Audio Transcript
It seems to be a very common dilemma for a growing church — predictable, even. The pastor, the guy we all knew so personally, a friend and the shepherd of the flock, slowly begins to feel more distant as the pews get fuller and fuller. As things change, the pastor becomes more of a voice in a microphone rather than a friend who knows your name and everything about your life. This is one of the good problems of a growing church. But how does a leader bridge this gap to the best of his ability? And how does a congregation come to understand the changes from a growing church? Today on Ask Pastor John: when your pastor feels distant.
The question today is from a pastor, an anonymous man: “Pastor John, hello to you from a longtime listener and a fairly new pastor of a small but growing church. Paul describes his pastoral ministry with tender imagery, like a nursing mother caring for her children, in 1 Thessalonians 2:7–8. And he emphasizes a willingness not only to share the gospel but his very life with the people. In light of this model, how did you approach the work of pastoral care for individuals and families under your shepherding? What principles shaped your ministry to the hurting, the wandering, and the grieving? Especially as your church began to grow, how did you balance spiritual counsel from the pulpit, practical support, and emotional presence?”
The first thing to say is that I don’t think I ever got this exactly right. I don’t even know what “exactly right” looks like when it comes to every member being known and cared for and held accountable by biblically qualified church leaders in a church — say, like ours, which was growing from three hundred to four thousand over thirty years. Like so many things in the New Testament, we’re given guidelines but not blueprints.
I think the only way a conscientious pastor can survive over decades of ambiguity and a sense of inadequacy (and here I guess I’m just speaking out of my own personality or situation) is to lean on the blood-bought, forgiving mercy of Christ, and try over and over again to do it better — at least, that’s my autobiography. I feel like I never did much better than B minus (or, I don’t know, C plus) when it comes to “How do you know everybody? How do you care for everybody and not just speak from the pulpit?”
So, let me mention a few biblical texts that I think embody some of these guidelines, and then I’ll give my own personal testimony of how I tried over the years to flesh those guidelines out.
1. Lead Like a Shepherd
Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. (1 Peter 5:2–3)
So, the guideline is this: By all means, lead the church like a shepherd leads to green pastures and still waters and safety from wolves (Psalm 23:2), but do it for the right motives. Don’t do it for money, don’t do it begrudgingly, and do it joyfully. And don’t do it with a domineering spirit to puff yourself up, but with a lowly spirit of Christlike incarnation, getting down low and coming alongside the people and being an example of what you’re trying to preach.
2. Love with an Open Heart
We were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us. (1 Thessalonians 2:7–8)
Don’t you love the apostle Paul? He was just so theologically rich and so tenderly personal. So, the guideline is to love your people with tender affection — not just dutifully, but with heartfelt affection. We open our heart and life to our people. That’s what we do if we’re shepherds. We’re not distant or closed or evasive or detached or aloof. That’s not the way we do it. If that’s the way you are by nature, you need to plead with God that he would change you. There are personality types that probably should not be pastors.
3. Seek Out the Informal
In Acts 20:20, Paul says to the elders of Ephesus,
I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you in public and from house to house.
So, the guideline here is that it is pastorally helpful not only to teach the people in large groups, as from a pulpit, but in smaller groups in informal settings. I don’t think this is a mandate that a pastor must be in every member’s house. We don’t know how many people gathered in those house meetings. But the guideline is this: A shepherd is not content to speak from a distance to a crowd, but seeks out other less formal gatherings for instruction and common life.
4. Joyfully Keep Watch
And then finally, Hebrews 13:17:
Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.
So, the guideline for pastors here is to joyfully keep watch over the souls of their members, in the awareness, the weighty awareness, that we will give an account to Christ for how we did this.
“We open our heart and life to our people. That’s what we do if we’re shepherds.”
That’s the list of guidelines, and it could go on and on — really. It’s not just four, but these few are what our friend asked about, especially the relationship between the public ministry of the pulpit and the personal ministry among the people. So, here are some of the ways that I tried to flesh out both of those: public ministry and personal ministry.
