Transcript
Scott Anderson: Paul, I thought one of the most helpful chapters in the book was your discussion on fear as being [an] unfortunately, regrettably, a primary motivation for many men in pastoral ministry. But you also talk about how debilitating being driven by fear is. Talk a little bit about why you wrote this chapter and what you hope to do through it.
The Dirty Secret of Fear-Driven Ministry
Paul Tripp: Well, I do think one of the dirty secrets of the church is how much of ministry is formed and driven by fear and not by faith. And there's a way in which we don't want to say that fear is irrational. I mean, if you're living in a dramatically broken world that's not functionally God intended and you're living amongst less than perfect people, there are things to be fearful...
Scott: Absolutely.
Paul: ...to be concerned about, but fear must not be the primary motivator of my ministry, the principal shaper of why I do the things that I do. And the relationship to awe is that it's only fear of God that can liberate me from all these other fears that can grip me. The only solution to fear is fear. It's only fear that overpowers fear and part of that is because I was hardwired to fear.
I mean, it's not some Creator construction mistake that I'm capable of being afraid because, actually, my capacity to fear was to draw me to God, that that fear of Him would be the thing that would keep me on the tracks that I'm meant to kept on. So in ministry, there are just very debilitating fears that can grip the heart of a pastor.
Fear of Himself
First is his fear of himself. If you're at all able to be humble and honest, things just get exposed about you in ministry -- levels of anger, levels of impatience with people. You could just go on with the list. And what happens is if my confidence in me is what's keeping me going, it's hard for me to keep retaining my confidence in me because of all these things getting exposed and I just get haunted. I just think, "This is a real mistake that I'm in ministry. I'll never pull this thing off. I'm a mess."
And so, I sort of live trying to avoid my own weaknesses in ministry. Well, that doesn't work because there's a way in which God wants to expose those weaknesses so that He can lift up His own strength, so that sort of "I got to avoid my weaknesses to cope" is not a way to do ministry.
Fear of others. People loom large in ministry. If you're in any public ministry, there will be critical voices all around you. There will be people who love you and have a wonderful plan for your life. There will be politicking going on and this "What if I don't please these people? What if they do gather together as allies? What if? What if? What if," -- I'd like to say that doesn't bother me, but it does.
I had a particular man fairly recently who criticized my ministry. It got to me. I'd get up to speak and his head was bigger than anybody's in the congregation. I actually had one moment where I'm preparing to preach and I'm thinking, "This point will get him." How perverse is that? I shouldn't be preparing that point to win some particular man.
Fear of Circumstances
Fear of circumstances. There's a way in which the ministry of a local church is way less regular and predictable than we'd like it to be, and a downturn of economy can make a mess of your ministry. And then fear of the future, fear of all those things that can come down the pike, fear of where is this going, what will this be like in five years.
Man, those can just paralyze you and produce a timidity in ministry, a reason for making decisions that's not for the glory of God and the good of God's people, being more political than pastoral. If you're pastoral, you're doing it for others. If you're political, you're doing it for yourself and all of a sudden, I've lost my way in ministry because fear of God has been overwhelmed by fear of all these other things. It's only when I live in that heart-rattling fear of Him that I can be freed from these other fears claiming my heart.
