A second reason why ministry is hazardous to your soul is because you are constantly being put on a spiritual pedestal and treated as if you are the fourth member of the Trinity.
In truth, they have no idea whether you have spent any time alone with God in reflection and prayer over the last six weeks; they do not know what you are viewing online; they do not know whether you treat your wife with tenderness and dignity.
They just afford you a high level of spirituality.
Here’s where it gets really toxic: You can begin to bask in this spiritual adulation and start to believe your own press. Soon the estimation of others about your spiritual life becomes your own.
This is why most train-wrecks in ministry are not as sudden and “out of the blue” as they seem. Most leaders who end up in a moral ditch were veering off of the road for some time. Their empty spiritual lives simply became manifest, or caught up with them, or took its toll.
You can only run on empty for so long.
I had a defining moment on this in my life when I was around thirty years old. A well-known leader fell, a leader who had been a role model for my life. I was devastated. But more than that, I was scared. If it could happen to him, then I was a pushover.
It didn’t help my anxieties that I was in a spiritual state exactly as I have described: confusing doing things for God and time with God; accepting other’s estimation of my spiritual life in a way that made it easy to bypass a true assessment of where I stood.
I was like a cut flower that looked good on the outside, but would, in time, wilt dreadfully.
I remember so clearly the awareness that I could fall; that no one would ever own my spiritual life but me; and that I needed to realize that the public side of my life was meaningless — only the private side mattered. This was not flowing from a position of strength; it was flowing from a deep awareness of weakness.
So the gun went off.
