Recently I spoke with a guy who worked for a denomination to promote church planting. The term “planting” is Christian jargon for establishing new congregations in new regions. The guy made an interesting observation which I completely agreed with: Planters must be pastors first.
As a denominational worker, this friend had seen many guys who became church planters, but who failed to be shepherds of people’s souls. I have seen the same thing also. When church planters are merely franchise operators, they tend to imitate the world. Since they are starting something, namely a new congregation, they tend to copy the world’s start-up culture.
Worldly Start-Up Culture
This summer I read a memoir about the inner workings of a technology company in its early “start-up” days. It was an expose of Silicon Valley and the start-up culture found in many of the tech companies in that industry.
The most prominent features in these companies were a combination of ‘bro-culture’, forced adolescence, and passive-aggressive conflict management.
‘Bro-culture’ is an intentionally exclusive world where male programmers use insider language to mask frat-house crudeness.
The forced adolescence of these companies shows up in their kindergarten decor and nap rooms.
Conflict is not handled openly and honestly but is ignored under fake happy veneers. Then when the threshold is reached, the aggressive scorched earth approach takes over with no possibility of forgiveness.
Companies mature and change. But all you have to do is make a Google search for “Bro culture” and you will see articles relating to these features of the tech start-ups. Many church planters have tended to copy this worldly (that is unspiritual) world of start-ups.
Christian Start-Up Culture
The church planting culture in North America can be sort of like a Christianized version of this tech start-up world. The planters are the ‘bros’. The plants have an infatuation with adolescent style. And the conflict management tends to be to ignore minor issues and then blow up, quit, or burn others when everyone is not on board with the vision.
Of course, there are challenges to every church plant. And many people can look on a pastor in his twenties or thirties as inexperienced, belonging to the pastors’ fraternity, and not very good at handling conflict. Almost every pastor who has started young and had a long tenure will admit to failure when it comes to the commissions and omissions of sin in his early pastorate, myself included.
But there is still this other kind of start-up style that bakes in the features of worldly start-up culture into church plants. I think these features are still influenced by Mark Driscoll and the bro culture he promoted in his church. His 2006 book Confessions of a Reformission Rev offered the memoir for how bro culture looks for a plant. Driscoll’s template resulted in scores of church planters trying to copy him. Thankfully these planters have been satirized enough that we might see an end to the cussing, middle-aged pastor with a soul patch and skinny jeans.
Planters Must Be Pastors First
Church planting is very hard. Establishing a new congregation requires both wisdom and faith. Much effort needs to be expended by a planter to get the right structures in place for this new entity to be organized and functioning well. But he must have faith so that his identity resides in union with Christ, rather than being a frat boy visionary or guru-like wunderkind.
The planter must be a pastor first. He must preach the word (2 Tim 4:2), pastor the people (1Pet 5:2), confronting sin (Titus 1:13), and comforting sufferers (2 Cor 1:3-7). All of this must be done while still promoting the advance of the gospel into unwilling and hostile environments.
Let us pray for planters that they would be pastors first.
If you are a Christian believer who has benefitted from the explosion of good resources in the last thirty years, someone else has shared their pastor with you.
Maybe that pastor didn’t come to your home or your church, but he came into your hearing and reading because someone else shared him. I’ve benefitted from the people of Grace Community Church sharing John MacArthur with others. He even came and spoke in Calgary a long time ago. If his church hadn’t shared him, he wouldn’t have come and the believers in Calgary would not have been blessed.
The Church Universal
When churches share their pastors, they show that they care about the mission of the church universal as well as their local church. Consider the generosity of Westminster Chapel in London sharing Martyn Lloyd-Jones in the sixties and seventies. Think how Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis sacrificed in sharing John Piper to take time to write books and speak at conferences. In each of these cases and many others you could name, the local churches paid the salary of men who were fruitful beyond their own local congregation. Their generosity by their sacrifice lead many others to be blessed.
Now it might seem obvious that Christians in these churches that I mentioned would want to be generous with their pastors and bless others with their time. But the fact is that many church members do not want to share. A friend told me his perception of what a congregation thinks about sharing their pastor. He said everyone thinks, “What’s in it for me?”
So pastors often have to persuade and promote the good work that they have opportunity to do outside of their church. Many times pastors are simply asked to help, asked to speak, or asked to equip. The pastor views it as a chance to do extended ministry. The church can view it as being cheated.
Painting the Neighbour’s Fence
Church members can feel this way when they don’t find that the pastoral care is sufficient, or that the organization of the church is to their liking. I have had people question why I would go to equip pastors in a difficult East Asian country for two weeks. They thought that there was more than enough ministry at home to do. Why go there? For many people, any service outside the church is like painting someone else’s fence when your own could use some touch-ups or even a second coat.
