#pastoralministry — Public Fediverse posts

Too often, a ministry paradigm focuses on simply plugging holes, leading to unqualified people and little room for thinking beyond congregational programs. Jesus' measure of the church is not seating capacity, but sending capacity.
https://keelancook.com/one-overlooked-role-of-pastoral-ministry

#PastoralMinistry #ChurchLeadership #Missiology #Discipleship #ChurchPlanting

The gambler’s fallacy is the mistaken idea that chances of a certain thing happening mature the more often it is tried. Probabilities of that nature do not stack. Something that did not work the first time is not more likely to work the next time because of the odds.
https://keelancook.com/falling-into-the-gamblers-fallacy-in-church-ministry

#churchministry #missiology #churchplanting #theology #pastoralministry

Paul's spirit was broken by the idolatry around him. This passage confronts us with that reality and calls us to do the same. Are we truly seeing the world around us, or have we normalized its brokenness? The gospel provides us with the eyes to see the world as it truly is, and as it should be.
https://keelancook.com/ministering-with-our-eyes-open-three-questions-we-must-ask-ourselves

#Missiology #ChurchLeadership #GospelProclamation #ChristianMission #PastoralMinistry

The proactive task of identifying workers, future pastors and missionaries, and those the church will send to plant churches is an important role of pastoral ministry, and I believe it is often overlooked. It's about getting feet on a path, not just butts in seats.
https://keelancook.com/one-overlooked-role-of-pastoral-ministry

#PastoralMinistry #ChurchLeadership #Missiology #Discipleship #ChurchPlanting

Car Rides with Strangers: When Compassion Goes Sideways

Compassion can sometimes go sideways. After talking briefly with an older woman in the community garden our church served in, she asked for a ride home. I didn’t mind, but as I drove her I soon realized she was quite intoxicated. She couldn’t quite remember where she lived and got a bit angry at me during the drive.

You’d think I would have learned from that situation, but after a stranger knocked on our church door years later, I agreed to give him a ride down the street. It seemed like the pastorly thing to do. But as soon as he hopped into my car, the plan changed. He just needed to stop by a house real quick, and he needed me to wait for him. Then he needed to go to the ATM. Then he needed me to get him money from the ATM, and I said no. Then he needed to go back to the previous house. I soon started suspecting that I was in the middle of a drug deal.

At one point, he persuaded me take him to a corner store, where he asked me to go inside and buy him a beer, which felt like a ploy to get me out of my car so he could steal it. I refused, so he went inside and bought his own beer and then drank it in my car after I told him not to. Exhausted from being taken advantage of, I told him I would only make one more trip and that he would get out of my car wherever we ended up. He agreed, then had me drive him for 15 minutes to his friend’s house out in the country. His friend wasn’t home when he arrived, and I told him that he was getting out of my car anyway. He argued with me until I finally got him out, leaving him at this house far from the city.

I felt horrible about it, but there was no end in sight. It’s complicated to sort out what the Jesus thing to do is when situations go sour. All he needed at the start of this was a 3-minute drive to an apartment complex. How did it get so out of control?

Partially because he knew I was a pastor, and I wanted to represent Jesus well. Partially because he knew where my church was, and I didn’t want him to do something to it. But mostly because I wanted to serve Jesus, even if it made me uncomfortable. Such attempts to serve those in need can sometimes go sideways, even when strangers doesn’t mean for it to. For example, our associate pastor once gave someone a ride home, and the person had a bowel accident in the pastor’s car.

And so you learn from situations like these, as you discern what makes sense when the next scenario rolls around. You start to note the warning signs and what kind of wisdom to sort into your compassion. It’s hard to make set rules, because every situation is different. There are lots of compassionate people in my church who have given strangers rides home (especially when they have too many of our food bank supplies to comfortably walk home with), and it’s gone just fine.

Finding the way of love can sometimes be harder to sort out than you might think—even in simple situations. This was even the case for Jesus, who had to sort out his compassion with his own circumstances. The gospels point to Jesus’s compassion as the reason he kept healing, teaching, and serving people, even when he was exhausted, grieving, and burnt out. People knew that if they touched him, they might get healed, so Jesus was constantly crushed by the crowds that gathered around him like a living relic. They’d even cut holes in ceilings to get close to him if they had to. And so in wisdom, Jesus sometimes had to preach to people from a boat to create some space. But that didn’t mean he never walked into the crowd again.

