Gift of Pastoring

GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT – GIFT OF PASTORING
DR. JIM DIXON
DECEMBER 1, 1985
JOHN 21:15-22

Ten years ago, a letter was sent to the Clerk of Session, Faith United Presbyterian Church in Aurora. The letter said, “Are you tired of inept preaching? Are you tired of inefficient management? Are you tired of incompetent counseling? Are you tired of your pastor? If so, please send a copy of this letter to six other churches who are tired of their pastor, bundle up your pastor and send him to the address at the top of the enclosed list, the church at the top of the enclosed list, and put your church’s address at the bottom of the enclosed list. In 30 days, you should receive 3,671 pastors and one of them ought to be dandy. However, have faith in this letter and don’t break the chain because one church broke the chain and got his old pastor back.” Dean Wolf, who was the senior pastor at Faith Presbyterian Church in Aurora, read this letter to his congregation and got a few laughs, but it is tragically true that many churches are tired of their pastors. Many pastors, I think, are frustrated with their churches.

There are 250,000 Protestant pastors in the United States of America, and recent surveys show that 40,000 of those pastors are seriously contemplating quitting their jobs and leaving the ministry today. The Greek word for pastor is the word “poimen.” It’s a word which means shepherd and refers to a person who is called to shepherd flock. I think most biblical scholars would agree that the first Christian to be called to a pastoral role was the Apostle Peter and in our passage of scripture today, we saw how Peter was by the Sea of Galilee after the miracle catch of fish. He had just completed having breakfast with the Lord Jesus, resurrected and alive and with some of the other disciples, and Jesus turned to him and said, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? Peter said “Lord, you know that I love you” and Jesus said “tend (poimen) my sheep.” That was the beginning of a new call for the Apostle Peter.

Biblically it is evident that pastoring or shepherding requires three functions and these comprise our three teachings this morning. First of all a person who is called to pastor or who has the Gift of Pastoring is a person who is called to feed the flock. The Greek word poimen, the word shepherd, etymologically comes from another word, which means to feed. And so, a minister, a pastor, is called to feed his congregation. This is not a reference to potlucks, this is a reference to spiritual food, and it’s a pastor’s responsibility to impart spiritual food. The Bible is spiritual food. The word of God is spiritual food and so it is that a pastor is called to proclaim the Word of God in clarity and in the power of the Holy Spirit.

There is not a single pastor in the world who proclaims the Word of God flawlessly. I heard the story some weeks ago of two pastors who were denominational executives and they were traveling around the United States preaching at various member churches. Four nights a week they would speak at four different churches. At each church they went to, one pastor would speak 15 minutes and the other pastor would speak for another 15 minutes afterwards. Kind of a goodwill gesture as they went around feeding all the churches in the denomination. Well, one pastor, every church they went to, he’d come up with a new message. Every church, he came up with a new 15-minute message. The other pastor gave the same message church after church, night after night. The one pastor got very tired of hearing the other pastor’s message over and over again. Finally, he got so tired that when they went to this one church, he decided that he would stand up first and he’d give the other guy’s message. He’d heard it so many times, he knew it verbatim, word for word, so he got up and he just stood there and gave the other pastor’s message.

Then with a smirk on his face, he went back and sat in his seat and he just knew the other guy was just going to be totally dumbfounded. The other guy would not know what to do, but to his surprise, the other pastor got up and gave a whole new message—no problem. He gave another 15-minute talk. Later that night, the one pastor said to the other, “Boy, I don’t understand it. I stole your message tonight. I gave your message word for word. I thought for sure you’d be upset. It didn’t seem to bother you at all. What’s the problem?” The other pastor said, “Well, you see I wasn’t planning on giving that message tonight anyway. What you don’t know is I was at the same church three months ago and I gave the very message you stole tonight.”

Pastors hate to feel like they’re repetitious. They hate to feel like they’re boring a congregation. They hate to sense that they’re not feeding. Personally, I can say I don’t think I ever had a Sunday when 1 didn’t go home and wish that I’d given a better message. But as a pastor, you’re simply called to do the best you can, to be as faithful as you can, and to trust that God’s Holy Spirit will bless it and use it in the lives of the people. And I think we need to understand that our spiritual diets are not simply the responsibility of the pastor, but our spiritual diets are also the responsibility of the congregation. Just as there are problem feeders, there are also some problem eaters. Now I don’t think we have many problem eaters in our church, but in the church universal, certainly there are certain types of problem eating that you see.

