Lost & Found: A Passion for the Church
Nov. 8 2006
We know that there are a lot of people burned by involvement in churches and might be wondering whether to ever go back. This story is for you. It’s the story of a disillusioned pastor that lost and found a passion for the local church. Our hope is that in sharing his story people that have been burned by their church experience would find hope too.
Sitting alone in his basement, Pat Sczebel was ready to walk out on the church.
He’d spent the last nine years in ministry and he’d seen some good, but a lot of the bad and ugly. After quitting his job for the tenth time since he’d taken it he knew that this time it was for good. He was tired. Tired of conflict with other pastors. Tired of riding the next big wave or program.
Pat had just released a worship album and decided to leave his church and travel from church to church doing worship seminars. As Pat relates the story he sighs and says, “I was ready to forsake all if there was something real and authentic.” He was yearning for something that he couldn’t put his finger on. Looking back on the last nine years of ministry he felt like there should be more. Something. Anything.
Pat had been saved at the age of thirteen and had yearned to be a big part of God’s plan. He bounced from place to place with his family in his early twenties until the pastor of a large and influential church in Toronto called him and asked him to become their Youth Pastor. Pat jumped at the opportunity.
“The senior pastor met me at the airport. Almost the first thing out of his mouth was ‘I’m not relational. You do your job and I’ll do mine and we’ll get along fine.’”
Even without any expectations of what pastoral ministry was like Pat was still surprised. Staff meetings often consisted of evaluating results. And by results they meant numbers. How many had come to the youth rally? What was attendance like? How many people had professed faith in Christ? There was much good going on and God was bringing many people through the church doors. But many people were walking out the doors just a few weeks later.
There seemed to be a constant search for the next big ministry trend. “We found our joy in the next experience,” Pat says, “There was always one new experience after another.” One movement or trend after another. “I kept feeling the whole time that ‘something is wrong.’ But at the same time there was a proud craving in my heart that was drawn to it.”
In a sense Pat had the chance to do what he’d always wanted. He was making a name for himself in the city playing in huge worship festivals and huge worship parades. “People were telling me I’d fill up stadiums.” Pat admits he wanted to believe them. There was a sinful craving in his heart for recognition, even at the expense of his family.
Pat admits he often saw his family as something in the way—almost as something holding him back from doing what he wanted to do. And he related to his family on based on how his work life was going. “My wife would have said that I was one of the most up and down people she’d ever met. I would get a high from an event then get horrible lows.”
Then there was an ongoing conflict Pat had with his senior pastor. Pat quit and returned numerous times. Finally, the situation climaxed and Pat resigned for good.
Sitting alone in his basement Pat still had a passion for God but he’d lost his passion for the church. He’d decided he wasn’t going to be accountable to anyone. He wasn’t going to have to deal with people that told him what to do. He was going to make his own decisions. It was then, Pat says, that God put his finger on something in his heart.
“Sitting at home by myself I thought, ‘You’ve become what you’re bothered by—what you’ve left. You’re no different than the guys you don’t want to be anything like.’” He was just another visionary that didn’t want input from anyone.
Pat sat and thought about the last nine years of his pastoral ministry. Was it supposed to be like this?
“I was starting to think maybe the church wasn’t God’s plan.” It sure didn’t look like it was. But maybe, just maybe, there was something else out there.
Flipping through his address book his eyes settled on a name: Mark Altrogge. Pat met the songwriter and pastor before and greatly respected him. It couldn’t hurt to call him. After all, Pat didn’t have much else to lose. That phone call changed everything.
The phone call Pat made to Mark Altrogge was the turning point.
A few weeks later Pat found himself at a leadership conference Mark invited him to attend. The people there were unlike any he’d ever met. “I cried for four day,” Pat says, “There were authentic and genuine people there. I was smitten.”
As he got to know the people in Mark’s family of churches Pat saw something he’d never experienced. The people were genuine; the things they said and did weren’t performances, they were real. Even the things they valued were different.
At the conference the leaders honored a man named C.J. Mahaney for, of all things, his humility. “I’d never seen that before,” Pat says. These pastors valued humility more than performance. They valued character first, not ability.
And from then on Pat says he began to experience a fundamental shift in the way he thought about church. He came to see it not as an event, not as just a Sunday morning, but as something that encompassed all of life.
“There wasn’t ‘the way we do church on Sunday,’” he explains, “Instead there was only ‘the way we do church every day.’” The mundane brought God glory just as much as a snazzy Christian club. Church wasn’t just an event—it was people.
Fast-forward a few months and Pat found himself meeting with a small group of 30 people in Vancouver during the weekends and flying out to the Sovereign Grace Ministries Pastors College during the week.
Pat cries when he talks about how much he grew during those months. In his thinking he no longer saw his family as an inconvenience but as something precious. Specific classes on marriage and parenting required huge boxes of tissues. Family wasn’t separate from his role in the church, Pat saw, they were where his involvement in church started. At the same time Pat was exposed to Covenant Life Church and other churches where he could experience a picture of the church he was looking for.
Those were hard months, but precious months. “I finally saw the glory of the local church. I thought, “What does it matter that I’m not leading worship for thousands? I’d rather be with thirty folks than doing that.”
Today Pat pastors a church in Vancouver, BC with senior pastor Tony Walsh. Coming full circle from being on the verge of the leaving the church is now passionately committed to it. When you ask him about the church today, his eyes light up. Pat credits God and the examples of the people in his family of churches for the change.
He has this advice to offer to those that, like him, have been burned by their involvement in churches: “Although you have maybe seen the bad and the ugly of church know that there are still great churches out there. There are people that live lives near the cross of Jesus Christ—people who daily gaze upon their Savior and all that he accomplished for them on the cross.”
“It is his church, his plan, it’s not about you” Pat says laughing. “Love him by loving the church. Be busy with your own life seeking to put sin to death and live a life worthy of the gospel. Spend less time looking at everyone else’s problems. Live amazed that God would save you and bring you into the kingdom of his dear Son. In view of the mercy God has shown you…Let gratefulness be your song.”
“Offer all of your life to be passionate about the thing the Savior is most passionate about...his church.”