Category Archives: Pastors

To have success in ministry, start by making a mistake

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In his book Everybody’s Normal Till You Get to Know Them, John Ortberg makes a confession. You get the impression that it was not easy in coming.

Here it is in his own words:

The church where I work videotapes most of the services, so I have hundreds of messages on tape. Only one of them gets shown repeatedly.

This video is a clip from the beginning of one of our services. A high school worship dance team had just brought the house down to get things started, and I was supposed to transition us into some high-energy worship by reading Psalm 150.

This was a last-second decision, so I had to read it cold, but with great passion: “Praise the Lord! Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty firmament!” The psalm consists of one command after another to praise, working its way through each instrument of the orchestra.

My voice is building in a steady crescendo; by the end of the psalm I practically shout the final line, only mispronouncing one word slightly:

“Let everything that has breasts, praise the Lord.”

Ortberg tells what happened next.

A moment of silence. The same thought passes through four thousand brains: Did he just say what I think he did? In church? Is this some exciting new translation I can get at the bookstore?

Then, everybody in the place just lost it. They laughed so hard for so long, I couldn’t say a thing. It was zygomatic. I finally just walked off the stage, and we went on with the next part of the service.

I have been teaching at that church for eight years. Of all the passages I have exegeted and all the messages I have preached, that is the one moment that gets replayed before conferences and workshops. Over and over.

That moment forever endeared Pastor John Ortberg to his congregation.

In fact, the power of that moment was so strong, it would have been worthwhile for him to have planned the flub.

I sometimes say to friends, “If you ever find yourself sitting among two or more preachers and want to get something started, ask them about their most embarrassing moments. Every preacher has had a dozen. And some are pretty hilarious.”

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The two times a pastor is most vulnerable

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“Guard through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us the treasure which has been entrusted to you” (2 Timothy 1:14).

We’re all vulnerable.  Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall (I Corinthians 10:12).  The brother who gave us that reminder was himself constantly being knocked down, but getting back up.  If anyone knew the subject of vulnerability, Paul did (see 2 Corinthians 4:8-10).

After telling young Pastor Timothy of a coming time when people would not stand for sound doctrine and strong preaching, but would “turn away their ears from the truth and will prefer myths,” Paul said, “But as for you, be sober in all things (that is, clear-thinking), endure hardship (expect it, and plan to get through it), do the work of an evangelist (keep telling Heaven’s good news), and fulfill your ministry (do not let any critic pull you off course).”  (With my interjections, that’s 2 Timothy 4:5).

I find it amazing and truly heart-warming how such reminders to a minister twenty centuries ago fit us so perfectly today.  That’s one more reason, out of ten thousand, why you and I live in this Word. There is nothing like it anywhere.

Now, returning to our subject of the minister’s vulnerability….

The minister is most vulnerable at two times: in the few minutes before the morning service begins and in the half hour after it ends.

A wise minister will take steps to guard himself in order to give his best to the Lord and the people.  (Proverbs 4:23 “Guard your heart.”  Acts 20:28 “Be on guard for yourself and for all the flock….”)

A caring membership will protect the pastor at the same time for the same reasons.

FIRST: In the few minutes before the worship service where he is to preach, the pastor is vulnerable.

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How to be a non-leader

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“So Moses arose with Joshua his servant, and Moses went up to the mountain of God” (Exodus 24:13). 

Always referred to as the servant of Moses, Joshua was used to taking orders.

That’s why, when the day arrived for Moses to announce that his work was done and God was recalling him and that Joshua would have to carry on (“Get these people into the Promised Land!”), he, Joshua, must have panicked.

For four decades Joshua has been warming the bench; now, he’s being sent into the game as the clock ticks down and everything is on the line.

What would he do without a boss over him, someone telling him what to do and how to do it, someone to whom he could report, who would grade him and pat him on the head when he did good or chew him out when his work fell short?

Throughout his life, Joshua had never taken the initiative in anything, but had followed orders.  In Exodus 17:9, the first mention of Joshua in Scripture, he leads a rag-tag army of ex-slaves against the Amalekites. However, on a distant hill, Moses was overseeing everything and giving guidance.

No one wants to follow a non-leader.  Readers will want to check out the final chapters of Deuteronomy and the early chapters of Joshua and count the number of times Moses, God, and the Israelites urged this surprised newly chosen leader to “be strong and of good courage.”

A leader must be strong to forge a path and take the heat and must be of good courage to endure the problems, headaches, and backstabbings.

It goes with the territory. As the saying goes, it’s why they pay the leader the big bucks.

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Pastor, please don’t lie to us.

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“Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices” (Colossians 3:9).

“Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord” (Proverbs 12:22).

