The Role of the God-ordained Pastor

By Evangelist Paul Mershon

February 5, 2012

"THE elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed:  FEED THE FLOCK OF GOD which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind; Neither as being lords over God's heritage, but being ensamples to the flock.  And when the chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away" (I Peter 5:1-4).

" . . . . Feed my lambs . . . . Feed my sheep . . . . Feed my sheep . . . ."  (John 21:15; 16; 17).

"But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word" (Acts 6:4).

I adamantly believe that many members of good, independent, fundamental, Bible-believing, Bible-preaching Baptist churches have little understanding of the call and ministry of the God-ordained pastor.  The God-mandated, God-established, God-directed office of the pastor needs to be carefully and thoroughly taught to our people that they might know what saith the Scriptures regarding his work and ministry.  Surely the pastor is not called to be an insensitive and harsh dictator, nor is he to be an autocratic ruler who beats the sheep rather than feeding the sheep.  Nor is he to be a passive weakling, failing to provide the leadership and oversight God has commanded he exercise.  We have far too many milquetoast pastors today who allow themselves to be bullied and coerced by people within their congregations with an agenda of their own.  Pastors are to tenderly watch for the flock, warning them of danger, while at the same time lovingly guiding them and preaching to them the whole counsel of God. Pastors are to take the oversight of the church, and are literally to rule (Greek: hegeomai – to lead, to command, to govern, to judge, to oversee, to guide). 

Beloved, let me remind you that God has not called church members to pastor the local New Testament church, He has called the pastor to pastor the local New Testament church. He has not called the church members to pastor the pastor. I have had my share of experiences as a pastor with folks who thought it was their calling and role in life to rule the church by consensus.  Then there are those folks who think it is there calling and role in life to correct, direct, influence, and shape the practice and policy of a church through controlling the pastor and leadership of the church through various unscriptural and inappropriate tactics.  If they are not able to wrest control and build a following within the church, they will cause all manner of trouble for a pastor. 

I gave counsel to one young pastor who was literally being bullied by a group of folks within his church who were heavily involved in a para-church ministry that has a reputation for producing adherents who can be proud and arrogant. This particular para-church ministry is fraught with questionable teaching and a cult-like aura. These folks kept the pressure up on the pastor in their overt attempts to control him and shape him into whatever it was that they thought he ought to be and how he ought to lead.  This caused no end of division and schism.  My counsel to him was to exercise church discipline if after being duly and graciously warned they did not cease and desist.  Not only did these folks not understand what the Bible teaches about the role of the pastor, they actually wanted to usurp his role and rule the church themselves.  This can never be allowed to happen. They took so much of the pastor’s time up with what can only be described as harassment, constantly bugging him with one issue after another, that he was distracted from what God had called him to do.  A church suffers when the pastor is not protected from encroachment. 

The pastor’s authority and role within the local church is clearly spelled out in the Word of God.  His authority only goes as far as the Scriptures allow, and that authority is distinctly and definitively stated along with the “job description” of the under-shepherd.  With this in mind, please read on.

A pastor shepherds a local church.  Therefore, He gave the gift of pastors . . . The term “pastor” literally means “shepherd.”  A shepherd, on the one hand, is one who cares for the needs of the sheep on an individual basis.  On the other, a shepherd oversees the entire flock.  Implicit in the term is both individual care as well as oversight of the overall flock . . . .

For over twenty-eight years in the ministry, I have observed many fellow pastors as one of their colleagues.  With more than a quarter-century of perspective, I have noticed trends in ministries which seem to fit a pattern.  For example, I have witnessed numerous fellows who over the years have received a strong academic education for the pastorate.  Yet for some reason, they seem to struggle as pastors.  I have known others who are obviously talented.  However, like the old Chinese proverb, they went up like a rocket and came down like a stick.  Some have been able administrators.  Some have been able scholars able to produce fine sermons. Some have had great skills of oratory and are excellent pulpiteers.  Some have a knack for promotion.  Some are skilled soul-winners.  Others rose to positions of leadership in church associations or pastor's fellowships.  Yet for some reason, some of these same men had trouble in their churches.  Somehow their education, skills of homiletics, sermon delivery, church administration, or promotion over the long run do not impress their people.

The truth is, preaching and local-church program management, though necessary, really are of secondary importance to pastoring.  All pastors will preach.  But not all preachers pastor (though they may hold that title).  All modern pastors will to one degree or another administer the affairs of the church.  But being a successful administrator has little to do with the scriptural office of pastoring.  Most pastors, to one degree or another, will be involved in promoting the ministry of their church.  However, being a good promoter has little of nothing to do with being a pastor.

