How To Preach Better Sermons

1 Timothy 1:5-7

The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.

The point of ministry within the church is love. Love, in fact, is the point of the life of any believer, not just those in church leadership. The only way to truly love others is to have a pure heart, good conscience, and a sincere faith.

The opposite direction of a pure heart, good conscience, and sincere faith is “vain discussion.” People not sincerely following the Lord can’t speak truth. People don’t talk about what they aren’t doing.

Guilt is funny that way. I preached several times a week for 21 years. I know the stuff I skipped, the verses I didn’t go into too much detail right then.

When I listen to other pastors preach I’m fascinated to note what verses they skip, or what theological ideas they circumvent and explain away.

“Vain discussion” is translated as “vain jangling” in the King James. I like that better. It sounds more accurate! It’s just empty words signifying nothing. Noise. Pomp.

Pastors who skip the plain meaning of verses and instead pontificate about their own ideas, their verbal gymnastics to explain away clear commands, are revealing for anyone who is interested that their conscience is not good. That there’s something wrong in them. They know what it is. I don’t, nor do I want to speculate, but something is off.

This is Paul’s word, not mine. If you don’t live sincerely and honestly before God, you will use confusing, empty, misleading language, most of it leading to nothing in the end. Oh, it took up time, it sure sounded like you were saying something, but in the end no truth was conveyed.

I’ve listened to many of these sermons.

Many of these guys, according to Paul, want to be teachers of the law even though they have no idea what they are talking about.

Perhaps he’s going after legalists in particular, but I think we do a disservice if we limit it to that group. Guys who relish telling other people what to do are often covering their own rebellion.

The preachers who rail on sin the most vocally and outrageously, are often making up for their own guilty conscience. I know guys who were staunch defenders of law commands who later were disqualified from ministry for doing the vary things they railed against, or sometimes the one part of the law they never brought up!

Paul says they don’t understand their own confident assertions.

There’s a pastor I know, I’ve heard many of his sermons, who whenever he departs from Scripture to pontificate about his own theories, his volume rises and his finger wags at the congregation. It’s almost a guarantee, the louder and more exuberant a preacher gets, the more seemingly confident they act, that’s when they’ve veered from Scripture the most.

The best way to preach good sermons, to uphold Scripture in word and deed, is to actually live by it. Having a pure heart, good conscience, and sincere faith is the best way to have right doctrine and sound preaching.

Departing from your own personal virtue before the Lord will lead you to preach empty sermons, riling people up about vain commands, and misleading people to follow your own proud assertions.

Souls are on the line. Get yours right before preaching to others.

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A Loving Ministry Will Kill You

1 Timothy 1:5
The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.

Paul charged Timothy to keep the church in Ephesus faithful to the apostle’s doctrine (1:3-4). He was to do this by avoiding other doctrines, myths, and endless genealogies.

The whole point of the charge given to Timothy is love.

Love is a big deal with God.

This probably has something to do with the fact that God is love. Could be.

Unfortunately, we’ve totally destroyed the word love. I have no idea what you think love means.

1 Corinthians 13 is the best biblical definition of love, but it’s long. Has a lot of verses. So maybe the ultimate best definition of love in the Bible is this: Greater love has no man than this, than to lay down his life for his friends. Or perhaps: God demonstrated His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

The ultimate expression of love is the Gospel itself. That God the Creator died for His rebellious creation. Amazing love how can it be, that thou my God shouldst die for me?

Having all the right doctrine along with the ability to avoid evil impulses in your ministry is all good, but if there’s no love, you’ll have problems.

This harks back to 1 Corinthians 13: if you have all knowledge and yet no love, it profits you nothing. Knowledge puffs up, it’s what it does. Knowledge needs love.

Love rejoices in the truth. Therefore, one must conclude that love sometimes hurts. Only a loving father corrects his son.

This love is no joke. Proving you love someone by saying you do is not the deal. This love is to come from a PURE heart, GOOD conscience, and SINCERE faith.

All those words mean the same thing: undiluted, genuine, true and honest by any examination.

You can’t play at love.

