The Greatest Danger to Your Pastor’s Spiritual Growth

Dave has a great post over at our RedeemingChurchConflicts site:

Here is just a snippet:

This is what the dangerous downward spiral looks like:

The pastor preaches a powerful message that really communicates.
Church members congratulate him on his fine work as a powerful communicator of difficult theological material.
The pastor is praised for “changing lives” and is pleased that the church members respond so positively.
The next week the same thing happens—praise, adoration, applause … for “the man.”
Week after week, the pastor receives this praise and feeds his ego by gathering close to himself only the people who agree with him and praise him; he tunes out (or even destroys) anyone who dares to challenge the view that he is a great man (the most theologically astute person in the church; the only real visionary; the one whose passions and ideas are “right”).
And then something devastating happens … the pastor begins to believe he is a great man; that he alone is the one making the real difference for the cause of Christ in his church.
The pastor and his congregation are destroyed.

It doesn’t have to be this way …