ARE YOU MISSING THE

FRIDAY FIVE

Encourge Your Pastor

I apologize to my readers for not being able to post a Friday Five this week due to a family matter.   I flew to the east coast to spend time with my mother.  Lord willing Friday Five should return next Friday.   Meanwhile, while I was away I got the better part of a blog post completed on how Christians can thrive in a hostile environment.  I hope to put the finishing touches on that and post it over the week-end or by Monday at the latest.
Tomorrow morning Wendy and I will be leaving for Fair Haven's Conference And Retreat Centre1 in Beaverton, Ontario where I will be the Camp Pastor for the next week.   No, I'm not the Conference Speaker, that honour belongs to my good friend Kevin Mahon who is the Lead Pastor of the People's Church2 in Wyoming, Ontario.   I'm looking forward to having my own spiritual batteries charged through his solid ministry of Bible teaching.

My responsibility is to Pastor the several hundred people that will be spending the week at the Bible Conference Centre.   I've been a Camp Pastor before but never been the Camp Pastor at Fair Haven's and I'm actually excited about it.   Being a Pastor and caring for the sheep is what God has called me to be.   Sometimes that involves admonishment and sometimes it involves encouragement.   Though some of us are called to be Pastors full time and are paid for it, everyone in the body of Christ are to be involved in shepherding the flock of God.   The Bible is full of "one another" 3 statements calling on us to minister to one another and care for one another.

I have been a Pastor for 37 years and though I wouldn't change it for the world, let me tell you it is not an easy ride.   I don't think there is any job that has higher expectations (sometime from the Pastor himself) and fraught with more challenges than being a Pastor in the 21st century.   I don't mean to suggest that there are not other equally difficult and challenging endeavours but I have talked to corporate executives who will tell you that leading a volunteer organization and a church in particular is an extremely difficult assignment.   In fact, 95-98% of those who start out in Pastoral ministry do not finish.   The drop out rate is exceedingly high, the challenges are may, and the task is tough. Most Pastors feel over worked, under paid, under appreciated and woefully inadequate.   To top it all off, the world and ministry is changing so fast that they can hardly keep up.

I have had to privilege for the past 11 years to Pastor the Parkway Bible Church 4 in Toronto.   They are a wonderful and gracious people who continue to support and encourage me. I have a terrific staff to work with and we enjoy each others company.   We have no major conflicts and as far as I know, no one is out to get me.   I'm in a good situation. I love the people of my church and I believe they love me.   I consider myself to be extremely fortunate to have the congregation that I do.   I know countless other Pastors who's congregations aren't, shall we say, as encouraging and supportive.

Being a Pastor can be exceedingly discouraging.   Week after week your Pastor has a 1,000 demands on his time.   He likely only gets half the time he needs to prepare for the Sunday sermon yet people in the congregation will compare him to John MacArthur or Charles Stanely or some other favourite big name preacher.   He'll preach his heart out and may weeks people will tune him out and go home the same as they came.   He may talk with members of a dysfunctional family that is falling apart knowing that they will not follow his counsel.   He'll cry with the broken hearted and give himself away in faithful sacrificial service knowing that at any moment any one of the sheep he is seeking to help could turn on him.  

It's a difficult assignment being a Pastor so let me encourage you to encourage your Pastor. Every pastor is different so there are different ways to encourage but let me make a few suggestions that you might try.   It's late as I write and I'm getting tired so let's just list 5 ways to encourage your Pastor and then I guess we will have a Friday Five this week.

1. Tell Your Pastor That You Love Him And Thank God For Him
It might feel a little awkward at first but tell him up front that you appreciate him as a godly man (his hearts desire is to be a godly man and he hopes it shows) and the hard work that he puts in.   You don't have to agree with him on everything in order to appreciate him as the man God has sent to shepherd the flock at your church.

2. Send Him A Note Or Card Of Encouragement From Time To Time
You never know when his heart may be heavy with discouragement and that card or letter of appreciation and encouragement might just carry the day.   Believe me, he doesn't get enough of this and it won't go to his head.   There are plenty of people sending him letters and e-mails telling him his faults etc and he is plenty aware of his own faults as well.   You need to counter that with encouragement.

