The trophy that is presented to the winners of the Super Bowl in the National Football League is called the Lombardi trophy, named after the legendary Vince Lombardi of the Green Bay Packers. He transformed his team, helping them win five NFL championships—including the first two super bowls and ten winning seasons. What made him legendary was his emphasis on the fundamentals, conditioning and intense preparation. It was said that he began spring practice by saying, “Gentlemen, this is a football and then proceed to focus on the basics”.
Years ago, Jack Whitesell, a church consultant, shared an encouraging word with me as a young minister in the gospel. It is not how long you have been in ministry that matters but the kinds of experiences that you have. There are people who have been in the ministry for years, but their experiences are limited. Then there are those who have been in ministry for a shorter period of time and have diverse experiences which have caused them to grow from them. Warren Wiersbe and Howard Sugden in their book on ‘Confident Pastoral Leadership,’ explain that “someone can say that they have been in the ministry for 15 years but has one year’s experience—fifteen times.”[i]
There is so much to learn pastoring a church. I have had the privilege to be in pastoral ministry since 1982 as a youth, executive and lead pastor. I’ve been involved in two church plants and have been in my current church for 38 years as the lead pastor.
While preparing for the ministry at Seattle Bible College, we were assigned a term paper dealing with a broad range of subjects of which I wrote on the biblical responsibilities of a pastor. It was from that study that I eventually decided to model my own pastoral ministry after the greatest pastor that ever lived: namely Jesus.
Leading like Jesus will prove to be very effective in impacting and influencing the lives of those God calls us to serve. In over four decades of pastoral ministry, I have read extensively in the area of leadership all of which have been insightful and helpful, but there is no better model of leadership and pastoral ministry that can be found than following Jesus as our example.
I want to briefly mention three key points regarding how Jesus went about the work of ministry and what his charge was to the disciples just before leaving them responsible for shepherding his flock.
- THE FIRST KEY POINT HOW JESUS WENT ABOUT DOING PASTORAL WORK HAS TO DO WITH CALLING
Jesus called disciples to follow him. We notice from the gospels that Jesus did something vastly different than what the other rabbis or the Greek teachers in antiquity did in the lives of their followers. At that time, followers chose who they would embrace as their teacher. Jesus, however, did the very opposite. He chose who he would develop as his followers in ministry and chose some of these followers to develop into the leadership of the church. He did this by waiting upon his Father for whom he was to choose.
Jesus went up on a mountainside and called to him those he wanted, and they came to him. He appointed twelve that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons. These are the twelve he appointed:[ii]
Luke tells us the magnitude of this key decision as Jesus spent the night in prayer determining whom he would select.
One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles:[iii]
Two very simple ideas come to mind in Jesus’ selection.
- The first idea is simply the concept of calling. Am I called to do this ministry?
We notice the importance of calling even in the life of Jesus, which is pattern for each of us.
- Jesus in his baptism was affirmed by the Father.
Therefore, Jesus knew who he was, and it was out of a place of affirmation that he began his ministry.
When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.’[iv]
We are not in ministry to receive God’s affirmation; rather we begin effective ministry from that affirmation of God’s choice in calling us. We certainly did not choose this vocation, rather God directed us into this calling or vocation. God does not choose us because we are worthy, rather God makes us worthy, by cleansing us, empowering us to the task and assignment that he is giving us.
It was immediately after this that the Holy Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness, where he was tempted by the devil. And what was the temptation? If you are the Son of God, this is a temptation dealing with identity. We need to be secure in our identity in order to serve from a place of acceptance and rest.
- Secondly, Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit.
Our ministry must be done in the power of the Spirit because apart from God’s presence in our lives, we are powerless. (John 15:5)
While all believers need both to know their identity in Christ and be filled with the Spirit are the necessary requirements to be spiritually effective. The work of ministry is too demanding and difficult for a man [person] to enter it without a sense of divine calling. …How do we know we are called? For some there is a crisis experience: Moses at the burning bush…but for most there is simply that inescapable conviction that God has his hand upon us.[v]
Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! If I preach voluntarily, I have a reward; if not voluntarily, I am simply discharging the trust committed to me.[vi]
The person who is called has this inner conviction which will not permit them to invest their lives in any other vocation. Along with this there is the possession of the gifts and qualifications that God requires for His workmen (1 Tim. 3:1-7 and Titus 1:5-9).[vii]
Not everyone is called to leadership in the church, though all believers are called to ministry. One of the primary tasks of church leaders is to equip or prepare the saints to do the ministry.
So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.[viii]
The mobilization of people in serving is part of their own personal growth and the enrichment and development of the church as a whole.
After studying leadership for over four decades and reading many definitions regarding leadership, I’ve concluded that leaders have the ability to do ministry through people. Those who are unable to accomplish ministry by recruiting, developing, and releasing others to do ministry may not be leaders. We know that is exactly what Jesus did. In the feeding of the multitudes, Jesus blessed the loaves and fishes by distributing them through the disciples. Jesus delegated ministry to his leadership core to release them to greater responsibility in the future.
