Have you ever thought to yourself, ‘The pastor should do something about that’? I have. The more you read about the church in Scripture, the more you see that needs to be fixed. There are things that we’re not doing. There are ways that we’re not relating. There are purposes we’re not fulfilling. As a pastor, I feel burdened to evangelize those who are lost, disciple those who are new, counsel those who are struggling, comfort those who are weak, train up our leaders, oversee our office, lead the church in prayer and still devote the bulk of my energy to teaching and preaching God’s Word. The reality is that I often try to do all of those things, but the Bible says that there are a few things a pastor should focus on.

1. A Pastor’s Priority Is Praying and Preaching

To me, one of the most amazing stories in the Book of Acts is in Acts 6, where the church is growing, but people are starting to complain. The complaint was that some of the widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of food. With many facing poverty, the church had decided to provide a regular meal for them. The apostles were getting run off their feet and unable to keep up. It would have broken their hearts to hear that widows were going hungry because they couldn’t manage. My tendency would have been to double down and try harder. Or else live with the guilt that I didn’t measure up. The apostles’ response is startling. In verse 2, they answer, “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables.” Then they tell the church to appoint others to the task while they devote themselves to “prayer and to the ministry of the word” (v. 4). If the apostles didn’t have the courage to make this hard decision, they would have been a bottleneck for the mission of the church. The problems would have remained, the apostles would have burned out, and the church would have faltered.

2. A Pastor’s Priority Is Equipping Believers to Serve

If a pastor’s calling is primarily to pray and preach, then how does everything get done? Paul gives about as close as we get to a pastoral job description in Ephesians 4:11-12 and it helps fill in some of the blanks. Paul writes, “And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.” God is committed to building up the body of Christ. The passage goes on to talk about the church’s unity, knowledge, maturity, fullness and discernment. But how does God accomplish all that? According to the verse, it happens as pastors equip believers to do the “work of ministry.” So asking a pastor why he isn’t doing something may not be a very biblical question but asking him if he’d show you how is. It’s only as believers each do their part in ‘being the church’ that the church becomes all that it was created to be. A pastor’s job is to equip you. Your job is to serve.

3. A Pastor’s Priority Is Watching over the Flock

There are some pastors who, having read the verses I’ve mentioned, spend almost their entire week in front of books and computer screens. But pastors are called to “pay careful attention to … all the flock” and “to care for the church” (Acts 20:28). Everyone would have been familiar with the image of a shepherd watching over his sheep. Elsewhere, it says that church leaders “watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account” (Hebrews 13:17). That still doesn’t mean that a pastor can or should do everything involved in the care of a congregation, but he has to get close enough to see the needs and equip the congregation to meet them.

4. A Pastor’s Priority Is Setting an Example

That still doesn’t seem to reconcile all that we see leaders doing in the Book of Acts. They organized relief drives and made dangerous journeys to personally deliver the funds (Romans 15:25). Even the more timid pastors were urged to “do the work of an evangelist” (2 Timothy 4:5), and there were other more menial tasks that they engaged in from time to time as well (2 Timothy 4:13). These all seem to be a part of the pastor’s calling to set an example for believers. Paul urged his disciples to imitate him (Philippians 3:17) and told Timothy to “set the believers an example” (1 Timothy 4:12) and Titus to “be a model of good works” (Titus 2:7). The church needs to be the church, but pastors need to lead by example.

Do you confuse the work of the church with the work of the pastor? Do you see the teaching ministry of the church as primarily about filling you or equipping you? Do you confuse the pastor’s example in ministry with the pastor taking care of the ministry? The church is all of us, and it can become so much more when each of us sees our part in making it all it can be.

In awe of Him,

Paul