I think the greatest pitfall that a pastor has to avoid is the pitfall of ego.
It's easy to answer a question like this with specific sins that creep in: we can talk about
an unhealthy attraction to a woman other than your wife, we could talk about your finances,
or laziness and all those are indeed problems, they need to be avoided.
But at their heart is really the problem of our heart: it's ego.
Ego wants to be stroked.
I care about me, I'm not caring about the gospel, not caring about the mission, I'm
not caring about the calling of God in my life.
So I think the greatest pitfall that a pastor can have is falling prey to his ego and making
his world about himself.
That is so dangerous because it leads us into all those other sins.
I need to realize that this is about the glory of Christ: when I preach, when i visit, when
I share the gospel with someone, everything I do is in order to glorify Him and my ego
is a detriment, it is a problem.
I need to get it out of the way.
Jesus didn't say take up your mirror and follow me. He said take up your cross. And we really
do have to die to self, to self-justification and to self-importance.
Another pitfall that a pastor falls into is:
the wrong kind of expectations of his church.
He's often tremendously disappointed when his church members turn out to be totally
depraved like he is.
And he expects them to listen to what he's preaching and do what he says and care about
lost people, and a lot of times when they don't, he can grow discouraged. And he needs to remember
that the call of God on a life is to preach the gospel, whether or not there are ears to hear.
Jeremiah wanted to quit. Ezekiel wanted to quit. And God told them both you keep preaching
and he said you preach until their ears are full of wax, you preach until they hear no
more and that's what we have to do.
We make it about the glory of Christ, and eventually the Holy Spirit uses it.
We see growth in some, we see results in some, and it's a tremendous problem when a pastor
starts thinking that he's responsible for the results, that indeed people are always
going to do the right thing.
They're not, they're going to hurt and wound and disappoint you, but your faithfulness
can't depend on their response.
Another pitfall that we can fall into is when we don't stay focused on the main thing.
A lot of times you'll go into a church and you might identify certain issues in the church:
I want to change their governance to this way, I've noticed they don't believe this
particular doctrine."
And we make it about a particular agenda item that's important to us, when that's really
not the heart of a shepherd.
We often have more of an idea of what we want the perfect church to be.
Well, we've seen it done elsewhere like this so and so's church is like this and I'm gonna
do whatever I need to get my church like that.
It's just the wrong way to go about it.
You've got to go into a church first of all with a deep love of the people, these are
people for whom Christ died even when they frustrate you and they don't listen and they
hurt you, you've got to make it about his glory above anything else.
And when you do that then your own faithfulness doesn't go up or down with their response
because you've made it about the calling of God in Christ Jesus.
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