That does not mean that if people do not have a leadership gift, that they are not valuable. All God’s people are called to do ministry, which is simply to serve. We need many hands to build the work of God. The hard work of leadership is training others to do ministry. This is parenting and requires great love and patience with people.
- Leaders begin by recruiting other leaders with God’s help through prayer.
Who is God selecting? Here we have to be careful. Sometimes the people God is choosing for a role of leadership my not always be obvious to us. We see this in the selection of David as King. Even his own father did not see David as a leader and when Samuel showed up to anoint one of his sons, David was out tending sheep.
Yet, we realize that selecting the right people is critical for the work and growth of the church. The people that are needed must embrace a biblical perspective, and have a humble, teachable spirit.
We should pause here and state that who we choose to work with us in our ministry context, need to be God’s choices. Who we choose will either enhance the ministry or diminish it. If you were to ask me about the most challenging aspect of ministry as our church has grown, I would unequivocally state that staffing empowers or detracts from the ministry. So, having prayed, how do we select the right people? We have already looked at Jesus’ approach to selecting leaders, which is prayerfully, carefully recognizing that character is the critical component of biblical leadership.
- The absolute critical foundation for godly and effective ministry is character.
You can train people, but the basic building block of a biblical and fruitful ministry is the character of the leader. You can only model what leadership looks like based upon your life. Character is the foundation upon which biblical leadership is needed. (1 Timothy 3:1-7)
Regarding the issue of competence, you can only develop what God has already wired into a person’s life. Years ago, a former Olympian gave his life to Christ in our church family and took his newfound faith like an Olympian in training. One day he shared an insight that has been an encouragement to me in the development of others. One of his Olympic coaches told him that you can only bring out of a person what is already innately within them. In other words, we cannot make someone more than what God has put within them. Every one of us has limitations. It was Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, who explained that different people have different capacities.
Moses listened to his father-in-law and did everything he said. He chose capable men from all Israel and made them leaders of the people, officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens. They served as judges for the people at all times. The difficult cases they brought to Moses, but the simple ones they decided themselves.[ix]
As a leader, I can only expect their best. One of the things I discovered is that as a leader, I set the pace. One of the deep convictions that I came to was that I needed to continue to grow as a person, and as a leader. To preach the word of God and call for change, which is the nature of repentance, the people ought to see that very thing happening in my life. I need to be modeling it before them. Paul had the audacity to say to the Corinthians that they ought to follow his example, as he was following the example of Christ. (1 Cor. 11:1).
It is interesting to look over the qualifications of an overseer/bishop of a church and find that most of the qualifications are dealing with character issues.
- THE SECOND KEY POINT OF HOW JESUS WENT ABOUT DOING PASTORAL WORK IS THE ISSUE OF FUNCTION
What should a pastoral leader be focused on as of primary importance? Here we see insight into the very nature of pastoral ministry in the restoration of Peter.
When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?’ ‘Yes, Lord,’ he said, ‘you know that I love you.’ Jesus said, ‘Feed my lambs.’ Again Jesus said, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ He answered, ‘Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.’ Jesus said, ‘Take care of my sheep.’ The third time he said to him, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ He said, ‘Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said, ‘Feed my sheep.’[x]
This has been a passage where we may have focused on the wrong emphasis. We often see in the text that Jesus’ usage of the word love and Peter’s response is different in the Greek. However, this is not the issue as John uses these two terms interchangeably.
But that is not the end of the matter. Three times Jesus asks the same question. When Peter is particularly grieved (v. 17), it is not because Jesus has changed verbs, but because the same question is being asked for the third time. As he had disowned Jesus three times, so Jesus requires this elementary yet profound confession three times. There is no trace of self-righteousness in Peter’s response. He can only appeal to the fact that the Lord knows everything, and therefore knows Peter’s heart: Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you. And that is enough. Lest there be any doubt that Peter is fully restored to future service, Jesus again commands, Feed my lambs. This ministry ‘is described in verbs, not nouns: Tend, feed, not Be a pastor, hold the office of pastor. And the sheep are Christ’s sheep, not Peter’s. Not, Tend your flock, but Tend my sheep’ (Barrett, Essays, pp. 165–166). That Peter fulfilled the terms of the service required of him receives its best attestation in 1 Peter (esp. 5:1–4).[xi]
One of the greatest expressions of love toward God is the manner in which we love and treat others. Do we love the people whom God loves? Do we love those whom God has entrusted to our care? Do we watch over their souls, praying for them, instructing them, and correcting them when necessary in a loving manner?
