Video Transcript: Becoming a Pastor

Welcome to lecture nine of the practical skills ministry course. Practical ministry  skills, whatever you want to call it, we are moving into part two of the book  pastoring, the nuts and bolts. The first part, we've been talking about God's  purpose for the church. Now we're moving into being a pastor, and this section,  part two, more specifically deals with the pastor definition I talked about in the  very first introductory course, as the person who's in charge of a church. But  again, those who are not filling that role currently, you may in the future, if you  never do it, will help you learn how to support and encourage your pastor. And  there is an awful lot in this that applies to other kinds of ministry roles, kingdom,  ministry roles, all kinds of things that God can call us to do all of these things  apply to a wide role I'm just giving, using pastor as the example, more or less, if  you will, as we go through these things. So let's start with our key verse, or I  didn't say the heading of this lecture. This is about becoming a pastor, how you  become the person in charge of a church? Again, a lot of it, especially about  calling and training and so on, relates to any other kind of ministry role that God  may call you into our key verse is Isaiah 68 Isaiah is writing about his vision of  heaven, and he says, Then I heard the Lord asking, whom should I send as a  messenger to this, people who will go for us. And I think it's interesting that  Isaiah jumps in here because God didn't say, oh, there's that person. I'm going  to choose him, which he apparently did in some places there's Saul. I'm going to knock him off, knock him off his donkey and change his name to Paul and send  him. Now, I think there's a whole lot more behind that. I personally think that  Saul witnessing the martyrdom of who I have reason to believe that I'm not  going to take the time to go into a friend, a former friend and colleague, Stephen and watching him die, talking about Jesus, and Saul seeing that. And I imagine  that Saul was praying and asking God, show me. You know, maybe he was  having second thoughts and so on before God appeared to him on the  Damascus Road. But regardless, in this verse, God is saying, Who's Who can I  get to do this for me? Who can I find? And Isaiah goes on. He says, I've said,  Here I am, send me. God needs people in every area of ministry, including being in charge of a church, including all other kinds of ministries, and in all of them,  we could imagine God saying, Who can I get to do this job? Who can I get to  work in this office? Who will carry my light in my presence. Who can I get to  work on this construction crew? Who can I get to serve in this army company  who will carry my light and my presence? Who can I get to be the mother of  these children who will carry my light in my presence, and we all have the  opportunity to say, I'm here. Send me. As I said, today we're looking specifically  at pastor, and it's a fascinating word when you get into the Greek and. It's  something called a hapax legomenon. And every now and then I have to throw  out some big, fancy word like that, just to show you that I've been educated a  hapax legomenon is a word that appears only one time in the New Testament.  So the only time in the New Testament that the word pastor shows up is in that 

list of the five fold offices that we've looked at before, Apostle, prophet,  evangelist, pastor and teacher. In the middle of the list with no definition, almost  no context, it's strange that that is the word that we have chosen to describe  such a common role in the church. But anyway, there it is. The word comes from the meaning or from it has meanings coming from the word of shepherd or elder or overseer and we can gain from all of those. And of course, the Bible does  have a lot to say about church leaders of various kinds using various different  words to describe them, and we'll be looking at some of those things. But there's just I wanted to start with that interesting fact about it, the word itself only  appears that one place. So God's calling me to be a pastor, and I want to be the  best pastor I can be. I want to be a success. I want God to be glad he called me  to be a pastor. Well, what does it mean to be a success as a pastor. We already  looked at the fact that it doesn't necessarily mean a big church. It doesn't  necessarily mean becoming famous. It means, as we looked at before, that your people are becoming more like Jesus. But it also means this. It means the same thing that success in any other calling means, and that is doing what God wants  you to do, you in that specific role in that specific calling, even if it looks like  nothing else that anybody else is doing, if God is calling you to faithfully pastor a church with six people in it, and you do that, then you're a success. So what  does it take to be a pastor? There's some basic requirements. Back at the  beginning, I quoted the saying, if you can do anything else, than become a  pastor, do that other thing, because it's such hard work, it's so demanding, and it is. There are some real requirements. In order to be a successful pastor, you  need to, first and foremost, you need to love God. That doesn't mean thump,  thump, a heart a feeling. God doesn't command us to have feelings, that's a  whole other area, but you need to set your heart and your mind and your soul  and your strength on loving God. Now first, of course, that presupposes that you believe in God, that you've become a Christian, that you put your faith in God  but once you do that, if you if you feel called, possibly to be a pastor, first you  need to love God, because God is the one you're going to be working for. God is the one you're going to be relying on. God is the one that you are giving your life for. But along with that first and great commandment to love God, is the second  commandment that's like unto it, and that is Love your neighbor as yourself and  so in order to be a success as a Christian, even more so to be a success as a  pastor, you have to love people. You have to love people. If you are thinking,  Oh, I love God, and I love reading the Bible, and I just want to spend all my time  diving into the Bible and learning theology and learning all the Greek and all of  this kind of stuff, and shut up in my in my office, getting close to God, or I want  to spend all my time going off and just gazing and contemplating and in prayer  and not have to bother with people. Maybe you should be a teacher, or maybe  you should be a monk or a nun, but you shouldn't be a pastor, because  pastoring, working in a church, ministering. Of almost any kind. The word 

