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.

Just For Pastors 27: Just for Guest Speakers

Today’s blog post is for guest speakers, whether you a travelling evangelist, an associate pastor, or an intern or elder or deacon who is covering the pulpit for a weekend.

Whether you are an apostle, prophet, evangellist, teacher – or a pastor but in another church to your own – you should submit yourself to the pastor of that church. You should be aware of his authority. Those sheep are not yours – you are merely a guest. You should behave as a guest.

You have zero right to go into another church and raise your own offering, build your own mailing list, do anything to bring increase to yourself. I have had people come to raise their own offering or do their own thing, and I never invite them back. I have had people on Monday morning skip lunch with me to have lunch with some wealthy people in my congregation and try and hit them up for money! They never came for one minute to serve, help or love our church, but came to steal from it. They came to take what they wanted.

On the other hand, good guest speakers, the ones who keep coming back – they will go to the pastor and say “do you know I love you? I am honoured to be with your people – I am submitting to you in your church, tell me anything you need to tell me and I will do it”. I am on both sides now, I travel a lot, I am an apostle over a family of churches, and I still pastor local churches. I know how I have been treated on both sides, and I know what honour is on both sides. I would never take advantage of a pastor, I come to serve. As a pastor, you need to know what the travelling ministers you invite are like – not just what they preach – and travelling speakers need to honour the pastors.

Just For Pastors 26: Get the Clippers Out!

Every church has two kinds of people – there’s other ways to classify people – but this is one that every pastor needs to know. You have the plugged in people and the hanging around people. You know – and it is only the people who are plugged in should get power!

What do I mean? If they don’t do it your way, don’t empower them, pastor! People who are not prepared to do things the way of the local church are passing through. They are goats mainly and will not stay long.

Think about it – you have a conference for leadership training in February (just a random example!) – and someone misses that to go to another leadership conference. That person is not plugged in to your church. They are not in a small group, but they lead their own little get together? Not plugged in.

Now a strange thing about sheep, I am talking about actual sheep here, is that they actually enjoy being sheared. They enjoy getting a severe haircut. I do not enjoy getting my hair cut, so I don’t understand that, but apparently that is the case. The reason being is that they cannot produce new wool until you shear the current wool off. Another thing about sheep is this – sheep are the only creature in the universe that can have baby sheep. A shepherd cannot have baby sheep but sheep can.

Sheep multiply sheep! When you have true sheep in your churches, true plugged in people, then other people will start getting plugged in, and new people will come and get plugged in. But the people who sit at the back on a Sunday morning, never turn up when there is work to be done, and never go to a conference or special meeting – they are not plugged in, they are not sheep. They will often be short lived in your church. I have no doubt they were called to your church, but that independent attitude they have means they will not respond to the call.

A person with a goat, independent attitude, will not normally tell you they are leaving the church – they will just be gone.

When I first started the Tree of Life, every time someone left I felt like the worst pastor in the world, a total failure, it used to hit me very hard. If I was a better pastor, better able to meet their needs they would have stayed, therefore I must be a bad pastor. I had to realize very early on that it was rarely my fault – people just have an attitude. Do you know I bet there are people in your church who are born again, tongue talking, but they have never done anything of worth for the kingdom. They are still loved by God – but they do not produce. When they leave your church, it is like God is cleaning your church up a little bit. It’s generally a good thing. It’s sad, but it opens the door for more fruitfulness.

Not everyone wants to live for God, not everyone wants to bear fruit. We live in a very strange culture where people just want to do what suits them. They have this independent spirit. So shear the lot of them, and the ones that appreciate it are the true sheep. Step on their toes, stand up for the truth, shine for Jesus, let them know you stand for the kingdom, and you need to know that you will stand before God one day and give account of what you have done as a pastor. That is not a light thing.

At the same time, do not get angry with the sheep. Love them, even when you shear them, even when you stand on the truth and stand on the Word, love the people! The goats will leave anyway – they don’t want their hair cut, they don’t want their toes stood on, they just want yet another sermon on how righteous and glorious they are and how God loves them no matter what they do – that’s true, but it’s not the only ingredient of a healthy diet!

Selah.

Just for Pastors 25: Let Them All In!

You don’t have a mandate from the Lord to run a church for one sort of person – a youth church, a Nigerian church, a middle-class church, an elderly church. A church should have a mix of whatever is in the community around it – that is a healthy church. A church should mirror the demographics of their community. Tree of Life is a multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-cultural church because that’s what London is like. Every church should reflect their community.

I have a real concern about black churches and white churches, we should we worshipping together if we live in the same towns and communities – firstly it prepares us for Heaven, and secondly, it gives us insight that we haven’t seen before. People from other backgrounds and cultures see things we haven’t seen before and gives us perspectives we haven’t had before. Why? Because we take seriously our responsiblity to love everyone!

It’s so important we don’t judge a book by its cover, it’s so important that we do not pre-reject God’s grace for someone. We have to believe God can transform anyone. The moment we are building a church for a certain group of people, we have become respecters of persons, and stopped being like God.