Neglect
Now there can certainly be a case when a local church pastor neglects his congregation in order to give his best time and effort to others. If that is the case then the church’s elder board ought to discuss the frequency of his speaking engagements and set limits on them. Or maybe that pastor needs to request a reshuffling of responsibilities so that his ministry in the local church is more effective, while he carries out important ministry outside the church.
Suspicion
Some people in the church are simply suspicious that opportunities their pastor has for wider ministry necessarily make him prone to pride, seeking a name, and the praise of men. Of course, these temptations exist when a pastor speaks, teaches or writes beyond his congregation. But they are not unconnected with the temptations in his local church ministry. If the church members and their elders see a consistent humility in a pastor while he leads the local church, they can at least know that he has a starting point for faithfulness in outside work.
Celebrity Pastors
Many of the “celebrity pastors” who have fallen have been marked by characteristics in their local church that got amplified in a larger area of influence. If they were bossy, or flirtatious, or attention-seeking while they are in their own church, the larger stage only amplifies those sins and works of the flesh. When I hear stories about the ‘behind closed door’ talk of some pastors who later had moral failures, often the wrecks could have been predicted.
Publicly Shared, But No Celebrity
Most pastors that I know are not celebrities–even ones that speak at conferences or have written a few books. They are not in the category of ‘celebrity’. But their churches have shared them, sacrificing generously to do so. The pastor who has been publicly shared by his church can then speak to others or create resources for them knowing he is accountable to his local church and supported by them. Church members truly are partners in that ministry. Paul showed his appreciation for publicly sharing him when he said to the Philippian Church:
I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now
Phil 1:4-5
If you read a blog post, read a book, listen to a podcast, hear a sermon, or read a book which comes from the labours of a pastor not your own, then you’ve benefitted from someone’s sacrifice. If you live outside of Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC, and yet you benefit from the ministry of pastors there, you have received the sacrifice of others. Another church has generously shared their pastor with you. If all of us took the attitude of giving and receiving with sacrificial generosity, then maybe our pastors would be more accountable because their churches would be more involved in the outside work. Maybe there would be more unity and fruitfulness among churches together as they share the gifts God has given them, including their pastors.
Returning from vacation, pastors might be jolted with the reminder that they can’t do their job. Or at least they will see that they can’t do all that their job demands of them. The needs of people are so many and so deep that only God’s supply can meet the demand.
So what is the pastor to do? Does he simply pray that God will enable him with supernatural capacity to meet every need in the church? Prayer for God-given empowerment is good, but if we seek it to meet every need, we will shift from being a servant to being a messiah.
People Are Gifts
What pastors and congregations need to realize is that God has already answered such prayers by providing gifts, supernatural gifts to the church. I’m not talking about the extra-ordinary apostolic gifts of miracles and prophecy which God sent to vindicate the foundation-laying apostolic message. I’m talking about God giving blood-won sinners who have been Spirit-empowered to serve God and one another. God has given people as supernatural gifts to the church.
In the gift lists of Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4, we see that God has given a diversity of gifts to the church by setting individuals in vital union with Jesus Christ and each other.
The marvel of this miraculous union shows God’s practical provision. Each believing person does not merely have a gift but is a gift. That means that no matter who they are, what their background is, or what their personality type might be, a sinner saved by grace is themselves a grace-gift to the church. They have a role to play. As they play it, everyone else will benefit. As Paul told the Ephesians:
“When each part is working properly [Christ]makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love
Eph 4:16
In the modern church, this has come to be known as every member ministry. The description attempts to clarify that church members, all of them, have a role to play in the ministry, not just the clerical class.
Caring For Souls
One area where every member ministry is critical, but often overlooked is in soul care. Today many people in Protestant churches still think that the only person who can help them is the pastor. It is as if they think that the pastor has a special direct line to God. Or they think that the pastor is the leading expert who alone has the professional expertise. Or they think that the pastor is paid to be on-call for their spiritual needs, so they want to get their money’s worth.
Unfortunately, a lot of bad thinking sounds more like the unbiblical priestly models of Roman Catholicism, or the consumeristic therapy models of modern secular counselling. The two results that such an approach will achieve is either pushing pastors to become more like ‘professionals’ or it will push them to burn out.
The Reformer Martin Bucer addressed this point:
The care of souls makes so many demands that even in small congregation it cannot be properly exercised by just one or a few…there is so much involved in the true care of souls that even those who are the most skilled in this ministry; if they are alone or few in number, will not achieve very much; because all skill and ability comes from God, who desires to carry out this his work in his church by means of many and not by means of few.
