We don’t really think about it much, but most churches have a weird relationship with their pastors. When a church hires a pastor he becomes an employee responsible to the church for his job performance. While churches have various ideas about exactly what a pastor should do, Scripture makes it clear that a big part of his job is to get people to change. (See Colossians 1:28)
Change, for most of us, comes with a certain amount of discomfort, especially when it comes to changing our long-held beliefs, core values, and deeply ingrained habits. But, the pastor’s job is to speak truth and encourage change. And in many cases, the more change needed, the more potential pain involved, the more the pastor is responsible before God to make sure it happens.
Weird, huh? In this, pastors have a lot in common with surgeons or physical therapists. Their job often involves inflicting short-term pain on people in order to facilitate their long-term healing. It’s the same with your pastor. For some reason, though, while we’re willing to pay thousands of dollars to surgeons for this service, when pastors do this part of their job well we tend to complain and grumble, and sometimes run them out of town on a rail.
So the next time you get torqued off at your pastor, take a second to think about what he’s doing, what he’s saying, what he’s actually accountable to God for. It’s possible the issue that made you so upset is the very idol God is trying to get you to release.
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