The Positives of Pastoring and the Positives of your Job

I’m a pastor and I’ve read a number of blogs and articles talking about pastors and how hard it is to be a pastor and how little pastors get paid and how much people complain about pastors and so on.  Is some of it true?  Sure.  Is a lot of it true?  Probably.  However, what doesn’t get talked about so much are the positive aspects of being a pastor.  I’m going to try about counteract the negativity a little and talk about some of the highlights of being a pastor.  You’ve probably had some negative thoughts about your job too.  Instead of focussing on the negatives, see what positives you can find.  (If you can’t find any positives, it might be time for a new job.)

Pastors get a lot of flexibility in their schedule.  I get to go out for coffee with someone from the church and talk about life.  I meet with volunteers in the evening to talk about youth ministry.  To the average 9-5 worker the pastor’s job schedule probably looks like a joke.  However a lot of work is done outside traditional office hours.  I can change my schedule pretty quickly and easily.  Don’t get me wrong, most pastors work very hard and certainly put in their fair share of hours but pastoring is a lifestyle not a job so that means you can ditch the office sometimes and go be with people or do something fun.  The lifestyle factor means you are always on call (hello crisis on my day off), but you get to be flexible with your schedule and that’s a luxury not everyone gets to enjoy which I am thankful for.

Pastors get paid to serve people.  It might sound kind of funny to say that, yet I believe it’s a privilege to get paid to serve God’s people.  Many articles and blogs complain about how little pastors get paid.  Do most pastors get paid a lot? No.  Is the job all about the money? No.  I believe God can work beyond the paycheque.  If someone is in ministry for the money, something is wrong.  I think the thing that gets pastors upset sometimes is comparing what get paid in ministry to what they would get paid in the secular world for the same skill set they bring to the table in their ministry position.  Pastoring is a high challenge job requiring a wide variety of skills and education.  I think if most pastors took their pastoral skill set to the secular world they would instantly double their salary.  Yet in any job it’s not about comparing to what others do or get (that’s a great way to breed dissatisfaction), it’s doing what God has called you to do and trusting him to provide what you need.  I get paid to do what I am passionate about and serve in ministry that has eternal value.  That’s cool.

Perhaps you’ve had similar thoughts about your job or your life situation.  Instead of thinking about all the negatives, think about what you are blessed with and the benefits of your current job or life situation.  You just might find yourself enjoying life a little more!

How to Help Young People Belong to the Church

I believe there are two crucial transitions in a young person’s life where adults can come alongside teenagers and make a huge impact. The first is around age 12-13 when a child becomes a teenager and the second is when a teenager becomes a young adult around age 18-22. 

Children see the world, for better or worse, largely through their parent’s eyes when they are young.  This begins to change as children hit puberty and become teenagers.  They begin to form more of their own opinions and begin searching for their own identity and place in the world.  This is a major transition as they are no longer all kid, and not yet fully teenager.  Sometimes if you observe closely you can literally see them switching modes from child to teenager within minutes.  Because this is a major transition children of this age are asking a ton of questions and are constantly looking for answers as they seek to relate to the world.  Adults can come alongside kids at this age and build relationships with them and help them through this transition.  In the church kids at this age are making the transition from children’s programs to youth programs.  Now is the time to help kids feel like they belong in 'big church' as they move away from the structured and sheltered confines of the children’s ministry.

The second major transition is the shift from teenager to young adult.  This is another crucial moment where adults and churches can make or break a teenager’s relationship with the church.  Teenagers are graduating highschool and choosing careers or post-secondary education.  Major life shaping decisions are made in this phase.  Making this age even more crucial is the transition that teenagers face in the church.  By graduation and age 18 or so teenagers are too old for the church youth ministry program and begin to transition out.  What is important to realize here is that if a person has grown up in the church they have been part of a program tailor made for their age category for their whole lives.  After graduating from youth ministry teens are suddenly part of 'big church' with all the variety and age ranges that entails.  Some churches, especially smaller ones, do not have a specific young adults program, so these graduates are thrown into the mixer.  If they have not been welcomed at church and built a few significant relationships with adults during their childhood and youth ministry years, they will probably simply leave church. 

There is abundant material written on how many young adults are leaving the church these days and I would contend that part of the reason is that teenagers have not found their place in the church outside of the youth ministry program. (To be fair, a number of these young adults who leave church return to church later in life.)  Youth ministries need to do a better job on integrating youth ministry into the ministry of the whole body so that teens are exposed to ‘big church’ often and become comfortable in church outside of the youth ministry program.  We can all play our part by building a few relationships with teenagers in our churches so that when they graduate highschool and the youth ministry program, they don’t graduate from church.

Two major transitions.  Two incredible opportunities to shape upcoming generations.  What is your role?

How to Cultivate Receptivity to the Holy Spirit (Part 2 of 2)

This week is the conclusion of this series.  I hope you have enjoyed it and that it has provided some practical help as you seek the manifest presence of God.  Today I will share a few practical steps to help you cultivate receptivity to the Holy Spirit in your life.