minister comes from the root that means to serve. And there is an element of  serving God, absolutely, but there is also the major part of serving people, being  around people, working with people. You have to love people. And you know  what we like to think, oh, wouldn't it be great to be around wonderful, mature  Christian people all the time? What a wonderful ministry, what a wonderful life  that would be. Well, guess what? If that's what you're looking for, don't be a  pastor, because if you're a good pastor, you're bringing brand new people into  the church all the time. People are coming to know the Lord. They're being born  again, and we already talked about their baby Christians and babies are messy.  It takes a while for a baby Christian to grow into maturity. It takes a while for  them to shed the old worldly ways. Some of them never do. Some of them stay  self centered and control freaks and complainers through 30 or 40 years of  sitting in the pews in a church. And if you're a pastor, you're going to be around  some of those people. You have to love people in spite of themselves. I saw a  cartoon once, if you're familiar with Charlie Brown, there's a character in it called Linus. He's a little kid, and he says, there's one line that I love in this one  cartoon. He says, I love mankind. It's people I can't stand. You can't if you're  going to be a pastor, you can't just love humankind as an anonymous mass. You have to love the individuals, the people you have to deal with, individual people.  You have to love people going along with that is the next requirement, and that  is humility. God loves people who don't think they have it all together, who  recognize that they don't have it all together, who recognize they can't do it all by themselves. And humility is something that if you don't have it sometimes, being  a pastor will bring it. There's a story of the old Deacon that was praying, and he  said, Lord, he was praying for the pastor. He says, Lord, you keep our pastor  faithful, and we'll keep him humble. You need to be humble. You need to be  teachable. You need to be open to all kinds of things that might happen. You  need to be ready to unclog the toilet in the church. You need to be ready to do  all kinds of stuff. You need to be humble and you need to be called by God. You  need to be called by God. You can't just decide, oh, I think that would be a good  career. I think I'll do that. I'll try that. It's doesn't look physically demanding.  People give you money. Sounds great. Well, it's not going to work. You cannot  be a good pastor if you're not called by God. You could be a bad pastor. You  could be a fake pastor. You could be doing it all for yourself. Get rich quick  pastor. But you cannot be a godly pastor. You cannot be any kind of a success  in God's eyes without being called by God. And if you're setting yourself up and  claiming the implication is, I'm a pastor, that implies that you're called by God  and you're not then you're lying about God, and that's a very dangerous place to be. Now, let me say this. There are some denominations, some groups, some  ways of reading and understanding the Bible that excludes certain people from  being pastors based on what I believe is a wrong interpretation of the Bible. Now obviously other godly, educated Christians interpret these passages differently, 

and we talked before about how to deal with that, we'll find out who was right  when we get to heaven. Here on Earth, I can work with people who believe  these things. I'm going to mention two in particular, two exclusions. They say  God doesn't allow these kind of people to be pastors. I think they're wrong. I can work with them. I can be colleagues. We can cooperate in all kinds of things, but I could not be part of their denomination. I couldn't lend my name to that  teaching. But that doesn't mean that we can't work together, and as I say, we'll  find out when we get to heaven. And please note that when I'm when I say this,  I'm not ignoring or explaining away Bible teachings that say things that I don't  want to hear. These are practical applications of some principles for interpreting  scriptures that we'll be talking about in detail later. But here are the two. There  are denominations and organizations and ways of reading the Bible that say that women should not be pastors. They base this on a couple of verses coming  from one author, the apostle Paul in one particular setting, historical, cultural,  socio economic setting, where Paul basically says, and again, the word pastor  never appears, except in that one time in the list, so He doesn't say, I don't let  people be pastors. And one he says, I don't let women teach. And then if you go  on down further, what he means is he doesn't let them teach adult men. And  then another one, he says, I don't let women talk in church. And when you look  into that in the context, it could easily mean I don't let them interrupt. I don't let  them you've got the men sitting on this side and the women sitting on this side.  And I don't let a woman over here who, because of her culture, has not been  allowed to be educated. I don't allow in the middle of the sermon for her to say,  hey, Harry, what does that mean? So don't talk in church. It's possible to explain  those things that way. But I think a more important thing is there are many  examples in the Bible of God using women leaders earlier in I Corinthians, that  same book, where he says, I don't let women talk in church. He describes what  women should wear when they do talk in church. He says they wish to have  something on their head when they prophesy. So I understand the Bible given  the narrow verses and the possible other understandings of the verses that  seem to prohibit it, and the fact that there are counter examples in the Bible, as  well as through church history. I understand that women can serve in any  capacity, in a church leadership or whatever. The second exclusion is, some  exclude divorced people from being pastors. Now for me, if the divorce  happened before the person became a Christian, then that doesn't count at all.  They're born again. Anything that happened before they were born again doesn't count because now they're a new creature. In Christ, second, I understand the  passages in I Corinthians, I think it's seven that where Paul talks about the  believers not bound in such a case, and so on, to say that if a an unbelieving  spouse, or even a somebody who claims to be a believing spouse, if they leave,  and the good Christian person couldn't do anything about it, didn't have any  legal recourse, because the laws in their state or their country allows anybody to

