NOT FOR PASTORS ONLY: threats to your ministry

Warren Latham, a/k/a to Wally when we were all a bit younger, wrote this earlier today and I’m honored to share it with you here —

Yesterday I was writing another devotion on 3rd John. I ended with this word to pastors:

Let us establish strong relationships with fellow Christians and maintain these, for our own sake as well as the sake of the gospel.

One of the greatest threats to your ministry is isolation, loneliness, separation. The office of pastor naturally creates this separation. Further, we may value our isolation because that means our lives are not opened to scrutiny which allows us a duplicity which professes one thing but lives another.

Intimacy requires transparency. Too many husbands lack transparency with their wives and the absence of true intimacy is the result. The same is true for pastors and churches.

Pastors, get into an accountability group, either with other pastors or members of your church. We have done both through the years and each has its reward. Create the time and space for this mutual accountability. Develop intimate relationships with fellow believers. Your ministry is at risk if you do not. Perhaps even your soul is at risk.

Finally, “Peace be with you.”

— I heard another colleague recently say they were singled out as an example of not just bad self-care, but horrible self-care. This is not good.

I’m flashing to my brief Sabbatical in January 2012 which included a week long seminary-based experience on, if I’m honest, Pastoral Survival. One take away among many was the need for exactly what Brother Latham advocates here. But far too many of us, first person singular included, fail at it. This is not good.

Knowing that whether you’re a pastor or not you have a ministry (I read that somewhere…oh, that’s right, it’s in Ephesians 4:11-13), I ask you: how are you doing with all this?