Video Transcript: The Pastor's Responsibilities

 Welcome to Session seven of practical ministry skills. This is Chapter Six of the  pastoring, the nuts and bolts book, The pastor's responsibility. And I mentioned  in the first section that I was going to be recording nine of these in one day, so I  managed to get through that yesterday, but I think I by the end of it, I may have  strained my voice a little bit, so I'm going to be speaking more quietly now we've 

raised the mic level. I hope you can hear it and keep praying for me to to get  through this, because I'm having a lot of fun. Praise the Lord. I hope you are too  our key verse, once again, one we've seen before. These are the gifts Christ  gave to the church, the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists and the pastors  and teachers, their responsibility. That's what we're talking about in this session.  Their responsibility is to equip God's people to do his work and build up the  church, the Body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in  our faith and knowledge of God's son that we will be mature in the Lord  measuring up to the full and complete standards of Christ. Ephesians 4:11-13.  So notice, let's go back there and see if I can talk to you from it. Also notice the  order there the pastor or minister, Apostle, prophet, evangelist, teacher, the  minister, the worker for the Lord, equips the people. The people are the ones  who do the work, and as the people do the work, the church is built up. Now, if  you think about the church, not as a building, there is that element of we are the  temple of the Lord, and so adding the living stones on builds it up in in that word  picture. But if you look at another word picture that the Bible uses the church as  the body of Christ, and you think about doing exercise and building up your  muscles as the people do the work. As the people work, they are built up more  come into it. The Church is built up and built up. The word is edified, and comes  from not only building an edifice, but has also come to have the meaning of  growing intellectually or growing in knowledge or wisdom, or maturing. So as we teach and train our people to do the work, and as they do it, they are built up.  The whole church is built up, and they become mature in the Lord. And it doesn't stop, until when this will continue, until we all come to such unity in our faith and  knowledge of God's son that will be mature in the Lord. And how do you know, if  you're mature in the Lord, you measure up to the full and complete standard of  Christ? So if you become just like Jesus, you've got it. And then you can stop.  As long as there's one person in your church, or within reach of your church,  who is not just exactly like Jesus, then the work of the church needs to go on.  So that's what you call job security, because that's not going to happen anytime  soon. So, and as we've seen before, I paraphrase this down to equip God's  people to do God's work until they resemble God's Son. What was Jesus focus? It was not building a big church in numbers of people. It wasn't getting a big  following. It was having people who could carry on his work without him, not  having people who were dependent on him to be there and do everything for  them and spoon feed them, but to create, to develop, to train a body of people  who could carry on his work after he went back to heaven. He knew that was 

going to happen. They didn't know that was going to happen yet, but he knew,  and in the same way, you need, as a church leader, to be equipping your people to carry on without you, because who knows what might happen to you. The  Lord may call you someplace else. The Lord may call you home. Now I want to  look at a passage that we all should know by heart, but so many of us miss a  part of it. So let's look at, look at this, the Great Commission, Matthew 28:19-20  go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the  Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Teach these new disciples all the  commands I have given you. Look at that carefully. Is that the way that Jesus  said it, a lot of people will miss something. There is a missing phrase in there  that I think is incredibly important, and yet a lot of our church activity goes right  on as if what you're looking at on the screen right now is what Jesus said,  totally ignoring the missing phrase. So what is the missing phrase? Here's how  Jesus said it, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the  name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Teach these new disciples to  obey the commands I have given you. He didn't just say, teach them the  commands. He said, Teach them to obey the commands. And that doesn't mean you better do it, or else, it means teach them how show them how to do this  stuff. Jesus spent three years showing his followers how to do things. They  watched him do it, and then he sent them out two by two to do it, and then,  knowing that he was getting ready to go away, to go back to heaven, then he  told them to make new followers and show them how to do the same things  Jesus taught them to do. We looked at that already in the the four stroke engine  Philip going to Samaria, the people who were scattered didn't know what to do,  so they did what they had seen the apostles do, which was what they had seen  Jesus do, and then they taught others to do that, and it's passed on down  through the ages to us. But it's not just enough to know the commandments you  have to show your people how to do them. So that kind of summarizes your job  looking now as the Minister of a ministry, pastor of a church, leader of  motorcycle ministry, whatever it might be, whatever your kind of ministry, prison  chaplaincy, whatever your ministry might be, but particularly in this case, pastor  of a church or somebody helping that, your job breaks down into another  number of areas. The first one is one that I believe is most important, and yet an awful lot of us never even seem to think about, and that is to minister to God in  praise and worship, minister to God. We usually think of ministry as something  that we do for people who are in some kind of need, and God is not in any kind  of a need, but we need to minister to God in praise and worship, because that's  what the Bible says, that the first Christians and the first Christian leaders did  Acts 13 described the leaders of the church being in a prayer meeting in  Antioch, and I've had the privilege of being in the cave where that prayer  meeting probably happened. It's just an amazing thing. While they were  ministering to the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, set apart for me, 

Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them. But notice they  were ministering to the Lord, and notice this is from the New American Standard Bible. This is not a dynamic equivalence translation that tries to make it take the  meaning and make it easy to understand. This is one of the word for word  translations. They were ministering to the Lord. The word, the original Greek  word, is leitourgeo, which means to serve, to minister in public or to lead  worship. They were doing this to the Lord. It's part of the priestly function of the  church, and now sometimes, depending on your background, you may wonder,  What the do priests have to do with the modern day Christian church? Well, the  the church, of course, there are denominations. They call their pastors priests,  but the the Bible says now that we are all priests, that was one of the bedrocks  of the Protestant Reformation, is the priesthood of all believers. We are all called to be priests. The Bible says so, if every Christian is called to be a priest,  certainly the Christian leaders, the ministers, the pastors, are called to be  priests. And what is a priestly function? A part of that was ministering to God.  And you know, the priests offered the sacrifices and took care of the tabernacle  and so on, whether or not there was anybody else there? Because remember  what we said about worship? God is the only one in the audience, and as long  as the audience is there, you put the show on, not that it's a show, but God is  there, and we minister to him. So your number one job, even if nobody else is  there is to minister to God. Now that doesn't mean if you have a snowstorm and  nobody can get to church and you get there, and it doesn't mean you have to  run through the whole service and preach your sermon and everything to an  empty building, because God already knows all of that. But you minister to God  in some other kind of a way The point is not doing a church service for him. The  point is serving God, offering yourself to God, worshiping God, ministering to  God. And it is in that time when, when I realize I've had this up there the whole  time. That's when the Holy Spirit said, set apart for me, Barnabas and Saul for  the work to which I have called them. It's in the ministering to God very often  that you will hear him, because that is your second responsibility, is to hear from  God. Now we've already talked about how everybody in the church, every  Christian, should be able to hear from God, but they don't all know how that's a  big part of your job, as we'll get down to it is, is to train them, to help them learn  how to hear from God. But until they can, you need to be hearing from God so  that you can pass it on. And you need to be hearing from God more than that,  not for them, but you need to be hearing from God for yourself. How God wants  you to carry out his ministry to the people, his ministry to the church. So you  minister to God in praise and worship. You hear from God what he wants to tell  you, and then you bring that message to the church, bring God's message to the church. And because God is love, God's message is always going to be a  message of love. Now that doesn't always mean it's going to be a feel good  message. It could be a justice message. It could be a call to repentance. If a 

