What is a Pastor?
What is a pastor? Eph 4:11 says, "And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers." So we see that "pastor" is not just the shepherd of a local flock; it is also one of the five-fold offices of Christ and is of the same governmental importance as apostle or prophet.
We know the Lord cares very much about each one of His sheep. Matthew 18:12-14 makes this very clear. Jesus said He cares about each individual sheep, not just about the flock overall. When one is lost or hurting, Jesus gives it the individual attention it needs. Jesus said He was the "good shepherd" in John 10:11,14-15. He is the good shepherd Whom His sheep know personally and Who would lay down His life for His sheep. This is the mantle of Jesus and this is the role model for those God appoints in the office of pastor. God gives pastors to the Body of Christ to care for individual sheep.
Somewhere along the line, people got the idea that teacher/preacher and pastor are synonyms. This is not really the case. A person does not have to be a good teacher or a good preacher to be a good pastor. (Of course, those things are nice to be good at since in most of our services, the pastor spends part of it teaching or preaching. The reason that came about is because the training and equipping is part of what a pastor does to care for the sheep in his/her flock. Apostle Paul helped train and raise up a young pastor by the name of Timothy. He gave Timothy instructions on how to pastor in 1 Timothy 4. Among those instructions is to teach God's truths and teach good doctrine (verses 2-7), raise the flock up in godliness (verse 8), to command (lead) in verse 11, to teach (also verse 11). Then he goes on in verses 13 through 16 to say:
"Devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching. Do not neglect your gift, which was given you through a prophetic message when the body of elders laid their hands on you. Be diligent in these matters; give yourself wholly to them, so that everyone may see your progress. Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save yourself and your hearers."
We see from this that a pastor trains and teaches his flock. He has to help them understand scripture so they don't fall into false doctrine. He also operates in his spiritual giftings.
But that is not all a pastor does. He also needs to pastor the flock, help and minister to people as per John 10:11,14-15. Jesus talked about the shepherd laying down His life for the flock. Many pastors do that. They put their personal goals, ambitions, hopes and desires aside for the good of the flock. Many pastors take a smaller salary than they would get working a secular job and live a simpler lifestyle so they can minister to those God has committed to their care. Jesus is their role model. He laid down His life for the flock.
There is another thing about Jesus as a role model. He said, "I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me" (John 10:14). This is personal relationship. And just as Jesus was in personal relationship with His followers, so the pastor is to be in personal relationship with his "flock." He is to know them personally, to speak into their lives, to comfort and strengthen them, to be there for them in times of crisis, etc.
Note that a shepherd does not "herd" his flock; he leads it. In other words, he does not sit and issue edicts of how a person should behave; he models and demonstrates it in his own life. A pastor leads by example. As he follows Christ, his flock follows him. 1 Peter 5:2-4 tells the pastor to, "Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, serving as overseers, not by compulsion but willingly, not for dishonest gain but eagerly; nor as being lords over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock; and when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that does not fade away."
In our modern society, the role of pastor is not just a five-fold office appointed by Jesus, it is also a "job." People train for this job by going to Bible college and then seminary (graduate school for ministers). Then they are interviewed by churches and "hired" to pastor a local congregation. Some denominations assign pastors to congregations without giving the congregation a say in who their pastor is. Other denominations allow the local congregation to interview/select their own pastor. Sadly, the process of selecting a pastor is sometimes driven more by "credentials" (Bible college or seminary) than it is about the call and anointing of God on the person's life. Some people who are pastors are not appointed by God in the "office of pastor" to care for the flock. Some are merely trained workers looking for a paying job. (I am sure your pastor is not like that. But sadly, there are a few out there who are. This is because modern society has secularized the process by which pastors are trained and appointed. It can become more about schooling and less about God's call of their lives.)
I went to Fuller Theological Seminary for a season. This seminary turns out a lot of pastors, as well as missionaries, evangelists, teachers and even Christian psychologists. I was in the Master of Divinity program - many denominations require that pastors have a Master of Divinity degree. I had many classmates who were in seminary because they planned to be pastors. Many were excellent candidates for this, with the call and anointing of God on their lives. But not all the people in this program were there because God called them to be. And some of them had very poor interpersonal and communication skills. Some had their own deep issues and were in desperate need of inner healing - they needed to be ministered to rather than being able to minister to someone else. These people were good scholars and did well at academia, even though they were not doing so well in their personal walk with God. These "good students" got pushed through the program, graduated and took jobs as pastors. They were hired because of their academic degrees. They had been through the academic system, but had not really been equipped to care for people, to interact with them, to be effective pastors.
