The Relational Pastor

Over the last few months I have been reading a book slowly and underlining most of it. I often have a few books on the go and this one was recommended by a wise retired Vicar who also happens to be my friend’s dad. As she said ‘Dad and his retired Vicar friends are suggesting it to young leaders as an essential and timely corrective to a wrong and increasingly seductive mode of operating they observe in church leadership today’ 

This among many quotes struck me:

“....the great temptation of power is control, and the great consequence of control is lack of relationship. The reason that intimacy is so difficult in ministry is you’re not in control- you’re in relationship. You have to enter a person’s life and they have to enter yours. The minute you start becoming obsessed with control, you lose relationship. Sadly, pastors can get really good at seeming relational, but they are being manipulative. They know how to play the emotional angles. I think that probably the leading characteristic of successful pastors today is their control’. 

The Way of the Dragon or the Way of the Lamb, p. 136