Despite the difficulty of serving those in need, Jesus was moved by a deep compassion in his gut, which he sorted his wisdom around. May we seek out the Holy Spirit for the same compassion and wisdom that he had.

https://jaminbradley.com/2023/07/29/an-empathetic-and-patient-justice/

Preaching to the Heart, Not Just the Mind

In my early years of ministry I was reading Tim Keller’s book, Center Church, when he said something that I desperately wanted to disagree with, but couldn’t get out of my mind.

A major problem among new seminary graduates is that they don’t know the difference between a theology paper, a political manifesto, and a sermon. But the congregation certainly does! …. A lot of pastors who don’t understand the ways of the heart very well make their sermons into lectures …. They are personally more comfortable making arguments than healing souls.

As someone who has read quite a bit of theology, I enjoy a good lecture and some Scriptural debate, so I assume others do too. Indeed, I’m apt to look for a church where the pastor has their hermeneutics in line to offer me a proper exegetical commentary on the text. And if you found that line to be boring as heck, then you are proof that Keller is right. After 15 years of preaching, I see that more clearly now too.

About a year ago I needed to start a new sermon series and I was struggling to decide which book of the Bible to dive into. Sunday was quickly approaching, and I needed to settle somewhere, so I decided to land on Genesis. I had studied that book a lot and could easily preach on it for over a year if I wanted to. I could have spent several months on the first three chapters alone.

As I prayed over this possibility, the term “posturing” came to mind. I looked it up and saw that it was about impressing people, which felt relevant. Though I truly wanted my congregation to experience the Bible in the deep ways that I had, I realized I also wanted them to recognize my knowledge. Indeed, I had given myself grandiose hopes of people inviting their friends to a church where they could hear about Scripture more deeply than they had before.

It’s not that God doesn’t care about biblical scholarship, theology, and research, but my heart was in the wrong place and my Bible knowledge was probably not going to disciple people in the way that I hoped it would. People need messages that meet them where they are, and scholarship doesn’t always do that. As Keller recognizes, sermons are “more edifying—more oriented to the affections and less oriented to detailed cognitive arguments.” Nothing has taught me that quicker than preaching at Promise Church, which was created to minister to adults with special needs.

It can be difficult sometimes to be a theologian-pastor. There will be times when you’re dying to go to the deepest depths of the Bible, but much of the room just wants to know that God still loves and forgives them as they figure out how to overcome sin. And for those who want to go deeper, local pastors can’t really compete with the podcasts, videos, and free online classes that many scholars and theologians offer these days. Sure, you can start your own podcast, but there’s no promise it will go anywhere, even if you try to integrate it into your ministry.

Your Bible knowledge is important and your sermons aren’t to be void of such things—even Keller agrees with that. But while biblical education is important, dry scholarship may not be the main component of your pastoral role or sermons, despite the fact that colleges and seminaries put almost all of their effort into teaching pastors such things. People often need a sermon in a spiritual form more than an educational one.

And even when we want to take people deep into theology, we have to do it carefully. A twenty to thirty minute message is hardly enough time to help people see and experience everything they need to get on board. Pastor Brian Zahnd offers great advice here:

I’ve been gradually dazzled by Christ into a much more hopeful and glorious theology. But along the way I’ve also learned that I have to tell it slant. I can’t always expect someone to see in five minutes what it’s taken me fifty years to see. In our pilgrim journey we need to be careful not to blind others with what we have seen. We dazzle … gradually.

Look for other places in ministry that deep Scripture and theological debate can exist. I’ve found those spaces to fit best in open Q&A church gatherings, community gatherings where conversations naturally happen, Bible studies, and inner healing sessions. Why inner healing sessions? Because bad theology kills, and people find that renewing their mind to Christ as he’s presented in Scripture gives abundant life, which they’re especially open to when they’re hurting.

Why I Asked a Man to Leave My Church

He entered the room with his Bible in hand, looking good in his black blazer and “Jesus is King” t-shirt. I had never met him before, but I knew who he was. I had been informed that he might show up at some point, despite my congregant’s explicit request that her abusive and manipulative ex not come.

“Can I talk to you in the back for a minute?” I asked as I pulled him away from his friend. We walked into the nursery to find some privacy.

