6 Essentials for Everyone in Church Leadership

While I was training to be a vicar in the Anglican Church of England, I went to a friend’s costume party. Lacking imagination (and costumes), I borrowed a friend’s clerical collar and went as a clergyman. I got chatting to a group of people I didn’t really know, and after a while one of them said, “You’re not actually a pastor, are you?” Given I was at that point still a full-time seminary student and hadn’t started working for a church yet, I replied that I wasn’t.

“Thank goodness!” she said (or words to that effect; her language may have been a little more colorful). A sense of relief immediately went round the whole group.
“So what do you do?” one of them asked.
“Well,” I said, “I’m training to be a pastor…”
The conversation ground to a halt.

I don’t know what they thought a pastor was like. Clearly it was not someone they would want to have around on social occasions. But it does raise the question: What is a pastor like? What does a pastor do? This is something that matters for pastors (obviously!) but also for every church member. Many a pastor has been crushed by church members expecting more of him, or different things from him, than God does. And on the other hand, many a church has been compromised because a pastor did less than, or different things from, what God requires of a church leader.

Job description

In Acts 20, Paul has been traveling around what is present-day Turkey and Greece and, before he leaves that region, he sends for the elders of the church in nearby Ephesus for one final meeting. Here he gives us one of the clearest explanations of what a pastor is to do.

So these are the things you need your church leaders to be doing for you—the things you should be praying for them to be doing. When the time comes for a new pastor to be appointed, these are the things to be looking for. But more than that, in outlining the priorities for Christian leaders, what Paul says does not only apply to pastors and elders, but to anyone in any level of Christian leadership. It applies to those running children’s groups, or leading Bible studies, to parents in the spiritual leadership of their children, and to all Christians as we recognize our pastoral responsibilities to serve and encourage one another in the local church.

Let’s have a look at this “job description”:

1. Serve God: “I served the Lord with great humility and with tears and in the midst of severe testing by the plots of my Jewish opponents” (v 19). The word Paul uses for service is more akin to slavery, and this is the foundation of all Christian ministry. Pastors are to be slaves of Christ, and therefore to serve him “with great humility”. A pastor’s main aim is to make much of Jesus and not of themselves.

A pastor’s main aim is to make much of Jesus and not of themselves.

2. Teach people: “You know that I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you but have taught you publicly and from house to house” (v 20). We need pastors to teach—and not only from the pulpit, but in conversation. Pastors are to teach what is “helpful”. This will mean knowing their church members well enough to know what to say, and how to say it. At the same time they are to teach “the whole will of God” (v 27), including the difficult and unpopular parts.

3. Accept the cost: “I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me. However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace” (v 23-24). Serving the Lord is certainly not easy, but Paul was prepared to suffer. It will be the same for all who have been given a task by their master, Christ. Just as staffers in the White House serve “at the pleasure of the President,” so also Christian leaders are to serve at the pleasure of Christ.

4. Care deeply about their church: “Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood” (v 28). Ultimately, of course, every local church is God’s—and he has purchased his church at an astonishing price: the blood of Jesus Christ. This flock is precious to him. If the church is worth Christ’s blood, then it is certainly worth its leaders’ labor.

If the church is worth Christ’s blood, then it is certainly worth its leaders’ labor.

5. Protect their flock: Every church is in need of protection. Sheep are extremely vulnerable animals, with no resources of their own with which to fight or flee. The flock is vulnerable to attack:

"After I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them." (v 29-30)

It is not persecution from without that Paul warns against, but false teaching from within. Teaching that distorts the truth is as savage to the church as a ravenous wolf is to unprotected sheep. The Christian leader is to protect the flock from distortions of the truth.

6. Guard themselves: “Keep watch over yourselves” (v 28). Passengers on planes are warned, in emergencies, to put oxygen masks on themselves before helping others with theirs. Church leaders are to keep themselves protected from spiritual harm before giving such protection to others.

The heart of the Christian leader’s task is the ministry of God’s word—but, as Paul has shown, this will take many forms. It is more than the formal teaching on a Sunday. It includes leading Bible-study groups, one-to-one discipleship, and even going door to door in an effort to share the word of God. Underlying it all is the reality that it is the “word of [God’s] grace” that can “build you up” (v 32)—and that’s a reality that makes a church leader’s job truly exciting.

This is adapted from Sam Allberry’s newest book, Why bother with church? And other questions about why you need it and why it needs you (The Good Book Company, 2016).

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