Finding faithful pastors is essential—and possible. But fostering trust isn’t blind faith. Trust is earned. Get to know the pastors before you join a church. Follow pastors who follow Jesus in ways that are apparent to all.

“How can we trust anyone—especially pastors?”
A tenderhearted sister asked this question during a recent study in 2 Timothy. We had just discussed the danger of false teachers and the apostasy of pastors like Phygelus, Hermogenes, and Demas. She struggled with how to respond.
In the wake of the recent admissions of reports of abuse, corruption, and cover-up in the Southern Baptist Convention, her question resonates with many others.
When men who are supposed to represent Jesus hurt people under their care, it’s atrocious and disorienting. Whether you’ve been wounded directly or indirectly by such hypocrites, we all need a path forward that avoids forsaking either faith in God or trust in his church.
9 Warning Signs
While we must avoid harboring a spirit of suspicion toward all leadership, we are called to be discerning, sober-minded, and on guard (1 Pet. 5:8; 1 John 4:1). Not all pastors who exhibit the following traits are abusive wolves. Undershepherds are also struggling sheep. But if these sins characterize your pastor, serious concern and severe action are necessary.
1. Isolated
Shepherds should be known by their sheep. Appearing in the pulpit is only a small part of a pastor’s responsibility. If church members lack any visibility into their pastors’ lives, they are unable to “consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith” (Heb. 13:7).
Dangerous pastors insulate themselves to avoid detection, and sin flourishes in isolation. A pastor’s life must be open to observation.
To be clear, pastors must be able to have private time with God, family, and close friends. And not every member of the church is going to have a close, personal friendship with every pastor. However, it should be clear and observable that a pastor is living in godly, mature, Christian community. Pastors who avoid intimate relationships with anyone are highly suspicious.
2. Unaccountable
Trustworthy pastors plead for accountability. Any pastor unwilling to be held accountable by godly gospel partners is vulnerable to all sorts of evils.
A pastor who leads alone is a pastor empowered to oppress. Whenever possible, then, a plurality of qualified elders should be established. Obviously, there will be seasons and locations where co-laborers may be few, but my point here is more about disposition than demography. Even when there are few pastoral hands on the plow, a shepherd can exhibit a desire for accountability from friends and other leaders.
God designed the church to have this built-in accountability structure for many reasons, including to protect pastors from sin. So these pastors or friends shouldn’t be “yes men,” unwilling to offer critique. Instead, they must courageously love the lead shepherd by holding him to God’s standard (1 Tim. 3:1–7). We all need men around us to support and encourage us, but we must we wary if the lingua franca shifts from biblical love to biased loyalty.
3. Defensive
Continuing this theme, godly pastors will encourage members to give feedback, share concerns, and help them grow in faithfulness. Beware of pastors who cannot receive critique or who become defensive whenever questions arise. A church where criticism is treated as high treason is not a spiritually safe environment for the pastor or those under his care.
For example, I’m convinced that some sort of a formal review of a pastor’s pulpit ministry—for encouragement and for constructive feedback—is both a proof of humility and an antidote to defensiveness. This might take place at a staff meeting or an elders’ meeting or a time set aside for a “service review.” Regardless of context, it should be clear that a pastor is himself open to correction, committed to continued growth, and desirous of learning from others around him.
4. Entitled
Instead of seeing service to Jesus as a high honor, some pastors think they’re indispensable to God’s work. They feel entitled to special treatment.
I know of a church where people were hesitant to push back on the pastor since he had done so much for them. Sadly, he was cultivating a secret life of indulgence that took advantage of enamored sheep. He had a huge impact on lives for good—and ill.
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Written by Jon D. Payne |
Tuesday, March 7, 2023
Sinners are saved and Satan is vanquished not through the visible glory of social activism, political victories, or cultural transformation. As beneficial as these pursuits might be to improve society, the saving power of Christ is not mediated through them. In fact, it’s one of Satan’s tactics to make us believe that it is. Rather, the saving power of Christ is operative, by the Spirit, through God’s chosen instruments of salvation: preaching, prayer, water, bread, and wine. Administered by lawfully ordained ministers of the gospel, the ordinary means of grace form God’s chief strategy for making disciples.

