BOOK COMMENTARY
April 1, 1980
Every Pastor Needs a Pastor by Louis McBurney Word, Inc., $5.95 Reviewed by Dennis L. Gibson, Ph.D., a practicing psychologist. You sigh deeply. Not just once, but several times in the course of an hour alone. You can't concentrate. You resist once again the fleeting thought of some other line of work. What is this weight on your chest? Louis McBurney identifies such heaviness in the lives of pastors as "the burden of unrealistic expectations they have accepted." He eloquently describes the burden with anecdotes that prompt the reader to say, "Hey, that's me!" McBurney then shows how the burdens are unrealistic. With deft economy of language, he brings in the psychological concepts that have bearing on the choice of pastoral ministry as a career. His key concept is that most pastors unconsciously cling to a plethora of expectations, spoken and implied, by persons to whom they have looked for approval over the years. McBurney cites five mistaken beliefs that chronically beset pastors: I must be constantly available to meet all demands my people make upon my time. I must be capable of meeting any need they bring to me. I must tower as a paragon of sinless perfection. I must have no spiritual needs of my own or chinks in my emotional armor. I must never let on that I have anymaterial needs. What keeps these absurdities alive in a pastor's thinking? Of the many plausible psychological concepts McBurney could use to answer this question, he picks one cogent and straightforward one: unresolved conflicts about authority and dependency. He gives a good thumbnail sketch of ideal childhood development, and of the common parental mistakes that reverberate into the adult lives of their children. One mistake is to demand more of a child than the ...
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