“The Way of the Pastor” (Part 1)

I was thinking about this great privilege for a calling, the pastorate.  And I happened to be reading about Paul and his connection with church leaders in Acts 20, when he was saying goodbye to the leaders at Ephesus.

So many lessons here.  So many reminders of the high privilege and responsibility of being a pastor or an elder of the church.

On Monday, let’s just be reminded of how much Paul loved the people.

Paul was 30 miles away, in Miletus, and called for the leaders of the church in Ephesus.  His words are clear when they get there: “You know about my life,” he talks to them.  He shows his love.

“You know how I lived among you,” he said.  Instead of the evangelistic talks that he gave in Acts, this sounds very much like a Pauline epistle.  Written to church leaders, and explaining what it means to do the work of the pastor or elder.

There was constantly so much poison around about Paul, so he starts with a bit of a defense of his life ministry.  They had seen him.  They knew:  “You know how I lived the whole time,” he says.  And how he lived was with both strong work and joy.

Verse 19 says his motive in a rather nonchalant way:

“I served the Lord with great humility and with tears, although I was severely tested.”

A great lesson for any pastor or actually any Christian – serve the Lord! His life example was so clear, and so were the dangers he faced.  But he was serving the Lord, so he could keep going.

At another place when Paul was in prison, he called himself “a prisoner of Jesus Christ.” He was serving the Lord.

That’s a huge issue for every day as you pastor.  It’s the high privilege.  You bow before your Creator, and it is not a creepy feeling.  You know your place, and it is not a putdown.  It is a sense of honor as we serve the creator and savior and general contractor of the universe.

Notice that he also served “with great humility” – that’s a tough adjective to give for yourself.  But it means he understood the privilege. It means he knew whom he was serving.  It means he could take the suffering with it, too.

And so I look at my life as a pastor or a church leader and seek similar help!

The pain is clearly described here – including the “plots of the Jews.”  And the book of Acts is full of those plots.

And our lives are full of pain once in awhile, or even grief from regular church people!

Maybe our ability to cope with this depends on our attitude about serving the Lord, and how we see ourselves.

Verses 20 and 21 show Paul’s proclamation with his life – his preaching and his proclaiming.

Notice that he did not hesitate to preach “anything that would be helpful,” which goes along with the admonishing and teaching that a pastor is called to do.  We can’t always just say what we feel like saying or what makes people feel good.  We say what is helpful.

Some churches in the past have called their vision “20/20” in honor of this verse – where Paul said he taught “publicly and from house to house.” Every church has to at least think about that – how to have home studies or talk to people one-on-one or in coffee shops, but also to emphasize the public proclamation at the church.

And the next verse shows that he had content to his proclamation – no doubt at all.  Verse 21 lists “repentance” and “faith in our Lord Jesus.”

I heard one speaker talk about the need to “make a full 360 degree turn to follow the Lord”!  I think that’s something we easily do.  Make a full circle and just keep going the way we were!  True repentance of course is a 180 degree turn, back the other way.  Back to obedience, changing our mind about selfishness.  That was part of Paul’s message!

But repentance or change of life means little if we don’t begin following the Lord Jesus Christ.

Notice how clearly the message of Jesus was in Paul’s life every day.

So his love for the people showed in the way he lived among them, faced pain, and proclaimed the Lord Jesus Christ and the way of life that follows Him.  Salvation is not just about forgiveness, but  a whole way of life, turning to Jesus the Christ.

We should not hesitate to embrace our calling as pastors and the gospel as the power of God.  What a privilege to share His grace, to help in public ways and in private ways, and to encourage people to consider who Christ really is.