The Isolated Pastor

The Isolated Pastor

1 Peter 5:8 "Your adversary, the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour."

A roaring lion, looking for a meal, does not take on an entire herd, but looks for an isolated member that is sickly or elderly, too young to keep up, or too headstrong to stay up. He seizes the prey and he’s got his next meal. He’s looking for the loner. Someone that is isolated from the group. Too many of our pastors fit into this category.

I’ve been in the ministry for a full half-century. I don’t know a lot of things, but I know some things very well, and this is one of them: The sinful heart resists fellowship. Ministers who need the fellowship of the brethren resist it for various reasons.

When your heart is cold toward the Lord, and regretfully sometimes it is, you resist companionship with other ministers for fear that coldness will be discovered. Sin isolates. Just as it keeps backsliding Christians home on Sundays, it locks pastors inside their homes or studies lest they should get with a brother in Christ and be healed.

Preachers need to hang out with one another. The best thing groups of pastors do with each other is not to sit in rows and listen to someone preach. That’s the last thing they need as a rule. What they need is non-judgmental brethren pull their chairs into a circle, and have someone say, “Okay, what shall we talk about today?” In a minute, after an aborted attempt or two to get something going, someone will open his heart and take out a burden he’s been carrying and trying to handle by himself.

Pay attention. These are some things you might hear:

-His council has asked for his resignation. 

-His wife has served him with divorce papers. 

-His doctor has said it looks like cancer. 

-His teenage son has been arrested.

-His church has cut his salary and he’s going bi-vocational and wondering how he can find a job and what he can do, and whether this means he has failed.

He looks at you as a peer, envies your success and grieves that his churches have never prospered the way yours have. He has no idea that you look at other pastors and their larger churches in the same way he looks at you. You need him and he needs you.

Proverbs 27:17 "As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another."

God's not looking for the next Lone Ranger, but he's looking for a soldier willing to be a part of a fellowship of unique individuals-they are the "Called." You can't do this by yourself, so please don't try.