John MacArthur: 4 Things You Need to Do to Stay in Ministry for the Long Haul
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“Don’t think you deserve a bigger ministry than you have.”
John Fawcett is a name you may not immediately recognize. In the late 18th century, Fawcett pastored a small, poor church in Wainsgate, England, where his salary was only 25 pounds a year.
In 1773, Fawcett was invited to become the pastor of a much larger church in London. Initially, he accepted the new position. But as his belongings were being loaded for the journey, the people from his church came to bid him farewell.
The tearful goodbye was so moving that John’s wife, Mary, cried out, “John, I cannot bear to leave!” “Nor can I,” he responded. “We shall remain here with our people.” Their belongings were taken back off of the wagons, and John Fawcett remained in Wainsgate for the entirety of his 54-year ministry.
Years later, as he reflected on his decision to stay, Fawcett penned the words to his most-well-known hymn:Blest Be the Tie That Binds. The familiar words of that song resonate with the loyalty and love that characterized the pastor who wrote them.
Blest be the tie that binds
Our hearts in Christian love;
The fellowship of kindred minds
Is like to that above.
Before our Father’s throne,
We pour our ardent prayers;
Our fears, our hopes, our aims are one,
Our comforts, and our cares.
Fawcett’s story illustrates the legacy of long-term commitment in pastoral ministry. In yesterday’s post, we looked at four practical suggestions for sustaining your ministry over the long haul. Today, we will consider six more:
Be thankful and be humble.
As a servant of the Chief Shepherd, you need to be grateful for the flock that Christ has entrusted to you, and regularly tell both them and the Lord of your deep gratitude. Contentment begins with confidence in God’s providence. Your church may not be as big or as financially well-off as the church down the road, but you can be content if you trust that God has sovereignly placed you exactly where He wants you to be. It also helps to always remember that, no matter your circumstances, you are unworthy of what you’ve been given.
Don’t think you deserve a bigger ministry than you have. It is grace that has placed you in such a noble calling. Learn to define success in terms of faithfulness and not in terms of popularity. The measure of your ministry is not determined by numerical growth, but by adherence to truth in life and message. While many preachers seem to work for earthly glory, godly preachers humbly labor for the glory that is yet to be given to them, in the presence of their Lord.Don’t lose sight of the priority.
As a pastor, your duty is to shepherd your flock—this means nourishing them on the Word of God, leading them toward Christ-likeness in tender affection, while protecting them from error. You are a pastor. You are not primarily an event coordinator, a financial analyst, a vision-caster or even a leader. Your ultimate responsibility is not to innovate or administrate but to disseminate divine truth. Only in that way will you be training up people within your congregation to live and serve effectively and obediently for the honor of God and the impact of the gospel. A church environment dominated by the Word and the Spirit will produce a congregation that will serve alongside you so that you will be able to concentrate on what you are called to do: teaching the Word while humbling yourself before God in dependent prayer.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Copyright 2016, Grace to You. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
This article originally appeared here at Grace to You.
In 1773, Fawcett was invited to become the pastor of a much larger church in London. Initially, he accepted the new position. But as his belongings were being loaded for the journey, the people from his church came to bid him farewell.
The tearful goodbye was so moving that John’s wife, Mary, cried out, “John, I cannot bear to leave!” “Nor can I,” he responded. “We shall remain here with our people.” Their belongings were taken back off of the wagons, and John Fawcett remained in Wainsgate for the entirety of his 54-year ministry.
Years later, as he reflected on his decision to stay, Fawcett penned the words to his most-well-known hymn:Blest Be the Tie That Binds. The familiar words of that song resonate with the loyalty and love that characterized the pastor who wrote them.
Blest be the tie that binds
Our hearts in Christian love;
The fellowship of kindred minds
Is like to that above.
Before our Father’s throne,
We pour our ardent prayers;
Our fears, our hopes, our aims are one,
Our comforts, and our cares.
Fawcett’s story illustrates the legacy of long-term commitment in pastoral ministry. In yesterday’s post, we looked at four practical suggestions for sustaining your ministry over the long haul. Today, we will consider six more:
Be thankful and be humble.
As a servant of the Chief Shepherd, you need to be grateful for the flock that Christ has entrusted to you, and regularly tell both them and the Lord of your deep gratitude. Contentment begins with confidence in God’s providence. Your church may not be as big or as financially well-off as the church down the road, but you can be content if you trust that God has sovereignly placed you exactly where He wants you to be. It also helps to always remember that, no matter your circumstances, you are unworthy of what you’ve been given.
Don’t think you deserve a bigger ministry than you have. It is grace that has placed you in such a noble calling. Learn to define success in terms of faithfulness and not in terms of popularity. The measure of your ministry is not determined by numerical growth, but by adherence to truth in life and message. While many preachers seem to work for earthly glory, godly preachers humbly labor for the glory that is yet to be given to them, in the presence of their Lord.Don’t lose sight of the priority.
As a pastor, your duty is to shepherd your flock—this means nourishing them on the Word of God, leading them toward Christ-likeness in tender affection, while protecting them from error. You are a pastor. You are not primarily an event coordinator, a financial analyst, a vision-caster or even a leader. Your ultimate responsibility is not to innovate or administrate but to disseminate divine truth. Only in that way will you be training up people within your congregation to live and serve effectively and obediently for the honor of God and the impact of the gospel. A church environment dominated by the Word and the Spirit will produce a congregation that will serve alongside you so that you will be able to concentrate on what you are called to do: teaching the Word while humbling yourself before God in dependent prayer.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Copyright 2016, Grace to You. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
This article originally appeared here at Grace to You.
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