A Preacher Is Not Necessarily a Pastor

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Let’s get the uncomfortable sentence out of the way…

You may be a very good preacher… and a lousy pastor.

You may preach faithfully from the Scriptures. People may fill notebooks while you preach. You may communicate with clarity, conviction, passion, humor, and power. People may come to Christ through your preaching. Your church may grow.

And you still may not shepherd people very well.

If that sentence irritates you, don’t leave yet. In fact, you may be exactly the person I hoped would keep reading.

This isn’t an attack on pastors. I love pastors. I have spent much of my life working with, serving alongside, consulting, coaching, assessing, and training pastors and church leaders. Many of the finest people I have known are pastors. Many preach well and shepherd beautifully.

But after more than 46 years of studying leadership and human behavior—and decades of consulting, coaching, assessing, and training leaders, pastors, and church leadership teams—I have seen one particular pattern far too often:

If a man can preach, we assume he can pastor.

Those are not the same thing.

And ordination doesn’t magically make them the same.

What Do We Mean by Preacher and Pastor?

We need to make an important distinction at the beginning because in ordinary church conversation we often use these words almost interchangeably.

For purposes of this article, a preacher proclaims the Word. He opens Scripture, explains its truth, calls people to believe and obey it, and communicates that truth publicly to the gathered church. A pastor shepherds people. The word itself carries the idea of a shepherd—someone responsible for knowing, feeding, guiding, protecting, correcting, tending, and caring for the flock entrusted to him.

These are not competing biblical roles, nor am I trying to tear apart things Scripture holds together. A pastor ordinarily preaches and teaches, and preaching and teaching are essential parts of feeding the flock. Paul’s description of Christ’s gifts to the church in Ephesians 4 includes “pastors and teachers,” and their work is aimed at equipping the saints for ministry (Ephesians 4:11–12). The New Testament does not reduce ministry to one undifferentiated skill.

I am separating these responsibilities here for one reason: churches sometimes assume that competence in one proves competence in the other.

It doesn’t.

For that matter, Leadership is also mentioned as a gift in scripture (Romans 12:6, 8). A man may preach beautifully and shepherd poorly. Another may care for people wonderfully and struggle in the pulpit. Some men, by God’s grace, do both exceptionally well.

The title Pastor before someone’s name doesn’t tell us which one we have.

We have to look.

Four Different Questions

When a church evaluates a potential pastor, one of the easiest abilities to evaluate is preaching. Give him the pulpit. Listen. Can he handle Scripture accurately? Can he communicate? Can he explain difficult ideas? Can he call people toward obedience? Can he move a congregation?

Those are important questions.

But they primarily answer one question:

Can he preach?

They don’t necessarily answer three others:

Can he teach?

Can he shepherd?

Can he lead?

Those four abilities overlap. They can coexist magnificently in the same person. But they are not interchangeable.

I actually think the old term clergy may serve us better here. It recognizes someone as set apart for the work of Christian ministry without automatically defining that ministry as pastoral. Not every ordained minister is a gifted pastor—and calling him one does not make him one. Ordination may recognize a man’s qualification for ministry. It does not manufacture the particular gifting required to shepherd people well.

Scripture itself refuses to flatten pastoral ministry into what happens behind a pulpit. Peter tells elders to “shepherd the flock of God among you” (1 Peter 5:2). Paul tells the Ephesian elders to watch themselves and all the flock over which the Holy Spirit has made them overseers (Acts 20:28). And Jesus, the Good Shepherd Himself, says, “I know My sheep and My sheep know Me” (John 10:14).

The biblical picture is intensely personal.

Sheep aren’t audiences. They are sheep.

They wander. They hurt. They become afraid. They get confused. They sometimes bite. They need truth, correction, protection, patience, direction, presence, and care. The Good Shepherd does not merely address the flock; He knows the sheep, protects them, and lays down His life for them (John 10:11–14).

