A word from Peter Ahn
Pastor, one of ministry’s deepest temptations is the desire to be wanted.
Not simply loved or respected. Needed. Admired. Sought after for your preaching, your vision, your leadership, and what people believe God has placed in you.
I have called it the desire to be "spiritually lusted after." The phrase is uncomfortable because the temptation is uncomfortable. I know because I lived it. And I learned that the temptation does not disappear when a church grows. It often grows with it.
A word from Peter Ahn
Pastor, one of ministry’s deepest temptations is the desire to be wanted.
Not simply loved or respected. Needed. Admired. Sought after for your preaching, your vision, your leadership, and what people believe God has placed in you.
I have called it the desire to be "spiritually lusted after." The phrase is uncomfortable because the temptation is uncomfortable. I know because I lived it. And I learned that the temptation does not disappear when a church grows. It often grows with it.
Before you read any further, I want to talk to you directly.
My Story
I felt like a complete failure.
I planted Metro Community Church with a dream so big it embarrasses me to say out loud now: over a million people in the pews. Stadiums. Global impact. The kind of pastor other pastors looked up to.
After five years of pouring everything I had into that dream, I couldn’t break 200 people.
So I did what a lot of pastors do when the gap between the dream and the reality becomes unbearable - I started lying. When other pastors asked how many we had, I’d say 175. We had 150. I told myself it was a “hopeful projection”. The truth was simpler and uglier: 175 felt closer to 200, and 200 felt closer to not being a failure.
I’ve since learned the number is never the point. I’ve sat with pastors running churches of eighty and pastors running churches of eight thousand, and the lie is the same shape. Whether the growth is real or just transfer. Whether the staff is healthy. Whether you still pray when nobody’s watching. The gap between what you report and what’s true exists at every size. Mine was twenty-five people. Yours might be something you’ve never said out loud. By year five, I had nothing left. Walking across the parking lot to my car at 10:30 on a Sunday night after an 18-hour day, the words that came out of my mouth stunned me:
“I want to die.”
I wasn’t suicidal. I was completely broken. And the church I was building on my own strength was breaking with me.
That night didn’t end my ministry. It began it.
Through a forced sabbatical I didn’t want. Through counseling I resisted. Through the slow, painful work of learning to be honest - I discovered God was never asking me to be successful. He was asking me to be faithful.
And faithfulness doesn’t look like strength. It looks like honest, vulnerable, God-dependent weakness.
- Peter Ahn, Founder, Weak Church Alliance
A Wider Pastoral Crisis
Two signs that something deeper is wrong.
These numbers do not point to one simple cause. They show a church carrying strain: pastors who are often isolated, and young adults who are losing connection with Christian communities. The relationship between those realities deserves attention, but it should not be overstated.
This is not just my story.
18%
of Protestant senior pastors say they have contemplated self-harm or suicide in the past year.
65%
report feelings of loneliness or isolation.
Barna Group, The State of Pastors
The Next Generation is Watching
1 million young people walk away from the church every year.
That is the number I wanted in my pews. It's the number leaving through the back door while we argue about how to fill the front.
Projection: The Great Opportunity, Pinetops Foundation
66%
of young adults who grew up in church stop attending for at least a year between 18 and 22.
61%
say church members seemed judgmental or hypocritical.
Lifeway Research
“People in pain are not drawn to perfection. They're drawn to honesty.”
-from The Weak Church
Why Weakness
Nobody wants to be weak. I understand - I didn't either.
Weakness sounds like defeat. Like giving up. Like the last thing a pastor responsible for a staff, a vision, and a congregation should ever embrace. So let me be clear about what I actually mean.
This is not
A defeatist mentality
An excuse for passivity
Abandoning your gifts or your calling
This is
The most countercultural truth in Scripture
Leading from what God can do, not just what you can
A shift that changes everything - not just in you, in your church
"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."
2 Corinthians 12:9
Invitation to Pastors
Does any of this feel familiar?
You don't have to keep performing.
Holding more together in public than you can sustain in private.
Noticing how easily attendance, followers, or invitations become measures of your worth.
Wondering whether the demands of ministry are pulling you away from why you began.
Quietly worried that a flat year means you are failing or that God is no longer at work.
Tired of projecting strength when what your people may need most is an honest, grounded pastor.
This may not be your whole story. But if even one of these lines feels familiar, you are not alone.
Programs, production, and growth have their place. But they cannot carry the spiritual weight we sometimes place on them. God's power meets us in the weakness we would rather hide.
Where to Start
Begin where you are.
The Weak Church Alliance is a growing movement of pastors learning to lead with greater honesty, emotional health, faithfulness, and dependence on God. The book, cohorts, and personal conversations are three ways to begin.
Read the book
First chapter free - one pastor talking honestly to another. Nothing to join, nothing to schedule., no commitment
Free, no commitment
Join a coaching cohort
A confidential formation space where pastors can do honest work alongside peers who understand the pressures of ministry.
Six months, 8–12 pastors
Meet one-on-one
A personal, honest, pastoral conversation - not a consulting session.
One conversation
Stay in it
One honest letter a month.
Once a month I write about the parts of pastoral life we do not talk about often enough. I also share useful resources for pastors and churches: chapters, guides, sermon material, and occasional cohort openings. No hype and no pressure.
If it is useful, I hope you will keep reading. If it isn't, you can leave at any time.