Mathis Workers for Your Joy

The Call of Christ on Christian Leaders
1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-1-4335-7810-6
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 352 Seiten

David Mathis Examines the Qualifications and Calling of Church Leaders for a New Generation of Congregants and Leaders We live in an age increasingly cynical about leadership-some of it for good reason, much of it simply the mood of our times. Still, the risen Christ continues the counter-cultural work he's done for two millennia: he appoints leaders in his church-not as a burden, but as a gift to his people. 'He gave . . . the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry' (Ephesians 4:11-12). What is the nature, calling, and work of local church leadership? Pastor and seminary professor David Mathis considers the elder qualifications in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 not only as prerequisites but as daily necessities to carry out joyfully. This accessible guide aims to serve current and aspiring pastors and elders, as well as church members who want to know the expectations for their leaders and how to pray for them. From the words of Christ to Peter and Paul and Hebrews, the New Testament casts a vision for church leaders that is good news to churches and leaders alike: joyful workers for the joy of their people. - Great Training for Current and Aspiring Pastors and Elders: Expands on the nature and work of local church leadership through the framework of its qualifications in 1 Timothy 3:1-7, Titus 1:5-9, and other passages - Useful for the Whole Church: Aims to help full-time pastors, lay elders, deacons, and seminary students, as well as church members eager to explore the true nature of leadership in the church and to pray intentionally for their own pastors - Explains 15 Virtues Church Leaders Should Pursue: Mathis shares Spirit-given competencies that Christian leaders can draw upon week in and week out to do the work to which Christ has called them 

David Mathis serves as senior teacher and executive editor at desiringGod.org; a pastor at Cities Church in Saint Paul, Minnesota; and an adjunct professor at Bethlehem College & Seminary in Minneapolis. He and his wife, Megan, have four children. He is the author of several books, including Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus through the Spiritual Disciplines.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Mathis, David

Leseproben

Introduction

The Pastors We All Want

Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you.

1 Peter 5:2

Several New Testament texts give us snapshots of leadership that are plainly different from today’s prevailing paradigms.1 Yet the place I turn most often and most enjoy inviting others into is 1 Peter 5:1–5. I pray that God may be pleased in our day to raise up and sustain pastors like this, the kind of pastors we all want. Here at the outset of this book on Christian leadership in the local church, before we turn to the elder qualifications as a lens into the heart of the call and daily work, consider five glimpses Peter gives of the leading or teaching office in the church, that of pastor or elder.

Men Who Are Present and Accessible

Peter begins, “I exhort the elders among you . . . : shepherd the flock of God that is among you” (1 Pet. 5:1–2). He says it twice in just one sentence. The pastor-elders (two terms for the same office in the New Testament, as we will see) are among the people, and the people are among the elders. Together they are one church, one flock.

Good pastors are first and foremost sheep. They know it and embrace it. Pastors do not comprise a fundamentally different category of Christian. They need not be world-class in their intellect, oratory, and executive skills. They are average, normal, healthy Christians, serving as examples for the flock, while among the flock, as they lead and feed the flock through teaching God’s word, accompanied with wise collective governance. The hearts of good pastors swell to Jesus’s charge in Luke 10:20: “Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” Their first and most fundamental joy is not what God does through them as pastors but what Christ has done (and does) for them as Christians.

Good pastors, therefore, are secure in soul and not blown left and right by the need to impress or to prove themselves. They are happy to be seen as normal Christians, not a cut above the congregation but reliable models of mature, healthy Christianity.

Another way to say it is that such pastors are humble. After all, Peter charges “all of you”—elders and congregants—“Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another” (1 Pet. 5:5). Healthy churches are eager to clothe themselves in humility toward their pastors who have led the way in dressing with humility for the church.

Such pastors, humble in practice, not just in theory, are present in the life of the church and accessible. They invite, welcome, and receive input from the flock. They don’t pretend to shepherd God’s flock in all the world through the Internet but focus on the flock “that is among you”—those particular names and faces assigned to their charge—and they delight to be among those people, not removed, distant, or remote.