3. Include Him And His Family In Your Social Network
Pastor's and their families are often lonely.   They are like the pretty girl who never gets a date because all the guys think she's already got all the dates she can handle.   Sure the Pastor's schedule may not always make it possible for him and his family to join you in some social occasion but invite him anyway.   Don't stop asking him over for a BBQ just because he couldn't make it the last time you invited him.

4. Brag On Your Pastor To Others
The story is told of a lady in our church who was in conversation with another lady from a different church.   The other lady said, "My Pastor is so good he can preach on any subject for an hour."   The lady from my church not wanting to be out done said, " Well, my Pastor is so good he can preach for an hour without a subject."

Okay, so he's not perfect but brag on him anyway.   Highlight the good things about your Pastor.   Focus on the good.   Tell people outside the church how much you appreciate your Pastor.   Let it be known that he is your Pastor.   I have one man in my church who is a very prominent person in the community, every time he introduces me and says, "And this is my Pastor" as if he was proud.   It makes me feel like a million bucks and I it inspires me to seek to be the kind of Pastor he can be proud of.   Also, talk well of him to other members of the congregation.   Every Pastor has his strengths and weaknesses so don't highlight the weaknesses when you talk with others in the congregation.   Highlight to positives.   You'll be surprised how the positive atmosphere in the congregation is contagious.

5. Pray For Your Pastor
There is nothing you can do better for your Pastor than to pray for him.   When you pray for him you align yourself with God who has called him to be your Pastor and you please the Father in heaven.   Your Pastor is a special target of the Evil one and so he and his family need your constant prayers.   He is totally inadequate for the job God has called him to do and he knows it.   Hold him up in prayer and let him know you are doing so.   When you stand with your Pastor in prayer you will grow in your love and appreciation for him and you will bring down the blessing of heaven on him and your church.
Oh, and by the way.  Tell him often that you are praying for hiim and his family.

God Bless You As You Bless Your Pastor

1 http://www.fairhavens.org/

2 http://www.peopleslambton.com/

3  John 13:34;  Romans 12:10, 12:16, 14:13;  Galatians 5:13; Ephesians 4:2, 32;  Colossians 3:13;  1 Thessalonians 4:18   to mention but a few.

4  www.parkwaybiblechurch.ca

5 Phrases That Guide My Life

What are the things that direct your life? What keeps you on the straight and narrow? What helps you set your moral compass?   In a world of chaos flooded with fuzzy inconsistent relativism we need markers, sign posts, along the way, to keep us on course.

There are 5 Phrases that run through my mind that guide my life and help me stay on course as a follower of Jesus. Now before all my preacher friends say, "Well the Bible should be the guide to your life" let me say that’s a given. The Bible is my ultimate source of reference for how I can live life abundantly. But these phrases, what you might call Pastor Rick’s Parables (PPP), summarize some pretty important biblical truth and give practical direction to my life in the midst of some of life’s trials. Perhaps you might find them helpful.

1. The most important thing you will do today is spend time with God.
I need to remember this every single day. My relationship with Jesus Christ is the most important thing in my life, it shapes everything else I do and say and am. It determines the man I am and if I don’t cultivate that relationship everything else suffers. My relationship with my wife, children, church people, neighbours and friends, who I am as a person, my integrity, everything suffers if I don’t maintain that relationship.
Every morning I wake up and there are a 1,000 things I have to accomplish, a dozen people who feel they need my time, a myriad of activities that cry out for my participation, a host of good things to do and accomplish. If I am not careful, these demands and activities will carry me away from the very thing that makes me the man that I am and the very source of my being and strength.
 
Jesus said, "Apart from me you can do nothing,¹" and that if we abide in Him we will bear much fruit.    He is the one who enables me to accomplish anything that matters and I cannot do it without Him. Therefore, the most important thing I will do in any given day is for me to spend time alone with God. 
  
This Pastor Rick’s Proverb reminds me to take care of the most important thing first. Remember, nothing you will do today is more important than spending time with God.

