You are the Greatest Threat to Your Ministry; Left to Yourself, You Will Ruin It

How many church leaders wake up every morning and plead with the Lord to save their ministry from themselves? Probably not many. We tend to underestimate the pervasive, pernicious, and powerful presence of pride in our hearts and to undernourish the grace of humility. As a result our self-confidence grows. 

We need the Holy Spirit to curb our tendency toward self-centeredness, self-promotion, and self-sufficiency, and to help us to see ourselves rightly so that we might esteem others more highly than ourselves. 

Our doctrine of human depravity tells us there is no natural inclination in us toward servanthood; it must be intentionally cultivated if it is to exist at all. Sadly, many church leaders long to be served, admired, esteemed, and depended upon as indispensable to the cause. We fail to mortify selfish ambition and lust for control, power, comfort, or approval. 

The apostle Paul reminds us of the importance of self-forgetfulness in our ministry. 

• “For if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself” (Galatians 6:3).
• “So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth” (1 Corinthians 3:7).
• “For I was not at all inferior to these super-apostles, even though I am nothing” (2 Corinthians 12:11).

Beyond all considerations of gifting and calling to the office of elder, the most important quality of a shepherd is humility. Talent, charisma, worldly success, and theological prowess count for very little if a church leader is proud, self-consumed, unapproachable, defensive, petty, inflexible, intractable, arrogant, or dismissive.

It is natural for a congregation to desire a senior pastor who is a superb preacher, visionary, and leader. We are even drawn to elders who are professionally accomplished and admired in the community. However, the Lord’s shepherds first and foremost must be servants of Christ and of others. 

The lenses of humility

In the New Testament a servant is one who reflects Christ’s humble and gentle heart, his self-sacrificing concern for others, and his resolute pursuit of serving his sheep ahead of his own welfare. Notice how the Apostle Peter distinguishes elders’ motives as he describes humility:

“So I exhort the elders among you…  shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock… Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (1 Peter 5:1-5).

Peter is simply expanding the admonition of Jesus for church leaders that “whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:44-45). 

Paul calls humility a mindset in Philippians 2:5, “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus.” 

To think of it another way, humility is a pair of glasses through which the Christian looks at God, themselves, and others. 

The lenses of humility are mercy and grace, two of the benefits lavished upon sinners through God’s love in the gospel. The mercy lens interprets everything according to this fact: I have not received what I deserve from the hand of a just God. The grace lens interprets everything according to this fact: I have received what I do not deserve from the hand of a merciful Father.

The riches of Christ’s grace and mercy comprise the lenses through which I make sense out of everything in life, including others’ faults and my own accomplishments.  

The humble heart wants to see things as God sees them and closely monitors the self-promoting and self-justifying inclinations of the heart. Jesus’ Spirit works this grace in the heart, enabling you to freely credit God with every good thing you enjoy while taking responsibility for any way in which you fail to reflect his glory.

Humble hearts marvel at the cross and glory in the gospel. They realize that though pride continually lurks in the shadows, Jesus overflows with compassion, patience, and love. 

Paraphrasing C.S. Lewis, humility is not thinking less of yourself, it is thinking of yourself, less. Secure in the love of Christ, humble hearts are free to consider others more important than themselves, putting others’ interests before their own while submitting their own actions, attitudes, and affections to critique. 

As Paul puts it, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:3-4).

Jonathan Edwards, echoing Augustine and Calvin, wrote about the centrality of humility:

“Humility, then, is the most essential thing in true religion. The whole setting of the gospel and everything that belongs to the New Covenant should have this effect upon the hearts of men. Without it there can be no true religion, whatever profession may be made and however intense the person’s religious affections appear to be.”  

The lens of pride

The proud are content to remain exactly who they are, giving little thought to mortifying their pride. A prideful leader excels at seeing the sins of others but has great difficulty seeing his own (Matthew 7:4, Galatians 6:1). 

Pride makes sense of life through the lenses of deserving and demanding. The deserving lens interprets everything according to this impression (not a fact): I deserve better than what I have. The demanding lens interprets everything according to this impression (not a fact): I have the right to demand whatever I think promotes my welfare.

Pride interprets everything with an inflated sense of self-importance, finding joy first in the primacy of one’s own reputation, desires, and demands. Pride renders you self-centered, self-exalting, and God-diminishing. 

The power of God’s Spirit

Thankfully, every Christ follower has the Spirit of Jesus who continuously liberates them from the insidious work of pride. The Holy Spirit is jealous to show us our pride that we might increasingly be conformed to Jesus’ image. He convicts us of how pride weakens our desire to serve others sacrificially. He reveals how pride blinds us to our sins, thereby diminishing the Spirit’s work to convict us of self-sufficiency and increase our longing for his presence and power.

What are some tangible indicators that the Spirit is forging humility in your heart?

