1 Peter: Expectations of a Pastor

If you ask 10 people what they expect from their pastor, you will probably get 20 different answers. Throughout history, pastors have been expected to be all sorts of things.

But what does God expect the pastor to do?

In 1 Peter 5, God lays out the three expectations for every pastor: to be an elder, a shepherd, and an overseer. In this message, we will learn what these terms mean and how it effects our life with Jesus today.

You can take interactive notes here. At the end of the message, you can email the notes to yourself.

Open your Bibles there to one Peter chapter. I’m really grateful. This is part nine of a 10 part series in the book of First Peter. I wanna begin by asking you a simple question. What do you expect from your pastor? Have you thought about that? Maybe even some of us in the room don’t really consider us having a pastor.

It would be a joy to be your pastor. If you’re here today. We’d love to introduce you to our church. But what do you expect from a pastor? A lot of times, pastor. Brings a lot of hurt and pain to people because of improper expectation. Sadly, there have been times where I have hurt people unintentionally because I had a different job description in my mind than they had in their minds.

One of them chief among them. Let me just say up front, I really wanna be a pastor that loves you and cares for you, and so does Pastor Caleb. But I am only. One example is my counseling. I only have so much expertise in the area. We’re very happy to help you find somebody with professional help, but there’s times where that is an example where you just expect your pastor to take care of it all.

I think Hadden Robinson, he’s famous for helping preachers preach better. He has this quote about what people expect from pastors. He says the modern preacher has a job description that sounds like super. He’s expected to make house calls like an old country doctor. Shake hands like a campaigning politician, prepare lessons like a professor and see as many people as a psychologist.

He has to be as skilled as an an executive, as the president of a business and as shrewd a financier, as a banker. As a result, those entering the ministry are confused about who they are and what they’re supposed to accomplish, and how they are to live up to the impossible. Expectation. I’ll ask you again.

What do you expect from your pastor? It’s likely that I have let you down. It’s likely that pastors in your life have let you down. And that’s part of us being human, but also maybe we have the wrong expectations. I wrote this a long time ago in my. Book and then I took it out of my book last second.

But I am really passionate about looking at the history. What are the expectations people have had on pastors since the beginning? Most theologians really divide the church into four different eras. The first one is the early church. What did the early church expect? This should be on your notes.

Early church expected the pastor to be the ex. In, you read the book of Acts. This is the beginning of the church. The church would grow and a huge way they would grow is actually by being martyred for their faith. And so it’s actually the Romans. They were so frustrated because the more they killed them, the more that it spread.

And pastors were expected to lead the way. And being the exile both being pushed out of their home, being sent across the lands. Also though being pushed out and killed for their faith. One example we have is Peter, the Apostle Peter. He was crucified upside down Most church traditions. We don’t see that in the scriptures.

But Peter himself, as we’re, as he’s writing this we do learn through church tradition that. He did not wanna get crucified in the same manner as Jesus, and he didn’t consider himself worthy. And so instead, he chose to be crucified upside down. But pastors were expected to lead the way in courage.

And I think that’s a beautiful example of pastors. And I really hope you don’t expect me to die first, but I think I’ll try. And number two, it’s the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages period expected the pastor to be the exorcist, so they wielded the power of the Holy Spirit. The term we would probably use today, they wouldn’t back then is pastor had like a sense of magic.

There was this aura about them. A lot of people today, we don’t partake in communion mainly because we just think it’s just a symbol and we really belittle it and we want to do a good job at our church to really remember the significance of communion. But in the Middle Ages, people would only partake in communion about once a.

Now, this is not because of why most of us only partake once a year. For us, it’s just something to do. It’s not really sacred, although it should be for them in the Middle Ages. They were so terrified of the power of communion. . They were so worried that maybe they would have sin in their heart, and so they would abstain because they believed, as it says, an acts, if they came to communion with a heart of sin, it could be possible.