Jonathan Edwards served as a missionary-pastor to the Mohawk and Mohican Indians from 1751 to 1758. Despite the numerous challenges of ministry in the northeastern frontier, the New England pastor was not fixated on contextualization or man-centered methods of mission and discipleship. Rather, like the Apostles, Edwards was devoted to gospel proclamation through the ordinary means of grace (Acts 2:42).
SAVING POWER THROUGH APPOINTED MEANS
Edwards believed that the word of the cross (i.e., the gospel) is the operative power of God unto salvation (Rom. 1:16; 1 Cor. 1:18). Moreover, he believed that Christ’s saving power is mediated through divinely appointed means. In other words, salvation comes to us ordinarily through the means of Word, sacraments, and prayer in the context of the local church. Despite his foreign context and contrary to all human wisdom, the Colonial missionary placed his confidence in what God promises to use and not what man thinks might work. He carried out the ministry on God’s terms, not man’s devices. Through the means of grace, God’s elect receive Christ and abide in Him through faith.
The example of Jonathan Edwards punctuates the essential point that the context of ministry must never determine the means of ministry. Geography and culture must never determine theology and practice. Whether laboring in the sophisticated environs of Northampton or the wilderness surroundings of Stockbridge, Edwards modeled an unflinching commitment to the proclamation of Christ through Word and sacrament. He stood firmly in the Reformed tradition. Believing the Westminster Shorter Catechism to be “an excellent system of divinity,” Edwards believed that the
outward and ordinary means whereby Christ communicates to us the benefits of redemption are his ordinances, especially the word, sacraments, and prayer; all which are made effectual to the elect for salvation. (WSC 88)
In other words, it is through the ordinary means of grace that the ascended Christ, by the Spirit, saves, sanctifies, and comforts His chosen ones. The means of grace are the effectual tools that Christ has promised to use to build His church (Matt. 16:18; 28:18–20; Acts 2:42; 1 Cor. 1:18–2:5; 4:1; 2 Tim. 4:2–5). Of course, it’s not in the tools alone that Edwards placed his confidence but the saving power of Christ operative in and through them. Religious and liturgical formalism was an abomination to Edwards. It should also be to us.
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What secures us in our trials is not the magnitude of our faith, but the power of the one in whom we have placed it. The smallest bit of faith in God is worth infinitely more than the greatest bit of faith in ourselves, or the strongest measure of faith in faith itself. Faith counts for nothing unless its object is Jesus Christ.

We aren’t certain whether gold is pure or alloyed until it is tested in the fire. We don’t know whether steel is rigid or brittle until it is tested by stress. We can’t have confidence that water is pure until it passes through a filter. And in much the same way, we don’t know what our faith is made of until we face trials. It is the testing of our faith that displays its genuineness, says Peter, and it is passing through the trial that generates praise and glory and honor. Though we do not wish to endure trials and do not deliberately bring them upon ourselves, we know that in the providence of God they are purposeful and meaningful, that they are divine means to make us “perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”
There are many who face trials and do not pass the test. Some face physical pain and through it grow angry with God and determine they cannot love a God who lets them endure such difficulties. Some face the possibility of persecution and find they prefer to run from the faith than to suffer for it. Some have children who turn to aberrant sexual practices and who prefer to renounce God than fail to affirm their kids. Some watch loved ones suffer and die and determine that a God who permits such things is not worthy of their love, their trust, their admiration. In these ways and so many more, some are tested and, through the test, shown to have a faith that is fraudulent.
Yet there are many others who face such trials and emerge with their faith not only intact, but strengthened. They face physical pain and through it grow in submission to God and confidence in his purposes.
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