Conversely, I have known some pastors who did not have a particularly strong educational background in preparing for the ministry.  Yet, their pastoral ministries have greatly flourished.  This author certainly believes in young men receiving as much formal training for the ministry as possible while they can get it.  However, I have witnessed men who lacked such training who have been quite successful as pastors.  I have known others who were very average in their ability to organize and deliver a sermon.  Yet, they have had long-term, happy pastorates.  Others have had a lack of administrative ability.  Yet, their people loved them as their pastor. 

It seems in so many fundamental institutions in this generation, the focus is upon two areas: 

(1)  to train young men to preach, including all the necessary education for good exegesis, homiletics, and pulpit delivery.  Without a question this is necessary and of utmost importance.  To a lesser degree another area of focus seems to be (2)  training young men in local church program management, including church administration, program promotion, and all of the various "programs" with which local churches are involved.  Again, all of this is vital and important. I would not suggest anything less.

However, it is the view of this author how men young in the ministry or preparing for the ministry need to be trained in a third area.  That is (3) how to pastor people.  Without a question, it is crucial for a pastor to be skilled in preaching and the program management of a local church.  However, if he does not pastor his people, his ministry will neither be happy nor long in one place . . . .

Many good things can detract from pastoring.  It has been the observation of this author how many pastors are focused on things which may be good, but have detracted them from pastoring their people.  For some, it is an inordinate emphasis on scholarship.  Institutions of higher learning are by their very nature academic.  It seems professors tend to beget after their own kind.  In looking over the catalogue of a highly regarded seminary, more than 90% of their course offerings related to the degree of pastoring were academic in nature.  Their catalogue denoted “practical” courses, yet they comprised about 6% of the curricula required for graduation.  (Most pastors who have been out in the field for several decades will understand how in practice, the ministry is perhaps 75% practical and 25% or less academic.)  Nevertheless, some pastors spend the lion's share of their time in studying.  To be sure, adequate preparation for teaching and preaching is a necessity.  But for some, it obscures the greater ministry of pastoring their people.

I have known pastors of my generation who viewed themselves as the chief executive officer (CEO) of their church.  As the God-ordained overseer, to a certain extent they are correct.  However, some are so busy running the 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation over which they preside, also known as a church, they are too busy to pastor their people.  How many a church has several layers of secretaries insulating the pastor from his own people who wish to see him?  Pastors are busy.  However, woe be to the preacher who is too busy to take time for his own people who have need.

Some preachers are so involved with the affairs of THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOL they oversee, their ministry of pastoring the people to which God has fundamentally called them fades into the background (the "tail wagging the dog" syndrome - ed.).  Most preachers will proclaim the principle how the church must take priority over the school.  And they are right.  However, in practice, they become so enmeshed in the complications of operating a Christian school within their church, the crucial matter of pastoring their people becomes secondary.

I have known other preachers who are gone almost every week for associational or fellowship meetings of one kind or another.  They may be officers in these groups or they just go for the fellowship.  But the simple truth is they are gone.  I once had a frustrated friend complain that his pastor was gone every Monday for various and sundry associational or committee meetings.  When he was back in his office on Tuesday, he was crabby from the stress of traveling to the meetings the day prior.

My father pastored his people.  He was always there when his people needed him.  Nothing took precedence over meeting their needs and encouraging them. His door was always ajar.  Over the years, he often lamented to me how he wished he had more time to visit his own people.  Though he was always there when they were sick or had other crises in their lives, he desired to make “routine” pastoral visits upon them.  Whenever he sensed a member of the church was beginning to drift or had need in their lives, Dad was at their door.  He would stop and visit with them, pray with them, and encourage them . . . . he made it a practice to make short “drop-in” visits upon people of the church.  For fifty years, Henry Sorenson made countless thousands of calls upon people of his congregations just to “pastor” them.  He got to know their homes and needs because he had visited with them.  He already knew about their problems when they did come for counsel.  He had already been to their homes - numerous times - for prayer and encouragement . . . . A pastor will be there when his people need him . . . .  (From, "The Art of Pastoring - New Testament Principles for Pastoring Independent Baptist Church," by David Henry Sorenson)

When I had the privilege of teaching a pastoral theology course some years ago, one of the things I emphasized in the classroom was that pastors must, at all costs, keep the main thing the main thing.  The "main thing," according to the word of the Lord, is to feed His sheep (John 21).  If a pastor (shepherd) does not engage in the primary ministry of sheep-feeding, the sheep will suffer, starve and eventually scatter or fall away.  In addition to these things, the wolf will almost always get into the sheep-fold when the pastor (shepherd) is not watching out for the flock and protecting them (Acts 20:28-31).  Within the realm of modern Christianity there are many distractions and diversions in the pastoral ministry that have short-circuited the sheep-feeding role of the pastor.