Lying is almost unforgiveable in a pastor.  Not acceptable  in anyone else, of course, but in a politician it’s almost expected.  When he was running for President, Jimmy Carter promised to never lie to us.  But he did.  He found out it’s a necessary part of the president’s job.  As Churchill once said, “In wartime, truth must be protected by a bodyguard of lies.”

But not in a spiritual leader.  Not in a Christian.

1. Do not lie to us about your resume.

If you say you went to school there or pastored that church, we want to believe you.  If you earned a degree, say what it was. If the degree was honorary, but not earned, say that also. What you must not do is give the impression you attended a school which you did not or served a church which you did not serve or possess a degree you  don’t..

Why would anyone lie about their resume? Obviously, to enhance their prospects for a job. But any position acquired as a result of a falsehood is worthless in the long run.

Regularly, we hear of high-profile executives, educators, and coaches being caught for padding their resumes, for claiming degrees they did not have, for professing honors they did not earn.  Perhaps the most shameful is the man who claims to have been a war hero, who wears the uniform and sports the medals, but who, it turns out, is a consummate liar.

Tell us the truth, pastor.

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Mistakes the beginning pastor will probably make

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“Let no man despise thy youth.” (I Timothy 4:12)

You’ve finished your formal schooling or you’re trying to continue your education while pastoring. Whether the congregation is fifty people or five hundred, your plate is full and you wonder how you could ever pastor a larger church since there are not enough hours in your day.

But you’re excited.  This is what God called you to do.  You can barely restrain yourself.

Here are three things lying in wait for you, young pastor.  Three potholes? Three comeuppances?  Three lessons you may expect to have to learn the hard way.

1) The beginning pastor can expect his sermons to be too heavy as he attempts to cram into them everything he has learned on the subject.

The young pastor cannot yet bring a sermon on one word in the Bible or even one verse. Not yet.  So, in order to fill the allotted sermon time, somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes, he overstuffs it.

Since he has been studying all week on this message–his notes on the text fill five pages!–he dare not leave out any of the great stuff he has unearthed. Some commentators had fascinating things to say on this scripture.  So, he uses it all.

The young pastor typically uses far too many scriptures, cites too many texts, and brings in too many stories from other places in the Bible.

Over time, he will learn to streamline his sermon, to pick a single theme and stay with it, and will learn how to recognize great ideas and exciting illustrations which do not fit this message and will need to be laid aside for another time.

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The pastor’s greatest burden is a gift from God

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When the prophets Nahum, Habakkuk, and Malachi stood up to preach, they began with the words, “The burden of the Lord.”

That was a dead giveaway this was not going to be a sweet little devotional filled with funny stories and touching vignettes. The men of God were about to drop a heavy load from their hearts into the laps and onto the shoulders of their audiences.

It took me a long time laboring in the Lord’s vineyard to figure something out. The burden God gives His preacher for some problem, some people, or some cause is every bit as much a gift from Him as the blessings of salvation. And it becomes my starting place.

Starting place for what? I’m glad you asked.

The burden God gives you, pastor, is your beginning point for three things….

1. The vision God will give you for your work begins with a burden.

I like to think of the time we wrestle with a problem (i.e., the burden) as the equivalent of digging downward for the foundation of a mighty building. The deeper we dig–the more the problem burdens us, the longer we struggle with it, and the more it pains us–the greater will be the structure that eventually gets erected there.

You’ve seen the signs: “Watch this site. A new office building will be erected here.”

Well, post one of those signs on the burden God has given you: “Watch this site. A new visionary structure will go up here.”

What is your burden, pastor? What bothers you most in your community, your church, your world? What robs you of sleep at night and will not leave you alone?

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Holy sandpaper, pastor!!

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This is a reprint of an article from August 2010.  The only changes are the names.  It’s been sixteen years and these people are in Heaven and it’s probably permissible to use their names.  Some members of that church in metro New Orleans are still with us, are active on social media and will read this.  I want them to. (It’s all good.) They were agents for our Heavenly Father in this pastor’s life.  

A pastor friend sent me a note just now reporting on his church. He has baptized several this year and had twice that number to join in other ways. I replied that God is using him to turn around that old church and, “Good for you, friend!”

He came back: “The curmudgeons are still there, though, still lurking.”

I answered, “They always will be. But let me tell you what I’ve finally learned about that. These detractors are doing you a favor. They motivate you to greater faithfulness, to do your best work, to keep the focus on the Lord.”

He said, “I call them ‘Holy Sandpaper.’”

The Lord uses them to get the rough edges off His servant.

Interesting how the notes I get from pastors–some are questions regarding ministry–turn out to be the very thing the Lord was talking with me about earlier.