Jared Wilson shares in ‘Portraits of a Pastor,’
Here is an outline of the pastoral mandate:
1. Shepherds feed the sheep.
2. Shepherds love the Lamb.
3. Shepherds trust the Good Shepherd.
Our tendency to delineate between pastors and good pastors results, at least in part, from confusing position with vocation. We hand out the title ‘pastor’ as if it may be divorced from the biblical expectations of shepherding. But my conviction, not born out of this passage alone but out of the greater biblical instruction on the pastoral office, is that these descriptions are the irreducible minimum of the pastoral vocation.If you do not feed the sheep, love the Lamb, and trust the Good Shepherd, you are not a shepherd.This, then, serves as the great pastoral commission, and it centers not on building a large ministry or casting a large vision. The central pastoral commission centers on our point number one: shepherds feed the sheep.[xii]
So, what should we be communicating with the sheep? Simply the message of the Father. Jesus focused on communicating the Father’s message and doing the Father’s will. “I only say what the Father wants me to say. (John 5:19, 12:49-50)”. This should be the aim of preaching and teaching. This requires spending time in prayer and studying the word of God. This is part of feeding and tending (caring) for God’s people. We need to learn to handle God’s word correctly. Paul in instructing Timothy in his pastoral letter communicates the necessity of interpreting biblical texts correctly.
Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth. Avoid godless chatter, because those who indulge in it will become more and more ungodly. Their teaching will spread like gangrene.[xiii]
One of the temptations in public communications is trying to connect with the audience through anecdotes and humor, but the minister of the gospel is simply God’s messenger to explain and apply Scripture to the lives of the people. Often in ordination services we are commissioned with this biblical charge to ‘preach the word.’
In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.[xiv]
- THE THIRD KEY POINT OF HOW JESUS WENT ABOUT DOING PASTORAL WORK IS HIS FOCUS ON THREE SPHERES OF MINISTRY
Jesus knew that he was leaving soon and had a strategic plan for the development of the future leaders of his church. A. B. Bruce in his book ‘The Training of the Twelve,’ challenges the reader with the fact that the gospels only focus on 33-34 days in the life and ministry of Jesus. This leads into the premise of his book, by answering that Jesus was simply training the twelve. Leadership development is one of the most strategic things we can do in the development of the work of God.
So, here are the three things that I learned from Jesus in the strategic approach to focus and time.
A. The training of leaders, twelve/seventy, is that we need to mentor and focus on training the leaders in our churches. In our particular, in church we have equipping areas to train leaders, but also to give them sound doctrinal and biblical foundations from the Scriptures. We have adult classes that teach and explain things that include: the spiritual disciplines, leadership principles from the book of Nehemiah, how to interpret and communicate the bible, and bible theology classes.
B. Another aspect of Jesus’ ministry was his communication to the multitudes. I equate this to the public preaching ministry in the church. I would argue that if at all possible, work on becoming an expositor of the word of God. People need to have the bible explained to them.
C. Personal interviews with people–meeting with your people to give them spiritual direction and guidance for their lives. This will help the leader to apply Scriptures to the human condition. We need to learn how to make the Scriptures applicable to the times and challenges people are facing in their daily lives.
Shepherds smell like sheep because they are involved in the lives of the people they are called to care for. Years ago, I read that throughout the gospel accounts there were twenty-seven personal interviews with Jesus. In the ancient Roman world, people had the right to appeal to Caesar with their concerns. We need to allow people into our lives if we will impact and influence them.
Ultimately, being faithful to God’s call will produce eternal results. We may wonder if what we are doing at times is making a difference but let me assure you that we don’t always know how significant our ministry really is. I love the story of Edward Kimball, who was teaching teenage boys in Boston. He felt a deep conviction that he needed to find out the true spiritual condition of these emerging young men in his Sunday School class, so he visited each of them either in their home or at their place of employment. One of them was a young man by the name of D. L. Moody, which Kimball had the joy to lead to Christ. Moody became the foremost evangelist in the 19th Century and one of those who came forward at one of his crusades was a man by the name of Mordecai Ham. He also preached a crusade in a small North Carolina community where Billy Graham received Christ. I don’t need to remind us of his influence in the 20th century. Remember, it all started with a Sunday school teacher reaching a few teenage boys years before that led to an amazing domino effect. As Paul reminded the Corinthians, may we also not lose heart and give up.
Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.[xv]
https://pixabay.com/photos/sheep-shepherd-young-man-portrait-5605251
[i] Warren Wiersbe and Howard Sugden, ‘Confident Pastoral Leadership, (Chicago, Il: Moody Press, 1981), 8.
[ii] Mark 3:13-16a, The New International Version of the Bible, Zondervan, 2011.
[iii] Luke 6:12-13.
[iv] Luke 3:21-22.
[v] Warren Wiersbe and Howard Sugden, ‘Confident Pastoral Leadership, 9.
[vi] 1 Corinthians 9:16-17.
[vii] Warren Wiersbe and Howard Sugden, ‘Confident Pastoral Leadership, 9.
[viii] Ephesians 4:11-16.
[ix] Exodus 18:24-26.
[x] John 2:15-17.
[xi] D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John, (Inter-Varsity Press, 1991), 678.
[xii] Jared Wilson, Portraits of a pastor: the 9 essential roles of a church leader, (Moody Publishers, 2017), 17-18.
[xiii] 2 Timothy 2:15-16.
[xiv] 2 Timothy 4:1-5.
[xv] 1 Corinthians 15:58.
