#5 is significant for me too. Your complaint reminds me of the opening passages of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together. He says: “So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes. There is his commission, his work.” Bonhoeffer goes on to quote Luther: “The Kingdom is to be in the midst of your enemies. And he who will not suffer this does not want to be of the Kingdom of Christ; he wants to be among friends, to sit among roses and lilies, not with bad people but with devout people.”

Too many pastors sit among roses and lilies. They fail to get beyond the devout and so they comfortably settle among friends.

Great post.