Pastoral Leadership

If there is a story in the Bible that simultaneously encourages and irritates me, it is the account of Nehemiah rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem.

On any given service, I can look across our auditorium and see people whom I’ve led to the Lord, baptized, dedicated their babies, and, in many cases, married their children. To me, our church is just family.

It is inherent in human nature to blame other people for our problems. All too often, we as pastors wish to blame the maintenance man, the staff member, the deacon, the Sunday school teachers, or others for the failures and difficulties in our church. This human tendency should be avoided.

One area Independent Baptists are not lacking in is our full schedule of conferences and meetings. From coast to coast there are ample opportunities to attend meetings that will “re-charge your battery.”

I use a template document for typing my sermon notes. But I guard against a template philosophy in preparing my sermons. My church deserves fresh sermons that are prayed over and thoroughly studied for—not cycled through.

One of my pet peeves is email. More specifically, it is email that is used as a substitute for a personal touch. Ministry is people work. It involves building real relationships and nurturing spiritual growth.

Esau “despised” his birthright! The word means to disdain or hold in contempt. He held in contempt what his fathers held dear. He saw his birthright as just a worthless piece of parchment that could be used for bartering. He was willing to trade it away for mere morsels to feed his own desires.

I'm writing to share with you a free resource that you may want to make available to your church family. Often times church members and new Christians are looking online for devotional resources and scripture reading websites. While there are many, not all of them are biblically sound and local church friendly!

Every pastor wants his church to grow. Many pastors do not realize that they often hold the key to significant growth. We know that God ultimately blesses a church with numerical growth as He sees fit, but the pastor can unlock the door to usher in this growth if he is willing to pay the price.

I heard someone quote an old preacher who said regarding this text, “I believe in chasing buzzards off. I don’t believe in chasing buzzards.” It seems to me that this text and the thought given by that man of God now in Heaven are especially significant to us today.

When God sends guests to your church, you must see them as a gift from God and treat them as such. Your reaction to them and response to their visit largely determine whether or not they will be your guest again.

Some of the final words written by the Apostle Paul under divine inspiration dealt with the subject of loyalty and particularly the loyalty or disloyalty of certain preachers to himself. Second Timothy chapter four speaks of Demas as having forsaken Paul, of Luke as remaining with him in his last days, and of the fact that at his trial, “No man stood with me, but all men forsook me.” Standing with Paul or forsaking him certainly appears as a theme in his final epistle.

There is an old saying that is absolutely true; you never have a second chance to make a first impression. All of us have visited churches where our first impression was less than positive.

Recently a young preacher from our church posted on Facebook that he was going to have the opportunity to preach on a Sunday morning while the senior pastor was on vacation. He was excited about being given the privilege of standing in the pastor’s place to feed the people of God in the most important service of the week.

Handling the financial pressures of a church are without a doubt the toughest task we face as pastors in our churches, especially when the expenses of our ministry have increased, and the income has leveled off or even decreased.

Constructive criticism is an incredible asset. Proverbs 27:6 says, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend….” Some of the most helpful advice and counsel I have ever received has come in the form of such “wounds.”

In 2 Timothy chapter 2, Paul told Timothy to, “Purge himself from these” in order to become “a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the master’s use.” The “these” from which Timothy must purge himself in order to be used of God are false teachers, such as Hymenaeus and Philetus.

Luis Montaño was not unlike many of the teenagers involved in our city gangs in the 1990s. He came to church with a shaved head and baggy pants, but underneath his tough exterior was a young man with a troubled past.

June 2011 marks my thirtieth anniversary in full-time ministry. I was saved in an independent Baptist church. Over the last three decades, I have seen the spiritual wagons circling into many different camps. We have to ask the question, “Should I separate from fellow independent Baptists?”