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The Number One Failure of 90 Percent of Pastors

The four-year-old who says, “I can do it by myself” has a lot in common with the typical pastor.

Pastors are notorious for their lone ranger approach to ministry. It’s what I call the number-one failure of 90 percent of pastors. They prefer to go it alone.

Even Jesus needed a buddy. “He came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, ‘So, you men could not keep watch with me for one hour?’ ” (Matt. 26:40)

Sometimes it helps to have someone nearby, praying, loving, caring, even hurting with you.

The word paracletos from John 16:7 is translated “comforter” and “helper” in most Bible versions. The literal meaning is “one called alongside,” the usual idea being that the Holy Spirit is our Comforting Companion, a true Friend in need. And each time that word is found in the New Testament—John 14:16,20; 15:26; 16:7; and I John 2:1—it always refers to the Lord.

However, here’s something important.

While paracletos does always refer to the Lord in those Scriptures, the word parakleesis (also a noun), for comfort or consolation, may refer both to the work of the Lord in our lives as well as the effect we have upon each other.

Don’t miss that.

Here’s the Apostle Paul …

We were afflicted on every side, conflicts without, fears within. But God, who comforts the humble, comforted us by the coming of Titus. And, not only by his coming, but also by the comfort with which he was comforted in you, as he reported to us your longing, your mourning, your zeal for me; so that I rejoiced even more (2 Cor. 7:5-7).

The great apostle was hurting. He needed something God provided by a friend, Titus. When this messenger reported to Paul how faithfully the Corinthians were serving God, when he told how they cared for Paul and grieved over him, that pumped him up.

Titus himself was elated by the work of the Corinthians, Paul says.

God made us to need the companionship of fellow disciples.

If you read the Scriptures and miss that, you have missed a great element in the Word.

“It is not good that man should be alone” was spoken of more than marriage. That is a fact of human existence.

God made us gregarious. We are social creatures. We do not do well in isolation. We are all about social networking, to use a term on everyone’s tongues today.

When we humble ourselves before God, repent of our sin and receive Jesus Christ—that is, when we are born again—we begin the process of moving back to God’s original plan for us: to rejoin the family of man, so to speak.

The night God saved me as an 11-year-old, I found myself loving the brothers and sisters of all ages in our country church. That was a new experience for me, one that no one had mentioned to me and for which I was totally unprepared.

It was a wonderful surprise.