Perfect Pastors Are Not Normal

On Monday of this week Brandon Cox from Pastors.com posted an article I had written for their site. It’s called – Pastoral Secrets Lead to Pastoral Sickness. As pastors, there are certain things that we just don’t want to admit to people.

Sometimes, the things we hide and fail to reveal about ourselves, are the very things that will connect us, even endear us, to our congregation. Our people need to know that we fail, suffer disappointments and setbacks, and even struggle with our faith at times.

The enemy of effectiveness in ministry is perceived pastoral perfection. We should never spread that myth! I had a pastor as a kid who always tried to do everything appropriately, as a good pastor would. He wife was the ever dutiful, appropriate, if not adequate, pastor’s wife. Heaven forbid that something should be amiss in their lives or “ministry”.

This myth of perfection and appropriateness was not helpful for us as a church family. We could never attain to this level of appropriability that they reached. (I just invented a new word! Everyone, use it as much as you can in the next month!)

Take a look at that post at Pastors.com. Pastoral secrets, regarding our weaknesses, faults, failures, or sins are never helpful or constructive, nor are they instructive, for the people in our churches.

Just be a person. Don’t be perfect, or perfectly appropriate.  Perfect pastors are not normal. Be normal. Church people love normal.

Tomorrow we talk with Karl “The Shark” Vaters about The Astonishing Power of Small Churches: Over One Billion Served. That’s on episode #78 of the 200churches Podcast!