Just For Pastors 37: Do You Feel Led?

We have to be led by the inner witness. Paul was led by the Spirit to preach in certain places and not in others. If you have ever preaching in a place you weren’t led to, you may understand why!

The inner witness is an inner traffic light inside you that God placed inside you. It’s like an inner knowing, go this way, accept this invite, pray for this person, don’t pray for this people.

I am all for having a soul. Our soul is our mind, will and emotions. In our soul we can reason and feel, and I am all for that. We should be reasonable and we should be emotional. But as a pastor you need to be at the place where you know that your mind is not yet fully renewed, it’s not yet perfect, so your ability to reason is not yet fully operational. You can reason something and it is totally wrong. You can say “logically, this was the best thing to do, the best place to minister, the best way to handle this” but your logic could be faulty, and you might not even know. Logic can be infected because we live in a fallen universe and our minds are still a work in progress. Some people only live on the level of logic, but as pastors we have to be far more careful than that. There are people who have committed great sins, and when I have asked them how they ended up there, it seems logical to them. Reason is good but it must bow to the Word, and you must continually renew your mind.

Emotions are great too, but they are also less than perfect. You can feel things that aren’t real only too easily. We must never be emotion led! Now, when people are led by the Spirit, we often use the language of emotion, we say “I feel God is saying”, “I feel led to do this or that”, and that’s fine to say that, but again – we are leaders – we have to consider when I say “I feel good about doing this”, do I mean on an emotional or a spiritual level? Am I being sensual, carnal – this needs you to consider and think and pray. If the feeling comes from the spirit and not your flesh, all is well, but make sure it is.

Let me give you an example. You could wake up in the morning and feel really out of sorts. Your body feels sick and tells your emotions to feel sick as well. At that point, as a born-again Christian, your spirit should led the way and say “listen carefully, I am not moved by what I feel, I know I am healed by the stripes of Jesus”. Then your logic kicks in “well, if I was healed, then I would be healed, so that cannot be true”, so then you need to transcend logic and live by faith – “the Word says I am healed so I am healed” and live from your spirit. That is what I mean when I say “I feel led”, I feel led to follow the Word, to live by faith and listen to the Holy Spirit.

I hope this helps you! Grace and peace!

Just For Pastors 36: You Need Some Discernment!

In my last post, I said pastors need power. It’s true, but you also need some wisdom to use that power. I know many people who have operating in the gifts without wisdom and ended up failing. There are satanic counterfeits of the Spirit of God and His gifts.

The only way to avoid being deceived and getting into a mess is to stay in the Word. We need to be full of the Word and full of the Spirit.

Part of the wisdom we need when it comes to the gifts and power of the Spirit. What happens is we are in a meeting, we are the pastor, and someone is operating in the gifts – one of our elders, a worship leader, a guest speaker – and you are thinking like this – “I don’t know what it is, I cannot say what it is, I cannot define what it is, I don’t have words. I know we must not stand against the Lord’s anointing, I know we shouldn’t judge – but this is not right, this is not God, this is not what should be happening in my church right here, right now, or ever” – that is discernment. It really is at that deep a level, it’s a pastor’s intuition and pastors – listen to me – trust your intuition. I have gone against my intuition several times (and sadly I have gone against my wife’s intuition too) and it has never ended well. If it doesn’t feel right to you, and you are walking with God, you are at peace, and you are not envious or foolish or backslidden, it is absolutely what you feel it is. The Holy Spirit is letting you – the pastor of the church – there is something wrong with this situation and you need to do something about it.

Discernment may be the most important supernatural weapon you have as a pastor do not neglect it.

Just For Pastors 35: You Need Some Power!

Pentecostal Power: Lessons in Spirit ...

Public speaking is undergoing a real resurgeance. People are watching TED Talks, top comedians can pack out the largest venues in the UK faster than Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift! People do enjoy listening to others talk.

But with us the kingdom of God is not just a matter of talk, but a matter of action – and we have to have power – the power of the Spirit when we minister. We should be moving in the gifts of the Spirit. We need to be baptised in the Holy Spirit, flowing in the gifts and seeing supernatural things happen when we minister.

