“Practice What You Preach”

Tuesday, September 10, 2019

I am a minister that has been called to minister for about six years.  Though I have been called, I have not always followed; I have recently accepted the position of youth pastor.  I am expected to teach on purity and abstinence before marriage; how can I teach something that I myself did not preserve?

Sincerely,
Feeling Hypocritical

Dear Feeling Hypocritical,

If it is impossible to teach on something unless you have done it right yourself, nobody could say anything about morality because all have sinned (Rom 3:23).  Paul preached on peace after killing Christians (Rom 12:18), and Peter preached on boldness after denying Christ (1 Pet 5:15-16).  The truth is the truth regardless of how well we have personally followed it.
On a separate, but related note: a minister is different from a pastor – which one are you?  If someone is going to be a pastor, he must meet the qualifications found in 1 Tim 3:1-7 and Tit 1:5-9.  Another thing to consider is that the Bible never talks about ‘youth pastors’ and ‘senior pastors’.  We would encourage you to read “Senior Citizen Pastor” because it sounds like you are caught up in a religious movement that doesn’t take God’s pattern for the church seriously, and if we don’t take God seriously, it doesn’t matter how much we clean up our lives.

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