Walking with Kings
Arrogance is usually the loudest in the room because it is the most uncertain.
As a pastor, one of the hardest assignments is impartiality. Scripture calls us to it, but our humanity resists it. We naturally lean toward people who are kind to us and pull back from people who are not. And yet the pastor’s calling is to love everyone and to play favorites with no one.
Over the years, I served congregations filled with some of the most considerate people I will ever know. They prayed for me without being asked. They sent encouraging cards and messages at just the right moments. They looked for ways to be supportive in every season. These people were easy to like, and smiling at them required no effort at all.
And then there were the others.
The ones who tested whatever poker face I had managed to develop. The ones who were, to put it plainly, mean. And yes—there are mean Christians in church. I used to tell my congregation: you haven’t seen real mean until you’ve seen mean in church. These members could find a flaw in almost anything we did. They collected our mistakes the way some people collect coins, and they carried them into the community as proof that the church—and, by inference, the pastor—was something other than what we actually were.
But the calling does not come with conditions. As pastor, I had to serve all of them with a loving spirit. I’ll give myself a B- in that area, and I think I’m being generous.
The people who truly warmed my heart, the ones I didn’t bother trying to hide my joy around, were those who had achieved significant success and never allowed that success to change them. We had our share. Physicians whose medical work was nationally recognized. Athletes whose achievements had carried far beyond our city. Executives who had risen into corporate leadership. Students who had earned their way into the most prestigious schools in the country. So many of them remained so humble and so personable that you would never have guessed at their accomplishments unless someone told you.
What I found so striking was this: the people with the least success were often the most arrogant and boastful, while the people with the most success were often the quietest about it. The arrogant were rarely the accomplished. The accomplished were rarely arrogant. And the ones who were hardest to like were almost always the ones who, by any honest measure, had the least to brag about.
There is something the gospel teaches us here. Humility is not weakness. It is not the posture of people who have nothing to offer. It is, more often than not, the natural fruit of people who know exactly who they are, who know exactly Who they belong to, and who do not need anyone’s applause to confirm it. Arrogance, by contrast, is usually the loudest in the room because it is the most uncertain.
I write this with some trepidation. The Lord has been kind enough to give me my own measure of recognition over the years, and I have shared rooms, stages, and boardrooms with people whose names many would recognize. None of that is mine to keep, and none of it tells the truth about who I am.
It is grace—every bit of it. And the older I get, the more I understand that staying humble is not a single decision; it is a daily discipline, and one I have not always handled as gracefully as I would have liked. The people I admired in my congregations set a bar I am still reaching for. I want to be one of them. I am still working at it.
I am grateful to God for allowing me to know and to lead so many people who fit Kipling’s beautiful description: those who could “walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch.” They were the joy of pastoral life. They are why, even on the hardest Sundays, the calling was always worth it. And they are, every one of them, still teaching me.