Jump directly to the Content

Pastor, Why Are You Hiding?

Sin-management strategies rarely work. It’s time to risk moving out from the shadows.
简体中文繁體中文
Pastor, Why Are You Hiding?
Image: Illustration by Rick Szuecs / Source image: Lightstock

The 17th-century Presbyterian clergyman John Flavel wrote in Keeping the Heart, “There are some men and women who have lived forty or fifty years in the world and have had scarcely one hour’s discourse with their hearts all the while.”

I’ve found this to be true of many people in ministry. These pastors passed their ordination exams with flying colors. They can quote Barth and Bavinck. They have “hot takes” on cultural issues on social media. They’re conversationalists and the last to leave church on Sunday mornings. But they’re also burning cauldrons of neglected needs that manifest in sneaky and secretive behaviors which will likely cost them their pastoral ministries and maybe their families.

They’re lost pastors, lonely and busy and empty and radically disconnected from any kind of inner conversation with their hearts and with the God who is more near to them than their very breath.

The Glittering Image and the Hidden Self

Something ...

March
Support Our Work

Subscribe to CT for less than $4.25/month

Homepage Subscription Panel

Read These Next

Related
Emotional Stability
Emotional Stability
You'll never grow up if you aren't willing to examine your inner life.
From the Magazine
The Evil Ideas Behind October 7
The Evil Ideas Behind October 7
The Hamas attacks in Israel have a grotesque ideological history and deserve unflinching moral judgment.
Editor's Pick
What Christians Miss When They Dismiss Imagination
What Christians Miss When They Dismiss Imagination
Understanding God and our world needs more than bare reason and experience.
close