Video Transcript: Intangibles that Matter

If you really don't want to, when you're asking someone to listen to you or come to your church, you really believe it or not asking them to follow you. Now, Theologically, we understand that we follow Christ, and they're really following Christ. But what we're doing is we're really pointing them to Christ. But in a sense, they are following your lead, because you are, as the Bible calls that a pastor, a leader, a church planter, a trust has been given to you. So as you think about leading people within their seven connections of existence, you're a leader. And there's some intangible necessary key issues that must be dealt with. 

The first one is we have got as pastors and leaders to have a humility about ourselves, it see ourselves, honestly, we don't need to hide from God's transforming glory. If there's you know, sometimes you'll have people who are in the pastorate. And there's everybody knows something about them. And there's like this elephant in the room. But this person is unteachable, this pastor is unteachable in this area. Now on one level, no one's gonna be perfect, there will probably be at least little elephants in the room, just because we're human. But as a pastor, we want to sort of like, you'll get the big elephant, at least in the room out of the room, you follow what I'm saying. And it's interesting in 2 Corinthians 3:16, a very interesting passage. But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away, the Lord of spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we who with unveiled faces, all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into His likeness to ever increasing glory, which comes from Lord, who is the spirit, this passage is sort of pointing back to the passage of Moses after receives the law. And after he receives the law, his face is really shining. But after a while, the face wasn't shining anymore. So Moses put a veil over his face. And he kept the veil on there, because it sort of gave the impression that God is really near him, and he wanted to sort of give the, you know, illusions, so to speak. And whether it was something he intention-ed did or not, you know, I don't want to get into that. But there was sort of, this is how leaders often struggle is like, we really want people to realize that we are from God, where the pastor and everything like that, but what happens, we can sometimes put veils over things in our life, where we want to sort of not have people see us, or we don't want to see ourselves honestly. But this passage, Paul says, take the veil away, be who you are, but be walking with the Lord, see yourself honesty, honestly, see yourself in such a way that is actually blessing yourself and others. Don't get into the pride thing, where basically, you sort of want to give an illusion of what does a pastor do? Be transparent, and be honest. I want to say this, I'm not talking like, you know, constantly talking about dirty laundry, constantly, blah, blah, blah, and about, you know, I'm just saying, in your heart of hearts, don't go down the trap of thinking that you have to sort of give some impression. You have to please people a certain way, have that honesty, this is an intangible that when pastors don't give this that really comes back and hurts them. And seeing yourself honestly understand, that we are all prone to pride and prejudice in our sinful nature, and we are all crackpots. And then as clear, it is clear that God would get all the glory in our sanctification and we see that in 2 Corinthians 4, 7 and 10 that we have this treasure in earthen vessels and the excellently prove that things are of God and not of ourselves. So this is an intangible, but it's so crucial to being a pastor. It's so crucial that our egos that our pride does not get ahead of ourselves that somehow or other we think we are more than we are, we are always crackpots we always need God As grace, we are always growing, he gets all the glory, it does not come on how great and wise and thoughtful we are. As a pastor, remember, we get out of the way of God's work, we don't do the work. I'm gonna say that again. We are humility, we get out of way when God is working through us, we are the vehicles of God's work and he gets all the glory.

Love. You know, as a pastor, if you have trouble with love. You know a pastor has to be able to love the person that just gossiped about them. Three hours earlier, and you heard about it. The pastor is called to be very forgiving the pastor, and here's why it's so important. Okay, so the person gossiped about you. Okay? How do you minister to that person? Well, there's two ways to look at it. In church and ministry class we got to make sure we think about this talk about if somebody treats you gossipy be like, that means they are treating the rest of their family, and their work associates and other people probably the same way. If somebody yells at you, they're yelling at their spouse, if someone treats you poorly, they're treating other people poorly. Now, what if you have that biblical love, this is an opportunity to minister that an opportunity to better if they're doing that to you, that means they're doing to everybody else. And you know what, they've just been transparent with you, you know what they need, and in love, you can give what they need, that they can be helped. Front of much affliction. In English, at heart I wrote you, these many, ahm! with many tears, nothing it should be grieved, that you might know, the love for which are more abundantly give unto you, see that, in the end of the day. What's awesome about being a pastor is that you get persecuted, you actually get stronger.

If you take the bait and become mad or bitter, or if you think about it, and you, because there will be your distractive. There will be people in ministry who won't like you, they will hate you, there will be things that you do that's not, that didn't quite work out the way you hope for and then somebody responds with great bitterness and you've got to love them. And then when they persecute you, you bless them. That biblical love is very important. So transparency, a biblical love. You have to be okay with accountability. It's okay to have other strong people in your lives. We need pastors, elders, deacons, mentors, men, women, as the body of Christ to help us see the truth about ourselves, and to encourage us to live a life worthy of the name. 

So okay, I'll give some examples of this. Okay. A pastoral care issue comes before us, a church and ministry issue come before us. A conflict comes before us, oh, we could go ahead and do it alone. Or we can find those trusted leaders that together, who are awesome, mad at by motivated by balance and love that together, we might do the work of ministry, in church. Don't I tell you, it's really dangerous for a pastor to just go out there on a limb alone. Now you're gonna get you know, when you first start out, you won't know what issues you need accountability and encouragement on some of that year and a half some failures, Uuu! I said talk’s to somebody Uuu! I'm going to talk more to person in the next time. I'll give you some examples. When you really, if you hear somebody says, you know, I'm thinking about suicide pastor, you know what? Whatever you think of it's not going to happen, it's going to happen in and I know we're going to talk about this later in the class as well. That's something to talk to another elder. Get out and get some help with that. Don't just hold that in. Or if there's an affair happening, you know, it's okay to say to the person, the the husband or wife, the offended party or whatever, you know, I'm listening to all this. Is it okay? If I consult with somebody else concerning you? Now, if they say no, they say no. But in confidentiality, those types of things can be very helpful. Because what you're doing is you are in ministry, you are not saying that you know everything. Now again, I understand each situation is different and you're gonna learn when you can share something when you can't. An elders, you know, an elders meet there. There's confidentiality in that room. I guess my point In this whole section is that don't be the alone ranger, that does not work. And when Satan knows that you are a lone ranger, it seems like the attacks are even more persistent to get that independent streak of yours, that isolation streak. That's it that's an area where Satan will attack it relentlessly. And have you just sort of out to dry? You know, as, as I think about these intangibles, and there are probably many more, we are called to be servants. So the ego stays on the back burner. We are called to love, love when we're persecuted. We are called to be accountability. And these are just intangibles in church and ministry. So as you're thinking about this, think about how the calling of God in your life to be God's servant is the motivating factor for your ministry