parent loves a child and the child is doing something wrong, the parent displays  that love through correction and discipline, and sometimes that's the way that  God wants to bring His message of love, but it is always your responsibility to  demonstrate God's message, bring God's message, and also make sure that  people understand that even if it is something they don't want to hear, it's still  coming from God's heart of love for them. The other side of it is to turn around  and bring the needs of the church to God. So it's kind of like, again, this is the  old image of the priest standing between God and the people to. Bring God's  message to the people and the people's needs to God. And since we're all  Christians, we are not, in that sense, as leaders, or since all Christians are  priests, we're not in as leaders, in that sense, in between the people and God  anymore. And we'll be getting to that a little bit more. You're not in between  them, but still, that is part of the function that we all have as Christians, but  especially as Christian leaders, is to bring the needs of the church, bring the  needs of the people, back to God. In other words, pray for your folks. Pray for  them. Let remind God of the of the needs. And I don't need to go into a whole  big thing about what prayer is here, but that's a big part of your responsibility,  and it's something that your people will be counting on you to do. I, in my  ministry, have many times been humbled by the faith that the people in the  church had in my prayers for them. So you need to be doing that. There's  another important part of your responsibility, and it may be the first one that  comes to most people's minds, and that is, lead the church. Lead the church.  You are a not a specialized person. Set in between. There's nothing necessarily  special about you as a pastor, as a minister, but God has put you in that role.  Somebody has to lead. Leading just means going first, figuring out the way to  go, and saying, Come on, let's go this way. And if you called into ministry, you  are called to a leadership position. So lead the church. That doesn't necessarily  mean always sit back and take a survey and take a poll and see what seems  popular. Sometimes you need to lead in a place where people don't want to go.  If we go back to the image of the shepherd leading the flock, sometimes, as the  grass had gotten all eaten down to the ground, the shepherd would have to lead the flock over a rocky mountain pass to another pasture that had not yet been  eaten down and had the nice green grass and the still waters and everything but getting There over that rocky pass was something the sheep didn't enjoy, and  given their choice, they would have just stayed there and kept trying to eat the  nubs of the grass down into the mud. But the shepherd had to lead them, and so leading is a skill. There's an awful lot to the skills of leading, but that's one of  your jobs, too. Is to lead the church. Another important job, of course, is to  introduce people to Jesus now, primarily as pastor, teacher, Minister, unless you  are in the role of evangelist, your job is to equip the people to do that.  Shepherds don't have sheep. Sheep. Have sheep. Sheep are the ones that  have baby sheep, not shepherds. But so train people to do that, but you also 

need to be very equipped to do that. I always made a point in my ministry to  include an invitation to faith at the end of every service, and I used wedding,  prewedding counseling as an opportunity to speak to people and much more  

personally and probably At least as many people came to the Lord in my  ministry through prewedding counseling as anything else. So counseling is part  of your job, preWedding, Marriage counseling, grief counseling, all kinds of  counseling, helping people and again, that's different from maybe secular  therapy kind of thing. There's a there's a good place for that. That's great. I was  not trained as a therapist or psychologist or anything. My understanding of my  job as counseling was to help people see the biblical perspective of their  situation. And I also was very careful to recognize if something was beyond my  skills, beyond my level of expertise, and to send them to somebody, an addiction counselor or something like that. I know sometimes, on rare occasions, I was  able to help people through addictions, once with a deliverance ministry and  various things like that that were pretty cool, but that wasn't where God had  called me. And so if something comes to you, that is not where God has called  you and you know somebody else who's much better, don't hesitate to refer  them over to the person God has equipped to help them visit. Part of your  responsibility is to visit people in their homes. Visit your members in their  homes. Visit them when they're sick or in the hospital, visit them in the prisons, if any of your people wind up in prison, or if any of your people's relatives wind up  in prison, they can be very open to the Gospel in a situation like that. You also  need to be aware of the tape and be very good at faking it in the hopes of  getting some favors from the prisoner, getting you to work on their behalf, but  visiting, and when you're visiting, make sure that you follow the rules that you  respect the authorities, take appropriate sanitary care. If you're visiting  somebody that's sick, all of those kinds of things. A big part of your job is to help  people learn to hear Jesus for themselves. Because think about it. I'm going to  get to this later in more detail. But when I was asking the Lord to show me a  vision for the church, what, what was his vision for the church, I was expecting,  you know, big building or new ministries or something, all that I get the Lord to  show me was a walk sign. People walking. I said, Lord, what is going on here?  What is this all about? And I realized the Lord was saying that his vision, what  he wanted me to do, was to teach people to walk, teach people to walk the walk, and we'll be getting to that. But another part of that is to teach them to walk for  themselves. Because if we talk about the church as the body of Christ, Jesus is  the head. God has put our bodies together such that the head doesn't have to  consciously tell the body each individual motion. Say, I wanted to take a drink of  this water here. What if my head had to consciously tell and direct each motion? Move, hand, forward, close, fingers. Lift, move toward face, adjust, tilt, stick and  mouth. I'd never get anything done. And what about all the things we never think about, like breathing and digesting and so on. Every part of our body is 