First, there are some Christians who are fast food eaters. These are Christians who really don’t have much time for the Word of God. They don’t care about receiving good quality food. They are willing to spend three hours or three and one-half hours watching a football game, two hours watching a movie. There’s not a single program on television that’s shorter than a half-hour, but a sermon for them can never be short enough and they’re always looking at their watches. Fast food eaters.

Also, in the Body of Christ, there are some junk food eaters. These are Christians who tend to be addicted to spiritual teaching that is not biblical or good for them. There is a lot of junk food circulating throughout Christendom today. Prosperity teaching is one such junk food, such as the teaching that God wants every Christian to be materially affluent and worldly successful. He wants Christians rich and famous. That’s a junk food teaching. It is not biblical. Longevity teaching—that every Christian should live and can live three score and ten or more. That God has promised to let every Christian live at least 70 years on this earth if they would simply live faithful lives. Sounds good. It’s just not biblical. It’s junk food.

Name it and claim it teaching. That you can get God to do anything you want Him to do if you can just come up with enough confidence in your prayer life. You can get Him to give you a new car, a new job, anything you want if you can just be fleshly confident when you pray or if you can get two or three Christians together and agree upon it. Now these teachings are junk food teachings simply because they are not biblical. They subtlety distort Biblical messages. Some Christians are addicted to these teachings. They accumulate tapes. They watch television programs. They go to churches where they can receive these teachings, but they don’t provide spiritual health.

The Bible never promised that God would make every Christian materially affluent or worldly successful. In fact, the Bible says that those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and hurtful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. The Bible says, “the love of money is the root of all evil.” The Bibles says, “if we have food and clothing, with these we shall be content.” The Bible does not encourage us to seek worldly prominence. Jesus said, “Do not seek the glory that comes from men.” Jesus said “Seek first My Kingdom and My Righteous and I’ll give you everything you need.” The Bible doesn’t promise every Christian can live at least 70 years. It just doesn’t promise that. It doesn’t promise that you’ll never get a terminal disease. The Bible doesn’t promise that you’ll never have a tragic accident. The Bible doesn’t promise that you’ll live three score and ten. Our Lord Jesus Himself only lived 33 years on this earth. Eleven of the twelve apostles died premature deaths, suffering martyrdom. Only the Apostle John lived three score and ten, and the Bible does not tell us that we can name it and claim it in prayer. The Bible tells us to “pray prayers of faith and that if we do that, we will be blessed but a prayer of faith is prayed in response to God’s leading, it’s prayed, in God’s character, it’s prayed in God’s will, it’s prayed in Christ’s name.”

Jesus told Peter that he would die prematurely, that he would die a death of crucifixion. Peter saw John following him as we saw in our passage of scripture for this morning. Peter said, “Lord, what about him? How long is he going to live? What’s going to happen to him?” Jesus said, “Peter, if it be My will that he remains until I come again, what is that to you? You follow Me.” And that’s really all he says to all of us. Follow Him.

So, there’s a lot of junk food teachings out there in the world today and problem eaters tend to be addicted to them. There are also some Christians who are what you might call gourmet eaters. They only like the more exotic foods of Christianity. You know, a few weeks ago, I performed a wedding, and at the rehearsal dinner, which Barb and I went to, we ate at the Chateau Pyrenees. Now Barb and I had never been to the Chateau Pyrenees, and I ordered medallions of beef and boneless quail. It’s kind of sad to see this little lump sitting on my plate. It would have taken 40 quail to satisfy my appetite but occasionally, it’s kind of fun to have something a little bit unusual.

Some people eat caviar. Some people have escargot, but I think—there’s nothing wrong with any of those things—but I think we would agree that if a person ate nothing but those types of exotic foods, their diet wouldn’t be very balanced. Well, some Christians are kind of addicted to exotic spiritual foods. These are Christians who just want to focus on the end times. All they want to talk about is the life to come or prophesy. The second coming of Jesus Christ, or the rapture, or the time of tribulation upon the earth. Of course, all these things relate to Biblical teachings and they’re important, but they were never meant to be the primary focus of our life. Bob is teaching a class right now on the Book of Revelation. It’s important that you learn about Biblical prophecy but Bob seeks, every time he teaches his class, to deal with daily issues of Christian living, not just things relating to the end times. Some Christians are preoccupied with signs and wonders. That’s all they want to talk about. Whenever you see them, whenever I see someone like that, I just know they’re going to want to talk about the latest miracle they’ve seen, the latest healing they’ve seen. That’s all they want to talk about.