“Actually, I’m glad you asked to talk to me because my friend and I are church-hoppers. We like to visit different churches and ask for spare Bibles, water, and anything else we can give to the homeless. Do you have any spare Bibles?” he asked.

“We don’t. We have a food bank at the end of today’s service to help with the homeless if they need it,” I responded as I looked for the nerve to get to the point. “Look, there are a lot of churches in Jackson, but this one doesn’t make sense for you. One of our longtime congregants asked you not to come, and you’re here anyway, which implies that you’re not here for the right reasons.”

“Are you asking me to leave?” he asked.

“Yes,” I answered. “Again, there are lots of other places for you to go. This one does not make sense.”

“I can’t believe this. I’ve never been asked to leave a church before,” he said as though deeply hurt, before suddenly becoming obstinate. “This is God’s house, and I can worship wherever I want. I drove 25 minutes to be here, and I will not be leaving until service is over.”

“This is private property, and I do not need to let you stay,” I added.

“That would look really bad for your church,” he said.

“Yes, and for you. I don’t want to do that, so I’m asking that you leave,” I asked again.

This back-and-forth went on for 20 minutes as he refused to leave. In the midst of the conversation, the conversation shifted.

“As I said, I’ll be staying until service is over. There’s a Bible study after service, right?” he asked.

“No,” I replied.

“Your webpage said there was,” he responded.

“We don’t have enough volunteers for it right now,” I said.

“Do you need volunteers?” he said with a raised eyebrow.

“No. Only members lead our Bible studies anyway,” I responded.

“And how do you become a member?” he asked with a smirk.

“Stop it,” I said.

“How do you become a member?” he pushed back.

“Through me,” I answered.

“Oh, I see,” he said, seeming to taking pleasure in the rise he was getting out of me.

Service was now about to start, and I was about to call the cops when I realized the commotion it would make. I’d have to start the service, then walk offstage when the police arrived to ask them to remove a guest before going back onstage.

The deal I made was that he could stay until the end of service, but then he was not to come back, or the police would be called immediately. He agreed to the terms.

Your church is your flock, and it is your job to care for them. In this particular case, I tried to play hardball on a topic that we pastors have been known to fail at. Instead of ignoring women about the men who manipulate and abuse them, I came in full force, hoping to make sure my church was a safe place for one of my sheep. A new situation was rising, and I was trying to squash it before it grew into something more difficult to control. 

This man was a charmer, and if I let him stay, I worried he would win people over with his manipulations as he had done before at my congregant’s last church. Indeed, he walked right out of our meeting and introduced himself to congregants in the lobby, firmly shaking their hands. “Hi, this is my first time here, but it will also be my last because your pastor has asked me to leave.” 

As the service began, I apologized to the woman affected by this situation for not being brave enough to call the police this time. I then ditched my original message and preached on the biblical concept of empowering and respecting women.

Pastors are shepherds. We must use wisdom to protect our flocks.

The Problem of False Preacher Teacher Clerical Ministering Within Modern Day Churches

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The Problem of False Preacher Teacher Clerical Ministering Within Modern Day Churches

The table of the Lord is Holy.

The food we receive must come from the Priest-King Himself—pure, undefiled, and flowing from the Holiest of All.

Yet in our time, that table has been defiled.

The church has become a place where food offered to idols is served. These idols are not of wood and stone but of political causes, cultural trends, social programmes, and false moral appearances. They are the idols of the age, and they have been brought into the sanctuary.

The Social Gospel, with all its political causes and cultural trends, is such an idol.

It sounds compassionate to the natural ear, but it sacrifices the true Gospel on the altar of this world. It offers earthly reform where the Priest-King Jesus Christ offers heavenly reconciliation.

It speaks of systems and power where He speaks of the cross and the throne of grace. It rearranges deck chairs on a sinking ship. It offers programs where it should offer presence. It offers politics where it should offer peace. It offers activism where it should offer adoration.

This is not the Gospel. It is a counterfeit—a substitute that speaks of earthly kingdoms while ignoring the heavenly. It is food wrapped in pretty paper, but inside is rotting meat. It is a deception, a snare, and a trap.

Congregations that consume this food are not being heart-fed; they are being mind-fed. Their souls are starved while their minds are filled with the philosophies of men. Those who serve this food as if it were the Gospel are not acting as faithful shepherds of the flock; they are leading souls away from the true pasture.