If a pastor does not love the people under his charge, he will not feed or protect them. There are many hirelings in the church today, pastors who are in it for the money, power, prestige, the challenge of growing an institution, or for who knows what fleshly reason.

The only reason for anyone to be a pastor is to give yourself away serving others. You do this through the proper understanding and teaching of God’s Word. This will first of all change your life, and then spread to change lives around you.

If you’re not approaching your ministry with love, your doctrine will suffer and the people under your care will suffer.

There are pastors in the ministry for wrong reasons. They don’t love the people, oh they say they do, they do showy things to make it appear as though they love, but most are getting selfish gain for their public displays. I’ve heard many pastors bad-mouth the people in their churches or mock them when they aren’t around.

There are a lot of these guys.

Timothy was not supposed to be one of those guys.

If you don’t love the people, if you’re not willing to sacrifice yourself and what you have for them, if you’re not willing to get paid less, or not have days off, it’s possible you don’t love the people.

I know, I know, there should be healthy boundaries etc. From a human and business perspective, of course. Duh.

From the standpoint of your Savior who gave Himself for you, maybe not. The Apostle Paul said, “I die daily.” He didn’t say, “I die daily, I mean, except for my days off. I mean we all need sabbaticals and days off. Oh and I better be compensated fairly for that too. Holiday pay right?”

I’m sure this is dangerous advice and causes pastors to burn out and destroy their mental health.

Oh well. Endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. We’re too soft in our day. We’re also too busy doing tons of stuff that no church or pastor should be doing. Busy work is what’s burning people out, not actual ministry and teaching the Word.

Get your priorities right. Cut the junk that is not edifying people. Give yourself away. Take up your cross and deny yourself. Whoever loses His life for Jesus’ sake will find it. Stop being a wuss. Instead, get biblical perspectives and priorities and give yourself over to your Commander and Shepherd who gave His life for you.

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Preach Biblical Doctrine. That’s it. Just Biblical Doctrine. Period.

1 Timothy 1:3-4

As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith.

According to Paul, Timothy’s main job as a shepherd of the church at Ephesus was to continue teaching the apostle’s doctrine. If a church/pastor is not going to teach biblical doctrine, what will they teach?

Paul says your other options are “different doctrine,” “myths,” and “endless genealogies.”

“Different doctrine” seems pretty straight forward! It’s just other stuff you’re teaching that has nothing to do with the Bible. Notice he didn’t even say “false doctrine.” There are other things you can teach that are true and fine, just aren’t supposed to be taught in the church.

In other words, a guy could get up and teach about how to pay off your mortgage efficiently, or change the oil in your car, or any number of other things. If you want to do that, do it on your own time. The purpose of the church is to teach biblical doctrine as revealed by the apostles. Period. That’s it. Nothing else.

“Myths” are stories, fictional accounts, words that are designed to entertain rather than instruct from Scripture. Perhaps showing modern day movie clips as sermon illustrations would fit in, I don’t know, who’s to say? Me, that’s who. Don’t do that.

Also beware of your sermon illustrations you get off the internet or from a book. So many of these illustrations are not true. They are fiction. When frogs are placed in pots of water, as the water heats up the frog will indeed try to get out. How dumb do you think they are? All living things have a desire to stay living. They don’t just sit there and get boiled to death. Sheesh. Look up some stuff.

People charged with detecting counterfeit dollars don’t just sit and stare at real dollars all day so they can identify fake ones. Nope, they study what counterfeiters are up to, learn their tricks, and watch out for that.

Eagles don’t fly above storm clouds. Eagles are birds. In storms eagles act like birds. What do birds do in storms? They sit around and wait. That’s what eagles do. Stop telling people to soar above the storms like the eagles, man. No eagle does that.

I could go on. Any sermon illustration that is popular should immediately make you skeptical. It’s fake. It’s not real, I can almost guarantee it.

Maybe you don’t think it’s a big deal to tell a false story to make a spiritual point. If you are standing in front of a church you are required to speak truth. Only speak what is true. Check your sources.

“Endless genealogies” could mean several things. Some think this is a Jewish thing where they look at the genealogical records in the OT and celebrate the awesomeness of their family or tribe, turning these records into reason to be superior to others.

