Pastor (Paper #3, ENGL 1101)

What Makes A Pastor? 

I recently had the opportunity to attend the annual Georgia Assembly of Confessional Baptists pastoral conference. For three days straight, nearly twenty pastors from various other Reformed Baptist churches from around Georgia, and even one from Tennessee, gathered for fellowship, prayer, and worship. During this period, four pastors each preached a sermon, directed toward the other pastors, detailing various aspects of the pastoral ministry. I aspire to a future pastoral ministry, and those sermons hit home. Since the conference, they have prompted me to consider seriously the pastor’s exact identity. I would like to explain the three crucial relationships that define who the pastor is: his relationship to God, his relationship to himself, and his relationship to his congregation.

The pastor is a man who prizes his relationship with the Lord before and above all else. Victor Harris, assistant professor and extension specialist in the Department of Family, Youth and Community Sciences at the University of Florida, states, “Effective communication is critical to successful relationships.” It is imperative that the pastor lead his congregation by modeling for them a worthy example of dedication to communion with God through consistent prayer and Scripture reading. Pastor Tim McGehee has said, “The best kinds of pastors are those who lead by example.” Because his relationship with the Lord sets the tone for his congregation, a true pastor must live as a pastor by growing in his knowledge of God and not merely preach as a pastor.


As the pastor spends time absorbing Scripture, he learns God’s commandments and from there grows to know God better by keeping those rules. The Apostle Paul acknowledged, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work” (ESV. 2Ti. 3:16). Scripture exercises the authority to command the pastor. To a lawyer’s question about the greatest commandment, Jesus Christ responded, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment” (Matt. 22:37-38). The highest commandment in Scripture is to love the Lord. The Apostle John says, “Whoever loves has been born of God and knows God” (3Jn. 4:7). In summary, God gave us His commandments in Scripture. To love is the greatest and summary of His commandments. A pastor can only be a man who loves God because Scripture commands it. Only men who truly love God will really know God. Therefore, the pastor is to exercise diligence in his study and reading of Scripture so that he may set an example in knowing God.

Pastors must also be men of prayer if they are to know God. The Apostle Paul instructs us to “pray without ceasing” (1Thess. 5:17). David McIntyre, in his book The Hidden Life of Prayer, explains prayer by quoting Hewitson as saying:

Prayer will be fatiguing to flesh and blood if uttered aloud and sustained long. Oral prayer, and prayer mentally ordered in words though not uttered aloud, no believer can engage in without ceasing; but there is an undercurrent of prayer that may run continually under the stream of our thoughts and never weary us. Such prayer is the silent breathing of the Spirit of God who dwells in our hearts… it is the temper and habit of the spiritual mind; it is the pulse of our life which is hid with Christ in God.” (29)

Prayer is a privilege for the pastor. It is an opportunity for the pastor to traverse the gulf between the mortal and immortal, the visible and invisible, the creature and the Creator and to enter into the presence of Almighty God for the sole purpose of seeking communion with Him. It befits a pastor who leads his congregation into the presence of God that he himself first seek that presence in personal, private prayer.

Pastor Eric Freel, from Redeemer Baptist Church in Macon, GA, pointed out that the pastor should tend first to his own life and conduct and after that to the life and conduct of his congregation. The basis for this claim is found in the Apostle Paul’s farewell address to the Ephesian church, “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers” (Act. 20:28). The order of attention is significant because it emphasizes the truth that if a pastor cannot nurture and protect his own person, then there is no way for him faithfully to nurture and protect another person since that is even harder. Pastor Thomas Waters, from Emmanuel Baptist Church in Jesup, Georgia, named three ditches especially peculiar to the pastorate, they are: “slothfulness,” a “desire for gain,” and a “lust for power.”

1 Peter 5:2-3 provides solutions to each of these three snares. A slothful person is a person who is refusing to do something that they are being forced to do. To counter this condition, the pastor must take care to serve his congregation with a willing, not a reluctant, or a hesitant, heart. Men of the ministry can also combat the desire for gain that so often seeks to entrap them by leading with an eager zeal. One way the pastor can especially pronounce this is through liberal and generous financial giving for the congregation. Thirdly, the pastor can avert the temptation to a lust for power by guiding the flock by example. Anyone can issue commands for other people to carry out, but it takes a dedicated and passionate man of God to live a life such that the demand he places on them is that of the Apostle Paul’s, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1Co. 11:1). Paul was not asking the Corinthians to repeat both his good and bad actions, but he was demanding that they duplicate his zealous drive for Christ-likeness.

