In his book, The Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning writes,

“Satan prompts us to give importance to what has no importance. He clothes trivia with glitter and seduces us away from what is real. He causes us to live in a world of delusion, unreality and shadows.”

In other words, Satan lies. Always. To all of us. And on every subject.

In John 8.44, Jesus calls Satan, “the father of lies”: Satan is the patriarch of lies and lying. He lives to lie and to perpetuate lies in the lives of all people everywhere.

Even in the lives of young ministers. Especially in the lives of young ministers.

 

Why? There are three primary reasons:

 

1. The death of the minister’s soul – like every human being, the minister will live forever, either in the presence of God or outside of it in a place of eternal torment. Satan lies to the young minister to see him or her eternally separated from God, pure and simple.

 

2. The youth of the minister – experience is our friend in that miles put muscle on souls, so to speak: the longer we are in Christ – and in ministry – the better we can handle hardship and deal with life’s most difficult questions. This being the case, Satan goes after us when we are earlier in the process of working through life and ministry’s critical issues.

 

3. The young minister as multiplier – a young minister is a multiplier of discipleship to many. And he or she has great potential to be an ever greater one over the years go to come. Rather than spend time warring against all of the persons the minister is influencing, just strike the shepherd and watch the sheep scatter (Mark14.27).

 

So what lies does Satan feed the young minister?

With help from, and great thanks to, the Millennial ministers I coach, we offer seven of the lies that Satan tells young ministers. In two weeks, we will offer seven more.

 

1. “I’m the only person in ministry who has fears or doubts.”

 

“No other minister knows this fear, doubt, discouragement and depression that imprisons me. No one else in ministry feels so alone, so isolated, so cut off from all help.”

And yet, the vast majority of ministers, especially young ministers, feel just this way.

“80% of pastors and 84% of their spouses have felt unqualified and discouraged as role of pastors at least one or more times in their ministry.”

This is not to say this is to be accepted as normal. Not at all. What it does mean is this: you are not alone.

One of the “secrets” of church history is the significant number of ministers, greatly used of God, who battled with fear, doubt, discouragement and even depression. Their stories are encouraging in that they tell me there is hope for me even as God uses me in ministry.

Feeling I am the “only person” is reason not to isolate myself from others, but to reach out to them – to all the others who have believed this lie that they, too, are “the only one” who battles fear and doubt. It is reason to trust the promise of Scripture that says, “Two are better than one . . . a threefold cord is not easily broken (Ecclesiastes 4.9-12).

 

2. “I can do it ‘in my own strength”

 

“Confidence is good but it’s also a killer. Satan has tried to convince me that, with my Bible school training and natural abilities, I don’t need to grow deeper in God or lean on His strength when things get hard.”

A lot of young ministers (and grey hairs, too) accept this lie as truth. Just look at the studies on ministers and their devotional lives: our prayerlessness and the dust on our Bibles scream that, in spite of our denials, we really do believe we can do ministry in our own strength.

We marginalize the experiences of ministers like A.W. Tozer, Elisabeth Elliot, E.M. Bounds, William Carey, C.T. Studd, Leonard Ravenhill, David Wilkerson, etc., saying these quaint stories make for interesting reading, but have little to do with today.

We’ve little time for seasons in prayer and the study of God’s Word, but plenty of time for Facebook, Instagram, Fantasy Football, coffee shops, “hanging out,” and going to the movies.

But no, no, no, we would never ever say we can do ministry in our own strength.

It’s time to get comfortable on our faces. Or maybe uncomfortable.

It’s time to turn off our gadgets and even our clocks to do what the Bible commands us to do: give ourselves to prayer. It’s time to stop dismissing the fact that the Acts church “waited on God” in prayer, saying we no longer have to wait on God because “the gift has been given.”

It’s time to be pursuers of God – children of the burning heart:

“To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul’s paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too easily satisfied religionist, but justified in the happy experience of the Children of the Burning Heart.” A.W. Tozer

May God make this generation of ministers the generation of ministers known forever as the Children of the Burning Heart.

 

3. Males will always be chosen for ministry positions; females won’t even be considered.

 

What’s the use of a woman even trying to follow Christ’s call when the numbers are clear: when it comes to serving in ministry leadership positions, males hold the definitive edge.

True. But this is not God’s truth.

The Scriptures list the exploits of women of God in ministry, as does church history. Where would the church and the work of God be today without the anointed service – and leadership – of women in ministry? If this subject is new to you, I would encourage you to begin by reading the works of church historian, Ruth Tucker.

Change is in the air and a new generation of humble, yet confident and qualified women are ready to take their places in leading the church.

The only question remaining is this: Is the church ready for them?

 

4. My past disqualifies me from a future of ministry.

 

Famed composer and conductor, Eva Jessye, wrote, “You should not suffer the past. You should be able to wear it like a loose garment, take it off and let it drop.”

In other words, what has happened in the past can stay in the past. Just so, as ministers, what we have done in the past, especially our failures, can and should stay in the past.

