Pastors, repentance, and humility

I’m really enjoying The Heart of a Servant Leader by Jack Miller. Lots of stuff that’s not the standard fare for pastors today, like this brutally honest quote about pastors, repentance, and humility. It’s from a letter that he wrote to a missionary/church planter:

My own conviction is that the flesh is still so strong in the Christian leader that each of us needs a healthy fear of our own capacity for ruining the work of God with our unconscious pride. Dear Chris, I am very, very much afraid of myself, and I think that is a good place to be – provided I take my fears to Jesus and ask Him to cleanse me of my “will to power.” Indeed, a pastor really needs to be broken before God every day, or he will break up the church of God with his willfulness or let it slip into spiritual death through his sloth.

I am horrified, no, terrified, by what I saw happen between the pastor of [a local church that split] and the other leaders and members of the congregation. It was awful and could have been prevented by humility, by listening, gentleness, and mutual teachability. I am convinced that I could do the same, and you could too…

In honesty I can learn to hate my egocentricity and its many manifestations, and when I do that I can really cry out with sincerity for grace. Jesus always helps me when I humble myself in this way. May He grant us both grace to humble ourselves so that we can do all things for His glory and not our own.

You don’t always hear this from pastors. Miller had a genuine humility and a corresponding grip on grace. I’m loving this book.