Life by Grace Alone

Everyone comes into a church with preconceived ideas about what a pastor and his family should be like. Usually there is the expectation that the pastor and his wife are somehow on a different spiritual plane then other people. The very idea that you should encourage your pastor in his study of the word or in his prayer life seems almost insulting, perhaps his wife but certainly not the pastor. In reality he may be so caught up in doing the work of the church, being the paid Christian saying all the right things, he may forget to check where his heart really is. His wife has been the recipient of wonderful teaching for many years and knows all the right things to say but are her words always an indication of where her heart is? Perhaps none of us should assume that everyone is thriving spiritually. We might be wise to share where we are in our walk while we kindly give them the opportunity to do the same. Sometimes people adopt false standards they want to hold all pastors' famil...

It doesn't matter who you are or what you do, most people do not handle criticism well even on those occasions when it is done in the most God honoring way possible. Unfortunately many brothers and sisters do not seem to think about honoring Christ before opening their mouths. Steve's first criticism concerning his ministry occurred when he had just started as a summer intern. One of the men after Steve had led a service asked with concern, "Do you think the fact you can't sing will hurt your ministry?" Although other comments over the years have been far more caustic, few have been more unexpected than that first thinly veiled criticism. At Steve's first church, a group of three young men who were ardent readers of reformed theology took it upon themselves many Sunday evenings to share their thoughts with Steve on how they believed he had missed the mark in his preaching. My husband, the recent grad was not experienced enough to take such encounters in stride...