I love the comic strip Dilbert. The ironic and hilarious picture of the triviality and ridiculous monotony of American corporate life is priceless. I have friends in the business world who tell me the comic is hilarious because of the accuracy with which it captures their own experience at work.

But honestly, I can’t relate. I can’t complain a bit about my job. I love my job. I am a pastor of a local church. Truthfully, when I see my paycheck from the church hit my bank account, I am tempted to pinch myself—I get paid to do this? Honestly, if I wasn’t getting paid, I would still want to do almost all of it. Studying the Bible, playing my guitar, praying with people, encouraging my brothers in Christ—this isn’t stuff I have to do, these are things I love to do.

In my life, my biggest frustration with what I do for a living has nothing to do with what I do for a living. In a way, my great struggle isn’t with trying to like what I do as much as it is with the fact that sometimes I like what I do a little too much. I can feel it almost constantly in my soul—this creeping tendency to love the activity of ministry more than I love God; this tendency to be more for the Lord in public than I am before the Lord in private.

How can it be that I can so love to lead the people of God in worship on Sunday morning and then find my heart dead before the Lord on Monday? How can I preach the Word with fervency to others and seem to apply the Word so poorly to my own life? How can I devote myself passionately to leading our church in spiritual matters and then get home and fail so miserably to lead my wife and my son with the same zeal?

Robert Murray M’Cheyne famously said, “What your people need from you most is your own personal holiness.” Kevin DeYoung, one of my favorite young pastors summarized that quote this way: “My congregation needs me to be humble before they need me to be smart. They need me to be honest more than they need me to be a dynamic leader. They need me to be teachable more than they need me teach at conferences.” When I see quotes like that, I want to agree and get sick to my stomach at the same time.

I can tell you what the biggest problem in my job is. I look at him every morning in the mirror. His name is Mark Vance. He is a sinner who happens to be a pastor.

My only hope is that Jesus will complete the work He has started in me—that as I walk daily with Him, however imperfect the walk feels to me, He will start to make me a humble, honest, teachable, holy man. My heart cries out with the Apostle Paul, “Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life."

Mark Vance is the Music & Ministries Pastor at Saylorville Baptist Church in Des Moines, Iowa.