HOW TO KNOW YOUR PASTOR AND HIS WIFE
BY ROGER BARCUS
To the church world, a pastor is but a hired preacher. Pastors have nothing to do with important decisions people make nor are they seen as useful in helping one hear from God. I’ve selected this article by Mark Barclay from “Seven Bible Ways to Properly Relate to your Pastor”, this month as one that should bless you, your family and church, besides the benefit to pastors doing their God-called jobs. In a “mainstream denomination’s” weekly bulletin I read, “Minister Rev. (name here), Pastors – All of us”. This is a direct fulfillment of Rev. 3:14 which makes a difference between letters sent “unto the angel (pastor) of the church in Sardis, Ephesus, etc., and “angel of the church of the Laodiceans”. I hope you enjoy it!
“And we beseech you, brethren, to know them that labor among you and are over you in the Lord. It is not a carnal pastor laboring among you. . . it’s a man of God, and he has authority and he’s looking out for your soul, and you’re not used to that. You’re used to: Pastor do this, and pastor do that, pastor please, pastor, please pastor visit me because I missed a Sunday service. But, when you get under a supernatural man of God, he’s not playing those games. He means business. He’s hearing from God and if you are, you’ll get blessed. If you aren’t…? Let me illustrate. They just love their pastor end he stands at the door after each service, and they say, “Bless you, bless you, good sermon, bless you, bless you.” But the minute that he becomes the one who is over you in the Lord, it’s a different story. It now is heard, “What right does he have to teach that kind of stuff? Well, who does he think he is? Well, it wasn’t like this at the church that I came from.” Noooo, it sure wasn’t!
Now let’s look at more of the scripture. “And we beseech you, brethren, to know them which labour among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you. ” Now this cuts out the less mature real quick. “. . . Admonish you! ” Have you ever heard this? “Now you know that we can take a little authority, we’ll go along with that. He’s pastor. But he had better not talk to me like he just talked to brother so-and-so?” You know I get a kick out of this. Sometimes people go around the church and say, “You know brother so-and-so? He’s the one coordinating the church services here and he’s giving orders and everything. Man, I sure wish I had his job. He doesn’t have anything to do but go around telling everyone else what to do.” Well, it would be nice if the same person who mouthed all this ignorance happened to be in the office when pastor disciplined brother so-and-so with the gospel and a lot of love, or corrected him for something he did not do that he was supposed to do. Do you know what brother so-and-so did when he was corrected by pastor? He is a mature person. He didn’t quit. He didn’t curse. He didn’t cry. He said, “Yes sir. It’ll never happen again. ” You know what? It never happened again and he’s still getting everything done – even better than before. And pastor doesn’t have to babysit him nearly as much. So what if your pastor admonished you. You should ask him to. It will keep you straight.
You see, we must know him. Some people would like to take the pastor out to supper (that would be okay), but that’s not what it means to know trim. It’s much deeper than that. “Well, Brother Glenn is always with the pastor but I never get to be with him.” I didn’t say have the pastor baby-sit you. It said to know them that labor among you and are over you and admonish you. How do you know him? Study him. How do you find out something? How do you know something? You study! Know him. Watch him. Watch him, study him and take notes on him. “Well, he’s not my God. I’m following Jesus! ” Not unless you’re following your pastor, you aren’t. These are people who have flipped somewhere with that dumb devil. He’s got them on a little demon trail and having a ball with them. If you don’t know your pastor, and you’re not going to study to know him, then forget it. You’ll never walk in the fullness of what God has for you.
We see in the Acts that it was the apostles that God sent from the church. The Holy Ghost spoke unto the gathering of the believers and said, “… separate unto me…” Now don’t get the itch and split. Stick around and work and maybe someday the Lord will say –why didn’t you separate so-and-so for the work that I have called them to, let the anointing flow in your life, send them out of here and support them as they go. Now that’s Bible and you’re not going to do that until you know your pastor. “Well, I don’t know, if he’d just let me come over once in a while. He never lets me come over, and I try to call him but no luck.” One brother called and he was hot! He called and got an answering machine and the next time the pastor saw him, he said, “I’ll tell you something right now, when I call my pastor, I’d like to get a hold of him.” Well, you know, that is real sad. He continued, “How do you expect me to get to know you if I can never get you on the phone to tell you all of my problems to have you solve them for me and have you help me out? If I don’t spend time with you, how am I going to get to know you?
Study. Lazy. Study! For some reason we go through school cheating. You know in high school you do okay in some grades but then you get car-crazy, girl-crazy, and all other crazy things. And then, studying just isn’t the focus of your attention for awhile. So you go to cheating — looking at what the neighbor has, taking down the wrong notes, bribing, conniving and cheating – getting lazy. So we just kind of grow up that way. We come in the church, be disciplined, study the man of God, watch how he handles hard situations, end watch how the anointing comes on his life. You know why many don’t want to do that? Because they have never received him. If they had received him they would be watching that man and saying, “Would you make that move again? I missed a couple of things in the way you handled that tough situation.”
You need to understand that pastor isn’t your God or savior and he isn’t wanting you to worship him. But, if he’s a man of God, and if he is your pastor, relate to him properly.
One day, prior to service, a couple of ushers were in my office when I dealt with a man in a bad spirit. Well, it was a really bad
situation and this man was giving us a hard time. As far as I was concerned, he was being used of the devil and was acting like a thief. Boy, he just ranted and raved and told me the way it was going to be and I just smiled at him. I let him go for a while and he began to get a little carried away. I was kind of looking at the other men in the of flee and I wondered what they would do if I just walked out of the room (cloth the Lord always speak through Moses)? That would have been one time I would like to have said, “You handle it ushers” and walked out. I had to use some Holy Ghost boldness and rebuke that man supernaturally and set him in his place with the Word of the Lord. Then I told an usher to “take him to the back of the church, sit him down and if he so much as sneezes, you haul him out. But as long as he sits and behaves (I wanted him to hear this) he could worship, he could learn, he could love, but if he does anything out of order, you grab him and haul him out of here.” The church didn’t know about this but
the ushers did their job well because they had received their pastor and they had confidence in his judgment and in his hearing from the Holy Ghost. They watched a rough situation and learned. Study your pastor.
Now some of you say, “I sure would like to have time to study the pastor and time to be with the pastor, but I don’t.” Well, go to
church! Take notes. Study. A lot of pastors are not going to tell you that, because when you start taking notes, you take the good and the bad. So what! Pastors take notes on you every day. You want to compare them? You should study your pastor. He is not your God and he shouldn’t lord over you. But he is going to pastor you and, as long as you receive him, you’ll receive tremendous things from the Bible. If you’ll just sit down and take time to study your pastor, it will change your life. You know, you can even study your pastor’s personal life. He is your example!
See what he does every day. Most people think that pastors really have it “made in the shade.” You should take a week off and follow him around. I tell you, you will need to jump to keep up with the normal pastor’s schedule.
THE ABOVE MATERIAL WAS PUBLISHED BY MINNESOTA MESSENGER, APRIL 1998, PAGES 6-7.
THIS MATERIAL IS COPYRIGHTED AND MAY BE USED FOR STUDY & RESEARCH PURPOSES ONLY.
