Pastor Pressure: How to Become a Better Man or a Worse Man
I’ve been a pastor here in the San Francisco Bay Area for 9 years. Before becoming a pastor I worked as an alarm installer, furniture mover, college campus handyman, ministry communications director, security guard, and waiter.
I’ve come to experience that there is a type of pressure that’s unique to the office of pastor. This unique pressure can lead to two opposite outcomes. I first heard Tim Keller name this reality and it has helped me make better sense of my life and work.
The Unique Pressure
The pastorate is a unique calling that requires a man to constantly, daily, publicly say to people sentences like:
God is good.
Trust God with all of your heart.
The gospel is the best news in the world, it can radically change your life and your community.
God is sovereign, God is wise, God is good–you can trust him at all times.
Other professions don’t require you to constantly stand in front of another person or a congregation and say such things. One of my best friends has a high pressure job as a Secret Service agent. He faces pressures I don’t face as a pastor (like bullets and assassins), but he never has to show up at work and tell anyone that God is real, God is at work, and God is to be praised and trusted.
Why is This Pressure?
Because you have just two choices: you can fake it, or you can really believe it.
Faking It: Becoming a Worse Man
Some pastors fake it. Their hearts can’t keep up with all of the God-talk. Eventually what you get is a man who spends his week churning out sermons, leading counseling sessions, discipling others, and evangelizing neighbors by speaking sentence after sentence about the power of the gospel and the goodness of God, but he doesn’t really believe it. He’s faking it!
All his God-talk has become just that–talk. The pastor’s heart hasn’t kept up with what his job requires from his mouth. He wakes up in the morning with the pressure to tell other people about the glorious, redeeming God of the Bible, but his own heart isn’t warmed by the truths he speaks. So, he keeps faking it. He feels pressure to fake it.
Eventually, such a pastor discovers that he’s become a worse man because of his work as a pastor. The pressure of the job has made him a hypocrite, a man who constantly says things he doesn’t really believe and experience in his own heart. He realizes he would’ve been a better and happier man if he’d taken a career path that didn’t involve this unique pressure.
Believing It: Becoming a Better Man
Other pastors really believe the sentences they speak. They feel great pressure pushing down on their shoulders. As they prepare the sermon, speak with their non-Christian neighbor, lead the difficult counseling meeting, or disciple someone, they notice the dissonance between the words they speak and what’s going on in their hearts.
They feel the gut-check, the conviction, the tug of the Spirit:
I just told the church that God accepts and loves people on the basis of Jesus’ work, not ours. Do I really believe this? I want these people to like me, to be impressed with me. Do I really believe what I’m saying, do I find my identity and rest in Jesus, or do I just say I do? Do I care more about what these people think of me than about what God thinks of me?
Instead of ignoring this gut-check, such a pastor takes action and meets with God. He chooses to process what’s going on in his heart in the presence of God. He lays it all out before God. He gets his heart back to the gospel. He repents. He asks for help, for more grace, for the Spirit’s power. He tells his wife and his good friends about what’s really going on in his life and he enlists their help, encouragement, and prayer. This cycle is constantly repeating itself. This man doesn’t feel pressure to fake it, he feels pressure to really believe it. The pressure actually energizes him.
Eventually, such a pastor discovers that he’s become a better man because of his work as a pastor. The pressure of the job has made him a man who more deeply believes and experiences the biblical truths he’s constantly talking about. He realizes that his own sanctification might be one of the main reasons God called him to be a pastor. He realizes that he would’ve turned out a worse man had he chosen a different career path. The unique pressure of the pastorate has made him a far better man than he would’ve been otherwise.
Pastors, join me in seeing our vocation as God’s perfectly pressured path for making us better men.
Question: Readers, how have you seen or experienced this pressure?
The Story of God and Man (with a Diagram)
This is a guest post by my good friend, Toby Kurth, pastor of Christ Church in San Francisco. I asked Toby to post the diagram he created for his current sermon series and to explain the series.
This bookmark encapsulates our fall sermon series, “Covenant: The Story of God and Man.” We are using this series to help our people better understand what the Bible, as a whole, teaches about who God is, who we are, and why it matters. We are combining traditional elements of covenant theology with a simple narrative of redemptive history. We are not after just knowing more about the Bible, but are focusing, in particular, on taking hold of our identity in Christ. What we lost in Adam, we recover in Christ. Despite sin and rebellion, God continued to pursue humanity, culminating in the person and work of Christ. All of Scripture details God’s unfolding plan of redemption. Everything points to Christ. Everything we read in our Bibles fits somewhere into this amazing plan.
We are taking fourteen sermons to unpack the series. The sermon headings are listed below. The diagram above can be downloaded as a bookmark.
