In this third installment in the series, we continue to focus on essential truths for the young minister. These are minister – and ministry – sustaining lessons I’ve learned over three plus decades. Ignore them at your peril. Act on them to not only survive, but thrive in ministry.

15. Be a Pastor. Not a Professional, But a Pastor.

Recently, a young couple told me that they are having a hard time finding a church. Why? The primary reason is they can’t find one with a pastor: the churches in their area are led by professionals, leaders more concerned with programs, church business, media. And numbers.

John Piper, in his wonderful book, “Brothers We Are Not Professionals,” writes, “The aims of (pastoral) ministry are eternal and spiritual. They are not shared by any of the professions.” Bingo.

Pastors are not better or worse than the people we shepherd, but the pastoral calling and vocation/office are biblically unique. Unique enough that God says He holds pastors to a unique standard and we will face a unique judgment before God for how well we meet that standard.

Why? Because of what Piper writes: the aims of pastoral ministry are uniquely eternal and spiritual

Yes, we carry out our ministry in a professional manner, but we are not professionals, as in career.

We carry out our ministry in a pastoral manner because we are pastors, as in calling: we are those charged by God to spiritually shepherd His sheep.

Our choices are not determined by money, personal advancement, ambition or position. Our choices are driven by our call by God to be under-shepherds of His people.

A unique calling. How unique? Consider this.

God formed every human being with a built-in need for a mother, a built-in need for a father. And God formed each of us with a built-in need for a pastor. Not a religious professional. A pastor.

A friend (and a fantastic pastor) said something I will never forget to a group of my Bible College students: Don’t be a leader who pastors; be a pastor who leads. Be a pastor.

I admit it: it still gives me a thrill when someone says to me, “Pastor.” Imagine! I am his or her pastor.

So thrill in your calling! Be what God called you to be. Be what your people need you to be.

Be their pastor.

16. Follow the rule of the open door and the big desk.

Let’s get practical. Very practical.

God has called you to a lifetime of healthy and effective ministry. A lifetime.

But how many lifetimes of healthy and effective ministry have been cut short by one unhealthy moment or one defective decision?

Many a ministry has been destroyed by the absence of an open door and a big desk. Many a quality minister has been ruined by the lack of uncompromising rules for relations with the opposite sex.

I remember a staff member at a church where I served. He refused to live by The Rule of The Open Door and the Big Desk. Repeated warnings did not move him. The casualties were a marriage of almost twenty years, a wonderful wife and children. The casualties were his ministry and his spiritual sheep.

An open office door and a big desk: I’ve insisted on them in every office I’ve occupied. And when an open door wasn’t practical, I insisted on the installation of a window in my door.

Why? Am I that untrustworthy? Am I that untrusting of women?

Not at all. I am simply protecting a lifetime of ministry from questions of the moment, that one time when someone might . . . wonder . . .

But because I have made it a point to let everyone know that I never meet behind closed doors with a woman and that I always keep a big desk between us when we do meet, no one has to wonder what happens in my office: the rules are clearly spelled out and I have an office full of staff who are witnesses to the fact that I keep those rules. Religiously.

Neither does anyone have to wonder about what happens between me and members of the opposite sex outside of the office because I maintain The Rule of the Open Door and Big Desk in all of life: I am never alone with a woman in private and even in public I ensure that others have full view of my interactions with members of the opposite sex.

This life rule includes one more vital element: I love my wife. I love my wife and I make sure everyone knows it. I tell the world that I love her. I tell her that I love her and I do so in public. I reference our love in sermons and in conversations. We hold hands in church. She has immediate, moment-of-request access to me in person or on the phone at all times and my staff knows it.

She is the only one I allow to join me behind closed doors and a big desk.

17. Maximize your strengths, work on your weaknesses.

God created each of us according to His individual design. Before He personally formed you in your mother’s womb, God knew you, placed His hand on you, and appointed you with purpose to a place of service for His glory, the good of His people, and the salvation of those far from Him (Jeremiah 1.5 and others).

He created you with strengths. And yes, He created you with weaknesses. (You knew that second part, didn’t you?)

Why did He do this? Ultimately, because it pleased Him to do so: in our strengths and yes, in our weaknesses, God works to help us fulfill His purposes for our life.

God gifts the author to write, the preacher to preach and the carpenter to craft treasures in wood. Each of these can choose to operate in his or her strengths or do the salmon thing and swim against the current of his creation, constantly striving to overcome internal obstacles and difficulties.

And many people, even ministers, do just this, wondering why life and ministry are so hard, and why God doesn’t turn the current around to help them in what they are trying to do for Him.