Some think it has to do with things like dating historical events. Like Bishop Usher coming up with the exact time the earth was created (October 22, 4004 BC if you’re wondering).

I have no idea what this term really means. What I do know is this: Don’t be talking about your past as though it were the barometer of your present state. Whether we’re talking family or church tradition or strictly biblical genealogies, doesn’t matter. Past performance is no indicator of present conditions or future results.

All these things, different doctrines, myths, endless genealogies, all have the same effect: endless arguing and questions.

One thing that drove me nuts after 21 years of pastoring was the amount of stupid arguments I had to be in all the time. I started very few of these, but there were people who came into the church with axes to grind, people who were not dedicated to the truth of Scripture, but caught up on some stupid opinion of theirs based on an obscure verse or variant doctrine whose origin remains unknown.

I actually had a guy in our church who argued about genealogies all the time. Once at an evening basketball game for men our church put on, he took himself out of the game to sit by me on the bench and immediately launched into his genealogy argument on me.

I never in my life started an argument about genealogies; I’m nailing this part of the Pastoral Epistles. But that doesn’t mean I was never in an argument about genealogies!

People like to argue. Gentiles seek wisdom, we like to sit around and pontificate and hear some new thing. Mars Hill in Acts 17 is still where many people hang out.

Learn to shun these conversations, maybe even the people after a while. Goodness. Drop it. Let it go. Endless arguing does no favors for anyone.

Preach biblical doctrine. That’s it. Any time you open your mouth before the church, biblical doctrine should be coming out of it. That’s it! Nothing else. I don’t care about the cute illustration you saw on the internet. I don’t care about your family tradition and Uncle Randy’s theory about “new wine.”

Don’t care. Doesn’t matter. Biblical doctrine. That’s it.

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Pastors, Mentors, and Biblical Doctrine

Timothy was Paul’s “true child in the faith.” That is an awesome title. How cool would it have been to have Paul as your father in the faith?!

Many years I prayed for a mentor, someone who could help me in my ministry. Give me some godly counsel, insight, and help. Someone to bounce some ideas off.

I used to talk to my dad a lot about pastoral things. What to say at funerals. What was that thing you’re supposed to say at weddings about power vesting and stuff? What do you think Romans 7:17 means? We would call each other on Saturday nights and talk about our sermons for the next day, go over points, bounce stuff off each other. It was cool.

Then four years in, he died.

Then there was no one. No one showed up even after all my praying for someone to. I tried with a couple older guys. I was open with them, revealed some stuff, hoped they would be a mentor. Instead the used the information against me, stabbed me in the back, and left the church.

So that was nice.

Instead of a mentor I went to the Bible. I read the Bible over 40 times in my 21 years of ministry. I had nowhere else to go. This was probably the best thing that ever happened to me.

I know pastors who had mentors, spiritual friendships, and counselors. A few of them seemed to really benefit from it. Probably most just became warped into their mentor’s image. They seemed unable to have a free thought and just followed the leading of Their Guy.

It’s a mixed bag. What I do know is that having Paul for a mentor would have been awesome!

Paul prepared Timothy to defend right doctrine. He starts with the charge to not let anyone mess up the doctrine he gave them.

Doctrine is the foundational teachings of the faith. Doctrine is essential to spiritual growth and certainly to healthy churches. Messing up doctrine goes hand in hand with messed up behavior. It’s a chicken and egg thing, but I know they go together.

Bad conduct will lead to misusing Scripture and teaching terrible things. Our guilt will make us justify sins, which will lead to more sin. Misusing Scripture will lower the standard, warp it into following human ideas and will create bad manners.

Doctrine and behavior go together.

Many churches have decided that doctrine is too divisive.

Yeah, no kidding. Truth has that tendency. Chucking doctrine for “unity” or seeker sensitivity might sound like a good idea, and might even work great in the short term, but the long term effects will be devastating.

Doctrine does divide, but not if all people in the church truly desire truth. Sound doctrine is the only safe foundation. Our spiritual leaders need to be instructed in sound doctrine and given the authority and conviction to teach and uphold it.