connected directly to our mind in such a way that all the directions don't have to  come to our conscious mind. But if I say, I want a drink, my mind formulates that  thought, and my body knows all the things to do to make that happen. The  church should be the same way. Every individual person in your ministry should  know how to hear God, so that when God tells the ministry what the ministry  wants to do, then every person automatically knows what to do to make that  happen. So help people to learn to hear Jesus for themselves. It's a learned  thing, just like a baby learns to walk, and when they fall down, you don't give up  on them and say, Oh, you're hopeless. You'll never learn this. What's the matter  with you? You pick them up, you help them, you encourage them, and they learn again. So help people learn to hear Jesus for themselves, and then help them  do what Jesus is leading them to do. Help them figure out the plan work with  them if they are like this. I mentioned before the illiteracy program or the literacy  program, I should say, teaching adults to read this was a new thing we didn't  have any any plans or processes or policies in place, and so I had to work with  Debbie to put this together, to figure out, all right, how are we going to do it?  When are we going to do it? How are we going to advertise it? Where will it  happen? What will be any safeguards that that may be needed, you know,  whatever. How are we going to know? Is it going to need any money, all of this  kind of thing? So help them do it. Help them get it together. Provide the  planning, the resources, the support, some oversight, but then set them free to  do it. Set them free. Don't micromanage. Don't stand over their shoulder. I never went to a single one of those literacy programs because I trusted Debbie, and  we had worked out the process, and she came back to me and told me, as  things were going on. And then if, if you do, however, find that something is not  going right correct as necessary, we looked at that in a previous passage. Want  to say very quickly, four things that are not your job. Number one, it is not your  job to make everybody happy. Pastors, ministers, church people, Christians in  general, are nice folks, and they want people to be happy, but you're never  going to make everybody happy. It's a popcorn dispenser in the front of the  church. As people come in, and the one Deacon is saying to the other, I still say  the new pastor is trying too hard to please everyone now popcorn may or may  not be a part of your church program, but the point there is, it's not your job to  make everybody happy. Jesus couldn't make everybody happy. At one point, he  had 5000 people listening to him, and then he started saying some things that  they were uncomfortable with and and a lot of them went away. Jesus couldn't  even make his 12 apostles happy. Judas was not was so unhappy with Jesus  that He betrayed him. So it's not your job to make everybody happy. Second, it's not your job to tell people what to do. It may be your job to tell them if you think  they're doing something wrong, something dangerous, something sinful,  something eternally dangerous to them, but it is not your job to tell them every  detail of their lives. As we said, it's your job to help them learn how to hear God 

tell them those things. It's not your job to do everything again. It's it doesn't say  the pastors do the church or the work or the work of the church. The ministers  do the work of the church. It's the ministers equipped the people to do the work  of the church. So it is not your responsibility to knock on every door and invite  every person to church, get some, get your people doing that. It's not your  responsibility to, I don't know to visit everybody in the hospital? If you have a  number of different people in the hospital, send a number of different church  people to go visit them, and you need to train your people that they have been  visited, even if it's a church member and not the pastor. I had people that didn't  want anybody else from the church except me, and that was that was just  feeding their own sense of self importance that didn't have anything to do with  the value of the church. So it's not your job to do everything, and I wish I didn't  have to say this last one, but it is not your job to be served. In some cultures, it  seems like pastor. And should I say some church cultures, not some ethnic  cultures, some types of churches in almost any country, anywhere there would  be the idea that the pastor is this big, illustrious person, and everybody else has  to kowtow and serve them and take care of them and honor them and so on.  And we should respect our leaders, of course, but that's something people  should give you voluntarily, if they want to. It's not something you can demand.  Jesus said, the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give  his life for many we're out of time. I'll see you next time