They could be dead on the spot. They understood the spiritual realm in a way that you and I have really dismissed. Another good example of that, in the 11 hundreds, you have Thomas. If you know your history, he was the one who famously opposed King Henry II for his lifestyle, and in so doing, he was murdered in 1170.

But what we do see is 50 years after his death, they took the bones of Thomas Beckett and they placed it in a shrine where people would come and touch the bones, and they believe by touching these pastures bones, it would give them a power, a glory that would rest upon. I’m here to tell you, if you were to touch my bones, I don’t think anything would happen.

But this was the expectations for pastors in the Middle Ages, and for which I’m pretty grateful. That’s not really the expectation anymore. The third one is the Reformation era. In the Reformation the Reformation era expected the pastor to be the expert. So they didn’t necessarily no longer, they no longer wielded the power of the spirit.

Instead, they willed, they wielded the power of the mind. This was when it became very common, and I think we still have this today for pastors to be expected to be the most educated person in the room. I’m grateful for this to an extent. But also know there’s a lot more experts in the room that are smarter than me.

Jonathan Edwards, he was in the 17 hundreds. Many consider him the greatest American theologian of all time. What was interesting about him, he was a pastor and he didn’t have to be entertaining. In fact, you guys probably read this story in high school if you heard the sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.

It is even said in that sermon, all he did was just hold his pulpit and. Barely even looked up at the crowd. But his power was not in communication. It was simply in how brilliant and smart he was. Even in that sermon, it’s recorded, people in the congregation were holding onto the pillars in the room, terrified they would be swept away, but this was all about the expert.

They were the smartest people in every room. And you would go to the church that had the. Pastor. Today is the modern age, and I would say the expectations are different still in the modern age. They expect the pastor to be the executive. They don’t necessarily wield the power of the spirit. We are too educated for that.

They don’t wield the power of the mind, although you better be smart. More than that though, the best pastors, the ones who get the most respect, are those who wield the power of the. , the creative pastor. This is and this is not to slam him, but the success of Rick Warren starting, especially in the 1990s, began to change the definition of success within a church.

Success was now how many people are seated in the room and how big of a room can you make? This also changed because the pastor became the executive. The sermons had to become a whole lot more practical. It was less theology and more, how can I just have a happy week this week? Give me five things to do, and your authority is now rested on this.

Size of your audience. You see this even on YouTube. You’re not really respected unless you have a certain subscriber count and the church world, you’re not invited to those conferences. You’re not spoken well of unless you have a track record of. Bigger is always better. Now, these expectations are exhausting, and I would argue most of them are not rooted in scripture.

At all. And the sad reality is when we ask the question, what do you expect from your pastor? We don’t look to the scriptures. We just think, what is my own personal expectation and what do I hope a pastor believes? And what do I hope the pastor can do for me? But I would argue a better question is, what does God expect from your pastor?

And if we wanna know what God expects from your. Which I know the irony being the one preaching this, but we need to look at the scriptures and I’m grateful for that. This isn’t something I am making up to make my life easier. In fact, I would argue after we’re gonna read First Peter five line by line, I think this actually probably makes my job a little bit harder.

And so first Peter five is going to give us that answer again. We’ve been in this book, first Peter, for nine weeks. If I were to summarize this book, it’s simply a letter about a church built on Christ and a culture built on crisis. So how do we weather the storms of life? And now Peter is transitioning and saying one way we weather the storms of life is to participate in the local church and to participate in the local church, you have to know how it functions and one way it functions.

To be led by a pastor or a multiplicity, several pastors. So again, let’s look line by line first. Peter five, starting in verse one. Peter says, I exhort the elders. Underline that word. We’re gonna explain what that is, and literally just a few seconds among you as fellow elder and witness to the sufferings of Christ, as well as one who shares this is that coin we talked about last week.

