The Question God Wouldn't Stop Asking
What happens when God asks a question you're not sure you want to answer.
There is a question that has been weighing on me for longer than I want to admit, and I am not proud that I tried to outrun it.
Are you still willing to serve My people?
When a few mentors started nudging me toward Substack many months back, I recognized it as more than practical advice because I had heard that kind of nudge before.
It tends to arrive wrapped in other people’s words, but the source is consistent, and I knew this was God pressing on something He hadn’t stopped asking me for a long time.
The honest answer? I wasn’t sure if I was still willing.
What Twenty Years in Ministry Teaches You
I’ve served in dozens of ministry roles for over twenty years, and I want to be careful here, because I mean what I’m about to say with real tenderness: pastoring people is some of the most fruitful, life-giving work I’ve ever done, and it is also genuinely costly in ways that don’t show up in any job description.
We are all, on our best days, difficult to lead. Ministry indexes heavily on damage control. You walk with people through their hardest and darkest moments, and sometimes the help you offer is not wanted, and sometimes offering it costs you the relationship. Twenty-plus years of that teaches you something about what it means to give without guarantee of return, and somewhere in me, I had grown quietly tired of betrayal and pain that hits deep.
So I sat with the question honestly. Was I still willing to do this? Or had I earned the right to fade into the background?
“Ministry indexes heavily on damage control. You walk with people through their hardest and darkest moments, and sometimes offering help costs you the relationship.”
The Convergence That Changed the Direction
What I recognized in that long, ongoing prayer between me and God was a genuine dissatisfaction. Not just the restless kind, but a deep sense that the status quo, in corporate America and in the structure of the church I had known, was no longer the lane I was meant to occupy. If I was putting my chips back on the table, I wanted fresh vision not to be different, but because I felt that was where my calling resided.
That inner work hit at the same time my second daughter was heading to college, and we were staring at the reality of both girls in school simultaneously. The financial weight of that was real. I started praying specifically about what I was building, whether it would be ministry or a coaching business, and I believe I got a firm answer: this is a coaching business.
So I joined Substack and started writing.
What Six Months Has Actually Looked Like
Nearly 1,200 subscribers. A handful of paid supporters. Twelve clients at various stages of career transition and pressure. Most of them are job displaced or at a serious crossroads, which puts me right at the intersection I’ve walked for thirty years, enterprise technology and pastoral presence.
And I’ll be honest with you the way I would with a close friend: I am not good at making money from this. Actually, I suck at it… lol.
When you have pastored for most of your adult life, you get used to giving help away freely, without invoice, because that is what service has meant to you. It is genuinely hard to turn around and attach a price to something that has, for most of your life, been an act of service and giving. The last thing I want to do is add financial burden to someone who already feels like they’re carrying too much.
But I’m learning something. Sustainability is not a compromise of calling. Building something that can actually last, something that doesn’t quietly ask my family to absorb the hidden cost of my willingness, is itself an act of faithfulness. I’m still working out what that looks like in practice.
“Sustainability is not a compromise of calling. Building something that can actually last is itself an act of faithfulness.”
Still Here. Still Willing.
Six months in, I can say this with more clarity than I had when I started: the question God kept asking was not rhetorical. He was not checking whether I was spiritually enthusiastic enough. He was asking whether I trusted Him enough to stay in the tension, to serve people in a new form, and to believe that building something sustainable was not a betrayal of the pastoral instinct that got me here.
For the love of God… I’m still here. And I’m still willing.
If you’re in that tension too, feeling the pull to give more than you can sustain, wondering whether calling and livelihood can actually coexist, you are not alone in it. That question doesn’t have a tidy answer, but it’s worth sitting with honestly. The honest conversation is usually where the real clarity starts.
So that’s where I am right now. Still called. Still willing. Still learning. Not trying to build a platform, not trying to impress anyone… just trying to be faithful with what God has put in my hands, and wise about how I carry it, because service that isn’t sustainable eventually fades, and I don’t want that to be the fruit of my life.
Much Love,
Chris