Dangerous Calling: Confronting the Unique Challenges of Pastoral Ministry

by Paul David Tripp

I am more and more convinced that what gives a ministry its motivations, perseverance, humility, joy, tenderness, passion, and grace is the devotional life of the one doing ministry.

If you are in ministry and you are not reminding yourself again and again of the now-ism of the gospel, that is, the right-here, right-now benefits of the grace of Christ, you will be looking elsewhere to get what can be found only in Jesus.

He had his identity too attached to his opinions and ideas and felt that rejection of

them was rejection of him. And as he looked horizontally for what could only be found vertically, he felt more and more alone and under-appreciated.

He did live and minister with leaders who cared about him and spoke to him honestly.

There were many occasions where a fellow elder or a long-term staffer would approach him about his attitude or about the way he had spoken to someone.

your ministry is no longer fueled by your

own worship;

There are two things that kick in here. First, when people are your substitute messiah (you need their respect and support in order to continue),

Autonomous Christianity never works, because our spiritual life was designed by God to be a community project.

Either I am attempting to do something that I was not called to do, or I am thinking and doing the wrong things in the middle of the ministry I was clearly called to.

And for all the pastors who know they are in trouble, there are many, many who are and don’t yet know it.

look back and see it as a sweet moment of divine rescue—just the kind of grace that was to be the passion of the ministry to which I had been called.

wrong. I remember that she looked frightened as she watched her young seminary husband fall apart before her eyes. In my typically dramatic fashion, I told her I was done. That I couldn’t continue my seminary studies. I told her it was over.

Fortunately, I am married to a wise and patient woman who helped me get my bearings and stood with me as I continued and then finished my studies. That evening, with my exegetical notebook in my hands, I learned something about myself and about the Scriptures. My eyes began to open to the dangers inherent in academizing our faith.

Bad things happen when maturity is more defined by knowing than it is by being. Danger is afloat when you come to love the ideas more than the God whom they represent and the people they are meant to free.

I told my students stories of the late-night calls from wives who have just been slugged by their husbands, of the grief of the mother who has discovered her fifteen-year-old daughter is pregnant, of standing with a mom and dad before the casket of their four-year-old son, of the hours with the severely depressed person or with the man who has spent his family into financial disaster.

I wanted my students to understand that they are called not just to preach exegetically correct and

theologically precise sermons but also to pastor people, to walk, live, support, and suffer with them.

to be the look on his face, the touch of his hand, and the tone of his voice. I wanted them to feel the weight of being called to make an invisible Christ visible in the lives of people who desperately need to “see” his presence and remember his grace.

to teach theology to their people but also to do theology with their people.

“All right, Professor Tripp, we know that we will have these projects in our churches. Tell us what to do with them so we can get back to the work of the ministry!”

There are many things to pay attention to in his statement, but notice this: he didn’t even call the struggling people, to whom we are all called to bring the gospel, “people.” To him they were projects, that is, obstructions in the way of his definition of ministry.

My rather pejorative term for them was theologeeks, the guys who see theology as an end in itself rather than as a means to an end.

It was a wonderful, God-given teaching moment.

I talked to them about the now-ism of the gospel and encouraged them with the power of the gospel to transform lives in very concrete ways, students in the class would reflect on issues in their own lives.

I was unprepared for the narratives that I would hear and the kinds of things my students were struggling with.

I was teaching to the foundational thoughts and motives of their hearts.

“Professor Tripp, you’re preaching at us. This is a seminary classroom, which means this is not your church, and we are not your congregation.” Yes, it really did happen.

“Help me understand how to live in light of what you are now teaching us.”

what is wrong with the way that we seek to prepare people for local church ministry?

I have a friend (about whom I have written before) who became an avid rose gardener. His rose garden was the community’s most beautiful and healthy and with the widest variety of roses.

