Podcast Summary: The Seven Deadly Sins of Pastoral Ministry with Jamin Goggin

Podcast: Know What You Believe with Michael Horton
Host: Michael Horton
Guest: Jamin Goggin
Episode Date: November 11, 2025

Episode Overview

In this insightful and deeply pastoral episode, Michael Horton interviews Jamin Goggin about his latest book, Pastoral Confessions: The Healing Path to Faithful Ministry. The discussion focuses on the unique temptations and vices that pastors experience—framed as the “seven deadly sins” of pastoral ministry—and the urgent need for honesty, confession, and grace-filled community among church leaders. Together, Horton and Goggin dissect how pride, sloth, envy, wrath, and other vices subtly undermine pastoral work, while also emphasizing the hope, healing and freedom found in gospel confession.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Need for Pastoral Honesty and Confession

(Begins ~02:11)

• Horton reads from Goggin's book, emphasizing its audience: “This book is for the church. It's a book for sinners in need of grace, for rebels in need of a king's absolution … for all those who know they are sick and in need of a physician. Pastors do this every week. Well, at least good pastors, you know, you're in need of a physician, you know, we're simul justus et peccator. And it's a little harder in my experience for pastors to believe this of themselves. Is that true?” — Michael Horton, 02:11
• Goggin highlights the risks pastors feel in confessing sin, not just spiritually but vocationally:

  “There’s real challenges in the pastoral vocation that make confession of sin feel all the more risky … What if this affects my employment? … But nevertheless, we need the gospel, don’t we?” — Jamin Goggin, 02:57

Notable Point

• Pastors often feel pressure to be exemplary, which leads to isolation and masks (“either despair or mask,” as Horton puts it at 04:38).

2. Pastoral Pride: The Primal Sin

(Begins ~06:51)

• Pride is described as the “primal sin”: both self-glorification and self-sufficiency.
• Subtle forms:

  “There’s two sides to the pride coin… grandiosity, self-glorification … but I think the other half is self reliance, self sufficiency … And I think that's where pride probably shows up with much more subtlety in pastors' lives and tends to go unnoticed.” — Jamin Goggin, 07:23

• Pride can masquerade as responsibility or diligence: “All these people are counting on me … operating in my strengths …” — Mike, 10:11
• Pride leads to fragile self-worth—being unable to handle critique, making an idol of the congregation’s or the wider church’s affirmation:

  “If the slightest critiques and criticisms kind of send us into panic mode and to marshal strong defense … my value and my worth are built on this thing that is mine …” — Jamin Goggin, 19:00, 19:44

Quote

• “We make idols of our members and we need them to affirm us.” — Mike, 21:07

3. Sloth/Acedia in Pastoral Life

(~12:30; more in-depth from 28:16)

• “Acedia” (sloth) is more than laziness; it’s spiritual dryness, apathy, or despondence:

  “Apathy. … Pride, again, being the primal vice, it can show up in all these others, like in Acadia. … either a kind of slothfulness and laziness in the work or a kind of despair.” — Jamin Goggin, 12:34, 13:34

• “Burnout” often masks a deeper moral dimension that needs confession, not just therapy:

  “By returning to language like envy, greed, acedia, sloth, we can help name the … moral dimension … Maybe there’s something to actually confess here.” — Jamin Goggin, 15:16

• Busy pastors can still be spiritually slothful:

  “I can be profoundly slothful and be really busy and really diligent … but maybe the whole time I’m avoiding the hard work of love.” — Jamin Goggin, 30:04

4. Wrath and Abuse in Ministry

(Begins ~23:14)

• Pastoral wrath often manifests as abuse, defensiveness, or exclusion, especially to perceived threats:

  “A lot of times it's talked about today as pastoral abuse … you are a threat to me and my success.” — Mike, 23:14

• The wrathful pastor operates as accuser and judge instead of shepherd:

  “I think the wrathful pastor relates to the body of Christ as a kind of accuser and judge rather than as a shepherd, rather than as an elder brother in God's household.” — Jamin Goggin, 24:24

• Wrath often leaks out when not confessed, poisoning relationships with congregants and other leaders.

