{"id":14960,"date":"2017-10-25T07:59:36","date_gmt":"2017-10-25T12:59:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/?p=14960"},"modified":"2017-10-25T08:46:11","modified_gmt":"2017-10-25T13:46:11","slug":"the-most-significant-thing-a-pastor-will-ever-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/the-most-significant-thing-a-pastor-will-ever-do\/","title":{"rendered":"The most significant thing a pastor will ever do"},"content":{"rendered":"

The title is a come-on, to give me the chance to say\u00a0one huge thing\u00a0to every pastor:\u00a0 You have no idea what ranks as the most important part of your work.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

You think you do.\u00a0 You think it’s speaking to the Chamber of Commerce dinner Thursday night.\u00a0 Or helping plan a community Thanksgiving service.\u00a0 Or guest-teaching a class at the seminary.\u00a0 And it may be.<\/p>\n

You think it’s that great sermon you preached a couple of weeks back, the glow from which is still warming your memory.\u00a0 The one which brought several new families to join your church.\u00a0 Or, maybe that mission trip to Tanzania last year.\u00a0 Or the revival last month.<\/p>\n

Could be.\u00a0 Or not.<\/p>\n

The most valuable ministry thing you have done just may be the time you stopped to encourage a homeless man and bought him lunch.\u00a0 Or that time you gave a new family a tour of the church.\u00a0 Or even the prayer you prayed for a missionary family in northern Italy this morning.<\/p>\n

You never know.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

As the shepherd of the Lord’s flock, you do a thousand things, some requiring great training and consuming huge blocks of your time, and some so tiny and almost trivial you don’t even remember the next day that you did them.<\/p>\n

God sees.\u00a0 He knows.\u00a0 And He alone is your Master, Administrator, and Judge.\u00a0 He has His own value system.\u00a0 And His ways are not yours, His thoughts much higher (that would be Isaiah 55).<\/p>\n

To Him you answer.\u00a0 Not to a board, not to a committee, and not even to yourself.<\/p>\n

“We walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7).<\/p>\n

Today, it may be a phone conversation with a church member.\u00a0 Tomorrow, it might be the prayer you offer at the public gathering.\u00a0 And the next day, a spontaneous conversation with a stranger in the mall parking lot.<\/p>\n

God knows. You do not.<\/p>\n

It is absolutely essential that we in the ministry stop judging what we did as to “what worked” and “what was wood, hay, and stubble.”\u00a0 We have no idea what God has just done with the little thing we offered.<\/p>\n

We do it and go on.<\/p>\n

“We see through a glass darkly” (I Corinthians 13).<\/p>\n

This article can end here.\u00a0 And maybe it should.\u00a0 So, for those who are\u00a0rushed, thank you for your attention.\u00a0 Have a great day.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

But for the rest of us…<\/p>\n

I’m remembering a few moments from my long ministry, any one of which could have been platinum to the Lord in Heaven…or nothing very much.\u00a0 It all depends on what He needed and what He chose to do with me that day.\u00a0 It depends on His will, His evaluation, and a thousand things I’m not aware of.\u00a0 And I’m good with that.\u00a0 He is Lord, and all glory, praise and honor be to Him.<\/p>\n

Mostly, we will never see what He did, never know which was “gold, silver, and precious stones,” or otherwise (I Corinthians 13).<\/p>\n

One.\u00a0<\/strong> I sat in a four-hour deacons meeting in which I was the subject, the defendant, the issue, with the motion on the table being to dismiss me.\u00a0 The rants and raves\u00a0were pro and con, fierce and wonderful, strangely wrong-headed and divinely Christlike.\u00a0 Meanwhile, I sat there in silence.\u00a0 During that time, I\u00a0felt the peace of God like never before or\u00a0since.\u00a0\u00a0 It was amazing.\u00a0 But I wouldn’t do it again for anything!<\/p>\n