The pastor is called to equip the church, the church is called to shine as light and bring all men and women to the knowledge of the truth. Our job is not to go and have cups of tea with people, run a bake sale, play bingo – as a church our purpose is to share the truth with people. A healthy church will always be doing things, but let’s make sure we are doing the right things – let’s make sure we are doing kingdom things and letting people encounter God and His grace., Your church is a city on a hill, a light to the world, salt – and your job as a pastor is welcome everyone, but then let them know the mission – we are not here by accident, we are here on purpose – and the purpose is to get the gospel to people.

If a church exists, it exists for a reason – find out why it exists and let the people know that mission. For Tree of Life, our churches exist:

  • to make disciples built only on the complete work of Christ
  • to create a church full of the Word, full of the Spirit, full of the nations and full of love
  • to plant churches that plant churches

All are welcome, but at some point you have encourage your people to switch from being the mission field to being the mission – and if you are actively against the mission then you can go, we have something so important to do.

It takes wisdom to know how to impart that vision, that dream, to build that culture, to transition people from mission field to mission. It’s a core part of being a pastor – pray for wisdom on how to do it more effectively.

Just For Pastors 24: Take Charge of Your Service!

Every church service should have the power of the Spirit manifest, we should be seeing the gifts happen. It’s that simple. You have to provide a system in which those gifts flow – and you both enable those who have something from God to share, and those who are a little kooky and spooky to be restrained and prevented from sharing nonsense – thereby protecting your flock.

Freedom is not freedom to be kooky. It is freedom to serve responsibly. If you have an open mic, trust me someone will take advantage of it, and it will take a while to clean up and it will be harder than you think. You think you have sorted it and weeks later someone is still trying to live and die by some nonsense word. Paul never told the immature and foolish and ambitious Corinthians to stop using the gifts, he gave them ways to use them in order. As pastors we have to do the same. Paul started with the basics – if you want to drink alcohol, stay home, don’t come to church. Then he said things like no more than two tongues messages per service – no more than two prophetic words – only one person interprets a tongues message.

It is up to you as a pastor to learn these Biblical principles and insist your church follow them. We had a worship leader who would stop the worship and let people share testimonies between songs. It stopped people truly getting into a place of worship, the testimonies became blander and blander, and the songs became less reflective and less focused on Jesus, and more of a performance. Now as the pastor, I cannot let that happen – I had to insist on certain standards for the worship service. It is my job – and your job – pastor – to train and equip the saints to do the work of the ministry. Our services now have much more powerful worship, more gifts, and more glory – it’s wonderful.

If the saints are being equipped and trained you have a healthy church. If the worship connects people to Jesus, you have a healthy church. If the gifts flow, you have a healthy church. If your church has no Holy Spirit, and your services have no flow, no gifts, no power – or on the other hand, no order, no restrains, no standards for those you platform – then you are failing your church and your people.

At Tree of Life Church, we have certain standards for people who are at the front – whether it is preaching, leading worship, leading children’s ministry or youth ministry, or flowing in the gifts. You have to be loyal to the church, in regular attendance, a tither, part of a small group, and not driven by the spotlight. In addition, you have to be sexually pure – not living with your boyfriend or girlfriend for example. Those standards protect our people and line us up with the Word, and bring more glory, more freedom, more power and more gifts to our church services.

As pastors we either enforces these standards and see God’s glory, or we fail to, and then that is on us. Take charge of your service!

Just For Pastors 23: Titles and Respect

Accolade - Wikipedia

If you want to survive in ministry, you need people not just to like you but to respect you. They need not just to relate to you, but they need to appreciate your fruitfulness. Now, at the end of the day, people are going to make their own choices, and many are stubborn, selfish and do not know or care to be part of something bigger than themselves. Many love travelling speakers and Bible College and conferences and TV ministries because they can like the speakers and not respect them, but for a church to be healthy, there must be respect for the pastors.

Sometimes that is hard because people can get used to anything. Keith Moore last night was talking about the rebellion of the Israelites happened while the glory of God was visible in the camp! We can get accustomed to anything. A guest speaker from a foreign nation with a different accent and a different slant on things can be very exciting, especially if we have seen them on TV first.

Now I am not writing this post to the church but to the pastors, so I am not saying “respect your pastor” – if I was talking to the whole church, I would. I am talking to the pastors, so I will say this – you have a role to play in whether people respect you. The way you dress, your punctuality, your respect for others, the way you handle money, the way you treat your wife – all of this will come into how people respect you. You should be shocked when people are all mate-y with you and treat you like a chum, rather than a pastor.

I have never been one to adopt the title “Pastor”, some people say my name like one word “Pastorben”, and that is because I don’t see it in the Bible, and neither do I come from a culture where titles are used much, we don’t in the UK call people by their job role, be it Prime Minister or Coach. However, there should still be a respect for the office. I do understand why people do that, because there has to be a respect for the office because otherwise it simply will not function. You cannot benefit from a ministry you do not honour.

