At last, I said: “I’m grateful you want to honor my studies, but please don’t mistake a degree for maturity, competence, fitness for ministry, and certainly not for godliness. The one does not necessarily portend the others. All it really means is that I persevered long enough to meet some academic requirements.” From the standpoint of interview skill, that was the correct answer. But over the next three years, God burned the truth of those words deep into the recesses of my soul.

I warned them, but I don’t think they believed me.

No doubt, they thought I was merely trying to exhibit humility or was trafficking in a garden-variety form of preacher talk. The pastoral search committee had zeroed in on me as its final candidate, but the three letters that sometimes appear to the right of my name kept hijacking our conversation: PhD.

“Should we call you doctor?” one asked. “I’ll bet you’ll really get this church going with all you bring to the table as a doctor,” another said. I fidgeted in my seat. I didn’t doubt the sincerity of their admiration, but I felt profoundly unprepared to play the role of spiritual superhero.

I had no idea.

At last, I said: “I’m grateful you want to honor my studies, but please don’t mistake a degree for maturity, competence, fitness for ministry, and certainly not for godliness. The one does not necessarily portend the others. All it really means is that I persevered long enough to meet some academic requirements.”

From the standpoint of interview skill, that was the correct answer. But over the next three years, God burned the truth of those words deep into the recesses of my soul.

Soon, the church called me as senior pastor. Soon, I learned that advanced degrees from a leading theological institution had not transformed me into the godly, humble, wise, selfless leader this congregation desperately needed. Soon, I realized only suffering-laden service on the front lines of ministry could make me that man. Soon, it hit me: I serve the church at war.

Sadly, my tenure in that first pastorate lasted little more than three years, due mostly to a major financial crisis in the church. Today, I am privileged to serve a different congregation. And thanks to lessons learned from many mistakes and foolhardy decisions I made in the first church, I am a different pastor.

Here are three major lessons I could’ve learned only by serving God’s people in the local church: credentials are not competence; ministry means war; and apart from God’s unilateral grace, a pastor labors in vain.

Credentials ≠ Competence

Prior to becoming a pastor, I had preached 1 Corinthians 13 many times and had seen it cross-stitched on home decor at least a thousand more. But once I began to shepherd a local flock, it became one of the most perplexing passages to me in the entire Bible. Why? It’s not difficult to interpret, but therein lies the rub; it’s difficult because it’s easier to be orthodox than it is to be loving.

And “knowledge puffs up” (1 Cor. 8:1). As one who prizes the study of theology and church history, that phrase hits close to home. It hits home because, if God gave me one wish in a prosperity-theology sort of way, I’d be tempted to choose “have all knowledge” instead of “be loving.”

Every hour of seminary delighted my soul. It left me with much knowledge, and, as it’s designed to do, equipped me to gain more for myself. But I soon realized that my command of Greek or Hebrew or the Puritans is not enough to keep me from erupting when an angry church member brings false charges against me. Those things don’t guarantee wise leadership decisions when a deacon tells me the church is almost out of money.

Sure, my theological knowledge positions me to make wise decisions and enables me to feed the flock with healthy grass, but the maturity needed to be a godly under-shepherd comes only through days, weeks, months, and years of labor in the vineyard of the Lord. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I am a man in the middle of his sanctification, just like the people who listen to me preach every Lord’s Day.

Love > Knowledge

Soon, I realized the people under my care were not all that interested in my orthodoxy, although I could never compromise it. They just wanted to know if I loved them. Once they knew I genuinely cared and saw them as cherished family in Christ—and not as mere subjects for evangelism or discipleship—they were much more willing to listen to me expound orthodoxy.

And there was only one means for building such trust: time in their presence.

I recall one particularly cranky man who just didn’t seem to like me—at first. So, taking a page from the Richard Baxter playbook, I visited his home. It was summer and we sat on his porch. We discussed Auburn and Georgia football. I listened to him talk about Dale Earnhardt. I listened to his wife talk about her family’s role in founding our church.

Before long, they seemed to move into my corner. On the day I left the church, he bear-hugged me and, through a river of tears, told me how his family had grown to love mine and how they would miss us. They would even miss my teaching.

The apostle warned me about this: “If I have . . . all knowledge . . . but have not love, I am nothing” (1 Cor. 13:2). If I do not love my people, they will not care how much theological talk proceeds from the pulpit. They will follow me only when I prove I love them and can be trusted as a mature teacher and under-shepherd.

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