The Pastor’s Spiritual Formation: Preaching Can Be Hard On the Soul In Surprising Ways.

I read a lot of books in seminary. A lot. A very few were unremarkable. Most were really helpful in conveying important ideas. But the book that helped me the most personally was Dallas Willard’s, “Renovation of the Heart.”

To oversimplify it, the message I internalized from that book is that any activity that we humans do with regularity will have a forming effect on us spiritually. Whether scripture memory, or doom-scrolling social media, our regular habits will shape us at the soul level.

So how does this affect the pastor/preacher?

1.       The pastor's job is to talk about stuff everyone around you values greatly. They literally hire you to know about things they hold very dear & talk about them every week. Your job is to be the expert/answer-giver.

2.       This makes it very easy to hide behind the ‘expert’ façade for the person who is insecure. This isn’t living in truthfulness, which wreaks havoc on the soul, and puts increasing pressure to maintain the façade as time goes on.

3.       It becomes an easy next step to carry this habit into other social realms. My subconscious tells me I need to provide insights and answers to whatever the topic is, regardless of what I know or if people want to hear from me.

4.       I’ve seen pastors who leave the ministry or retire but don’t know how to turn this off. Their social equilibrium has been shaped by being the person in the room with answers. It becomes part of their soul-level identity and one of their normal routes to experience validation.

5.       This ‘wall of words’ habit often gets in the way of real listening. Not typically because the pastor is arrogant, but because they’ve subtly come to expect that they’re not doing their job if they don’t provide answers.

So what can be done about this? Be aware of how the task affects you. Give those closest to you the freedom to point it out without being threatened. And engage other disciplines to form yourself in healthy ways. When I became aware of these early in my ministry (my wife called me out after a dinner party!), I not only became a better pastor and friend, but also a lot happier.

Serving in ministry is a joy and brings many blessings. Being aware of the potential traps can help make sure we experience more of that.