Embodying Biblical Truth
I always viewed the pulpit as my primary way of shepherding the people, feeding the people, leading the people, protecting the people, strengthening the people, teaching the people, seeking to transform their minds, comforting them, guiding them, encouraging them, correcting them, even being an example to them. All of that I saw as what you do in the pulpit. Some of those don’t go elsewhere only. I think the pulpit is where emotional health and humility and strength and transparency begin in the local church. If they don’t see it there, where are they going to see it?
This is what people see over and over again. That’s why it’s so primary. They see it over and over and over again. This is what visitors see when they come. Does he communicate a genuine, healthy embodiment of biblical truth? That’s what they look for and that’s what they ought to see. It’s possible, I think, to be radically God-centered and, at the same time, deeply personal and transparent. At least that’s what I tried to do — felt that’s the right thing to do. It is possible for the sheep to feel that they really do know their shepherd because of how he communicates his soul, his mind, his heart, his emotions in the pulpit.
In the early days, I was the only pastor (or maybe there were two — we hired a number two guy pretty quickly when I came) at a church of about three hundred in attendance. I visited people in the hospital — all of them. If anybody got sick, I was there. I was at their sides when someone died. I would go to their home and grieve with them. I did all the funerals. I did the weddings. Noël and I opened our home, and we invited everyone in the church to open houses at Christmas. We had to do it over more than one weekend. We held a new members’ class in our living room for years.
We had a Sunday evening service where I did not wear my dark suit and tie, which I did very intentionally wear on Sunday morning, and I could give a whole rationale for why that was. I came down out of the pulpit on Sunday evening on the floor level with an overhead projector, and I dressed differently, I talked differently, I took questions, I became very personal. We described Sunday morning as the Mount of Transfiguration, where the disciples fell down on their faces before the glory of the Lord (Matthew 17:1, Mark 9:2). And we described Sunday evening as the Mount of Olives, where Jesus stretched out on the grass on his elbow with his disciples, and spoke to them about how things were going.
And then there were Wednesdays. I taught Wednesdays in the same manner — very open, very personal and relational. I wanted people to see Piper is a thundering prophet on Sunday morning who could also be very nurse-like and tender, but he dresses up, he is reverent, there is dignity, there is awe, and he’s another person on Sunday night, because that’s the way the gospel is and that’s the way God is. He’s both of those kinds of realities. So, I tried to take the people to both theological and practical reality, and I tried to bring all of the Christian life into the pulpit and the more personal, smaller gatherings.
Known and Accountable
As the church grew from zero elders to forty elders (we didn’t have any when I came), I had to persuade the church that elders were biblical. It took ten years to do that. But then eventually, we had pastor-type elders, and we divided the church into small groups with trained small group leaders and accountable elders. They were accountable to elders. And we tried in that way to see to it that everyone was known and accountable.
And as the church became thousands instead of hundreds, the way I made myself available to pray with people was to linger after services as long as they wanted to share a burden. I said to them very publicly, “This is not a time for extended pastoral counseling. We can’t do this for three hours, but I will hear any burden if it leads to prayer.” And so, that’s what I did, and I would typically stay for an hour or more after that second service. After the first service I could only do it for about twenty minutes, but I would stay until they were all gone.
I was regularly the last person to walk out of the sanctuary, absolutely exhausted, because standing there and praying with people is more taxing than preaching. And yet, everybody knew the pastor does that. Anybody in this church can walk right up to him, take his hand, speak into his ear, cry on his shoulder, and get prayer from our preaching pastor. You can number the people in hundreds who did that, instead of thousands — but all of them knew about it. And that made a huge difference in the way they perceived me and my availability, my shepherd bent.
So, there’s lots more that could be said, but I think the main point for our friend who’s asking this is to know the biblical guidelines and pray them into your heart. And as situations change in your church, just keep trying your very best, various strategies to mingle public and personal ministry.