Case in point. Yesterday, I was going through some old correspondence files, trying to decide what could be discarded. I ran across the most critical (as in life-changing) exchange of letters I ever had with a church member in nearly a half-century of ministry.

Here’s the story and our letters….

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When preachers say really dumb things and why

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“Remind them of these things, charging them before the Lord not to strive about words to no profit, to the ruin of the hearers” (II Timothy 2:14).

The desire to be clever has tainted many a good minister, sabotaged many an excellent sermon, and probably messed up a few marriages along the way.

On the way home from somewhere, I was listening to a radio preacher. He was local, sounded “live,” and was clearly a biblical conservative, meaning I liked most of what he had to say.  Then, he spoiled it all.

He mentioned a well-known Southern Baptist evangelist who once preached in his church. “I asked him, ‘Brother, how long does it take you Baptists to disciple a new believer?’”

“He answered, ‘I don’t know. We’ve never done it.’”

Then he, the radio preacher, said, “Shameful!”

From that launching pad, he proceeded to disparage churches for not discipling people while telling how it ought to be done.

I found myself wondering two things.

Why would the evangelist say such a patently dumb thing–that Baptists have never discipled anyone!–and then, why would the radio pastor repeat it?  Both are foolish statements, and reflect poorly on everyone involved–the speakers, the churches, and even the Lord Jesus Christ.

I suspect I know why the evangelist said it and the radio preacher quoted it.

The evangelist said it for shock value.  He got the reaction he wanted by making an absurd statement.

Had we said to him, “Do you mean to tell me no one in any Baptist church has ever become a disciple of Jesus Christ?” I’m confident he would have back-tracked and said that was not what he meant, then turned it into something other than the moronic statement it was.

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Twelve things I tell deacons

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No one is more surprised than I that the Lord has me leading all these deacon training conferences and retreats these days.

I love deacons and treasure the relationship with quite a few from the six churches I served over four decades.. My oldest son is the chairman of deacons in Mobile Alabama’s “West Mobile Baptist Church.”

But I have a few stories about some deacons.

I carry scars from battles with deacons.  I encountered a dozen or so along the way with mental health of the worst kind, some with stunted and deformed theology, and one or two who thought they were rightfully entitled to rule over the universe.   This website carries many articles on the ministry of deacons. Frequently, those painful experiences and harshest collisions produced the  best lessons and, of course, the most interesting stories.

This list of principles is not something set in stone, handed down from Sinai, but represents the gist of the conferences I hold. See what you think.

1. PRAYER: Nothing you will ever do is more about faith than praying.

Our Lord said, “My house shall be a house of prayer.”  Everything we do should be undergirded by strong prayers, seeking God’s will and His power, protection, and provision.  And we’re not just talking about handing Him our laundry list, but praying prayers of faith, asking God for what we believe to be His will and doing so in Jesus’ name, for Jesus’ sake, by Jesus’ blood.

Prayer is need-driven and faith-powered.  The needs will drive you to your knees, but faith will connect you with the Heavens.

Deacons should be the best pray-ers in the church.

2. CHANGE: If you do not like change or cannot deal with it, you’re going to have a tough time following Jesus.

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Some preachers give us substitutes for the Gospel. Not good.

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I like to encourage embattled pastors who may be preaching to people who despise them and are working to remove them from the pulpit.

I’ve been there, done that, in two churches. It’s a lonely feeling, one you would not wish on your enemy.

I encourage such pastors to remember why the message of Jesus is called “good news,” and to preach that.

This is so elementary, such a no-brainer, that one might wonder why I made a point of saying it.

Here’s why: We pastors sometimes feed our people fiber instead of protein, filler instead of nourishment. I’m not saying they do it consciously–“I will now cut corners on my preaching”–but sometimes it happens as a result of neglect, fatigue, or discouragement.

Someone needs to recognize that this is happening and call us back to our God-given task of preaching the gospel. Again, you would think this would be a no-brainer. But I cannot tell you how many times pastors have told me they model their preaching after an Elijah or Jeremiah or Amos. One said his role model was John the Baptist. Personally, I don’t see it. We are called to proclaim the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 1:16), and not to address every sinful failing of Washington, D.C. or whoever happens to be the current occupant of the White house.

Having been in active ministry since 1962, I am well aware of those substitutes for the gospel that have a way of creeping into our messages. Here are several I’ve seen in myself and noticed in you. (Consider that a friendly wink at the pastors who read this.)

1. Rather than deliver the gospel, we sometimes deliver theatrics.

Theatrics are the dramatics which often decorate sermons. Usually they involve bodily motions–walking, waving, pointing–and emotions: raising the voice, lowering it, getting tearful or excited or angry or compassionate.

It’s like a Supreme Court Justice said of pornography: “Even if I cannot define it, I know it when I see it.”

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