1. You regularly remind yourself that you are the greatest threat to your ministry and, if left to yourself, will ruin it. Then you flee to Jesus and receive his grace and power. Mercy experienced in your personal walk with Jesus frames the way you relate to everyone else.
2. You gladly confess to the Lord that you are nothing, God is everything, and that no fruit will be borne through you without being constantly filled with the Spirit (John 15:5; Ephesians 5:18).
3. You continue to ask Jesus for grace to repent of your idols, whether the need for control, approval, comfort, appearing competent, or being right.
4. You insist on periodic reviews of your performance, seeking input from those who work for or with you regarding your impact upon them.

When leaders model these graces, there will be a trickle-down effect into the flock they lead, producing sheep who also reflect humility and long to mortify pride in their own lives.

Mike Sharrett is a retired PCA pastor who currently serves as interim pastor at Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church in Williamsburg, Virginia. February 3, 2025

A Valentine's Day Prayer

Dear Lord Jesus, 

it’s Valentine’s Day—the day in our culture in which red hearts, overpriced cards, dark
chocolates, and cut flowers abound. For some, it’s a day of incredible kindness, sweetness, and gratitude. For others, it’s a day in which brokenness, loneliness, and emptiness are magnified. For all of us, it should be a day in which our deepest longings for intimacy and connection find their way home to you — the quintessential lover.

We each have our own stories of love gained and lost, of love being alive, and love being tested, strained and fractured. We’ve experienced seasons of incredible joy, connection and intimacy in our marriages —moments when we’ve wondered how heaven itself could be any richer, grander or fuller.

But we’ve also discovered time and again, that no one human being (or any number of them), no human romance story, no torrid love affair can possibly fill the vacuum in our souls that’s uniquely Jesus shaped. Even the best marriage is made of two broken people, two redeemed sinners who will ultimately not be enough for the other.

Lord Jesus, “grace” us with a deeper, richer current experience of belonging to you. You are the ultimate Spouse — the One we’ve always longed for. I believe this theologically, and I want to “know” it more experientially.

Our hearts are fickle and fragile — still capable of being sucker-punched by sin within, and susceptible to whisperings without. Most of the time I believe you greatly love, desire, and delight in me; but then I also have moments when I can be blindsided by unbelief, temptation and discontent.

Those are the times when I place unrealistic demands on other relationships, including marriage. Instead of living as a grateful servant, I can act like a grace-less orphan — over-expecting from others and under-believing of you. Forgive me and free me from all such nonsense.

Lord Jesus, increasingly, I want to love you (and others) as you love me, until the Day our betrothal to you becomes the Day of great banqueting forever — the Day we crave more than any other—the wedding feast of the Lamb. You are more than enough. So very Amen I pray, in your tender and tenacious name.

THANKS Scotty Smith, founding pastor of Christ Community Church in Franklin, Tennessee.

The Enjoyment of Wanton Sin

One of the most memorable sections of Augustine’s Confessions is his painful, prayerful recollection of an
event that had occurred 25 years earlier.

This account is worth some very serious meditation on sin, the nature of pleasure, stealing forbidden fruit, and the companionship of fools.

 Augustine says that as a 16-year-old, “I cared for nothing but to love and to be loved. . . . Love and lust together,” he writes, “seethed within me. In my tender youth they swept me away over the precipice of my body’s appetites and plunged me in the whirlpool of sin.” “I was . . . floundering in the broiling sea of my fornication. . . . The brambles of lust grew high above my head and there was no one to root them out, certainly not my father” (II.2).

Despite his lust-filled teenage years, he focuses most of his attention upon an act that many might dismiss as good old-fashioned rabble rousing: petty theft from a fruit tree. But note carefully why Augustine, looking back, sees the sinfulness of sin in stealing these pears:

There was a pear-tree near our vineyard, loaded with fruit that was attractive neither to look at nor to taste.

Late one night a band of ruffians, myself included, went off to shake down the fruit and carry it away, for we had continued our games out of doors until well after dark, as was our pernicious habit. We took away an enormous quantity of pears, not to eat them ourselves, but simply to throw them to the pigs.

Perhaps we ate some of them, but our real pleasure consisted in doing something that was forbidden. . . .

It was not the pears that my unhappy soul desired. I had plenty of my own, better than those, and I only picked them so that I might steal. For no sooner had I picked them than I threw them away, and tasted nothing in them but my own sin, which I relished and enjoyed. . . .

We were tickled to laughter by the prank we had played, because no one suspected us of it although the owners were furious. Why was it, then, that I thought it fun not to have been the only culprit? Perhaps it was because we do not easily laugh when we are alone. . . I am quite sure that I would never have done this thing on my own. . . . To do it by myself would have been no fun and I should not have done it.

—Saint Augustine, Confessions, Penguin Classics, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin (New York: Penguin, 1961), II.4, 6, 9.

This is worth some serious meditation on sin, the nature of pleasure, forbidden fruit, and the companionship of fools.

Thanks to Justin Taylor