The (Genuinely) Helpful Pastor

The (Genuinely) Helpful Pastor

Last month I posted an article here on “The Unhelpful Pastor”.  The post identified ways in which we as pastors can accidentally end up pursuing priorities in ministry that conflict with those our Lord may have.  This month I would like to explore just the opposite: what it looks like when a pastor faithfully follows the specific direction that Christ has for their particular congregation.

Scripture tells us that God has specific plans for each person, and by extension for each of our congregations. Ephesians 2:10 reminds us that “...we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

The Book of Acts shows what it can look like when believers pour their lives into carrying out the plans that our risen Lord has for each of us. They did exactly that, and as a result the church spread throughout the Roman world. 

Our savior still has plans for his church. That’s exciting: God intends to use your church to make an eternal difference in his world. That’s also a bit sobering. After all, the events on your calendar or daily to-do list may or may not be very closely aligned with God’s. 

This puts a lot of responsibility on those who lead the church. It’s the job of the pastor or other key leaders to do their best to identify what the Lord is up to, and to help everyone align behind his lead.

This can be really exciting to consider. Our Risen Lord has specific plans for your particular congregation! We as leaders don’t need to invent a grand vision for our churches. There’s already a divine plan laid out.

But in reality, this can be really tricky. A local congregation is filled with people who contribute time and money into their particular ministry, and therefore have a legitimate need to have their opinions considered. And everyone’s opinion seems to be different. Leaders are confronted with a myriad of conflicting expectations as they struggle to manage their to-do lists. Pastors can often feel like one-armed wall paper hangers as they balance meetings to lead, visits to offer care, and the never-ending details to be followed up on. 

By the time a pastor approaches his or her farewell celebration they will have made countless micro-choices about what they will have done with their time during their years of service. The sum aggregate of years of daily calendars and to-do lists will be their legacy.

In the face of a congregation’s worth of conflicting expectations, how can a busy pastor help a congregation to faithfully follow what our Lord might actually be up to?

Seeking Direction

This brings a leader to the place that every leaders needs to regularly end up: on their knees before God.

At their best, God’s leaders in scripture have always found themselves humbled before God as they sought his direction: picture Moses squaring off with God in the cloud on Sinai, or the psalms David wrote while wrestling with him in those caves during his fugitive years. It’s out of that kind of struggle that God’s leaders have discovered the wisdom reflected in Proverbs 3:5-6:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
     and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
     and he will make your paths straight.

But what will that look like? 

Godly leadership will always involve first and foremost a priority on seeking God’s continued call as the basis for the leader’s discernment. The exact disciplines needed for that will vary from pastor to pastor, but it will likely involve some combination daily and seasonal disciplines including daily devotional practices and periodic retreats or other solitude practices. It will also involve a need to develop appropriate allies who can help discern what God may be doing.

Developing Leadership

So what exactly can a leader actually do to develop this kind of leadership?

First, the place to start is by developing self-leadership. A pastor will need to develop the ability to lead himself or herself if they are to have any hope of leading a congregation. And this, it should be noted, is a lot more difficult than it might look from the pews. 

The fact is, most congregation members will have an impression that their pastor has plenty of time to return their phone calls or respond to various suggestions or ideas. The reality is that on most weeks many pastors often feel like they’re swatting at flies in their efforts to keep up with ministry efforts while striving to protect the time needed for Sunday’s sermon.  This myriad of various expectations will require the pastor to make a steady stream of choices about just what they will or won’t accomplish on any particular day. Managing that stream of decisions will prove crucial to any pastor’s efforts to chart and point towards God’s direction for their ministry.

Second, this kind of leadership discernment will require developing the right allies to help chart God’s course. No pastor is sufficiently insightful to accurately track God’s direction on their own.

David knew that as he struggled to lead Israel in his day. That’s why I Chronicles 12:32 notes that David’s band of leaders included 200 key leaders from Issachar, who were “men who understood the times and knew what Israel should do”

Not every person in a leadership role will be able to provide such leadership direction—but some certainly will. While every congregational member will ultimately need to have a voice in their church’s ministry, the wise pastor will learn to identify and partner with these individuals early in their strategic thinking. Perhaps that will happen in official Council or staff meetings, but not necessarily. It may be that this will happen best over breakfasts in the local diner or a cup of coffee later in the day.

Third, this kind of strategic leadership will require disciplined prayer through one’s own to-do lists for each day. If a busy pastor cannot filter and prioritize their over-populated todo list, whatever they accomplish in a particular day will probably happen by accident. And most leaders, like most congregations, don’t follow God very well by accident.

The only alternative that I’ve found to such “leading by accident” is to learn to painstakingly identify my top priorities for each day. And this, I have found, can only be done if I’ve taken the time to wrestle with God through his priorities for this current season, and then for this current week. If I haven’t figured out what God wants for this particular season, then chances are slim that the choices I make this week will actually lead me very close to whatever God might have had in mind. 

These practices are foundational. Once the leader has become grounded in God’s priorities for their particular season in their church’s story, they can more effectively help their leaders, and ultimately their congregation, to more clearly understand what God wants them to actually do at that point in their story.

I’ve often envied the clarity that God offered to Moses when their heavenly pillar of cloud and fire would move or stay over the place where they were supposed to settle (Exodus 13). But I’ve learned that God still wants us to have clarity; he just wants to offer it in a way that will require us to spend generous time in conversation with him.  He really seems to like that.

Who Does The Pastor Work For?

Underneath this all lies a question that can often fester in congregations: just who does their pastor really work for?

It could seem that the pastor works for the church. After all, it’s the local congregation who offered them the job to begin with, and it’s the church’s name printed at the top of paychecks each month. 

In reality, the pastor works for Christ who is actually the Lord of the church. The pastor may be employed by the church, but he or she has been called by God. That makes a difference. The congregation’s priorities are hopefully close to Christ’s plans for their ministry, but the reality is that there is usually some dissonance between the two. It’s the pastor’s job to help their congregation follow God as best as they can.

If you are a pastor, let me ask you: just what is God hoping to prioritize in your congregation’s ministry this year? How is he hoping that this year might be different from what he was hoping for last year?

If you are a member of the congregation, let me ask you a different question: when you pray for your pastor, what do you ask God to do? It can be easy to tacitly ask God to enable the pastor to satisfy your own expectations. When was the last time you asked God to empower your pastor to follow God’s lead, even if it conflicted with the expectations the congregation might have?

Question: if over the course of the coming months you saw generous evidence that God had been clearly leading your church toward his plans for your future...would you be surprised?

I hope not.