Martin Bucer, Concerning the True Care of Souls, 58
To get ‘the many’ involved in ministry, pastors will have to do a number of things which will take effort, but the result will be better soul care for the congregation.
Equip
Pastors must start by obeying Ephesians 4:12 and aim to “equip the saints for the work of the ministry for building up the body of Christ.” This means teaching the saints the content of the faith, but also equipping them in such a way that they know the work of the ministry they are to do, and that they have the chance to do it. To equip the saints, they need both direction and teaching.
Direction
I think pastors can be good at teaching the content of the Christian faith but can assume that people in the church will automatically know how to minister to each other from that doctrinal foundation. I know for myself that I’ve had to be more explicit in helping people make connections between their role in the body of Christ and their responsibilities in the work of the ministry.
Teaching
To equip people well requires all of the best elements of teaching. People need the content, examples, illustrations, analogies, steps and opportunities to practice. This kind of teaching takes a lot of work on the part of pastors. It is the part of my own experience that I find the most difficult. Teaching doctrine is easier, but it can be harder to help a member become a needs-aware role player in the body of Christ.
Unity
If pastors work at equipping the saints for the work of the ministry, the result as Paul argues through the fourth chapter of Ephesians will be unity. A church that “builds itself up in love” will be supernaturally unified through the relationships of its visible members. As Bucer put it:
In this work of building [God] wishes to have and make use of many tools, so that he may raise many of his own to honoour and hold them all the more firmly together…None of his members must be idle, and there must be the highest degree of unity and order among them, each one must depend on and be depended on by the other; thus everything must be one and in common, beginning and continuing by means of common activity.
Martin Bucer, Concerning the True Care of Souls, 58
Don’t Just Do It Yourself
As pastors (and church members) return from summer vacation, they can be tempted to slip into the thinking that says if you want a job done right, you have to do it yourself. But if we give in to that, we will burn out. Silo ministry will only expose how dysfunctional we are. Yet when we live according to God’s design, we will rejoice that he has gifted the church with many hands. Many hands make light work.
As a twenty-something newlywed, I climbed the steps of the Royal Conservatory on Bloor Street in Toronto, eager to meet my petite French vocal coach for my regular lesson. I had no idea that a mere four years later I would become a pastor’s wife. My artsy, hipster existence would be forever changed.
Being married to a man with a shepherd’s heart is a wonderful blessing, but it also comes with unique challenges. When my husband transitioned from a Toronto Professor to a Calgary Pastor, the biggest change for me was that my house suddenly became transparent.
It’s no secret that pastor’s families live in glass houses. If you are married to a pastor, you’ve likely had to reckon with what it means to live your life in this highly visible role. Pride would have us try to live up to everyone’s standards, but as the wizened among us will tell you, perfectionism only results in unfulfilled expectations.
The irony of pride is that it makes us fearful, anxious and insecure. We constantly have to prove we are as good as we think we are.
Fortunately for pastor’s wives (and every other human on the planet), the bible nowhere praises people for their perfection and self-sufficiency. Instead we are encouraged to live every day in view of God’s grace.
An Example in Sarah
The Apostle Peter held Sarah up as woman “who hoped in God” precisely because she placed her hope in Someone better than herself (1 Pet. 3:5).
Sarah wasn’t called a “holy” woman because she was sinless. She was called a holy woman because, when she sinned, she repented and her life shows a pattern of obedience and hope in God.
In hope, she looked to God when He called her husband, Abram, to leave Ur of the Chaldeans, with no idea where they were going (Heb.11:8). In hope, she looked to God through the inherent dangers in travel, even when Abraham lied about who she was on two separate occasions, and foreign kings took her as what we can only assume to be a concubine (Gen. 12, 20).
After waiting until the twilight of her life to conceive, Sarah’s faith came to the ultimate test when God told Abraham to sacrifice their precious son on an altar. Her faith was tried and tested, and as Peter said earlier in his letter, faith tested by fire is more precious than gold.
What Sarah exemplifies for us is not perfection, but a persevering faith. Sarah’s trials taught her to reject the false security of people and circumstances, and instead hope in something better. This is why Peter, inspired by the Holy Spirit holds her up as an example of a “holy woman who hopes in God.”
Secure in God’s Grace
It’s a mistake to tread lightly at the throne of grace. When trials or criticism make us feel unstable and vulnerable, that is precisely when we need to lean in more. Because of Christ, we can “with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Heb. 4:14- 16)
When I was vacationing in Arizona with my family recently, we went for a beautiful hike through the desert. The landscape was full of cacti, mesquite trees, and desert shrubs that were completely foreign to our Canadian terrain. And as we reached the summit of a hill, I saw on the horizon, not one, but two eagles gliding through the air.
