I love a good Venn diagram. When I’m mentoring someone newer to church work, I usually end up drawing one on a napkin or a whiteboard. Two circles, overlapping in the middle.

One circle is everything we’re called to as followers of Jesus. Worship that’s actually genuine. Studying scripture. Praying for people. Repenting when we need to. Fighting for the vulnerable. Loving our neighbors, serving them, sharing what we have with them. Caring for creation. Asking hard questions about how to steward what God has given us.

Jesus is not an easy person to follow once you actually dig into the stories. He was a revolutionary who made powerful people uncomfortable on purpose. He loved the outcasts nobody else would touch, healing lepers and eating with tax collectors. He lifted up women and the lowly. He loved God and loved neighbor, and he backed it up with his life, all the way to the cross.

This is why most of us got into ministry in the first place. Christ’s love transformed us so deeply that we couldn’t help wanting to share it. At her best, the Church is full of the Holy Spirit, doing the work of loving like Jesus. That work is hard sometimes, but it’s holy. It’s the most meaningful thing I know.

The second circle is what I’d call “church work.” It overlaps with the first one, and some of it is genuinely necessary. Budgets and buildings and staff meetings make ministry possible. But it’s a different thing than following Jesus, and the two don’t automatically line up just because they happen under the same roof.

The Gap Nobody Warns You About

Here’s what I wish someone had told me earlier: what people expect church to feel like, what people expect it’s like to work for a church, and what the business side of church actually requires of the people doing it, are not always the same thing.

I went to seminary after already spending over a decade in local church youth ministry. I sat next to idealistic classmates who’d never worked on a church staff, who had no idea what happened behind the curtain. I don’t think we do young church workers any favors when we send them out without preparing them for that gap.

I already knew about it, actually. I’d been laid off from a church staff role for financial reasons once before, years before seminary, for reasons that had nothing to do with whether my work mattered. That experience shaped what I felt called toward next. When I sensed God pulling me into ordained ministry, I felt it very specifically toward the diaconate rather than eldership. Deacons are ordained too, we carry the title “Rev.,” but our calling centers on connecting the church to the needs of the world rather than running the institution. Some people call it leading from the second chair.

I’d watched what happens when the person in the first chair, the ordained elder or senior pastor, carries the full weight of budgets and buildings and board meetings. I have deep compassion for my senior pastor colleagues. The pressure to keep a church financially solvent, to perform well enough to keep a job, is enormous and mostly invisible to the congregation sitting in the pews on Sunday. As a deacon, I’ve been able to spend more of my time in that first circle: leading missions, teaching, helping shape worship, taking people on retreat, teaching spiritual practices. It’s a gift I don’t take for granted.

I’ll be honest that I have more to say about this gap, about what happens when church work quietly crowds out following Jesus, and I plan to keep writing about it in the seasons ahead. This piece isn’t the place to unpack all of that. For now, I just want to name that the gap exists, and that naming it isn’t the same as losing faith in the church.

Where I Am Now

I don’t currently work for a church. I lost that job this summer. I sat with that for a while, and I expected it to feel like loss, like failure, like something to grieve.

It hasn’t felt that way. It feels more like clarity.

I still remember the drive home after my last day, AC blasting against the Texas heat, not sure yet what I felt. What surprised me was how much of it was relief. Hours that used to disappear into commuting and back-to-back meetings are mine again, and I’ve been spending them on the things I actually got into this work for in the first place. Sitting with scripture without an agenda. Praying without watching the clock. Letting myself grieve and hope in the same breath.

I do grieve for the institutional church. I love her, which is exactly why it hurts to watch her lose sight of her own vision. That grief is real and I’m not going to pretend it away. But grief isn’t the last word here. I still believe in the church God intends her to be. I’ve seen glimpses of it, in small kindnesses and honest rooms and people who showed up for each other with nothing to gain. I still believe she can get there.

So here’s the question I keep coming back to, the one I hope this diagram gets you asking too: is your work, is my work, bearing the right fruit? Galatians tells us what the Holy Spirit produces in a life: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Look at Jesus and you see deep compassion, radical humility, real strength, a life anchored in prayer, and a willingness to obey God all the way to the end.

That’s the circle worth living in.

I drew this diagram the same way I’ve drawn it a hundred times on whiteboards and napkins and the backs of bulletins, trying to help someone see where they’d wandered off center. This time I sat down with oil pastels instead, because some things need color and texture, not just lines. Because this isn’t just a concept to me. It’s the shape of my own life right now, and the shape I want for the church I still love.

I’d love for her to find her way back to that center. And I’d love for you to join me, wherever you find yourself this week, in choosing the circle that’s actually about following Jesus.

Follow Jesus boldly. That work is still worth it. That work was always worth it.

For Personal Reflection: In what ways have you experienced the tension between church work and following Jesus?