A few years after David Platt became the senior pastor at the Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham, I traveled to Alabama to interview him. I asked him what his biggest surprise had been about pastoral ministry. He smiled and shook his head. “You know, somehow I thought everyone would like me.”
He realized this was a naïve belief, but somehow slamming into the reality that some people in the church weren’t going to like him, regardless of how kind he was, jarred him. I can relate. I’m a people pleaser. I suffer under the illusion that if I just try hard enough and perform well enough, everyone will like me. But experience has taught me this simply isn’t true. And trying to please everyone is actually unhealthy.
Pastor Ike Miller came to a similar conclusion, and shared “How Codependency Hampered My Pastoral Ministry.” He writes, “I began to realize how a type of unhealthy people-pleasing—codependency—has affected my ministry and fed the emotional drain of this season.” Read about his experience and about how he’s started to overcome his people-pleasing codependency. Also check out our resource on Dealing with Difficult People. It will help you identify problem people and deal with them well.
