Pastoral Confession
Content taken from Pastoral Confessions by Jamin Goggin, ©2025. Used by permission of Baker Books.
Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.
- James 5:16
Let me, then, confess what I know about myself, and confess too what I do not know, because what I know of myself I know only because you shed light on me, and what I do not know I shall remain ignorant about until my darkness becomes like bright noon before your face. - Augustine
The glory of God is also concerned in this, that men should not only inwardly reflect upon their guilt, but at the same time openly declare it. - John Calvin
There was one item on the agenda. We had gathered to confess our sins. This was new for us, but as elders, we had all agreed to make it a regular practice. Now here we were, faceto-face, and I wasn’t so sure. No doubt it was the right thing to do, but good? As the meeting began, I felt the impending risk of vulnerability. Already, this didn’t feel good.
Perhaps my reservations were justified. After all, there were pressing matters of ministry to discuss and pray over. Maybe this wasn’t the best use of our time. Plus, this group of elders hadn’t known each other long. Maybe this kind of vulnerability was a bit premature. Oh, the reasonable lies we tell ourselves to justify our fears.
I was scared. Scared of being truly seen. I feared the embarrassment, shame, rejection, and condemnation I imagined would come if I divulged my sin. Deep down I didn’t trust that confession was a good thing. In fact, I believed it was bad. I believed it was a source of harm rather than healing.
Despite all my fears, there was no getting out of it now. My mind anxiously searched for the file named “Jamin’s sins,” long since concealed by a carefully crafted form of pastoral encryption. Jamin is a powerful preacher. Jamin is a wise leader. Jamin is a faithful shepherd of souls. As I searched through the file, I began to pick out the vices I thought would get me into less trouble. I even found some that I thought might be heard as virtues. Like answering that infamous interview question, “What is your greatest weakness?” with a humble “I tend to overwork,” I was determined to risk nothing. Perhaps a vice like “worry for the church” would work well. Who could blame me?
As others began to confess their sins and I continued to weigh my options, one sin kept bubbling to the surface—anger. This wasn’t the safe and excusable vice I was looking for. My fear wanted to pretend I didn’t notice it, but it refused to be ignored. After a long season of change and upheaval in our church, anger had settled into my heart like a hibernating bear. Anger toward many who had left the church. Anger at some who had stayed. For months it lay quiet, but now it threatened to come roaring out of its cave.
I silently confessed this anger to God in prayer. For the first time in several months I was honest with him about my pain and disappointment, my bitterness and resentment. The Spirit of Christ comforted my heart with the forgiveness of the gospel. And yet I knew God was prompting me to go further. He was calling me to confess it out loud to the room.
The lies returned. Familiar lies, designed to mute my full confession. You confessed to God. That’s good enough. You don’t need the help of others. You’ve been managing it just fine on your own. Plus, you have to be careful who you share your heart with. Boundaries are important. Maybe you just need to schedule some time with a counselor or take a vacation. In the end, the risk outweighs the reward. Lies, all lies.
The truth won out. That is to say, God had his way. I confessed my anger, and the veneer of pastoral sturdiness was peeled away, revealing the hidden fragility of my heart. Not only was my sin known, but my pain and fear also were. God’s grace met me through the tender mercy of his children. Perhaps this is what it means for us to “bear one another’s burdens” (Gal. 6:2). Perhaps confession is a good thing. My sin was not mine to manage or fix on my own. What good news this was. I didn’t need to keep my sin a secret. In fact, it was best I didn’t.
Many are the secrets of a pastor’s heart. Secrets kept to ensure our own safety. To protect ourselves against the shame of sins revealed. Kept for the well-being of others. God’s people, after all, need leaders they can respect and admire. What they don’t know won’t hurt them, but what they do know might cause them to stumble. Or so we tell ourselves.
Some secrets of the heart are kept so well we do not know them ourselves. The truth is, we don’t want to know them. We will do whatever we can, even lie to ourselves, to avoid the pain of self-knowledge. Self-deception is a powerful bug of the Fall, constantly at work in the operating system of the soul. A destructive virus not unique to pastors but uniquely hazardous to our occupation. The pastor who fails to know their own secrets cannot be trusted with the secrets of others.
Deceiving others and deceiving ourselves. This is one possible vocational pathway for the pastor. One that has, for many, resulted in a “successful” ministry. To be sure, we can lie our way to the top. We can gain the whole world. The question is, at what cost? In recent years we have frequently witnessed the cost in the lives of pastors and their congregations.
There is another way. We can minister in the truth of who we are before God and others. This way is marked by risk. The risk of following Jesus. A path of fleshly mortification that demands risky behavior like honesty and repentance. But it is such risky behavior that opens up to us the secret of the gospel.
I am here to tell my secrets. The ones I have kept to myself and the ones I have kept from myself. To tell them as honestly as I can by the power of the Spirit. To speak them to God and to speak them to brothers and sisters in Christ. For there is no virtue in keeping secrets in the kingdom.
It will take an entire book to tell my secrets. The secret pride that has driven me into the pulpit looking for the applause of people rather than the glory of God. The secret anger that has pulsed through my veins while I appear to calmly listen to a church member tell me they are leaving. The secret envy I have felt as a member of my congregation shares all the insights they have gleaned from another pastor’s sermons online. These are but a few of my secrets. There’s more where that came from. I speak these secrets as a confession.