Pastoral Leadership

If you are like me, you wake up one day and you’re thirty-five with five children, and you realize, “I am not young anymore.” I feel young. I may even look young. But I am not considered young anymore—at least not by the next generation.

On July 11, 1976, our nation’s bicentennial, Liberty Baptist Church held its first service at the South Coast Westin Hotel in Costa Mesa, California. Eighty-nine people attended that first service. Some came out of curiosity; others were already seeking a local church fellowship. Less than a year later, the young church relocated to the chapel of the Southern California College, now Vanguard University, allowing them to begin a graded Sunday school program and Wednesday evening prayer service.

Men like me who are over fifty are often baffled by the demographic shift in mindset represented by the Millennial Generation. (According to Pew Research Center, millennials, sometimes called Generation Y, include people born between 1980–2000.)

On a hot summer day in 1975, God answered my mom’s prayers, and my dad was saved from a life of alcohol addiction. At a service station, my parents picked up a church tract which resulted in our family attending Fairfax Baptist Temple. After hearing Pastor Bud Calvert preach the gospel, I received the Lord as my Saviour.

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.”

Having been at Peoples Baptist Church now for over thirty-two years, I have seen many staff members come and go. Some have floundered, and some have flourished and gone on to do even greater things for God.

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.