One Friday evening after three hours of rose work, he was looking out the window as he washed his hands at the kitchen sink, and it struck him all of a sudden that the one thing he hadn’t done in years with his roses was enjoy them. He had studied the world of roses. He had cultivated the soil

around his rose bushes. He had carefully pruned his bushes. He had given bunches of roses to others. He had fed and watered his roses.

Could it be that this is very close to what a seminary education might do to its students? Is it not possible for seminary students to become experts in a gospel that they are not being exposed and changed by?

Is it not dangerous for students to become comfortable with the message of the Bible while not being broken, grieved, and convicted by it?

Could it be that rather than having as our mission students who have mastered the Book, our goal should be graduating students who have been mastered by the God of the Book?

You see, it is quite possible and, sadly, quite regular for us to use the Bible unbiblically. Even given its God-driven purposefulness, you can approach, handle, and make use of the Word of God in ways that are outside of its intended purpose.

The gospel narrative is all about the larceny and restoration of true worship, the thing for which we were given breath, the worship of God.

When the Word of God, faithfully taught by the people of God and empowered by the Spirit of God, falls down, people become different.

The ultimate purpose of the Word of God is not theological information but heart and life transformation.

this student’s future ministry will never be shaped by his knowledge and skill alone but also, inevitably, by the condition of his heart.

Permit me to list the things that may happen in the lives of the students when the seminary environment is less than faithful to God’s intention for his Word.

1) SPIRITUAL BLINDNESS

Because sin blinds, and those blinded by sin tend to be blind to their blindness, it is dangerous to handle the truths of the Word without asking students to look into the mirror of the Word and see themselves as they actually are. Students who don’t do this will enter ministry convinced that they are prepared to fix the world but will fail to recognize that they need fixing just as much as anyone to whom they have been called to minister.

2) THEOLOGICAL SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS For students who have not been required to confess that it is easier to learn theology than to live it, it is tempting to think maturity is more a matter of knowing than a matter of living. They think that godliness is more a matter of what you intellectually grasp then a matter of how you live your life. So, puffed up with knowledge, they smugly think they are okay. 3) DYSFUNCTIONAL PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP TO THE WORD Somewhere in his theological education, the student loses his devotional relationship not only to the Word but also to the God of the Word. Study of the Word becomes more a world of correct ideas than a world of submission to the Lord, whom those ideas introduce and define. 4) LACK OF PERSONAL GOSPEL NEEDINESS Since the student has come to think of himself as more mature than he actually ...

5) IMPATIENCE WITH OTHERS I have written and said many times that no one gives grace better than the person who is deeply persuaded that he needs it himself. Self-righteous people tend to be critical, dismissive, and impatient with others. 6) WRONG PERSPECTIVE ON MINISTRY Because of all this, ministry is driven more by theological correctness than by worship of and love for the Lord Jesus Christ. The sermon becomes more of a theological lecture than an exposition of the grace of the gospel and a plea to run after the Savior. Sadly, it is often driven more by the passion for ideas than by love for people and for Christ. 7) NO LIVING COMMUNION WITH CHRIST It can finally all degenerate into a Christ-less Christianity that puts its hope in theology and rules and somehow forgets that if theology and rules had the power to tran...

I am suggesting that seminary classrooms should be places of both education and worship.

“We finally came to the realization that we had called (hired) someone we didn’t know.”

What does knowing the man mean? It means knowing the true condition of his heart (as far as that is possible). What does he really love, and what does he despise? What are his hopes, dreams, and fears? What are the deep desires that fuel and shape the way he does ministry? What are the anxieties that have the potential to derail or paralyze him? How accurate is his view of himself? Is he open to the confrontation, critique, and encouragement of others? Is he committed to his own sanctification? Is he open about his own temptations, weaknesses, and failures? Is he ready to listen to and defer to the wisdom of others? Does he see pastoral ministry as a community project? Does he have a tender, nurturing heart? Is he warm and hospitable, a shepherd and champion to those who are suffering? What character qualities would his wife and children use to describe him? Does he sit under his own preaching?