Transcript
Scott Anderson: Paul, one of the important things that you discuss in this book is that it's not just concerns you have for pastors, but it's concerns that you have for church cultures, atmospheres in church communities that really don't allow for, the expectations are just so messed up from the congregation, what they're wanting their pastor to be that you quote one pastor as saying, "You know, I'm scared to death for my congregation to know that I'm a sinner. If I was to confess certain struggles, I'd lose my job; or at the very least, I'd lose their respect or their confidence in the gospel. They'd say, 'Well, if it's not good enough for Pastor Joe, then it's not good enough for me.'"
Making It Safe to Confess in the Church
And so, they don't know what to do and so, they put on a greater public righteousness. That doesn't seem like a healthy cycle at all and so, what can church communities do to help make it okay for their pastors to be broken and messed up and yet still, in leadership, faithfully serving the flock?
Paul Tripp: Isn't it scary and sad that in many, many situations, no one gets less of the body of Christ than the pastor. Now, think about God's design. If the design is Christ is the head of His body and then, everything else is a body held together where every part needs every other part, then if Christ is the head of His body, everything else is just body. That includes the pastor.
The pastor is part of the body of Christ. If you go to the passage we're all familiar with -- let's just take two -- Ephesians 4 and 1 Corinthians 12, there's no hint that the pastor can successfully live up above or outside of the body of Christ.
I talk about the... every joint and ligament does its part as the essential sanctifying ministry of the body of Christ. It's essential to a person's progress and sanctification. It's not luxury. It's not icing on the cake. It's essential. It's part of God's rudimentary design for people sanctification, so we can't have a healthy pastorate when we have people in the pastorate who are receiving nothing of the body of Christ.
I wish the conversation that you repeated had only happened once. I've heard it again and again and again, where pastors essentially say to me, "Everybody else in the body of Christ can confess sin. If I do, I'm done." That's a culture who can't work.
So we have to start way out front with the way we call pastors. We can't just hire gifts, experience, and knowledge because a person's ministry is never just shaped by those things. It's always also shaped, inescapably, by the condition of his own heart.
We Love Your Gifts, but We Do Not Know You
So we have to say, "We're concerned about your heart, brother. We love the display of your gifts. We love your knowledge. We're heartened by your experience, but we don't know you; so over the next few months, we're going to get to know you.
"We're going to sit with your wife, with your permission, with you not in the room and we're going to talk to her. What's it like to live with you? If you have older children, we'd love to have permission to talk to your kids.
"We want to talk to people in your church. We want to get to know you, not because we want to harm your ministry -- we would never want to do that -- but because we want to pastor you. We want to shepherd you.
"If you're thinking right now, 'I'm not sure I'm comfortable with being in this kind of intrusive community,' you probably won't want to work at this church because we believe that the body of Christ must be an intentionally intrusive, Christ-centered, grace-driven, redemptive community and we're going to offer you that community.
"We're going to ask you to be part of a small group that you don't lead, to be regular and faithful to that. We're going to look for ways of keeping our knowledge of you and your walk with God current because we think that you need the body of Christ.
"We're going to encourage you to be appropriately self-disclosing in preaching. You don't have to give blood and guts details but for you to say, 'I wish I could say that this isn't my struggle, but it is and I'd love it if you would pray for me," that gives the body of Christ a chance to minister to you the next week. People [who] never talk to you personally, will carry you to the throne of grace."
Small Changes, Not a Culture Turned Upside Down
Now, think of the things I've mentioned. None of those mean a complete turning of the culture upside down. It just means the culture that all of us know is the best, most biblical culture we offer to the pastor, and we're going to do that with commitment and discipline and perseverance.
Scott: That's good. Later in the book, I know you talk about the need for the church to be able to provide the pastor, the pastor to be comfortable requesting a counselor-like voice, if not a counselor, or a mentor, somebody who they have, who is there for the duration of their ministry that they can go to and share things with, but who also is going to challenge them in the right kind of ways. How did you arrive at that sense of conviction about that need and have you used somebody like that in your own ministry, and what does that look like for you for season to season?
Paul: Sure, it's come out of my own knowledge of my needs and what God has provided. I have one particularly long-term relationship. It's a man who has known me as long as any man has known me. The only person known me longer than that is my wife, Luella, and he gets me.
I mean, there's no fooling of this guy and he can encourage me in places where other people would not know that I needed encouragement. He can confront me in ways which he is willing to do, in places where people wouldn't get that I need that confrontation.
I'm enormously thankful for that relationship, but it's born out of the journey we've had together and so, to have a pastor who is in a local church, and you have someone who's willing to journey with the pastor that way, willing to meet regularly, willing to talk, willing to fellowship, willing to have relaxed time so you develop that kind of community together, it can be enormously helpful.
Scott: So that is one of those "joints and ligaments ministry". And for the pastor who maybe is in a smaller church, who doesn't have a lead team or elders, or the folks that are in those roles, perhaps, aren't especially qualified or aren't taught in these matters, do you encourage that person just to bear with the isolation and the separation or do they need to seek that out in their flock? Or at least for a season, do they need to get that from the outside? What do you say to that because I imagine that's a pretty typical type pastor that you run into.
A Sweet Experience Six Months Ago
Paul: I had the sweetest experience about six months ago. I was doing a weekend event and a man came up to me said, "Do you remember me?" Well, of course, I remember. I threw my arms around him and he threw his arms around me.
And when I was in my first church planting situation, there was nobody there for me in this sort of way; and we had made contact and he was in the same situation, and we got together and journeyed together, very honest about our spiritual struggles, wonderful times of prayer with one another, appropriate kind of accountability.
And I look back and think, "Would I have made it through all those ups and downs of early ministry without my relationship with this man?" I'm very thankful for that community. Now, it was outside of the body. I grew to a point where that wasn't as necessary it was, but it was very important for that period of time.
