Your Pastor Is a Gift From God (And You're Probably Wasting Him)

Most church members only go to their pastor when things have completely fallen apart. But the Bible says your pastor isn't a last resort — he's a gift of God's grace placed in your life to help you follow Jesus. In this episode, Cam unpacks what Scripture actually says about the role of a pastor and why availing yourself of that gift might be one of the most underrated things you can do for your walk with Christ.

Transcript

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I want to briefly talk about the beauty and privilege of the role and function of a pastor elder in the life of a local church. At my church, I have the privilege right now of preaching through the book of Colossians. And one of my favorite New Testament passages and just my understanding of a philosophy of ministry is Paul's words in Colossians chapter 1, 28, and verses 28 to 29, where he says this, we proclaim him, warning and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ. I labor for this, striving with his strength that works powerfully in me. This has been one of my favorite passages for a few reasons, but Paul says a quite a bit in just two verses. So in those verses, Paul makes it clear, you know, hey, in my ministry as an apostle, as I as I'm a minister of the gospel, which has been entrusted to me, it's not my own message, it's a message entrusted to me. My role and function as an as an apostle and ambassador of the gospel has been entrusted to me. I'm not preaching my own message, but rather as a faithful shepherd, I am preaching him, preaching Christ and him crucified. One of the privileges of serving in the life of a local church as an under-shepherd in Christ's church is to recognize, man, we have the privilege of not preaching our own message and not preaching ourselves or trying to build ourselves up as some kind of hero. We're trying to simply preach Christ. Another way to think of it is like in a sermon on a Sunday gathering, a pastor is almost like putting their hand on the chin of their members and trying to lift their gaze upwards to behold the glory and transcendence of Jesus, which Paul does a wonderful job in chapters, chapter one of Colossians 15 through 20, of just breaking out into a hymn almost of describing just all the different facets of God's, I'm sorry, of Christ and his transcendence and his glory, his supremacy, of how he is the ruler and sustainer and creator of all things and all things exist for him and by him and through him. But getting back to my my earlier comment about the beauty of the role and function of a shepherd in Christ's church, I often say Jesus Christ is the senior pastor of every church. A pastor is an under-shepherd seeking to help his people make it to heaven. And it is a joy and a privilege. As a matter of fact, the scriptures say, especially in the book of Ephesians specifically, that pastors, deacons, evangelists, like they are gifts to the local church. So here's here's what blows me away. So think about this. When God in his wisdom created the institution of the family and the church, he said, these institutions exist by my creation, therefore, God owns the intellectual rights to those institutions. But he also describes throughout the Bible what is the purpose of these institutions and how they are to benefit his people. So think about this. In God's wisdom, he decided to create this institution of the church. And within that institution are all of these structures that he put in place to help you flourish in your walk with Jesus, to enjoy the fullness of God's love for you and to benefit from all the means of his grace. And one of those means of grace is pastors. The Bible says that pastors are a gift to a church. And so, with that being said, I would just throw out there to you, church members, are you availing yourself of the gift of God's grace towards you, which is one of those gifts, is your pastors. Now, here's what I mean by that. Often church members will go to their pastors as a last resort. If their marriage is struggling, if they're having disciplinary issues with their kids, if they're wrestling with depression, if you know the workplace has been really hard and they're struggling financially, whatever it may be, whatever, whatever sufferings of life that enter into your spear and cause heartache, sometimes church members will wait to go to their pastors until it's like a last resort. It's like, I've tried this, I've tried that, and now I'm at, I'm at the point of no return. Pastor, will you meet with me? And praise God. Every faithful shepherd will step up to the plate and seek to minister to their flock in those situations. But why not avail yourself of the gift of your pastors way earlier in that process, recognizing, wait a minute, God in his grace has placed these people in my life to help me follow Jesus. Therefore, if I find myself at a crossroads where I'm struggling to follow the Lord, then I can go to these individuals who God has uh by his divine grace and wisdom placed in my life to help me follow