Lies Pastors Believe, Part One

By amazon Thursday, December 12, 2019 Comment Edit

Pastors are called on constantly to help people fix their lives, because pastors minister to people who are broken. But pastors are broken people, too.

Pastoring is difficult. Ask any pastor how the day is going and about 360 days of the year you’ll hear at least one challenge that day—relational, spiritual, physical, emotional, or mental. Roughly five days a year we feel like we wouldn’t have changed a thing. Those are precious days when so many are filled with defeat, discomfort, or discouragement.

Pastors are called on constantly to help people fix their lives, because pastors minister to people who are broken. But pastors are broken people, too. It’s easy to want to come up with the quick fix, the perfect remedy. I just need a plan! we muse to ourselves. I just need a strategy, or, I wish I could stay committed to the strategy I have, we think. Or, I need more sleep. I need more sabbath-ing.

I want to give eight lies pastors believe—those which can pull us off the beaten path traveled by godly leaders in generations past. Part One looks at the first four.

1. I just need more plans and strategies, and I will be a better leader.

Pastors tend to be doers, and in our doing we can forget that who we are in Christ matters far more than what we do for Christ. Derwin Gray summed up the recent G2 Summit’s focus succinctly: “The greatest work God wants to see done is not ministry THROUGH you, but ministry IN you.”

When pastors give and minister to the point of mental or emotional exhaustion we can begin to believe the lie that the answer to every challenge is a new plan or strategy: just give me the one strategy, the “magic bullet” I can use to lead my church to do ______, and I am set. There is no magic bullet. We don’t need a magic bullet. We need Jesus.

The only way to lead better is by letting God love you better. ...