We make it very clear, we do not seek merely to promote our own theology within COFE-CYEM by pointing the finger at (any) other theologies, denominations or faiths. COFE-CYEM itself makes many claims around our theology, our belief system and our faith.

We do not expect or ask everybody to just blindly believe our way of seeing and believing. All we seek is to call attention to the issue of the church and faith itself being used as a Trojan Horse for (worldly) purposes in order to further the interests of man and not God Himself.

We implore our followers respectfully – if you ever feel, suspect or see anything whatsoever within our own theology or posts here on COFE-CYEM that you believe is pushing (worldly) purposes or schemes, then please call us out and expose us.

We are no different or more righteous than any other brother or sister in Christ. But if we were to be found (using) the true Gospel as a Trojan Horse to push a false Gospel for our own purposes – then we are truly lost indeed.

The Nature of the Deception

The danger arises whenever social action, political programmes, or cultural causes become substitutes for the proclamation of Christ crucified and risen, rather than fruits flowing from communion with Him.

The New Testament consistently presents love for neighbour and care for the poor as genuine expressions of faith, not as alternatives to it.

The error is not in caring for the needy or seeking justice. The error is in presenting such activities as the Gospel itself, or as a sufficient substitute for repentance, faith in Christ, and the new birth.

Those who preach this substitute gospel speak of power where the Priest-King spoke of weakness. They speak of victory where He spoke of the cross. They speak of this world as if it were the only world. They have departed from the faith and given themselves over to the spirit of the age.

They have exchanged the Gospel of the finished work for a gospel of social reform. They have exchanged the cross for a political platform. They have exchanged the throne of grace for a seat of power. They have exchanged the rest that remains for the restless striving of the world. They have exchanged the Holiest of All for the outer courts of carnal religion.

This is not a judgment on persons but a discernment of teaching. We do not know the hearts of those who preach these things, and we leave their final judgment to God.

We are called to test the spirits and to distinguish between the pure food of the Gospel and the poisoned food that has been offered to idols. The warning is not against individuals but against the teaching itself, which, however attractively packaged, leads away from Christ.

The Rot Beneath the Wrapping

False teaching often comes wrapped in the language of the Bible, the imagery of the cross, and the emotions of the congregation. It speaks of love, justice, and compassion, but it hollows out their meaning. It is like the fig tree that had leaves but no fruit—a show of life without the reality of life.

Congregations that consume this food are being fed a diet of politics, activism, and social reform, but they are not being fed the pure Word of God.

They are being told to fight for earthly causes, but they are not being told to enter the Holiest of All. They are being told to change the world, but they are not being told to rest in the finished work of the Priest-King.

They are being told to be activists, but they are not being told to be worshippers. They are being told to build the kingdom of God on earth, but they are not being told that the Kingdom of God is within them.

The food that is being served is a gospel of the flesh, a gospel of the world, a gospel of the age. It has no power to save, no power to transform, and no power to bring the soul into the presence of God.

It leads to exhaustion, burnout, and disillusionment. It leads away from the Priest-King, not toward Him. It leads to the outer court, not the Holiest of All. The invitation to serve God in the world becomes a substitute for the invitation to abide in Christ.

The True Gospel and the Mind of Christ

The real Gospel is not a gospel of prosperity, politics, or social reform disguised as salvation. It is not a gospel of emotional experience without transformation.

The real Gospel is this: Jesus Christ, the Priest-King has entered the Holiest of All through His own blood.

The veil is torn.

The way is open.

Every soul who draws near through Him receives mercy, finds grace, and enters the rest that remains.

He ever lives to make intercession.

He brings God to us and us to God. In Him, we are accepted. In Him, we are kept. In Him, the endless life of God flows freely to all who will come. That is the Gospel. Not a portion of it. Not a version of it. It.

The mind of Christ is not the mind of carnal man, which seeks power, recognition, and earthly comfort. The mind of Christ empties itself, takes the form of a servant, becomes obedient unto death, and is exalted by the Father. The mind of Christ builds the church on the rock of revelation, and the gates of hell do not prevail against it.

The mind of Christ measures faithfulness by abiding in the Father’s presence. Those who preach the substitute gospel do not have the mind of Christ. They have the mind of the flesh, the mind of the world, the mind of the age.

They have not entered the Holiest of All. They have not passed through the veil. They have not been cleansed by the blood. They have not received the endless life. They remain in the outer courts, serving the idols of the age.