I have to admit, I’ve never noticed how an eagle flew before that moment, but on this day, I sat there and observed. I noticed the ease with which these large birds seemed to glide through the sky. Their wings were not flapping, they were literally gliding on the wind. There was nothing frantic about it. They were not tiring themselves out. In fact it looked restful and invigorating at the same time.
Isaiah 40:31 came to mind. “But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.”
And as the truth of these words penetrated my heart, I wondered how often I unnecessarily flap my wings, tiring myself out with my self-reliance.
The Lord is the one who forgives our sins and strengthens us for ministry. The Lord makes us soar like an eagle, gliding on the wind, empowering us by the Holy Spirit.
Our perfectionist dreams for ourselves may be more flattering, but they will never amount to anything more than unfulfilled expectations and a ginormous amount of wing-flapping. Whereas God is able to do “far more abundantly” than we even know to ask or think (Ephes. 3:20).
Our glass houses are a blessing in disguise because they remind us that there was only one perfect man in the history of the world, and we are not him! Jesus was perfect for us. He took on our sin and gave us his righteousness (2 Cor. 5:21). This alone is the reason a holy God accepts us.
Pastor’s wives are not perfect, but when we put our hope in God’s grace and sufficiency for us, we are no longer slaves to the next wave of public opinion or even our own changing emotions. Sarah’s life showed a pattern of obedience and hope in God and that is why Peter said that we are her daughters if we “do good and do not fear anything that is frightening.” (1 Pet. 3:6)
Glass houses become less scary when we’re secure in God’s grace.
A version of this article titled, Grace for the Pastor’s Wife was originally posted at The Gospel Coalition Canada
That’s the question which came in response to the sermon on Psalm 9.17: “The Wicked shall be turned into hell”
How do you preach that text?
Not just the content. Not just the truth of the text. But how do you preach that text within the full compass of biblical revelation? How do you preach it within the gravitational pull of the glory of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ, the risen, incarnate One?
How do you do it?
So the question, with the gentle rebuke in it, was asked:
“Were you able to preach it with tenderness?”.
Who were these two men? The preacher and the questioner?
The preacher was Andrew Bonar. The questioner was Robert Murray M’Cheyne.
You see M’Cheyne had been deeply concerned in his own life that he would not permit a bitterness to develop in how he viewed the people. The reason was that although judgement needed to be preached clearly, it also needed to be preached so as to pierce through the conscience with God’s gracious love. This meant that every grave and urgent warning needed to be marked with “angelic tenderness.”
Bonar said of M’Cheyne:
Of this bitterness in preaching, … so sensible was he of its being quite natural to all of us, that oftentimes he made it the subject of conversation, and used to grieve over himself if he had spoken with anything less than solemn compassion.
Memoirs and Remains of Robert Murray M’Cheyne, 53.
Here are seven ways to kill bitterness in preaching if you’re being tempted that way.
1. Watch Strong Passions
Desire is a key component to the preachers calling (see 1 Tim 3:1). Desire must be there. Passion for preaching the truth must be in hand.
However, the virtues of desire and passion for a good thing like preaching can get distorted later on into the vices of wrong passion and selfish desire.
Consider that all of Paul’s ministerial opponents (Judaizers at Galatia, Super-apostles in Corinth, etc) must have had a strong sense of ‘desire’ to preach their message!
Paul could say, “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!’ (1 Cor 9.17).
There was both desire and passion in that statement. But there was never the distortion of passion into something else.
Distortions come when we are overruled by a passion for select truths and desire for select types of change.
Remember, the prediction made by Paul in 2 Tim4.3 that people “ will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions,”
Teachers who are passionate about the noble task, are easily tempted to be passionate about various selective passions, causes, movements, and desires.
There was a man that I know whose ministry was very influential on me, introducing me to some of the more detailed elements of historic protestant theology. He was passionate about reformation. He was passionate about revival. Sadly today after a series of doctrinal changes, his passion is for unity between denominations with particular sympathy for the Church of Rome. He is not a Roman Catholic, but it is striking to see the following which he has among Roman Catholics who are courting dissatisfied Evangelicals.
His passion for ecclesiastical unity led him to find the grass always greener everywhere else, except in his own backyard. Yet in his new tolerance, there is an edge of intolerance for the leaders and theology which he used to embrace, an apparent bitterness toward former friends.
When we adopt passion for individual causes we can develop bitterness toward those who don’t do the same. Since others aren’t accompanying this “one-note tune” then it can be easy for us to feel frustrated and injured. Then we can get bitter in our preaching.
2. Avoid Being Quarrelsome
From this point I want to trace out 2 Tim 2.24-25, which begins with this statement, “And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome”.