divorce anybody for any Reason, and they they couldn't do anything about it. I  understand what I read there in I Corinthians to say, that's all right, then they're  not bound. It's not their fault. I don't see divorce as being any worse than any  other sin. I mean, in I Corinthians, also, Paul talks about a case of a much worse sin, somebody who's sleeping with his mother in law. And in II Corinth, he says,  Yeah, condemn them, you know, bring them up. Discipline him for that. But in II  Corinthians, he talks about, okay. He's repented, he's over it. Bring him back. So I would not have a problem with that exclusion. How do you prepare to be a  pastor? Well, I think there are a number of things you need to do. One is training in what they call practical theology, practical ministry skills, how to do church  courses like this, mentoring, apprenticing, becoming an assistant pastor to  somebody else, watching and learning. You need to know how to do the  practical day to day stuff, but you also need to know something about as much  as you can learn about the Bible, yet you really need to know this is what you  stand on. You know this is what you're explaining to people. So learn all you can about the Bible. Never stop learning. Learn about theology and church history.  You may never talk about theology in church history, but it's important to know it, because that's how you catch innocent mistakes before they create a problem.  Somebody in in one year Bible studies or in a Sunday school class or  something, reads a Bible verse And they say, Well, I don't quite understand this.  You know all this trinity stuff about God being three and one at the same time,  maybe sometimes he's the father and sometimes he's the son, and sometimes  he's the Holy Spirit. And sounds reasonable, and let's, let's go with that. If you  have been trained in theology and church history, then you will recognize that  that is a problem that the early church recognized to be enough of a problem  that they called it a heresy, a false teaching. And so you can nip that in the bud,  and you can you can recognize it. If you don't recognize that, then it can lead  people off into all kinds of other problems. Now that's different from differences  of theological opinion. And again, you need the training to understand the  difference between a Calvinist person versus versus an Arminian understanding  of free will and preservation predestination, free will and predestination and how  they fit together. I had a New Testament professor, by the way, that told us free  will and predestination are like the two sides of a roof. They come together  someplace, but it's over my head, it's too much for me to understand, because  there are Bible verses that seem to support both views, and we just need to,  instead of saying the Bible contradicts itself, we say, okay, how do I understand  it? To recognize that God doesn't contradict himself. These are both truth. So  you need training Bible theology and church history. You need to keep learning  all your life. Ordination, I believe, is a very important thing, because what  ordination does is it means that a group of people who presumably know  enough to be in this position have looked at you. They have checked out your  training, your Bible understanding, they have made sure that you are equipped 

and ready to be turned loose on an unsuspecting congregation, and that you  won't lead them off the cliff. They are willing to put their names on them and say, we stand behind this person, and ideally, they should also be equipped, if  necessary, to say, Oh, my goodness, we thought this person had it right, but  they're making this mistake, and we have the ability and the authority to come in and correct That mistake, and even maybe if, if the person refuses the  correction to remove them from being a pastor, or at least to remove their their  approval from it. So that's what ordination is about. It's a way of protecting the  church, basically the congregation. So you go through all this, how do you get a  church to serve? Well, in some denominations, you're appointed by a bishop. In  some denominations, you're hired by the congregation. Or you can go plant your own church and become the pastor in charge of that. There are biblical support  or all of them. There's historical Support for all of them, great churches, great  pastors work in all of those areas. I want to close this out with just a lighter note,  pastoral selection committee. This is obviously a church where they hire a  pastor, and they they call pastors, they set up, they give an advertisement, we're looking for a pastor. And the guy on the left says, top interview, the pastor on the right is coming out from this Inquisition chamber. Now, most churches are not  going to do that to you, but sometimes they can feel that way. Some churches  wait and don't treat you that way until after they've got you as their pastor, and  we'll be talking about that later. But anyway, and I wish I was joking about that,  but I had too much experience to know that's not always a joke. We'll be getting  into all of that. If God is calling you, God will equip you. God will provide for you.  God will get you through it. Talk to you next time