Being a Young Pastor (Part 5)

Maintain office hours and be approachable. There are fewer things that put me off more than an aloof and unapproachable pastor. One way to remain approachable for your congregation is to keep office hours. Most churches provide adequate studies for their pastors. Make good use of your study and be available by phone, for personal visits, or a spontaneous “hello.” My study door is almost always open and I enjoy people sticking their head in and saying hello.

Each person is a little bit different in this area. My day off is Friday. My wife and I have a “date day” for breakfast outside at the beach, and we take a long walk every Friday morning simply to be together. This means I get in early on Monday morning and I have a written schedule of what I’ll be doing every day. Thursday is sermon-making day and no one gets through to me except my family, my elders, or a bona fide emergency. No interruptions on Thursday!

Source: "To the Young Pastor" by Ron Gleason

Being a Young Pastor (Part 4)

Manage your time to the glory of God. This is a crucial, essential component of the pastor’s life and calling. Far too many pastors waste precious time performing ever-nebulous “networking.” Time, once spent, cannot be regained. Therefore, how we use our time matters greatly. Since we are accountable to God, pastors should have an exemplary work ethic. Among other tasks, the pastor must make time for theological study and keeping his use of Greek and Hebrew, he must be fully conversant with the contents of Scripture, taking the requisite time for sermon preparation and delivery, and setting aside time for prayer and reading the Bible devotionally for himself and for his own instruction and edification.

The pastor must also lead his own home well. This requires a disciplined life. He pays attention to his marriage and the spiritual instruction of his entire family. He is a good friend and neighbor. He builds solid relationships with his session and deacons, and other church members who serve in various other leadership positions.

Source: "To the Young Pastor" by Ron Gleason

Being a Young Pastor (Part 3)

A faithful pastor takes worship seriously. For Christians, how we worship God is a key consideration. To worship God rightly means to worship Him scripturally. The pastor and his congregation must pay careful attention to what God requires in His Word. If God’s people are to worship Him in spirit and in truth — and they are — then we must look to Scripture both to form and inform our worship style. By using the ordinary means of grace God has given us, worship gives the opportunity to preach the Word, sing the Word, pray the Word, and read the Word. True worship is Christ-centered and Word-centered.

Source: "To the Young Pastor" by Dr. Ron Gleason

Being a Young Pastor (Part 2)

Manage your time to the glory of God. This is a crucial, essential component of the pastor’s life and calling. Far too many pastors waste precious time performing ever-nebulous “networking.” Time, once spent, cannot be regained. Therefore, how we use our time matters greatly. Since we are accountable to God, pastors should have an exemplary work ethic. Among other tasks, the pastor must make time for theological study and keeping his use of Greek and Hebrew, he must be fully conversant with the contents of Scripture, taking the requisite time for sermon preparation and delivery, and setting aside time for prayer and reading the Bible devotionally for himself and for his own instruction and edification.

The pastor must also lead his own home well. This requires a disciplined life. He pays attention to his marriage and the spiritual instruction of his entire family. He is a good friend and neighbor. He builds solid relationships with his session and deacons, and other church members who serve in various other leadership positions.

Source: "To the Young Pastor" by Dr. Ron Gleason

Being a Young Pastor (Part 1)

If you care to read my blog, I want to forewarn you that my next several posts will be mostly self-focused, yet done in an ecclesiastically-relevant and biblical manner.

I recently came across a short online article entitled "To the Young Pastor" by Dr. Ron Gleason (Grace Presbyterian Church and rongleason.org) from Ligonier Ministries and it summarizes the faithful pastor that I both should strive to be and long to be. So, if you are reading this, I covet your intercessory prayers. Please pray for me that I will be the type of pastor that Dr. Gleason describes in his article, which I will be posting in my blog part by part.

First, a pastor must...

Preach expository sermons from both the Old and New Testaments. The preacher’s foremost task is to preach the Gospel. Many voices in Christianity today tempt us to forget this. They encourage us to do what will attract the unsaved. Nevertheless, the pastor is primarily called to proclaim the riches of Christ through the preaching of the Word and the clear exposition of Scripture. In this manner, he both equips the saints and prepares them to present the true, pure Gospel to the lost. Expository preaching has three decided advantages for any pastor: First, it takes the congregation through a book of the Bible so that they are able to observe and understand the various covenantal themes contained in it. Second, this type of “series” preaching protects the congregation from the pastor’s “hobby horses.” Therefore, rather than preaching on a number of his favorite topics, he is bound by the text to preach and teach the variety of doctrines found in the Word of God. Moreover, in the history of preaching it has been this expository approach that has proven to be the most spiritually beneficial to God’s covenant communities. Third, this will solve the problem for the younger pastor of choosing a text every week. Being guided by the text and your exegesis, you know what you’re preaching on next week.

Be Strong and Courageous

Wow! My goodness! The video you see above is absolutely powerful. It's a sermon entitled "The Call to Courage" by Crawford Loritts from the 2008 Desiring God Conference for Pastors. It's over sixty minutes of pure passion and conviction and unction. There is never a dull moment and frankly, there are times when it's so convicting that you might be tempted to turn in off. If you are a pastor, I beg you to listen to it for the sake of being a better pastor. If you have a pastor, I beg you to listen to it to better understand the pressure he is under. Long? Yes! Worth the time? Oh Yes! Spiritually beneficial? Absolutely yes! You can't find the time? Yes you can! Listen to it while you're exercising. Listen to half today and the other half tomorrow. Sacrifice your favorite TV show or ESPN Sportscenter or internet browsing or a day's worth of Facebook time and just listen. It's that good! One of the best that I've heard all year! Super-highly recommended!

To download Click Here.

Warning Regarding Legalism

"It is quite possible that the gospel is preached in the life of the church, but the Christian congregation does not make the connection between that gospel and their own lives. One of the hallmarks of an assumed gospel in an evangelical church is that the gospel is regarded as being for the outsiders, the non-Christians who ever so rarely slip into one of the services. When we limit the gospel in this way to unbelievers we begin to adopt extra ways of relating to God and to others, and they all fall under the label of legalism. This is the opposite of the gospel of grace—striving to be acceptable first of all to God and then to others by keeping rules and by outward behavior. Churches at the Reformed or conservative end of the spectrum can be especially prone to their own set of extra rules: what we wear on a Sunday, how many services we attend, the version of the Bible and the hymnbook that we use, what must happen at which point in the service, whether we keep the pews or the organs. Churches like this are often only a generation away from extinction and from denying the gospel by losing sight of its primacy."

-David Gibson, “Assumed Evangelicalism” in Modern Reformation, Vol.16, No.5, Sep/Oct 2007

When It Ain't Biblically Cool to be Culturally Cool

Another great read from Fide-O regarding cultural relevance at the price of biblical infidelity: Read it Here! (Note: I especially appreciate his observation on pride and it subtle relation to "coolness").