What are pastors good for?

In his book “Ordinary Church”, Joseph S. Beach has a section titled “The Ordinary Pastor of an Ordinary Church.” When you have gone through the process of “Church shopping,” one of the first things you probably considered was the Pastor.

The first point regarding Pastors that Mr. Beach makes has to do with what Pastors are. They, first and foremost, are human beings, folks trying to make their way through life just like you. Secondly, your Pastor is also a fellow “regular” Christian (no super Christian), someone trying to follow Christ just like you and struggling against sins and temptations just like you. If you’re really blessed, your Pastor is there to serve you and be your shepherd, plain and simple, not to further their professional career or to use you to build a bigger church or to use you as a stepping stone to another (supposedly better) church.

Hopefully, your Pastors are your Pastors because God has appointed them to be your Pastors. Acts 20:28 states: “So guard yourself and God’s people. Feed and shepherd God’s flock—His Church, purchased with His Own blood—over which the Holy Spirit has appointed you as elders.”

Hopefully, in return, God has appointed you to them, as Peter puts it in 1st Peter 5:2–3: “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. Don’t lord it over the people assigned to your care, but lead them by your own good example.”

Read what Sarah Bessey has written about why she goes to church: “So why do I go to church? Because we know and love our Pastors for their humanity, not in spite of it. Because of the way they show up for us. Because sometimes it’s an amazing sermon and sometimes it’s, um, not.”

For better or worse, we need to recognize that ordinary congregations, with ordinary Pastors, to which Christian’s belong, is indeed the Body of Christ—the form that our Lord has chosen to take in the world. One Bible Scholar writes: “We have trouble finding the church, not because it is invisible, but because, sinful as we are, we do not particularly like what we see.”

Do not let your sinfulness hold you back from finding an Ordinary Church, with its Ordinary Pastor — the truth is, Christianity is the only organization you can belong to where you need to admit you are flawed and sinful to be a member.

Hopefully, that Ordinary Pastor, while they might present 52 different messages every year—they all in some way make the same point: “God loves you. He is on your side. He is coming after you. He is relentless.” That is what a Pastor is good for.