The problem is that "pastor" is a job as well as an office of God. Ideally, a person is called of God and hired into a paying job as pastor. It does not always work that way. Some pastors are called of God and function in a pastoring role, but are not paid for it. They have to take a secular job to pay the bills so they can do what God called them to do. Others are in the "job" and being paid, but were never called of God to be there. These people do not have the mantle, the gifting and anointing, to be effective in caring for their flock. In short, some people get into pastoring for the wrong reason.
And occasionally abuses arise out of that mismatch between profession and call of God. I have heard horror stories of pastoral abuse that can all be traced to the same root problem - the person acting as the pastor of the church was not called/gifted by God as a pastor. Some were excellent teachers, some where powerful healers or evangelists. But they were people who act as pastors but were not called by God to pastor a flock and as a result their sheep were not being adequately cared for.
Fortunately, the problems/abuses are the exception rather than the general rule. Most pastors are there because God called and gifted them to be there. (Really, the pastoring job has a lot more drawbacks than perks, so most people whom God has not called as a pastor don't want to serve as a pastor.) Most pastors do a great job caring for, loving, training and equipping their congregations and are sacrificially laying down their lives to serve the Lord. That brings me to my next topic, which is the price tag people in the five-fold office of pastor pay, for there are many "costs" associated with being a pastor. We will talk about those costs in our next two lessons.
The "Cost" Of Being A Pastor
There is a big misconception going around that pastors have an easy or "cushy" job, and that they have to work only on Sundays, and then only part of the day. This, of course, is not true.
Pastors wear many hats and probably work much harder than the average person. A pastor has to be a speaker/teacher and has to study and prepare the Sunday sermon. A pastor often has to be a counselor, and to spend time with individuals in need of pastoral counsel/advice. A pastor frequently has to act as an administrator, making financial and administrative decisions about how to run the church. A pastor has to be God's representative to the community and to the city and local government. A pastor needs to remain apprised of current events and of what God is doing spiritually in various places, and to help his congregation interpret current events in light of God's plan and strategies. A pastor needs to be available to people in the congregation to provide individual pastoral care. On any given week, most churches have at least a dozen people who will need individual pastoral care or attention. Pastors have to spend time training and developing their leaders.
In addition, most pastors pray and intercede for their churches and for each person who is a part of that church. This prayer and intercession can be amazingly time consuming. And a pastor needs to maintain his own walk and intimacy with the Lord, maintain his own personal worship, his own devotions and personal time with God.
There are a lot of demands on a pastor that may not be obvious at first glace. Most pastors work very hard in their jobs; most work a lot more than 40 hours a week. In addition to all that, pastors:
- Are called to be "servant of all"
- Are accountable to God to equip those in their care and protect them
- Often are not financially compensated commensurate to the work they do
- Are targets of criticism and power struggles by controlling/manipulating types
- May get "bitten" (personally attacked) by the sheep they are caring for
- Have to work with immature or wounded people without quenching what God is doing in that person
- Are often targets for Satanic counter-attacks in spiritual warfare
Let me discuss these a little. I will develop the first four in this lesson, and will discuss the others in the next lesson.
Servant Of All
Some people see the job of pastor as powerful and glamorous - they influence a lot of people, they are up front, they set policy and run the church, etc. But in reality, a pastor is a servant of all. Pastors have to live and model the Christian walk for their flock. They have to be "all things to all people" to meet people's needs and to care for their charges. They have to watch over the people in their congregation and frequently put other's welfare and needs ahead of their own.
Jesus described it this way in John 13:12-17: "So when He had washed their feet, taken His garments, and sat down again, He said to them, 'Do you know what I have done to you? You call Me Teacher and Lord, and you say well, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example that you should do as I have done to you. Most assuredly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master; nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him.' "
Accountable To Equip And Protect Those In Their Church
A pastor is not just accountable for his own spiritual walk. God also holds the pastor accountable for those He has put in their care. The pastor is responsible to help them grow/mature spiritually and to equip and release them into the ministry God has for them. 2 Tim. 3:16-17 says, "All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." Pastors teach on and expound Scripture (as well as how to apply the principles in God's word to everyday life) so that their flock will be "trained in righteousness" and "thoroughly equipped for every good work."
Hebrews 13:17 talks about how God holds pastors and spiritual leaders accountable for the development and well-being of their charges. It says, "Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account. Obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you." God holds them accountable whether or not the person they are caring for is cooperative. That is really quite a responsibility.
In fact, when Paul was about to go to Rome for his final journey, he met with the elders of the church in Ephesus. The instructions that he gave the leadership there on pastoring are found in Acts 20:28-32: "Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which He bought with His own blood. I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth to draw away disciples after them. So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears. Now I commit you to God and to the word of His grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified."
