Being a pastor – or really any kind of spiritual leader – isn’t difficult because of the money, though that’s not easy. It’s not hard because of demanding parishioners, though a congregation isn’t a cakewalk. Leading a flock isn’t tough because of the need to find time for a family or oneself or both, though those can be constant challenges. No, the hardest thing about being a pastor is managing one’s own heart.
The Puritans wrote that both riches and poverty are a fire. The reason is that both the conditions of being rich or poor can feed the tendency that everyone has to find a god other than God. It’s what the Bible calls idolatry. John Calvin, in his Institutes, memorably said, “The human heart is a perpetual idol factory.” The primary scriptural text on the topic says: “You shall have no toher gods before me” (Exodus 20:3, all scriptural notations are from the New International Version unless otherwise noted). It is the first commandment listed.
Later in the Biblical narrative in Isaiah the Scriptures are even more emphatic: “I am the first and I am the last;apart from me there is no God.”(Isaiah 44:6b).In Scripture. “idol” originally referred to gods who were alternatives to Yahweh. Later, the term also acquired a metaphorical meaning designating anything that is followed instead of following Yahweh. In his letter to the church in Ephesus, for example, the apostle Paul wrote, “For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person – such a person is an idolater – has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God” (Ephesians 5:5, emphasis mine). Paul is even more succinct elsewhere – “their god is their stomach” (Philippians 3:19).
So what should a pastor be following? What should they be chasing instead of a successful ministry, or raising money, or filling up the pews?It is nothing less than love from - and therefore love for - Jesus Christ. John Nelson Darby put it beautifully in his translation of Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians: “For the love of Christ constrains us, having judged this: that one died for all, then all have died. And he died for all, that they who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and has been raised” (2 Corinthians 5:14,15, emphasis mine).
The effective pastor works out of the firm knowledge that God both loves and saves them! In his letter to the Philippians, Paul commands, “Rejoice in the Lord!” (Philippians 3:1b). Here the Apostle echoes Nehemiah - “the joy of the Lord is your strength (Nehemiah 8:10b, emphasis mine). If this is, in fact, the primary note of the pastor’s emotional song, they will then be balanced. There are so many things that can make the pastor look very successful, and which, in and of themselves, are not bad things. But – in the words of the late author and pastor Tim Keller in his book Counterfeit Gods – taking something that is a good thing and making it an ultimate thing is what can make the pastor imbalanced. This reliance can, in fact, be referred to as idolatry.
There is nothing wrong with a large and growing congregation but it’s a good thing; it’s not an ultimate thing. There is nothing wrong with receiving praise for adept leadership, a great sermon, or a very effective counseling session; but these are all good things, they are not ultimate things. The difference is that a great pastor understands that love from Jesus is an ultimate thing. An understanding of that love is what sustains. There are times in every life when everything else is pulled out from under us and God and His love for us are all that’s left. There are times when the only thing that’s left IS the ultimate thing. And, as a consequence, it is this love that gives the pastor freedom from distractions.
This knowledge gives the pastor the ability to not succumb to idolatry.First and foremost, the pastor who wishes to be spiritually effective must intentionally go back and back and back to the gospel itself. This might be done by the reading of the Bible or other books, by quiet meditation on the truths of the gospel, or by prayer in speaking to God about what we know about the gospel and our gratefulness for it. That recurrent choice to think again and again on these eternal and sustaining truths – God loved ME and sent Jesus to die for ME and I am therefore saved - is the source of the overflowing love that will keep the pastor balanced and undistracted by relative superficialities.
It is only with the inner strengths of knowing that the omnipotent Creator of the universe loves us that we are free to truly love others in the midst of lesser fears and concerns. Nothing is at stake for us! We are children of the all-powerful and living Lord! We have the freedom to be able to focus on others! While in prison, the Apostle Paul both models this for us and enjoins us to follow his example: “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:3,4). In that same letter, Paul indicates that he had to deal with the opposite attitude of egoism quite a bit.
Speaking of his associate Timothy, Paul writes, “I have no one else like him, who will show genuine concern for your welfare. For everyone looks out for their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 2:20, 21, emphasis mine). But such an ongoing awareness must be cultivated. It is not automatic. The natural tendency of the heart is to degrade in its awareness of God’s love; it is so easy to be distracted by fears, accomplishments, or both. But as the pastor recurrently chooses to cultivate their own awareness of God’s love and its consequences, they are free.
Copyright Stephen Shields 2024. All rights reserved.
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