That requires more than the ability to preach a good sermon.

The Competency Halo

There is a leadership phenomenon we call a competency halo: when someone is exceptionally good at one highly visible responsibility, we begin unconsciously assuming competence in responsibilities we have barely observed. Psychologists have long described the halo effect—our tendency to let one positive impression influence how we judge other qualities. In our leadership work, we call this particular version the competency halo.

The church may be particularly vulnerable to this because preaching is usually the senior pastor’s most visible competency. We see it every Sunday.

Pastoring is harder to see.

How does he respond when a staff member disagrees with him? What happens when someone tells him no? Can he listen without preparing his defense? Does he notice when someone on his team is struggling? Can frightened people approach him? Does he handle conflict biblically and skillfully? Does he develop people or merely deploy them? Can he give difficult feedback without crushing someone? Can he receive difficult feedback without punishing the person who gave it?

Does he know what it is like to be on the other side of himself?

Those things rarely happen under stage lights. So a gifted preacher can accumulate enormous evidence of preaching competence while the church accumulates surprisingly little evidence of shepherding competence.

A great sermon can make it surprisingly difficult to see a poor pastor.

Sometimes it makes it difficult for the preacher himself to see it. Success has a way of becoming evidence in our own defense.

People are coming. People respond to my preaching. The church is growing. God is obviously using me.

All of those things may be true.

None answers the question we are asking:

Are the people entrusted to you being shepherded well?

Pastors Know There Is a Gap

This distinction isn’t merely theoretical. Pastors themselves have been telling us where some of the gaps are.

Barna found that the percentage of pastors wishing they had been better prepared to handle conflict rose from 27 percent in 2015 to 40 percent in 2020. Those wanting better preparation to delegate and train others rose from 20 percent to 41 percent, while those wanting better preparation for church politics rose from 16 percent to 36 percent.¹

More recent Lifeway research provides an important balance: 73 percent of evangelical and Black Protestant pastors said their seminary or ministry training prepared them for the people side of ministry.² That’s encouraging. It also means more than one in four didn’t say that. And even good preparation doesn’t guarantee competence any more than taking a leadership class automatically produces a good leader.

A newly released 1,000-pastor survey commissioned by pastor and leadership coach Jared Fabac found similar concerns around difficult feedback and building healthy culture. Sixty-three percent said they had never been trained in a repeatable framework for giving hard feedback, while 77 percent wished they had learned earlier how to model and multiply healthy culture. Fabac summarized the gap memorably: “Seminary trains the sermon. It rarely trains the system.”³

That line is strong, and I would not use rarely as an indictment of seminaries in general—Lifeway’s findings give us reason to resist that overreach. But Fabac is naming a real distinction. A school can prepare a man to handle Scripture faithfully without supplying every competency he will need to lead people, shape culture, navigate conflict, develop staff, and shepherd a church.

A man can know how to prepare a sermon without knowing how to lead a difficult meeting. He can exegete Romans without knowing how to resolve conflict between two staff members. He can preach beautifully about grace while the people closest to his leadership experience very little of it. He can teach biblical leadership without knowing how to lead.

And he can preach about the Good Shepherd while shepherding poorly.

Your Title Doesn’t Supply Your Gift

We ordain a man and call him Pastor. The title can quietly become an assumption: Pastor must mean he knows how to pastor.

But a title identifies a responsibility. It does not automatically supply the gifts, competencies, character maturity, self-awareness, or experience necessary to fulfill it well.

Paul’s qualifications for an overseer are revealing here. He does say an overseer must be “able to teach.” But look at the rest of the list: above reproach, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, gentle, peaceable, able to manage his household well, and possessing a good reputation with outsiders (1 Timothy 3:2–7). The ability to teach matters enormously. Scripture simply refuses to let teaching ability stand in for character and relational maturity.

Calling matters. Gifting matters. Character matters. Competence matters. Training matters. Experience matters.