Unfortunately, if a church decides to do this, people will leave. They will go to another church that has the doctrine they are comfortable with. There are so many choices in the church culture. The church with sound doctrine will probably shrink, while all those who leave those churches flock to the ones with the warped doctrine that satisfies the flesh.

Cynical? You betch’ya, but that’s what I see happening.

Paul’s mentorship wasn’t just about making Timothy’s dreams come true like a life coach. It wasn’t about establishing an institution or making it “grow.” It was simply about knowing, teaching, and fighting for sound doctrine.

Imagine if our church leaders today were equipped for such a thing. Amazing things would happen. For instance, 86% of all churches would close down almost immediately.

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Failing Pastor’s Comments on 1 Timothy 1:1-3 part one

1 Timothy 1:1-3
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope, To Timothy, my true child in the faith: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine,

I was asked the following question when the church I pastored at for 21 years was about to hire me, “Do you feel you were called to the ministry?”

I don’t know how I answered, but I know it wasn’t a definitive “Yes!” That’s not because I didn’t think I should be a pastor, but more because I’m not sure people today get called to the ministry like they were in the apostolic age.

Paul said he was an apostle “by command of God our Savior and Christ Jesus our hope.” He really puts the emphasis on the call; not just an inkling, a shiver up the spine, or some such, a command. Not just a command by God, some amorphous divine force upon him; but specifically from God our Savior and Christ Jesus our hope.

Paul is very definitive about his call. In fact, if you have any doubts, you can actually turn in your Bible to Acts 9 and get the exact moment the command was given! Paul had absolute certainty about his call.

I did not. I received no command from God our Savior and Jesus Christ our hope.

I was raised in a pastor’s home. I grew to hate the church. Not all the people in it, many of them were very good to me and for me, but the place, the institution I did not like. I had to be there all the time. I never got to watch a Super Bowl in its entirety until I was in college. (This was back in the day before anyone would have even considered cancelling church for football games. Ancient history. Tail end of The Early Church period.)

On top of that, I saw my dad give everything he had to serve people and he just got used and stabbed in the back. I saw lots of things young eyes probably shouldn’t have seen. My dad, one of the most depressed people I’ve ever met, was not shy about letting his family know his pain and frustrations with the church and the people in it. He probably said too much too early to me.

On one hand I appreciate it now, on the other hand, sheesh, he could have spared me a little bit. But I was in church all the time, I kind of knew anyway, I knew who was there, who wasn’t, and usually why, even if he never said a word about it. All I know is I hated seeing my dad, the nicest guy in the world, get beat up routinely.

In high school people asked, “What are your plans? What do you want to do with your life?” My answer I gave several times was, “I don’t know, but I know I don’t want to be a pastor.”

I went to a Christian college and started with a degree in broadcasting. Talk radio was hitting its peak and I felt that would be an awesome gig. Spout off all day and be funny and sell Snapple. Sweet gig.

I despised my Christian college and most of the “Christians” in it. I rolled my eyes at their emotional religion. I cringed during the excessive praise chorus times during chapel. Everything about modern Christianity annoyed me.

After a year or so my brain said, “You know, if you know so much about Christianity, if you know how church should be, maybe you should quit whining about it and get in there and help.” That thought nagged me. I interpreted it eventually as an impulse to go into pastoral ministry.

I changed my major and went on to seminary. Then I became a pastor and was asked, “Do you have a call to ministry?”

I had no Damascus light, no command from God, but I had a hunch, a feeling, and maybe even a desire, albeit also sincere trepidation. Does that count? I think that’s what most people mean by a “call.” But I have similar hunches, feelings, and desires to buy call options and those rarely work out well.

I don’t like to play games with the word “call.” Paul was definitively and undeniably called. His call made him labor more than the rest of the apostles according to him. His absolute certainty fueled him.

I had a hunch this is a thing I should do. The 21 years I did it gives me zero clarification as to whether I was called or whether I just followed a hunch. If ministerial success based on results or numbers is any indication, I doubt I was called.

But alas, I did it and I will give an account for it someday. I will not be shocked when I stand before the Lord and He says, “Dude, what was all that pastor stuff about? Could you not take a hint?” I will bow my head and say nothing.

