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How To Encourage
An Encourager by Joe McKeever
Someone
from Williams Boulevard Baptist Church in Kenner called the other
day and asked me to speak to their men's breakfast next Sunday
morning on "how to encourage a pastor." I like that
assignment. I believe in affirming these men who are called of
God to do the most exciting, most difficult work on the planet.
A
few years ago when Mike Miller of Lifeway wrote a book on "Honoring
the Ministry," my church fed steaks to 125 pastors and deacons
from all over New Orleans and we brought in someone to teach that
book. Encouraging pastors is a longtime passion of mine.
Now,
I've noticed something. When the Lord knows what I'm going to
be speaking on the following Sunday, He likes to help me get ready.
(Ahem.) That's why He sent Charlie and Karen Tackett to the church
where I was speaking last Sunday.
The
pastor of Highland Baptist Church in Metairie, Scott Smith, was
on vacation with his family, seeing our nation's capital for the
first time, and I was filling in for him. Someone approached me
just before the service and said, "We have some missionaries
here today. Could we give them a few minutes in the service?"
You bet.
Charlie
Tackett told the congregation, "My wife and I are missionaries
to pastors. We go all over this nation, seeking out pastors especially
of smaller churches. Some of them feel isolated and lonely and
they have no one to talk to. When you have a problem, you call
a pastor. Who does he call? Some would say, 'He calls God.' Well,
that's right, but sometimes a pastor would like to have a sit-down
with a human being. That's when we show up. We take the pastor
and his wife to a nice restaurant, and we listen to their concerns
and love them and pray for them. Our whole lives are devoted to
encouraging pastors."
All
of which raises a good question: how would you go about encouraging
a minister and his wife? I know lots of ways that people have
used with us over the years, some better than others.
Now,
if your pastor is struggling to pay his bills, money is always
a welcome gift. Or a gift certificate to the grocery store. In
my first pastorate after seminary, when Margaret and I had two
small sons and were struggling to make ends meet on an inadequate
income, I did a funeral in the middle of winter in the worst weather,
wearing my thin blue suit. After leaving the cemetery, I ran by
the hospital, and when I got back to the church office, there
was a large box on my desk. Mrs. Ethel Keeling had bought me a
new London Fog all-weather coat. I wore it for years, until it
was stolen from the next church I served, but that's another story.
Should
you give the pastor a plaque for his wall, saying how much you
appreciate him? How about an after-church fellowship with sandwiches
and koolaid and everyone coming by and hugging the pastor? Or
maybe just a pat on the back?
How
about a resolution of appreciation by the deacons or the entire
church? Maybe some letters and notes from people? A gift certificate
to a restaurant? Or take the pastor and his wife to that restaurant?
Or some turnip greens and tomatoes from your garden?
Those
are all nice, not a thing wrong with any of them. But they're
not the encouragement the pastor really needs. As important as
each one is, none of them reach him at the deepest level.
The
word "encouragement" is a wonderful word. At its heart
is heart. The Latin word "cor" means 'heart.' To encourage
someone is to give them heart. Discouragement means to lose heart.
>From
Hebrews 13:15-18, here are five ways to give heart to the en-hearteners,
encourage to the encouragers.
1.
HAVE A GREAT ATTITUDE. "...offer the sacrifice of praise
to God continually....giving thanks to His name." (13:15)
Nothing demoralizes a minister like church members who are always
complaining. Nothing meets their standards, everything has something
wrong with it. Likewise, nothing encourages him like being surrounded
by believers filled with the joy of the Lord.
Maybelle
Montgomery was such a member of a church I used to pastor. She
was elderly and lived modestly, but to hear her, you would think
she was on top of the world. When the hospital called to say she
had been admitted to the emergency room with a broken hip, I dropped
what I was doing and rushed to see her. She spotted me coming
in the back door and called out so half the ward could hear her,
"Praise the Lord, preacher. He left me one good leg!"
Pastor
Jack of New Bern, NC, had taken a group of his people on a mission
trip to the Caribbean. On the island of Tobago, they visited a
leprosarium and held a worship service in the chapel. Perhaps
fifty patients gathered with the visitors to sing to the Lord.
Many of the lepers were visibly afflicted by the disease, making
a sad sight. As the group from North Carolina stood in front of
the chapel, they noticed one little lady who sat on the back row,
turned completely to the back wall. Finally, Pastor Jack announced
that they had time for one more hymn. "Does anyone have a
favorite you'd like us to sing?" Now, for the first time,
the patient on the back row turned around. The pastor found himself
looking at the most hideous face he had ever seen. The leprous
woman had no nose and her lips were gone. He was staring at much
of her skull. She was raising her hand into the air, except there
was no hand, just a bony projection reaching up from her elbow.
While the stunned pastor stared, she said, "Could we sing,
'Count Your Many Blessings'?' The pastor was so overcome, he had
to leave the service. Another church member stepped up and led
the song, while one of the deacons followed Jack outside. "Will
you ever be able to sing that song again, Jack?" he asked.
"Yes," he said, "but not in the same way."
You
can always find reasons to complain. Always. But, as a person
of faith, you can always find reason to rejoice and praise the
Lord.
2.
DO YOUR WORK WELL. "To do good...forget not." (13:16)
The absolute finest way to encourage a preacher is to do your
work well. If you teach a Sunday School class or lead a choir
or minister to children or chair a committee, throw yourself into
the task and give it your very best. Arrive at your assignment
on time, know your pupils, pray for those under your leadership,
give your best service to the Lord.
