The Work of the Pastor
By William Still
(His dates: ?-?, Addresses first given: 1964-1966, This book first published: 1984)
Rutherford House, 2001
Introduction (Magee)
Recommended by Scott Meadows
Read an article by the same – Word-based ministry
“The bulk of pastoral work is through the ministry of the Word. Only the residue of problems and difficulties remain to be dealt with thereafter.”
Contents
1. Feed My Sheep
2. The Pastor Outside the Pulpit
3. Complete and Contemporary
4. Commissioned by God
5. Walking the Tightrope
1. Feed My Sheep
THE PASTOR
Shepherd
Under-shepherd
The value of the sheep
Ultimate aim – sacrifice on God’s altar
THE PASTOR AS EVANGELIST
2 Timothy 4:1-5 ESV I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. 3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. 5 As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.
Teaching and preaching
Evangelism that brings the whole counsel of God
TEACHER AND PREACHER
Teaching preaching and powerful prayer
ESV 1 Corinthians 14:24-25 But if all prophesy, and an unbeliever or outsider enters, he is convicted by all, he is called to account by all, 25 the secrets of his heart are disclosed, and so, falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really among you.
Why do smart people insist that they can’t bring their unconverted friends to this kind of ministry?
FEED THE SHEEP!
The importance of teaching the nucleus of people that you have
You will not turn goats into sheep by pandering to their goatishness.
THE WORD OF GOD
Pastor, you need to be fed yourself.
Godly character – word needs to become flesh in you
A POOR DIET
Tell them to eat. Eat it whole. Stop playing with your food.
SPIRIT-INSPIRED
Holy Spirit as the One Teacher
We need the Spirit in our assemblies
Does the Word of God work for you? If not, what can you do for someone else?
BE SURE OF YOUR CALLING
Greatest difficulties may come from evangelistically-minded within church
PREACH THE WHOLE WORD
Preaches through books
Daily Bible reading notes written since 1947
SIDE EFFECTS!
On to other congregations
Fruitfulness into the world
THE BASICS OF EFFECTIVE MINISTRY
1. Pastor must really know Christ.
2. Pastor must know that God has called him to be an evangelist, pastor, and teacher of the Word.
3. Pastor needs to find his place of calling.
4. Begin to minister to the people at once.
ESV Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. 13 And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
PRAYER
Set a time and announce that you will be glad to join with any that come.
EARLY FRUITS
Quiet persistence
Believing people will start to give more
This becomes a witness to the nominal
A nucleus will appear
The church will take form
Do not be afraid of upset. God is at work and is answering prayers.
FAILURE TO FEED THE FLOCK
Greatest failure is a failure to feed the flock the Word of God
DYING TO SERVE
Die every time you bring forth God’s living Word to the people.
Conflict! Cost! Crucifixion!
Our sufficiency is of God.
2. The Pastor Outside the Pulpit
START WITH THE WORD
All that many spiritually sick people need is a good, balanced diet and a disciplined spiritual routine.
PROBLEM PEOPLE
There are unfortunately those who want to attach themselves to the pastor for some reason, though they do not want the Word itself.
Healthy feeders need the pastor less and less.
You can only help people on the level that they want help.
Jesus allowed people to walk away.
Give people the help that they ask for, if you can, and let them go.
You cannot spend all your time with people who do not want the Word.
KNOW OUR LIMITATIONS
Some meddling ministers want to sort everyone out.
God is not so optimistic.
There are some who will die as mixed-up personalities, and they may be true believers.
Most people crack up because they try to do what God never intended them to do.
Ambition drives them on.
I am far more ready now to give up with difficult people than I used to be.
THE CONSULTANT PASTOR
If you are not interested in the problems of sincere ongoing Christians you ought not to be in the work of ministry at all.
Let the Word solve or settle all.
LISTENING
Let them talk. Don’t turn it into another sermon.
Ask all the questions first before giving an answer.
COMMON SENSE
So much of God’s will is just Christian common sense.
BUILDING A FELLOWSHIP
Learn how to live and worship together.
VISITING
Social visiting has to give way to the ministry of the Word, and to people in real need.
Don’t try to do too much or too little.
Count on the presence of the Holy Spirit in every visit.
Be what you are in Christ, no more, no less.
Christ has given you love for your people, you don’t have to show it off.
Take in the situation and don’t force yourself, your readings, your prayers on people.
ARTIFICIAL STRATEGEMS
Prayer, example, and precept in that order are the means of bringing up children and young folk in the faith.
Reality above all things
Tell them they have to come to church if they are serious, and that they to use their critical faculties, and ask if God is really here with these people, what is He saying, is He really speaking with me too…
The pastor is not a spiritual doctor. The Holy Spirit is the doctor.
3. Complete and Contemporary
1. Word of God is eternal and abides forever
2. Word of God is ever contemporary
MORE THAN ‘GOSPEL’
The whole Bible
We are not only forgiven. We are His.
Your people need the whole Bible. Be convinced of that.