Men Who Work Together

One of the most important truths to rehearse about pastoral ministry is that Christ means for it to be teamwork. This will be a major theme in this book. As in 1 Peter 5, so in every context in which local-church pastor-elders are mentioned in the New Testament, the title is plural. Christ alone sits atop the church as Lord. He is head of the church (Eph. 1:22; 5:23; Col. 1:18), and he alone. The glory of singular leadership is his. And he means for his undershepherds to labor and thrive not alone but as a team.2

Mature congregations don’t want an untouchable leader, perched high atop the church in his pulpit, safely removed from accountability and the rough-and-tumble exchanges of instinct and convictions among leaders that make for real wisdom. The kind of pastors we long for in this age are good men with good friends—friends who love them enough to challenge their assumptions, tell them when they’re mistaken, hold them to the fire of accountability, and make life both harder and better, both more uncomfortable and more fruitful.

Men Who Are Attentive and Engaged

Pastors also exercise oversight (1 Pet. 5:2). However fragile modern humans have become, deep down we still want leaders who don’t just listen and empower but also take initiative, give guidance, and provide genuine leadership. We want leaders who speak to us the word of God (Heb. 13:7) and actually do the hard and costly work of oversight, or governing, which they have been called to do. “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God” (Acts 20:28).

However experienced and capable good pastors may be, they are not typically men known for their world-class intellect, extensive experience, or their administrative savvy. Rather, they are known as men of the book—men for whom having God’s word in Scripture makes all the difference in leadership; men whose leadership style is Bible based. The Bible is not a supplement or assumption for them; the Bible is central and explicit. God has spoken; that changes everything. Such pastors don’t just say they trust God’s word. They trust it enough to know it backward and forward and bring it to bear, in prudent and proper application, on issue after issue in church life.

We want men who steward influence as teachers, not insist on control—“not domineering over those in your charge” (1 Pet. 5:3). Men who manifestly serve others, not self, with their abilities and authority. Men who actually expend the effort it takes to lead, not just occupy positions of authority. Men who do not treat the office as a privilege for personal gain but as a call from God to die to private comforts and convenience and to embrace the harder roads. Men who do the hard work to win trust rather than lazily presume it. Men who, as Peter says, “shepherd the flock of God” (1 Pet. 5:2), which not only means leading and feeding, casting vision and communicating truth, but also defending and protecting. This leads to a fourth quality.

Men Who Lean into Hardship

The true colors come out for leaders and congregations when tough times arise. We want the kind of pastors who lean in—not with forcefulness, necessarily, though that may be needed on occasion (yet rarely), but with even greater attentiveness, care, courage, and patient teaching.

In conflict, “the Lord’s servant” must not only be kind and patient, and correct opponents with gentleness, but also “able to teach” (2 Tim. 2:24–25), which in this context seems more like an inward temperament than an outward skill (more on that in chapter 3). God’s people don’t need teaching only in peacetime but just as much when times are tough, and even more. We need pastors who do not mainly see a static world of right and wrong and stand ready to pronounce judgment, but “teachers at heart,” ready to take people where they are, in error and ignorance, and patiently present truth in an understandable and persuasive way, seeking to win them. When those who are in error receive such treatment from pastor-teachers, who knows? “God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will” (2 Tim. 2:25–26).

Good pastors rise to the occasion in hardship. When times get tough, the hired hands flee (John 10:12–13); the true undershepherds abide. Peter’s “So” in 1 Peter 5:1 refers to what he just wrote in the previous sentence: “Let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good” (1 Pet. 4:19). Suffering is the context of Peter’s charge to the elders. That’s why he turns next in his letter to the elders—when the going gets toughest, the weight falls especially on the elders. As it should.

Good pastors know this and learn to lean in with courage and gentleness. When the situation is fraught, they become more present, not less. When uncertainty emerges, they grow more attentive, not less. Not that they have to be certain, or feign it, about what’s next and how the conflict will end. But they lean in and lead together and lean on fellow brothers in the cause. They do not pretend their way is best or the only one, but at least, with prayer and counsel, they will propose a way forward. When they don’t know what to do, they know one thing to do: look to God (2 Chron. 20:12). They initiate. They take a risk and put themselves out there in a world of cynicism and criticism. They overcome their fear of being wrong in the hope of caring for others.

To embrace the calling to the pastoral office in the church is to embrace suffering. Pastors suffer in ways as pastors they would not otherwise. But they do so looking to the reward, the selfless gain to be had, the glory commensurate with the work, which is not shameful but pure: “When the chief Shepherd...