Tag Archives: ministers

We need more ministers. We need fewer ministers.

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moppingI think the church needs more ministers. I also think that the church needs fewer “ministers.”

That is, I’m convinced that the church needs fewer men whose goal is to lead the church, who want titles like “senior minister” or “senior pastor,” who want power and authority.

I’m equally convinced that we need men who remember that the word translated “minister” in the New Testament is the word diakonos, which means servant. We need men who are called to serve the church, to minister to her in the true sense of the word.

It’s interesting to note that the Bible teaches more about what it is to be a follower than it does what it is to be a leader. It tells us to serve and to not “lord it over.” Much of what is said about leadership is negative, what a leader shouldn’t do or be.

When we focus on service, leadership will naturally grow out of that. When we focus on leadership, service often gets left by the wayside.

To those on staff at a church, I give you this reminder: you weren’t called to lead the church, at least not primarily. You were called to serve it. Even those called to be pastors must remember that a pastor’s ability to guide the sheep grows out of his ability to serve the sheep.

Image taken from MorgueFile.com

Love Not The World

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As I mentioned yesterday, I’m speaking this weekend at the National Preachers & Leaders Conference in Daytona Beach, Florida. It’s a gathering of leaders of Hispanic churches and others involved with outreach in Spanish. I’m really honored to get to speak. Besides the three classes I mentioned yesterday, I was also asked to give a keynote address.

The overall theme of the conference is love. My assigned topic for that talk is “Love Not The World.” I was encouraged to make the talk especially applicable to church leaders.

I was sorely tempted to do some of my presentations on citizenship and what it means to be strangers and aliens. But that doesn’t seem to fit the context of 1 John 2, which is the passage that was given to me along with the title. 1 John 2 is talking about the desires of the world: flesh, eyes, pride of life. I decided to be true to the text and discuss that topic.

I first want to use John 17 to demonstrate that “love not the world” isn’t talking about trashing the planet or even hating the people around us. “The world,” in much of John’s writings, refers to those who don’t follow God. It’s the idea of being “in the world but not of the world.”

From there, I’ll look at the three types of temptations John mentions. I’ll relate them to the temptation of Eve (saw fruit was good for food, was beautiful to look at, was to be desired to make one wise) and the temptation of Jesus (tempted with bread, “shown” the nations of the world, tempted to throw himself from the top of the temple).

From there I’ll steal something that Trey Morgan tweeted once, about the three G’s that plague preachers: girls, gold, glory. I’ll offer some practical advice that others have shared with me.

One thing that I want to impress on these guys is that reasonable safeguards are not enough. We’ve got to be willing to be unreasonably careful in these areas. I’ll use the example of civic planning. When considering the necessary zoning rules for floods, engineers can’t just think about a typical year’s rainfall. They have to be ready for the 100-year flood, that once-a-century storm that can wash everything away. In the same way, we can’t rely on measures that work 95% of the time. We need to be extreme in our care. (And no, I don’t expect everyone to agree, especially the younger guys who haven’t seen as many people fall)

Those are my thoughts for sharing on Saturday. But there’s still time to sway me! What modifications or additions would you suggest regarding this topic?

Who are the shepherds of the church?

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Since several of my readers are preachers (or have played one on TV), I feel the need to speak to the role preachers play in people leaving a given congregation. Preachers have always had an influential role in our brotherhood; there has been a conscious effort over the last few decades to give them even more power. For the record, I’m against it.

It reminds me a bit of the situation of Israel in the days of Samuel. “We want a king like all the nations around us.” We want to make our preachers pastors, senior pastors! This will help us to be like the churches around us. Just as it was a terrible idea back then, it’s a terrible idea today.

It’s interesting to me that about the time the business world moved away from the “Lone Ranger at the top” model, churches decided that was the way to go. Businesses moved to collaborative leadership; churches moved away.

I support the elder model, where the elders lead. Ideally, the ministers provide biblical teaching, helping the pastors to feed the flock. But the elders remain the ones responsible for the congregation.

A big reason for this has to do with tenure. Preachers come and go. There are exceptions, but by and large, preachers are at a congregation for a relatively short amount of time in the history of that congregation. A healthy congregation will have continuity in the eldership, consistently raising up new men to serve alongside those who are already there.

I remember one congregation that I love that went through a rough time back in the 1980s. A minister came in (associate minister) and pushed for the congregation to create a detailed vision statement. This led to months of committee meetings, with almost everyone in the congregation stating their opinion as to where the church should be going. Discussions became heated and hard feelings were created. Finally, a vision statement was created. I don’t know that the ink was dry on that statement before the minister that started the whole process had taken another job. What he left behind was the heartache and strained relationships.

I’ll say a bit more tomorrow about the role of preachers in congregational dissatisfaction. But for now, I’d like to hear your thoughts on elder-led congregations versus minister-led congregations.