THE WHOLE WORD
Get right to it and keep going – teaching and preaching through the Bible several times over the course of a ministry
Not a history lesson
[Magee – more and more convinced that my expositions should let the text unfold as it unfolds in all simplicity. This is faster to do and better for everyone than being too clever.]
You do have to let the New Testament help us to understand the Old.
1 Peter 1:10-12 10 Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, 11 inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. 12 It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.
PREACHING TODAY’S WORD
Ever new – must be taught that way
Up to date
NOT SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Not here to Christianize the state
Our expectation is tribulation, our hope is toleration, not Christianization of the state
Submit to whatever system we happen to be under, not sponsor it or oppose it
Don’t be side-tracked – be the church
Gathering a hidden kingdom in an alien world – always missionary
The world is for the church, not the church for the world
NOT SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
Don’t be a dealer in antiques
The letter kills
Beware of preoccupation with your own sin
Don’t be a humbug
NOT EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Class-meeting complex
NOT NINETEENTH CENTURY
Sabbath day above all else
Some in the evangelistic camp are not saved at all
Do they love American-style hymns or God?
I have found to my bitter cost, that if you take these (hymns) away (with their repetitive choruses which are to be sung with glazed eyes, moronic expression, and slightly swaying movement like primitive tribes people), they hate you like the devil… It is their god… must be smashed.
TWENTIETH CENTURY FROTH AND RIGIDITY
Just forgiveness and justification – hardly knew that there was a life of sanctification in the soul of the believer which needed to be nurtured by the Word
COMPLETE AND CONTEMPORARY
1. The whole Word
2. Saturated in the living, up to date, grace of God by His Spirit
For the servant of God:
1. Live in instant, tensile experience of the death/resurrection of Christ, and
2. Be dead to all but the mighty purpose of God.
4. Commissioned by God
A SHIFT IN EMPHASIS
Need to consider sanctification
Not only a matter of the truth – but the working balance of the truth
Focus since mid 19th century has been bringing people to Christ and very little on building them up in Christ
OBSESSION WITH EVANGELISM
Evangelical church – a huge nursery
The danger: the who school of Christ will be come one vast kindergarten with overflowing classrooms
A MORE FRUITFUL WAY
Feed the lambs
If we do not feed them with the Word, there will be no harvest of Christian usefulness
All who respond to the Word will offer themselves to God.
Preach the word – 1. Some will grow and move forward, 2. Others will shrink back
FATTENING THE SHEEP
Fatten the sheep for the kill – sacrifice
Too many ministers find other things to do
REFUSING TO BE DEFLECTED
The ethical issue – You are paid to minister the Word to the flock – not all else
We must not leave the Word of God to serve tables – deacons
THE CHURCH AS A FAMILY
One of the most injurious practices – affinity groups
THE WORLD IS OUR PARISH
Not by the minister going everywhere, but by God thrusting out well fed Christians
THE CALL
Be absolutely sure that God has you there
Don’t be a minister if you can help it
THE
If you are called of God, you are not your own, and you are certainly not your wife’s, nor your children’s, nor even your congregation’s.
Keep close to God.
DYING TO LIVE
Dead to sin (obvious) but also to self in all its various and subtle aspects
PRAYER
We must challenge our people to pray for the ministry.
5. Walking the Tightrope
FINDING THE BALANCE
In the world of real people, not of books, yet all that is worth saying to them is in books
Incarnational – One Person – Christ
Don’t cut ourselves off from others are thinking, saying, doing
Some knowledge of the pathway of sin in our time and place
NO FEAR OF GOD
Church is fairly and squarely to blame.
Look at men of courage and the word from the Bible, Noah, Samuel, Paul…
They knew God and His Word, and they knew by the Spirit of God what the Word was for that hour.
KNOWING YOUR BIBLE
How well do you know the sweep of the story of the Bible?
THE CHURCH IN THE WORLD
The importance of the Church – building up redeemed humanity for eternity
Might be a small congregation – don’t underestimate the world-wide impact
A GLORIOUS PROSPECT
God’s program for His kingdom vs. our misconception of that program
God pins His hope upon the remnant in every age who live in Messianic hope and power.
Lots of great saints are massing in heaven even now, and they will break out and vindicate the martyrs, and overrun and overflow the whole creation.
No point being saved to starve.
THE MIRACLE OF GRACE
Walking the tightrope of the Spirit of God
LOSING YOUR BALANCE
Academic, activist experiential,…
We are looking for truth that becomes known in character
KEEPING YOUR BALANCE
1. Know Christ
2 Peter 1:19 19 And we have something more sure, the prophetic word, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts,
2. Be sure of your call
3. Wait for His will
4. Die to yourself
The Word will never come through someone living. You have to die to self.
5. Don’t go it alone
SUMMARY
Ever a remnant
Closing Thoughts (Magee):
1. A book to be read and considered by ministers
2. Above all a call to faithful ministry of the Word
3. Tota Scriptura
4. Bible notes for his congregation for so many years
5. Plenty of opposition
6. Death to self is the only way to go.
7. It has taken me 14 years or do to figure out what my ministry is about.
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