Nothing compares to the privilege of serving in the house of the Lord! My heart echoes David’s: “For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness” (Psalm 84:10).
Forty years ago today, I was ordained into the gospel ministry. As I look back over the past four decades, I say with the apostle Paul, “And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry” (1 Timothy 1:12).
Aside from my salvation and my family, there has been no greater joy in life than to serve Christ as a preacher of the gospel.
This month I will celebrate my fortieth year being ordained as a Baptist pastor. No one could have prepared me for the changes that were ahead in the church and ministerial landscape over this forty-year period.
When most of us think of ministry work, we think of shepherding people, leading souls to Jesus, and teaching and preaching God’s Word. Yet for these essential roles to be successfully fulfilled, there is an unglamorous, easily-neglected side of local church ministry—the administrative side of managing projects and processes. It’s the daily grind, and, frankly, it doesn’t come naturally for many ministry leaders. But local church ministry benefits from intentional strategies and processes.
One of the great privileges of the pastor is to shepherd church members through difficult seasons. What can you do as a pastor to help and encourage?
1. Point them to the Lord. We can and should pray for people. We can and should encourage them. We can and should share biblical truth with them. But their primary relationship is not with us but with the Lord. “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in thee” (Isaiah 26:3).
We are tempted to think that the time in which we live is the worst time in the history of civilization. That’s nonsense. The Bible speaks of a time when “every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 21:25). What is new, however, is the way in which Christians have succumbed to social pressure during such a time. I believe some Christians’ lack of indignation at what we see in our world today is not a sign of their spirituality but of their indifference.
