Should Pastors Pastor?

Megachurch pastors are not likely to see themselves as that—pastors. According to recent findings from Leadership Network’s Large-Church Senior Pastor Survey, 81% of Sr. Pastors with more than 2,000 attendees view their role as “preacher/teacher” while only 16% see themselves as “pastor, shepherd, or spiritual guide.” And only 10% say they are strongest in pastoral counseling and spiritual direction. (You can find an article on this study in the Christian Post.)

Sad News, Not New News

While to me this is very sad news, it is hardly new news.

Pastor, author, and professor Eugene Peterson noted in a 1993 article for Christianity Today that the practice of pastoral soul care and spiritual direction was a forgotten art. Through his research he concluded that until about a century ago, pastoral work was synonymous with soul care—the Scripture-directed, prayer-shaped care that is devoted to persons singly or in groups, in settings sacred and profane.

In his 1989 book, The Contemplative Pastor, Peterson noted that pastors now focus on running a church (administration) and have abandoned their historic call to pastoral soul care. Peterson saw many of the ministers of his day as CEOs and polished public speaker. But can they relate? Do they care? Do they practice pastoral care? Are they even aware of their ancestors in pastoral practice?

“Yes, But”

I can hear you now…

“Yes, but there’s no way a pastor with 2,000 people can counsel, pastor, or shepherd everyone!”

I’m not saying they could or even should provide personal ministry to everyone.

I’m saying they should be able to shepherd someone! More importantly, the Bible says that a pastor should be able to shepherd (1 Peter 5:1-5; Acts 20:25-38; Colossians 1:28-2:2).

Objection # 2

Or, you might say, “Yes, but the work of the pastor is equipping the people to do the work of the ministry, not doing all the work of the ministry.”

I agree 100% that pastors are equippers. Of course, nothing in the survey noted this as their self-identified role.

Additionally, how can you equip people for the personal ministry of the Word (counseling, shepherding, spiritual direction) if you have little or no experience or ability or passion in that area? And how many mega-churches have equipping ministries for lay counseling, lay care-giving, lay shepherding? (Answer: a very low percentage.)

Another Potential Objection

Or, you might say, “Yes, but through the pulpit ministry of the Word, so many more are fed.”

Here’s my problem with that—if a pastor is not involved in the personal ministry of the Word (shepherding, pastoral counseling, spiritual direction), then the preaching is more from theory than from real-life, raw, relevant ministry experience.

Hiding behind the pulpit ministry of the Word can easily become an excuse to avoid the personal ministry of the Word. The pulpit ministry of the Word and the personal ministry of the Word are not enemies. They should be partners.

Join the Conversation

What do you think?

Should every pastor be involved in the personal ministry of the Word through shepherding, pastoral counseling, care-giving, soul care, and/or spiritual direction?

Should pastors pastor? Or, does pastoring a mega-church grant pastors a pass on pastoring?

Is a pastor a soul physician or a CEO/public speaker?

The Anatomy of Anxiety

Part 25: A Safe Place to Hit Rock Bottom

Note: For previous posts in this blog mini-series, visit: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, and 24.

Big Idea: Does worry, doubt, or fear get the best of you sometimes? Do you wonder where anxiety comes from and how to defeat it in your life and the lives of those you love? Then we need a biblical anatomy of anxiety. We need God’s prescription for victory over anxiety.

The Safest Place on Earth?

When we struggle with issues like anxiety and depression, unfortunately, the church is often one of the least safe places on the planet. Is the church a safe place to hit rock bottom, or is it the place we get stoned by rocks?

When someone comes to us anxious or depressed, do we respond more like the loving, accepting Father or the judgmental older brother (see Luke 15:11-32)? Are we the good Samaritan, crossing over to get bloody, or are we the self-righteous Pharisee staying as far away as possible from life’s messes (see Luke 10:25-37). Are we asking, “Who sinned?” or are we praying, “How can we help bring healing?” (see John 9:1-12).

