Dangerous Calling: Confronting the Unique Challenges of Pastoral Ministry

by Paul David Tripp

a pastor’s ministry is not shaped just by his knowledge, gifts, skill, and experience but also by the condition of his heart.

The gospel is the only thing that can free a pastor from the guilt, shame, and drivenness of the hide (“never let your weakness show”) and seek (asking ministry to do what Christ has already done) lifestyle that makes ministry burdensome to so many pastors.

Worship isn’t first an activity; worship is first our identity.

Once something is our treasure, it will command our desires and shape our behavior.

Biblical literacy is not to be confused with Christian maturity. Homiletic accuracy is not the same as godliness. Theological dexterity is very different from practical holiness. Successful leadership is not the same as a heart for Christ. Growth in influence must not be confused with growth in grace.

Your ministry will live at the dangerous intersection between the difficulties and temptations of this fallen world and the kingdom battle that is still going on in your heart.

We are frequently told, indeed, that the great danger of the theological student lies precisely in his constant contact with divine things. They may come to seem common to him because they are customary. As the average man breathes the air and basks in the sunshine without ever a thought that it is God in his goodness who makes his sun to rise on him, though he is evil, and sends rain to him, though he is unjust; so you may come to handle even the furniture of the sanctuary with never a thought above the gross earthly materials of which it is made. The words which tell you of God’s terrible majesty or of his glorious goodness may come to be mere words to you—Hebrew and Greek words, with etymologies, inflections and connections in sentences. The reasonings which establish to you the mysteries of his saving activities may come to be to you mere logical paradigms, with premises and conclusions, fitly framed, no doubt, and triumphantly cogent, but with no further significance to you than their formal logical conclusiveness. God’s stately steppings in his redemptive processes may become to you a mere series of facts of history, curiously interplaying to the production of social and religious conditions and pointing mayhap to an issue which we may shrewdly conjecture: but much like other facts occurring in time and space which may come to your notice. It is your great danger. But it is your great danger only because it is your great privilege. Think of what your privilege is whe...

youth ministry of the church must move beyond Bible entertainment and do all it can to help teens to see God’s glory and name it as the thing for which they will live.

Awe of God is one of the things that will keep a church from running off its rails and being diverted by the many agendas that can sidetrack any congregation. Awe of God puts theology in its place.

Many pastors are better at arguing fine points of doctrine than at stimulating divine wonder.

No matter what is or isn’t working in my ministry, no matter what difficulties or battles I am facing, the expansive glory of God gives me reason to get up in the morning and do what I have been gifted and called to do with enthusiasm, courage, and confidence. My joy isn’t handcuffed to the surrounding circumstances or relationships; I don’t have to have my heart yanked wherever they go. I have reason for joy because I am a chosen child and a conscripted servant of the King of kings and Lord of lords, the great Creator, the Savior, the sovereign, the victor, the one who does reign and will reign forever. He is my Father, my Savior, and my boss. He is ever near and ever faithful. My passion for ministry is not about how I am being received; it flows out of the reality that I have been received by him. My enthusiasm is not because people like me, but because he has accepted and sent me. My passion is not the result of my ministry being as glorious as I thought it could be, but because he is eternally and unchangeably glorious. So I preach, teach, counsel, lead, and serve with a gospel passion that inspires and ignites the same in the people around me.

I can do what I have been called to do with confidence, not because of who I am but because he is my Father, and he is glorious in every way.

Your salvation and your call to ministry do not automatically give you a ticket out of the fallenness of your surroundings.

No one is completely loyal. No one always has your back. Because of this, relationships in the body of Christ are messy and unpredictable. They are the places where we experience some of our most gratifying joys and heart-wrenching pains.

horizontal fear cannot be allowed to rule your heart, because if it does, it will destroy you and your ministry.

It is only fear of God that has the spiritual power to overwhelm all the horizontal fears that can capture your heart.

Living just to alleviate fear never leads to being fear free. It simply makes you more fearful of fear, more fear alert, and ultimately more fearful. It is only when God looms larger than anything you are facing that you can be protected and practically freed from the fear that either paralyzes you or causes you to make foolish decisions. Wise, stable, and fear-free living doesn’t require you to deny what you’re facing, but rather looks at whatever you are facing from the perspective of a gloriously freeing and motivating fear of the One who rules all the things that you would otherwise be afraid of.

functional awe of God really is the key to your heart’s not being ruled by fear.

In the intersection between promise and reality, you have to be very careful to guard your meditation. You have to be very disciplined when it comes to what you do with your mind.

For many people in ministry, waiting becomes a chronicle of ever-weakening faith because meditating on the circumstances will leave you in awe of the circumstances. They will appear to grow larger, you will feel smaller, and your vision of God will be clouded. But if you meditate on the Lord, you will be in greater awe of his presence, power, faithfulness, and grace. The situation will seem smaller, and you will live with greater confidence even though nothing has changed.

