Tom Nelson learned most of his leadership lessons during an eight-year stint helping to manage a Minnesota Dairy Queen. But he’s devoted his last 30-plus years to pastoral ministry. He believes with every fabric of his being that the local church as God ordained it is the hope of the world.

But he’s worried about the pastoral vocation.

In his new book, The Flourishing Pastor: Recovering the Lost Art of Shepherd Leadership, Nelson observes a dripping irony. Though surrounded by many people, pastors are often intensely lonely and socially isolated. They work with the things of God but are tempted by the seduction of accomplishment at the expense of intimacy with God.

Shepherd leaders, according to Nelson, are forged on the anvil of obscurity and refined in the crucible of visibility—not all that different from managing a small-town Dairy Queen. Pastors get into trouble when they attend more to the church than to their own soul, or when they get sucked into partisan politics and lose track of their disciple-making vision.

Nelson joined me on Gospelbound to discuss flourishing pastors, congregational expectations, friendship, failure, and much more, including his eight years with Dairy Queen.

“I learned more about serving people and how Christ conforms us in our workplace and dealing with people in those eight years than any time in my leadership,” Nelson told me. “They formed me.”