him. I I think that's a real struggle. For instance, you know, I tease people in my own church who sometimes, you know, when they reach out to me, maybe they'll start the conversation with, you know, uh, Pastor Cam, like, I know you got a lot on your plate, so I'll be quick, or I'm sorry to bother you, or you know, I know you got a lot going on right now. And I try to correct them and say, hey, hold on. Like, when it comes to pastoral ministry, like it's people work. Like you are my ministry. I am, I have been entrusted with the the pastors I serve with. I have been entrusted with a flock who I am to shepherd zealously to the glory of God. It is, I find my joy in promoting the joy of the Lord in the hearts of my people. And so you're never a burden. You are the ministry. It brings me joy to help you follow Jesus and to watch the Holy Spirit do a work in your life and to see the light bulb click when you realize, wow, like Jesus is changing me. He's doing a redemptive work, or you fall deeper in love with Jesus, and then I get excited and start cheering for you and saying, Yes, this is this is the ministry. This is discipleship. This is why I love Colossians 1, 28. Paul is very clear like, my chief aim in ministry is to present everyone mature in Christ. And here's what I love about his word choice there. He doesn't say like there's a tiered system in the church, and you know, I'm gonna focus on the first tier Christians, the solid Navy SEAL type church members, the ones who have the most potential. I'm trying to present them mature in Christ because they're gonna do a whole lot of ministry in the church to help me out. No, he says, I am seeking to present everyone mature in Christ. No one is left out, there's no exemptions. Everyone, whether you're the new believer who's been walking with Jesus for less than a year, whether you're the Christian who's been uh a follower of Christ for 30 plus years, Paul says, No, we are trying to present everyone mature in Christ. I often tell people at our church, you know, our one of our goals is we're trying to help people make it to heaven. Whether you're an unbeliever and we're evangelizing you and we hope to see you come to faith in Christ and baptize you into the church, or whether you are born again and you're faithfully following Christ, the goal is we're trying to help you make it to heaven. And I love how Paul says to present everyone mature in Christ. Like there's there's no specifics there. He doesn't give a specific program, but he does say the content is Jesus, we are preaching Christ, but he gives a twofold aspect to his ministry, admonishing and teaching. He says, warning and teaching everyone with all wisdom. So that's important. So as a faithful shepherd in Christ Church, we should strive to both teach and admonish. Admonish is to warn, it is to correct, it is to confront sin and concerns that you might have in your people. But that doesn't mean as a jerk with your Bible as if you're a hammer looking for a nail. Even when we admonish, it comes from a posture of love, of care, of wanting to help people be conformed into the image of Jesus. But he also says teaching through the public ministry of the word and the private or personal ministry of the word, we teach people God's word. We bring God's word to God's people and God's people to God's word, which means as pastors, as under-shepherds, we're never preaching our own message. We are trying to help give people the full counsel of God so they know God's will for their lives. There's uh a joke out there about, you know, topical sermons in which a pastor says, you know, I have a great sermon. I just need a verse to go with it. That is that is the opposite of what we should be doing. The goal should be I want to get my people's attention in this book and to help them look at the text, explain to them here's what it says, here's what it means by what it says, and here's what you should do or stop doing, believe and stop doing in light of what it says, and let the Holy Spirit do the sanctifying work in the hearts of his people. So this is a privilege. And here's here's here's another privilege of ministry. I love Paul's language in verse 29. I labor for this, striving with his strength that works powerfully in me. Similarly, he compares himself to the other apostles. He says, Hey, I worked harder than all of those guys, yet it wasn't me, but it was the power of Christ in me. So as a as a faithful under-shepherd in Christ's church, it is a privilege, a privilege to labor for the spiritual flourishing of your people as best as you can, as hard as you can, but not in your own strength, not by your own means, not by your own wisdom, but you do it through the power of Christ who is working in you because ultimately you're doing all this for him, anyways. This is the beauty of pastoral ministry, which, you know, there's some sobering reminders here for those who have the privilege of serving as under-shepherds in Christ's church. The message is not our own. We are not hired speakers, right? We don't give TED talks on Sundays. We are