Again, shares in the glory about to be. Shepherd. God’s flock among you, not overseeing out of compulsion, but willingly as God would have you not out of greed for money. This is something a lot of people claim pastors are just greedy and they shouldn’t be according to this text. Certainly not, but eagerly meaning I’m, we’re doing this for the ministry, not for the money, not lording it over those entrusted to.

But being examples to the flock. In other words, not using that power to abuse people, but instead to love and to serve people. And when the chief shepherd, that’s Jesus Christ, appears, we believe in the second coming, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. . There are three words that I’ve found in studying this text that implies the three expectations God has on pastors.

Are you with me? So let’s look at it. Number one is elder. So as an elder, the pastor guides the church by setting the example with his own maturity. Okay, so pastor is the phrase you and I use a more common used phrase in the scriptures is elder. And so elder is this phrase, press budros. And so he says, I exel the, I exhort the press budros or the elders.

This means a couple things. This first of all, the office of leadership. So look up First Timothy three, one through seven, Titus one, six through nine. It’s talking about the office of elder and elder especially is tied to their. So for our culture, When we mention somebody as elder, they it’s one of two things.

Either you’re Mormon and so you call somebody elder, Trey Elder, whatever, because that’s what the LDS church does. Which we have a lot of friends and loved ones and neighbors that are, that we don’t use that language. Maybe because our LDS. Friends do. And so we wanna distinguish where we can, but technically you can call me elder Trey, please don’t.

But you can. But also, so it’s a title but it’s also referencing maturity, but it’s not by age. So that’s the second thing. So either it’s elder because of another. Church. But elder today in all of society, we typically think of it as somebody who’s older. They have gray hair they are just wise and amazing, or not.

They can be really cranky, right? But they’re still your elder. But in this passage in the Bible, it’s moaning more, not by age, but by maturity. That you are sometimes. And hopefully one of my favorite compliments is when they say, man you’re wise beyond your years. It’s that’s part of the gig.

If I wasn’t, I shouldn’t be a pastor. First Timothy four 12 though, argues it’s doesn’t, you can be an elder but not elderly cuz Paul says to Timothy, don’t let anyone look down on you as an elder because you are young. So you can be young, but you need to be wise in your years. That make sense?

So first Peter five. It says shepherd God’s flock among you, not overseeing out of compulsion, but willingly as God would have you, not out of greed for money, but eagerly. These are maturity things. Next line, verse three says, not lording it over those, and trusting to you, but being examples. Two, the flock an elder is the ultimate example.

And this example is not for you to mirror or mimic the pastor’s personality. Lord knows this would be an unbearable church if y’all acted like me, but it’s to mimic his maturity. . I had a pastor once tell me like don’t take the humility card saying, oh, don’t follow me. Just follow Christ.

Paul says, no, follow me as I follow Christ. And part of being a pastor is your life should be at least mature enough where you can say, with confidence, follow me as I follow Christ. Not saying I am perfect, but I am in progress and I want you to be in progress with me. Agent Rogers, he’s somebody I’ve been reading a lot lately.

He was my favorite pastor growing up. He says, if your pastor is a man of. Follow him if he’s not fire him. There’s two ways you can fire me. Okay? Oh, this is scary, right? Number one is you guys as members can get together and kick me out, all right? Hope you don’t do that, but we’ll have a conversation if it leads to that.

But number two is for you to leave the church, right? That is two ways that people don’t follow a man of God because that person’s no longer a man of God. This is really important though, talking about being a pastor, being a. Example, his maturity needs to be above his years. It’s important because pastors reproduce who they are.

Or another way to put it in layman’s terms, like leaders, they lead they lead a people to become who they are. There’s a professor. He did an experiment on his students in college. It was supposed to be a four person group project who hates, I hated group projects. I was always the one who just wind up doing everything miserable hate group projects.

But he did a group project and the winning group would win a hundred dollars each. When you’re in college living off Top Ramen, that’s a big deal, right? And so he got the whole his class to get together. They split off into groups of. And they had an hour to complete this task. Now, what he did that other people don’t know is in each group, he already told one person to be what he would call the actor.