And none should be casually substituted for another.

Gift is not character. Gift is not calling. Gift is not competence. And competence in one gift is not competence in another.

Organizations make this mistake constantly. Someone becomes exceptionally good at performing a task, so we promote him into leadership over the people who perform it. Then everybody discovers—sometimes painfully—that doing the work and leading the people who do the work require different competencies.

The church can make the same mistake with preaching.

Except the consequences involve sheep.

Personality Matters More Than We Sometimes Want to Admit

This is where the DISC Model of Human Behavior can help us. DISC helps us recognize and describe patterns in how people tend to approach problems, people, pace, procedures, decisions, relationships, and their environment.

But let’s keep the order straight.

DISC doesn’t create personality. Personality produces the behavioral patterns DISC helps us recognize and describe.

And those patterns create real propensities.

After decades of working with DISC and human behavior, I have seen a pattern far too often among pastors: some of the same personality characteristics that can help make a man a compelling preacher can also create genuine liabilities in shepherding.

High-Dominance/high-Influence and high-Influence/high-Dominance combinations are especially worth understanding. These men can be decisive, persuasive, energetic, convictional, forward-moving, comfortable taking a position, comfortable influencing a room, and comfortable saying, “This is where we’re going.”

Those are real strengths.

They can also have a natural propensity to pastor poorly.

There. I said it.

Not will pastor poorly. Not cannot become a magnificent shepherd.

Propensity is neither destiny nor mere possibility. It is a real directional tendency.

High-Dominance personalities naturally tend toward results, action, forward movement, problem solving, challenge, and accomplishment. Those strengths can also make slowing down, looking backward, listening at length, noticing subtle relational signals, or patiently remaining with a person whose problem cannot immediately be solved considerably less natural.

Add high Influence and you may have someone who genuinely loves being with people while still not naturally doing the quieter work of caring for individual people.

Interaction with people is not necessarily care for people.

Now, before we reduce everybody to one letter, the entire DISC blend matters.

A secondary dimension is not necessarily a weak dimension. I am a 100 Influence and a 97 Dominance. My Influence being three points higher does not somehow turn the 97 Dominance into a minor personality characteristic.

There is a whole lotta D in me.

The primary dimension helps shape how the rest of the personality is expressed. It can temper, redirect, soften, intensify, or change how another dimension appears. But 97 is still 97.

And this becomes especially important under stress because the secondary dimension can become more visible when pressure rises. Think about when pastoral leadership is tested most severely: conflict, criticism, staff resistance, financial pressure, a challenged decision, a departure, a difficult elder meeting, someone questioning authority.

Those are precisely the moments when the whole personality blend matters.

So asking, “Is this pastor a D?” is far too simplistic. A much better question is:

How much Dominance is actually present, how does the rest of his personality shape its expression, and what happens to that expression under pressure?

Other DISC combinations bring different strengths and corresponding risks. A C/S or S/C pastor may naturally bring patience, steadiness, careful preparation, listening, consistency, and relational presence—and may have to work harder at confrontation, rapid decision-making, mobilizing change, or taking necessary risks. A D/C or C/D may bring extraordinary task focus, standards, problem solving, accuracy, and clarity while naturally overlooking some of the relational world surrounding the task.

None of these personalities is spiritually superior.

And none is trapped.

The Holy Spirit is not constrained by a DISC graph. A naturally task-oriented man can become an extraordinary shepherd. A conflict-avoidant man can learn courage. An impatient man can grow in patience. A reserved man can learn to communicate warmth. Character can mature. Skills can be learned. Habits can be developed.

But sanctification is not an excuse for pretending personality doesn’t exist.

Every strength creates a corresponding stewardship risk.

The question isn’t whether your personality is good or bad. The question is whether you know what it naturally supplies—and what it naturally neglects.

You May Not Know

This is where the conversation becomes especially uncomfortable for some Dominant leaders.

