History’s Wish List for Pastors
Church History’s Wish List For Pastors – Part II
In our previous article, we presented twenty gift ideas for your pastor as suggested by some of history’s most faithful pastors. This wish list from faithful pastors of history includes twenty more gifts you can give your pastor, gifts that will not only be a blessing to him or her, but to you, your church, and the world for eternity.
Gifts that keep on giving, part two. . . .
Identity
“It’s easy for us as pastors to go on autopilot, just going through the motions of ministry, performing the roles we were trained to do without giving much thought to what we’re doing. No wonder we become bored and discontent in ministry. No wonder that so many of us burn ourselves out or are such easy prey for temptations of various kinds that ruin us and end our ministries. I therefore plead with you: Watch what you’re doing as a pastor. Remember who you are, whose you are, and whom you serve as a servant of Christ and steward of God’s mysteries.” Harold Senkbeil, The Care of Souls
Apostolic Preaching
“Apostolic preaching is not marked by its beautiful diction, or literary polish, or cleverness of expression, but operates “in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.” Arthur Wallis, In the Day of Thy Power: The Spiritual Principles of Revival
An Audience of One
“A humble understanding of ourselves is necessary to have a right view of our calling as ministers. Such understanding will prevent us from performing for the crowd and instead encourage us to play to an audience of One (Galatians 1:10). Only then can we help the sheep entrusted to us to see our proper role in their lives and encourage them to keep their gaze on God, their true Shepherd and King.” Michael Todd Wilson and Brad Hoffman, Preventing Ministry Failure
Freedom to Make Disciples
“I’ve been around just long enough to have watched churches turn their pastors into managers. On Sundays they’re expected to preach and inspire us. But then, when Monday comes, they’re supposed to be at their desks, running an organization. They oversee staff, crunch numbers, start and kill programs. Oh, and if they’ve got time left over, why shouldn’t they be therapists? So, when did we stop asking our pastors to give their primary energies to the thing they were called to do: turn people into disciples of Jesus, become spiritual leaders who can help the church do what it’s supposed to do?” Gordon MacDonald, Going Deep
“What might happen if a church made the development of deep people its highest priority? What if a church decided that its pastor’s greatest responsibility was to lead the effort to produce a continuous flow of deep people?” Gordon MacDonald, Going Deep
Eternity-Eyes
“His throne is the pulpit; he stands in Christ’s stead; his message is the word of God; around him are immortal souls; the Savior, unseen, is beside him; the Holy Spirit broods over the congregation; angels gaze upon the scene, and heaven and hell await the issue. What associations, and what vast responsibility!” Matthew Simpson, Quoted in Haddon Robinson, Biblical Preaching: The Development and Delivery of Expository Messages
History
“When questions ignore the story of how our fathers and mothers in the faith prayed, lived, and worshipped, we deny the life-giving power of our own roots and cut ourselves off from the wisdom of those whose minds were renewed. As a result, at best, the work of God in our lives of slower and shallower than might otherwise be. At worst we lose our children.” Rod Dreher, The Benedict Option
Need
“It is my sense of need (of grace) that leads me to tenderly pastor those in need of grace.” Paul David Tripp, Dangerous Calling
Heart Preaching
“My grand point in preaching is to break the hard heart and heal the broken one.” John Newton
Incarnation
“Simply put, pastoring is bringing God to people. A pastor is one who brings God to people by imparting the Word of God out of the reality of his or her life, which is undergoing authentic and continuous Christlike transformation. Just as in Jesus, the Word must become flesh in the pastor so that the transmission of truth is both exegetically sound and experientially real.” John W Frye, Jesus the Pastor
A Ruthless Heart
“We must be ruthless about our pastoral purpose and the mission of the church in the Word of God itself, in the Gospel itself.” Thabiti Anyabwile, The Unadjusted Gospel
A Filled-Up Soul
“I owe my congregation a filled-up soul.” Gordon MacDonald, A Resilient Life
“The main thing you will give your congregation, just like the main thing you will give to God, is the person you become. . . . If your soul is unhealthy, you can’t help anybody. . . . You and nobody else are responsible for the well-being of your own soul.” Dallas Willard, as quoted by John Ortberg, Soul Keeping
Resolve
“Nothing is more needed among preachers today than that we should have the courage to shake ourselves free from the thousand and one trivialities in which we are asked to waste our time and strength, and resolutely return to the apostolic ideal which made necessary the office of the pastorate. (We must resolve that) we will continue steadfastly in prayer, and in the ministry of the Word.” G. Campbell Morgan