Being the Lord’s servant, means you are owned by one greater than you. By contrast, being quarrelsome means you are protecting your own bit of turf.
It is easy for us to think about people in our church as the opponents. And we are amassing our arguments to defend our positions so that we can slay our opponents in three easy moves.
When we are passionate about our position. When we have staked out our ground on the issue. It is quite easy to change our view of the sheep into a crowd of potential debate partners, adversaries and challengers.
This leads to polemical preaching which fights battles like Don Quixote— charging at windmills.
This is ‘battling for the truth’ that is akin to those who ‘devote themselves to myths and to endless genealogies’ (1 Tim 1.4).
This is why guys who are known as being ‘battlers’ often lack what real defenders of the faith have: solemn compassion.
When a godly, learned man gives a denunciation of falsehood, it is always so thorough, so gracious, so comprehensive, so as to be utterly devastating.
But you can never say, “Oh, ya… that guy was just taking cheap shots”.
No. The preacher’s solemn compassion for the deceived makes him just and fair in denouncing the deceivers and their deception.
3. Seek Kindness to Everyone
Consider the next point in Paul’s bullet list in 2 Timothy 2:24-25, “be…kind to everyone”. This makes pastoralunkindness an oxymoron. Yet how often are we given to speaking in unkind ways to people, and especially about people?
A pastor friend shared the counsel that he gave to a married couple who were struggling greatly and fighting often. He said to the husband, “She is not the enemy!”
And in the relationship between the pastor and the church, we must be careful that we don’t view each other as ‘the enemy’. Satan and sin — those are enemies. False teachers are enemies. Not blood-bought sinners bound for glory.
In our preaching and our speaking, we must resist any temptation to pastoral unkindness. We must be valiant for truth, but we have to work at waging our warfare without unkindness.
4. Work at Teaching
Being “able to teach” (2 Tim 2:24) is that distinct qualification of an elder/pastor/overseer (1 Tim 3:2). And in this context of resistance or potential confusion, clear teaching is what is required. To teach is to be compassionate. It is to empathize with where people are at and bring the truth to them. It is harder work to teach someone than it is to be careless of their lack of understanding.
It is like the picture in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. Christian was given a telescope by the Shepherds. Through it he saw the gate of the Celestial City. So also a pastor’s teaching offers the vision of what lies ahead, and the pathway to get there.
When we are bitter or harsh we will wonder why these people can’t figure this out? But we will fail to work at teaching because it is simpler, and sometimes lazier to trumpet the goal, but offer no assistance to get there.
5. Patiently Endure Evil.
Fulfilling the calling as the Lord’s servant, the preacher must be marked by patience in enduring evil (2 Tim 2:24).
Why does Paul have to say this?
He says it because the tidal wave of evil in the world makes one a) impatient for an end of it, and b) unwilling to endure the waves rolling over us.
Bitter preaching or harsh preaching is often impatient and unwilling to endure evil. It calls for justice and change and transformation now. It is unwilling to trust in the superiority of God’s global solution in Jesus Christ, a salvation for sinners that is both cosmic in scope and personal in experience.
Solemn compassion in preaching exhibits a clear view of the now/not yet of the kingdom, and so patiently endures the evil tide. Solemn compassion knows that ultimately this tide too will pass (Rev 21:1).
6. Correct Opponents with Gentleness
This is where preaching that has a corrective function is proven whether it is done compassionately or with harshness.
Can correction by Spirit-wrought, biblical argument be made without resorting to strong-arm tactics? Or is the bully pulpit required to ‘correct’ others.
Often the use of the harsh bully pulpit by a preacher betrays their lack of thought, prep, study, and reasoning about an issue.
The ethos is this: You don’t agree with me—- So let me shout louder!
Of the many examples in Jesus’ ministry, his lament over Jerusalem epitomizes his strongly convinced condemnation of Jerusalem’s sin. He is compassionate in telling them the truth but unbending in the truth of it. He said:
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!
Matthew 23:37
We need to be Christ-like in this way, loving people enough to clearly tell the truth and not hiding behind gentleness as a cover for our negligence. In the same way we should love people enough to temper the edge of our truth-telling with gentleness.
It’s like the blacksmith crafting the iron of the forged knife. It will never keep a sharp edge unless the hot blade is quenched and cured. Our preaching can be sharp and surgical when its unbending truth is holding the keen edge of gentleness.
M’Cheyne made the observation:
It is not saying hard things that pierces the conscience of our people; it is the voice of Divine love heard amid the thunder. The sharpest point of the two-edged sword is not death but life
Memoirs and Remains of Robert Murray M’Cheyne, 53.