One of the recurring problems I have seen far too often among high-D personalities is a lack of self-awareness.

Dominance naturally looks forward:

What’s next? What’s the problem? What needs to happen? Where are we going? What’s standing in the way?

Self-awareness requires something Dominance may do less naturally: looking back.

What happened there? How did I affect that person? Why have three different people responded to me in essentially the same way? What keeps happening around me?

What is it like to be on the other side of me?

A pastor may know people say he is intimidating. He may know staff members say he doesn’t listen. He may know people describe him as controlling. He may even joke about it.

That doesn’t necessarily mean he is self-aware.

He may simply have been told often enough that he now knows what everybody else thinks.

Knowing something about yourself because other people keep telling you is not necessarily self-awareness. Self-awareness begins when you can see, understand, and take responsibility for what they are seeing.

There is an enormous difference between “People think I don’t listen” and “I don’t listen well, and I’m beginning to understand what that has done to people.”

The first possesses information.

The second is beginning to possess self-awareness.

Sometimes it takes a significant emotional event to get there. Sometimes it takes a couple few. A staff departure. Then another. A painful confrontation. A fractured relationship. An elder meeting. A family member finally saying what everyone else has been afraid to say.

One event can be explained away. Two can be unrelated. But eventually a wise leader becomes curious about the common denominator.

A significant emotional event can break through the defenses. It cannot make someone walk through the opening.

If the Shoe Fits, Please Wear It

So let me speak directly to the pastor who may need this article most.

You may be an excellent preacher.

And you may be a lousy pastor.

Both can be true.

I’m not trying to make you feel lousy. I’m trying to help you discover whether you’re pastoring lousy.

Because if the shoe fits, please wear it. Then walk some good miles in a better direction instead of continuing down a road that is hurting people.

If people around you repeatedly describe you as inaccessible, harsh, intimidating, dismissive, controlling, defensive, uninterested in people, difficult to approach, unwilling to listen, or incapable of receiving correction, don’t dismiss the pattern simply because you can explain every individual incident.

Maybe each person misunderstood you. Maybe each departure was somebody else’s fault. Maybe every staff conflict has a perfectly reasonable explanation.

Maybe.

But eventually repeated evidence deserves examination.

One complaint may be wrong. Ten independent stories saying essentially the same thing are something else.

Wisdom recognizes patterns.

And Scripture is not casual about what happens when shepherds fail the flock. In Ezekiel 34, God’s indictment of Israel’s shepherds includes this: “You have not strengthened the weak, healed the sick, bound up the injured, brought back the strays, or searched for the lost” (Ezekiel 34:4). The problem was not that they had failed to look like leaders. The problem was that the sheep were not being cared for.

I wrote Who’s Killing Your Church? years ago because I had watched these patterns damage churches and people far too often. One of the things I tried to make clear then—and still believe—is that this isn’t about bashing pastors. It is about loving Christ, His Church, and His shepherds enough to confront problems rather than allowing them to keep hurting people.

The goal isn’t to catch another bad pastor.

The goal is to help a pastor become a better one.

And pastor, accomplishment cannot become your defense.

But look what we’ve built. Look how many people are coming. Look at the ministry we’ve accomplished. Look at what we have saved.

Wonderful.

Now look at the people.

Leadership is faithful stewardship applied to people. The people aren’t an interruption to the ministry.

They are part of what God entrusted to you.

Develop It—or Delegate It

Suppose you discover that some important dimension of pastoral ministry simply isn’t a strength.

Good.

Now we can do something.

Some weaknesses need to be developed. You cannot delegate humility. You cannot assign someone else to be gentle for you. You cannot hire an associate pastor to possess your self-control.

And you cannot tell your staff, “I’m a Dominant personality. Bob the Supportive personality handles love.”

Love, patience, kindness, gentleness, teachability, integrity, repentance, self-control, and concern for people are matters of character. Scripture doesn’t permit a leader to say, “That’s just not my personality.”