So, what did God do with my four hours of silence?\u00a0 I have no idea.\u00a0 (I know how He ended my ministry there and some of what He did afterwards. But have no idea what if anything He did with those four hours of sweet silence. It’s very possible that when it’s all over, the Lord may say that “this was your finest hour.”)<\/p>\n

Two.\u00a0<\/strong> I was a passenger in the funeral car\u00a0that broadsided a pickup truck running a stop sign.\u00a0 My head broke the dashboard and I bled profusely.\u00a0 For that, I\u00a0was given\u00a0a nice ride to the hospital in an ambulance.\u00a0 The medics fixed me up and I did a wedding the next day wearing a white bandage between my eyebrows.\u00a0 It made for some great photos!\u00a0 Many years later when I was doing a deacon retreat for a church in that city, the chairman told\u00a0his group\u00a0something I’d never known.\u00a0 He had been\u00a0the insurance agent for the driver of that pickup truck, the one responsible for this scar between my brows.\u00a0 He said, “A few days later, Pastor Joe called me and said, ‘Do you think\u00a0the insurance\u00a0company would replace my glasses?” They had been broken in the accident.\u00a0 He said, “Now, this pastor\u00a0could have sued us for a lot of money, but here he was simply asking us to replace his glasses. And that impressed me.”\u00a0 As a result, he said, he started going to church.<\/p>\n

I had not known\u00a0this.<\/p>\n

So, was this one of those golden moments by which Heaven rates me as faithful?\u00a0 The agent treated it as such.\u00a0 But it was so trivial and fleeting that I had not remembered any of it–well, except the accident.\u00a0 I still\u00a0carry the small scar.<\/p>\n

God knows.<\/p>\n

Twice in the 12 months since I moved back to Mississippi, men have approached and introduced themselves and told me something I did over 30 years ago.\u00a0 In each case, it was to counsel a young pregnant woman not to have an abortion.\u00a0 Each man said, “I was the father.” One said, “That child was born handicapped and lived only 11 years.\u00a0 But she was the delight of our lives.”\u00a0 The other said, “The baby is now (30-something) years old, and the joy of our hearts.”\u00a0 Each said, “I’ve wanted to meet you to say thanks.”<\/p>\n

In each case, I said, “You know that I have no memory of this, don’t you?”\u00a0 But you may believe I was thrilled to hear this.<\/p>\n

Most of us never get to do that, to know what a few minutes in the counseling office did for a family.\u00a0 God was so kind to let me see that.<\/p>\n

Do not judge yourself; just be faithful.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Every pastor has preached the little incident in John 21 where\u00a0Peter asks the Lord, “What about John? What’s going to happen to him?”\u00a0 Jesus said, “What is that to you? You follow me.”<\/p>\n

The Lord will be grading the papers at the end of the day.\u00a0 Grades will be posted.\u00a0 But for the moment, we are still in the thick of things.\u00a0 It’s time to run back into the huddle and get ready for the next play.<\/p>\n

Speaking of which…<\/p>\n

On the football field, no running back stops at the end of a play and jerks out a scorebook to tote up the yards he has gained.\u00a0 He drops the ball and rejoins his teammates for the next play.\u00a0 High above\u00a0the field,\u00a0in the top tier of seats\u00a0someone is keeping\u00a0account of every yard gained, every attempt made, every pass completed, every fumble and interception.\u00a0 The\u00a0task of each person on the field\u00a0is to be faithful and play the game for which\u00a0he was recruited and trained.<\/p>\n

Be faithful.<\/p>\n

“To me it is a very small thing that I should be examined by you, or by any human court;\u00a0 in fact, I do not even judge myself.\u00a0 But whether I’m conscious of any charge against me or not, it doesn’t matter.\u00a0 The One who judges me is the Lord.”\u00a0 (I Corinthians 4:3-4, paraphrase)<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The title is a come-on, to give me the chance to say\u00a0one huge thing\u00a0to every pastor:\u00a0 You have no idea what ranks as the most important part of your work. You think you do.\u00a0 You think it’s speaking to the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pastors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14960"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15014,"href":"https:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14960\/revisions\/15014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}