Warnings for when a pastor’s call becomes their profession

A crisis eventually comes in the life of many who hear that call of God having had it confirmed by three or more others.  And it is good that this crisis is acknowledged.

What was seen in the one who said ‘yes’ to God, the one who embarked on training to become a pastor, or to serve in a ministry role, was a certain kind of specialness.  But in the making of a pastor, that special gift gets professionalised.  Therein lay the risk.

What was identified as unique and highly prized for the service of God becomes, or is, the benchmark.  In other words, as far as ministers are concerned, the specialness of what it took to be recognised as having ‘what it takes’ to be a pastor is now simply the yardstick.

Pastors must show up with the characteristic gifts of a pastor.  It’s the minimum standard.

And yet this has an impact on the pastor, who is just a normal human being who appreciates having a gift for blessing people through their pastoral care, their teaching, their encouragement, or their mentoring, etc.

The impact is their tireless service in their gifts strips them bare and they don’t even realise what’s happening until one day they bear those gifts with a tarnished heart.  It shocks them if they’re aware.  It shocks others where they discern the incongruity.

If the pastor doesn’t do anything about the trajectory of the professionalising of their gift without shoring up their relationship with God, they become double-minded at best (an effective professional without the character of a heart after God) or dangerous at worst.  At worst, power that has become theirs potentially becomes corrupted, and there are umpteen different temptations to sin.

The point of all this is something that God brings all us pastors to eventually.

The reality is they appear to be fine exponents of the pastoral profession in their work, but they’re lousy regarding character in other places, including the home.

Having professionalised our service to others in God’s holy name, we then must go and backfill the hollowed trenches of our faith or we’ll soon find them full of resentments for burnout, empty with meaninglessness or hypocrisy, a façade for manipulation, or a hotbed for a terrible manifestation of temptation we have given assent to — the worst of this, abuse.

The one who CANNOT see these things as they approach and swallow them whole lacks pivotal insight.  The one who WON’T see these things, the one who refuses, is the narcissist who recklessly believes there is no accounting — when there is always an accounting.

When it all comes down to it, any of us who turn our passion into a profession stand to experience this, BUT the issue for pastors is we’re in a position of spiritual leadership and power, where the enemy of God bays for our blood, where lack of integrity is a poisoned chalice.

The power vested in a minister is a sacred power, certainly as it’s deployed in God’s name through their ministry, but again just as much by the power people give the minister and by the power a minister uses, usurps or accesses.

If the minister isn’t truly walking with the Lord, they will either be ineffective at best or potentially dangerous at worst.

When a pastor’s call becomes their profession, the pastor must respond by continuing to build their faith commensurate with their professionalism.

The professionalising of a pastor’s gifting is inevitable, and their biggest challenge is to make sure their character keeps pace with that growth.

Photo by Melyna Valle on Unsplash