Once you know your propensity, continuing to use your personality as an excuse is no longer self-awareness.

It’s poor stewardship.

But many ministry functions can—and should—be delegated. I once knew a pastor who readily admitted that he was lousy at counseling. I agreed with him. His counseling was poor in substance and style—in both truth and love.

Which raises a rather obvious stewardship question—

Why are you still doing it?

If you’re terrible at counseling, stop counseling people merely because someone put Pastor before your name. Find someone who is gifted, trained, wise, trustworthy, biblical, and loving—and let that person counsel.

If detailed shepherding isn’t your strength, surround yourself with gifted shepherds. Then—and this matters—give them real responsibility. Real access. Real authority.

And listen when they tell you what is happening among the sheep.

Delegating shepherding responsibilities cannot become an excuse for refusing to become shepherd-like. You remain responsible for your character and for the stewardship of the flock. But leadership doesn’t mean doing everything yourself.

Stewardship does not require you to be good at everything. It requires you to make sure everything entrusted to you is cared for well.

That isn’t weakness.

That’s leadership.

As the Senior Pastor Goes…

Leadership reproduces.

Your strengths don’t remain personal for very long. They begin shaping what the organization notices, rewards, tolerates, celebrates, and eventually becomes.

Unfortunately, so do your weaknesses.

Years ago I wrote, “As the senior pastor goes, so goes the church.”⁴

I haven’t softened on that.

If you are warm, approachable, humble, teachable, truthful, courageous, and deeply interested in people, those qualities have a chance to work their way into the culture. If you are inaccessible, task-first, defensive, harsh, controlling, conflict-avoidant, or relationally unaware, those characteristics can work their way into the culture too.

As the senior pastor goes, so goes the church.

That is both wonderful and dangerous.

The larger the church becomes, the more intentional shepherding must become. A senior pastor cannot personally know thousands of people.

He doesn’t have to.

But he is responsible to help build a church in which people are known.

He can build a leadership structure in which shepherds are accessible and leaders are knowable. He can create pathways through which concerns travel upward instead of dying quietly below him. He can make sure people who are gifted at shepherding have genuine responsibility for shepherding.

Size creates distance.

Leadership decides whether that distance becomes disconnection.

And This Isn’t Just About the Pastor

Elders, search committees, denominational leaders, and churches bear responsibility too.

Be careful about allowing the pulpit to answer questions the pulpit cannot answer.

A candidate preaches an extraordinary sermon.

Excellent.

You have learned something important about him.

You haven’t learned everything.

Don’t allow the most visible competency to create a halo around competencies you haven’t examined.

Spend enough time with him to discover what happens when he isn’t preaching. Talk with people who have worked under him. Ask about conflict. Ask about departures. Ask how he receives correction. Ask what happens when his preferred direction doesn’t prevail. Ask about people he has developed. Ask how his family experiences his leadership. Ask how he handles someone who moves more slowly than he does.

Ask the people who have seen him under pressure.

And don’t merely ask him whether he is a good shepherd.

Almost everybody does well on a self-administered oral examination.

Look for evidence.

The church doesn’t merely need a man who can fill the pulpit.

It needs shepherds who will care for the flock.

Four Questions Again

So before we call another man to be our pastor—or before those of us already carrying that title assume we’re doing the job well—let’s return to four questions:

Can he preach?

Can he teach?

Can he shepherd?

Can he lead?

Don’t assume that because the answer to one is yes, the others came free with ordination.

And pastor, don’t assume it about yourself.

Ask. Listen. Look backward long enough to notice the trail behind you. Ask trusted people what it is like to be led by you. Pay particular attention when independent people who have little to gain by telling you the truth keep telling you essentially the same truth.

And if you discover that you’re a good preacher and a lousy pastor, don’t waste energy defending the contradiction.

Thank God you finally saw it.

Then do something about it.