I tried. I thought I did what I was supposed to do. I took the opportunity that was before and labored to do it well. I’ll let Him let me know if I was called and if any gold, silver, or precious metals survive His fire.

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Is Your Church’s Leadership Paying Attention?

In my many years of familiarity with churches, I’ve noticed that many people in positions of church leadership have no idea what’s going on in their churches.

And let me make clear that the church I was a pastor of was no exception.

I took my role as pastor/overseer seriously and felt the role required utmost attention since I would give an account before God. Souls were at stake and I wanted to be careful.

The people on the church board were mostly checked out though. This was frustrating on several levels:

1) They had no idea what was going on and they didn’t care. They were “busy.” They had zero time for church considerations. Oh sure, they mostly showed up for meetings and said “aye” at the right time, but they spent very little time thinking seriously about what the church was doing.

I remember one month at a board meeting asking them if they prayed about the church. They unanimously said no, not with any regularity. I asked them in the coming month to do so. They said they would. “Aye.” I asked them at the next board meeting if they prayed regularly for their church. They all said “no.”

This broke my heart. I can’t even get them to think enough about the church to take a few minutes a day to pray for it, how in the world are they going to be effective and helpful leaders in the church?

2) Even if a few people are paying attention, no one understands concerns when brought up. The one guy paying attention gets branded as “that guy” who is “always against everything.” After a while that guy isn’t listened to.

For most of the years as a pastor the board of the church was not involved in anything in the church. It was actually a rare occasion when all board members would be at church on a Sunday morning. “Why didn’t you choose more faithful people to be on the board then?” you may ask. There weren’t any others. These were it.

If they are never at church activities seeing what I’m seeing, how are they going to care? “Just do what you want, that’s why you get the big bucks” was actually a regular answer I received from the board. Doing what I wanted wasn’t the point. Having a group of dedicated people in agreement, and having each other’s backs, and ultimately the health and safety of the church as a prime concern, was the point.

I’m in a church now as not a pastor. I have no official authority of any kind in the church. I struggle with this. Not because I want to be in charge! But I do see how the leadership of the church is not really paying attention. There is so much inconsistency and compromise and sloppiness in adherence to biblical standards, it’s rather distressing to me.

I find myself looking up things just out of curiosity, things that make me wonder, “what’s that about?” I find out. Turns out usually there is a reason my attention was pricked. I’ll ask about it from various members of the church leadership. “Oh, I don’t know what that’s about.” One recently said, “I wasn’t paying attention, I just tune that stuff out.”

There are, in my opinion, pretty dangerous things being floated about in this church, yet this seems to not get anyone in leadership’s attention.

I was unable to get a group in my church to actually care about the church; I know how hard it is to do. I do not stand as one who knows how to do it. I don’t know, I couldn’t figure it out. The inactivity of the board was one of the main things that drove me to resign. Obviously I don’t know how to lead.

I’m wondering if my old church and the church I go to now are exceptions or just how it is. From the various pastors and churches I know about, I’d wager that most churches have barely attentive leadership. How else do we account for the sad state of churches in our day?

Even if they were paying attention to church activities, are any of them regularly in the Word as well? Do they even know what a biblical standard is? What exactly is our guide for decision making? Is anyone paying attention to that? Or have we all agreed to not challenge anything so we can all just coast and get by doing the bare minimum?

Our shepherds are not keeping watch by night or day. Wolves are in sheep’s clothing tearing up the flock. Church leadership is “busy.” Not busy overseeing and protecting, but busy nonetheless.

I imagine this will be a deal on Judgment Day.

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Pastors Should Be Poor

Let me begin by saying that I was a pastor for 21 years and for most of those years I was poor. And, just so we’re clear, my family and I were in the 0% tax bracket. And that’s not because we were playing games with taxes; that’s because we were poor.

And let me also say that the “richest” I was, the time when I was paid the most, was in the first couple years of my ministry. My salary shrunk over time and that was mostly due to my voluntary pay cuts.

The reason I mention this is because I am fully aware of the common assumption that what I personally did is the best and only way to do things. Since I was a poor pastor, therefore, any pastor who wants to be spiritual like me should also be poor.

