Mistakes that Pastors Make

As a pastor I make a lot of mistakes. No doubt about it, I mess up my job all the time. I hope that I learn from my mistakes, and I understand I am constantly growing in my abilities, gifts, and discernment. But I still make mistakes. All pastors make mistakes. I am not sure if anyone has told you this before, but pastors are actually, almost all human. (I reserve the right to think that some pastors are less than human, but never super-human) Over the past couple of weeks, however, I have been trying to think of the biggest mistakes pastors make as a way of once again challenging myself to be a better pastor. So I thought I would let all of you in on the process. I will share with you my insights into pastoring if you will share with me your observations as well. My list is intentionally noncomprehensive, but it should cover a lot of the various areas.

1) No Boundaries – One of the easiest things to do in ministry is to lose balance in your life. As you serve the Lord it is easy to neglect your family, neglect yourself, neglect God, and allow ministry to overtake your life. You must create boundaries, check points, forced areas of limitation, to protect your life in ministry. Most burnout, and much of the sin that brings down pastors relates back to boundaries.

2) The Zeal is Gone – In Romans 12 Paul says, “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.” Without zeal, a burning passion for God that is born in love, you can not minister to the world. Without it you are left merely with talents, strategies, and your own efforts. But, armed with zeal, God can transform and use his people in profound ways. Be zealous in your pursuit of God.

3) You forget the people – Ministry is first and foremost about people. Too often as a pastor, you can get stuck in details, administrivia, and planning forgetting to be with your people. Time with those you are called to minister to has to be priority number one on any pastor’s job description. Without people, there is no church. The church isn’t a building, a budget, or a vision, it is people. Never lose them as your focus.

4) Routine kills creativity – There is a big difference between discipline and routine. Discipline is a crafted regimine of right activities that shape and transform us. Routine is simply falling into a pattern of behavior. Part of our discipline needs to be a changing of our routines to help prevent bad habits and keep us from getting stuck in a rut. For instance, how you prepare for sermons, plan worship, or write can become very routine. Without intentionally carving out space for creativity, trying new approaches, or keeping those activities fresh, they begin to lose your interest, and they can become stale. Shake up your routine. Mix up your normal weekly activities to have a fresh approach. Leave your office to write sermons, go somewhere new to brainstorm. Just don’t let the routine destroy your creativity.

5) Being a coward – A lot of pastors simply have no courage. They don’t have the courage to make hard decisions about their church. They don’t have the courage to confront sin in the life of their paritioners. They don’t have the courage to preach the gospel and truly call people to repentance. They don’t have the courage to let people into their lives to see themselves for who they truly are. They don’t have the courage to think outside the box or to challenge or analyze the systems they are part of. Why? Why do we lack courage? Usually it is because of fear, the fear of rejection. If I challenge the church to go another direction will they turn on me? If I tell people they need to follow Christ they will think it is too hard and leave the church. If I rock the boat, maybe I won’t keep moving up the career ladder. Faith in Christ requires bold courage. Don’t lead people if you won’t allow God to give you the courage to face tough tasks.

6) Thinking it is all about them – Too many pastors try to lead by force of personality. This is one of the areas where I really struggle. It is always easier, at first at least, to just try and do things yourself. You know your abilities and you can rely on yourself to get the job done. But, if you don’t trust and empower other staff and lay people to do ministry with you, the success of your ministry will only last as long as you are around. If when you leave a church, or step out of a ministry, it crumbles and dies, you have not done your job. It is bad leadership to build anything around yourself. Equip those around you to share in the task of ministry. You can often tell pastors that struggle with this when they don’t share their pulpit, they have to lead every meeting they attend, they distrust those around them, and they isolate themselves from staff and laity.

7) Improper evaluative measures for success – When you consider success as a pastor and success as a church, how do you measure it? For many the measuring sticks are wrong. For many attendance, budget, and buildings are the measure of success. Even for those who measure more spiritual areas, they try and measure conversions or salvations in the church, a wonderful calling of the church, but they do it in a poor manner. How do we measure new believers? It certainly goes way beyond some moment at an altar praying a prayer. It also goes beyond membership in the church. Baptism, tithing, active discipleship, discovering and using gifts, calls into fulltime ministry, and leadership development are much better measuring sticks to determine success as a church. Don’t measure success by having 2000 members if you haven’t also planted another church or two during that same time. Don’t celebrate 100 conversion that year if none of them have been baptized or discipled. Don’t talk about how much money you raised if a significant portion of that wasn’t given to support ministry outside of your local congregation. Make sure the marks you are measuring yourself by are the right ones.

8) Underestimating the power of your weaknesses – We all have strengths and we all have weaknesses that relate directly to those strengths. When we know our weaknesses, however, we tend to think that God won’t work through those areas. One of my weaknesses as a pastor is in pastoral counseling. It simply isn’t much of a gift or a strong desire in my ministry. But, God has consistently placed me in situations where my counsel was vital to someone else’s formation and healing. Why? I assume that God was once again demonstrating his power to work through me as he pleases, to his glory. Don’t assume you know how God will use you. Often God will use your weaknesses in profound ways.

9) Getting caught in the tractor beams – You know in great SCI-FI films how there is often a tractor beam. The tractor beam is like a lazor, it is a beam of energy that takes control of you and sucks you into the darkness, or the control of the enemy ship. There are a lot of tractor beams in ministry. You can get sucked in by the praise of those around you. That praise can begin to take over you and pull you to a place of losing a God centered focus for ministry. Temptations of abusing power and influence are tractor beams. Negativity, and cynicism are tractor beams. There are a tremendous number of tractor beams waiting to grab hold of you. Keep your shields up and don’t get sucked in.

10) Don’t forget about Mr. Hyde – Everyone knows the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the inner demon who lived inside the good Dr. Each of us has a Mr. Hyde. There is a darkness, a part of our personality, a lingering darkness of our soul that threatens us in our walk with Christ. The blood of Christ cleanses us from sin and puts to death that old self, yet, Mr. Hyde waits and lingers out there. As we remain in Christ, there is no concern for Hyde taking control. But, when we cease to remain in Christ and wander from the heart of God, we run the risk of our the darkness taking over us.

Those are just the some of my thoughts on mistakes and dangers we face as Christians and especially as leaders in the church. I would love to hear any thoughts you might have as well.