Transcript
There were times when I would get off the phone and I go up to talk to Luella, and I couldn't talk about the conversation because as I did, I began to weep. I knew that there was another book that was necessary. I wrote Dangerous Calling[: Confronting the Unique Challenges of Pastoral Ministry] first, out of my own experience. As a pastor, I had was a very angry man, and I was in the process of destroying my life and my ministry; and God rescued me.
Pastors Telling Me Their Stories
And as I went around the world telling my story, pastors would come to me and tell me their stories and so, I thought there are a unique set of temptations that a pastor faces that someone needs to speak to. That was Dangerous Calling[: Confronting the Unique Challenges of Pastoral Ministry].
But I had a sense, as I wrote Dangerous Calling[: Confronting the Unique Challenges of Pastoral Ministry], that there'd probably be a good possibility that because that made me public and people began to call me a pastor to pastors that there'd be a good possibility that churches would seek me out and say, "We're in a leadership crisis. We're in a pastoral crisis."
And so, I began to get those calls. That meant that I experienced some of the most heartbreaking, tragic things you could ever imagine in the church, some of the darkest, most tear-producing moments you could ever imagine. I knew that I had to be willing to spend a lot of my life sad at what was happening to leaders out there.
When the Crisis Became Public
As that was happening, that pastoral crisis became public as globally influential leaders fell, some of them losing their ministries forever, some of them seemingly forsaking the gospel forever. And as I prayed about that, as I thought about that, as I wept over those stories, there were times when I would get off the phone and I go up to talk to Luella, and I couldn't talk about the conversation because as I did, I began to weep.
I knew that there was another book that was necessary because it became very clear behind the fall of leaders was dysfunctional leadership community, that there's a way in which it wasn't just the falling of one man. It was a falling of a community, communities that had once held a man accountable became his defenders, defending a man that they should confront and protect; and communities of leaders that were once defenders that became part of the culture. Now, it's advocates.
And so, I knew that God was calling me to write a book that now would speak in to the crisis of leadership behind the crisis of the falling of pastors. That's this book. It's about how to grow and maintain a spiritually healthy leadership community. Leaders that have longevity have longevity in the church because they're surrounded by vibrant, honest gospel community.