There must be a distance, it should not be as much as some say it is, but there should be a place for people to accept your preaching and teaching as it is – you as the chosen man of God for the church leading and feeding the church (I taught on honour once at a summer conference, and a person I had marked for a key leadership position left the church because he disagreed with the teaching, and I am so glad I taught it because of that, that would have ended badly – leaders need to honour God, the Word and you) – and you also act in a way that enables the church to trust and respect you. You need people to realize you genuinely love them, that they are a human to you, not just a number or whatever. Ask the Lord today what two or three things can you change in your life today to make it easier for people to trust you and respect you.

Do not compromise, but being all things to all men to win some is a Biblical principle.

Just for the Pastors 22: Let’s Talk About Money

As a pastor you have to understand on a very deep, heart level that money is not evil, and you should not be poor. You should have a lot of money, and because of that, you should be learning how to handle money with wisdom, faith and gentleness. If you cannot handle money well, satan will destroy you. I know many ministers who have been destroyed because they cannot talk about money, cannot handle money, cannot raise money, cannot save money, cannot spend money. Part of your job as a pastor is to set a great example when it comes to money.

The first step to this is simple. Never ever ever ever minister for money. It’s that simple. Never make a decision for the ministry based on gain for you. Never care for the flock, never pastor, never preach for what you will get out of it. Make your mind up you will go where God calls you, be faithful to the people God calls you to without thought of reward. We get upset when a businessman leaves your church to move to another town for a meagre pay rise, but I have seen pastors leave flocks or assignments for an even more meagre pay rise so no wonder people do that with so many bad examples in the church leadership.

Peter had to tell elders and pastors:

And now, a word to you who are elders in the churches. I, too, am an elder and a witness to the sufferings of Christ. And I, too, will share in his glory when he is revealed to the whole world. As a fellow elder, I appeal to you: 2 Care for the flock that God has entrusted to you. Watch over it willingly, not grudgingly—not for what you will get out of it, but because you are eager to serve God. 3 Don’t lord it over the people assigned to your care, but lead them by your own good example. 4 And when the Great Shepherd appears, you will receive a crown of never-ending glory and honor. (1 Peter 5.1-4, NLT)

You serve God and you do what the Lord Jesus tells you, not what money tells you. You serve God for God not for money. Not for what you will get out of it. I know guest preachers who will not go somewhere unless they are guaranteed so much up front, a minimum offering, and certain requirements while there. I’m not interested in that at all. You have to set the bar high as a pastor because you are influencing all your people. I have gone to preach in places, they gave me an offering, and I gave it all back to them because they needed it more. I have given personal offerings straight into the church before. I have never asked for a minimum amount, and never taken a preaching engagement because of money. It’s that simple.

Money gives you power. If you do not know how to handle money, you do not know how to handle power, and power not handled well corrupts. In the last post we mentioned sexual sin, well, there are money sins too, and as pastors we have to resist temptation and serve God not money. Ask God to help you here. Of course, you are worth being paid and so on, but do not focus on that and it will come. Seek the things and nothing happens. Seek God first and His kingdom first, and the things will be added to you. That’s for everyone in your church, so do not merely teach it, model it. AMEN.

Just for the Pastors 21: Let’s Talk About Sex

Lester Sumrall said that ministers only fall for three reasons: power, money and sex, and the hardest fall is when it involves sex. When a minister commits adultery, there is always steps before that, often pornography. Sexual sin will not just destroy your ministry, it will destroy your soul and your family too. It’s serious.

Now one thing that happens is that pastors assume God is not disappointed with their sexual sin because they can still minister life and work miracles. There was a pastor not far from where I live who had a large church and saw miracles and healings week after week. It later turned out he was having an affair for over seven years, but still every Sunday he preached with power. The gifts of God are without repentance, but we should still repent!

Now, all sin has been dealt with once and for all by the blood of Jesus, but if you as a born again, righteous Christian, persist in sin, that sin will lead to death, it will pay you the wages of death. Now if you repent and turn from sin, you can be made clean and forgiven, and God can also as your Good Shepherd restore your soul, and restore your pain, and your marriage. Several times I have seen marriages restored after adultery. On the other hand, I have seen people divorce, remarry quickly and then get into the same messes as before because they never dealt with the sin in the first place.

Of course, the best advice is Paul’s – do not give place to the devil (Ephesians 4.27) – do not give the devil a place. It is not your job to provide for satan! You are a representation of Jesus Christ when you minister. You are not in ministry for your gain, but to honour Jesus Christ and represent Him.

As ministers we have to be very careful. On a personal level we need to control our sexual appetite. It seems sad to have to talk about this, but I have met far too many ministers who have committed sexual immorality and thought it was no big deal. I have met far too many Christians who are having sex before and outside of marriage to know we have to talk about this. I have met Christians who would literally pray together then have sex outside of marriage. They have no sense of the fear of the Lord, no sense of holy living. As pastors, we need to be sure of our purity, then develop a culture of purity in our churches. It is essential.

Teach your people boldly that sex is for marriage and marriage is for life. Teach them boldly that faithfulness and commitment is part of being a disciple of Jesus. Let us be a force of purity across this nation.