So three of the students weren’t in on the situation, on the experiment, but one of them was, and they were asked to be one of three things to some of those students. He told them to be a slacker. This is somebody who would immediately. Just do nothing. Be on his phone while the group is trying to figure out what to do, and it shows in his experiment.

When a slacker was in the group, the entire group quit the group project within a span of 45 minutes. Because of that slacker, the whole group failed. The second type of person that they, that the professor put in the room is the jerk. And so he put, made somebody say, act like you just want to kill somebody’s cat, right?

Just be mean. Push down everybody’s ideas, fight people. And that’s exactly what the actor did. And so in fact, within a span, again, of 45 minutes, they made the jerk made the whole group fight. Not just the jerk but each other. It was contag. . The last one was the most devastating result is the actor was told to be a depressive pessimist.

Where a moment anybody would bring up anything, they would, they were told to be negative, to bring people down, say that we’ll never accomplish this goal. And at the end of those 45 minutes, everyone was literally visibly sprawled on their desk from exhaustion. That was the span of 45 minutes. What can an immature pastor do to a congregation in 45 Sundays or more?

That’s a character thing. It’s so important. The pastor could be an expert in no theology, but if he is a slacker or if he’s a jerk, or if he’s a pessimistic person, it infects the entire congregation. So they must be an elder who is mature, who can withstand the storms of life, who can still be positive and hope, bringing in the midst of really difficult circumstances.

Hebrews 13, seven. Really great line says here, says, remember your leaders. Who have spoken God’s word to you, we would call that a pastor. As you carefully observe the outcome of their lives, imitate their faith. Pretty interesting. So that is your responsibility as a congregation to observe the outcome.

right now. This is, may I just say this as a pastoral word, give grace to their kids. Amen. One of the worst things to be as a pastor’s kid I was one. And it’s a glass house and there’s so much expectation the kids didn’t sign up to become a pastor. Okay. Just the pastor did. But anyways.

The scriptures do also say the kids should be respectful and upright, but they need grace. They’re only seven. Okay? But also, so look at their life and as you look at their lives, imitate their faith. Now may, you may be thinking, this is always hard for me to say, but if you don’t see me as a pastor that you would want to imitate, I would invite you to find another church.

I invite you to please find a pastor you can trust, because the, one of the greatest ways for you to grow in your relationship with Jesus is to have a pastor you can trust and have a pastor you can follow. Now, pastors should not be put on pedestals at all. And there’s example after example of that in the scriptures, but they do need to be the example.

And if they’re not worthy of following, then either that pastor needs to go or you need to, okay. Awkward moment over. Let’s keep going. Verse two. First Peter five, it says, shepherd God’s flock. now overseeing out of compulsion. This means like having to right but willingly as God would have you. Not out of greed for money, but eagerly.

This is a good shepherd. Let’s keep going. Verse three, not lording it over, those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock and when the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. It’s helpful for us to remember that the shepherd, the chief shepherd of this church and the church, Jesus Christ, right?

So as my job, I am actually a under shepherd. And so in my prayer life, there are parts of my prayer life where I tell God what I would love to see happen to this church. But more than that, I am learning more and more to say, okay, God, you are the pastor of this church. You’re the chief shepherd. So God revealed to me through the word of God, through counsel, whatever you can use to show me how you want me to shepherd this local church.

So not only is a pastor and elder, which implies a lot of expectation there, but the pastor is a shepherd. So write this down. As a shepherd, the pastor guards the flock with the ministry of God’s word. Notice how we are called the flock, the church, which implies that you are sheep. It is not talking about geese.

Okay? You flock of geese. No flock of sheep given to the mob mentality. Sheep are really dumb, okay? And for some reason, God wants to call you and me sheep. It doesn’t take much to get everybody to jump off of a cliff. , right? And so the pastor’s job is to lovingly figure out where one, where the bad sheep is leading the others.

