What are pastors like?

I had the opportunity once to visit several missionaries in Bosnia and I asked them, "What do you wish people back home understood about missionaries?" One said immediately, "That we're not holy." She went on to explain that missionaries struggle with sin and temptation like everyone else.

We tend to forget that missionaries are ordinary people. We ought to highly esteem the missionary, but we mustn't exalt them. They have as much need of daily grace as any Christian. They get lonely. They doubt sometimes. They can be afraid. They can lose their tempers. They are gifted and called to the work, but they aren't super-Christians.

The same can be said of us pastors. Pastors may be gifted from the Lord for their work in the ministry but they are still ordinary men. We have the same temptations to sin as others do. We suffer the same trials others do. We are subject to the same feelings as others are. Pastors who pretend otherwise are, well, pretending.

I don't mean that pastors ought to be like everyone else. We ought to be examples to the flock. We ought to be leaders in service and worship and mission. But we should readily admit we are nothing except by grace. Behind any achievement in sanctification or sacrificial service or Spirit-filled sermon is an ordinary man.

"The best of men are only men at their best. Patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, - martyrs, fathers, reformers, puritans, - all, all are sinners, who need a Saviour: holy, useful, honourable in their place, - but sinners after all." J.C. Ryle

God is most pleased to use ordinary men; just as He is most pleased to call ordinary people to salvation (See I Corinthians 1). He does not wish to share His glory. What is unordinary about pastors is they have a desire to serve the church in a capacity others do not and they have an empowering for this work others do not. But this comes from the Lord, not the pastor.

God is the extraordinary Pastor.