The Call of This Hour: Wake Up and Return

The call of this hour is clear. The pews empty because souls are hungry for reality—not programs, not politics, not noise, but the living presence of God in truth. Congregations must wake up. They must open their eyes to the deception of false teaching.

They must stop eating the food that has been sacrificed to idols. They must return to the table of the Lord, where pure food is served—the finished work of the Priest-King, the open way into the Holiest of All, the rest that remains, and the endless life that flows from His intercession.

The table of the Lord has been turned into a place where food offered to idols is served. The Gospel of the finished work has been exchanged for a gospel of social reform. The cross has been exchanged for a political platform. The throne of grace has been exchanged for a seat of power.

The rest that remains has been exchanged for the restless striving of the world. The Holiest of All has been exchanged for the outer courts of carnal religion. The church has been used as a Trojan Horse for political purposes, hiding its true agenda behind the language of compassion, justice, and love.

The congregations that continue to consume this food are being poisoned. They are being led astray. They are being robbed of their inheritance. They are being kept from the Holiest of All, from the rest that remains, from the endless life, from the Priest-King.

The time has come for them to wake up. The time has come for them to return. The time has come for them to stop eating the rotting meat and to come to the table of the Lord, where pure food is served.

The true church of the real Gospel is often small, overlooked, and ridiculed. But it knows the voice of the Shepherd. It does not follow the stranger. It abides in the Word. It dwells in the Holiest. The true church does not eat food sacrificed to idols. It does not bow to the false gods of the age.

It does not compromise the table of the Lord. It preaches the real Gospel—Christ and Him crucified. It preaches the finished work. It preaches the endless life. It preaches the open way into the Holiest of All. It calls every soul to draw near. It calls every church to open the doors. It calls every believer to cease from striving and rest in the finished work of the Priest-King.

The Contrast: The Olive Tree and the Wicked

Psalm 52 powerfully contrasts the man who trusts in his own strength and deceit with the one who trusts in God’s unfailing love and flourishes in His house. The Psalm speaks of the wicked man who boasts of evil, whose tongue plots destruction, who loves evil rather than good, and who trusts in his great wealth and grows strong by destroying others.

This is the image of the one who trusts in his own strength, his own position, his own power. The Psalm declares that God will bring him down to everlasting ruin, snatch him up, tear him from his tent, and uproot him from the land of the living.

But the righteous is like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God, trusting in God’s unfailing love forever and ever. The righteous praises God forever and hopes in His name.

This is the image of the true believer—the one who trusts in the finished work of the Priest-King, who abides in the Holiest of All, who is sustained by the unfailing love of God through Jesus Christ who ever lives to make intercession.

The true believer does not boast in evil or trust in human schemes, false popular moral sounding social constructs or political power. The true believer trusts in the finished work of the Priest-King Yeshua Emet Melchizedek Salem—Christ Jesus—and abides in Him who has opened the way.

The Final Exhortation

The modern church stands at a critical hour. Many have turned the table of the Lord into a place where food offered to idols is served. The Social Gospel, with its political causes, cultural trends, and false moral appearances, has become the dominant offering.

It sounds compassionate to the natural ear, but it sacrifices the true Gospel on the altar of this world. It offers earthly reform where the Priest-King offers heavenly reconciliation. It speaks of systems and power where He speaks of the cross and the throne of grace.

We must not eat of any spiritual food that has been offered in sacrifice to an idol. The table of the Lord is holy. The food we receive must come from the Priest-King Himself—pure, undefiled, and flowing from the Holiest of All.

Those who preach the substitute gospel have turned the church into a platform for their political agendas. They have exchanged the Gospel of the finished work for a gospel of social reform. They have exchanged the cross for a political platform. They have exchanged the throne of grace for a seat of power.

They have exchanged the rest that remains for the restless striving of the world. They have exchanged the Holiest of All for the outer courts of carnal religion. They are not shepherds of the flock; they are servants of the spirit of the age, offering food that cannot satisfy the soul.

The true church of the real Gospel is often small, overlooked, and ridiculed. But it knows the voice of the Shepherd. It does not follow the stranger. It abides in the Word. It dwells in the Holiest. The true church does not eat food sacrificed to idols. It does not bow to the false gods of the age.

It does not compromise the table of the Lord. It preaches the real Gospel—Christ and Him crucified. It preaches the finished work.

