The Pastor as a Transforming Leader (Pt 5) - Practices

I think the leader of a great church will just need to put into practice two commandments of Jesus – The Great Commission and the Great Commandment. All other considerations of the Christian leader will spring from these two commandments.

OBEYING THE GREAT COMMISSION (Matt 28:18-20)
The pastor-leader must have a passion for souls. He must have a passion for God’s agenda. If he is seeking God’s will daily, he will be totally committed to mission and evangelism because people are what God is concerned about and God’s concern should be his concern. Therefore, local as well as foreign missions should be spearheading the ministry of the church.

Having evangelized and brought people into God’s kingdom, the next step is to disciple them so that these new converts can continue to grow in their faith. There is a biblical injunction that believers are to grow in their relationship with Christ (2 Pet 3:18) and also in spiritual maturity. The aim is discipleship and therefore the pastor’s ministry of teaching, preaching, visitation, etc., should bear this aim in mind. In Christian life, a believer is already backsliding if he is not moving forward. I believe one of the reasons why factionalism and friction is found in the church is because of the immaturity of church members who put their agenda before anything else. An idle mind is the devil’s workshop and the devil is always busy at work when Christian minds are idle.

OBEYING THE GREAT COMMANDMENT (JOHN 13:34-35)
Mother Theresa once said “I am God’s pencil; a tiny bit of pencil with which he writes what he likes.” The pastor-leader should also see himself in this light, as one in whom God’s compassion and love is written for the people to see and be touched. By adhering to the Great Commandment, the pastor-leader will thus keep his focus on God’s ways and not his own. To the secular leader, the ends justify the means but the pastor-leader has to ensure that both the means as well as the ends please God and glorify him. Paul was a good example of a pastor who was focused on God’s way and not his own in ministry. That is why he said “Everything is permissible but not everything is beneficial. Everything is permissible but not everything is constructive. Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others.” (1 Cor 10:23-24).

In obeying the Great Commandment, the pastor-leader also should not end up setting himself over his followers. Thus, in love, he must be willing to make himself accountable for the decisions that he makes. Nor only that, he should also make himself accountable for the mistakes of those whom he delegates responsibility to. A person gets disillusioned when he sees support not forthcoming from the leader but is strengthened when the leader charges to his own account the blame accruing to his subordinate.

Obeying the Great Commandment also means attending to the needs of his followers. The church leader must never forget that he is above all, one who is called to pastor God’s people. We have already seen one image of the pastor as a shepherd, one who tends God’s people. Unlike the secular leader, who sees failure as unforgivable and is quick to sever the weakest links in the organizational chain, the pastor-leader is willing to slow down and come alongside the straggling ones to lift their spirits or tend to their hurts or lead them to rest so as to prevent lives being broken. I do not think a church ministry is worthwhile if lives are shattered and relationships broken in achieving its goal. The pastor has to remember that he must love his people because they are God’s sheep entrusted to him. The pastor should remember that leadership is not a status symbol or position of power but a responsibility and service.

If the pastor desires to transform his environment, he must therefore model obedience to the Great Commission and the Great Commandment. Only when he is an example of obedience can he then speak with authority to his members. Love always brings about a positive response and so out of love, people will respond by giving and working towards growth of the church ministry in missions and planting churches.