That probably plays into my opinion some, but I like to think Scripture plays into it more.

The time in my career when I was paid the most was also the time when I was preaching what people wanted to hear. I mostly did this because I didn’t know what else to say. I was preaching the party line, which is pretty much the only line I knew. People were happy and the church grew and I got paid more.

I began to feel terrible about this. The fact I was getting paid a lot, while honestly having no idea what I was talking about, ate at my soul.

To remedy this I began reading the Bible consistently. Over my 21 years of pastoral ministry I read the Bible over 40 times, again, not saying this to sound uber-spiritual, just pointing out what I did to remedy my lack of knowledge.

As I began reading the Bible I began to see that the party line I was taught was not biblical. Being a person with the Holy Spirit, an awareness of my responsibility and accountability before God, and a measure of self-respect, I had to preach what I was learning.

People did not like this. People want their pastors to be sure of themselves, not shifting or changing beliefs. In other words: people don’t want their pastors to grow.

I also noticed how often money was an issue in the Bible. 1 Timothy 6 is pretty much the only passage you’d need to see how dangerous money is to spiritual health, but there are many more.

1 Timothy 6 is in what we call “the Pastoral Epistles.” I imagine there’s a reason for this. Money is dangerous to spiritual health. Going after and getting money leads to spiritual shipwreck. That’s not me; read 1 Timothy 6.

Pastors should be poor for several reasons:

1) The Bible

The Book is pretty clear. You can’t serve two masters, you cannot serve God and mammon (money and all it can get you). This idea was not taught in a corner; it’s all over the place in the Bible once you see it.

2) The Church

The pastor will affect the church. A pastor who is rich, or desires to be rich, will teach false doctrine. To attract people, which is how you get paid more, you will teach what keeps people coming, and you primarily need rich people coming. One of the miraculous signs of the Messiah is not only healing people and raising the dead, but that He would preach to the poor (Matthew 11:5). It’s that astounding and acted as a unique sign. Preaching to the poor doesn’t pay well. Rich pastors don’t bother with such wastes of time.

3) The Judgment

Pastors will give an account for what they said and did in front of a church. You lead by example, whether you want to or not. People will follow. If the pastor has money, people will assume it’s ok. The rich pastor will not preach on the multitude of Scriptures that say money is dangerous. Having money will make your stand before the Lord potentially terrible. Ezekiel 34 is a huge warning to the spiritual leaders of Israel who did their shepherding for their own gain. There is a warning here for New Testament shepherds as well. OT shepherds have already gotten judgment dropped on them, what do you think similar shepherds in the NT will get?

4) The Pastoral Office

Pastoral ministry has an eternal component to it, a spiritual burden if you will. If pastoral jobs pay well, it will attract people who want money rather than those with a spiritual burden to serve. It will be harder to tell who really has spiritual priorities if the pay is good. Benefit packages should not be why a pastor wants a job.

5) The Pastor

The Bible is clear that money has the potential to destroy your soul. It will choke out fruitfulness. As a pastor gets paid more, spiritual vigor will decline and focus on material things will increase. Good soldiers of Jesus Christ endure hardness. Rich people get soft. You’ll lose more battles. Your soul is at stake.

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I’m not saying churches should slash pastoral salaries tomorrow. I’m not praising churches that underpay their pastors out of their own stinginess, or to “teach him a lesson in trusting God.”

What I’d prefer, what I’d recommend, is that all pastors consider this very carefully. Decide between you and the Lord how much money you actually need. If necessary, take a pay cut. Not out of arrogance or to be seen, but out of a faithful accountability to God. Pastors should be people who don’t mind being poor and prefer it to be so. That’s the point.

Money is a huge issue in the Bible. It doesn’t get taken seriously in our affluent age. Luckily for us, our affluent age is about to take a hit, whether you choose it or not! This will work out just fine for everyone who already knows money is a sham anyway. Lead the way, pastors!

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If you’d like to hear more of my accumulated pastoral “wisdom” that shrunk my church, I wrote a book. CLICK HERE to get a copy of it. There are 9 tips for how to not grow your church for only $3.50! And, in a consistent effort to remain poor even while not a pastor anymore, I only get $1 of profit from each book sold!