I have just ministered in Indonesia for the first time. They invited me back as soon as I had finished my first session – not because I preached an especially remarkable sermon, although I thought it was rather good, but because several people were healed, then I gave a word of knowledge for someone in the room that was exceptionally accurate to his situation. In the evening service, more people were healed and God gave me another word of knowledge that again was exceptionally accurate and ministered life to someone who desperately needed it.

It’s not just about talking, it’s about power. There has to be power! Acts 1.8 says you shall: “receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you and you shall be witnesses unto me… unto the uttermost part of the earth”. Notice carefully that it says that power makes us witnesses unto Jesus, not witnesses for Jesus.

What’s the difference? If I am a witness for Jesus, I get into the pulpit and I tell you some nice stories about what Jesus did 2000 years ago 3000 miles away and you all nod and clap and we all go home and had a nice service. But as a witness unto Jesus, I do what He did in His name, with the same power He had, the power of the Holy Spirit. You cannot do it without the Holy Spirit and His power. But we need more supernatural in the church. Not spooky, but supernatural.

There were meetings in the past century in the UK where people had words of knowledge, saw great healings, saw great miracles. We need to go back to those days. We need to return to the days of Smith Wigglesworth, the days of the early Pentecostals, the days of George and Stephen Jeffries. We need supernatural meetings.

Now in that environment, some people go weird, some even open themselves up to the demonic. Recently a well known “prophet” has been exposed for using Facebook to find out information about people, in previous years another used a radio piece in their ear, and people go “wow, this has to be God”, and when it isn’t, they back off from the supernatural. But the copies are just copies of what is REAL. There are real gifts of the Spirit, there is real power to the Holy Spirit.

Now listen – we must as pastors have the gifts, but we must NEVER build our lives and ministries on a gift. Kenneth Hagin used to tell his contemporaries “You have all built your ministries on your gifts, but I am building mine on the Word, so I will still be going when you are all gone” – and that turned out to be totally true!

Paul wrote to a church that was having the gifts abused and all sorts of problems because of the carnal use of the gifts, and he didn’t say “Stop it with the gifts until you all grow up”. No, he did not. He said, “Desire eagerly the gifts”. And despite what some fools may say about the gifts for being for yesteryear, we should be desiring them today, in our services this weekend. We should be operating in power! AMEN!

Just For Pastors 34: Don’t be a Copycat Clone

Sons of God should be led by the Spirit of God. You need to spend time in the Word and time praying in the Spirit, praying in tongues, so you can learn how to follow the Spirit of God, not something else.

I have lost count of how many times people have come to me and said “We need to do this, Pastor, in my last church we did this”, or “Mega Church A is doing this and that, we should do this and that”, or “can we sing these songs from Mega Church B”, or “I went to this conference and this happened, you must do this”. I get bought the shirts of the pastors they want me to look like, and the teaching sets of the pastors they want me to sound like! It’s absolutely true.

But I am not a clone, I am me. I have my own spiritual DNA and God has called me to do what I am called to do. Tree of Life Churches should look like Tree of Life and not some other church down the road. I am not going to start this or that because God told someone else to do it that way. I have to hear from God, and if God tells me to do something I will do it.

You cannot just go and start a church, you certainly cannot just go and start a Bible College, you cannot just go and start a ministry. You need something from God that is supernatural. If He does not tell you to do it, you cannot expect Him to help or pay for it. So many pastors are struggling financially because they are not asking God how to do things! There is no excuse for pastoring on a natural level, just doing marketing courses, begging for money, not listening to God, not studying the Scriptures. This is why so much is not working in our country. People actually think doing three years of Bible College is sufficient to run one! It’s ludicrous! You need experience of fivefold ministry to raise up fivefold ministers!

What we do has to be supernatural – and the most important level of spirituality is being shown things to come. You have to have a vision from God and you have to learn how to communicate that vision to people. There are different ways to communicate and different ways to fund raise and different ways to deal with problems – so you have to seek the Lord for your situations and your church and your ministry. You cannot just do what someone else has done and expect results.

We need to be led by the Spirit and we need to operate in the power of the Spirit. I’ll talk more about that next post!