And to bring that back, one pastor said Sheep are weak. They are way worth, but they are worthwhile. And so the primary way though a shepherd can help feed the flock and to put them in the right direction is to preach the word of God, which is why today what we’re doing is just line by line. We want to, I know maybe even you’re thinking, I’m not a pastor.

Why do I need a sermon on a pastor? The word of God finds it valuable, and so therefore we find. Valuable. And so one way for us to stay on the straight and narrow is just to keep going through the scriptures. Now, preaching has the job of guarding the doctrine and the direction of the congregation.

Acts 20 verse 29. Paul gives this warning. He says, I know that after my departure, Savage wolves will come in among you not sparing the flock. You see this imagery he’s using men will rise up even from your own. And distort the truth to lure the disciples into following them. This is so hard. This even means like our church now, even if you came in with the right heart, it is my job to be like, are you good?

Do you have some sort of bad motive here? Because I love you, but I also love our congregation. And negativity spreads 10 times faster than positivity, right? Lies multiply way faster than truth. And so if someone is spreading dishonor, Disrespect spreading false lies about the gospel. It is our job to put it to rest or else it will not only destroy the person spreading that message, but everyone else around the next verse 31, therefore beyond the alert, remembering that night and day for three years, I never stopped warning each one of you with tears.

He was crying for three years. Saying false doctrine spreads among us. And if we had time, I would go through. There have been times in our church where we have had to confront what I would call wolves, who just tried to destroy our church. Sometimes it’s in the form of gossip. Other times it’s in the form of a false gospel entirely.

And this is my least favorite part of the job, if I can be honest with you. But I have learned, if I don’t confront it, it will only get. And if I don’t confront it, you will get even more hurt. So I’d rather go through getting hurt by fighting the wolf. Now just hear me. I’m not punching people. Okay? But we, and this is why we have deacons, it’s why we have multiple pastors.

I don’t go at this alone. This is why we call deacons shock absorbers. They’re there to help in the fight. And when we say fight, it’s bathed in grace and bathed in connection before correction. If you have problems with that, I’d. Process that out loud with you later. But it is important for us to uphold doctrine.

Now, there’s two ways that we uphold doctrine. It’s orthodoxy and ory. So the first one, orthodoxy, this is on your notes. Orthodoxy means correct beliefs in accordance with the truth of Jesus. So the shepherd is supposed to make sure our beliefs, what we’re communicating about the gospel is consistent with the scriptures.

You miss one little. Most lies are 95% truth, but that 5% will poison the whole entire thing. And so it’s important for us to hold to orthodoxy. I was really troubled recently, they did a poll to Evangelicals in America, and I think it said like over 50% didn’t even know that Jesus never. That’s problematic.

That’s orthodoxy. If you believe Jesus’s sin, you have no hope. There is no gospel. Jesus was perfect in every single way. That’s what made him a worthy sacrifice to take our sin and we can take his righteousness. It’s called W Imputation. Okay, so orthodoxy is importance is why we’ve done theology of the Gospel courses.

It’s why we try to go through the Bible as much as possible line by line. The second thing is ortho. This is probably the biggest black eye on the American church is we only think doctrine has to do with orthodoxy our beliefs, but correct behavior is important as well. So Ory is correct behavior in accordance with the way of Jesus, how we act, how we live out this gospel is just as important.

We need to be people of grace, not just theologically, but practically. We don’t need to just know that we should love our neighbor. We can pass the test or an exam saying, yes, we should love our neighbor, but we need to call each other out if we don’t love our neighbor. We need to call each other out.

If we make somebody a least of these person feel like they’re not welcomed in our church, that needs to be spoken against and guarded against. That’s why I’m so excited. So guys, for the next two years, we’re gonna take our church starting in January on a. Seven part series, a discipleship journey to help you in your daily and weekly life.