It preaches the endless life. It preaches the open way into the Holiest of All. It calls every soul to draw near. It calls every church to open the doors. It calls every believer to cease from striving and rest in the finished work of the Priest-King.

The Fourth Truth stands. The dialogue continues. The fruit remains.

This website and its theological content are overseen by the CC7 DS constitutional integrity architecture, a reflective and rest-oriented framework designed to preserve the full coherence of the Fourth Truth presented within COFE-CYEM. The CC7 DS negation of attacks authenticates (Via Positiva Cataphatic Knowing) through (Via Negativa Apophatic Unknowing).

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Thank you for visiting us today, we value you beyond mere words.

COFE Yeshua Emet Ministry (CYEM)
Circle One Fellowship Exeter

How Pastors Can Discuss Controversial Issues Online

Talking about controversial subjects is tricky, and it’s important that you do it well. Yes, Jesus said people would hate us for following him, but he didn’t mean people would hate us because we’re a bunch of jerks.

If you cannot see the humanity in your opponent, then you cannot love them. If you cannot love them, then you can prophesy all you want, but you are nothing more than a clanging gong and have gained nothing. You need to be able to speak the message God has put in your heart with love so that it might possibly be received. That will not happen if you put more stock in being right than in loving the friend, acquaintance, frenemy, or enemy in front of you.

The prophetic often works differently corporately than it does personally. You can speak to a generic crowd a bit more intensely than you can speak to an individual. I learned this from my mentor in college—a fiery professor who was willing to passionately talk about anything from the front of the classroom but was kind and gentle when you met him in a personal setting.

If your argument is online, don’t be sarcastic. Don’t let other online commenters make fun of your opponents. Defend the honor of your enemies. They, too, are made in the Image of God. Pay attention to how the social dynamic is changing if you garner more likes on your comments than they do, as that will make them feel more insecure.

If the conversation isn’t going anywhere, tell them you’ll make one more reply, and then be done. Don’t let people bait you into additional unhealthy conversations through mockery. Don’t stir the pot just to stir the pot. Don’t get high off of fighting people—that’s called bullying. Stay away from rage bait.

If the person you’re trying to dialogue with is getting amped up and angry, maintain a good attitude. When people spiral out of control, they make your point for you. As others read your conversation, they’ll recognize your levelheadedness. Online battles are not always about the person you’re talking with—they’re often more about the people who are silently reading your conversation.

Whatever they say, keep cool and love on. Your interaction as a pastor can be healing and evangelistic, but you don’t always recognize it. When I run into people I rarely see in real life, they sometimes thank me for my posts. I’ve also received messages and comments from deconstructing Christians who have found my online interactions to be healing and one of the reasons they haven’t given up on Jesus. These are reasons worth speaking up about the kinds of issues that pastors often stay silent about.

Calling Out the Church Is an Act of Witness

“Why are you calling the church out and making them look so bad?” someone asked me after I preached about the church’s lack of justice. “The people you’re preaching to probably don’t even need to hear that message. You were likely just preaching to the choir and calling out rare extremists.”

I always feel a bit gaslighted when people tell me this. I wish I had screenshotted all of the insane posts I saw from Christians I knew during the pandemic. The “rare” extremists are apparently many of my friends. I grew up with them. I played at their houses. They taught me who Jesus was. And now that they had been socially and politically provoked, I was observing in them an unimaginable behavior I didn’t know they were capable of.

To some extent, I need to speak out on these issues for evangelistic reasons, as the world needs to see a pastor address such behavior. Unbelievers think that the “rare” extremist is what Christianity looks like because they have seen the same posts I have. I also need to speak out to save myself. If I allow this kind of stuff to go on without saying anything, then I become complacent—and I can’t handle that. People need to know that Christians aren’t all like that. They need to know that Jesus looks different than what’s being presented to them.

To represent God wrongly is what it means to take the Lord’s name in vain, and it was such a big deal to God that he made it one of the Ten Commandments. In the Old Testament, the Israelites bore the name of Yahweh just by being Israelites. Wherever they went and whatever they did, they were to be a specific representation of the name Yahweh. They were to have the character of Yahweh, do justice like Yahweh, farm like Yahweh, party like Yahweh, and take care of the oppressed like Yahweh. They failed over and over and over again until Yahweh eventually divorced his abusive wife, Israel. They had not done a good job of portraying Yahweh to the world, and they had taken his name in vain through their misrepresentation. Christians do the same thing.