1.  James 4:8 “draw near to God and he will draw near to you.”  We have to actively seek God and desire for him to work in our lives.  If we do not provide an opening for God’s action in our lives, he will not force himself on us.

2. Practice spiritual disciplines.  Read the Bible, pray, worship, serve etc. (there are many more spiritual disciplines).  As we spend time in spiritual disciplines a little bit of worldliness falls away and the hidden spiritual realm is opened up a little bit more.

3. Offer ourselves as living sacrifices.  There is no limit to what God can do with a willing sacrifice.  See Romans 12:1-2.

4. Strive to live a holy life.  God is a God of love, but he is first and foremost a holy God.  To follow Jesus in earnest we must strive for holiness and love.

5. Submit to God’s will.  We reach a landmark moment when we realize that God’s will is what is good for us and that it is what is pleasing to God.

A person submitted to God and striving to live a holy life will be far more aware of the presence of God because that person realizes that she is an active agent of God’s kingdom breaking into this world.  If I sacrifice and actively work to improve my marriage there will a payoff in development of depth, trust and communication in the relationship.  It is no different with God.  If you sacrifice and put effort into the relationship, the relationship will grow and improve.

If we passively sit back and wait for God to do something, he very well may do something, but it likely won’t be through those who are sitting back waiting for something to happen.  It will be through those who have submitted themselves to God and have said “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt 6:10).

One final Tozer quote to wrap things up: “Let any man turn to God in earnest, let him begin to exercise himself unto godliness, let him seek to develop his powers of spiritual receptivity by trust and obedience and humility, and the results will exceed anything he may have hoped in his leaner and weaker days” (Tozer The Pursuit of God pg 64).

A.W. Tozer’s book The Pursuit of God inspired me to write this series and if you've enjoyed this series of blogs I’d strongly encourage you to read it.  I’ll be back next week with a new topic so stay tuned!

How to Cultivate Receptivity to the Holy Spirit (Part 1 of 2)

Like many things in the Christian life, coming to an understanding and awareness of the manifest presence of the Holy Spirit is just the first step.  We have to develop receptivity to his presence.  Just like a farmer sows seed and then cares for the plants we must cultivate receptivity to the presence of the Holy Spirit.  It isn't something that just happens to us all the time, yet with learning and practice we can become far more aware of God’s manifest presence and learn to experience his manifest presence far more often.

We may have a special experience at a camp or an altar call or a retreat but those moments are generally highlights and are relatively few and far between.  Cultivating a regular receptivity to the Holy Spirit has the potential to change our day to day lives.  As I mentioned last week, receptivity to the manifest presence of the Holy Spirit is something that can be increased by exercise or destroyed by neglect (Tozer The Pursuit of God pg 64).

Sometimes we wonder why God seems far off and why he doesn't seem to be acting in our lives.  Seeing as he is the all-powerful God and we are limited human beings, it is more likely that we hold ourselves back from a close relationship with God, perhaps through simple unawareness or perhaps through neglect.  We will never fully understand God, but we have to trust him and his actions.  Isaiah 55:8-9 says “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”  God is always trying to get our attention, he always wants to reveal himself to us and he always wants to communicate with us, though we may not understand how he goes about it or why something occurs (Tozer The Pursuit of God pg 65).  We only have to choose how we respond.

As I discussed last week, choosing to respond to God and seek the manifest presence of God will require surrender on our parts.  It is one of those paradoxes of Christian faith that surrender here brings us a new level of spiritual awareness.  Following Jesus is never about oneself so seeking the manifest presence of God for selfish reasons will not work.  A selfish person will never really accomplish much because they are only ever out for their own interests.  On the other hand a person dedicated to a cause is far more dangerous.  Someone dedicated to the kingdom of God holds the keys of change in the world.  Next week I’ll conclude this series with some practical steps we can use to cultivate receptivity to the Holy Spirit in our lives.

How to Cultivate Awareness of the Manifest Presence of God

This week I’ll look at how we can cultivate awareness of the manifest presence of God.  A.W. Tozer explains the awareness of the manifest presence of the H.S. far better than me so I’ll let him explain: “Men do not know that God is here.  What a difference it would make if they knew.  The Presence and the manifestation of the presence are not the same.  There can be one without the other.  God is here when we are wholly unaware of it.  He is manifest only when and as we are aware of his presence.” (The Pursuit of God pg 60)

So even if someone believes that God is everywhere, realizing that he is right here, right now occurs only when a person is aware of his presence.  God wants to reveal himself to us that we might know him.  God can certainly hide his presence if he chooses to do so, but I would propose that in most cases it is our human nature and spiritual warfare that holds us back from a passionate pursuit of God, and not God hiding himself from us.  We have to be open and receptive to the manifest presence of the Holy Spirit and as we develop that awareness a whole new spiritual experience is opened up to us.  We can experience the Holy Spirit on the drive to work.  Doing the dishes can become a worshipful moment. We can be praying constantly throughout the day.  We can be listening to the Holy Spirit as he whispers to our souls.