Some Christians are really into biblical symbolism. They spend all their time examining the symbolism of the temple or the tabernacle or numerology, the symbolism of Biblical numbers. There’s nothing wrong with any of these things. In fact, I would go so far as to say that God wants us to be knowledgeable regarding the end times. He wants us to be open to signs and wonders and miracles, and He even wants us to be knowledgeable regarding biblical symbolism, but He doesn’t want these things to be the meat and potatoes of our spiritual diets. He doesn’t want us to be gourmet eaters.

Finally, there are some Christians who are food critics. They are kind of picky eaters. I don’t think, and I’m very thankful for this, we have many picky eaters in our church. If we did, I’d be in a lot of trouble. But these are Christians who tend to go around from church to church. They never really settle in any church. They are never satisfied. They always are saying that they’re not getting fed or this church is only giving out milk, not solid food. Many of these kinds of food critics have their own special spiritual guru, their own special teacher, not a pastor of a local church, but some national teacher. Someone like Chuck Swindoll, someone like R. B. Theme, someone like Kenneth Copeland or Kenneth Hagan—very gifted teachers—people who, perhaps, spend most of their time teaching. And they listen to those tapes and they use that quality of teaching to evaluate all of the local pastors that they hear, not realizing that pastors are called to many different functions and not all pastors preach as well as perhaps a perfect pastor would. But you see, the ministry was never meant to be a popularity contest, and the Christian life does not consist of sitting at the feet of your favorite guru.

A pastor is a person who is simply called to the best of his ability, to proclaim the truth of God as contained in the scriptures. To call the Body of Christ to repentance, to call people to faith in Jesus Christ as the source of life, to call people to obedience to the Word of God, to holiness in this world, to call people to discovery of their spiritual gifts and to encourage people to enter into ministry on the earth. And sometimes the Bible tells us God even wants a pastor to be repetitious. We all want to be entertaining, but some points simply need to be repeated again and again and again.

The Apostle Peter said, “Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, your virtue with knowledge, your knowledge with self-control, your self-control with steadfastness, your steadfastness with Godliness, your Godliness with brotherly affection and your brotherly affection with love.” He goes on to say “I intend always to remind you of these things, though you know them, and are firmly established in the truth which you have, but I think it right, as long as I’m in His body, to rouse you by way of reminder, since I know that the putting off of my body will be soon as the Lord Jesus Christ showed me. And I intend to see to it that after my departure, you may be able at any time to recall these things.” You see, Peter had one concern and that was feeding the flock. As Jesus had said to him years earlier by the Sea of Galilee, “Feed my sheep.” The Bible says in the last days, in the last times, some people will no longer endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own liking and they will wander away from the truth into silly myths. That is happening throughout the Church of Christ today. There are problem feeders. They are also problem eaters. Spiritual food. Critical to the life of the Christian.

A pastor is not only called to feed. The Bible tells us that a pastor is called to guide. In fact, the Greek word “poimen,” the word for shepherd is sometimes given a meaning that refers to leading or guiding, but biblically speaking, a pastor is not supposed to guide by domination. A pastor is called to guide by example. Now, last year Barb and I and Drew and Heather and my brother Greg and his wife and kids, we went up to South Dakota to the Black Hills. We went to Custer State Park and we stayed at the State Game Lodge, not too far from Mt. Rushmore. We decided to go horseback riding. Barb and I hadn’t been horseback riding since our honeymoon in Yosemite National Park 14 years ago. When we went horseback riding at that time Barb’s horse ran away with her, and I got to play the part of John Wayne which I must say I did very well. Anyway, this time we went horseback riding and it was really boring because you had to get into a line and you couldn’t leave the line, and the gal from the riding stable was up front and the first thing she did was she told Barb to take her horse and get to the rear of the line. She said that was very important that Barb have her horse at the rear of the line. We did not understand that. We began to go up this path and it was obvious that Barb’s horse didn’t want to be at the rear of the line, Barb’s horse kept trying to pass all of the horses in front. Barb was doing everything she could to hold the horse back but she couldn’t seem to stop the horse and the horse began to pass other horses. Then when the horse would pass other horses and get in front of other horses, it would begin to kick those horses and we had this chaos and a cloud of dust and it was just horrible and finally the gal from the riding stables turned around, looked at Barbara and said, “Get Bimbo to the back of the line,” and I thought, “What is she doing calling my wife Bimbo?” and then I realized that the horse’s name was Bimbo and Bimbo had a problem because Bimbo couldn’t lead other horses. If ever Bimbo was in front, he would try to intimidate the horses that were following him, try to dominate them.