 
2. It’s not what happens to you but what happens in you that makes the difference.
Let me put it bluntly. Sometimes life sucks and kicks you in the gut. Bad things happen to good people. Life is made of such things.   Yesterday I read a blog post from a friend who just spent a month in Malawi with his family helping deeply impoverished people.   He said, "There are people here who appear to be completely trapped under the heavy weight of disadvantage, missed used opportunity, and marginalization." Life hurts not only where you are, but often much worse where others are.
Somehow we forget that this is not heaven. It is a fallen, corrupted, sinful, decaying earth. I hurt with hurting people every day, it’s the stuff of ministry.   Bad things happen to you not because God is punishing you, but because we live in a fallen world.   There are things that you cannot do anything about.   You can’t change that Uncle Harry molested you, that you were brought up in a poor home, that people have said nasty things about you and done nasty things to you.   You can’t help that your job was down sized or that the stock market tanked.
You can however, choose how you will respond to the bad things that have happened to you.   The difference is attitude.   Life had not been easy for me being brought up in a broken home and living with a stepfather who seemed to resent me, but when I was 12 years old I made a very distinct decision that I would be a happy person.   I made a choice.
Everyone has difficulties, trials and pain in their lives.   The difference is the attitude with which they face life.   It’s not what happens to you, it's what happens inside you, how you choose to respond that determines how high you’ll fly through life.   Your attitude determines your altitude.


3. Life is too short to carry a grudge.
In ministry and in life there are lots of people who will betray you, hurt you, and disappoint you.   If you choose to focus on the hurts and bear grudges you will find that those who hurt you or slighted you have long moved on and you are the one still suffering. When Jesus taught us to forgive unconditionally, He wasn’t doing it just for the sake of the offenders.   He knew that if you and I choose to bear grudges, we imprison ourselves.   We are to forgive others to set ourselves free.
Life is way to short to waste it holding on to the hurts and pains and the wounds selfishly inflicted on us by others.   Holding a grudge usually has little or no impact on the person with whom we hold the grudge but it eats away at our soul like a cancer and will destroy us.
Jesus wants you to live an abundant full life and that cannot include bearing a grudge or harbouring a hurt.   He said, "But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."²
Do want to live a life full and abundant, or do you want to waste away holding on to that hurt?


4. Do right.
Short but yet such a powerful Pastor Rick Proverb.   Always do the right thing regardless of how you feel, regardless of whether others deserve it, regardless of what others think, regardless if you will be mis-understood, regardless of the cost.
Many times in ministry there have been times when I would like to have acted carnally. Times I would have liked, in the flesh, to put people in their place, to lash out and fight for my rights.   There have been times when I have been mis-understood, lied about, misrepresented and treated maliciously. You have too.
If I choose, by the power of the Spirit to always do the right thing, I will never have to regret anything I’ve done or said or any action I’ve taken. I will always know that I have acted in a way pleasing to God.   Life is greatly simplified when you simply choose to do what is right.
Jesus has called us to a whole new way of living and it is a life of obeying and honouring Him and Him alone.   We play to an audience of one, the Lord God of all heaven and earth. Someday I will stand before Him to give an account and the only thing that will matter is whether I’ve done what was right in His sight.

5. Be faithful.
I want to make a difference in the world. I want to accomplish great things. I want to change the world. I am a man passionate about what I do. I don’t know how to do anything half hearted. I work hard. I play hard. I pray hard. I try hard. I think it was Ignatius of Loyola who said, "Work as if everything depended on you, pray as if everything depended on God."
Yet, I find myself sometimes, perhaps often, down on myself because I have not accomplished more for Christ or that I wasn’t a better father or husband.   I started out to convert the world, but have often found the results less than I had hoped.   I beat myself up because Sunday’s sermon wasn’t what I had hoped it to be and people weren’t clamouring to get the MP3 or because someone points out that David Jeremiah or John MacArthur did such a superb job on the same passage on their broadcast.
My wife is the one that reminds me of this PPP.   I need to remember that God doesn’t call me to reach someone else’s potential or fulfill someone else's purpose.   He simply asks me, and He asks you, to be faithful to the assignment He has given us.   He does not ask us to be the brightest, the biggest or the best.   He asks us to be faithful.   A whole lot of stress is releaved when I just focus on being faithful to what He asks of me.
I have found these simple phrases powerful guide posts in my life helping me to remain positive and on track as I seek to be a dedicated follower of Jesus.   God bless you.  I hope they will be a help to you too.

1.. John 15:5

2.  Matthew 5:44