To continue to quote Tozer: “On our part, there must be surrender to the Spirit of God, for His work is to show us the Father and the Son.  If we cooperate with Him in loving obedience, God will manifest Himself to us, and that manifestation will be the difference between a nominal Christian life and a life radiant with the light of His face.” (The Pursuit of God Pg 60)

It’s so easy to just go about our days and accomplish the items on our to do list without really stopping to be aware of God’s presence with us.  You don’t have to be in church, at a camp, or even with other believers to experience the manifest presence of God.  It is something that you can learn to cultivate and like other learned skills, you develop it as you practice it.  Be warned here though; God cannot be controlled by humans. Experiencing God’s manifest presence is not a toy for our enjoyment, it requires surrender to God and submission to his will.  His will is good, pleasing and perfect so you need not worry, but his will may just be different than your will.  It’s a great adventure but it may not be the one you charted.  Next week we’ll look at cultivating receptivity to the presence of the Holy Spirit. 

How to Understand the Manifest Presence of God

To back up a little and flesh out what I wrote last week, I’ll explain what I mean by the manifest presence of God.  God is everywhere, all the time.  This is one of the special attributes of God.  There is nowhere that God is not.  David declares in Psalms 139:7 “Where shall I go from your Spirit, or where shall I flee from your presence?”  It’s quite easy to say that and even to really believe it, but it can be a sort of “God’s out there somewhere, but he isn’t really impacting my life right now.”  It’s like oxygen.  We are always breathing oxygen and in fact we can’t live without it, but often we are not consciously aware that we are breathing oxygen.

The fact that God is everywhere should radically reshape our awareness of the world.  Yet somehow it often doesn’t.  Jacob experienced this in Genesis 28.  He has a vision of a ladder to heaven and after the vision he woke up and declared “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” (Gen 28:16)  Is this not our dilemma?  How do we find God when it doesn’t seem like he is around?

To realize personally that God is present we have to find his manifest presence.  God’s manifest presence is when we are actively aware of God and sense the power and presence of the Holy Spirit in an immediate personal way.  God is always around, but that doesn’t mean we are always aware of him and communicating with him.  Perhaps we can think of it this way.  I can know that my wife is in the room next to me, but we aren’t communicating at the moment.  However, she steps into the room where I am and asks me a question; now we are interacting.  I always believed that she existed when she was in the next room but we weren’t interacting.  Believing someone exists and actively interacting with them are very different things.  It’s like this with the Holy Spirit.  We can believe that the Holy Spirit exists and is around us, but it is very different to be actively interacting with him.

Coming to a realization and awareness of the manifest presence of the Holy Spirit has the potential to radically reshape our concept of the Holy Spirit and his active presence and influence in our lives.  For me this was a major revelation and it is right up there in the most important moments of my life.  Stay tuned next week as I examine how to cultivate awareness of the manifest presence of God.

How to Find the Guidance of the Holy Spirit

Perhaps too often Christians beat themselves up for not spending enough time with God, thinking they have to commit to a technical and boring in-depth regime of prayer and bible study to be good Christians.  The reality is that Jesus says his yoke is easy and his burden is light.  Through Jesus we can do far more than we ever imagined.  One of the best ways to find this out is to find the manifest presence of the Holy Spirit.  As we realize that the Holy Spirit is everywhere and always with us, that knowledge will change our outlook on life and the way we act and deal with everyday situations

Have you ever been lost or not quite sure where you are?  My wife and I experienced this a number of weeks ago as we were out driving in the woods intending to observe God’s creation of the antlered variety.  We had a map and had plotted a route but after a while we realized that we were not where we thought we were.  We had taken a wrong turn and weren't on the road we wanted to be on.  This led to some confusion but eventually we were able to find our way back to the main road and the day ended happily.  The problem wasn't that we had gone off the road or that we were particularly lost, but that we had taken a road that we hadn't meant to and thus were not where we thought we were.  Often this can happen in life.  We plot out a nice route, make plans and set the cruise control.  At some point down the road we realize we took a wrong turn and we aren't where we thought we were going.  We have to stop, correct the error and find our way back to the main road.  If the Bible is our map, the Holy Spirit is our guide and he will help us to get back on track.

If you think about it, a guide is always with you.  A guide would not be doing a very good job if he left you on the trail without any idea of where you are going.  The good news is that the Holy Spirit is a very good guide and he is always available to help us find the right paths.  Now, the Holy Spirit is also much more than just a guide.  Recently I had a fresh revelation of the Holy Spirit’s work.  Our small group was studying A.W. Tozer’s book The Pursuit of God.  In that book Tozer writes and explains the manifest presence of God.  Reading that book I had a light bulb moment and received a whole new revelation of what God’s manifest presence means.  

Stay tuned for a continuation of this post next week.  

Thanks for reading, I hope it's helpful.  Let me know if you have any comments or feedback.

Mike