We have all seen, or heard about, pastors falling into some
grievous sin. While the celebrity pastor gets the attention, more often the
fallen pastor serves a smaller congregation. It may not be as public a fall but
anytime a pastor falls, it hurts the people of God. I am grieved each time I
hear of another situation in which a minister of the gospel dishonors his Lord
and his office.
In 1993 I was given a copy of John Henry Jowett’s book, The
Preacher, His Life and Work. This book is a series of lectures that Jowett
gave to a class of Divinity student at Yale in the early 20th Century.
Jowett has been a faithful guide to me in my ministry. The second lecture is
entitled The Perils of the Preacher. Jowett outlines four dangers to be
faced and overcome by every preacher. I want to summarize each of these and
offer some of my own observations.
First is a “deadening familiarity with the sublime.” Jowett
writes, “You will not have been long in the ministry before you discover that
it is possible to be fussily busy about the Holy Place and yet lose the
wondering sense of the Holy Lord. We may have much to do with religion and yet
not be religious.” When we lose the sense of the Holy, we have become
technicians rather than men of God. While our words may be helpful to God’s
people, we risk hearing the words of Jesus, “Depart from me…I never knew you.”
I have seen one way in which this manifests itself. When the
preacher develops a “preacher’s voice.” When his words both in the vocabulary
and even in the tonal inflections change when he is leading in worship or
preaching, he is in danger. I have heard preacher who put on a pleading tone
when in the pulpit. This is a tone which the preacher never uses in any other
situation of life. This tone communicates to the congregation, “Come up to the
heights from which I am speaking to you now.” Sadly the height is only the few
short steps into the pulpit and not an exalted heart communing with the Almighty.
The second peril is a “deadening familiarity with the
commonplace.” The pastor listens to the marital struggles of his members. He is
aware of the great moral failures of people all around him. He sees people
hurting others on a daily basis and rather than breaking his heart, he calmly
offers a solution. One pastor became aware that a staff member confessed to a
consensual sexual relationship with a young teenager. The pastor knew that the
staff member must be removed. Being familiar with sexual sin, the pastor sought
to correct the teenager. He did not enter the poor girl’s life to hear her
heartbreak. He did not consider that she had been manipulated by the staff member.
He did not consider the deep tragedy of the rape which had actually occurred.
The pastor failed because he had a “deadening familiarity with the commonplace”
which prevented him from seeing the real issues involved.
The third peril is “the possible perversion of our emotional
life.” A pastor walks through the emotional highs and lows of the members of
his church. He stands with the young mother as she becomes a widow. He
pronounces the hopeful couple “husband and wife.” He gets to set apart a
newborn child through the sacrament of baptism and will weep with the couple
who lost a child in early pregnancy. In addition, he has his own ups and downs.
He may have a child who faces physical hardships, emotional struggles, or even
struggles with faith. He has the same disappointments others feel with the issues
in society. His emotions can become raw; or maybe even desperate. As Hugh Price
Hughes told Jowett, “The evangelical preacher is always on the brink of the
abyss.” Jowett continues, “That is to say, the evangelical preacher, with his
constant business in great facts and verities that sway the feelings, may
become the victim of nervous depression, and in his nervous impoverishment his
moral defenses may be relaxed, the enemy may leap within his gates, and his
spirit may be imprisoned in dark and carnal bondage.” His emotions may scream
for relief and he may seek such relief in a sinful opportunity. I have seen all
too many pastors either seek comfort in the arms of a mistress, a bottle of
alcohol, or who face burnout.
The fourth is “the perilous gravitation of the world.” Jowett
describes this peril…
It is round about us like a
malaria, and we may become susceptible to its contagion. It offers itself as a
climate, and we may be led into accepting it as the atmosphere of our lives. I
suppose that one of the deepest characteristics of worldliness is an illicit
spirit of compromise. It calls itself by many agreeable names, such as
“expediency,” “tactfulness,” “diplomacy,” and it sometimes ascends to higher
rank and claims kinship with “geniality,” “sociability,” and “friendship.” But,
despite this fine borrowed attire, the worldly spirit of compromise is just the
sacrifice of the moral ideal to the popular standard, and the subjection of
personal conviction to current opinion.
Henri Nouwen wrote in The Wounded Healer that a
minister “finds himself standing on the edges of events and only reluctantly
admitted to the spot where the decision are made.” “Ministers are more
tolerated than required.” This reality can lead many a pastor to want to be “relevant.”
In addition, members of the church, and other leaders, will encourage the
pastor to “let his hair down” to just “relax” a little. This will lead him to
compromise to live in the gray, serving both God and mammon.
By being aware of the perils, maybe pastors, both
experienced and new to the calling can continue in a long term ministry that
honors God by its length and by its depth.
