Two Kinds of Pastors

There are lots of bad ways to pastor, and one counter-intuitive good way.

It’s tempting to pastor without a robust set of convictions. It’s easy to pastor while keeping an eye out for increasing one’s Twitter followers. It’s tempting to want to create a name for ourselves outside of our local church. So many things come easily that shouldn’t: appealing to the lowest common denominator, preaching to the podcast rather than the people in the pews, rushing through the week without adequately feeding on Christ and preparing to feed our people.

Then there’s the counter-intuitive way to pastor. It’s my privilege to know pastors who serve this way.

They love their people. The greatest privilege is to serve them. They have a wider influence, but they know they will give an account for the people they pastor, and so they focus their attention there. They work diligently to feed on Christ and to show up with something to give their people. They stand up in the pulpit and point to Jesus with every ounce of their being. They are not necessarily the most gifted people, and they know it. But a few things are clear: they love Jesus, they love the people, and they’re willing to suffer. This is more than a job to them.

God give us more pastors like this: pastors with conviction, who are willing to suffer, and to do the long, hard work of loving a particular group of people, and who are prepared to sacrifice over a long period of time, in obscurity, to faithfully discharge their duties. The world needs more pastors like this.