Your Favorite Pastor and Other Categorical Errors

Every once in a while, I get asked, “Who are your favorite pastors?”

I think it’s a funny question. It’s like asking, “Who’s your favorite boxer, artist, football player, or actor?” Those are questions I could answer fairly easily. But asking who my favorite pastor is is closer to asking who my favorite dad, mom, or grandparent is. It’s not so much whether they’re my favorite. They just are. They’re who God has given me.

Of course, what people are really asking is, “Who is your favorite writer, speaker, or content producer who happens to bear the title of pastor?” It’s not someone you actually know, other than maybe shaking hands in the lobby or chatting over coffee at a conference. You don’t really have a relationship with that person.

All of my pastors have been quite influential in my life. My first pastor was Roger Webb. My second was Randy Warwick, followed by Brian Nevins, then Russell Smith, then a pastoral team led by Tim Bayly, and lastly, Andrew Dionne.

All these men have shaped me in very significant ways. And since they were the pastors of churches I joined, they were my pastors. I don’t think of them in terms of favorites. I think of them in terms of influence.

Roger pushed me to simply trust God and follow Him wherever He might lead me. Randy taught me, very much by his example, to invest in others and sometimes radically delegate responsibilities. Brian was incredibly compassionate and also introduced me to G. K. Chesterton. Russell was my first Presbyterian pastor, and through his influence, I dove deep into the writings of men like Iain Murray and Martyn Lloyd-Jones, along with the Westminster Standards. Tim was quite the personality, but he was a man who thought a great deal about the inner workings of organizations and the human soul. Andrew was very much a workman, disciplined when it came to sermon preparation, leading elders meetings, and so forth.

There were things about all these guys that grated on me at times, and we had some significant theological or philosophical differences. But they were all my pastors, and they all loved me and invested in me. I am who I am in no small part because of their influence.

They were real men with real sins and real foibles. Very few of them are the sort of men you would invite to speak at a conference. None of them had super popular podcasts, and only a handful actually wrote books. But again, they were real men whom I actually knew.

I think we make massive categorical errors across nearly every area of life these days. Sermons have been turned into commodities. Pastors into celebrities. Churches into purveyors of goods and services. Online social media connections into friendships.

And we’ve become so accustomed to these substitutions that we hardly notice the difference anymore.

Recovering the West is going to require a stubborn sort of person who simply refuses to play along. You're going to have to be willing to be at odds with the current culture if you want something different.

Painting: Hanne Lore Koehler