A pastor is a saint before they are a pastor. I say this because there is tendency to regard pastors (all licensed ministers really) as above the regular folks in the church and I believe that this is unhealthy for church culture. Respecting your pastor and following their spiritual leadership is healthy, but considering them above you just because of their title is bad.

For the record, when I use the term saint, I'm using the biblical meaning of an individual saved believer within the church, not some alleged super Christian as taught by a certain large church organization who shall not be named here. Do a word search in your favorite bible study software or bible website and you’ll see what I mean.

Perhaps the root of the issue is that we have done a poor job separating people and roles (or offices if you prefer that term). This seems to be a general problem with humans as it happens even in the most secular of large corporations. For example, people get a job position with the word manager in the title and suddenly they are a MANAGER and don’t you forget that! The good ones rise above this, but many do not, providing backstory to the modern parable that "people don’t leave companies, they leave bad managers". The good managers are those who are still whatever they were before their promotion, only they now use their skills to help and provide for their team. My background before pastoring was IT and the good managers were still good programmers at heart. When I arrived at the role of Technical Lead, I had enough responsibilities on the project that my available programming time was limited, but I was still the one that my team came to when they got stuck because I was the best programmer. I considered that my role was to enable them to do their work, whatever that meant that I needed to do. I would run interference and keep them out of meetings whenever possible, I would help them when they got stuck, answer their questions or deal with organizational blockages.

My view of pastoring, much like my approach to being a Technical Lead, was that I was there to help my congregation grow spiritually and progress forward in their relationship with the Lord. Everyone got a standard helping of preaching and teaching, but others would need additional help and they would get encouragement, visitations, bible studies, conversations, taken out for coffee/breakfast (guys) or invited over for a cup of tea with my wife and I (ladies), book recommendations, YouTube video links or whatever else seemed useful and appropriate for their situation.

As a pastor, I always reminded myself that I served at the Lord's pleasure. I was thankful for the opportunity to pastor for almost 18 years, but when it was my time to step down (after a little procrastination) I did so and am now embarked on my next chapter of ministry with writing. The other thing that I did regularly was to pray that the Lord would help me to be the best saint that I could be. Understanding that pastors are saints first, I knew that the better saint I was, the better the pastor I could be. Yes, we’re all human and I have my fair share of imperfections, but the better I can be in my primary identity as a saint, then the better I can be in the other roles I'm called to fill in my life. As the best version of myself I can be, the better I will be as not only a pastor, but also as a husband, a father, a son, a friend, an employee, or whatever other roles come my way in life.