Pastors - whipping boys or fraternal fathers

Pastoring is a weird vocation.  Have you  ever thought where they came from?  What impresses God and how should our pastors be impressive?  Why do we call them pastors when the leadership gifts in the New Testament are actually in a list of 5 - pastor being only one of them.  Apostle, Prophet, Pastor, Evangelist and Teacher makes up the list but only one of them is given leadership in churches and maybe one or two of the other can work for him.  Some are more forgiving and gracious than I am, but part of the reason I have hard time being so, is that I have been an associate pastor and a quasi youth pastor. 

Should I be gracious, yes.  Is it difficult to be so, yes? 

The pastor of The Church of the Open Door came to speak at Trinity on "celebrating the pastorate" and his last comment before he walked out went something like this, "A pastor will always have a ministry but may not always have a job.  If you're not willing to lose your job as a pastor, then you are not supposed to be a pastor.  When a pastor focuses on being conventionally nice and making people happy - nothing prophetic comes out of his mouth and he loses his ability to be who he is, but in turn doesn't lose his job.  A true pastor will always have a ministry but may not always have a job."    (This is not an exact quote)

Dave Fitch  writes from his blog - “Because our pastors have been so trained to understand the ministry in terms of their own success, we have thousands of them who are either manic-depressive or egomaniacs.”

So what does it mean to be a pastor and why do we focus on them to lead our churches and be the top dog?  Where do the other 4 leadership gifts come in?  Let's stop hurting their ability to live, to disciple and remove the ornate soap boxes we've given them and put away our whips.  They are our brothers who we have given the ability to be fathers.  They live in a difficult tension because they are nothing more than who we are as people - brothers and sisters working together and yet they have a responsibility to lead us.  We need to discontinue choosing them based upon their height, their smooth tongue, their strong personalities and their ability to play politics but ignore the prophetic potency of truth.  I wan to put away our whips, break down our soap boxes and stand in comradery with our brothers who are our fathers as they lead us.