Pastors generally like people and, like most people, tend to prefer being liked to being hated. As most people in the congregation have an opinion about the pastor, it’s very easy for pastors to fall into a pattern of people-pleasing. This is very different from a servant’s heart, which all pastors should have. People-pleasing is insincere, hypocritical and motivated by a desire to be liked instead of by true love.

I am in my second month of my second pastorate. For most of my adult life, I’ve been an educator, a teacher and an administrator. I love being a pastor. I hope and pray that God blesses me and allows me to remain a pastor for the rest of my life. As a pastor, I have read about temptations that pastors face and have experienced most of these myself. I have also experienced some that I haven’t read as much about but have conformed with other pastor friends that they face, too.

I offer these ten temptations pastors face not as a public confessional but as an invitation to pray for your pastor. I don’t know for sure which of these your pastor faces, but he probably deals with at least some, if not most, if these ten:

10. People-pleasing. Pastors generally like people and, like most people, tend to prefer being liked to being hated. As most people in the congregation have an opinion about the pastor, it’s very easy for pastors to fall into a pattern of people-pleasing. This is very different from a servant’s heart, which all pastors should have. People-pleasing is insincere, hypocritical and motivated by a desire to be liked instead of by true love.

9. Laziness. Pastors are not generally supervised and held accountable like people in other jobs. The work pattern is very unusual and has periods of intense busyness followed by pockets of empty time. Much of a pastor’s calling is to study, and pastors can be tempted to be lazy students, halfhearted about studying and sermon preparation. The internet often aids in laziness, allowing pastors to short-cut their sermon preparation time.

8. Distraction. The Internet helps here, too. Sometimes pastors can be very busy doing things they don’t need to be doing and are not called to do. Sermon preparation and research can easily lead to checking the news (I need to be relevant), sports (good sermon illustrations in the sermon world) to watching random YouTube videos, etc.

7. Isolation. It’s easy for pastors to want to keep people at a safe distance, to protect themselves from hurt when people in the church criticize, gossip or leave. It can feel safer to be isolated, but a shepherd must be among the sheep, to know them and feed them well.

6. Hypocrisy. One form of isolation can be mask-wearing, which is also related to people-pleasing. By pretending to be holier, nicer, better, more faithful, etc., the pastor can protect his true self behind a facade.

5. Neglect personal and family worship. When it’s your job to study the Bible, lead people in worship, pray, counsel, etc., it can be tempting to neglect real personal worship and family worship.

4. Neglect of marriage. The church is the bride of Christ, not the bride of the pastor. But the pastor can become more committed to the church and her needs than to his wife and her needs.

3. Workaholism. If pastors get affirmation and a sense of fulfillment from being a pastor, it can be all too easy to do it all the time.

2. Distorting God’s word. This is one of the most dangerous and serious. It can be a combination of laziness and people-pleasing. It can also be related to the next sin, pride, Whatever its cause, the sin of mis-handling God’s word and preaching a personal agenda instead is very grave and destroys God’s people.

1. Pride. The pastor’s job is to deliver God’s word to God’s people in different settings – in the pulpit, in the classroom, in the hospital room, at weddings and funerals, etc. It’s far-too-easy for the pastor to forget that he is delivering God’s word and he is not a god himself. Not even close.

Pray for your pastor. He needs the Holy Spirit to protect him from these sins and keep him faithful and fruitful.

Jason A. Van Bemmel is a Teaching Elder in the Presbyterian Church in America. This article appeared on his blog Ponderings of a Pilgrim Pastor and is used with permission.