#22 - Dangerous Calling

I'm a big fan of Paul Tripp. If you have not read any of his books, you really should. I think every Christian should read Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands. If you are a parent of teens or pre-teens, you should read Age of Opportunity. If you want to improve your communication skills, War of Words is great too. And if you are a pastor or elder, you really should read his latest book, Dangerous Calling.

I wish I had read this book 10 years ago. I think it would have really helped me through the hard knocks of my journey in pastoral ministry a lot. But I think God wanted me to struggle through a lot of these issues on my own. However, I'm glad that this book is available to me now as though I have identified many of these issues addressed in the book previously, I have by no means mastered them.

Tripp calls this book a "diagnostic book," that is, it is meant for pastors to examine their hearts and to help them transform through the power of the gospel. He begins the first section of the book by describing the unhealthy pastoral culture often found in many churches. Most pastors are very isolated. They do not interact with the people in the church as just another sinner saved by grace. Unfortunately, pastors feel the pressure to put on a front of super spiritual maturity and most churches want that same ideal from their pastor as well.

He peels back the layers of the heart where pastors find their identity in ministry not in Christ alone. We puff ourselves up with theological arrogance or pride in ministry skills. We develop self-righteous complaints of others or even anger. These are all dangers "unique to or intensified" in pastoral ministry.

Then Tripp spends the next section focusing on the first solution - regaining our awe of the greatness of God or what I like to call being God-centered. If we have the right view of God and His sovereign majesty in our lives and ministry, we can't help but be dependent on Him through the gospel daily which is the last section of the book. Tripp exposes the many manifestations and dangers of self-righteous pride.

Here are some gems:

• Ministry had become my identity...I thought of myself as a pastor. That's it, bottom line..."Pastor" defined me. It was me in a way that proved to be more dangerous than I would have thought.
• Tender, heartfelt worship is hard for a person who thinks of himself as having arrived. No one celebrates the presence and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ more than the person who has embraced his desperate and daily need of it. But ministry had redefined me. In ways I now find embarassing, it told me that I was not like everyone else, that I existed in a unique category. And if I was not like everyone else, then I didn't need what everyone else needs. Now, if you had sat down and told me all this specifically, I would have told you it was all a bunch of baloney; but it was how I acted and related.
• When I daily admit how needy I am, daily meditate on the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and daily feed on the restorative wisdom of his Word, I am propelled to share with others the grace that I am daily receving at the hands of my Savior.
• It is my worship that enables me to lead others to worship. It is my sense of need that leads me to tenderly pastor those in need of grace. It is my joy in my identity in Christ that leads me to want to help others lives in the middle of what it means to be "in Christ." In fact, one of the things that makes a sermon compelling is that the preacher is worshiping his way through his own sermon. Having a ministry that is fueled by personal devotion has its roots in humble, heart-deep confession.
•  Once you have closed your eyes to the evidence and quit listening to the voices of others, you are left to the blindness and self-righteousness of your yet sinful heart. This makes it very hard for you to conclude that you are the problem. No, what you will conclude is that ministry or things in your ministry is the problem.
• Bad things happen when maturity is more defined by knowing than it is by being. Danger is afloat when you come to love the ideas more than the God whom they represent and the people they are meant to free.
• Only deep gratitude for a suffering Savior can make a man willing to suffer in ministry. It is only a heart that is satisfied in Christ that can be spiritually content in the hardships of ministry.
• It's only when your identity is firmly rooted in Christ that you are free from seeking to get your identity out of your ministry.
• You can be assured that like God's leaders of old, he will face crucial personal- and ministry-choice points. In those significant moments, what will win the day and determine what he will do will be his heart because, like everyone else, it is inescapably true that whatever rules his heart will direct his life and his ministry.
• When you forget the gospel, you begin to seek from the situations, locations, and relationships of ministry what you have already been given in Christ. You begin to look to ministry for identity, security, hope, well-being, meaning, and purpose. These are things you will only ever find vertically. They are already yours in Christ.
• When you live out of the grace of the gospel, you quite fearing failure, you quit avoiding being known, and you quit hiding your struggles and your sin. The gospel declares that there is nothing that could ever be uncovered about you and me that hasn't already been covered by the grace of Jesus.
• It is your admission of weakness that protects your ministry from becoming all about human reputation and kingdom building. And it is your weakness that protects you from the dangers of self-righteousness and self-reliance. It is your delusions of perceived strength and maturity, which you actually lack, that have the potential to derail and ultimately destroy your ministry. This is because when you think you are strong, you think you can live independently of the grace of Jesus and the ministry of others, although you may not know that his is what you're doing.

This is an excellent book for pastors. It really does a great job of exposing so many of the dangers and deception in the heart of a pastor. It feels like Tripp is doing spiritual heart surgery. I am constantly struggling with seeing my identity as a pastor above my identity as a child of God so I definitely appreciated the insight and solutions offered.

This is also an excellent book for elders. Not only will it help them to understand the issues and struggles that staff pastors deal with, but a lot of these heart issues apply to them as well. The solutions to dealing with these challenges are found both in the individual and in community. Having others that create a leadership culture that fosters transparency and gospel driven encouragement is vital for pastors and elders.