“Strive to Be Ordinary”

In my Pastoral Ministry class today B. J. Maxwell, pastor of Unity Baptist in Millington, TN, gave a lecture titled, “Strive to Be Ordinary.” It was an excellent exhortation to pursue faithful ministry to people rather than the trappings of success. I attempted to record it but was unsuccessful. The manuscript should be available soon, and I will link to it.

Maxwell began by rooting pastoral ministry in a proper understanding of the church. Is it a business to keep profitable? A team to be coached? A brand to be marketed? Or God's redeemed and sojourning people who need shepherding on their journey home? Because the church is a unique entity, pastoral ministry is a one-of-a-kind service. It cannot be approached or defined by categories of this world.

He described pastoral ministry as helping people to die well.

The heart of the presentation was “five rungs for climbing down the ladder toward ordinariness.”

1. Get acquainted with suffering

2. Develop a theology or vocabulary of encouragement. Learn how to encourage God’s people with the gospel.

3. Focus largely on micro-ministry before macro-ministry (i.e. needs of specific people before structural or programmatic issues)

4. Think in terms of decades and generations rather than weeks and years.

“Work today not with an eye to impressing the state paper, but with an eye to shaping your grandchildren.”

5. Recover simple personal discipleship

UPDATE: The manuscript is now available here. Highly recommended!

Ortlund on Pride vs. Christ

Ray Ortlund’s post “I am … nothing” is another helpful shot at our man-centered thinking. It is brief, but I encourage you to read it. He cites a statement from an Assyrian king:

“I am royal, I am lordly, I am mighty, I am honored, I am exalted, I am glorified, I am powerful, I am all-powerful, I am brilliant, I am lion-brave, I am manly, I am supreme, I am noble.”

He contrasts this with Christ. What hit me was how the Assyrian quote parallels how we are often encouraged to think of leadership and pastoral ministry. May we be Christlike.

Trueman on Leadership and Making Difficult Decisions

Carl Trueman has another insightful article this time on leadership. Trueman discusses the tendency today to avoid any decision which will cause any offense. This, he argues, is not an option for those in real leadership positions. Pastors are leaders and we ought to know the reality of Trueman’s statements. If we are going to be faithful to our calling we are sometimes going to have to make decisions which are not all that clear, ones that perhaps later on will be shown to be unwise. We will be tempted to avoid the issue, to stall or to shift responsibility in some way. If we give in to this temptation we will be guilty of cowardice (see 2 Tim 1:7). Sure there is a place for waiting to seek wisdom, etc. But at times in real life a decision will have to be made by leaders who are willing to make a call and receive whatever consequences come. This will not require us then to maintain we were right in all such decisions. It may often require that which is even more difficult- publicly admitting we were wrong. But we must be willing to ake decisions and while living semper reformanda, always reforming in light of the Scriptures.
The church needs such leaders among her pastors.

Here are some quotes to entice you to read the full article:

it is perhaps not surprising that as adolescence creeps into middle age, so does the fear of making choices and closing down options; but I wonder if most lethal of all will prove to be not the lack of commitment and stability that characterises Marks' `cult of options'. Rather the worst of it may well be that a generation is growing up that is happy to sneer and snipe at the decisions of others, but for whom making decisions that bind is something they themselves are incapable of doing, an alien concept no less; and that means not only, as I suspect Mark Dever fears, that a generation will grow up with no real commitments other than to themselves as individuals but also with no real leadership potential.
…
Too often I suspect that aspiring statesmen in the church are driven more by a need to be liked and to avoid conflict than by a real desire to provide strong leadership; but being a statesman is not a career path; it is something that is earned over many years of making hard decisions, taking unpopular stands, and proving one's mettle under fire.

Leadership Equals Teaching

I have recently been sent the following quote from Great Leader, Great Teacher: Recovering the Biblical Vision for Leadership by Gary Bredfeldt:

"We have been hoodwinked. We have come to accept a standard for leadership that
actually robs the church of great leaders. The standing-status-success standard is not a biblical standard: it is the world's standard. Pastors are not to be CEOs, and our best models are not corporate executives, coaches, generals, and presidents. Far from it ... the biblical leader is, first and foremost, a skilled and godly shepherd-teacher ... Here then is an alternative standard of leadership effectiveness from the standing-status-success model offered by the world. It is a standard that describes leadership in terms of personal relationship, sacrificial care, and secure and abundant provision." (52, 54)

I don’t know anything else about the book, but I resonate deeply with this quote.