Many have bought into the fallacious notion that the pastor is to be, and to serve as a corporate CEO, a school administrator, a social director, a business manager, a programs specialist, a marketing expert, a financial manager, and wear so many other hats that it is a miracle if he ever gets to do any real pastoring.  God has called him into a ministry of oversight (I Peter 5:2), so he will certainly give leadership to all of these facets of church organization.  But none of these things ought ever be allowed to plagiarize the pastor's time and energies that he is not free to actually pastor and feed the sheep.  Satan knows how to rob the pastor of his time, and rob the sheep of their pastor by getting him so bogged down with the details of ministry, and the management of the corporate  monster many ministries have become today that he (the pastor) is almost inaccessible to the very people he has been called to pastor.  A well-managed, well-oiled machine of a church may even grow numerically, but the sheep may not be growing "fat and fluffy" spiritually when they do not have a pastor who visits and tends the flock carefully and tenderly.  They must be fed, and that feeding comes not from the pulpit ministry alone.  It comes from one-on-one attention given in regular doses in addition to the teaching and preaching ministry of the local New Testament church.  Sheep must be fed, watered, groomed and given tender watch-care.  A distracted shepherd will not be able to do any of these things effectively.

The pastor of a local church is not an itinerant preacher.  He is a "stay-at-home" sheep-feeder.  Just imagine what would have happened to the sheep David was charged with watching over and caring for if he had abandoned them, even for a very short period of time.  When God sent Samuel to Jesse's house to choose a king in the stead of Saul, all but one of Jesse's sons were presented to Samuel as potential candidates.  Not one of those he made pass by Samuel were God's anointed.  Samuel inquired if there was not yet another.  Jesse responded in the affirmative.  He told Samuel of David, who was the youngest and never present when the others had been presented.  Where was David?  Jesse told Samuel, "he keepeth the sheep."  He was a faithful sheep-feeding young man carefully tending his father's flocks.  This was God's anointed.  He was faithful in watching for the lives of those sheep, and would be likewise faithful in watching for the souls of God's people as king of Israel.  He did not run off and leave the sheep he was charged with shepherding.  He was always close by watching for their lives.  It is not that the pastor can never take a vacation, or be away for short periods of time.  No, not at all.  But, he must make very careful provision for the sheep while he is on his sojourn.  The pastor is not an itinerant evangelist.  The pastor is a sheep-feeder who stays close by the sheepfold.

Too many young pastors (and some not so young), have made the mistake of thinking that the church is "their" church.  It is God's church, and that must be remembered.  Too many good men feel that they must be micro-mini-managers, having their hand on the throttle of every engine that drives the work of the church they have been called to pastor.  They are so weary, so distracted and so side-tracked, that the "main thing" becomes secondary.  Not only do the sheep suffer, but their marriages and their homes suffer.  Their marriages and their families take priority over their ministry, and if they are not tending the sheep at home, they will not be fit to tend sheep in the sheepfold of the local church. They are so focused on administrative function that they forget about their calling (I Peter 5:1-4 - Acts 6:4 - Acts 20:28-31). 

I once was with a pastor who spent nearly every Saturday just visiting with the members of his church.  He would make short visits to many of his folks, just encouraging them and praying with them.  Some men have the philosophy that "healthy" sheep do not need tending.  But, in order to stay healthy, even mature sheep need tender-loving care - "preventive medicine," if you will.  It is good that the mature sheep, the serving sheep, the younger sheep, and the newborn sheep be tended personally from time-to-time by the sheep-feeding pastor.  This, I fear, has become a thing of the past in many places around the country. 

Church folks need to be sensitive to pray for their pastor as he often has a huge load on his shoulders, and bears many a burden upon his heart that few will ever know about.  Pray for your pastor, and help him where you can.  Too many church people complain about their pastor not spending enough time with the sheep in the sheepfold, but yet they are unwilling to relieve him where they can that he might be free to do what God has called him to do.  If the work of the church is to be done, it is to be done by the people, not the pastor and "paid staff" alone.  We used to do the work of the ministry as God's people stepped in to labor in God's vineyard.  Today it has become necessary to pay people to do many of those things that could be done if God's people would surrender themselves to come to the work to do it.  Again, pray for your pastor, and do not allow those things encroach upon him that would preclude him from being a sheep-feeding pastor.