Now I’ve learned through the years that there are many bimbos in the pastorate. There’s a lot of ministers who, perhaps, have entered the ministry for all of the wrong reasons and they really want to dominate or perhaps even intimidate their congregations, but the Bible does not give a pastor the right to dominate a church. The Bible only gives the pastor the right to be an example. In fact, the Apostle Peter says, “Tend the flock which is your charge, not by constraint but willingly, not for shameful gain but eagerly, not as domineering over those in your charge but being an example to the flock, and then when the chief shepherd is manifested, you will receive the unfading crown of glory.” Of course, there’s only one perfect example in this world or in the universe and that one perfect example is Jesus Christ who is the Chief Shepherd, Lord of Lords and King of Kings, and Jesus said to his disciples “I’ve given you an example, that you should follow in my steps.” There’s not a single pastor in this world who is without sin. We’ve all flawed but all of those who would be pastors are called to live an exemplary life and we are told in the Bible that we will be judged with greater strictness.

There are a number of pastors here at Cherry Hills Community Church. We’re all flawed but we all seek to be faithful to the Lord, to live lives that are ethically and morally in accordance with the scriptures. We take out call seriously, and I think God would want me to tell you that you also are called to live exemplary lives. Before the Lord Jesus Christ, we are all sheep. But with respect to other people in Christ, sometimes we are all called to be shepherds. Each and every one of you. There’s no way that people in this church can know Bob and myself or any of us on staff—there’s no way everyone in this church can know all of us personally. We can’t really be a personal example to everybody but you can all be examples to each other. And there’s a sense in which you, too, are called to pastor. You, too, are called to feed some people. You are called to guide some people by way of example. The Apostle Peter says “I exhort you Brethren as aliens and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against the soul. Maintain good conduct among the nations so that in case they speak against you as wrongdoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. ”

Our method of ministry is example. That’s true of pastors. That’s true of every Christian in the world today.

Well, thirdly and finally, as pastors we are called to protect. Now we’re all familiar with the fact that shepherds sought to protect their flocks. If a sheep was caught in a thicket, the shepherd would try to free the sheep. If a lamb was wounded or a limb was damaged, the shepherd would bandage and bind up the wound. If there were lions or wolves or bears, the shepherd would try to ward them off or fend them off with his staff, protecting the sheep. Most Biblical commentators, and I think they are right, would view this realm of protection in the pastorate as referring to pastoral care, referring to praying for the congregation, praying for the needs of the people, referring g to counselling people in the church as they are hurt, referring to visitation, going to hospitals, visiting people who are sick. All of these things relate to pastoral care and protection. I would like to say a word about pastoral care here at Cherry Hills Community Church. Some people want to know whether we participate or are involved in visitation as a staff. When people think of visitation, they think of many things. Some of you can probably remember incidences when a pastor visited you. I read a story a few weeks ago, allegedly true, that tells of a minister who was making regular visits to his congregation as part of a visitation program, and he made it a point to visit every single member of the church at least once a year. And he was at the home of an elderly widow. He had never met her before. He introduced himself, they sat down in the living room, they began to talk, and he saw a bowl of peanuts there on the table. He kind of liked to eat while he talked. It made it easier for him and he reached down and grabbed a few peanuts. And they tasted really good and so he thought he’d have a few more and pretty soon, he was really rolling. They talked for about a half hour and after a half hour he had eaten every single peanut in the bowl and he felt kind of embarrassed. So he looks at the widow and he says, “Boy I’m really sorry. I just noticed here I ate all your peanuts. I feel really bad about that. I apologize.” and she said “No problem. Three weeks ago, I had all my teeth pulled and I really can’t eat nuts anyway. Since that time, I’ve just kind of sucked the chocolate off the nuts and put them back in the bowl there.” Such are the hazards of visitation!