Few
things demoralize and discourage a minister more than church members
who take responsibilities and do not keep them. The nursery workers
fail to show up or to tell anyone they were going to be out. The
Sunday School teacher goes away for the weekend and does not arrange
for a substitute. A committee chair does not do his homework,
and renders shoddy service to the Lord.
Pastors
have to deal with a puzzling reality of church life. Many church
members serve their employers more faithfully for a paycheck than
they serve God in their church. Missing a day of work is a major
consideration to them. Missing a responsibility in church matters
hardly at all.
And
we wonder why pastors get discouraged and feel their labors are
going for nothing.
Do
your job well. Give the Lord your best. The pastor will take note
and I guarantee you, he will be encouraged.
3.
GIVE GENEROUSLY. "To do good and share, forget not."
(13:16) If you want to discourage a pastor, withhold your offerings.
Want to bless him? Give regularly and generously into the offering
plates. Rightly or wrongly, pastors feel affirmed when the offerings
are coming in and all the bills are being paid.
If
you want a good reason not to give your offering, you can always
find one. You don't have enough to live on, you have some unexpected
expenses this month, you'll make it up next time. But the favorite
reason not to contribute to church--the top of the charts, the
all-time leader of the non-givers' hit parade--is: "I don't
like what they're doing down at the church." Or what they're
not doing.
A
great way to end a pastor's ministry is to stop giving. Many people
use this approach to undermine him with the certain knowledge
that if things get bad enough, the deacons will fire him or see
that he is terminated.
Question:
what does the Lord Jesus Christ think of this approach? He has
not left us in the dark.
Remember
the widow who gave the two tiny coins into the temple treasury?
The one who impressed the Lord Jesus so much He called her to
the attention of the disciples? (Find her story at the end of
Mark 12, among other places.) She had the best reasons of all
for not giving. One, she was poor, desperately so. Two, she was
down to her last two cents. Three, her gift would not make much
difference even when she gave it. Four, the Lord knew all these
things and He surely understood. But number five is best of all.
Five,
the people in charge of the temple were crooks. I mean, mafioso,
cosa nostra types with a hit contract out on Jesus. If anyone
on the planet had reasons not to give, she was the one. Yet, here
is the Lord Jesus complimenting her for giving the last coins
in her possession. Her giving actually encouraged Jesus Himself.
The same way it does your pastor.
4.
FOLLOW HIS LEADERSHIP. "Obey those who have the rule over
you and submit yourselves...." (13:17) I call verse 17 the
scariest verse in the Bible. God commands church members to do
the toughest thing you may ever do--to put yourself under the
authority of another man, a pastor, and to follow him. "They
keep watch over your souls," He says, "as those who
must give account." That's the scary part for the minister.
He's going to have to stand before the Lord at judgement and account
for every one of these people. How would you like to be in his
shoes? "Let them do this with joy," He says, "and
not with grief, for that would be unprofitable for you."
We
were voting to call a new associate minister to our church staff.
I asked the congregation to do something unusual. On the "church
register" which everyone in the service signed during the
morning worship service, I asked them to write whether or not
they would commit themselves to following his leadership. Most
said yes, but one man wrote, "I will follow him so long as
I agree with the decisions he is making."
The
best I can figure, that computes to: I will follow him if I were
already going in that direction in the first place. Which isn't
following at all. To submit and obey means whether or not I agree,
I will go along with his leadership. Not because he is smarter,
but he is the pastor. In the military, you salute the uniform,
not the man. Now, to be sure, if he is a godly and smart pastor,
he will seek the counsel and input of all his church leadership
before taking the congregation on new and uncharted directions.
After
the victory of the Israelites over the Canaanites in Judges 4,
Deborah and Barak celebrated with a song of thanksgiving. The
second verse of chapter 5 records this line: "That the leaders
led in Israel, and that the people volunteered, O bless the Lord."
(It reads a little different in the KJV due to the difficulty
of some of the Hebrew here.) What a great arrangement--leaders
doing their job and the people doing theirs.
We've
all seen times when leaders were leading but no one was following.
We've seen members willing to work and wanting to go forward,
with no one leading. Worst of all is when no one leads and no
one follows. Best is when both leaders and workers are on the
job.
5.
PRAY FOR THE PASTOR. "Pray for us." (13:18) On many
occasions, the Apostle Paul implored his readers to pray for him,
that God would empower his words and make him an effective missionary.
Nothing blesses a pastor like people lifting him to the Father
day by day.
A
pastor of a thriving congregation preached an inspiring sermon
one Sunday morning. That afternoon, he was scheduled to speak
at a church across town and invited some of his deacons to accompany
him. On their return, one of the men said, "Pastor, that
sermon was wonderful this morning when you preached it in our
church. But it bombed this afternoon in that church. How do you
figure that?" The minister said, "Gentlemen, never forget.
Poor preaching is God's judgment on a prayerless congregation."
I
was Miss Annie Cogsdell's pastor for the last 10 years of her
life. She was a tiny thing, and some kind of infirmity had drawn
her body to the point where standing upright, she wasn't four
feet tall. Church members would pick her up and bring her to church,
and when she could no longer take care of herself, they made arrangements
for a nursing home. At her funeral, I told the church something
they had not known. "No matter where I saw Miss Annie--at
her home, here at church, or at the nursing home--she always said
the same thing. She would press her small, misshapen hand into
mine and say with her tiny, weak voice, "I...pray...for...you...every...day."
There was not a dry eye in the house. Then I said, "And now
that she's gone, I find myself wondering, Who's going to pray
for the pastor?"
Who's
praying for your pastor?
Do
your job with a great attitude. Give your tithes and offerings
regularly. Follow the pastor's lead. And pray for him.
Five
of the very best gifts you could ever give to a man of God. Nothing
will encourage him more.
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