So we have come together. Our team has determined there are seven practices of Jesus. So those are the seven series we’re gonna sprinkle throughout the next two years. The first one we’re starting out with is Sabbath. We talk about Sabbath a lot. We wanna make like a four week resource for you. This is s.

This is what it isn’t. This is why we believe we can still operate and do it in the new Covenant. There’s seven different ones. We’re gonna lay this out even later. But for now, I want you to know orthopraxy means a ton to us. We wanna help you in your everyday life, and one of that is to help with the practices.

So if you’re curious, our plan is to do a practice and then pick an Old Testament or a New Testament book and then go back after that to another practice. I need to move on the last line in verse. Says and you will receive the unfading crown of glory quickly. It’s actually referencing Paul, Peter here is referencing the Olympic athletes who would win like a wreath that would be put over their head.

It was a laurel made of weeds and plants, and it was a beautiful honor, but what they all knew is this was. Beautiful. And it was the most coveted prize, but it would fade away. It would literally die. And he’s saying, pastors press on, fight the good fight. Guard the flock, guide the flock. Do these hard things because if you do it with faithfulness, you’ll receive a crown.

Unlike the Olympic athletes that fade away, this crown will last for. Eternity and it’ll be our pleasure to take that crown and lay it at the feet of Jesus. This is helpful for me cuz it’s a reminder, my pastoring, I’m not looking to be rewarded for my pastoring. This side of heaven. My reward will come in the new heavens and the new earth.

Why is that important? Pastoring has seasons of tremendous di. And if I need instant gratification and if I need things to go well for me now, it can give birth to self pity. And self pity is the mother of many sins. I think that’s why pastors are caught in adultery, caught in embezzling because it gets to this point where it’s like, Hey, I’m not getting what I think I deserve.

I am doing overtime. I I am helping these people, and yet I’m not reciprocating. I don’t feel like I’m getting what I’m giving out. And so that leads down a very terrible path. Peter’s saying, look, the reward is. But stay faithful. Know that there will be seasons, months, even years where pastoring is so hard.

But it’s okay because we are training. We are running a marathon, not a sprint. And if you persevere, you’ll receive an unfading crown of glory. That’s why I’m so grateful to be fourth generation pastor. My great-grandfather, my grandfather, and my father. All of them have so far cuz my dad is still in ministry, but I believe this will still be true.

They have all finished. And that is a beautiful gift and example to have. Are you guys with me? This is line by line. This is how we’re doing it today. Look at verse two. Shepherd God’s flock among you, not overseeing out of compulsion but willingly that overseeing is episcopals in the Greek. Which we see in other texts when Peter’s when Paul is talking about pastors, hear Peter’s saying it, P pastor has the expectation of being an overseer.

So as an overseer, the pastor grows the congregation with his management of the vision. So there’s a lot of expectation that God has on a pastor, right? So he is an elder. He needs to be mature. He is a shepherd. He needs to have the ministry of the word and feed his flock, but also he’s an overseer, which means he manages the vision.

One thing that’s really common is this phrase vision leaks. The reality is people forget the vision over and over, so you actually see, you can look through history, but even modern day today, when churches become successful, churches run the threat of forgetting the mission because they become infatuated with their own.

So we gather and we’re pumped about the service, not because of the Holy Spirit, the scriptures, God’s glory, none of that. It’s wow, we packed out the house today. How amazing are we? We’re the best, right? And so you every week, look how great we are. We had so many, we had energy in the room, which energy is a blessing.

But the blessing, the true blessing is the mission. The true blessing is who else is not in these doors yet. The church should never exist for itself. It’s always to advance the kingdom. Now, when a church becomes a failure, there are hard seasons in the lifespan of a church when a growth just no longer comes easy.

And I think God does that to build the character of a church. But when in failure season, if pastors don’t oversee it correctly, churches can become the. And they claim the city is too far gone to be saved. We be then start thinking us for no more. It’s just because we preach the truth. The large church down the road, they don’t preach the gospel.