An End to Trivial Pursuit
“What I object to most is the appalling and systematic trivializing of the pastoral office. . . . A staggeringly high percentage of pastors actually collaborate with the enemy, the world that wants a religion that is mostly entertainment with occasional breaks for moral commercials.” Eugene Peterson, Under the Unpredictable Plant
Quiet Collisions
“One of the reasons Jesus practiced solitude was so that His identity as the Promised One could be called out by the Father. It can be no less for us. If our Chief Shepherd grounded his identity in the revelation promise and real presence of the Father, we undershepherds must ground our identities there as well. A pastor must substitute nothing or no one for the Father’s voice of affirmation and commission.” John W. Frye, Jesus the Pastor
A Shepherd’s Heart and Hands
“Remember you are a shepherd of souls. This is not just a job or a vocation; this is a habitus. Remember that what you do flows from who you are. And as you develop that character and identity of a shepherd it colors the way you look at the sheep and interact with them. Rather than a two-stage thinking/doing process, your pastoral response becomes increasingly reflexive and instinctive.” Harold Senkbeil, The Care of Souls
A Closed Shop
“The pastors of America have metamorphosed into a company of shopkeepers, and the shops they keep are churches. They are preoccupied with shopkeepers’ concerns: how to keep customers happy, how to lure customers away from competitors down the street, how to package the goods so that the customers will lay out more money.” Eugene Peterson, Working the Angles
A Worn Out Bible
“When pastors’ lives aren’t characterized by deep study of the Word and spending time with God, the result is usually reverse evangelism: the world invades and converts the church rather than the church invading and converting the world. I would venture to say that’s what’s happening to many of the churches in America today. We are not changing the world; the world is changing us. Much of the constant appeal to ‘stay relevant’ is in reality a substitution of carnal ideas for God’s spiritual plan for building his church.”Jim Cymbala, Fan the Flame
An Upper Room
“We have a right to this time (time alone with God), even prior to the claims of other people, and we may insist upon having it has a completely undisturbed quiet time despite all external difficulties. For the pastor it is indispensable duty and his whole ministry will depend on it. Who can really be faithful in great things if he has not learned be faithful in the things of daily life?” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
The Gift of His Own Pastor
“Doctors need medical care. Lawyers need legal advice. Counselors need counseling. Pastors need pastoring.” Jimmy Dodd, Survive or Thrive
A Career Killed, a Call Answered
“Is it not clear by now that the religious programming that . . . takes up most of the pastor’s time and energy is destroying our vocations? It is becoming clear to many, and dissatisfaction is deepening among pastors. The fraud of popular religion in which we have so often been unwitting accomplices has us examining our vocational conscience. We are asking, “Is this in fact what I was called to? Is this what ‘pastor’ means?” We look at job descriptions handed to us, we look at the career profiles outlined for us, we listen to the council the experts give us, and we scratch our heads and wonder how we ended up here. One by one men and women are making their moves, beginning to move against the stream, refusing to be contemporary pastors, our lives trivialized by the contemporary, and are embarking on the recovery of the contemplative.” Eugene Peterson, Under the Unpredictable Plant
A FINAL THOUGHT
In Ephesians 4, God tells us that the role of the pastor is a gift to the church, the individual pastor is a gift to the individual church. When that gift is in place and fulfilling a pastoral role, the church and its members have unlimited potential for health and strength. When a pastor is not present, or a non-pastor is in the position (someone filling the position but not being a pastor and doing the work of a pastor; Jesus calls him a “hireling.”) the church and its members are weak and helpless. Proof: Matthew 9.36-37 . . .
When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd (disciples without pastors). Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
May God remove the hirelings from our churches and give us pastors, undershepherds of the Great and Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ.
A final quote to drive home the point:
“These are times that try men’s souls. Uncertainty is everywhere around and fear is often the result, giving rise to all kinds of mischief as church leaders scramble to find the magic pill to connect with a world that seems to have come unglued. We need not fear. We know the last chapter of this world’s history. Our Lord promises that the very gates of hell will not prevail against his church, and that he will be with us always, to the very end of the age.” Harold Senkbeil, The Care of Souls
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