Only after a pastor has learned to develop a pulsating, vibrant relationship with the Lord and has begun to combat the weaknesses of his flesh can he ever hope to relate well to his congregation. There are many different ways to classify the work of the pastor, and even more angles from which to view his work. For the sake of simplicity, let us narrow them down to preaching and teaching. Preaching here encompasses the public and corporate ministries, and teaching includes the private and individual ministries.

The Apostle Paul set the precedent for pastoral ministry when he wrote to Timothy and instructed him to “preach the word; [and to] be ready in season and out of season” (2Ti. 4:2). Because it can be so hard to reach every member of a church individually, preaching is the single most important duty of the pastor in relating to his congregation as their spiritual guide (Neste). Pastors are to function as prophets, not foretelling the future per se, but clearly heralding the Word of God to His people (Slate). Prophets of old received God’s Word directly and then precisely recited it to the people so that they could follow in obedience. Pastors today are to function in very much the same way, differing only because they receive the Word in written rather than auditory form. They are responsible before God to study His Word meticulously and to preach it exactly as it is, without personal interpretation, manipulation, or selectivity.

The view of the pastor as a teacher, in addition to a preacher, is being rapidly lost in society and, even more importantly, in our churches. Pastor Waters summarized this responsibility when he said that the pastor must “take time to pet the sheep.” He went on to elaborate by explaining that the pastor must be intimately involved in the lives of those he shepherds.

A pastor must spend immense volumes of time with his sheep. He must go with them, labor for them, and live among them. This sort of exposure to the congregation will allow them to grow in their trust of the pastor and, subsequently, their willingness to obey the commands he preaches from Scripture. John MacArthur, pastor for more than forty years of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, stated, “The single greatest support of the truth in your preaching is the power of an exemplary life.” The biblical pastor must abide with the sheep he leads so that they may learn the voice of their shepherd.

Not only are the sheep to know the shepherd, but the shepherd is to learn the sheep as well. The pastor must be acute in his observation and oversight of the flock. As he spends time with his people, he must learn their strengths and weaknesses. He has to learn the congregation so well that he, led and aided by the Holy Spirit, can effectively organize them as a single unit, the body of Christ, having each person contributing to the function of the whole by exercising their individual gifts and strengths in unique and fitting ways. In addition, he must carefully study their weaknesses and temptations so that he can “lead [them] in the way everlasting” (Ps. 139:24) by taking their hand and instructing them with exhortations from Scripture. (Waters)

The pastorate is no small job. James 3:1 says that “not many… should become teachers… for… [those] who teach will be judged with greater strictness” and Hebrews 13:17 says “they are keeping watch over… souls, as those who will have to give an account.” Pastors are responsible to cultivate an intimate relationship with their heavenly Father. Men of God are to guard their own souls against the wiles of the devil who has developed special temptations to which pastors are especially susceptible. Shepherds are to develop bonds of understanding with their flock in order to maintain the power of their preaching and in order to function as a teacher. It is a high calling and a “noble work” (Weymouth) to follow the pattern of our Great Shepherd.

Works Cited 

English Standard Version Bible. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Print.

Freel, Eric. Personal Interview. 24 Oct. 2012.

Harris, Victor William. “9 Important Communication Skills for Every Relationship.” Electronic Data Information System. Jan. 2012. Web. 24 Oct. 2012.

MacArthur, John, Jr. “12 Marks of Excellent Pastoral Ministry.” Grace to You. 14 May 2006. Web. 25 Oct. 2012.

McGehee, Tim. “Laws for Effective Leadership.” Union University. N.d. Web. 24 Oct. 2012.

McIntyre, David. The Hidden Life of Prayer. Fearn: Christian Focus Publications Ltd., 2011. Print.

Neste, Ray Van. “Philosophy of Pastoral Ministry.” Union University. N.d. Web. 25 Oct. 2012.

Slate, Jerry. “The Pastor’s Communion with God.” GACB Annual Convention. Redeemer Baptist Church, Macon. 11 Oct. 2012. Lecture.

Waters, Thomas. “The Pastor as a Shepherd Among Sheep.” GACB Annual Convention. Redeemer Baptist Church, Macon. 12 Oct. 2012. Lecture.

Weymouth New Testament. “1 Timothy 3.” Biblos.com. N.d. Web. 26 Oct. 2012.