Why we pastors DON’T like being VULNERABLE

---

This Sunday at H2O, we are in week 2 of our series, Our Shame: From Wounding to Freedom. As a leadership team, we’ve decided to do something that I honestly have never experienced before in church. We intend to take turns telling our stories of struggle…

---

of wounding,

of failure,

of SHAME.

---

I believe and hope it’s going to be REALLY inspiring. I mean, “If these guys are that messed up, yet experience Jesus authentically, maybe there IS hope for me after all.”

---

We’re going to talk about our sin. We’re going to talk about imperfect families, imperfect marriages, and imperfect motives.

---

This Sunday, I get to lead off by sharing my struggle of growing up functionally fatherless, and the devastating, but below-the-surface consequences that could have—should have—devastated my marriage and family. I’m also going to share the not-often-discussed struggle for me as a pastor to chase “success” in ministry. Which has me wondering…

---

Why is it that the church is more like a museum and less like a recovery group? In a museum, we stand in awe and wonder at the beauty of an image on the wall, or propped up on a pedestal in a glass case. If the art was marred or stained, we would experience the awkwardness of needing to point the flaws of the object in the glass case. In a recovery group, you feel awkward if you’re NOT marred, if you’re NOT stained.  So why is the church often more like a museum and less like a recovery group?

---

To be honest, I think I enjoyed the pedestal, the glass case.

It fed my Superman complex, my need to be special, to stand out.

---

Eventually, by God’s grace, I was shown another path, the path of vulnerability.

I chose to no longer seem, but to be. In the words of Neil Peart, from the Band Rush, I chose to reject the limelight, or at least the temptation to be anything less than vulnerable while in it…

---

“Living in the limelight

The universal dream

For those who wish to seem

Those who wish to be

Must put aside the alienation

Get on with the fascination

The real relation

The underlying theme”    Neil Peart, Rush, 1981

---

Can’t wait to share my story…

---

Written by: John Hever

---