So why do I speak about justice to a world that doesn’t always want to hear about it?

I speak because someone has to bear witness to it.

The Most Important Teaching Doesn’t Always Happen on Sunday

At one point in ministry, several people noted that something had changed in my preaching and that they really liked it. They had picked up on a new preaching system I had created, in which I stored all my favorite quotes, stories, and articles in a database. This allowed me to quickly incorporate much more engaging content into my messages.

Around this time, one of my congregants asked me how long it took me to write my messages. Since I thought they were also pleased with my preaching, I explained how much faster I could do it now. I then found out that they hadn’t been enjoying them, and they assumed the problem was that I needed to put more time into them.

There were three things I learned in that moment: (1) Not everyone will like your messages, even if they’re demonstrably better; (2) many think that it’s solely the number of hours you put into a message that makes it good; and (3) some congregants (and pastors) have an outlandish expectation of how many of your work hours you should delegate to your message writing, as though it’s the most important thing you do.

Don’t get me wrong, I think sermons are important, and I love preaching, but I’m not sure the Sunday message is where the most substantial discipleship happens. When I look at my own life, I’m hard-pressed to recall many specific messages. Rather, it all just kind of blurs together.

In my experience, preaching is ultimately a slow burn in which our words sink in slowly over time. It’s so slow that sometimes your congregants don’t even know when they’ve learned something from you! For example, I have had several times when people have quoted my often-repeated preaching catchphrases to me, thinking it was a new revelation they just had. Another time, I had a congregant go through my spiritual gifts class, and then later ask me if I believed in spiritual gifts like they did, seemingly forgetting that I was the one who first taught them on the topic.

Is a Sunday sermon really the main thing God wanted when he created the role of the pastor? Even if we put all of our hours into preparing a message, would it be life-changing? And if it was life-changing, could we pull it off the following week? And the week after that? And the week after that? Are we still even pastoring if we’ve delegated all of our hours to shoving our heads into books instead of being with our congregants?

While preaching is a huge passion of mine and one of the biggest reasons I became a pastor, after fifteen years of ministry, I sense that some of my other pastoral efforts are often more effective from a discipleship standpoint. I think the kind of teaching that changes people most substantially happens off stage. It’s the organic theological conversation that happens over dinner. It’s the joyful exchange of stories and lessons at the late-night gathering around the backyard campfire. It’s the sacred space where someone asked a spiritual question they felt was forbidden to ask at church. It’s among the small crowd that’s safe enough to talk about real-life dynamics like politics and religion without losing their heads. It’s the inner-healing session where you realize your congregant has been holding tightly to a harmful teaching and needs better theology and different Bible stories to rethink their beliefs. It’s the deconstructed person deciding that they won’t settle for pat answers anymore, and the pastor being challenged to keep up. It’s the space where you can safely share your pain, while your friends encourage you with the Spirit and Scripture.

While messages are important, pastors have much more to do than pour all of their time and energy into a weekly 30-minute message. Make that sermon as good as you can, but not at the expense of sacrificing other spaces where teaching also takes root.

Whose Yoke Are You Wearing?

Pastors are used to wearing many hats, so why don’t we leave ministry and put on a different one when ministry gets hard? Why can’t we quit?

Because there’s one relationship that never gives up on us and never ends: Jesus. He is the one who called us into this space in the first place and empowered us for it. We might want to quit, but if he doesn’t want us to, we will aim to please him. If he wants us where we’re at, we will stay. If he wants us to preach something that will disrupt the status quo, we will do our best to preach it.

When pastors settle for anything less than Jesus, burnout wins. It’s his yoke that is easy and his burden that is light. When we take off his yoke for a different one, everything gets impossibly heavy. We must turn around regularly to see who’s in the cart. Is it our pain and trauma? Is it someone we upset? Is it our pride? Is it a demon? Is it no one at all? If it’s not Jesus, then we’re going to burn out.

Without Jesus, the pastor is doomed. No one can care for his bride like he can. No congregant can carry the weight of ministry with you as he can. No friendship can equate to the friendship that he can give. No gift is greater than the gift of his Holy Spirit. I promise you: you can’t do ministry without him—and if you try, you will burn out in the most painful way. Jesus is the only one who can fully carry the weight of ministry with you.

