The Ministry of a Pastor

    The role of Pastor (or as the bible puts it: shepherd/elder) is a biblical position in the local church. Ephesians 4:12 tells us that God gave His people leaders, including Pastors, to “equip the saint for ministry.” Therefore, the Pastor is not be the sole decision maker, and he is not to be the sole disciple maker in the church. The Pastor is there to give the church the tools and encouragement necessary to go out and disciple the nations. But how does one man equip an entire body of believers? Through the Ministry of the Word, or simply put, through preaching the Word (not the only way but a major way).     Bringing the Word of God to God’s people is the most important task a Pastor, or a group of Pastors, has/have. It is an important, and daunting responsibility. It is indeed a joy to preach to God’s people, but many have twisted that joyful responsibility into their weekly airing of grievances, or their campaign for political candidates and ideologies. Every Pastor will indeed fail to be preach faithfully at some point in their ministry. But these fake pastors have made entire careers off of twisting scripture, ripping verses out of context, or coming before God’s people without a biblical text at all. 

Pastors Who Should Fear

The common idea of fake Pastors is the mega-Church Pastor who is often dressed in expensive clothes, hip to culture, and often looks to be overcorrecting to the common perception of a pastor. Or one thinks of a charlatan whose entire ministry is built around health, wealth, and lining their own pockets for their own glory. 
    Fake Pastors are indeed just that: fakes. They are masquerading as shepherds of God’s sheep, and yet they are in it for some other reason. These men (and women I guess) should fear the day they stand in front of God and give an account for their ministry. The “hip, seeker-sensitive” Pastor ought to fear for the way he has dressed Christ’s Bride in whore’s clothing so that men who care nothing of God will look at her. The charlatan lining his own pockets ought to fear the way greed and self-interest has made him unfaithful to the self-sacrificial calling of Pastor (and a whole host of other things that often accompany this kind of ministry). 
The Bible Belt has been plagued with a third kind of Fake Pastor, and these fakes ought to fear the Lord’s Judgement on their unfaithful ministry… 

The Plague of the Bible Belt

    The common church goer in the American South has sat under Pastors who, week after week, have some new “message” that “the Lord has laid on their heart.” This is often the play these fake pastors run in order to speak to their congregation about the latest goings-on in politics, or how the world has ticked them off recently. This is a joke. These people are not pastors bringing God’s people the Word, they are wanna-be politicians.  

It is not uncommon that a faithful preacher will plan to bring the Word to God’s people in one way, and at the last minute feel the Spirit lead Him in another direction; however, this should be an exception to the rule of faithful, planned out expositional preaching. But in the American South, God’s people are taught to wait all week long to see what it is that the pastor wants to “talk about” on Sunday. 

You can get a good idea of the church’s view of God’s Word by the way those church members talk about the preaching. If a church member ever says “I can’t wait to hear what pastor has to talk about this week” or ” I wonder what pastor has to say this week,” you can bet this church has a low view of God’s Word, or a misunderstanding of what the preaching moment is meant to be.    That is what has plagued the Bible Belt the most: bad preaching. I don’t mean boring preaching, or the kind of preaching that seminary students like to nit-pick. No, I mean bad preaching because it isn’t preaching at all. Preach is bringing the Word to God’s people. Not your ideas. Not what you’ve noticed lately. Preaching is bringing the Word. Paul told Timothy to “preach the Word,” and yet many Pastors do not preach the Word, rather they talk about life and make reference to the Bible. 

Terrible vs Ideal Preaching

    There is indeed a kind of “preaching” where the “pastor” stands in the pulpit and makes no reference to the bible whatsoever. That is rare. So, when I say that many Bible Belt Pastors are not preaching the Word, I do not mean they stand up and give a speech with no bible at all. Rather, I mean they stand up and use the bible as a tool to proof-text whatever topic they want to discuss that week. That kind of preaching is not faithful to the calling to the “preach the Word.” That kind of preaching is what has plagued the Bible Belt for so long. That kind of preaching is why the south is full of people who are members of churches they haven’t attended in decades. This kind of preaching may motivate fake church members to vote a certain way, or to get “all riled up” about a certain topic, but it hasn’t motivated them to love God’s Word.

    Ideal preaching, which is so needed in the Bible Belt, is Expositional Preaching. What is Expositional Preaching? Preaching that systematically draws meaning from the text of scripture. Simply put: verse-by-verse preaching through whole books of the Bible. When you preach expositional sermons, your people see how they can draw meaning and application from every page of scripture. When you preach sermons that go verse by verse through a text of scripture, you show the people of God that all of God’s Word has meaning and application. This takes God’s Word seriously, and allows the preacher to bring God’s Word to God’s people (rather than whatever speech he wants to give that week). 

To the church member…

If you are a church member, watch the way your pastor preaches. Make sure your pastor is faithfully bringing the Word to you, and not using the pulpit to share “what’s been on his heart.” There is no time like the present to make sure your pastor is truly equipping you through preaching God’s Word. 

For His Glory

Alan

Bible Passage That Inspired This Article

Acts 20:26-27 “26 Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all, 27 for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.”
Ephesians 4:11-12 “11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ…”

2 Timothy 4:1-2 “1 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.”