Jay Herndon

Someday I am going to write a book entitled, "Passages for Pastors: Common sense advice for those in ministry." Each of the chapters will include simple advise from the scripture, lessons I learned in the trenches. One of my chapters will be entitled "Anger" with the theme verse from James, "The anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God."

One of the most important lessons that I had to learn in order to be effective in ministry was how to handle my anger. The Bible tells us that the anger of man can not produce the result that God intends. Anger works against the minister in two ways:

First, it sows Flesh into that which is Spirit, and like a virus, it destroys it. I admit that anger is natural, but that very admission proves the point--anger is natural, not supernatural. It is carnal, not spiritual. Anger is a "faithless emotion," it exists when there is a lack of trust and faith in God. Where there is faith and trust in God even injustice is met with peace and an awareness of God's purpose. The angry man says, "I have been wronged and God isn't here to fix it." Some might point out that there are examples in the Bible where God displays anger. However we must distinguish between "the anger of God" and "the anger of man!" It is the "anger of man that does not produce the righteousness of God." The anger of man will sow seeds of destruction into a ministry. Any action taken with anger as its' motive is bound to fail (even if the action is otherwise correct) because the Flesh will always corrupt the Spirit.

The other reason that anger works against the minister is that it destroys the one thing that people need and expect out of the ministry--a sense of God's presence. The one quality that people expect most out of a minister is a sense of god's presence, a sense of peace. And the quickest way to destroy this sense is for people to be exposed to the anger of the minister. I have seen many ministers lose years of credibility and authority with people in just a few moments. And be warned: anger in the pulpit is ten times more visible than anywhere else.

How do we handling anger? I have learned that anger is a secondary emotion--it originates somewhere else. And so the way to deal with anger is to trace it to it's root. This is what God attempted to do with Cain when he asked him, "WHY are you angry?" Once the minister knows the location of the anger he is equipped to address it or to ask for grace for it. If Cain could have answered the WHY question corrrectly he might not have killed Able.

Minister, I want to give you this simple advice: learn how to handle your anger, learn what Paul meant when he wrote, "be angry, but do not sin."