Being a Pastor, part 2 (My Epiphany)

I remember when I came into my first church, I was told, "In this church, the Deacons are the leaders, not the Pastor. The Pastor is to preach and visit shut-ins and leave the decision making to the Deacons and the Committees."

I suspect that this same conversation has been held with a lot of young pastors over the years. I attended a Minister's Conference several years ago where the leader explained that in a typical small church the job of the Pastor is to preach, visit, pray, visit, do funerals, visit, perform weddings, and visit.

Don't get me wrong, any Pastor worth his salt is going to spend at least some of his time out visiting. I remember when I was in a Hospital making a visit and I ran into Dr. David Uth (at the time, he was the Pastor of a congregation that was running more than two thousand every Sunday). I remember thinking then that if a Pastor with his responsibilities could find time to go to the hospital to visit, then anyone could.

I also remember when I was in High School, and my grandfather passed away. My grandfather had been heavily involved in our church for decades, and yet when he died, the Pastor never came out and visited with my grandmother once, not one single time. My parents were upset, to put it mildly.

One of the basic qualities of a good Pastor is that he loves his people. Dr. Uth went to the hospital because someone he cared about was sick. When the Pastor never came to my grandmother's house, people wondered (reasonably) if he really cared. (In his defense, I believe that the Pastor did care about his people in general and about my grandmother in particular. He simply was not very comfortable working with people one on one. This proved to be a hinderance to his ministry.)

The problem is that after a while if visiting is all you do, being a Pastor comes to resemble the game "fetch," where the Pastor runs back and forth and everyone looks on with admiration. He never really accomplishes anything, but because he stays busy everyone assumes that he is doing a good job as Pastor.

For years, I played that game. I measured my success as a Pastor by how many miles I put on my truck for that particular month. However, after a while I began to wonder what the whole point was.

Then I had my epiphany.

A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to sit in on a conversation involving a young lady in our church that was feeling led to lead our Youth Ministry. I had arranged for the two of us to meet with a friend of mine, Eric Ball, who has trained and equipped Youth Ministers for a number of years.

As the two were talking, Eric was explaining how Jesus had spent most of his time equipping twelve men for ministry. Yes, he ministered to the sick and the dying. Yes, he performed miracles that even his opponents could not deny. However, the bulk of his time was spent working with the 12 disciples, twenty four hours a day, for about three years.

Eric went on to explain how Jesus was a mentor to those men, and that as a Youth Minister, this young lady needed to be a mentor to the youth. He encouraged her to start working with the two or three that we had, start with them, and allow the ministry to grow naturally.

When Eric used the word "Mentor," a light bulb went off in my head. I realized right then and there that I had been going in the wrong direction for years. For far too long I had tried to be the kind of Pastor that everyone else wanted me to be and for some strange reason, it just wasn't working.

When Eric was explaining about how to mentor someone, I realized that this was what a Pastor is supposed to be in a church. Not just a teacher, not just a preacher, not just a shut-in visitor, but a mentor. All of a sudden, my life got a whole lot easier.

I realized that it is not my job to do whatever needs to be done around the church, but rather to help others learn to do whatever needs to be done around the church. I realized that my job is not to grow the church, but to help grow people.

As soon as that sunk in, I reevaluated my entire approach to being a Pastor. Right then, I started looking at all of the different ministries in the church, and I asked myself two questions: 1) who is the leader of that ministry, and 2) what can I do to help them learn how carry out their ministry?

As I did this, Ministry got a LOT easier and, frankly, all of a sudden it was fun (not a word you usually hear about being a Pastor).

I began to start meeting one on one with the various leaders of our programs. I shared with them the vision that God was giving to me for the church and we discussed how their ministry could be a part of this. Once I did that, I was able to step back from a lot of the things that were really stressing me out, and I immediately became more comfortable with my role in the church.

Does this mean that I don't make any decisions any more? No. I still make decisions, but they are more about the overall direction of the church. Do I step back completely from the different programs and ministries? No. One of my goals for this year is to meet one on one with each ministry leader at least once a quarter just to review what has been going on and where things need to go from there. Also, I keep an eye on what's going on week to week, but I try to avoid stepping in unless I absolutely have to.

