Skip to content
Hard question September 21, 2026 · 39:05 · 7 min

Talent is not authority; the scale problem

The hosts separate the office from the responsibility: an elder in a 300-person church does not know you or labor with your soul, so 'I'm an elder' carries no automatic authority (the 'Ted Jackson, elder' Walmart coffee-shop joke); eldership and pastoring cost your ambitions — 'your name is done, your ambitions are done' — and gifted speech does not equal spiritual authority. One host warns that a pastor saying 'God has placed me as a pastor over you; resisting me is to resist God' is 'trash': the mark is humility that draws others into humility. A teaching pastor over hundreds cannot bear their souls — 'Billy Graham was not the spiritual authority for almost anybody,' but he was a heck of a teacher.

Clips from this

More on Humility

Now playing
0:00 0:00