As a pastor, I am constantly faced with deciding
between what is urgent and what is important. Too often, they are not the same.
So what guides me in making daily decisions? How do I plan out my week to
ensure I am not sacrificing the most important tasks for the urgent ones?
The key is through establishing priorities. Below,
I have listed the three pastoral priorities that I am committed to in order to combat
the tyranny of the urgent.
Preaching
2 Timothy
4:2 preach the word...
Preaching is the number one responsibility of every
pastor. Every other pastoral duty should come second to this great task. There
is no building of God’s people apart from the proclamation of God’s Word. To
sacrifice this responsibly for others is a grievous error that has severe spiritual
consequences.
When Martin Luther was asked how he sparked a
reformation in the church this was his response: “I simply taught, preached,
wrote God's Word: otherwise I did nothing...the Word did it all.”[1] This was
just as much true in the sixteenth century as it is in the twenty-first. My
number one priority is to preach God’s Word.
Praying
Psalm
127:1 - Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain...
It is foolish to think that a church can flourish
and prosper apart from prayer. Every pastor knows this, but too often we
function as if it were not true. We profess, “If God does not build his church
our labor is in vain”, but we spend too little time on our knees asking him to
work in us and through us. Too often we succumb to the temptation presented by Satan
and our flesh to believe that we can succeed in ministry by our own power and
effort.
As a pastor, I cannot become so busy that there is
little to no time for prayer. As the apostles in Acts 6:4 stated, “...we will
devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.”
Preparing
Young Men for Ministry
2 Timothy 2:2 ...entrust to faithful men who will be able to
teach others also
The biblical mandate for pastors is to multiply
their ministry by investing in the next generation of leaders. This was
evidenced in Jesus’ life as well as his apostles. Pouring yourself into a group
of young men is a scriptural precedent.
As a pastor, I have the burden and responsibility
to train young men to faithfully serve the Lord, his church, and proclaim the
gospel. Allowing other tasks to
interfere with this essential commission is to drop the baton when it comes to faithful
pastoral ministry.
[1] Cited in John Stott, Between Two
Worlds: The Art of Preaching in the Twentieth Century (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1982), 25.
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