Security is never to be found in our attempt to figure it all out or in trying to divine the secret will of God.

Do you live Abraham’s paradigm, not denying the existence of trouble but prohibiting trouble from dominating and controlling your meditation? Does God loom so large in your thoughts that you grow strong in faith, even in the middle of what is unexpected and difficult?

You need to tell yourself again and again that there is no pit of life or ministry so deep that Jesus isn’t deeper.

Excellence in ministry flows from a heart that is in holy, reverential, life-rearranging, motivation-capturing awe of the Lord of glory.

Preaching is more than the regurgitation of your favorite exegetical commentary, or a rather transparent recast of the sermons of your favorite preachers, or a reshaping of notes from one of your favorite seminary classes. It is bringing the transforming truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ from a passage that has been properly understood, cogently and practically applied, and delivered with the engaging tenderness and passion of a person who has been broken and restored by the very truths he stands up to communicate. You simply cannot do this without proper preparation, meditation, confession, and worship.

if I am unable to practically apply the truths of the passage to my life and to those to whom I will preach, then I haven’t yet fully understood the passage.

The exegetical process doesn’t end with understanding; it ends with application.

God has chosen to build his church through the instrumentality of bent and broken tools.

if you are a pastor or ministry leader, you are at the same time a person in the middle of your own sanctification. You are not yet free of sin and all its attendant dangers. You still carry around moral susceptibility. You are capable of giving way to disastrous things.

we who are called to provide and lead ministry are in desperate need of ministry ourselves.

Remember, no mirror that you look into to know yourself will ever show you you with the clarity and accuracy of the mirror of the Word of God.

Faith is deeply more than what you do with your brain. Knowledge is an aspect of faith, but it doesn’t define faith. Ultimately, faith is an investment of the heart that leads to a radically new way of living your life.

Spiritual maturity is more than maturity of knowledge. You can actually be mature in your understanding of God’s sovereignty but live a life of fear, because in your immaturity you have attached your security more to your control than to God’s wise rule.

there are loads of theologically knowledgeable pastors who, in the way that they live and ministe...

Experience will teach you some things, but it simply has no power to make you holy.

local-church ministry success is the result of things that are profoundly deeper than a leader’s insights, strategic planning, sense of the moments, ability to build a ministry team, and instilling a compelling ministry vision in the congregation.

Public acclaim is often the seedbed for spiritual pride.

Arrival, whether conscious or not, will always begin to cut you off from the essential protecting and sanctifying ministry of the body of Christ.

Arrival is not the soil in which pastoral grace grows.

arrival is the soil in which unrealistic expectation, criticism, impatience, and harsh judgments grow.

Awareness of sin and the promise of salvation are what daily drive you to Christ, not to rush through a passage in his Word and say a quick prayer but to sit at his feet and grieve your sin and give praise for the grace that meets you in it. Assessments of arrival crush personal worship.

Then having given the instrument too much credit, we run to the conference or buy the book so that we can do what our ministry hero has done. Can we learn from others? Of course. Can ingredients of a healthy ministry be identified? Yes. Should we be thankful for dedicated servants of the Lord and communicate our thanks? It would be wrong not to. But we must reserve our adoration (whether of self or of another) for the Lord.

The smug expectation of blessing will cause you to question not only the appreciation of the people around you but also the goodness of God.

Arrival causes you to be too self-assured; being self-assured causes you to make unwise choices; unwise choices expose you to temptation and sin; pride causes you to think you can handle the exposure—and before long you have fallen.

You live right smack-dab in the middle of the already and the not yet. In the middle there is temptation all around. In the middle you are still susceptible to its draw. In the middle there is still an enemy lurking around looking for his next meal. In the middle we are capable of self-deceit and personal delusion. In the middle we still need to be rescued from ourselves. In the middle we must always live humble, concerned, and protective lives. In the middle we constantly need grace’s rescue.

Gospel-driven, Christ-centered ministry, one that gives grace to those who hear, doesn’t start with theological knowledge; no, it starts with a humble heart.

You and I must not become pastors who are all too aware of our positions. We must not give way to protecting and polishing our power and prominence. We must resist feeling privileged, special, or in a different category. We must not think of ourselves as deserving or entitled. We must not demand to be treated differently or put on some ministry pedestal. We must not minister from above but from alongside.

proud people tend to talk about themselves a lot. Proud people tend to like their opinions more than the opinions of others. Proud people think their stories are more interesting and engaging than others. Proud people think they know and understand more than others’. Proud people think they’ve earned the right to be heard. Proud people think they have glory to offer. Proud people, because they are basically proud of what they know and of what they’ve done, talk a lot about both. Proud people don’t reference weakness. Proud people don’t talk about failure. Proud people don’t confess sin. So proud people are better at putting the spotlight on themselves than at shining the light of their stories and opinions on God’s glorious and utterly undeserved grace.

Thinking of yourself more highly than you ought to think always leads to looking down on others in some way.