Pastor Me Purely

This is personal for me.

Not theory. Not something I’m tossing around from a distance like an idea in a book. This reaches back into my own life, into the places where God met me when I was still trying to figure out who I was and how to carry what I didn’t have words for yet.

I know what it is to be a boy growing up without a father in the home. I know what it is to watch a hardworking mother shoulder the weight of life, doing everything she can to keep things together, while a quiet loneliness hangs in the background like a constant companion. I was a latchkey kid. I locked the door when I left for school. I unlocked it when I got home. And I waited… for my mother to return from work. In many ways, I was raising myself while still trying to grow up.

So when I gave my life to Jesus in the summer of 1982 and started going to church, I didn’t walk through those doors empty.

I came in hungry.

I came in with needs and gaps and wounds I couldn’t yet name. And that matters more than many people realize, because people do not come to church empty, ever. They come carrying pain. They come carrying rejection. They come carrying unmet needs, confusion, loneliness, trauma, father wounds, mother wounds, and silent longings that have been tucked away for years. They come wanting God… but sometimes they don’t yet know how to tell the difference between their need for Christ and the pull they feel toward human leadership.

And that’s where confusion can begin, on both sides of the relationship.

The Lord is the One who takes us up

Psalm 27:10 says, “When my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take me up.”

That verse is a balm to the wounded soul.

It reminds us that ultimate healing is not found in a pastor. Not in a church culture. Not in being close to a leader. Ultimate healing is found in the Lord Himself.

The Lord takes us up.
The Lord heals us.
The Lord steadies us.
The Lord becomes the answer to the deepest cry of the soul.

Pastors matter. Leaders matter. Shepherds matter. God uses men and women in the body of Christ to teach, guide, correct, strengthen, and care for His people. But we must never turn them into replacements for what only God can be.

And the moment people begin looking to a leader to become the answer to what only Christ can satisfy, something starts drifting out of order. And the moment a leader enjoys that drift, feeds that drift, builds on that drift, danger is already at the door.

Healthy spiritual care is real

Let me be plain.

I believe healthy spiritual care exists. I believe true pastoral love exists. I believe spiritual fathers and mothers, in the right, biblical sense, can be a blessing to people.

As I grew in the faith, I had brothers around me who helped me. Later, I met Bishop McCarter, and he became a living example of what healthy spiritual influence can look like. He helped me without trying to possess me. He cared without blurring lines. He didn’t exploit my hunger. He didn’t use my need to tighten control over me. There was sincerity. There was strength. There was guidance. But there was also order.

And that matters.

Because this is not an attack on healthy pastoral care. It’s a call for purity in it.

A real shepherd can love deeply without becoming emotionally entangled. A real shepherd can care sincerely without building someone’s identity around dependency on the leader. A real shepherd can nurture the sheep without quietly enjoying how much the sheep need them.

That is clean ministry.
That is holy ministry.
That is pastoral care without mixture.

The sheep bring issues, and leaders must bring integrity

Here is the hard truth: even when leadership is healthy, the sheep still bring issues.

And that’s not an insult. That’s reality.

In May of 1988, when I went to Bible school at Solid Rock Church in Marshall, Texas, I was deeply moved by the language of fatherhood, discipleship, sonship, covering, and leadership. Those words touched something in me. But if I’m honest, part of what made them touch me so deeply was that I had father hunger.

And it taught me something I’ve never forgotten: all relationships involve mutual needs being fulfilled.

Sometimes the terminology isn’t the deepest problem. Sometimes the deeper issue is the wound in the person hearing the terminology.

A person hears words like fathering, covering, sonship, discipleship, and what rises in them isn’t just understanding. Sometimes what rises is an ache. A longing. Years of unmet need, looking for a place to land.

That doesn’t make someone wicked.

It makes them wounded.

And wounded people don’t need to be shamed for being wounded, but they do need truth. They do need order. And they do need leaders with enough integrity not to let those wounds redefine the relationship.

A true shepherd does not punish wounded people for being wounded.
But a true shepherd also does not allow someone’s wound to pull the relationship out of biblical order.

A true shepherd keeps the relationship clean.
Balanced.
Holy.
And refuses to become an emotional idol.

That’s what integrity looks like.

Selective father-language can wound people badly

I also remember something from Bible school that opened my eyes even more.

There was a friend of mine who wasn’t as visible as I was at the time. I was active in praise and worship, so my visibility was different. But this brother was struggling with drug addiction. And in the middle of his struggle, he was told, “I’m not your spiritual father.”

That hit him hard.

And I understood why.

Because once a church culture builds itself around fatherhood or motherhood language, that language can become selective. The gifted get embraced. The polished get embraced. The visible get embraced. The useful get embraced. But the struggling, broken, addicted, messy, hurting person can suddenly feel pushed to the edge of the room.

And that can wound a soul deeply.

Not because every pastor must call every person a son or daughter, that’s not the point.

The point is this: once leaders build a culture around that kind of language, they must recognize how powerful it is. If they use it selectively, carelessly, or manipulatively, they can do real damage to people whose identities are already fragile.

This must be handled with fear before God.

The church is not a stage for emotional favoritism.
The church is not a place where needy people are drawn in by family language and then sorted by usefulness.

The church is a place where truth, love, order, and holiness must govern how people are cared for.

Purely pastor people

This is the burden of my heart to leaders:

Purely pastor people.

Love them.
Feed them.
Teach them.
Correct them.
Pray for them.
Walk with them.
Help them grow.
Stand with them in truth.

But do not possess them.
Do not exploit their hunger.
Do not feed on their emotional need for you.
Do not build a ministry culture where your importance grows in proportion to their brokenness.
Do not enjoy becoming indispensable in ways Christ never called you to be.

Pastors are called to point people to Jesus, not to become functional replacements for Him.

The shepherd is called to serve the sheep, not quietly own them.

Pure pastoral care is strong enough to love people without needing to control them.

Purely seek to be pastored

And this is my burden to the people:

Purely seek to be pastored.

Do not ask a leader to become what you lost.
Do not use your loneliness, your father wound, your mother wound, your abandonment, or your ache as permission to emotionally overreach toward spiritual leadership.

Be honest about your need, but take that need to Christ first.

Let the Lord heal what only the Lord can heal.
Let the Lord father and mother you where earthly fathers or mothers failed.
Let the Lord steady you where life left you fractured.

Receive wise, biblical, clean pastoral care for what it is. Honor it for what it is. Benefit from it for what it is. But do not turn it into something God never meant it to be.

The pastor is not your daddy.
The pastor is not your mama.
The pastor is not your emotional rescuer.
The pastor is not your substitute parent.

The pastor is a servant of Christ, charged to feed, guide, warn, protect, and care for souls under the authority of God.

That is a sacred role. But it is still a role. It must remain in order.

Where healing stays holy

The sheep bring issues.
The leaders must bring integrity.
And both must submit to Christ.

That’s where healing stays holy.
That’s where the church stays clean.
That’s where pastoral care remains pure.

And that’s why I say what I say with conviction.

Because I know what it is to come into the house of God hungry. I know what it is to come in carrying need. I know what it is to feel the pull for someone to stand in the place of what was missing in life.

But I also know now, after years of walking with Christ, that no human leader can occupy the place that belongs to God alone.

The Lord is the One who takes us up.

And when that truth is settled, both sheep and shepherds can walk in freedom.

 

Love ya'

 

Pastor Frank Henderson | EPIC Fellowship Church | thrive@epicfc.org