Minty - with a quotation from Barnes

I realise it wasn't especially illuminating to simply comment that Barnes says something on that topic, without giving any idea of what he says, so I decided to try to track something down.

What I'm quoting below is not all he says but an interesting segment of it.

Since their souls are a sacred meeting ground, it is crucial that pastors know how to expose themselves to God. It is not enough that they have learned as minor poets how to peer into the subtexts of the Bible and the congregation. They also have to attend to the underlying holy space of their own lives.

It's not the most important subtext, and pastors have to constantly guard against making their personal issues the issue for the congregation. Nothing is more dangerous to a church than for its pastor to manipulate it into a means of working out his or her own anxieties, hurts, anger or unfulfilled yearnings. That reduces the priestly arena into a therapeutic couch for the pastor...Not everything about the pastor belongs to the congregation, and that would certainly include the wounds that the pastor has collected along the way in life...The pastor maintains a conversation not between the congregation and the pastor but between the people and the God in whose image they are made. Often this holy discourse cannot occur unless the pastor brackets out the personal issues that keep interrupting it.

While mindful of this caution, it is still critical that the minor poet knows how to stand before God with an open soul. That's the place where sermons, counselling, and the best leadership of the church finally occur. After the ears, the eyes, and even the mind are done, and there are no more appointments left in the day, a pastor has to retreat into the soul to wait for holy words.

(M Craig Barnes, The Pastor as Minor Poet, pages 108,109)