Spiritual Conversations

There are many ways to help bring healing. One way is to learn the art of “spiritual conversations.” In my book Spiritual Friends, I call these “trialogues.” In a monologue, I talk at you. In a dialogue, we talk to each other. In a trialogue, together we invite a Third Party to join our conversation—Jesus. Every interaction between Christian friends should include at least three people: you, your friend, and the ultimate Spiritual Friend—Christ—who we invite in through His Word and His Spirit.

Sustaining Spiritual Conversations: Romans 12:15

Sustaining spiritual conversations seek to empathize with another person’s hurts and struggles. They seek to communicate, “It’s normal to hurt.” And, “It’s frightening to experience anxiety.” They “climb in the casket” of anxiety, for instance, that feels like death warmed over. They weep with those who weep (Romans 12:15). They face the fact that we live in a fallen world and it often falls on us.

Ponder just a few sample sustaining spiritual conversations. The idea is not to repeat these in a rote, wooden way. In fact, don’t repeat them at all. Use these samplers to create from your own caring heart person-specific interactions that communicate that you care and accept your friend exactly where she/he is.

*“I’m so sorry you’re going through this. I can see and feel your stress and fear.”

*“What do you fear the most in this situation? What’s the worst case scenario? What if that happened?”

*“When are your worries the most overwhelming? When are they the least taxing?”

*“What are these feelings of anxiety like for you? Please help me to understand, the best anyone could, what you’re feeling right now.”

*“Specifically, what are the situations and circumstances that you’re worried and anxious about?”

*“When else have you experienced feelings similar to this? How did you respond? What did you learn about God and yourself in that situation? What would you repeat and what would you change?”

*“If you knew that God would say ‘Yes,’ to your prayer about this situation, what would you be praying?”

*“What has been robbed from your life due to these fears and stresses?”

*“What do you wish were happening instead of what you’re experiencing now?”

*“Have you been able to share your heart with God? What have you said? What are you sensing from God?”

*“What might God be up to in all of this?”

*“How is your battle with anxiety influencing your relationship to Christ?”

*“What do you think the Bible says about anxiety, worry, and fear?”

*“What Scriptures could we look at that illustrate how God’s people have talked to God when they felt fear, worry, and anxiety?”

*“If you were to write your own Psalm 27, 31, 46, 55, 91, 92, 109, or 116, related to your fears, how would it sound? What would you write?

*“What Scriptures might you turn to in order to discover God’s perspective on this?”

*“What passages have you found helpful in gaining a new perspective on this? To find strength and courage and peace as you go through this?”

*“How does your faith in Christ fit into your feelings and thoughts?”

*“How could your image of Christ impact your current feelings and prompt peace?”

Keeping It Real

1. Are you a safe person? Do people feel safe hitting rock bottom with you?

2. Who has been a safe spiritual friend for you? Who enters into spiritual conversations with you that communicated, “It’s normal to hurt.”

3. Of the sample sustaining spiritual conversations, which ones would you want spoken to you? What additional samples would you add when speaking to a friend struggling against anxiety?

The Rest of the Story

In our next post we move from the casket to the empty tomb. We explore together healing spiritual conversations that communicate, “It’s possible to hope.” And, “It’s possible to experience peace even when you feel worried.”

Join the Conversation

How can we make our churches safe places to hit rock bottom?

Spiritual Friends

100 Top Resources for Your Life and Ministry

“Want to change lives?”

That’s the four-word summary of my passion that drives everything I do with RPM Ministries: “Want to change lives?”

I want to equip God’s people to change lives. I know that’s not as “user-friendly” or “seeker-sensitive” as many more self-absorbed questions.

However, I have faith that people of faith want to change lives with Christ’s changeless truth.

The Macy’s Santa Claus

Of course, I’m certainly not the only person passionate about equipping. That’s why one of my commitments is to be a bridge-builder directing you to additional equipping sources.

I like to use the analogy from the movie Miracle on 34th Street. Remember how the Macy’s Santa shocked everyone by sending customers to the “competition” (Gimbels)? Why? Because for him it wasn’t a competition! Life was all about helping others to find what they needed.

That’s the passion behind my bridge-building, resource-providing ministry.