5. Lust and its Hidden Danger

(Begins ~26:01)

• Major public falls are often the end of a long, hidden chain:

  “So often in the church today we’re seeing the kind of very end, the catastrophic end of a long history of lust … if you find yourself here with lust, confess quickly, confess early at a time when those sins are not disqualifying.” — Jamin Goggin, 26:30

• Unconfessed struggles fester amid pain, loss, and entitlement:

  “[Lust] becomes a way to escape some of the pain, a way to kind of dull some of the grief, to mute some of the anger that hasn't been addressed.” — Jamin Goggin, 28:03

6. Envy and Competition Among Pastors

(Begins ~33:43; especially 34:41–38:56)

• Envy in ministry culture is normalized, but it “robs us of the unique fellowship … that the shared yoke of ministry ought to be.”
• Pastors compare and compete, seeking validation from peers and wider church culture:

  “The slip to comparison is just now one more step to competition.” — Jamin Goggin, 35:37

• This mindset undermines needed friendship, trust, and mutual support among pastors.

7. Hope, Confession, and Grace for Pastors

(Begins ~38:58; deep dive into confession at 39:59)

• Gospel principles of faith, hope, and love are proposed as antidotes to the deadly sins.
• Confession among pastors is scripturally mandated but often avoided out of fear:

  “Confess your sins to one another, that you may be healed … We need others to be praying for us … [Knowing grace] doesn't only happen in my prayer closet. It happens in and through his body. He has chosen this to be a means of knowing his grace.” — Jamin Goggin, 39:59–40:32

• Corporate and private confession should be recovered in church life; Horton notes the Reformation’s emphasis on public and private confession, not just auricular confession to a priest (43:46).
• Interpersonal or “accountability partner” confession and prayer is also upheld, so long as it leads to gospel absolution, not mere moral policing.

Memorable Quotes and Moments

• “Confess quickly, confess early at a time when those sins are not disqualifying.”
  — Jamin Goggin, 27:18

• “The prideful pastor is consumed by what others think of them. Isn't that kind of the root of it?”
  — Mike, 21:07

• “I can be profoundly slothful and be really busy and really diligent … I can be doing all of that, actually, to avoid having the two conversations with the disgruntled church members who are hurting.”
  — Jamin Goggin, 30:04

• “The wrathful pastor relates to the body of Christ as a kind of accuser and judge rather than as a shepherd.”
  — Jamin Goggin, 24:24

• “We make idols of our members and we need them to affirm us.”
  — Mike, 21:07

• “You need colleagues … once we've clicked into that kind of comparison and competition mode … we rob ourselves of the joy of shared fellowship … and we need it, if we’re going to finish the race of ministry well and be found faithful. We cannot run alone.”
  — Jamin Goggin, 36:59

• “Confess your sins to one another, that you may be healed … and pray for one another.”
  — Jamin Goggin, 39:59

Important Segment Timestamps

• 00:47 – 02:11: Introduction of Jamin Goggin and his new book, Pastoral Confessions.
• 02:11 – 05:51: The importance of confession among pastors and unique pressures of ministry.
• 06:51 – 21:16: In-depth survey of pride in pastoral ministry and its subtle forms.
• 12:30 – 15:58: Sloth (acedia), spiritual apathy, “burnout,” and their deeper moral roots.
• 23:14 – 25:12: Pastoral wrath, abuse, defensiveness, and the need to shepherd gently.
• 26:01 – 28:16: Lust, shame, secrecy, and public disqualifications.
• 28:16 – 31:01: “Acedia” (sloth) and the illusion of diligence masking spiritual laziness.
• 33:43 – 38:56: Envy, competition among pastors, and the loss of collegiality.
• 39:59 – 46:39: The biblical mandate to mutual confession; reformational and modern practices contrasted.
• 47:02 – End: Concluding remarks, practical wisdom on confession and blessing pastors in gospel ministry.

Tone and Takeaway

This episode is rigorous yet tender, balancing theological reflection, personal candor, diagnosis of pastoral struggles, and practical, grace-centered hope. Listeners get frank discussion of the dangers lurking in every ministry, paired with robust reminders that only the gospel, lived out in honest confession and community, can deliver pastors (and churches!) from despair or pride.

For further enrichment:
Go deeper by picking up Pastoral Confessions: The Healing Path to Faithful Ministry by Jamin Goggin, recommended by both host and guest as a wise, gospel-saturated resource for pastors and congregants alike.