Not Necessarily Adequately Compensated (Financially) For Their Work
This statement pretty much speaks for itself. Sadly, this statement is true for more pastors than it is not true. (Yes, there are some congregations where the pastor fleeces the flock financially for his own gain. But that is the exception, not the general rule. For each pastor you can show me who is in it for the money, I can show you at least ten who are in it to serve God and who make substantial financial sacrifices to serve as a pastor.)
Most pastors work 60 to 80 hours per week and get paid as if they worked 20. For some reason, many people do not value the work that a pastor does. They would be willing to spend $75 per hour to go to a professional counselor or psychologist. But they expect equivalent service free of charge from their pastor and in most cases, the pastor is paid less than the average household income of the people in the church. Why don't they pay him more? In a lot of cases, it is because there is an incorrect mindset that says that the pastor job is not worth a lot of money.
So many pastors often do not get paid very well and have to live simpler lifestyles than they would live if they had a secular job.
Power Struggles
You have probably all seen this at some point in your Christian walk. There is always someone who comes in and thinks he can run the church better than the pastor can. Some try to manipulate the pastor to do things their way. Some have ideas about the direction the church should take and the activities it should be involved in. They assume they can hear God better than the pastor can. They may try to mobilize others in the church to side with them in getting their way.
The simple truth is that the Lord will usually give the vision and direction for the church to the pastor, since he is the one who is accountable before God for that congregation. (If the church is ruled by a governing board instead of by a pastor, then God will usually give the vision/direction for the church to that governing board.) Pastors who have governmental control in their church tend to vary in the amount of decision-making and policy-setting that they involve others in. Some pastors have a leadership style where they take input from everyone in their congregation and where they like to corporately set direction for the church. That is fine if that is how the pastor feels God wants that particular congregation run. Also, some denominations have a governmental structure where the pastor is not the one with authority to make decisions on how the church is run. Some denominations do this through corporate meetings. Some have a governing board that sets policy. Others give the pastor complete leeway in setting policy and making decisions.
I am not suggesting that any form of church government that does not give the pastor complete control is wrong. What I am saying is that there are people out there who will want to control the pastor, and the activities of the church, outside of the legitimate church government. And when that type of person comes around, the pastor usually finds that they try to initiate a power struggle for control in that congregation.
More "Costs" Of Being A Pastor
In our last lesson, we found that the job (and five-fold office) of "pastor" is not as glamorous and "cushy" as it may seem. We saw that the pastor has a lot of demands put on him to care for the people God has appointed him to care for. In addition to all that, pastors:
- Are called to be "servant of all."
- Are accountable to God to equip those in their care and protect them.
- Often are not financially compensated commensurate with the work they do.
- Are targets of criticism and power struggles by controlling/manipulating types.
- May get "bitten" (personally attacked) by the sheep they are caring for.
- Have to work with immature or wounded people without quenching what God is doing in that person.
- Are often targets for Satanic counter attacks in spiritual warfare.
We talked about the first four in the last lesson. So let's continue looking at these costs.
Sheep Bite
We hear so many stories of "spiritual abuse" these days. It is sort of the in thing to criticize the pastor or accuse him/her of being abusive any time a person is upset with his church. (There really are cases of spiritual abuse, and I don't want to minimize them. But much of what people say is spiritual abuse really is not.) People get angry that they are not getting their own way, or that they are not getting the attention or recognition they feel they deserve. They begin to blame the pastor and/or criticize him. Sometimes God will throw them in the refiner's fire to expose and deal with some character areas that He wants to heal, and the person may get mad at or blame the pastor, as if it were his fault that they are in the refiner's fire.
Some sheep are not fully mature and conformed to the image of Christ. Sometimes they can be self-centered and demanding. I'm not a pastor, but I do head a ministry and I do get pastoral care requests. One person, who I did not know, wanted me to commit to praying and interceding for them an hour a day for the next six months because they were going through difficult times. I politely replied that I could not commit to that because my time is very limited and God had not quickened that particular request to me. They became furious that I would not be available to them in that manner and accused me of everything from being spiritually abusive to being a false prophet because I would not commit 182 hours to interceding for a complete stranger. The person simply assumed that because I was a minister, they had a right to make demands on me. There are a lot of people who have that attitude to some degree or another. Pastors frequently face people who are demanding and unappreciative and who get mad at the pastor when things go wrong.
Let me share an example from a church I once belonged to. There was a man who sang in the choir and who helped teach Sunday school, as well as being involved in a few social activities. He got busy in his profession and began to miss a lot of church. He started dropping out of the various activities he had been involved in. Then he had a two-month period where he had to work Sundays and was unable to attend church. He mentioned it to the pastor and to his friends. Several months went by and he had not been to church at all. The pastor wrote him a note along the lines of, "We miss you. Hope you are doing well in your walk with the Lord. Please know that I am here and would be happy to talk to you if you feel the need."