As a staff here at this church, you probably already know, we do not visit every single home in the church. We don’t have the time. We make visitation calls in response to people’s requests. If somebody says, “I need someone to pray for me, someone to come,” we always seek to send somebody there, some member of the staff, perhaps also with a deacon or an eider, perhaps with we seek to help. Sometimes when somebody wants to be prayed for for them here… we ask them to come over to the church and we pray. Sometimes we have the elders lay hands on them and we pray for them. We, of course, make hospital visits. I think all of us on staff go to the hospital at one time or another to visit people but the person on our staff, more than any other who makes hospital visits is Everett Dye. Now Everett has been our pastor in charge of administration and in charge of some pastoral care, but the church has grown, and Everett no longer has time to do both, so beginning the first of the year Everett is just going to do pastoral care. We re going to hire somebody else in administration. I must say, if I was at the hospital, I can’t think of anyone I would rather have visit me than Everett Dye. He loves the Lord, he loves you and he really believes in prayer, so if you find yourself in the hospital, you’ll probably be visited by Everett. You might also be visited by someone else on staff or by a deacon or by an elder.

In this realm of pastoral care, we also offer counseling. It’s amazing the number of people in this world that want counseling today. According to a survey, ten years ago 28% of the American people claimed that when they go to counseling, they go to a professional counsellor, 29% say they talk to their family physician and 42% say they talk to a pastor or clergyman. Now perhaps over the past ten years, those statistics have changed because I know an awful lot of people want to talk to ministers. And the truth of the matter is that we all have problems, there’s not a single person in this room that isn’t suffering with some degree of self-esteem problem because we all have sinful natures, we all have fallen natures. Every single person in this room has experienced some measure of rejection, some measure of failure and sometimes we need to talk to somebody about it.

A pastor, during his life, confronts just about every kind of problem of man because Christians are not immune from problems. In the twelve years of my ministry, I’ve talked to people who were victims of child abuse, people who were victims of wife abuse, battered wives, people who were victims of rape or sexual molestation. I’ve talked to people who were addicted, people addicted to alcohol, people addicted to drugs, people addicted to lust, to sexual promiscuity, people who are in the depths of grief. I’ve talked to people who have just lost a son or a daughter or a husband or a wife or a mom or a dad or some close friend. I’ve talked to people who are depressed, people who were on the verge of suicide. Of course I’ve talked to people who have spiritual questions relating to their relationship with Jesus Christ or people who have theological questions regarding the meaning of certain portions of scripture.

Every pastor deals with all of these things, but the truth of the matter is, there’s no pastor that is competent to deal with all of these things. And I know sometimes that I’m in over my head and so I refer people to someone who I think could help them better than I could. I do some counselling, Bob does some counselling, Dick Schultz does some counselling, Everett Dye does some counselling, Doug Nuenke and Dan Sadler, our youth ministers, counsel some of the kids. Maureen Kiernes and Sheila Vicory and Susie Miller counsel some of the kids in the children’s program and some of their parents, but the person on our staff who does most of our counselling is Dick Savidge. He is the one who has most of the training in counselling and he has God’s call upon his life, specifically in pastoral counselling.

But the demands of the church are so great that Dick cannot counsel everybody. In fact, he’s had to limit himself to only counselling members. If however, you’re not a member of the church we still care about you. If you have a problem, if you want to talk to somebody, call us up and we’ll try to have somebody on staff talk to you or perhaps one of our lay counsellors talk to you. All I want to say to you this morning regarding pastoral care is WE CARE. If ever you want someone to pray for you feel free to call the church. We’ll put you on the prayer chain. If you would like to have it we’ll have the elders pray for you and we as a staff will pray for you. And we trust that you will be faithful to pray for us as well because the truth of the matter is we desperately need it. We hope that you understand that not every pastor is called to all areas of pastoring. Not every pastor is equally gifted in ail areas of pastoring. Bob and I are primarily called to feed. We have other staff members, other pastors, who are called primarily in the area of nurture and of pastoral care. But our desire is simply to be faithful. I know our desire like your desire is one day to stand before Jesus Christ and hear Him say “Well done my good and faithful servant.” Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.