7. Look to God to Change People
This is the final perspective that creates compassion versus harshness in our preaching, even in the midst of controversy.
We must look to God to change people.
There is a calm and secure resignation in the ability of God to “grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim 2:25).
Trusting in God’s sovereign ability is always a good policy. We should be expectant of the possibility that God, in his freeness, may choose to grant repentance to the stubborn. When we aren’t expectant of this, we betray our own creeping unbelief. Such unbelief is soil for bitterness in our preaching.
Of course we must look to God because in all of our conflict, we are engaged in spiritual warfare, especially when we are attempting to correct opponents who need to “come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will” (2 Tim 2:26). Only God can do this supernatural work of changing stubborn hearts.
We must look to God to change our own hearts that we would repent, and then expect him to be able to do the same for others.
So in all of our ministry, like M’Cheyne said to Bonar, the question remains:
I’ve been using a program called Grammarly lately. It tells me that I write more words per week than 99% of its users. Maybe it tells everyone that (which wouldn’t fit the math), but it seemed to verify that I write a lot of words each week.
Now it might be because I have to prep a sermon every Sunday. And yes, my sermons are longer than some, but not too long I hope.
There is another reason why I write a lot. It’s because being a pastor means that you have to write in different formats for different audiences. The writing has to be regular and it must be done well.
So what are some of the other things pastors should be writing? To start with, let’s look at the pastor as a letter-writer.
1. Letters
There is a long Christian tradition of letter writing that goes back to the New Testament epistles. Many pastors wrote extensively to their congregation, to outsiders and to other pastors. Their collective letter writing can be a devotional gold mine. The letters of Augustine, John Calvin, Samuel Rutherford, John Newton or Martyn Lloyd-Jones all have their own godly character and pastoral wisdom.
Today the way that most pastors engage in letter writing is through email. Unfortunately, email is often seen as a blight in our lives. Yet for all that, it is still the way that people communicate in long written form.
Can email be redeemed? Someone will suggest that we go back to writing handwritten letters as a way to escape email. This is a possibility for some of your correspondence. However, in our modern-day, pastors will still be using email and church members will expect it.
The way to redeem email is to commit to writing well. Thoughtfully crafted letters which are scripturally soaked and prayerfully inspired can be spiritually meaningful for the recipients.
Pastors can work at writing better quality emails in the spirit of the great letter-writers of the past.
2. Devotionals
Frequently pastors are asked to share a mini-meditation on Scripture. This might be at a staff meeting, an elders meeting, a home visit, a potluck or small group. It’s not a sermon, but you have to be able to pray, preach or die at a moment’s notice.
It’s helpful for pastors to write down brief skeleton outlines of biblical passages they are reading devotionally. Maybe there is a single insight they can draw out, whether a principle or other application. You never know when that nut you’ve squirrelled away will be needed!
3. Position Papers
When some pastors leave seminary, their academic muscles get atrophied. But if they are faithful in their calling, they will usually have to employ rigorous study and careful precision to produce position papers on doctrinal issues their church is debating.
Certainly, some pastors will write often about theological issues beyond their own congregation. But even the pastor focussed only on his own patch will have to draft these careful essays on theology. There are many contentious issues that may require an essay like this, whether it involves the church’s views on alcohol use, views on worship music, or views on the millennium. In any of these cases, a church statement will require some careful writing.
4. Summaries of Events
In counselling or church discipline situations, there may need to be written communication that expresses more formal language. This requires a lot of care because when there is a conflict between a pastor and someone else, it is important to be able to communicate clearly. This is also the reason why face-to-face meetings are so important during conflict. At the same time, written documentation and clear communication in writing are often necessary. Pastors need to learn how to write these kinds of summaries, statements of church action or other letters during disagreements. The careful pastor will be able to restate issues fairly, concisely and winsomely. But it takes practice.
5. Discipleship Resources
The pastor will accumulate a lot of bible study material through his years of preaching. It is helpful if he is able to repackage them into training resources for the future. He can create Sunday school classes, small group bible studies, blog posts, booklets, e-books and more.
By re-cycling these materials, he doesn’t merely retread the same sermons to the same congregation. Instead, he re-purposes them for different uses by editing, collecting and regrouping them. When pastors are re-using good material they are simply being good stewards of the resources God has given them.
6. Worship Resources
Some pastors will have musical or poetic ability. So they will be able to write hymns for congregational worship. The hymns may not be any good. Or they may end up being suitable for a different generation’s tastes. But good hymnody is a sign of spiritual life in a church. Pastors with songwriting skills can apply themselves to write hymns and help Christian worship. If no one else will sing them, at least the pastor can!
