Failed Pastor

When I first moved back to Nashville, I joked with a friend that I was a failed pastor.

It was one of those jokes that isn’t really a joke. The kind that gets a laugh because it’s easier than saying what you actually believe.

The truth is, a large part of me believed it.

I was divorced.

I’d stepped away from vocational ministry.

Those two facts became louder than every other truth I knew about myself. They became the lens through which I viewed my past, my present, and the future I thought God had taken from me.

The call I’d spent years submitting to seemed to have disappeared almost overnight, the core of who I feel called to be packed away and forgotten. I’d invested my twenties and early thirties into the local church and university campus ministry. My identity had become so intertwined with being “Pastor Tom” that when the title disappeared, I wasn’t entirely sure who was left. So much so, I didn’t even want to go by my first name anymore. “Pastor Tom” became simply “Rowan.”

Failure felt like an accurate assessment.

In ministry, we often celebrate stories of faithfulness, perseverance, and fruitfulness. We don’t always know what to do with stories that involve grief, disappointment, loss, or endings we never would have chosen. Somewhere along the way, I’d accepted the idea that had previously caused me to cringe, that pastors are supposed to have lives that move in one direction only, that look perfect, and that cannot truly fail. Life aimed upward. Sacred responsibility. Pedestalled influence. Something I never wanted to be.

Then life’s brokenness forced its way in. It reminded me that I am human.

That my heart can be broken deeper still.

That marriages can end.

That theology is much easier to articulate than it is to live.

And that sometimes we wake up wondering if we’ve squandered the calling God gave us.

The strange thing is that I wasn’t only grieving my marriage or my ministry. I was grieving the loss of fullness and purpose I found in giving my days to ministry.

More than that, I was grieving the future I thought I had. The sermons I imagined preaching. The people I longed to disciple. The churches I hoped to serve. It felt as though an entire future had died before I’d even had the chance to live it.

For a while, I quietly wore the label “failed pastor.” Sometimes not so quietly. “Divorced,” for some, is the unforgivable sin, regardless of the circumstances.

But for me, accepting that title seemed honest. It seemed humble. But over time I’ve begun to realise it wasn’t humility at all.

It was shame.

Fear.

Anxiety.

Shame is a cruel storyteller. It edits your memories until every failure stands centre stage and every evidence of God’s faithfulness fades quietly into the background.

Shame has a horrid way of quite suddenly collapsing a whole life into a single chapter.

It takes one event and makes it your identity.

It whispers that because your journey included failure, your destination is that too.

The gospel refuses to do that.

Scripture never hides the failures of God’s people. Noah gets drunk. Abraham lies. Moses murders. David commits adultery and orchestrates a death. Peter denies Jesus. Paul calls himself the chief of sinners. The Bible is remarkably honest about human weakness, not because failure doesn’t matter, but because redemption matters more.

That doesn’t minimise sin. It names it.

It doesn’t erase consequences. It faces them.

It doesn’t pretend wounds aren’t real. It bandages them.

It doesn’t allow failure to become the final word. Christ is the final word.

I’ve had to learn something I spent years teaching to other people but struggled to believe about myself.

My identity was never supposed to rest in any role of this life. No ministry. No marriage. No citizenship.

It was never supposed to rest in being needed, wanted, valued, or appreciated.

It was never supposed to rest in being qualified, successful, or even faithful enough.

It was always supposed to rest in Christ.

That sounds wonderfully obvious until everything else vanishes like vapour.

Then you discover whether you actually believe it.

I don’t write this because I’ve figured it all out, because I haven’t.

There are still days when I miss the work I used to do. It’s rare that I don’t. There are too many moments when I wonder how my life could have gone. There are scars that will probably always ache a little more than I care to admit.

That said, I’m also increasingly convinced that God has never been in the business of using perfect people.

He has always worked with repentant people.

With those honest enough to face their own shortcomings.

With people who know not merely what it means to be humble, but rather what it is to be humbled.

Perhaps that’s why Jesus seemed so comfortable around failures. Not because He celebrated brokenness, but because broken people need grace like drowning people need a lifeboat. Dare I say, those who have been broken down by this world are more prone to recognise Christ and accept His grace than those who have lived under perceived perfection.

So, I bought FailedPastor.com and redirected it to my website.

Why?

Because I know what it is to fail as a pastor.

But I don’t need to remain there.

Not because I’ve rewritten my history.

Not because the hard things didn’t happen.

But because failure is something I’ve experienced, not someone I am.

I am a man deeply loved by God.

A sinner being sanctified.

A disciple still learning to follow Jesus.

And if God’s redemption narrative teaches us anything, it is that He has an extraordinary habit of writing beautifully eloquent chapters long after the ones we thought had brought an abrupt and painful end to our stories.

So I turn a page.

I take a breath.

And I start to read.

Tell me, author of my story, what will we do with this life?