Develop what can be developed. Delegate what should be delegated. Repent where repentance is required. Put gifted people around you. Give them responsibility. Listen to them.

Keep preaching the Word.

But also—

Shepherd the flock.

[So what if you recognize yourself here?

If somewhere along the way you have realized, I may be a better preacher than I am a pastor, don’t stop at recognition.

And don’t hear me standing on the other side of the page telling you to go fix yourself. I am a fellow beggar. I have spent a lifetime learning that some parts of loving and leading people come naturally to me—and some decidedly do not.

The good news is that shepherding can be learned.

We do not have to become different people. We do have to become more faithful stewards of the people God has entrusted to us. That means learning to see ourselves more clearly, listen better, communicate truth with love, understand how our personalities affect other people, notice what we tend to omit, receive correction without immediately defending ourselves, and practice the kinds of care that may not come naturally.

We have already spent a good deal of time working through those things together in Leadership Masterworks. If this article has exposed a place where you want to grow, start with How to See Yourself Clearly Enough to See Yourself… and Change. Then come with me into How to Shepherd a Shepherd, When Nothing Is Wrong, But Something Is Missing, Speaking the Truth in Love, and Personality & People.

There is bread here.

Not because I have mastered all of this, but because God has been kind enough to teach me some things along the way—and because other faithful people have taught me too.

Come eat with me. Let’s learn to shepherd His people better.

Not sure where to begin? There is a growing body of material here at Leadership Masterworks designed to help leaders understand themselves, understand the people entrusted to them, and lead with greater wisdom, self-awareness, love, and faithfulness. Spend some good time reading here.

You can also contact me if coaching, consulting, or leadership training would help you or your church take the next step – [email protected] .

Much of my life’s work has been helping leaders understand how God has made them, recognize what they cannot see about themselves, and become better stewards of the people He has entrusted to them.]

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Coaching Questions

1. If the people closest to my leadership evaluated me separately as a preacher, teacher, shepherd, and leader, where would their scores differ most from mine?

2. What criticism about my leadership have I heard from enough independent people that I can no longer responsibly dismiss it as someone else’s problem?

3. Which parts of pastoral ministry does my personality naturally strengthen—and which do I consistently neglect?

4. What am I currently doing poorly because I believe my title requires me to do it personally, when faithful stewardship might mean developing the skill or giving the responsibility to someone better equipped?

5. What would have to change for the people I lead to experience me as someone who genuinely knows, protects, develops, listens to, and cares for them?

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Endnotes

1. Barna Group, “What Pastors Wish They’d Been Prepared For,” April 19, 2023. Barna reported that pastors wishing for better preparation in conflict rose from 27 percent in 2015 to 40 percent in 2020; delegation and training others rose from 20 percent to 41 percent; church politics rose from 16 percent to 36 percent.

2. Lifeway Research, Pastor Attrition 2025 Report. Seventy-three percent of surveyed evangelical and Black Protestant pastors agreed that their seminary or ministry training prepared them to handle the “people side” of ministry.

3. Jared Fabac, quoted in “1,000-Pastor Survey Behind Leading Lazarus Finds More Than 8 in 10 Considered Leaving Ministry, and Culture, Not Compensation, Was the Main Reason,” PR Newswire, August 11, 2026. The release reports topline findings from Fabac’s commissioned Culture Resurrection Index, including 63 percent saying they had never received training in a repeatable framework for difficult feedback and 77 percent wishing they had learned earlier how to model and multiply healthy culture. The complete methodology and dataset were not publicly available for independent review at the time of writing. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/1-000-pastor-survey-behind-leading-lazarus-finds-more-than-8-in-10-considered-leaving-ministry-and-culture-not-compensation-was-the-main-reason-302847859.html

4. Royce White, Who’s Killing Your Church? (2019). The book develops the principle that the character and leadership patterns of the senior pastor tend to propagate through the culture of the church.

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