7 Ways for Pastors to “Love the People”

When I was preparing to be a pastor, an older pastor told me, “Love the people. That’s the biggest thing. You’ve gotta love the people.”

As a young, idealistic pastor-in-training I had no idea what that really meant. If you asked me to nail that down, I suppose I would have said something along the lines of, “Be nice and talk to them. Shake their hands. Something like that?”

After 21-years of being a pastor, and now being out of pastoral ministry and observing pastors from the “layman’s” perspective, here are the top things I think it means for a pastor to “love the people.”

1. Love rejoices in the truth.

Love doesn’t mean tolerating sin or downplaying scriptural standards of Christian conduct for fear of offending and losing attenders. The pastor who told me to “love the people” frequently told people their sin was ok, that they didn’t have to worry about it because of grace. His idea of love meant “be inoffensive” to people. If you are not pointing out truth and error you are not loving people.

2. Love feeds the people.

The idea of preaching and teaching the Word is repeated in the Pastoral Epistles something like 12 times. It’s a big deal. People in your church have been put under your charge. You are the one primarily responsible for feeding them. If your people are starving, it’s hard to see how you are being a good shepherd that loves his sheep. Give them solid meat to chew on!

3. Love protects the people.

Shepherds feed and protect the sheep. There are plenty of wolves out there, some in sheep’s clothing and some very plainly walking around looking like wolves. Be on guard. Warn the people. Protect the people. Call out sin and false teaching. Don’t be afraid to enact biblical church discipline for the purpose of restoring people into paths of righteousness.

4. Love shows up.

Be there for people. Don’t get so sucked into your schedule that you can’t take time out to make a hospital visit or be available in crisis moments. Also, don’t just wait for crisis moments! Be with your people. Know them. Set up times to visit their work place or homes. This used to be common, but with texting it is less so. Some people are uncomfortable with the idea so check first. But be available. There are always healthy limits, but there are probably other duties you do that can be put off or delegated so you can be with the people.

5. Love knows how to listen.

Some think “love the people” means to be an extroverted schmoozer. That’s not it at all. Shut up and listen! It’s awful hard to know what to say to edify people if you’re never hearing what they are saying. Shut off the auto-responses, the pastor voice, and trite answers. Drop the knee-jerk defensiveness that keeps you from being corrected. Shut off the part of your brain that formulates responses before the other person has stopped talking. Listen. Listen to the extent that you remember stuff. Bring up that stuff later. Ask follow-up questions next time you see them. People in our world are not used to being listened to. Be an exception.

6. Love serves.

Be available for menial tasks. Clean the toilets in your church every once in a whole. Don’t be above others. Not saying you do everything, just saying be careful not to get uppity, feeling like you are above others or above certain jobs. Be humble. Look for opportunities to humbly serve. Wash some feet out there!

7. Love is strong.

Make sure you’re growing. If you’re not advancing in your faith, how will you help others advance in theirs? Bear burdens. If someone in the church has to sacrifice, let it be you. Again, there are healthy boundaries, but lead in sacrificing. Take a pay cut instead of cutting support for struggling but faithful missionaries. As the KJV says, “Quit ye like men.” Be strong. Set your face like flint, armor up, take up your cross, and bear one another’s burdens.

There are probably more things to add. Love is a gigantic topic in the New Testament, kind of the whole deal. Pastors, you gotta love the people. I hope this helps you think through better how you can do that.

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A Warning About “Practice What You Preach”

“Practice what you preach” is an old phrase and conveys a solid point. Preachers who don’t do what they preach are hypocrites and do the church no favors.

But the flip side of the phrase also conveys a warning. There are preachers out there who only “preach what they practice.”

These preachers, often unwittingly, avoid preaching on subjects that they are guilty of violating. Or preach to justify their guilt.

Doctrinal shifts sometimes arise out of a preacher’s guilt.

Some pastors will never mention pornography because their own guilt on the issue keeps them from preaching against it. There is at least some nobility to this; they have a desire to practice what they preach! If they can’t practice it; they don’t preach it.