Instead of waiting for the current to turn around, maybe we should consider turning ourselves around to the current God placed within us by operating in our God-created, God-given strengths as much as is possible?

In ministry, and yes, only under the Spirit’s anointing, we best fulfill the purposes of God for our life as we fill roles in which we can maximize our strengths, doing those things God has gifted us to do well.

We would do well, then, to learn our strengths. Various tests are available to help you do just that: Strengths Finder 2.0, 16 Personalities, etc. As we maximize operating in our strengths, we will then operate in our Jeremiah 1.5 creation.

Now for the stretching. Yes, we should seek to operate in our strengths, but we can’t maximize them while simply ignoring our weaknesses. No, we must understand that these too are the gift of God, a part of His personal design for our life.

And we must, with God’s help, work on them: we submit our weaknesses to God, we solicit the help of coaches and peers to grow in these areas, we study how to grow, and we make them a matter of prayer before the throne of grace.

We work on our weaknesses because it is in our weaknesses that Christ is most readily revealed. It is in our weaknesses that we best understand our dependence on God. It is in our weaknesses that we have greatest opportunity to grow in Christ’s likeness. It is in our weaknesses that Christ is made strongest.

Serve your great God in both your strengths and in your weaknesses, and do so as you maximize your strengths and work on your weaknesses.

18.  Claim no trophies.

 Church world publicity is flooded with the “awesome” churches that you just have to visit, the “incredible” preachers you just have to listen to, the “unbelievable” worship experiences (I never have understood that one) you just have to attend, the “jaw-dropping” programs you just have to use, the “world’s biggest-best-greatest” ministry you just have to follow, etc, etc, ad nauseum.

What would God ever do without us?

Have you noticed the awards that we give ourselves? And notice the pronoun: we, for I have done it too.

We speak of humility, of serving, of washing feet, but it seems we are only ready to do so when we are on a platform and people are seated before us.

Oh and “Like” us on Facebook.

Pastor and author, John Ortberg, writes, “We’d like to be humble . . . but what if no one notices?”

What if no one notices? Would we serve anonymously anyway?

What if no one thanks us? Would we serve joyfully anyway?

What if no one trophied us? Would we serve unacknowledged anyway?

What if someone else, say, Jesus, got the glory for what happens in our churches and our ministries? Would we be found with a basin and towel in our hands, or would we hold up our trophies?

And finally, what if people do notice you, do thank you, do trophy you: will you serve anonymously, joyfully anyway? Will you put down the trophy to pick up a basin and a towel?

Rather than seeking trophies for ourselves, Ephesians tells to seek to be Christ’s trophies, to intentionally live to the praise of His glory (Chapter 1), to aggressively show the riches of His grace (Chapter 2), to build and be a church in which He is glorified (Chapter 3), to walk humbly in unity that Christ might truly be above all and in all (Chapter 4), to willfully live as a sacrifice of praise to God (Chapter 5), and to forcefully live as bondservants to Christ (Chapter 6).

Claim no trophies. Live instead to be Christ’s trophy.

19. Love people and let them love you.

Eden Ahbez, in his beautiful song, “Nature Boy,” made famous by Nat King Cole, wrote, “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.”

These words aren’t found in the New Testament, but they would set well with Paul, who taught us in I Corinthians 13 that the greatest of Christlike qualities is love. The beautiful words of Ahbez also mirror the teaching of Jesus to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Or Jesus saying, “This is my command, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

So why are so many pastors so cold, so distant, so unapproachable? How is it that they have chosen to live among God’s people without getting close to them?

The truth? The truth is that it is often easier. If they were honest, many pastors will tell you that when you get close to people you get hurt, so the best way to avoid getting hurt is to not get close, to not let them in. Instead, what they will tell you is that loving and being loved by people gets in the way of the ministry, so for the sake of the ministry, you have to maintain your distance, i.e., not love or let love in.

I know that ministry leaves its wounds and its scars. I can detail mine for you, the what, the where and the when of my wounds. And yes, the deepest wounds were inflicted by those who were closest to me.

But at some point we need to live the Word of God, we need to trust and obey because, as the old song says, there is no other way to be happy in Jesus. When we trust and obey God’s commands to love one another – when we love and let others love us – the grace of God is released in us to heal our wounds and even to turn our scars into the precious marks of Christ, reminders of when and where God powerfully met us with healing in His wings.

Loving and being loved is the greatest thing. So be sure you do it. Up close and personal, day-to-day, deeply and with abandon. Love those whom you pastor. Love them like Jesus loves them. And let them love you. It’s what Jesus does with you each and every day. It’s what He wants to do through you.

