Practical Thoughts on an Enduring Ministry (Part 3)
February 14th, 2007
(By John MacArthur)
Over the last two days, we’ve considered six practical suggestions for maintaining an enduring ministry. Today we will conclude by looking at four more.
7. Expect to work hard. If you’re faithful to your calling, you will find it to be a difficult and relentless task. Pastoring is not like an assembly line that stops and lets you walk away. It is a kind of blessed bondage that requires discipline and sacrifice. Still it brings the purest joys and most lasting, even eternal satisfaction.
Enduring pastors are not undisciplined people who show up on Sunday for an improvised pep rally. Nor are they men with a few years’ worth of sermons who take them from church to church. Rather, they are disciplined men whose lives are brought into line so that they can invest their physical and spiritual energies into the flock God has given them. It’s a consuming task, but it comes with the promise of long-term impact as your congregation is taught the truth and sees it lived out over decades. They will trust you and you will find them your crown of rejoicing. Moreover, being forced to keep studying and preaching through Scripture will expand your own understanding of divine revelation so as to increase your usefulness and the body of your life work. This will bring the blessing of learning from others because it requires that you be a diligent and constant reader of the best of biblical, theological, and biographical material.
8. Trust the Word to do its work. People in churches today are starving for theological, expository preaching, but don’t even know it. To be sure, they realize the vacancies in their life, the shallow places, the lack of insight, the absence of understanding. They realize that they cannot solve their numerous problems and dilemmas. They’re looking for divine answers, and they’re being offered human, artificial substitutes that can’t help. Long-term exposition will satisfy their hearts and, at the same time, increase their appetite for more. And God has given us the deep treasuries and fresh truths of His Word, the riches of which no amount of years can exhaust.
9. Always depend on the Lord. Obviously, a ministry that rests solely on human strength, cleverness, or survey strategies, even if successful numerically, is doomed to be short-term and superficial. A lasting spiritually transforming ministry must be built by God’s power released through His truth. And He always blesses His truth and the labor of a true man of God. When you realize that you can’t resolve all the problems in your church, that you can’t save the unbelievers who attend your services, that you can’t cause spiritual fruit in your people—you will fully rest on God who can, accepting your weakness and inadequacy, and relying solely on the power of the Word through the Spirit.
10. Don’t leave just to leave. When you approach your pastoral ministry as a life commitment and serve your flock as I have described, you will find it hard to leave. We are, generally, not called away from, but called to a people. Leave your current ministry for another only if you have a true calling to that other place. The fact that a new opportunity pays better, has a larger facility, promises respite from current problems, or provides a platform for greater influence, doesn’t necessarily make it a right move and can play to ambition. So make sure that when you leave, your reasons are spiritually compelling. And also, do your best to ensure the flock you leave behind is well taken care of before you go. That is a vital part of your legacy.
[…] Here are some of the points made: 1. Don’t arrive unless you plan to stay 2. Learn to be patient. 3. Don’t be afraid to change. 4. Study to know God, not just to make sermons. 5. Be thankful and be humble. 6. Don’t lose sight of the priority. 7. Expect to work hard 8. Trust the Word to do its work. 9. Always depend on the Lord. 10. Don’t leave just to leave. […]
The hardest thing sometimes is to just trust the word of God to do its work. You know the word and trust the word, but sometimes to believe and be patient is the hardest.
the other thing is that sometimes we think that when we start to preach the word that things will just go exactly how we expect and when it does not, that is when number 9 of the above list comes into play.
we must trust the Lord.
Thanks for these posts.
[…] Read the posts at Pulpit Magazine: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. […]
I Corinthians 4:1 Let a man regard us in this manner, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. 2 In this case, moreover, it is required of stewards that one be found trustworthy.
II Timothy 4:2 Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with GREAT PATIENCE and instruction.
Hebrews 13:7 Remember those who led you, who spoke the word of God to you; and considering the result of their conduct, imitate their faith.
John’s words carry much weight as his ministry has become an example because of the above.
May our lives through our ministry be as such.
John, I just want to thank you for sharing your experience and wisdom in these three posts. As someone only starting out ministry, and many years of labour ahead (God willing) I need to be ready to learn some of these principles now…
I agree that a pastor’s work is very difficult and hard work when done well (there are many who do this and they are precious to all who learn from them!). There are too few who actually do this according to Biblical principles. Instead, many use online, prewritten sermons to entertain their “flock” like the EC and PDC…very sad indeed. However, the flock isn’t let go of their duty of studious work of His Word. Each person is accountable for their growth of knowledge in His Word by studying it and sharing what they have learned with others. I just came from a blog, Reflections of the Times http://carla_rolfe.blogspot.com/, that many hail as being a worthy read. The only thing I found that had anything to do with God was her profile and the ending to each of her posts. I think her title is a very accurate reflection about this century’s attitude toward Godly studying in this country. If our “profile” states an accurate doctrine and our farewell reminds people that God still sits on the top of our sunday, then what we do in-between time is our time to do with as we choose…meaningless, useless activity. We then go to church and are either dazzled by the entertainment our “preacher” has “prepared” for us, or if we are a little more concerned about learning about God, then we go to church and demand that our preacher has done his job by thoroughly learning the Scriptures so that we can kick back and soak it in once a week. We should expect excellence in the studying of God’s Word from EVERYONE including our children. I’m still praying for God to stir the hearts of women to this end. They need to learn His Word in order to properly teach/discipline their children along side of their husbands.