Pastors, like any person sin. While this may be surprising for some people as they put their pastors and their wife on a pedestal, it is true. Because of the nature of being a pastor and the life they live, their sins are often not obvious and ones that no one will ever know about. In fact, some of the most hurtful and dangerous sins are ones that a church and elders can unknowingly encourage. These sins are not in any particular order, just the order I wrote them in.
So far we’ve covered:
The fourth sin that many pastors deal with is the sin of the need to be needed. This directly affects what we talked about yesterday and how the pastor and his family are seen.
Many pastors as they become pastors do so out of a sense of wanting to help people. This can be seen in counseling, in discipling people or walking alongside of them. They want to help people.
This can hide for a time any way, the need to be needed. This shows up when a pastor:
- Must be at every meeting or party for the church.
- Visit every person in the hospital.
- Follow up with every guest or new Christian.
- Baptize everyone.
- Always preach.
- Never take a vacation.
- Respond to every email and call.
Now, I’m not calling for pastors to be lazy. In fact, the last sin we’ll talk about is how lazy many pastors are.
Pastor, take a minute and ask yourself some of these questions:
- How much do I need to be needed?
- Do I need to check every alert on Facebook, twitter or email?
- Do I keep my phone on during dinner with my family and answer it when it rings?
- Do you check your email or answer your phone on your day off?
- Do you take a day off every week?
- Do you take all your vacation days?
- Do you miss any Sundays?
- Do you take any Sundays off from preaching?
You may fall prey to the desire to be needed and that may be driving you and your ministry more than Jesus. If so, take a day off, turn your phone off and take a break from preaching.
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