I’m reading through with a friend Paul Tripp’s Dangerous Calling: Confronting the Unique Challenges of Pastoral Ministry (Crossway 2012). I would describe it as a sober and yet grace-filled critique of pastoral culture in our setting. Its helping me see and feel afresh the importance of keeping my heart soft before the Lord in the midst of the ups and downs and busyness of ministry. Here is an especially powerful quote. I think Tripp is right on in his concern here:
“Does it seem right and healthy that in many churches the functional reality is that no one gets less of the ministry of the body of Christ than the pastor does? Does it seem best that most pastors are allowed to live outside of or up above the body of Christ? If every pastor is, in fact, a man in the middle of his own sanctification, shouldn’t he be receiving the normal range of the essential ministry of the body of Christ that God has ordained for every member of the church to receive? Is there any indication in the New Testament that the pastor is the exception to the normal rules that God has designed for the health and growth of his people?” (p. 69).
3 Responses
Bravo! I am always concerned about this…although I myself have a difficult time approaching pastors to ask if I can help…possibly from offering to pray in the past or to help in some way and having been brushed off or outright rejected. Email makes it easier to ask without the push off.
You Pastors are humans just like the rest of us in the Body of Christ…and yes there needs to be much privacy perhaps, but not to the exclusion of no body ministry one to another…we are not to forsake fellowship, including pastors. So I always pray for personal friends to a degree that you can share and be ministered back.
We need to know you and you need to know us. “As iron sharpens another, so a man.sharpens the countenance of his friend.” Proverbs 27:17 KJV or Message: “You use steel to sharpen steel,
and one friend sharpens another.”
Plus, how can a man give God if he hasn’t got anything given or something like that.
I don’t know…I just agree with the writer you quoted and I do earnestly pray for all of my pastors that God has provided you with prayer parterns personally and that you are following Jesus’ example of friends (3 beloveds) and disciples and those who ministered to him. And time alone in prayer and communion with our Father! I just love my Pastors…and JESUS LOVES YOU MORE…HE MADE US IN THE SAME BODY! Glory be to God!
They will know HIm by our love! Love, Lauri
Lauri,
thank you for your prayers, and your sweet, supportive spirit. Your prayers mean so much, and I’m sure only in heaven will we see how much has been accomplished by the simple, faithful, earnest prayers of God’s people. Every church needs prayer warriors. In fact, I think they are the secret engine for much of what God does. Thanks again, from the heart.
Gavin