Ministry is not competition. We’re co-workers together. God’s resources are infinite. Human needs are close to infinite. Let’s work together, building bridges and pointing each other to the best sources for changing lives with Christ’s changeless truth.

That’s why you’ll find on the right hand side of my website my blogroll and favorite websites that I follow and recommend.

For your convenience, I’ve listed below (with automatic links) these 100 top sites. Take a look, visit, enjoy–and be equipped. Because…you want to change lives.

Join the Conversation

What blogs and web sites do you recommend to someone seeking to be equipped to change lives with Christ’s changeless truth?

Where do you go to find Christ-centered, comprehensive, compassionate, and culturally-informed equipping for biblical counseling, spiritual formation, Christian living, and church ministry?

To Glorify God and to Comfort the Saints

*A review of Anthony J. Carter, “On Being Black and Reformed: A New Perspective on the African American Christian Experience”

With one succinct sentence, Anthony Carter integrates historical Reformation theology and historical African American experience. “Our primary goal as theologians is to glorify God and to comfort the saints.”

Some may wonder what’s so novel about that declaration. A careful reading of most modern presentations of Reformed theology exposes the truth that God’s glory is always emphasized (rightly so), while the saints’ comfort is often minimized (sadly so).

Reformation theology has historically offered great treatises on anthropology (human creation and God’s design), hamartiology (human sin and depravity), and on soteriology (Christ’s salvation and human deliverance). Historically, what has been lacking is a biblical sufferology—a theology of suffering that brings comfort to human misery, that brings hope to the hurting.

Throughout “On Being Black and Reformed” Carter’s subtext reverberates. Reformed theology has much to offer African American Christians. And, African American Christians have much to offer Reformed theology. When separated from Reformed theology, African American Christians, according to Carter, are tempted toward a lower view of God, truth, and theology. When separated from African American Christianity, Reformed theology, according to Carter, is tempted toward a lower view of comfort, love, and contextual experience. Reformed theology and African American Christianity need each other equally.

Nowhere is this juxtaposition more clearly revealed than in the Reformed African American theological interpretation of American enslavement. How could a good and sovereign God allow an entire people group to be enslaved for centuries? African American pastors like Lemuel Haynes, Richard Allen, and Absalom Jones, and writers like Phillis Wheatley, Olaudah Equiano, and Quobna Cugoano all offer the “Joseph Answer.” “You meant evil against me, but God intended it for good.” In God’s affectionate sovereignty, He shepherds good from evil, He creates beauty from ashes.

Anthony Carter’s retelling of this historical merging of African American Christian experience and Reformed theology is a gift to all people of all races.

Reviewer: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., is the author of “Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction,” “Soul Physicians,” and “Spiritual Friends.”

Nominated for eight academy awards, “There Will Be Blood” plays like a modern-day version of Genesis 4. Though many Christians may resist seeing it, and many who do may wish they hadn’t, “Blood” is replete with themes of biblical proportions. It is certainly not a “Christian movie,” but Christianity thoroughly addresses the issues it raises: greed, envy, hypocrisy, rage, lying, manipulation, selfishness, self-sufficiency, and a plethora of other sins of the flesh and idols of the heart.

The movie stars Daniel Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview whose sin is in plain view for all to see, despise, and be haunted by. Not a single word is spoken in the first fifteen minutes of the movie. Yet the scene speaks volumes. Daniel falls down a mind shaft severely hurting his leg. Rather than crying out to God or to anyone else for help, Daniel wordlessly and arrogantly works his way out of the pit rug by rug, dragging his lifeless limb behind him. The metaphor has been written: “I am my own Savior.” Daniel in the lion’s den refuses to pray to the Lion of the Tribe of Judah.

In the next scene, this sinner who thinks he can save himself learns from a mysterious stranger that there’s oil in those hills of New Boston. Traveling to the California oil fields at the turn of the 20th Century, Plainview brings his young son, H. W. (played by Dillon Freasier), who serves as a prop to provide the image of a congenial family man. Upon arrival in New Boston, CA, Daniel meets the Sunday family, headed by patriarch Abel (remember Genesis 4). Abel’s son Eli (played by Paul Dano) is a young faith-healing evangelist-pastor who turns out to be as consummately evil as Plainview, and a tad bit slimier.

