Have a great day guys.

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