Just For Pastors 33: Watch Out for Fake Pastors In Your Church!

I have had several people tell me over the years that they know more than pastoring than I do, but somehow none of them have ever pastored. We had a so-called prophet come to one of our churches and prophesy over me that God had called him to be my pastor and I should pay him double what I pay myself for him to pray for me daily and tell me what to do. I said if you know that much, go do it – go plant a church.

Guess what he did – guess what they all do – he tried to start a little Bible study in the church, get people to come and gather around him, even asked them to give him money. He wanted to be a teacher, but not a leader, he wanted a group but not responsibliry.

Paul said to the Ephesian elders and pastors that people would turn up in their churches and try and draw away disciples to themselves. So it shouldn’t surprise us when it happens! It’s in the Bible. Even this week, someone who left the church offended over a year ago, was contacting people in our church and trying to persuade them to leave. Why are they still concerned? Because they are immature and foolish. Why haven’t they joined another church? Because they cannot. Why haven’t – if they are so holy and so glorious and so anointed –

People like that need to be removed from the church or repent. Their inability to respect and honour leadership will infect the rest of the church. A small group should be a road into the church, with an elder or leader who is sanctioned and submissive to church leaders. These unofficial, unsanctioned groups are cul-de-sacs – dead ends that have no life and nowhere for people to go, and are being used by a tiny person who is trying to manipulate a ministry through sneakiness rather than stewardship. These are not people you as a pastor can afford to be influencing people in your church.

Selah.

Just For Pastors 32: Feed The Sheep

I want to let you know something – I have in the last 28 years of ministry often preached on the same topics again – faith, love, prayer, all sorts of things. But I have never in the last 15 years preached on the same notes again. God led me to stop doing that. He said – Ben, if you preach on it again, study it again because when you study it again, you will get more revelation on it, and a new dimension of understanding.

I like preaching fresh, I like preaching like a homemade meal, not like a fast food burger. If I am not hunting the Word for fresh information, how can I present it to others.

Pastors, if you are not in the Word, you will become a parrot, preaching other people’s messages, your old messages, and the sermon illustrations will be from other preacher’s lives and from the TV. Nothing wrong with a little of those, but you need a testimony, you need life, you need to study the Word.

Not everyone has to do it exactly like I do it, but if you are preaching something fresh, study it fresh and watch what happens.

Just for Pastors 31: Don’t be a Heavy Shepherd

I know I need to lose a few pounds, but that’s not what a heavy shepherd means. The phrase heavy shepherd comes from America, and comes from the seventies, although some church leaders have been involved in this sort of behaviour all over the world, and for much longer than since the seventies.

What heavy shepherding is in a nutshell is a system of control where the people in a church cannot do anything without the permission of their pastor. I have encountered heavy shepherding several times in my life. In one church I went to, we were not allowed to go on holiday without permission from the pastor, in another we were actually told what colour socks to wear on Sunday. Not as ushers or part of the band, just to turn up!

I know churches where people cannot do anything, get married, flow in the gifts, or do anything, without permission from their pastor. Now of course there is a balance to this. You cannot just get up and speak in a church service if you are not the leader, but what you do outside of the church is not under the leadership of a pastor.

We are not there to control people, we are not there to tell people who to fellowship with. Right now there are two people who are utter liars and I wish certain people in the church didn’t listen to them, but I am not there to control the sheep, I am there to feed the sheep. I give people the Word, but people are still people and are free.

Again, there is a balance to this. You will be responsible for what you allow in the flock, in the services. Don’t invite a guest speaker who teaches nonsense, don’t let someone lead worship who raises their fists to you and tells your son to go and kill himself, don’t let someone flow in the gifts who has got two different women who are not his wife pregnant, don’t let someone who is constantly causing division even attend the services. You are responsible to lead the flock!

Some travelling speakers have their own agenda. I’ve had a guest speaker once try and take some of the wealthier people in the church out for breakfast to invest in some scheme – I cannot allow that to happen, that’s in my realm of authority. I had one guest speaker in the middle of our conference tell everyone our conference was no good, and his was much better. I did not invite him again. His conference stopped and is no longer in existence, our summer conference is still going and growing! We must protect our people from abuse.

