What do we mean by spiritual maturity? How do we determine whether or not someone’s at the right stage of maturity to contemplate pastoral ministry. A while back I was reading Paul Tripp’s book, Dangerous Calling, and found this enormously helpful:
We must be careful how we define ministry readiness and spiritual maturity. There is a danger of thinking that the well-educated and trained seminary graduate is ministry ready or to mistake ministry knowledge, busyness, and skill with personal spiritual maturity. Maturity is a vertical thing that will have a wide variety of horizontal expressions. Maturity is about relationship to God that results in wise and humble living. Maturity of love for Christ expresses itself in love for others. Thankfulness for the grace of Christ expresses itself in grace to others. Gratitude for the patience and forgiveness of Christ enables you to be patient and forgiving toward others. It is your own daily experience of the rescue of the gospel that gives you a passion for people to experience the same rescue.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV9CLQPhSv8
I think the quote adds a crucial distinction between skill and humble living. If we judged pastors by their orthopraxy instead of their orthodoxy, many pastors would rejected out of hand. A hard truth, but true. Thanks for sharing the quote!