The man became irate that it took the pastor so long to figure out he was missing. He criticized and attacked him unreasonably and became hostile toward him. I ran into this man afterward, and he shared the situation with me. The real problem was that he felt hurt and unappreciated. Very few people from church had contacted him to see why he was not attending. Of course most of them were under the assumption that he was still working weekends. But he felt hurt that he was not missed and that people were not following up to see how he was. He was upset that they simply forgot him (out of sight, out of mind) as the months dragged by and he had not been at church. So he focused all of the hurt and frustration on the pastor and let him have it with both barrels. In reality the pastor was doing the very thing he hoped people would do. Caring about him and checking in on him to see how he was. But he was hurt and upset enough that it did not seem that way to him. And he ended up attacking and criticizing the pastor.
People do that. All of us can occasionally be unreasonable. When a person is really upset or hurting, they may tend to be unreasonable or demanding on a more frequent basis. They may tend to strike out at someone for something that is not their fault. When they do it to a pastor or leader, we call that "sheep bite."
Developing The Immature
One of a pastor's jobs is to help people grow and mature in their faith, their giftings and in their personal walk with God. This includes the spiritually and the emotionally immature. This means that pastors frequently have to work with those who are "developing." That can be frustrating, especially when the trainees make costly mistakes. There is a joke about this in prophetic circles. Do you know what many pastors/leaders/teachers call prophetic students who are still in the process of learning how to move in their gifting? They call them "the PITs" - it stands for "Prophets In Training," but it also describes how their mistakes can be "the pits!"
It is important for a pastor to provide a safe environment for the trainees and those the trainees will minister to, in whatever area the pastor is developing the person. The pastor has to correct mistakes, but still encourage the trainees so they can grow into strong/gifted believers. This is sometimes a complex juggling act trying to find the fine line between not discouraging the person and correcting mistakes.
Pastors often get thrust into a counselor's role as well in working with emotionally immature and needy or dysfunctional people. Often pastors can make real progress because they can deal with spiritual issues as well as emotional ones. Many pastors have to serve as personal counselors for individuals or as marriage counselors for families in crisis. There is often a great demand on pastors to work in these situations even though they have not been formally trained in this area. It can be very stressful for a pastor to serve in this capacity. It can also be frustrating because a lot of times, wounded or immature people resist being helped, can fail to follow through on commitments and action items. Some people who come to the pastor for "help" want sympathy and attention more than they want to gain victory in their personal lives and situations. So the pastor has to work on adjusting their expectations and getting them to look at the situations from God's perspective as well as helping the people.
There really are a lot of demands put on pastors, especially by people who have not matured in their own personal life and walk.
Targets For Spiritual Warfare Counter Attacks
One of the basics of spiritual warfare is that the more you build up God's Kingdom, the more you are actively tearing down Satan's. And Satan does not want to lose ground, so he is out to defend his turf. In general, he perceives pastors as dangerous because they equip and enable others to be effective for God's Kingdom. Satan tends to spend more of his resources counter attacking those he views as a threat. Pastors are a threat on two levels. They advance God's Kingdom by the nature of the work they do, and they train others how to advance God's Kingdom and be effective in their Christian walk.
About 10 years ago, many prophetic voices began to warn intercessors to cover their pastors because Satan was launching an all-out offensive designed to destroy pastors' marriages and families. Satan actually released demons whose main job was to disrupt and destroy a pastor's relationship with his/her spouse and children. This went on for quite a while and it was somewhat effective. We began to see more pastoral marriages failing than we'd ever seen. Why? Because Satan was fighting back to try to make pastors less effective in dismantling Satan's kingdom.
In general, pastors tend to get more spiritual warfare counter attacks than the average believer. This comes in various forms. One form is that the enemy will work harder to tempt them and cause them to fall into some besetting sin. One form is that there will be attacks against their family, against their relationships with spouse and children. One form is that the enemy will try to attack them in the area of their health. And another form is that the enemy will try to attack them in the area of their finances.
Does this mean that pastors should cower in fear, afraid to do anything for fear of upsetting the devil? Of course not. The God they serve is much more powerful than the devil. But they do need to put on their Eph. 6 spiritual armor on a daily basis. They do need to exercise wisdom. They need to guard their own personal relation with the Lord, and not allow business to keep them away from spending quality time with God. They need to set apart time for their own family and give their spouse and children a priority in their lives. They need to exercise common sense, such as a male pastor not making a house call by himself to a woman member of the congregation who is known to have the "hots" for him. In addition to that, a pastor should have adequate prayer covering. This can take the form of a team of intercessors, or of a few members and elders who are committed to pray for their pastor on a regular basis.
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