What Should Your Pastor Be Doing?

2 Timothy 2:15...Study to show thyself approved unto God. A workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. 

I have come to learn in ministry that there are many strains of thought as to what a pastor ought to be doing. The society of churches have a thought as to what a pastor ought to be busy doing, individual congregations have thoughts on what a pastor ought to be doing, church boards have their thoughts on the matter, the pastor has his own thoughts and then there is what God says he ought to be doing. These thoughts can differ from group to group but there is one thing that I think every group agrees upon. That as a man of God He ought to study and know the counsels of God that he might lead those in his charge in such a way that God would be glorified in them. A dear brother, friend and fellow pastor whom many know from  Proclamation Social Gospel and Gospel Fellowship Chapel gave me this past weekend what I believe to be one of the best explanations of the primary work of any one bearing the calling of a pastor. I would like to share it with you in it's entirety as he gave it to me. 

This is a plan suggested by an anonymous parishioner and cited in Rediscovering Expository Preaching ( John MacArthur and the Master's Seminary Faculty, 1992, Word Publishing, pp. 348-349).

Fling him into his office. Tear the "Office" sign from the door, and nail on the sign, "Study." Take him off the mailing list. Lock him up with his books and his typewriter and his Bible. Slam him down on his knees before texts and broken hearts and the flock of lives of a superficial flock and a holy God.

Force him to be the one man in our surfeited communities who know about God. Throw him into the ring to box with God until he learns how short his arms are. Engage him to wrestle with God all night through. And let him come out only when  he's bruised and beaten into being a blessing.

Shut his mouth forever spouting remarks, and stop his tongue forever tripping lightly over every nonessential. Require him to have something to say before he dares break the silence. Bend his knees in the lonesome valley.

Burn his eyes with weary study. Wreck his emotional poise with worry for God. And make him change his pious stance for a humble walk with God and man. Make him spend and be spent for the glory of God. Rip out his telephone. Burn up his ecclesiastical success sheets.

Put water in his gas tank. Give him a Bible and tie him to the pulpit. And make him preach the Word of the living God.

Test him. Quiz him. Examine him. Humiliate him for his ignorance of things divine. Shame him for his good comprehension of finances, batting averages, and political in-fighting. Launch  at his frustrated effort to play psychiatrist. Form a choir and raise a chant and haunt him with it night and day, "Sir, we would see Jesus."

When at long last he dares assay the pulpit, ask him if he has a word from God. If he does not, then dismiss him. Tell him you can read the morning paper and digest the television commentaries, and think through the day's superficial problems, and manage the community's  weary drives, and bless the sordid baked potatoes and green beans, ad infinitum, better than he can. 

Command him not to come back until he's read and reread, written and rewritten, until he can stand up and say, "Thus saith the Lord."

Break him across the board of his ill-gotten popularity. Smack him hard with his own prestige. Corner him with questions about God. Cover him with demands for celestial wisdom. And give him no escape until he's back against the wall of the Word. 

And sit down before him and listen to the only word he has left - God's word. Let him be totally ignorant of the down-street gossip, but give him a chapter and order him to walk around it, camp on it, sup with it, and come at last to speak it backward and forward, until all he says about it rings with the truth of eternity.

And when he's burnt out with the flaming Word, when he's consumed at last by the fiery grace blazing through him, and when he's privileged to translate the truth of God to man, finally transferred from earth to heaven, then bear him away gently and blow a muted trumpet and lay him down softly. Place a two-edged sword in his coffin, and raise the tomb triumphant. For he was a brave soldier of the Word. And ere he died, he had become a man of God.