I am a pastoral coach: I have the joy of pastoring pastors every day. Millennial pastors primarily. Pastors across America and in foreign nations. Pastors of all kinds: lead pastors, church planters, staff pastors, special needs pastors, missionary pastors, and even a couple of pastors-of-pastors.

I love what I am called to do with my life because I love pastors and, I love – and greatly respect – each and every one of the pastors with whom I am privileged to journey.

Many years pastoring churches and pastoring pastors have taught me much about myself and about pastors in general. I know our weakness and our strengths. I know our concerns and our confidences. I know our hurts and I know the help we bring to people.

I know our hopes and our dreams. I know the prayers – if you will, the wishes – that we lift up to God, the heartfelt “if onlys” we raise to our Heavenly Father. Especially at Christmas.

So, from a heart of love for Jesus, for His church, and for pastors, this Christmas, we at Journey offer, “A Pastoral Christmas Wish List” for churches everywhere.

“Heavenly Father, this Christmas, give your church . . .

 

1. Disciples.

“Help your pastors live as disciples, Called Out Ones.”

Called out by, to, and for Jesus Christ.

As ministers of the Gospel, we first serve the One who has called us – not the culture, not the church or even our own people. We serve the Lord of Heaven and Earth. At His pleasure. For His pleasure.

We are called out to be with the Savior in day-to-day, even moment-to-moment relationship.

We are called out to be sent out by the Savior in leading His people.

“Father, help pastors everywhere live as disciples.”

 

2. Pastors.

“Help the leaders of your church to be pastors first, leaders second.”

God built every person with a need for a mother. He built every person with a need for a father.

God built every person with a need for a pastor. Every person.  Jesus saw the crowds weak and helpless and said it was because they had no shepherd, no pastor, in their life.

Paul wrote in I Corinthians 4.15, “For though you have countless guides (leaders) in Christ, you do not have many fathers (pastors).

In a church leadership culture focused on numbers and excitement, fascinated with tech and technique, and too often guilty of using and abusing people, how we yearn for selfless shepherds, spiritual shepherds, servant-hearted shepherds.

Pastors who understand that everyone needs a pastor and that it is a privilege – a privilege – to be selected by the Good Shepherd for this place of service.

“Father, help pastors fill the role that no one else can fill in the life of their people.”

 

3. Healthy Pastors.

“Help every pastor to seek out a pastor.”

In his book, “Dangerous Calling,” Paul David Tripp writes, “Pastor, it is plain and simple: you and I need to be pastored. One of the scandals … of churches is that no one is pastoring their pastor.”

Every pastor needs a pastor.

Someone who helps him clear his sight and clarify his thoughts; encourages and challenges her, pushes her on and pulls her close. Someone who calls him to repentance and to rejoicing. Someone who helps her see her self, her ministry and her God with 20/20 vision.

Someone who understands the burden he bears, the load of cares. Someone to lead her beside still waters and to green pastures. Someone to share the journey.

A shepherd.

“Father, give the gift of a personal pastor to every pastor.”

 

4. Healthy Pastoral Staffs.

“Help lead pastors to pastor their own pastoral staffs.”

What an opportunity lead pastors have in working with a pastoral team! What an opportunity so many lead pastors are missing in working with their pastoral team (I know because I hear it all the time).

What an opportunity lead pastors have to multiply ministry here and now in their church! An opportunity to build strong pastors here and now in their churches.

What an opportunity lead pastors have to help develop ministers for a lifetime of healthy and effective ministry, and so, an opportunity to infinitely affect eternity.

“Father, give your church lead pastors who pastor their pastoral staff.”

 

5. A Legacy.

“Help every experienced pastor make the time to pastor one younger pastor.”

Some studies indicate that nine out of ten who begin vocational ministry will not make it. They will give up. Studies also say that five out of ten will quit within the first five years of service.

Why the high casualty rate among God’s spiritual leaders, God’s shepherds?

