mgpcpastor's blog

From an excerpt of Zack Eswine’s The Imperfect Pastor, posted at The Gospel Coalition.

Do you have a bucket list for ministry, all the great ministry achievements you want to accomplish in his name before you die? You would not be alone if you did. Just read the classified ads, and myriad desires of those who make up your congregation and community reveal themselves too.
James and John had bucket lists. “We want you to do for us whatever we ask of you,” they said. “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory” (Mark 10:35–37).
James and John had begun to subtly yearn that their ministry with Jesus would provide them a platform for greatness. Their cravings began to wreck their community (Mark 10:41). Jesus did not stop this friction or potential wreckage from happening. He still doesn’t. Did you mark that down? James and John were dearly loved, gifted, called, fruitful, and central to Jesus’s earthly ministry. He graciously heard their desires. But their closeness to Jesus and their fruitfulness in ministry didn’t mean that everything they did, said, or craved was blessed by God, or that everything they did was good, right, and helpful to those who knew them.
Instead of giving them such immunity, Jesus responded. What he says sobers us. It’s possible for ministry leaders to desire greatness in ways no different from anyone, anywhere in our culture. Attaching Jesus’s name to these desires doesn’t change the fact that they look just like the cravings of the world.
Pause here. Read that last sentence again if you need to. Prayerfully slow down for this. Human leaders everywhere desire greatness and to lord it over others. “It shall not be so among you,” Jesus declared. If it is greatness that you desire, you must from now on surrender your life to greatness of a different kind.

Read the rest at The Gospel Coaltion. (and then get the book)