3 Things to Pray for your Pastor
“The most effective way to learn to be like Jesus is to take up his cross”
Pastors have an extraordinary calling. They are entrusted with the care of souls.
Whether fortunate or unfortunate, we live in a media flooded, overly podcasted, live-streamed, post-Christianized culture that has produced a significant amount of unbiblical expectation upon pastors.
Christian church hoppers judge a pastor's worth on their ability to entertain and emotionally move them. Average cynical attendees rarely consider if the pastor is fulfilling scripture's standard for success.
How can we expect pastors to fulfill scriptures standard when we are so busy assaulting them with our unmeetable expectations?
It is week 26 of 52 in the Tim Challies 2020 reading challenge, and I find myself confronted by a Lutheran brother, that while I disagree theologically in some regards, cannot help but be blessed by his book The Care of Souls: Cultivating a Pastor’s Heart.
Harold Senkbeil wrote this book last year to encourage fellow pastors on their commissioning to care for souls. I have been encouraged and challenged by it and give it 4 of 5 stars (subtraction of a star mainly due to theological differences on minors points and overall organization throughout the book).
I chose to read Harold's The Care for Souls through the lens of one of the sheep rather than the one trying to shepherd.
Being a pastor is a difficult task to perform faithfully. Certainly, there is an abundance of unfaithful wolves who devouring unsuspecting congregations, seeking their glory rather than God's, and that leads to a very comfortable life. But to execute the calling of pastor faithfully requires divine intervention and often requires significant sacrifice.
With the perspective of the one being cared for, I have boiled down Harold's The Care for Souls into three things to hope and pray for in your pastor. Mostly, that he would care for souls by Praying, Preaching, and Living the Holy Word of God.
1. Pray the Word
Pastors care for souls through praying the word.
Congregations should be praying and wanting their pastors to be humbling praying the word.
In Harold's introduction he states, "the premise of this book is that action flows from being; identity defines activity" (p. 15). Before a pastor can care for another soul, they must entrust and continually surrender their soul to Christ.
"No pastor can give to others what he himself has not received. Turn that around and you have the very core of what pastoring is all about: giving out the gifts of God in Christ that you yourself receive by faith" (p. 19).
Church members need their pastors to be saturated in biblical prayer. They should want time devoted to their pastor's schedule for the undistracted activity of aligning their identity to Christ through prayer.
Rev. Harold Senkbeil
Martin Luther notoriously stated that he had so much to do each day, that he must spend the first three hours of each day in prayer. Your pastor cannot care for your soul as the scripture has described outside of constant prayer.
Ephesians 6:18 gives the final commissioning of God's soldier as "praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication."
Harold dissects the importance of humility in prayer for pastors beautifully and is something that every church member, elder board, and congregation needs to pray for their pastor and hold them to.
2. Preach the Word
Pastors care for souls through the preaching of God's word.
As a church member, I need my pastor to preach the word. I need to hear God speak as my pastor exegetes God's inspired word. I need to be convicted through the Holy Spirit as my pastor applies the text to today's context. I need my pastor laboring in study weekly to wrestle with theology to help develop my Christian worldview.
Harold impresses the importance of theology in the care of souls. He states:
"[The doctrine of] Justification is not just central in preaching and teaching; it's also central for the care of souls. We have something to bring to broken hearts and troubled souls. It's much more than just a feeling or an idea. We bring the reality of sins forgiven and broken hearts mended in Christ Jesus. We bring a clean heart and a right spirit for Jesus' sake. We deliver a clear and good conscience before God. We do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ crucified and risen, who brings life to the dying, hope to the disheartened, and light into this present darkness by his spirit" (p. 127).
The care a pastor provides is a strong biblical theology that serves as a life foundation for his congregation. The pulpit is not a place to flaunt intellectual prowess but must be the place that connects theology to practice.
"The best pastors among us are the ones who realize how little they actually know and how much more they have to master concerning the art of the care of souls" (p. 12).
Church members should be praying that their pastors preach the word. Pastors need to be encouraged to labor in the study of scripture and preach not for entertainment or emotionalism, but the glory of God and the edification of the body.
3. Live the Word
Pastors care for souls by living the word.
"At bottom, sin of every sort is fundamentally idolatry. Sin will not let God be God, but insists on elevating the self to sit on God's throne" (p. 134).
Church members should be praying that their pastors would be kept from idolatry. When a pastor's life is contrary to the word, it brings the whole congregation down. As he is aligned to the Word, and walking in obedience to Christ, he elevates all those around him.
"The closer people are to Jesus, the greater his sanctifying influence in their lives and the more healing they find in him" (p. 193).
As I hope my pastor is praying for my sanctification, I need to be praying for his. Every pastor will answer to God for their care of the souls entrusted to them. It is only right that their people fervently pray for them to be kept walking in obedience and living the word.
The hardest thing a pastor will face is finding satisfaction in God’s view of them alone. Pray that your pastor would find the pure joy of surrender to Jesus by praying, preaching, and living the word to care for souls like yours and mine.
Though Harold wrote this book for pastors, I have been challenged and blessed by reading it from the perspective of the church member. Whether you are a pastor, elder, deacon, or church member, you will benefit from The Care for Souls.
My challenge to church members reading this is to stop and pray for your pastor!
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John Owen came from Welsh descent, was educated at Queens College, and became a renowned Puritan theologian, Oxford professor, and passionate pastor who lived from 1616 to 1683. In 1647, he wrote the exhaustive treatise The Death of Death defending Limited or Definite Atonement against the Arminian view of Universal Atonement or Unlimited Atonement.