Support Your Local Pastor

Greetings and welcome to our final entry for 2011. First and foremost I would like the reader to understand that many generalisations will be used in this particular entry; it will be more subjective than what we normally offer. Therefore, We recommend the Bible verses offered here be the focus and everything else be received in a general sense.

The five-fold ministries of Ephesians chapter 4 are the basis of our entry today, well at least the part pertaining to pastors. Lets look at verses 11-13: And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.

We see from this verse that the role of a pastor is to equip the saints for the work of the service. Too often in the churches of today it seems that congregations have the expectation that their pastor will do 'all the work' and all they need do is to show up on Sunday. However, as we can see from the Ephesians 4, part of the pastor's duty is to equip the saints for work, not to simply be the only one in the church who plays an active role in the things of God.

We believe every member of the congregation is responsible to evangelise (this simply means reaching others with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, you don't have to be a World famous Evangelist to do this). Furthermore we are all responsible to minister to the needy, to minister to our families, to our friends, to each other and to assist with the day to day running of the church (the physical building). It is the pastor's role to equip everyone for the above activities. Yes there are different gifts and ministries but we are all called to perform the essential roles of our faith. Plainly put, we should not be pew warmers sitting back expecting the pastor to nourish us with God's word while we do nothing with that spiritual food. We should not expect the pastor to do 'everything'.

Another major Biblical expectation of Pastors that most of us would have, is that pastors are to 'shepherd' their flock, and there is some solid Biblical basis for this. See 1 Peter 5:2, Acts 20:28 & see John 10:1-16 for the role of Jesus as the Good Shepherd. So congregations have the right to expect their pastors to act like a shepherd. It has been my experience that pastors are like any other section of the societies we live in; some are outstanding, some are average and sadly some are not worthy of the title.

Happily I can say most of our pastors have been good ones. We had one less than ideal (who only visited our home to make sure we were tithing and after confirming that, we never had personal contact with him again). We also endured one pastor 'personal empire builder' who was a wolf in sheep's clothing who preached heretical, new age teachings. He majored on these more than he did anything Biblical. However, We have been blessed with a couple of men who were inspiring and their impact echoes in my life and I am grateful for the time they were 'my' pastor. (If you are concerned with my assessments here that you might consider 'judgemental' please see: John 7:24, Romans 16:17, Galatians 1:8-9 and in particular, 1 Corinthians 5:12-13).

The elders who rule well are to be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching 1 Timothy 5:17

If you have ever had a pastor who worked hard at preaching and teaching and they had a positive impact on your life, why not let them know. Yes they have their reward from the Lord but we can also honour them even if we just say thank you. However, it is our contention that we are obliged to do more than that and some of these things we have outlined above. Now if you are being led by a pastor who is not worthy of 1 Timothy 5, perhaps its time to look elsewhere. We've had to do it, so we speak from personal experience. If we stay under the leadership of a non-biblical pastor we risk becoming victims of their abuse and the damage that is done in those situations can be immense.

We also believe those in leadership need to lead by example, like Jesus did; that is they must be servants of all. However, pastors have a specific role and that does not involve being responsible for everything that happens in a church. Don't leave it all to the Pastor and his wife (if he has one, remember I mentioned this entry would be 'generalisation' heavy). Support him so he can get on with his role of equipping and shepherding the flock that he has been entrusted with. In short, support you local pastor.

Note: Unless something important arises this will be our final entry for 2011. Have a safe holiday. See you in 2012!