One of the fundamental truths of the gospel is we’re all flawed human beings. All of us, the Bible says, have fallen short of the glory of God. While all of us would easily admit we are sinners, it’s the details of those sins that make us uncomfortable, especially if we’re in the profession of helping people with their own sins. For some reason, when you’re dealing with other people’s sins, they don’t want to know about yours.
And while most churches would agree their pastor is a sinner, they don’t want to know any details. As a result, pastors and other church leaders never talk about their own struggles. They don’t have a pastor they can talk to. They don’t see a counselor with any regularity. They never join a group of any kind. After all, if they share something in confidence and it leaks out, the pastor could lose their job.
So, pastors don’t talk to anyone. Even worse, they try to keep their shadow side hidden, and this is when the darkness is most powerful. The darkness pulls us off into solitude and that’s when our addiction – whatever our addiction might be – becomes our only solace. While the addiction will end up destroying our ministry in public, the destruction begins in solitude.
We’re told Satan hunts the way a lion hunts its prey. Have you ever watched a lion hunt? Videos of a hunting pride of lions are shown on the nature channels all the time. The pride will get the herd of prey running and make the herd change directions. When one animal in the herd is too slow or too weak to keep up, they become separated from the herd. That’s when the lions move in and cut off the stranded animal. When that happens, the animal doesn’t stand a chance.
And neither do we. Like the unfortunate prey, we die in our loneliness.
Here’s the rule. We have to deal with our shadow, or our shadow will deal with us. Every believer – but especially pastors – have to be intentional about dealing with their brokenness and unresolved wounds. This means a serious commitment to the spiritual disciplines of Bible study, journaling, and fasting. It means finding a time and place to worship at a place and time where you don’t lead. It means finding a group – a band of brothers – to do life with. All of us need a group of friends who know our story and will stick with us in good and bad times.
And most pastors need to be working a serious process with a good pastoral counselor. Each part of our life is connected to the others. Our childhood affects our preaching, our adolescence impacts our leadership, and our parents inform our view of God. We need to take the time to work through each of these issues and a safe place to tend to our unhealed wounds. We all have them and we all need to be proactive in dealing with them. Deal redemptively with your woundedness – the same way you would encourage any member of your church to deal with theirs.
We’ve all fallen. We’re all flawed. We all need to deal with it.
And we need to deal with it before it deals with us.