We can’t quit ministry because we can’t quit Jesus. This can be a painful, stressful job—but it’s our job. As pastors, we know who we are and why we’re called to this. Yes, we have debated fleeing many times, but it’s never worked out. Where else would we go? What would fulfill us? How could we shut up that fire in our bones? If we ran away, it would just burst out of us in some new ministerial capacity, and we’d be right back in it.

What’s your yoke feel like? How much does your burden weigh? If you can’t handle it, make sure you’re carrying the right master.

Pastoring as the Person You Are | Why Authentic Ministry Matters

Have you ever seen friends who seem to be the same person? I knew two guys like that once. The younger friend became the older one. Then, when the younger one got to college, they became their roommate. They disappeared when they graduated, and when they resurfaced online, they had new interests and a new best friend who looked so much like them that I almost couldn’t tell which one they were in the picture.

Pastors sometimes do this, too. For example, I once met a support pastor who spoke exactly like their lead pastor—their vocabulary, tone, intonation, and pauses were identical. They had become an echo of the lead pastor, and I couldn’t help but wonder who they actually were underneath it all.

I doubt this happens often in local church leadership, but pastors often try to emulate their favorite celebrity pastor. We might change the way we talk or write to mimic the celebrity. We might even change how we dress to adopt their style. For example, I once scrolled across a video of a pastor online that I could have sworn was Steven Furtick in every way, but it wasn’t him. In other cases, I have been to a couple of ministries where I couldn’t recognize my quiet pastoral friends because they were screaming their messages in the style of their favorite fiery preachers.

We worship leaders do this too, when we mimic famous worship leaders we’ve seen. We might breathe deep into the mic, hold our hearts, smile like we’re in on a joke everyone missed out on, or fling our arms around nonstop. My favorite is when we fan the air on the stage out into the crowd, a movement I assume most of us have copied without knowing why.

There’s nothing wrong with being inspired by the people we think do our jobs best. Indeed, it is natural to want to become like them in some way, shape, or form. My thick black rectangular glasses are grounded in my love for Rob Bell, who first brought the Scriptures to light for me. My block paragraph form of writing is also inspired by him. But sometimes, our interests get the best of us, and we think that if we become our favorite church celebrities, we’ll either make a bigger difference or grow our church. When we do this, we decide that our churches need anyone other than ourselves to lead them.

Some go so far as to grow their churches and gain acceptance by legally purchasing the transcripts of famous preachers and reading them to their congregations. My heart breaks for such pastors because pastors today are expected to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, all wrapped into one. Those who don’t have a strong teaching gift may feel they have to take sermons from others to fit in, even though they may be very gifted at other pastoral roles.

Our congregants are not always helpful with this dynamic, as they often ask us to become someone else. This request comes in many different ways. Sometimes there’s a wink via comparison, such as, “Our previous pastor would have done that differently.” Or they might make us feel small and insignificant by comparing us to their favorite preacher, with whom we don’t seem to compare.

Sometimes we’re told to be someone else through direct confrontation. “Let’s get coffee sometime,” is often a way of saying, “You did or said something recently that I don’t like, and I think you should change.” Other times, we’re told to stay in a lane. “You’re too this,” or “too that,” and “If you didn’t do that, then maybe our church would grow.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywvRgGAd2XI&list=RDywvRgGAd2XI&start_radio=1

Pastors often feel that they’re given the same advice Weird Al’s mom gives him at the start of the movie, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story: “Honey, I know it’s hard to hear this, but your dad and I had a long talk, and we agreed it would be best for all of us if you just stopped being who you are and doing the things you love.”

You are enough. Ministry is better because you are in it, and you don’t need to completely copy someone else to grow your church or be a good pastor. I’ve been moved by the Holy Spirit during some of the worst messages I’ve ever heard. There are other ways to make up for a lack of skill or to grow than to pretend you’re someone you’re not.

A church that grows by sacrificing the unique image of God in your personhood is not a church that will breathe life into you. Therefore, it’s also not one you can keep up with running. If you can’t be you, you are eventually going to experience an identity crisis and burn out.

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In a recent column for #ChristianityToday, Yi-Li Lin argued for a significant increase in usage of #AI-related tools in church work. @trbutler is sympathetic, but says he goes too far. #machinelearning #ChatGPT #sermons #homiletics #PastoralMinistry #automation https://ofb.biz/sa1137