Leadership
A Pastorally Wise Approach to Mother’s Day
Mother’s Day, while a blessed celebration for many, is a painful reminder to those struggling with infertility, with the loss of children or mothers, with wayward children, etc. Today in church, our current church placed the following text in the bulletins to show love for all women on Mother’s Day. As Christians, we must recognize the importance of not only what we are saying, but what we’re unintentionally saying as well.
Our Mothers
To those who gave birth this year to their first child–we celebrate with you
To those who lost a child this year–we mourn with you
To those who are in the trenches with little ones every day and wear the badge of food stains–we appreciate you
To those who experience loss this year through miscarriage, failed adoptions, or running away–we mourn with you
To those who walk the hard path of infertility, fraught with pokes, prods, tears, and disappointment–we walk with you. Forgive us when we say foolish things. We don’t mean to make this harder than it is.
To those who are foster moms, mentor moms, and spiritual moms–we need you
To those who have warm and close relationships with your child–we celebrate with you.
To those who have disappointment, heart ache, and distance with your children–we sit with you
To those who lost their mothers this year–we grove with you
To those who experienced abuse at the hands of your own mother–we acknowledge your experience
To those who lived through driving tests, medical tests, and the overall testing of motherhood–we are better for having you in our midst
To those who will have emptier nest in the upcoming year–we grieve and rejoice with you
And to those who are pregnant with new life, both expected and surprising–we anticipate with you
This Mother’s Day, we walk with you.
Mothering is not for the faint of heart and we have real warriors in our midst. We remember you.
Pastor or Minister?
Is the person up front every Sunday morning a pastor? Or are they a minister? Does it make a difference? To most people, it probably doesn’t make a difference. Maybe it shouldn’t. But I want to take a few paragraphs to explain my personal conviction of why those who are up front each week (and others who are involved in pastoral ministry) should be called pastors rather than ministers.
As I’ve mentioned a few times on this blog, I’m currently working through the book of Ephesians. At one point in this beautiful book, Paul writes,
And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son ofGod, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.
Eph. 4:11-14
In this passage, Paul is referring to gifts that God has given his church. And contrary to most ‘spiritual gifts’ passages, the gifts in view here are offices within the church. Without getting into the debates about the current existence of apostles (there aren’t any), prophets (no comment), and evangelists (definitely), I want to focus only on the final two (or one) office: shepherds and teachers (or shepherd-teahcers). This is akin to the modern-day office of pastor in the church. And that’s the term that is used here: shepherd, or pastor.
It is significant that Paul doesn’t refer to this office as a ‘minister’ but rather a shepherd for two primary reasons.
First, the term shepherd or pastor more accurately describes what the pastor does. The biblical image of a shepherd is one that is used throughout Scripture for the leaders of God’s people. In the Old Testament, Israel’s leaders (both secular and spiritual) were referred to as shepherds (cf. Ezek. 34 for a nasty indictment of Israel’s leadership). This term is used in the New Testament as well for those who guide God’s people spiritually under the direction of Jesus himself (cf. 1 Peter 5).
Second, and more importantly, it is significant that Paul uses this term because of what comes next. In v. 12, Paul describes why God has given these gifts to the church: to equip the saints for the work of the ministry. Why is it important to not call pastors ‘ministers’? Because all of God’s people are ministers. We are all involved in the work of the ministry, not just those who are up front on Sunday mornings. When we refer to pastors as ‘ministers,’ we are implicitly stating that the work of ministry is only done by a select few, and that the recipients of this ministry are those who attend the church. But that’s not the case at all! All Christians by definition are involved in ministry; pastors are there to guide and shepherd and equip those who do the actual ministry–to one another, and to those in their communities. This does not mean that pastors aren’t involved in ministry; no, as God’s people they too should be involved in ministry; but that ministry is done in addition to or as a part of their ministry of equipping the saints.
Before people object, I want to make it clear that this is a bit of an overstatement. I realize that this is much more of a ‘cultural’ or ‘traditional’ thing (neither of which is bad) rather than a theological thing. It is my personal conviction that the implications of what we call those in vocational ministry are significant enough to be intentional in our choice of words, but I also don’t think that people are necessarily wrong when they call a ‘pastor’ a ‘minister.’ I would encourage a thoughtful reflection on the theological language that one is using, and that those who refer to their pastors as ‘ministers’ prayerfully consider calling them ‘pastor’.
Faithfulness in Ministry
At the beginning of his volume The Hardest Sermons You’ll Ever Have to Preach, Bryan Chappell writes what is given below. It is a helpful reminder to the pastor that service of God, while difficult and oftentimes unrewarding, does not go unnoticed by God. A word of encouragement:
To
faithful pastors
I have had the privilege of teaching
and encouraging for more than three decades.
By your lives and ministries
God’s people have known
the love, comfort, and strength of Jesus Christ
in times of tragedy.
Your ministry as Christ’s ambassadors
amidst affliction and pain
is victory beyond words, treasure beyond measure,
and grace most precious.
Hope still blooms in darkness
because you were there with the light of the gospel.
I thank God upon every remembrance of you.
Though the world despises your office or discounts your care,
your loyalty to your calling and devotion to your Savior
is recorded in heaven and honored by all who dwell there.
You have made an eternal difference
by anchoring souls to unshakable truth in their worst storms.
No word of Scripture you have spoken
has been without God’s intended effect.
No loving deed has been too obscure to escape his notice.
No grief you have borne has been futile.
Your labor is not in vain.
He who began a good work in you
will carry it on to completion
until the day
of Christ Jesus.
Bryan Chappell
The Danger of a Seminary Education
A book I read a while back is Paul David Tripp’s Dangerous Calling. In this book, Tripp addresses several of the difficulties that pastors (and future pastors) face (or will face). Tripp grounds his book in experience as a counselor for pastors and their families, as well as teaching as a seminary professor. Check out this quote on the danger of too much ‘knowing’ and not enough ‘going’:
“Academized Christianity, which is not constantly connected to the heart and puts its hope in knowledge and skill, can actually make students dangerous. It arms them with powerful knowledge and skills that can make the students think that they are more mature and godly than they actually are. It arms students with weapons of spiritual warfare that if not used with humility and grace will harm the people they are meant to help.”
(I am reading the eBook version, so I do not have a page number for this quote; apologies).
