Category Archives: Faith and Practice

Encouraging Your Pastor

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“Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls,
as those who will have to give an account.”                                                                        (Hebrews 13:17)

I want to begin this article by giving thanks to Memorial Presbyterian for the support and encouragement they have given me as their pastor.  There are days when my inadequacies for such a calling are manifest, and their prayers and kind words are an invaluable source of strength.  There have been ups and downs in ministry; times I’ve wanted to pack it all up and find “greener pastures,” and there have been times when I have been overwhelmed by the compassion, love, and trust I have been given.  Over these past 7 years, I have come into a richer and deeper understanding of what it means to be a pastor, and how I have been called to love and serve the Lord as I love and serve his church.  My greatest desire is that God would be glorified in my life, and likewise in the life of the church – that for me would be a successful ministry.

I recently finished reading Kent Hughes’ book, Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome, an excellent book on how to redefine success in ministry from a biblical, rather than worldly, perspective.  At the end of the book, there is a great chapter on how the congregation can help encourage their pastor.  While reading through the chapter, I identified many of the things my own congregation does for me and for my family and I thought I would pass along a summary of Hughes’ concluding points to help you continue to encourage your pastor.

You can encourage your pastor by living biblically successful lives

There is little that will lift the pastoral heart more than people who are successes before God (faithful, serving, loving, believing, praying, holy, and positive), for this means that the fullness of Christ is active in the congregation and that the vision and burden of ministry is being shared.  It means that the pastor will have some people around him who are cheerful, hardworking, selfless, and supportive.  The heartening effect of this cannot be overestimated.

You can encourage your pastor by your personal commitment to help him know success

Commit yourself to freeing your pastor from a ministry of numbers.  While growing attendance and conversion is significant, it is not the only indication of success in ministry.  This does not mean that the Pastor shouldn’t be held accountable in matters of work habits, administration, creativity, preaching, and spiritual discipline.  Those are necessary.  But the church must also commit itself to creating an environment in which its pastors are encouraged to be men of God and to pursue biblically defined success.

Encourage your pastor by not expecting (or allowing) him to be involved in everything. 

Reject the ubiquitous pastor fallacy – that the good minister must be present and presiding at everything.  The leadership of the church should help the pastor understand which boards and committees he must regularly attend, and those which he should only infrequently visit, ensuring that the pastor has ample time for his devotional life, family, sermon preparation, exercise, and leisure.

Encourage your pastor by providing adequately for him and his family.

Salary – An excellent rule of thumb is that the pastor’s salary and benefits should be at a level that is near the median income of the congregation, ensuring that the pastor can support his family.

Study Time – These are not vacations.  They are for spiritual and intellectual renewal.

Vacation and Days Off – It is not uncommon, because of emergencies and special meetings, for a minister to go two or three weeks without taking one day off.  Help him by gently reminding him that his calling does not cancel his humanity.  Burn-out has become epidemic in the ministry.  The church can help forestall this by making wise provision for time away from work.

Encourage your pastor by loving his family

The fishbowl life of the pastoral ministry can take its toll – especially on the pastor’s family.  Not a few PKs have reacted to the feeling of being under the congregation’s microscope.  What can we do to minimize this effect?  Simply love his family.  By this we are not emphasizing a public display of compassion, but a quiet familylike love that recognizes that they are people in process like those in one’s own family.  This love does not demand more from them than from other children.  This love honors their individuality and gives them space to grow.  It refuses to gossip, believes the best, has a kind word, and prays for the pastor’s family.

Encourage your pastor by treating him with respect.

The pastorate is a divine office, and thus a minister should never have to earn his congregation’s respect unless he has done something to lose it.  Furthermore, he should be respected no matter how great or small, grand or humble his ministry is.  The church must dismiss the world’s rung-dropping, numbers-counting way of according respect.  True, your pastor is to lead by being a servant, but such a call is intrinsically honored.

When you have done these things you have done almost everything to encourage your pastor – except for the most important thing, which is to pray.

“Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing” (1 Thess 5:11)

SDG

Red Moon Rising

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“And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars.
See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet.”
(Matthew 24:6)

bloodmoonDid you get up to see the lunar eclipse this week?  If you’ve been paying any attention, then no doubt you’ve picked up on the talk about the Tetrad, a series of 4 consecutive total eclipses occurring at approximately six month intervals.  The first total eclipse on April 15, 2014 will be followed by another on Oct. 8, 2014, and another on April 4, 2015, and another on Sept. 28 2015.  Such an occurrence is pretty rare.  According to the NASA website, “During the 21st century, there are 8 sets of tetrads, but this has not always been the case.  During the three hundred year interval from 1600 to 1900, for instance, there were no tetrads at all.”

Coinciding with the beautiful pictures of this rare phenomenon has been a lot of buzz from “End Time” Prophets that the Blood Moon is a sign of the coming apocalypse.  Please remember, when the article begins with “best-selling author and televangelist…” that should say quite a lot about the reliability of what you are about to read.  Keep in mind, Tetrads have happened before, and were probably received with the same caliber of hype and doom-saying from the prophets who profit off fear.

I recently concluded a series of sermons working through Matthew 24-25, never knowing that this whole “tetrad” thing was coming.  Still, I thought, given the current attention of the news, it might be good to offer a quick reminder of the basic premise of Jesus’ teaching about the signs of the end times.

  • Christ is Coming – While it’s easy to get caught up in the signs and mysteries of the end times, the primary purpose of Jesus’ teaching was to remind His disciples that He is indeed coming back.  In each of the gospel accounts, Jesus’ teaching on the “signs of the close of the age” are always found just prior to his betrayal, arrest, trial and crucifixion.  Jesus is about to be taken away, about to give up His life for us, but He wanted His disciples to know that He would be returning.  Not only would Jesus return, He would return in great glory, to gather His people to Himself (Matt 24:30-31), and to judge the nations (Matt. 25:31-32).
  • Watch for the Signs – Because He is coming, we are instructed to watch and wait for His return, and part of this watching and waiting involves knowing the signs of the age.  Jesus wanted His disciples to be prepared that in advance of His coming, there would be wars, famine, natural disasters, persecution, tribulation, lawlessness, and even a great falling away from within the visible church (Matthew 24:3-14).  All these are but “birth pangs,” signs that something greater is coming.  Therefore, when we hear of wars, when the moon turns red and stars fall from the sky, when there is division within the body of Christ, these things should not cause us to panic, but should serve to remind us that Christ is coming, and we are to be prepared.
  • Do Not Be Deceived – While we are instructed to watch for the signs, we are not to be deceived.  Jesus made it very clear, “See that no one leads you astray… but concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.”  It floors me whenever I hear a “preacher” (and I use that term cautiously) say, “THESE ARE THE SIGNS THAT JESUS IS COMING” (aren’t they usually shouting?).  No one knows the day or the hour.  The signs have been happening for centuries.  There were natural disasters in the NT era that made people think they had missed the return of Christ.  There have been wars to end all wars – I remember when the first Gulf War was the sign of the apocalypse – and here we are almost 25 years later.
  • Be Prepared – Rather than becoming preoccupied with end time signs and hoarding up for the apocalypse (remember Y2K, anyone), how should Christians wait for Christ’s return – by being prepared.  We do not know when He will return, so we must assume He will be back at any moment.  The parables of the ten virgins, the talents, and the sheep and the goats teach us to watch and work – supplying ourselves with the means of grace that have been given (oil for the lamps), putting that grace to work for God’s Kingdom (the talents), and caring for the least of these (sheep and goats) as we would care for Christ.

Ultimately, there is nothing for those who are in Christ to fear.  He is coming for His elect.  The signs may be alarming, disturbing even, but do not be dismayed.  These are signs to remind us that Christ is coming, and before His coming there will be trouble and struggles for His people.  Yet through it all, God is on His throne, He holds all things in His hands, and there is nothing that can separate us from His love for us in Jesus Christ our Lord.

SDG