commissioned messengers. We are ambassadors for Christ, imploring others to be reconciled to the Father through the crosswork of Jesus Christ. The calling of a pastor is not our calling. It's God providentially calling us through, you know, a local church. The message we proclaim is not our own. Therefore, we don't have the rights to water down God's word, to skip over the hard things. We want to give people the full counsel of God so that they know their God, so that they know themselves, they know the gospel, and that they're growing more and more into the image of Jesus Christ. And we recognize, hey, our congregation, our people are not a means to a greater end, meaning we don't serve this flock in order to build a platform to do other bigger or better things, but rather, no, no, no, no, our people, they are the ministry. I love how Timothy Whitmer in his book on pastoral ministry uh summarizes, you know, what is fundamentally a pastor expected to do, it's called to do and accountable to God for, and that is to feed, lead, protect, and know his sheep. A pastor fundamentally is to feed his sheep, know his sheep, lead his sheep, and protect his sheep. That is the privilege of pastoral ministry. A hired speaker is not committed to the congregation, he doesn't care for the congregation, he's there to deliver a spiritualized TED talk and then dip and move on to the next thing or build a platform. But a shepherd identifies with the sheep. A shepherd, a shepherd feeds the sheep God's word to help them grow in competency and conviction. A shepherd protects the sheep from false teachers, from wolves who will lead them astray, or the philosophies of of man based on human tradition that can lead people into false teaching that that makes them wander away from the gospel and the Jesus who saved them. And so, all that to say, pastoral ministry is is such a privilege, and every pastor is a shepherd. This should be fundamental for everyone. It should go without saying a pastor is a shepherd. We live in a day and age where sadly there are many pastors who are convinced, well, I'm not, you know, it's not my gift to counsel and care for people. And so we refer out for all that stuff. Or, you know, I just preach and I let my my associate pastors do all the shepherding and pastoral care stuff. Man, what a sad, a sad indictment on the church when that happens. What what a missed opportunity for those pastors who I believe are missing out on the joy of being able to open your Bible and walk alongside a church member who is hurting, who has a broken marriage or a sin struggle, and to be able to shepherd them, to care for, to be a physician of the soul, right? To exercise church-centered soul care, to watch the Holy Spirit before your eyes conform someone into the image of Jesus and to know that it was nothing of your own doing, but rather you simply made yourself available as an instrument in the Redeemer's hands to promote holiness in the lives of the people in your church. Why would any pastor rob themselves of the joy of such a ministry opportunity where you get to build trust and develop love and relational capital with your people because they know how much you care about them? And so, all that to say, man, I love pastoral ministry. Pastors are some of my favorite people in the world because it is such a privileged role to reflect Christ to your people and to help them look like their savior. And so, with all that being said, man, be encouraged if you're in the ministry. And if you're not a pastor, that's fine. If you're a church member, I would encourage you to avail yourself of the gift of your pastors. Don't look to them as, you know, I just show up on Sunday and let them preach at me, and that's about it. No, obey them, submit to their leadership. If you're in a healthy church, if you have men who see themselves as under-shepherds and they truly are striving to shepherd the flock of God among them zealously, and they recognize that this is not my congregation. This is Jesus' church, whom he purchased with his own blood, and my job is to help them make it to heaven. Well, then avail yourself of such shepherds. Let them lead you, let them feed you God's word, let them get to know you and protect you from false teaching, because I promise you, according to the Bible, they are a means of God's kindness and love and grace towards you to help you flourish in your walk with Him. And you are a source of blessing to your local church pastor and helping him pursue intimacy with Christ and godliness and to be encouraged in the faith. There's a mutual, edifying relationship in the life of a healthy local church in which a pastor understands what his role is according to scripture, and when church members understand their role according to scripture and are seeking to mutually serve one another and exalt the gospel and the glory of Jesus Christ. Hopefully, this was helpful. If it was, I would encourage you to share it with somebody else who might benefit and subscribe so you stay so you stay up to date with future episodes. Until next time, God bless.