20. Keep a study, not an office.

Give yourself to the Word and prayer. That little room you call home at the church? Give it over to the Word and prayer. Build it into a study and then keep it a study.

I’m going to say it: the study of God’s Word and prayer are the most amened and least practiced ideas in the church.

And the primary reason why this is true will shock you: these two ideas are the most amened and least practiced disciplines in too many pastor’s offices.

 For some pastors, the room in which he or she does his or her daily work at the church is an office. For some, that room is a study.

For the first group, that room is first a place to do business for God; for the second group, it’s first a place to do business with God, a place that exists first for the pastor to daily meet with God over The Book and in Prayer before any business he does for God.

I have been blessed in every church I’ve served, except one, to pastor congregations who shared and supported my passion for the study. They allowed me to give my mornings to studying God’s Word and to praying for them. The reason they did so, they have told me, is not only to honor the biblical principle (Acts 6), but because of the results: they saw the results of my Monday through Friday study and prayer time with God in my Sunday and Wednesday preaching and praying time with them.

When we left pastoring in the US to enter missionary service, Tricia and I were deeply saddened to leave our church. It was truly our church; these people were not church members, they were family. Several months after resigning, I was privileged to officiate the wedding of a couple from our church. The happy occasion reunited us with many of these precious people. One woman told me how much she and the church missed us as their pastors. I thanked her and assured her that we missed them as well. She stopped me, saying, “No, Pastor, I mean we really miss you as our pastor. When you were with us, you sought God for yourself and us, you prayed for us every day and we felt it. But our new pastor doesn’t pray or study. And we feel it. We miss you, Pastor, but we miss your prayers as pastor too.”

You’d be surprised how many pastors have told me they couldn’t give whole mornings to studying God’s Word and to praying, telling me they were far too busy to sit still for that.

Their people feel it, too.

Too busy. Too busy to follow in the footsteps of the Pastor of pastors who gave Himself to prayer on this earth, and far too busy to follow in the footsteps of the Pastors’s first undershepherds, the Apostles who said in Acts 6 that it would not be right for them to busy their life with anything that got in the way of giving themselves first to the Word and prayer.

 Build a study through prayer and the study of God’s Word. And then keep it a study.

21.  Walk strong, your head bowed and your heart humble.

As itinerating missionaries, my family and I were ministering in a medium size church in a coastal town in South Carolina. The pastor and his congregation treated us like kings and we enjoyed a wonderful service that Sunday evening. After the welcome and the worship, preaching there was effortless and I took great joy in the results and the many words of blessing given us by the people as they left the sanctuary.

Alas, one man was not of their company.

When I reached out to shake his hand at the sanctuary doors, this bear-sized man grabbed my hand and pulled me close. Eye-to-eye and with a look of disgust, he told me, “You aren’t fit to call yourself a preacher.” With those words of disdain, he angrily pushed me away and left the sanctuary.

Later at dinner, I, of course, told the pastor what had happened, apologizing for causing him any trouble. The pastor told me, “Oh, don’t worry about him. He’s always mad about something. It happens all the time.” With that, the pastor laughed and I was assured that at least he was in a good place with it all. I certainly was not. “Not fit to call yourself a preacher.” The words stuck with me for days.

The next Sunday we were back home in Indiana, preaching in a church that had recently celebrated its 50th anniversary. The morning service went very well with a great response to our ministry. Afterward, as was our custom, my wife and I stood in the church foyer by our missions display, greeting church members and answering their questions about our planned ministry in Europe.

As the line grew shorter, I noticed an older gentleman patiently waiting across the way. It was obvious that he wanted to be the last person to talk with us. As we said our thank yous and goodbyes to the person before him, this gentleman stepped forward. He took a moment to greet us and then said, “Brother Baker, I’m a charter member of this church. This has been my home for fifty years and I’ve heard ‘em all, the good preachers and the bad preachers, the well-known ones and not so well-known ones. But let me tell you something, you are, by far, the most powerful preacher to ever stand in our pulpit and preach the Word of God. I’ve never heard anyone or anything like it before.”

I promise you that in that moment, I heard God speak to me, “Don’t believe either one of them, South Carolina or Indiana. You just do what I tell you and keep your heart fixed on me for how you’re doing.”

I’ve never forgotten either man or the valuable lesson they taught me.

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“In the early years when I was becoming a pastor, I needed a pastor.” 

 Eugene H. Peterson, The Pastor: A Memoir