Pastoral Leadership

No one likes confrontation. And yet, the Bible tells us that the reproofs of instruction are the way of life. All of us face situations in our ministry where we must deal with a situation, but we know that when we do so, it is quite likely to cause trouble.

Over the years, I’ve often told our church family here at Lancaster Baptist Church, “I’m Baptist born and Baptist bred, and when I die I’ll be Baptist dead.” At times, this has been a fun, catchy phrase, but in reality I fully mean these words because I believe in my Baptist heritage, and I hold it dear.

For years I have written and spoken against being contentious. Yes, I’ve contended against contentiousness! A contentious, always-in-a-fight spirit will damage whoever it touches. A wrong spirit will kill any marriage, church, or movement. But make no mistake. The mark of a biblical leader is his willingness to contend for the faith. While we should not be contentious, we must contend.

There were false prophets among the people of Israel in the Old Testament—that’s a matter of history, and those who falsely claimed to be prophets of God were to be stoned. But the Israelites rarely had the will to deal with them, so they multiplied, causing disaster to the spiritual life of God’s people.

Perhaps this has not happened in your church, but in our church we occasionally have a person who joins the choir and then decides not to live by the standards of behavior to which they had agreed when they came in. We’ll sometimes have a Sunday school teacher who seems to wish to continue teaching their class but no longer wants to visit, no longer wants to live in accordance with the church’s stand on separation from the world, or to be faithful to the services as they had agreed.

China’s best-known monument is the Great Wall that surrounded the country during the Ming Dynasty. At four thousand miles long and over twenty feet tall, the Wall was designed to be an impregnable obstacle to invading armies. The idea was a good one, and it would have worked well—except that the enemy was able to bribe the gatekeeper. With the compromise of one guard, an impenetrable wall was rendered useless.

In spiritual leadership, the way up is down, and the way to greatness is the path of service. We already know that, and we pray for a servant’s heart. But sometimes we forget what a servant’s heart actually looks like. What, specifically, are we praying for when we ask for a servant’s heart?

One of the dangers to which spiritual leaders are particularly susceptible is that we would teach the truths of God’s Word while exempting ourselves from those very truths. Take, for instance, the lawyer in Luke 10 who asked Christ how to inherit eternal life. Contrary to face value, this question was not a “What must I do to be saved?” kind of question. It was a trap.

It promised to be a beautiful Monday morning in a small, rural area of Kansas. The opening services of the revival on Sunday were productive, and I was thankful to be at this church for a few days. At the crack of dawn, I mounted my bicycle, intending to get some good exercise.

The mission of every local church is, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15; see also Matthew 28:18–20 and Acts 1:8). But to break it down further, the personal order to every Christian is to be, “Ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us.”

If you lead any sort of ministry team—whether as a senior pastor with a staff or a Sunday school teacher with one helper—investing in those who serve with you is not just smart for the furtherance of the ministry, it is a way to show gratitude to those on your team.

One of the most used phrases when making excuses for not doing something is, “I don’t have time.” That is never true. We all have the same amount of time. In this area we are all equal. We all have 24 hours every day and 60 minutes in each hour. We must learn to prioritize our time. When I say, “I don’t have time,” what I am really saying is, “This is not a high priority with me.”

For years, I’ve taught that we must take time to “come apart” (for replenishment) before we “come apart” (from overwhelmment). “And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat.”—Mark 6:31

Excellence—it’s important in any area, and it’s vital in leadership, particularly spiritual leadership. The quality of a work is unlikely to rise above the quality of the leader. This is why—when it comes to local church ministry—spiritual leaders must maintain a quest for personal excellence.

A man pastors a church which is part of a Baptist Association. He involves himself in this organization until one day, he realizes that he has had an inappropriate motivation: a desire to become the president of the group. He also becomes increasingly aware of things in the organization he believes are wrong.

One of the most seductive traps into fleshly ministry is the belief that we must gain God’s acceptance by our accomplishments. The accomplishments might even be spiritual goals—winning souls, building a Sunday school class, raising godly children. But if we undertake them to gain the Father’s acceptance, we’re working in the flesh and missing the joy of the acceptance provided through Christ.

On a scorching hot Monday in July of 1958, Louis Johnson and his family arrived in Tucson, Arizona. By the following Sunday, Pastor Johnson had reserved a room for the first church service in the Pueblo Garden Elementary School. Pastor Johnson and his oldest son knocked on eight hundred doors the following week, inviting everyone that was home to attend a new church plant. Twenty-eight people attended the first service in 1958.

Growing up in the average Australian household means a life void of religion, God, or faith. By the time Robert Bakss of Sydney, Australia, was eight years old, his parents had divorced, and he found himself in not one, but two of these average Aussie households. “I went through a bit of an ordeal then,” Robert recalls, “I was going back and forth between two homes, a dysfunctional sort of home life.”

As a part of my work as a chaplain for the Saginaw County Sheriff’s Department, I took a course in critical incident stress debriefing. While I did not look forward to this investment of time and did not expect to learn much, I found it very practical and quite helpful. One of the things they said was that in an immediate crisis, you would not do a complete debriefing, but you could do a defusing. I have found that, as a pastor, there are many times and circumstances that can benefit from “defusing.”

Leading in ministry is like walking a tightrope. Not only does it require delicate balance, but the stakes are high if we slip. As spiritual leaders, it is our responsibility to walk with balance. Ephesians 5:15 puts it succinctly—“walk circumspectly.” But if we were to get off balance, what would it look like?