Pastors need to avoid the Pastoral Epistles. Those are the Pauline letters to some guys who were laboring alongside him in the gospel ministry. You would think that those books would be uniquely helpful to pastors, and they are. But my advice is… avoid them.
Why? That can only be asked by someone who hasn’t read them. In II Timothy alone, there are so many injunctions that expose our pastoral failures. Things like: “pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace (2:22)”; “…always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry (4:5).”
Of the eight injunctions in those two verses, all eight of them slay me. My point, I think, is this: all of us so-called clergy types have very little to be high-minded about. So, in the face of those and other reminders, the need of the hour is a humble clergy. Anything other than that borders on the irrational.
