Pastor/Leaders are Vulnerable

A pastor can only provide protection that is as good as his own. Modern Christians do not realise that the pastors/leaders they trust are extremely vulnerable to spiritual attack themselves, so they cannot provide strong protection.

Having one person as leader of a church is spiritually dangerous. Spiritual authority and protection comes through submission to authority. If one man leads a church, all the church members submit to him. This gives the pastor/leader tremendous authority, but leaves vulnerable to satanic attack and deception. In most situations where Christian groups have gone haywire, they were led by one person.

True protection comes when a group of elders all submit to each other. Each elder is accountable to the others and protected by his submission. The members of the Church are then protected by submitting to their elders.

Protection comes through submission to people close enough to see the first signs of deception or sin. For most pastor/leaders, this will not come from within their church. Their people look up to them, so most pastor/leaders have no one close enough to see their frailties and bold enough to challenge them before they make a serious mistake. Many people will disagree with a pastor/leader’s decisions, but very few will challenge a pastor/leader’s hidden sins. Those who do challenge have usually lost their credibility. There are very few people who can speak the truth to their pastor/leader in a pure spirit.

Some pastor/leaders attempt to establish spiritual protection by linking with other pastors, either in their own denomination or in the same city. This is good, but it does not provide full protection. Their commitment to their people means that they will not be able to get really close to another pastor/leader. The other pastors will not be close enough to see if any spiritual vulnerability is coming to the surface. To get an early warning of something going wrong, a person must see the pastor/leader when he is relaxed with his guard down. There are very few pastor/leaders who are secure enough, to allow a fellow pastor or church leader close enough to see into their soul.