But the other side is also a problem – when as pastors we get involved in things that are outside of our realm of authority. Our job is to make sure we are feeding the flock, but we cannot force them to eat. I can refuse to platform someone who does not want to submit to the Word and act in love. I don’t have to let them lead the worship or the service or preach, but I cannot go round their house and force them to act like Jesus. That’s out of my realm. You start getting involved in things out of your realm – there is no grace for that, and you will start to cause havoc. Focus on feeding the flock. You can take a horse to water, but you cannot make them drink! It can feel very frustrating but do what you can do and trust God for the rest.

I went to one church and they wanted me to tithe as I got paid, they wanted to set up a standing order, see my payslips and set it all together. I have had people come to Tree of Life Church and ask permission to go to a conference. Now, of course, if someone is always at conferences at churches down the road, but doesn’t go to our conferences, if someone’s social media is post after post of the sermons of dozens of other pastors, but never shares one of our sermons, or services – well, I have no ability to control that, but I can control me.

Refusing to make someone an elder who does not tithe, does not ever celebrate the church’s media on their social media, who does not come to our summer conference to go to some other preacher’s conference – that is good shepherding. But if I send the boys around their house to rebuke them the week after the conference, or if I tell someone you cannot be in this church if you follow such and such on social media, that’s heavy shepherding. It’s about knowing where your authority ends. You are in charge of the church, you are not in charge of the small details of the personal lives of the people who come.

And criticism goes both ways – there are bully pastors and there are also people in the church call a pastor a bully for just leading the church. Either way, you as a pastor need to know where the lines are. Peter tells pastors not to lord it over their churches (1 Peter 5.3). Focus on teaching well and setting a great example in your life, speech, marriage, family.

As you are praying about how to shepherd, let me tell you something – not shepherding is easy, heavy shepherding is also easy, good shepherding is hard. Someone comes to you and says “how much should I give to the church”.

The lazy shepherd says “it doesn’t matter how much you give, it’s all grace, I don’t even talk about finances”. That’s not shepherding, but many pastors choose that approach. Heavy shepherding takes someone’s payslips, does the maths for them, sets up a standing order for them, and publicly shames them if they stop giving. That’s also wrong, but it’s also easy.

True shepherding involves teaching Biblical, sound truth on giving. You let people know what the Word says on tithing, on stewardship, on sowing and reaping, you challenge the presumptions that teaching on giving makes you all about the money and out of love, you follow the Holy Spirit and you enable the Holy Spirit to convict people’s hearts and let them respond in faith to the Spirit.

That takes effort, study, prayer, wisdom, skill, and it is not easy. But that’s shepherding. You have to rely on the Holy Spirit, not on your force of personality, but you build people who are walking by faith, not externally obeying out of guilt and fear.

Selah.

Just For Pastors 30: Feed the Sheep Spiritual Food!

I’ve spent three years at Bible College, and then I did a Masters in Biblical Languages, and I am currently doing my Th. D. in Apostolic Ministry. But I have never done a course on how to pastor in the spirit! I’ve heard a lot of Bible teaching, a lot of great doctrinal teaching, a lot of very good practical teaching, but there is a dimension of pastoring that cannot come from a classroom, it can only come from experience.

I am very grateful the Bible College that I went to insisted I was part of a local church while I was there, as that is where the real learning takes place. In Jeremiah 3.15, God promises the people “pastors according to my heart which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding”, the only way to be that is through experience and doing. I want you all to be pastors who are after God’s heard, and feed the sheep, and do it skilfully!

While at Bible College, I would have lectures from 9am to 12noon, and then often listen to 8+ hours of sermons afterwards and be taking notes. The Word consumed me. That’s why I can do what I do now, preaching five to seven times a week, over and over, on different subjects to different audiences. This week I am preaching to our youth on Friday, Southampton Saturday, Watford Sunday morning, then Manchester Sunday morning. And it’s glorious, and I love it. I am also teaching Wednesday night on our live stream Bible study. But I put the preparation in. I still go to every meeting I can, I listen to as many sermons as I can, I study the Bible as often as I can.

