The standard cultural portrait of a pastor in our modern age significantly differs from those who proclaimed God's message in antiquity. In large part, people look for a peaceful protagonist with a pleasing demeanor and positive messages. People long for someone who will cuddle and nestle them into comfortable spaces of complacency and self-acceptance. Like a doctor who refuses to deliver the patient the news that eighty percent of their body is failing, these practitioners of passivity are committing the worse type of malpractice; soul malpractice. Rather than owning the present reality, far too many are sugarcoating the rot to sustain their mythical fiefdom long enough for someone else to confront the problem.  

The following are Four Ways to Prevent Soul Malpractice:

1. Purge the Idols of Personal Preference

   The church of modernity is in desperate need of prophetic proclaimers who refuse to pander as Aaron did to the children of Israel, fashioning idols of personal preference to appease the masses. We desperately need faithful proclaimers who will take the sacred cows of our cultural enclaves and slaughter them on the altar of God's word to show them a God sized-vision of what the church could be if we faithfully stepped into the future story of our missional ministry. For if it is not evident to you, the church, in large part, is slumbering, and people in the pews are sliding headlong into eternity without a genuine saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.

2. Define Discipleship for Your Context

   We desperately need people who understand that to be a disciple of Jesus Christ doesn't mean to live the life that Jesus lived. Instead, being a disciple of Christ means living as Christ would if he had your family, job, boss, spouse, children, and bank account.

3. Train People to Live as Followers

   Unfortunately, not enough of our churches have an adequate process to develop disciples who develop others for eternity; instead, they retain a strategy to secure devotees to temporal places and programs of worship. What the western-cultural church needs are pastors and parishioners who are passionate about the pull of God on their lives into the places they cannot yet see. The church of our age needs training centers that develop more devoted followers of Christ than dysfunctional dictators.

4. Prayerfully & Quickly Go

   Cut and cauterize quickly the wound that is aggressively poisoning the churches of our age. May we be willing to embark upon a faithful journey into the unknown with the Knower of all things that we might once again experience life everlasting on this side of heaven. If you're a pastor, church leader, or denominational leader, be willing to risk the comforts of retirement and sustainability for the sake of the souls of those under your charge. It's the least we can do since our Savior was willing to do the same, and it is what he has called us to.