1. GOD
2. Man
3. Fall
4. Noah
5. Abraham
6. Moses
7. David
8. Israel
9. Exile
10. New Covenant
11. New Man
12. Fulfillment
13. Signs
14. Restoration
God is Not A Highway Patrol Officer
Every time I pass near a Highway Patrol car I instantly assume the officer is staring directly at me and that he’s staring at me because I’m in trouble. This leads me to do a rapid self-assessment in hopes of assuaging the guilt: Am I speeding? Do I have updated registration stickers on my license plate? Did I come to a complete stop at that stop sign? Did I cut somebody off?
Unfortunately, many Christians relate to God the way they relate to the Highway Patrol. They think God is constantly staring at them for all the wrong reasons. They think God is on duty in his patrol car, following close behind, in search of infractions, imperfections, and violations of the law. And so we quickly do the self-assessment, making sure we’re meeting all the standards so that God doesn’t pull us over and give us a ticket.
The good news of the gospel is that God is not a Highway Patrol officer!
Jesus has performed perfectly in our place. The perfect performance of the Son of God has permanently changed how God looks at those who trust in Him.
Christian, God is indeed constantly staring at you. But his is not the stare of punishment or disappointment, it’s the stare of acceptance, approval, and gladness. There’s no need to do a self-assessment to assure yourself of this, instead do an immediate Jesus-assessment. Ask yourself, “what does the Father see when he looks at Jesus?” Answer: perfect righteousness.
Jesus is perfect! When God the Father looks at you, he sees you covered in Jesus. Covered in Jesus! You’ve got Jesus all over you. You’re covered in Jesus!
That’s what God sees when he looks at you. God is your loving Father. He sees you covered in his Son Jesus.
God is not a Highway Patrol officer.
People Are Moving into Cities Faster than the Church is Moving into Cities
Instead of watching the San Francisco Giants win game 4 against the Phillies last night, Tim Keller spoke to the Lausanne III crowd in Cape Town. He delivered a paper on God’s global urban mission.
“The people are moving into the cities faster than the church is,” Keller emphasized. “If you love what God loves then you will love the cities. If you want to go where the people are you got to go into the cities.”
The Christian Post reports on Keller’s message.
Preaching is a Huge Commitment
Preaching is a huge commitment. So why would anyone want to bear such a burden? Why put yourself through weekly agony with the potential for public humiliation? Any preacher knows the answer: because speaking as God’s representative, an agent of change and salvation, is the greatest and highest privilege in the world. Whatever study it may demand, whatever sacrifice it may require, whatever effort it may entail is eclipsed and forgotten in the sight of lives touched by God and changed by the gospel.
-Hershael York
How David Beats Goliath
This is a fascinating read. Malcolm Gladwell, How David Beats Goliath, The New Yorker (May 2009):
“And it happened as the Philistine arose and was drawing near David that David hastened and ran out from the lines toward the Philistine,” the Bible says. “And he reached his hand into the pouch and took from there a stone and slung it and struck the Philistine in his forehead.” The second sentence—the slingshot part—is what made David famous. But the first sentence matters just as much. David broke the rhythm of the encounter. He speeded it up. “The sudden astonishment when David sprints forward must have frozen Goliath, making him a better target,” the poet and critic Robert Pinsky writes in “The Life of David.” Pinsky calls David a “point guard ready to flick the basketball here or there.” David pressed. That’s what Davids do when they want to beat Goliaths.
My Simple Productivity System
Hi-tech, digital productivity systems
Here is my productivity system:
1. At the beginning of each day I write down on a piece of paper what I want to accomplish by the end of the day.
2. As I move through the day I focus on only one action item/project at a time, attacking the most important items first. Because of how I’m wired, I often choose to first work on the task I’m the most excited about (much of the time the most exciting task is also the most important task).
3. Things come up during the day and get added to the list.
4. The tasks that don’t get crossed off the list either move to tomorrow’s list or get ditched all together if deemed no longer important.
Notes:
- The daily piece of paper that I use is a page in a small 3×5 notebook, a notebook that I always carry in my back pocket.
- In addition to the small notebook I always carry a pen in my pocket.
- I use other pages in the notebook to jot down ideas that come to me throughout the day.
Citylife Boston: Prelude
My friend Bobby Krier and crew from Citylife Boston recently released their debut album, Prelude.
This is an album of old hymns set to new melodies.
The oldest hymn on the album was written by Charles Wesley in 1738. Four of the tracks were written by Horatius Bonar in the 1800s.
I’ve been listening to Prelude almost everyday for the past two weeks. I love this cd (tracks 1 & 10 are my favorite). Citylife Boston did an expert job at setting a new, rich, robust sound to these old, gospel-drenched hymns.
You can (and should) sample and purchase the music here.
Making Ideas Happen
I finished two books this week that I heartily recommend.
Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky. I read this book in two days. This is a wonderfully written, action-oriented book that will help you push your ideas forward. I’m not sure yet, but for me, Making Ideas Happen might trump Allen’s Getting Things Done.
The Making of a Leader by Robert Clinton. I read this book in two months. This has been a timely book for me, helping me make better sense out of how God shapes and molds a leader over a lifetime. Thank you, Mark Lauterbach, for recommending it to me in my living room this summer.