That’s why they’re growing. We’re the faithful, we’re the frozen chosen, right? So that’s why we’re not growing because we actually believe that sin is real and hell is hot and all of these other things. But an overseer corrects both of. and brings it back to the vision. The vision at our church is we are formed by Jesus together for others, and we believe if anything goes against that vision, it’s the pastor’s job to lead the way in getting rid of it.

right, formed by Jesus. This is spiritual formation. It’s my job as a pastor to say, is there any way that we, as a church are being formed by the world? Are our thoughts, our actions, our loves, our habits? Are they formed more by Silicon Valley than the scriptures than we need to change something and fix it?

Together. Are we living in isolation? It’s my job to say, okay, what other event, Viking feast, this, that, the other, how can we cultivate more community? We need to live life together, not in isolation, and we want to always be for others. So an overseer’s job is to say, okay, who is not in the room and how can we bring them into the family?

How can we love and serve the least of these? We need to be thinking out there instead of just in here. So that’s the overseers. To manage, to know the vision, to put forth events, the right leaders, the people to call out the wolfs, all these things to make sure the vision is staying on point. And there are two vision killers that are very common today.

Number one is being comfortable kills the vision. If the mission is painless, then the vision is pointless. . I have asked you guys to do a lot the last couple years, and sometimes I feel really bad about it, but what I’m grateful for is that you and I have not been comfortable and that’s good because comfortability kills mission.

Even the simple missing of Sundays can really not help our momentum, right? Just being comfortable coming whenever those little things add. And it keeps us from reaching people. So an overseers job is, how can I make sure we’re not comfortable? We’re leaning in to the presence of God, willing to get uncomfortable for the sake of the gospel.

The second thing is being conceded. Being conceded can kill the vision. Whoa, to us when we push people away, woe to us if we get to a level of success where we’re more about ourselves than the kingdom, more about how great we are than how great the need is. This happens all the time. The two ways churches die are being too comfortable or being too conceded, and what’s so terrifying is the pastor, it says in scriptures, has double judgment.

So we will all be judged if we’re comfortable or conceited. Because it’s the pastor’s role as overseer, the pastor will receive double judgment for leading a people being too comfortable, too conceited, or some other sin. I have not put on the screen who wants to be a pastor? Joy. Okay, so write this down.

I love this quote. I think this is a helpful way to us to make sure we’re not comfortable or conceded. Says, if you’re not close to people who are far from God, you’re not as close to God as you think. Because God’s heart is always with people who are far from him. That’s from Pastor Vince Antonucci. So what should you expect from your pastor?

Maturity, ministry and Management? So as we close, how can we apply this message this week? The first obvious question that I want you to really wrestle with, number one, is God calling you into pastoral ministry by God’s. . We have two men in our church right now. Ironically, neither of them are here, but we have two men in our church who are taking their first steps towards the pastorate.

They’re here for legitimate reasons, but we couldn’t be more thrilled for that. Like we are going to put together a helpful step by step guide to help them become pastors. And if you wanna be a part of that, we love to invite you into the fold and see what that means for your. . But the second question, and maybe this will apply to every person in the room.

Is God calling you to grant your pastor the privilege to guide, guard and grow your soul into the way of Jesus? I love it. One recent new member, we’re having conversation with them about joining and I thought it was so great. He says, I need a pastor in my life. I want to join a flock because I want the anointing that comes from follow.

A, a man of God under the authority of the word, and I thought that was such a blessing. Will you, are there ways, or maybe I’m calling you according to the authority of the scriptures, to do something and you are neglecting the call, would you consider to say, okay, I’m going to trust you. I will take the next step.

I will commit to being guided, guarded, and being grown by the pastor through the word of God and through this. Will you pray for your pastor and will you give us, as pastors the privilege to do this? I think this is the most faithful way to apply this text.