But for many young ministers, the past is definitive in the present and authoritative over the future: “What I’ve done has forever done me in.”

To this, and in almost every one of his letters, Paul writes to young ministers: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” Grace and peace over your past, grace and peace in your present, grace and peace for your future.

Paul can pray grace over our past because he has stood on the same ground:

“I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” In Philippians 3.13

My past is neither disqualifying nor qualifying: it is Christ who qualifies me.

“Such confidence we have through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant.” II Corinthians 3.4-6

So let it drop: let your past fall to the ground that you might press forward for the prize.

 

5. “I have to choose between my family and my ministry. I can only have one.”

 

“When God called us to the ministry, He called us to trust Him with our children, even if that means we can’t be there for them because of the ministry.”

I remember this lie, too, told to me by veteran missionaries when I was new to missionary service.

The only problem is, it’s a lie of the devil: when God called us to the ministry, that call included the call to faithfully provide for and lovingly protect our families. This is the teaching of Scripture: “The person who will not provide for…his own household has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever (I Timothy 5.8)…,” “Fathers,…bring (your children) up in the training and admonition of the Lord” (Ephesians 6.4) etc., etc., etc.

Ministry and family are not separate calls, but one call from the one true God. While each will be called on to make sacrifices for the other, neither is to be sacrificed to the other: we can live a family and ministry life that is healthy, whole, and effective. In Jesus’ strong name.

And God help the church or lead pastor who demands that a pastor do otherwise.

 

6. “I cannot effectively pastor people: they won’t listen to me because I’m young”

 

“People don’t respect me since I’m young and JUST a youth pastor.”

And yet, God called young men like Timothy to pastor significant churches. To them, Paul writes, “Never let others look down on you because you are young. Instead, lead believers by being their example in action, in love, in spirit, in faith, and in purity” (I Timothy 4.12).

Ministers like . . .

William Wilberforce, follower of Christ, who, at the age of 28, forged a national revolution against slavery in the UK and defeated it;

Lillian Trasher, follower of Christ, who sailed from the US to Egypt at 23 years of age and began the largest orphanage in the world up to that time;

Billy Graham who was 31 when his evangelistic ministry went national in impact;

Martin Luther King Jr. who was 26 when he began a national movement to fight racism;

Albert Mohler, Jr. who, at 33, became president of Southern Seminary in 1993. He is cited as leading a movement that pulled the Southern Baptist Convention back from biblical heresy.

Finally, when did pastoring pre-adults become less than legitimate ministry? Studies show that the overwhelming majority of conversions to Christ happen before we leave our teen years. This being true, it would seem that youth ministry requires not unqualified “babysitters,” but the very best ministers the church has to offer.

 

7. “I’m too busy to walk with mentors who could help me process life and ministry.”

 

As a fulltime pastoral coach of Millennial ministers, I hear this lie all the time.

I hear it from its victims.

A Journey member told me, “This lie almost killed me. I was what others call a successful pastor, but inside, I was dying and I didn’t know what to do about it. Pastoral coaching saved my life. Not just my ministry, but my marriage and my life.”

When I asked him why he hadn’t begun earlier being pastored by a pastor, he said, “I thought I was too busy. It was only when everything was collapsing that I made time to ask for help. Now that I’m solid again, I’ll never use that excuse again and I’ll never call my coach only when I’m in trouble. Walking with my coach is right up there behind my daily Bible reading and prayer in importance.”

I couldn’t have said it better.

Many will call a coach when they are in trouble and need to find a way “out.” But to do this is to fail to address the real issue: Jesus built you and me with a need to be mentored.

God has written the mentor concept into human nature and that is why the concept is written into the Bible. Lynn Anderson

Pastor, it is plain and simple: you and I need to be pastored. One of the scandals of hordes of churches is that no one is pastoring their pastor. No one is helping him see what he is not seeing. No one is helping him examine his thoughts, desires, words, and behaviors. No one is regularly calling him to confession. No one is delineating where repentance is appropriate. No one is reaching into his discouragement with the truths of the presence, promises and provision of his Savior. No one is confronting his idolatry and pride. No one is alerting him to places of temptation and danger in his life. Paul David Tripp

 

A FINAL THOUGHT

To repeat, Satan is the father of lies. All he speaks is lies. Period. They may be shaved as half-truths or clothed in the garments of truisms, but all he speaks is lies.

How do we recognize a lie?

Someone has written that experts in currency counterfeiting prepare themselves for their task by first and foremost knowing authentic currency: it is in knowing the true that they are able to recognize the false. AND, we might add, they are always careful to confer and to confirm with others who work in currency.

Good advice for the young minister, isn’t it?

Know the truth for it is the truth that will set you free from Satan’s lies about you and about ministry. Wear out the pages of your Bible and of sound commentaries and texts.

Be careful to confer and confirm truth with others whose work is the truth in the context of a life in ministry. Wear out your coaches and peers with conversations about what it means to live for and to lead others in following Christ.

 

Part II and seven more lies Satan tells young ministers in two weeks.