Answer: Isolation. There are other reasons, to be sure, but reason number one, far and away, is isolation – the feeling that you’re all alone and no one knows, no one sees you, no one cares.

Isolation as in “ice” – that cold place where seminary idealism is crushed by early experiences with an imperfect church, leaving us exposed and without real world answers.

Exposure becomes helplessness and helplessness becomes hopelessness. Hopelessness becomes loneliness as in one-alone-against-the-world (Even the sense of one-alone-against-the-church).

And then, all too often, comes exit – either by quitting the ministry outright or by simply shutting down while remaining in ministry.

All the while, one wonders what would have happened if just one person who understood had joined the journey of the younger minister in his time of isolation. Could then a pastor have been redeemed for a lifetime of healthy and effective ministry?

The elder coaching the younger:  it’s a model that echoes throughout the Bible, Old Testament and New: the elder investing in the younger that he or she might not just survive, but thrive in ministry.

“Father, give every young pastor the gift of a more experienced pastor to share his or her journey.”

 

6. Circles.

“Give every pastor a small and supportive circle of peer-mentors.”

One of the big three keys to surviving and thriving in ministry is a “Circle”: a strong, functioning band of brothers, a small group of friends who serve in similar stations, ready to give and to receive encouragement, accountability, challenge, correction, instruction and support one from another.

A Circle.

I remember pastoring in a small town where neither the church nor the town were “home” to us. It seemed that everything we did was like pulling teeth (and without novocaine). But, in His kindness, God gave me a Circle – a group of six other pastors, all from different denominations than mine.

But they were so much more than pastors: they were my friends, my confidents, my brothers my lifesavers, my disciplers, and sometimes, yes, even my connection with God. I owe them more than I can ever say. Without them, not only would I not be in the ministry today, but more importantly, I wouldn’t be who I am today. To say they were my Circle is to say that I owe them my life.

Thank God that these six men were willing to be my Circle.

In his challenging book, “Serious Times,” James Emery White writes:

One of the more unsettling revelations to most Christ followers, particularly in light of our fierce individualism, is how many of the marks of a Christian involve other people . . . Following Him is tied to the “one anothers.”

Following Jesus really is tied to the “one anothers.”

If this is true in following Him, how much more true it is for those who lead others in Him.

“Father, give your church pastors who run around in circles, small circles of peer-mentors.”

 

7. The Book.

“Help your pastors read Facebook less and The Book more.”

Consider these quotes from some of history’s wisest pastors:

Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ. Jerome.

The great cause of neglecting the Scriptures is not want of time, but want of heart, some idol taking the place of Christ. Robert Chapman

I prayed for faith, and thought that some day faith would come down and strike me like lightning. But faith did not seem to come. One day I read in the tenth chapter of Romans, “Now faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God”. I had closed my Bible, and prayed for faith. I now opened my Bible, and began to study, and faith has been growing ever since. Dwight L. Moody

At any price give me the book of God. Let me be a man of one book. John Wesley

Resolved: To study the Scriptures so steadily, constantly, and frequently, as that I may find, and plainly perceive, myself to grow in the knowledge of the same. Jonathan Edwards

As pastors, we have but one treasure to offer God’s people:  Jesus Christ, the Lord and Savior.  We are those called to be with Jesus that we might then go out from Him to shepherd and disciple His people.  That treasure is ours, but only in The Book, the revealed Word of God.

“Father, give your church pastors who are men and women of The Book.”

 

A Closing Prayer 

Father, this Christmas I pray you will bless your shepherds. . .

Undergird them with Your abiding, providing and protecting presence.

Overwhelm them with the glory of your person.

Prompt their churches to remember them with loving acts of kindness, to remember You with heartfelt devotion and discipleship.

Provoke fellow pastors to reach out to your shepherds with a hearing ear, an understanding heart, and hand to help.

Strengthen each pastor for his or her place of calling. Strengthen pastors everywhere and together for the enormity of their shared calling.

In Jesus’ mighty name. Amen”