Let’s be honest. There are too many power struggles in the local church. Gospel ministry easily becomes politicized. Pride causes you to hunger for power (even though you may not know it). The hunger for power causes you to collect ministry allies, and the desire for control causes you to locate ministry enemies. Somehow, some way, gospel ministry has become a political battleground for human power.

I didn’t see it at the time, but I enjoyed the ministry celebrity that I experienced my early days in coal country. I was the center of a little growing church and a rapidly growing Christian school, and I loved it. We were seeing fruit in a place where there hadn’t been much fruit, and people were excited. Thankful people seem to be everywhere, and they expressed their thanks often. But, in ways I didn’t see then, I took a lot of the credit.  

I was unaware of how proud I had become until a man asked if he could meet with me. I was sure he has been convicted by one of my glorious sermons and wished to counsel with me. We met over dinner, a meal that neither one of us ended up eating, and it quickly became clear that he didn’t want to talk about himself. He spent a couple hours offering me example after example of my pride. He said that he thought I thought my job was to give “the final opinion on everything.” 

I was devastated. I thought he had been inaccurate and unkind. But I couldn’t escape his words, so I called my brother Tedd to ask him what I should do. Tedd gave me the best and hardest advice. He simply said, “Listen.” In the next few weeks I tried my best to stop, listen, and look. What I saw was a proud man who had begun in subtle and not-so-subtle ways to take credit for what only grace could produce. I heard a man speaking who had forgotten who he was. I saw a young pastor who had already begun to act as if he had arrived.  

I wish I could say that I am free of all the self-assessment delusions of my ministry youth. There are times when the congratulatory comments of a thankful hearer morphs into self-congratulation. There are times when I am defensive as someone presumes to question or confront me. There are times when I am too self-aware and not nearly as Christ-aware as I should be. I still struggle with latent self-righteousness , and the praise of others tends to confirm the praise for myself I still carry around in my heart. So I still cry out for help. I still need to be rescued from me. I still have but one hope: the transforming grace of Jesus Christ.  

So what are the lifestyle tendencies of a pastor ministering from a position of arrival? If you think you’ve arrived, you will:

Think you don’t need what you preach.

Sinclair Ferguson has said that he determined to be a man who sits under his own preaching. Even your preparation should be an acknowledgement of ongoing need, a cry for divine help and a celebration of ever-present inexhaustible grace. Think Isaiah 6: “I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell amongst people of unclean lips.”

If you think you have arrived, you prepare material from above for people who sadly still need what you no longer need. Are you desperately hungry for the truths that you regularly prepare to expound to others?

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