Not every pastor may be good at hymn-writing, but they will all have to work at liturgy crafting. Even if they used a set format a pastor will have to fill in the blanks. He will have to choose which texts to use, and which prayers to pray. Even if the liturgy has unscripted elements, the outline overall will employ basic categories such as a call to worship, a time of repentance and assurance of pardon, a pastoral prayer, prayer for the Word preached and a benediction. This weekly liturgical writing is something that all pastors must do and oversee, even when it is a team effort.
Public pastoral prayers can be a regular piece of spiritual writing for a pastor. He may jot down notes on the back of his bulletin, or he may craft a written prayer beforehand. There are different courses for different horses and every pastor will have his own way of preparing to pray pastorally for his congregation, the nation and the advance of the gospel. Whatever the preparation, likely there is some pre-prayer praying and writing going on.
Writing to Make Disciples
Of course, some of the greatest theological writings have come from pastors. These great men of God have used their pastoral ministry as the seedbed for their other theological writings. In all of it, their aim was to disciple believers in the churches.
Pastors are writers. But they write more than sermons. Pray for your pastor that he would grow as a preacher, but also as a godly writer in all the channels that are necessary.
You call him, “Pastor”, but do you know what it means? In our urbanized modern world, the knot between pastors in churches and their rustic origins has been cut. Today many people are asking, “Where does our food come from?” Christians ought to ask, “Where does our pastor come from?” You likely know his birthplace, but you might not know where his job came from. Without knowing that, both pastors and people will have a tendency to distort what a pastor does and what he is for.
Just as many people are looking to rediscover where their food comes from, it’s also helpful for pastors and their churches to take an agrarian turn. Does food come from the grocery store? Do pastors come from the seminary? For some people, the one question is as elusive as the other.
Pre-Processed Pastors
Is it too cynical to characterize some pastoral careers today as the equivalent of processed food? Many pastors are the product of a systematically funnelled career path which introduces them from youth ministry, through seminary, onto senior leadership, and then a repeating tenure of stops in an ascending scale of congregations. Those careers look like they were made in a factory.
Inside the church, the processed programs which pastors can bring may be useful for producing results, but they get stale quickly. Then new processes are needed. More efficient programs need to be discovered and implemented as a new way to do church. Like pre-processed food, those store-bought programs only require you to add water and stir.
Agrarian Losers and Gainers
An agrarian turn in pastoral ministry would aim to reconnect to the Scriptures’ own priorities set in agricultural and biblical soil.
The trouble with using a term like ‘agrarian’ today is that it already conjures up images of middle-class westerners with good jobs to support their farmers market dreams.
When it comes to farming it has always meant losing. Losing sweat, crops, herds, flocks, not to mention years. In that losing, the gains can only come from the heavens. Rain and favourable providences of God provide the only hope for the farmer.
The agrarian pastor is a loser too. Paul could describe himself this way saying, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ” (Phil 3:8). Most pastors don’t know how much they must lose, but Jesus is worth it all.
The pastor has to live on hope. As Paul put it, “the plowman should plow in hope and the thresher thresh in hope of sharing in the crop” (1 Cor 9:10). A pastor hopes in God because whether he sows or irrigates or threshes, it is God who gives the growth (1 Cor 3:7). Only Jesus, the chief Shepherd can claim to have lost none of the sheep (John 6:39, 17:12, 18:8).
Prone to Quit and Hope
I’ve seen how a brief hailstorm could devastate fields and families. One moment, showers of rain fell on ripening heads of grain and a few moments later the crop was flatter than a tabletop. Hope and despair passed within minutes. No wonder so many farmers quit.
Pastors are prone to quit too. But like the hardworking farmer, he will have the first share in the crop (2 Tim 2:6), and his hope renews constantly, not from his own skill, but from the prospect of the next season and what God might provide. Pastors have setbacks. Churches blow up. Members leave. The baptized get excommunicated. Satan roars. In all of these the pastor still has hope, like a crazy farmer. For pastors, like farmers, can keep on pastoring their churches and say with Paul, “that I might have a harvest among you, just as I have had among the other Gentiles.” (Rom 1:13).
To hope in the face of regular perplexity is the way that pastors imitate farmers. But the pastor, as a Christian believer is “always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies” (2 Cor 4:10).
Where to Find A Pastor
The idea of an agrarian pastor stands out in comparison to many of the pastoral models promoted today. The metaphor is quite different than the pastor as comedian, talk-show host, marketer, or CEO. Instead of those outstanding celebrities, the agrarian pastor is like the simple farmer. He may never be outstanding but will be literally outstandingin his field. That’s where you need to go to discover where the idea of a pastor comes from. The agrarian pastor hopes in the Lord puts his hand to the plough and doesn’t turn back (Luk 9:62).
