Pastoral Leadership

Have you ever gotten to the end of a “day off” and felt just as exhausted as you did at the beginning? Have you ever looked back over the day and wished for a do over?

In 1989, First Baptist Church of Plattsmouth, Nebraska was on the brink of closing its doors. The church had been without a pastor for eighteen months. An elderly couple and one widow were the only church members remaining. But they decided to launch out by faith to call a new pastor. They believed God wanted their church to go forward, though many obstacles stood in the way.

My generation tends to think of a strong spiritual leader as someone who is authoritative and able to administrate from a position of command. Indeed, we see leaders like this throughout the Bible—Joshua, Nehemiah, perhaps Paul.

There’s a lot of talk in our day about transparency. Some of it is just talk in which people try to create an illusion of transparency where there is none. But biblical Christianity is transparent and free of guile.

We know that God is more interested in the spiritual health of a church than its numeric growth. A spiritually thriving church will be reaching people with the gospel and seeing people added to the church, but a church focused only on growth may be seeing people added without true conversion or spiritual maturity.

The average tenure for pastors and assistant pastors is somewhere between three to seven years. There are many reasons why pastors and assistants move on. We cringe to hear of the bad reasons, but sometimes ministry transitions are good for all parties involved.

If planning counts as productivity, the week between Christmas and New Year’s is my most productive! This is my week for setting goals and planning out the “big rocks” in my calendar for the coming year.

When Terrie and I moved to Lancaster over thirty years ago, I began an eighteen-month season of intense personal outreach. Every week, I would knock on no less than five hundred doors personally with a church invitation and a purpose to share the gospel at the door.

I meet once or twice each year with the senior men of West Coast Baptist College to discuss ministry philosophy and personal growth. As we met last month, I was encouraged by their sense of anticipation and eagerness for getting into the ministry.

Every pastor has former church members and former workers. It has been said that the average life of a church worker is seven years. That may be the average, but I am sure it is not God’s intended norm. Here are a few simple thoughts to help people be faithful in the work of God over a long period of time.

There is no greater leader, than the Lord Jesus. Two thousand years after His brief earthly ministry, the impact of His leadership is still being felt, books are written about Him, universities named after Him, churches meet weekly to worship Him, He was a leader among all leaders because people today are still following him! Why did people follow Jesus?

You can’t miss the urgency and passion with which Jesus carried out His ministry. Throughout His ministry, He spoke of musts, such as, “I must work the works of Him that sent me” (John 9:4).

North Valley Baptist Church was started by Pastor Calvin Blanton in the downtown area of Phoenix, Arizona, in 1956. For twenty-eight years Pastor Blanton faithfully led his congregation until he was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor in 1984.

Christians across America are frustrated. Some are discouraged. Some are fearful. Some are hopeless. Our culture is shifting before our very eyes, and there seems to be little to nothing we can do to stop it. We see the decaying morals and we sense the intolerance toward Christians growing around us.

If you’ve served the Lord any length of time, you know that the outward expressions of service don’t guarantee a consistent heart for the Lord. The same is true of serving on a church staff. Being in the ministry is no guarantee that you will be strong as a Christian or that you will be diligent in the spiritual disciplines of following God and serving His people.

Most of us have more ideas than time. That’s a good problem. It’s better than more time than ideas, for sure. The danger, however, is that we develop a tendency to also have more half-started projects than we have involvement. Once we’re convinced that an idea is something God has laid on our hearts—whether that be a new ministry, building, activity or event, project, or program—how do we act on it to bring it to completion?

Have you ever delegated a responsibility to someone who didn’t follow through? Or who didn’t care to do it the way you wanted it done? God has made pastors overseers of His flock.

“What God has done is miraculous.” This was the recurring statement made by Mike Edwards when interviewed about Heritage Baptist Church in Woodbridge, Virginia. Dr. Edwards has been the pastor for thirty-four years.

If there is anything you learn over years in ministry, it is that victory doesn’t “just happen.” But you don’t have to learn that by experience. You can see it in the example of David’s preparation and charge to Solomon for the temple. From David’s earliest desires to see the temple built to Solomon’s completion of it, there was a process that included steps of victory you and I can follow today.

For years, a small group of believers burdened for an independent Baptist church in the Oakland Bay Area prayed for a miracle.