Neither man displays a single redeeming quality. Both men play games with the Redeemer. Eli uses God to amass a following. Daniel uses God to manipulate God’s followers into signing land over to him, even to the point of feigning acceptance of Christ. In “There Will Be Blood,” blood is shed, but the shed blood of Christ is never received with a sincere heart.

The darkness of Daniel’s life is suffocating. As he ages (the movie spans nearly forty years in its nearly three-hour run), Daniel’s evil ripens. Where he once at least feigned love for H. W., by the end of the movie Daniel disowns him. In perhaps the only sign of grace in the entire movie, H. W., mute due to an earlier drilling accident, signs to his father “I love you” right after his prodigal father disowns him. Off H. W. goes with his wife Mary (yet another biblical allusion) to make a different life for himself in Mexico.

Christian theology sees life as a three-act play of creation, fall, and redemption. God designs humanity with dignity (creation), sin mars humanity with depravity (fall), and Christ restores and rescues humanity with salvation (redemption). There will be blood is an accurate portrayal of what our world would be like if there were no creation and no redemption–only fall. There is nothing redeemable in humanity because there is nothing human to redeem. We are, in the eyes of “Blood,” devolved animals seeking to devour one another.

You leave “Blood” feeling bloody, dirty, filthy. But “Blood” doesn’t leave you. It preoccupies your mind, disturbs your soul, and troubles your spirit. You ask yourself, “Is that all there is?”

And the answer is, “Without Christ, that is indeed all that there is.” Self. Self-sufficiency. Evil. Hatred. Rage. Hopelessness. Helplessness.

This decidedly un-Christian movie about the first decades of the 20th century has perhaps the strongest evangelistic message of any film of the first decade of the 21st century. Certainly unintended, “Blood” depicts exactly why every human being needs the blood of Christ. It is an amazing picture of the amazing sin that requires amazing grace.

Our worst sin is not our greed, evil, rage, hatred, drinking, womanizing, etc. Our worst sin, and the only unforgivable sin, is our refusal to acknowledge our sinfulness, the refusal to ask for forgiveness. We are sick undo death and in denial about our deadness, thinking that we can raise ourselves.

What can wash away our sin of self-sufficiency? Nothing but the blood.

“I . . . acknowledge the mercies of Providence in every occurrence of my life.”[i] These words from the pen of the Christian Olaudah Equiano might seem trite until we realize that they introduce the narrative of his harrowing kidnapping and enslavement.

Equiano was born free in 1745 in the kingdom of Benin on the coast of Africa, then known as Guinea. The youngest of seven children, his loving parents gave him the name Olaudah, signifying favored one. Indeed, he lived a favored life in his idyllic upbringing in a simple and quiet village where his father served as the “chief man” who decided disputes and punished crimes, and where his mother adored him dearly.

Bathed in Tears: Weeping with Those Who Weep

At age ten, it all came crashing down. “One day, when all our people were gone out to their works as usual, and only I and my dear sister were left to mind the house, two men and a woman got over our walls, and in a moment seized us both; and, without giving us time to cry out, or make resistance, they stopped our mouths, tied our hands, and ran off with us into the nearest wood: and continued to carry us as far as they could, till night came on, when we reached a small house, where the robbers halted for refreshment, and spent the night.”[ii]

His kidnappers then unbound Equiano and his sister. Overpowered by fatigue and grief, they had just one source of relief. “The only comfort we had was in being in one another’s arms all that night, and bathing each other with our tears.”[iii]

Equiano and his sister model a foundational principle of sustaining empathy: weeping with those who weep. Far too often we rush in with words, and far too often those words are words of rescue. Our hurting friends need our silence, not our speeches. The shed tear and the silent voice provide great enrichment for our spiritual friends.

[i] Equiano, The Interesting Narrative, p. 4.
[ii] Ibid., p. 24.
[iii] Ibid., p. 25.