Why? My priority, my top calling is to feed people. Jesus told Peter three times – feed my sheep. You see when you realize as a pastor your job is to feed people, you don’t get weird. If it doesn’t feed people, we leave it out. I have never started a pyramid scheme to raise money in the church, because I am too busy feeding people. I’ve never got into weird things that are passing through the church, because I am too busy feeding people. Our TV show within seconds of watching, you are straight into the Word of God. Our YouTube channel is all about feeding the sheep.

A while back a rather disgruntled and foolish couple made a video lying about me just before I went live. I didn’t watch it because I am not into watching foolishness, but some people told me it had happened and told me some of the lies told about me. When I went live, there was an exceptionally large audience, but I didn’t respond to the lies, I just opened my Bible and fed the sheep. I take the call of Jesus to feed people very seriously indeed, and every pastor should.

Pastors need to avoid getting distracted. You are not there to give people a book review, to sell a DVD, to give people your geo-political opinions – you have to feed people the Word of God. That is what will change their lives!

Just For Pastors 29: Choosing an Assistant

One of the most remarkable moments in my life was when Tree of Life Family grew beyond myself and my family. One of the tasks I now have I have never had before is to select and hire staff. Now I genuinely believe that I have the most remarkable pastoral and admin staff in all of Europe. I have seen several great ministers struggle so much because they hired the wrong staff. If your staff do not have your heart, and cannot work with you, you are never going to accomplish that much!

The only reason I can travel the way I do is my pastoral staff. The only reason I can grow the ministry as much as I can is my admin staff. Tree of Life Family is not a large ministry, we have nine staff, but they are remarkable. Anointed, loyal, some have been with me since nearly the first year of Tree of Life. They can work well together.

Right now, I am looking and dreaming of international staff, starting offices in other countries, that’s a big step forward, and again I need to think about how to do that.

This is an important job of a growing ministry, and you need to be praying about it now. Jesus had twelve staff and one of them stabbed him in the back, and if that happens to you, you are in good company.

You need to look for three things in good staff. The first is character. We are not a cut-throat business, we are not some company, we are the church of the living God. We need people who are patient, kind, not driven by the spotlight, who have a living relationship with the Lord through Bible study and prayer.

Secondly, look for capability – can they actually do the job. This is vital for both pastoral and admin staff. So essential!

Thirdly and finally, look for compatibility – in other words, can they work with you and your team. Someone might be exceptionally holy, and remarkably capable – but if they cannot work with you and your team, there’s an issue.

Selah.

Just For Pastors 28: Say It Again, Pastor!

We have to take our calling as a pastor seriously – God takes it seriously, so we should. Paul told Timothy to preach the Word. He did not say preach tradition, preach someone’s ideas, preach what you think, preach what you feel. We have to preach the Word. Paul actually said:

Preach the word, be prepared in season and out of season

In season and out of season refer to whether they get it or not. You keep preaching whether the people get it or not. Kenneth Hagin was asked “why do you keep preaching on Mark 11.23 all the time? You should preach the full counsel of God!”. He replied “I will preach something else, as soon as you get Mark 11.23”.

To effectively teach the Word you will have to repeat it, again and again. You will have to develop a rhythm. I like to teach 4-6 weeks on a topic, then immediately teach a parallel topic. For example, I might teach a few weeks on prayer, then immediately teach on fasting, but as I teach on fasting I will bring back and recap what I taught on prayer. That kind of repetition is very helpful to people.

Now, think about this – God is never in a season. God is always on all the time. God is never out of season. Heaven has no seasons, God never changes. We have seasons on earth. So what does that mean? Well, someone might say “it’s time for a season of miracles”. That’s great – but it’s not that God is holding back on the miracles, it’s that we haven’t been believing and praying and imagining miracles – we are the ones who need to change season, not God.

If you are going through a season with no miracles, and no gifts of the Spirit, that’s on you, pastor, not God. You need to change season! Get with God’s season!

If you want a season of the gifts in your church, say it again pastor! Preach a sermon on the gifts, then another, then another, then another.