You don’t need to hear it from me, but maybe I need to hear it from myself: Pastor, you have permission to be a pastor.
Let’s see, you got into ministry because you love people, love the church, and love the Word of God. Your weeks are full—even in a pandemic—with leading meetings, preparing agendas, responding to emails, praying, counseling, reading a book with your staff, meeting a student for coffee, putting out relational and institutional fires, and, oh yeah, trying to find time to write a sermon.
And now, with everything going on in our country, you have to think through COVID protocols, navigate racial tensions, and help steer your congregation through another divisive election.
You’re tired.
Not tired of Jesus or tired of the gospel or tired of being with people in their moments of pain and joy. You are not tired of being a pastor. You are tired of not being a pastor.
You didn’t sign up for the ministry to become an expert in epidemiology or Supreme Court nominations.
You aren’t quite sure if masks are saving lives or the first step of government oppression.
You don’t know how to fix policing in America or if it needs fixing in the first place.
You’re not looking to sign up for Black Lives Matter or for Trump’s re-election campaign.
You don’t have an opinion on everything, or at least not an opinion you think needs to be shared with everyone.
But somehow, you’re wondering if you’re a squish for plodding along with social distancing and masks, or if you are insufficiently attuned to social justice because you aren’t sure the nation is a racist nightmare.
You’d like to think that reading old books, reading commentaries, and reading your Greek and Hebrew are still the most important things you can read each week. But it doesn’t feel like that. It feels like being up on the news is more important than being up on the mountain with God.
You’d like to think, even in the midst of COVID, that the old paths are still the right paths, that the ordinary means of grace are still the right means of grace. But that’s not what you’re hearing. Experts are saying we can’t go back to the way ministry was before. Once the pandemic passes, we have to start over and rethink everything.
What is a pastor to do?
If a few pastors have the time and the calling to speak into the pressing cultural issues of our day with courageous grace and winsome truth, go for it. We will rise up and call you blessed. But most pastors are not short on things they need to do. Don’t neglect what the Bible says about good shepherds: they feed, they guide, they protect, they preserve.
It’s tempting to think, Nothing prepared me for this. Perhaps. But don’t lose sight of what you were prepared to do. Don’t think that preaching the whole counsel of God is not prophetic. Don’t think that caring for the least of these in your congregation is not doing justice. Don’t think that being faithful in all the mundane messiness of your church and family is not real Christian discipleship. Keep your hand to the plow. Keep praying. Keep preaching. Keep loving people.
Everything is changing, they say. True, it always does. And at the same time, nothing has changed. God is still God. Sin is still the problem. The cross is still the answer. Jesus is still mighty to save.
Head down, chin up, one foot in front of the other. The world is broken, but what’s new about that? The Word still needs to be proclaimed, the darkness still needs the light, and the sheep still need a shepherd.
Don’t give up pastor. You have permission to be the pastor you always wanted to be.

Kevin DeYoung (PhD, University of Leicester) is senior pastor of Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina, Council member of The Gospel Coalition, and associate professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary (Charlotte). He has written numerous books, including Just Do Something. Kevin and his wife, Trisha, have nine children: Ian, Jacob, Elizabeth, Paul, Mary, Benjamin, Tabitha, Andrew, and Susannah.

You’ve probably seen entries in this Theological Primer series before. The idea is to take a word or phrase or concept from systematic theology and explain it in less than 500 words (e.g., the existence of God, the extra calvinisticum, the nature of church power).
I’m thrilled to be working on a book for Crossway that will include 365 entries like the ones above. At this point, we are calling the book Daily Doctrine, but that may change. It’s going to take me a few years to complete 180,000 words, so don’t look for the book anytime soon. But when it is finished (Lord willing), I’m hoping the book can be used as a daily devotional, a reference work, or read straight through as a mini systematic theology.
My goal is to plug away with one new chapter each week, and then knock out 50 or 60 over the summers. From time to time, I’ll put a fresh entry up on my blog. Today’s topic is “Religion.”
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The etymology of the word “religion” is unclear. Over the years, many have agreed with Cicero (106-43 BC) who derived religio from relegere, a Latin word meaning to gather together or to reread. On this account, religion is the diligent study of the things pertaining to God. Others have preferred the explanation given by the church father Lactantius (c. 250-325), which Augustine (354-430) adopted, that religio comes from religare, meaning to fasten or to bind. With this etymology, religion is the binding or reattachment of man to God.
In contemporary parlance, “religion” is often construed in entirely derogatory terms. Even by Christians, religion is supposed to be the opposite of a relationship with God. Or religion is about trying to earn God’s favor. Or religion is about a stultifying system of rituals, dogmas, and structures. The problem with this disparaging understanding of “religion” is threefold.
(1) This is a relatively new way for Christians to speak. John Calvin wrote the Institutes of the Christian Religion. Jonathan Edwards wrote on Religious Affections. Pastors and theologians, especially in the age of awakenings, often wrote about “religion” or “true religion” or “real religion.” Our forefathers were well-aware of religious hypocrisy and false religious systems, but they did not equate “religion” with works-righteousness.
(2) The word “religion” occurs five times in the ESV and is, by itself, a neutral word, translating either deisidaimonia (reverence for the gods) or threskeia (religious worship). Religion can refer to Judaism (Act 26:5) or the Jewish-Christian faith (Acts 25:19). Religion can be bad when it is self-made (Col. 2:23) or fails to tame the tongue (James 1:26). But religion can also be good when it cares for widows and orphans and practices moral purity (James 1:27). There is no biblical ground for making the practice of religion a uniformly negative phenomenon.
(3) In castigating “religion,” we may be unloading more baggage than we realize. People tend to equate commands, doctrines, structures, and rituals with religion. That’s why people want to be “spiritual but not religious.” And yet, Christianity is a religion that believes in commands, doctrines, structures, and rituals. As a Jew, so did Jesus. Jesus did not hate religion. On the contrary, Jesus went to services at the synagogue and operated within the Jewish system of ritual purity (Mark 1:21, 40-45). He founded the church (Matt. 16:18) and established church discipline (Matt. 18:15-20). He instituted a ritual meal and called for its perpetual observance (Matt. 26:26-28). He told his disciples to baptize people and teach them to obey everything he commanded (Matt. 28:19-20). He insisted that people believe in him and believe certain things about him (John 3:16-18; 8:24).
In short, we give people the wrong impression about Jesus and affirm unbiblical instincts about true spirituality when we quickly dismiss “religion” as antithetical to the gospel and at odds with God-honoring piety.

Kevin DeYoung (PhD, University of Leicester) is senior pastor of Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina, Council member of The Gospel Coalition, and associate professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary (Charlotte). He has written numerous books, including Just Do Something. Kevin and his wife, Trisha, have nine children: Ian, Jacob, Elizabeth, Paul, Mary, Benjamin, Tabitha, Andrew, and Susannah.