Full-Time Pastor but only Part-Time Follower of Jesus
What it took to find my real ministry.
Craig Groeschel
April 1, 2007
From my earliest memories, I remember "playing the game": try to say the right things at the right times to the right people. When the people or circumstances changed, so did I. As a young child, I tried to please my parents. In school I made sure my teachers got my grandest act. There's nothing terribly wrong with that, but looking back, I see that those were just practice runs for what would come later. As a teen I did almost anything for acceptance from my buddies. I partied, swore, lied, cheated, and stole. By the time I got to college, I was playing so many different roles that I began to lose track of the real me. Honestly, I began to wonder if there was a real me. At nineteen I became a follower of Christ. And the parts of my life he changed, he changed miraculously. He cleaned house. But in a darkened corner here, a locked closet there, I continued to believe I was better off putting up a front. It was a new front, a spiritual one. But still the same old game, just played on a different stage. Within a few years, I became a pastor. You'd think that would have shaken the deceit right out of me. But as a young pastor, I simply turned pro. My church members observed my finest performances. I fooled many of them, but I didn't fool myself. And I didn't fool God. I entered seminary after I had been a pastor for a while. One of my professors taught me many invaluable ministry principles. In fact, I still practice most of what I learned from him. However, one of the things he shared I now believe was not only wrong, but incredibly dangerous. He called it the "pastor's mystique," and he said we had to guard it at all cost. "People think they want their pastors to be normal, everyday people," he told our class, "but they really don't. ...
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