I remember the first time someone called me the “first lady” of my church. Thirteen years ago, I was a brand-new church planter’s wife on vacation in California, and coming from a Canadian context, I had never heard a pastor’s wife referred to in this way before. I didn’t know whether it was an honor bestowed or a burden to bear, but it made me uncomfortable.
Many of us feel pressure to fulfill this nebulous role of “pastor’s wife.” For church-planting wives, the lines between “wife” and “support staff” can be blurry. What does it mean for us to be our husband’s “helper” (Gen. 2:18) and intimate “companion” (Mal. 2:14), and yet not be a “co-pastor” with him? Do we need to be a ministry asset in order to be a good pastor’s wife? And how do we discern when we cross the line from helping to meddling?
In church planting, it can be hard to discern where our husbands’ personal concerns end and the church’s business begins. Sometimes my husband’s burdens necessarily become mine, but I’ve learned to hesitate before jumping in. I am not called to pastoral ministry like he is, and I am not supernaturally equipped for the role in the same way that he is. God has made me fit for a different role in His kingdom, and knowing the difference between my and my husband’s responsibilities is essential for my personal sanity, the health of the church, and the harmony of our marriage.
Not My Responsibility
In my early years as pastor’s wife, I was confused about the nature of wifely support. Church planting can be lonely work, and I felt that if I was not constantly “in the know” and bearing every burden with my husband, I was neglecting my God-given role to help him. This was a mistake.
When God made Eve a helper fit for Adam, there was an implied unity. They had a common goal to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28), but Eve was not Adam’s clone. She had her own unique role to fulfill in God’s kingdom. This unity and diversity is also true of the Church. It is one Body but has many members. We each have different gifts, “according to the grace given us” (Rom. 12:4–6). A pastor’s wife has different gifts (and a different role!) from her husband.
Many of us struggle in a church planting scenario because we are running too much in our husbands’ lane. Even if no one puts pressure on us, it’s easy to take on too much responsibility. We may imagine that if we do A, B, and C correctly, we can make our husband’s ministry a success, but that is not a burden that God means for us to bear.
Biblically speaking, there are only two offices in the Church, and “pastor’s wife” is not one of them. Because of this, I’m wary of any special expectations being put on a pastor’s wife. We are called to be our husbands’ helpers, lovers, and companions (Titus 2:4), and at the same time, we are free to fulfill our unique roles in the Body. Keeping this distinction in mind is helpful because it protects us from false guilt on the one hand and overstepping on the other.
When His Burden Becomes Mine
Pastoral ministry is not a 9 to 5 job, and it’s not the kind of job you can leave at work. Emergencies, staff management, and difficult counseling situations can drain a man of his spiritual, emotional, and physical resiliency. Every so often, the job affects my husband deeply, and when that happens, his burdens necessarily become mine.
During difficult seasons especially, your husband likely needs his wife more than he needs a body to fill ministry gaps. Because you are uniquely called to be your husband’s wife, your ministry to him is invaluable. Someone else can do the bulletins or kids’ crafts at church, but only you can be his wife.
For my husband and I, knowing when he should share with me is often more important than how much he should share. For example, 10 p.m. is not a good time! He will sleep like a baby after unloading all his burdens on me, and I will be up all night stewing on his pain and discouragement.
When he does share his burdens with me, I’ve found it’s almost always better to say less and pray more, especially when I am initially hearing about difficult church dynamics. My initial gut reaction to want my husband vindicated is rarely helpful to voice, but thankfully, the gospel puts everything in perspective. It’s only in light of God’s love for us that I am able to diffuse my martyr mentality and say something that’s actually helpful.
The apostle Peter holds Sarah up as an example of mature femininity precisely because she was “a holy woman who hoped in God,” and he says we are her children if we “do good and do not fear anything that is frightening” (1 Peter 3:5–6). When we respond to difficult church dynamics with bold-faced hope in God’s promises, it helps our husbands. This doesn’t mean we are unable to empathize or grieve ministry losses with them, but it does mean that we don’t give in to the temptation to bitterness and suspicion. We don’t fume, rant, or speculate about people, and we don’t stir up sinful responses in our husbands. Instead, we let our speech and demeanor testify to the hope we have in Christ.
Our ministry will inevitably overlap with our husbands’ ministry because of the oneness of our union (Mark 10:8), but it’s important to understand the distinction between our role and theirs. Some pastors’ wives take on a more public ministry role in the church and others are quiet, behind-the-scenes prayer warriors. Whatever your gifts and disposition are, none of us should attempt to bear the weight of pastoral ministry. Instead we are free to love our husbands and serve the Church in whatever ways God has gifted us to serve.
