Pastor does not mean Preacher
John MacArthur, John Piper, John Owens, and John Shin. This is what I believed to be success in pastoral ministry. My goal was to preach and be well known like these pastors/preachers/authors. I thought it was so cool that my name was also "John" in this lineup. I was so stupid. If you were a young asian pastor, perhaps you also thought about similar dreams.
Every young pastor desires the day when he/she gets to preach. Preaching is fun and I love it but it is a bit too glamorized. It probably is the main reason why most people want to become a pastor. That is what everyone sees every weekend-the pastor preaching at the pulpit, being the face of the church and usually the person everyone wants to meet with. Like it or not, most people can't resist being the center of attention. Those who grew up in the church have this image imbedded into their brains. The pastor means the preacher on Sundays.
In Korean churches, the pastor was the main head guy. When you were the pastor, you were the top dog. And if you were the head/senior pastor, then wow, you were really the main figure. I believe this what draws a lot of young asians into pastoral ministry. This was the example that was always set before us.
Some pastors know that there is much more to preaching for a pastor...some. When I first became a "Jundo-Sah" (literally means evangelist in korean. There was another title they used for you if you got ordained), I followed the model and did what my predecessors showed me. Prepare my sermon, take care of curriculum, assist the Sunday school teachers with supplies and oversee/run large events like retreats, VBS, Halloween, etc. It consists mostly of operations or sermon prep.
As I progressed in my pastoral ministry, I couldn't help but think about how preaching/teaching cannot be the main role of a pastor and it definitely couldn't be the only required skill since there are plenty of teachers in the church who aren't pastors. Part of this discovery was due to my personal journey in church strategy (at the time I didn't know what church strategy was) as I thought more about systems/structures of church.
My frustration built up as students would often say "I thought you had to be a pastor to preach/teach" or "if you're the pastor then you are the one to lead bible study" or "I can't teach because I'm not a pastor". Then it really got tough when most pastors focused mostly on preaching, and therefore there was no development in church strategy or raising other leaders. This is exactly what I did. You know what else I hated? When people thought being an elementary pastor (which I was for the first 8 years) was not a "real" pastor. That is another story.
Many pastors don't know how to create church strategy or develop their staff because they were never trained to do so. If you were/are a teaching pastor then focusing only on sermon prep and developing curriculum fits the role. But most of us are not. I dare any of you greek gods to do a word study on "pastor" in the NT and you will find that it doesn't mean teacher/preacher. Here is some greek trivia for you. How many times does the word pastor appear in the NT?
At Saddleback Church where I am a pastor at currently, I'm pretty sure that 97% of the pastoral staff do not preach every weekend and that percentage is a gracious estimate. For those who know our church model, you understand. However about 90-95% of our pastoral staff is teaching every week. I'll write another article on this later but teaching comes in many forms other than the pulpit. (picture below is not Saddleback Church)
If you're on staff from an Asian Church, then please focus more on developing well rounded pastors/leaders. I do believe culturally, preaching is more valued in Asian churches which is not wrong and key to understanding the difference in asian churches. That's our culture. However, be careful of glamorizing it for your younger staff. The temptation with ego is all too easy. If you preached for 1000 people I think that was a great opportunity and good experience. But that in no way shoots you to the top of any resume pile. I hate to tell you this, and maybe this is for you who loves to preach, but you might not be a great preacher. You might be good or ok, but you may not be great. So what does that mean? Are you going to fail as a pastor? Please yell NO for me here. And to those who are leading churches and staff, please mine out other gifts in your pastors that are always looked over or even invisible because you don't pay attention to it. Stop trying to make every pastor into an asian Haddon Robinson.
To those who are considering pastoral ministry because you really want to preach/teach, I beg you to please reflect on this role deeply and talk to some other pastors/church leaders outside of your circle. One book I highly recommend is Dangerous Calling by Paul Tripp. And if you are a young pastor in your 20's and reading this, then I beg you to study up, learn and develop some key skills that pastors need (campus experience, assimilation systems/structure, evangelistic strategy for your city, constructing a clear vision and knowing how to be aligned with it throughout the year, etc). Another way to think about learning church strategy is by asking questions: How do you start a small group from scratch? What do you have in place for a new visitor/1st time guest? How do you follow up with visitors? How do you know if your small groups are healthy or not? What is the pipeline for church volunteer/leadership/staff development? Do you have an open hand or closed grip church style? How do you think about a student's pathway from Elementary to Jr High to High School to College?
I remember when I was in my 9th year of pastoral ministry and I knew some college seniors who wanted to be a pastor. I would always ask anyone pursuing pastoral ministry this same question: "Why do you want to be a pastor"? The 2 answers I would always hear were "because I want to preach or because I want to serve the Lord". My response was always the same. I said, "You can do that without being a pastor. Get a different job, make more money and you can still teach and serve the Lord for the rest of your life. There is only 1 answer to this question. So why do you want to be a pastor?" Calling is important and is part of the answer but no young 20's person has ever answered that question correctly for me. There are different ways to say the answer, but there is only 1 (picture Dr. Strange). By the way, "God called me" is another can of truth and crazy that needs to be explained. Don't get me started on that.
