The Problem with Pastors

I've been thinking about a number of things for a while but this week whilst reading Paul Tripp's brilliant 'Dangerous Calling' (a must for EVERYONE in ministry) some of those thoughts have become more crystallised.  I am increasingly convinced we set up our churches so that pastors have a significant chance of burnout and failure.  I am also convinced that pride and sin leads pastors to accept those opportunities to burn out and fail because we look for approval from others in our congregation rather than rooting out identity who we are in Jesus (I say that because I see it in my own heart).

Here are a number of things that were said to me when we entered the ministry 10 years ago by a variety of people; we were told that being in ministry was lonely, that we couldn't afford to have any friends because that would be perceived as favouritism, that we had to be careful how much of ourselves to reveal because then people wouldn't feel they could approach us with their problems.  Fundamentally they are all wrong because they all set the pastor up to be head of the church.  But a pastor is not the head of the church, the pastor is part of the body of which Christ is the head.

And as part of the body the pastor should be engaged in the full one anothering which takes place in the local church.  Those who work for the church are not immune to sin, they are not immune to spiritual blindness and hard heartedness, they do not come automatically plugged into a constant source of joy in the gospel, they are not hardy types who never need encouragement, or rebuke, or counsel, loving warning, or marital help.  Church leaders are people, sinners who have been saved by grace and are in need constantly, day-by-day, hour-by-hour, of that grace worked deeper and deeper into our lives.  Is that how we think of ourselves as church leaders in what ever position or ministry?  Is that how you think of your pastor or minister?  Is that how functionally churches treat their minister?

If we allow, or even worse encourage, pastors and leaders to think of themselves like that we cut them off from the grace we all recognise we need to grow in our faith, to keep going in our walk with Jesus by the Spirit.  And we should expect their to be casualties.  Is the fact the ministries keep on wrecking, that pastors only do short pastorates (less than 15 years), that moral lapse is not uncommon due to the way we set up and think about church leaders.

And pastors do we collaborate, maybe even welcome, that unhealthy set up.  Why?  Because essentially we want others to think well of us, to respect us, to look up to us, because well that's what a church needs in a pastor.  Maybe because that is what we perceive is the job, and because to do anything else may lead to unemployment.  But if we delve deep enough into our hearts it is because of sin; pride, self-reliance, a drift from the gospel that justifies.

What would a healthy model of pastoral ministry look like?  It would be a place where the pastor was viewed not just as a teacher but as someone needing to be taught, not just as a someone who does pastoral care but someone in need of pastoral care, where he was one anothered as others one another, not just someone in need of grace but needing grace, part of the body of Christ not above it or outside it.