The better option is to do battle with pornography, however.

Some preach to justify the sin of others they value. Sometimes the preaching changes to accommodate changing societal views of certain sins, or to quiet the squeaky wheels in the congregation.

I know pastors who had kids walk away from the faith and very soon after become strident proponents of “Easy Believism.” One gets the impression they preach to justify their kids into heaven.

Paul’s qualifications for church leadership are all moral/character issues. A preacher’s guilt will influence what is preached. Do battle with sin. In fact, a preacher should have a consistent track record of battling and getting victory over sin.

Most false doctrine arises out of sinful conduct. A guilty conscience will warp your understanding of Scripture and what you say about Scripture.

Doing God’s will is the first step to knowing and preaching sound doctrine. If you skip that step, you and your hearers will be led astray.

Yes, practice what you preach, but also improve your practice, so you can preach what you practice.

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The Dangers of Plugging New People into Church Leadership Positions

One time in my pastoral experience I invited a new family over for dinner and asked them how they’d like to be involved in the church. “Would you like to teach Sunday School or work in our youth group?”

Typically I never asked newcomers to get involved right away, but it was a particularly desperate time in our church and I had heard from many others that I needed to “get new people involved right away” if I wanted to grow the church.

So I tried. They never came back to church after that meal. I don’t know if it was because of my question about involvement, or if my wife’s lasagna was repugnant that night, or what.

I was never comfortable asking for volunteers for church work. Typically the worst person possible raised their hand. You can’t very well say you need a position filled and then not fill it with a person who volunteered to fill it.

Usually I asked an individual who I thought would be good at the position to do it. If they said no, I got rid of the position until I found someone who could fill it and wanted to do it.

I eliminated a lot of ministries and ministry positions. No one wanted to do anything really. So we didn’t do much.

I do believe the Bible says to be careful about putting new people in positions of church leadership. Having any sort of spiritual leadership is a serious position. People who take on that role will have added accountability on Judgment Day.

I don’t know if churches consider that enough. Asking some immature person who just wandered into your church to teach kids is not only potentially damaging to those kids, it might add heaps of guilt and chastisement to their life and potentially in God’s judgment.

Paul says a qualification for a bishop is that they are “not a novice” (1 Timothy 3:6). They can’t be new to the faith. Later in 3:10 he says that a person who wants to be a deacon should first be tested.

Now you may think that Sunday School teachers of kindergarteners or leading singing isn’t a bishop or deacon position, but Paul is establishing the point that positions of leadership in the church should be vetted.

The qualifications for pastors and deacons are nothing more than a description of what a mature believer looks like. Maturity in the faith should be an essential requirement for leadership.

I think the testing can be used for smaller, non-leadership roles in the church, things like cleaning, stacking chairs, (Lord knows we need qualified people for that job), greeting, etc. Anyone who joyfully performs these duties should be discipled for opportunities to lead.

Not only does begging new people to get involved potentially compromise those new people and who they might lead, it also reflects poorly on the church.

A church should act like it’s been there. It should have its stuff in order. If you walk into a new church and they are tripping over themselves to get you to do stuff, watch out! Why are they so disorganized and desperate?

Many churches expand their ministries and are forced to plug warm bodies into leadership roles. Anyone will do; we just have to keep the machine rolling.

This will not only destroy the people in the roles and who they are leading, it will eventually destroy the church. Only have ministries you have people qualified to lead. Yes, you will have to cut some ministries. Yes, people will get mad. Yes, Judgment Day will go better for everyone involved.

Church Growth advice is heavy on getting new people working in the church as it forces them to have to show up.

For every example of a church that exploded in growth by plugging new people in immediately, there are probably ten churches that were massively damaged by such a thing. No one writes books about or has those pastors to conferences. Only the winners get book deals.

Be careful out there. As the pastor you are responsible for what’s going on in the church. It falls on your shoulders, if not today, then at least on Judgment Day.

Church is serious business. The new people you beg to do stuff in your church probably go to work during the week. They have bosses that don’t go around plugging new people into skilled positions without some vetting first. And if they do, no one is happy about it!

At least pretend church is as important as the places that employ your people.

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