Skip to main content

Now I Know How To Pastor

Trying to determine what a pastor should do and deciding if I have been a good pastor has been difficult.

I often tell people this: "Ask around. They will tell you I am not a great pastor but a wonderful Bible teacher." Excusing myself from pastoral work and identifying myself as a Bible teacher has been a common declaration for me. But the fact still remains. I am called a pastor. I am expected to pastor a church. I still wonder what am I required and have I done it (well).

With this as a background, you can imagine how happy I was to come across two articles by Pastor Stephen Blandino, the Lead Pastor of 7 City Church near the downtown/cultural arts district of Fort Worth, Texas, on pastoring. He holds a Master's in Organizational Leadership and is the author of "GO! Starting a Personal Growth Revolution." He blogs regularly at www.stephenblandino.com on leadership, personal growth, church, and culture.

His two articles beautifully blends all the roles and responsibilities of a pastor into several questions and by asking them, I realized what was pastoring, what I was supposed to do as well as how far I failed . . .

Here are the questions:

Pastors NOTICE
1. Who’s New…that I should meet?
2. Who’s Missing…that I should call?
3. Who’s Hurting…that I should encourage?
4. Who’s Serving…that I should thank?

Pastors DEVELOP
5. Who’s Emerging…that I should believe in?
6. Who’s Rising…that I should equip?
7. Who’s Faithful…that I should promote?

Got to keep asking these questions, answering them and being the answer to the answers. Ok, gotta go. Got some pastoring to do.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Understanding Church Trauma

Christian  communities are expected to be our safest emotional and physical spaces. Even so, there are times this sacred space become toxic, abusive, and traumatizing to a church member when leaders and members of a congregation exhibit actions that fail to reflect the love of God. In the infographic below, four common ways church trauma is caused is identified and explained. I hope the information will help you understand what has happened to you or someone you know in church (or now no longer in the Christian community). The purpose of this post is to promote healing among those traumatized and to highlight practices that need to stop so that a Christian community is restored once again as the safest  emotional and physical space for any child of God. As you continue educating yourself on church trauma and abuse, it’s important to remember that you are not alone. If you need to, seek a mental health professional to help you better understand your condition its impact on your...

Overcoming Setbacks with Seligman's 3P's

How do you successfully process negative events that hit you in life ? Psychologist Martin Seligman discovered 3P's that STUNT recovery from such events: Personalization - what happened is my fault; realize that bad events aren't entirely your fault. Not everything that happens to you happens because of you. When you blame yourself, you delay recovery. Pervasiveness - this will affect ALL areas of my life; realize bad events don't affect every area of your life Permanence - the aftershocks of this event will last forever; realize hardships won't follow you everywhere forever even though you feel that the debilitating anguish will always be there. When we are suffering, we tend to project it out indefinitely and overestimate how long negative events will affect us. One way to overcome this is to replace "never" and "always" with "sometimes" and "lately". So next time, when the next 'bad'comes, remind yourself ...

Am I A Beggar, Begging?

I believe there are people out there who want to help and are able to help, so I share needs, both personal and church/ministry related. I also believe what James said in his letter, "You do not have because you do not ASK." So it was a surprise to me to be (recently) labelled a beggar and to have my sharing of needs and requesting for assistance and donations described as begging. My initial response was, "What? Me a beggar, begging? I began to wonder when did asking become begging and is there a difference between asking and begging. So I turned to Google and typed in 'difference between asking and begging', and lo, to my surprise, it was an often asked question! The articles, forums and comments listed were helpful and most importantly, eye opening, especially the dictionary definitions. It says that if I ask someone or ask for something earnestly and/or humbly, thats begging. Then I have been begging (oh no!). It also says that if I ask especially f...