My wife has noticed that since I started doing this I am a much happier person. I look forward to each new day more than I did before, and while I had considered leaving the ministry several years ago, I am more content than ever at being a Pastor.

Being a Pastor, part 1

A few years ago, I had an epiphany. I had one of those moments when the light came on in my head and all of a sudden a lot of things made a lot of sense. I understood why I had become so discouraged at being a Pastor, I understood why there is so much burn-out in the ministry, I understood why so many churches are struggling, and I understood a little better why God called me into the ministry in the first place.

Something that I have observed in churches is that we have seen the declining numbers in our churches and we have hit the panic button.

Don't get me wrong; we need to be concerned about dwindling attendance. I would hope that any church that sees fewer people coming every month would be concerned enough to do something about it.

However, what I have seen churches do is decide that getting bigger is the only thing that really matters. In a way, numbers have become our new God. We never admit this, and yet .... we always have to have more people coming to church, more money coming in the offering plate, more people going on mission trips, more, more, more, and everything else is secondary.

As a part of this, new Pastors are brought into a church and simply told to grow it (without making substantial changes to anything).

Pastors then start working trying to grow the church. They visit prospects, they witness, they come up with all these new programs to draw people in. If these things work, then the Pastor is viewed as a great success (provided they didn't make too many changes).

However, if they don't work, or don't work well enough, then the Pastor is blamed for the continued decline. People get upset, they criticize every move that the Pastor has made (or has been perceived to have made), make his life miserable, and then one day, to the shock of all, a search committee is observed in the morning worship service.

The Pastor goes to another church where he is told (again) that the church is looking for someone with "new ideas" and he thinks, "This one will be different." Except that it usually isn't, and sometimes it's even worse than the one before.

After a while, the Pastor decides that the ministry is not worth sacrificing his family, his emotional well being, and his sanity, and starts looking for a way out. Sometimes, he begins to tell himself, "Why am I doing this? I can do so much more for God and for my church as a regular layperson." Eventually, these thoughts get put into action, and he packs his bags.

(As an aside, if you are a Minister and have been considered doing this, be warned: you cannot serve God by denying His call in your life. I have seen multiple instances of what happens when someone who, like Jonah, has been called into the ministry tries to run away from it. The end result is never pretty.)

What are the results of this Spiritual Rat Race? Now we have not just declining attendance, but more and more churches are shutting their doors altogether. Fewer and fewer people are coming to know Christ, and our country (along with most of the world in general) is going right down the toilet.

If we are going to fix this country, we have to start with the churches. In order to fix our churches, we need to rethink what churches are supposed to be doing, what the Pastors' role in the church should be, and how he relates to his congregation and his Deacons.

And that is where my epiphany comes in. But you will have to wait for the next post to read about it. :)

Context

In order to avoid misunderstanding of some of what I write, you might want to know a little about my background.

1. I am the Pastor of a Southern Baptist church. I occasionally make references to Deacons. In SBC churches, Deacons function as a governing board. In some denominations they might refer to them as "Elders."

2. As I am male, and virtually all of the other Pastors that I have regular contact with are men, I refer to Pastors in the masculine. I am not trying to slight any woman pastor or minister, it is simply force of habit.

3. I am originally from Georgia, while my wife is from Louisiana. This makes for interesting game days when UGA and LSU are playing, or when the Falcons and the Saints are playing.

4. I base my theology on a literal interpretation of the Bible, within its original context. I have no real preference for translations, except that I use the New American Standard the most.

My new Blog

I have a very full life in a lot of ways. I have a awesome marriage to an amazing wife. I have three really good kids. I live at the beach where I pastor a truly wonderful church with a lot of really good, down to earth people.

And yet, my life is missing something. What could that be?

I know!! A blog! It seems that every other pastor has one, and if I don't, then I am out of date, left behind, a technological dinosaur.

So let me turn off my eight-track player and make one.

As so much of my life revolves around church and whatnot, there are all these things running around in my head that, if put together, might even make a book.

The problem is getting them down on paper in a coherent fashion. What I intend to do is write a post on a given subject, open it up to comments, and start refining and fleshing out some of these things.

So, check back here on a regular basis. I've got posts in my head about churches, Pastors, Deacons, Prophecy, Salvation, and snake handling, to name a few. You never know what is going to pop up.