I’m writing a series of posts about pastors and joy because pastors struggle with experiencing the very joy which they constantly proclaim as being a blessed by-product of the Christian life.
This, of course, becomes one more hindrance to their joy as they feel ashamed by their lack of it and hypocritical for expecting it from others.
And I’m not even talking about the pastors who are constitutionally prone toward depression and in need of serious help. I’m talking about the rest of us: normal Christian men in the abnormally challenging role of the solo or senior pastor.
So I’ve shared five reasons why the pastor’s joy is so important, fourteen reasons why it’s so challenging and one good suggestion for achieving, what I’ll call, “pastoral joy.”
That first and most important suggestion was:
- Work at getting good at rejoicing in the Lord.
Click here to find the full post. This is so important and so basic that it’s almost a “Do not pass go; do not collect two hundred dollars” kind of thing: Do this first and work at doing it well. It will bless your life now and forever if you learn how to rejoice in the Lord.
My second suggestion – just below – will be almost as basic and important. After suggestion #2, I’ll share many additional strategies – of all varieties – for pursuing pastoral joy, from the profoundly spiritual to the profoundly simple. Pick the meat from the bones. Fly past the ones you’ve already mastered or don’t find relevant and zero in on anything here which will help you.
I want to help. As I’ve been saying, feel free to contact me at churchwhisperer@gmail.com. I’m pretty good at listening to pastors and praying with them. Try me.
- Take responsibility for your own joy.
“Each heart knows its own bitterness, and no one else can share its joy.” Proverbs 14:10
As a pastor, you have a powerful enemy who wants you miserable (John 10:10). At the same time, you are surrounded by people who expect you to be joyful and expect you to help them to be joyful.
If your mother is still alive and doesn’t live far away from you, she just might be the exception to what I just said. But this would be pretty abnormal and not necessarily a healthy choice on her part.
It’s not likely, but just in case you’re waiting for your mom or your wife or your children or your staff members, board members or church attendees to make you joyful, you should put away that idea right now. Not going to happen. You must take responsibility for your own joy. Decide you’re going to be a joyful Christian man, no matter what. This choice will serve you well.
- Dig deep into your position in Christ.
I already broached this subject last week as I wrote about rejoicing in who the Lord is to you, but I don’t think it will hurt to return to this incredibly important subject.
Of all people on this planet, pastors need to know how loved and valued and safe they are because of their relationship to Jesus Christ. We often refer to this as grasping “our position in Christ.”
I can’t go into the riches of the Bible’s promises and assurances on this subject in this short post, but I can point you in the general direction of Romans 5-8 and The Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians (for starters).1
In my own experience, I was just beginning to understand the life-changing consequences of grasping, and being grasped by, these wonderful truths, when I found myself swept into a legalistic system which caused me to forget about them for several years.
Those years were tough, as I tried so hard, like so many around me, to please God with my hard work and stellar performance. I stumbled along like the frustrated, formerly joyful Galatians (Galatians 3:1-5, 4:12-20, 5:1-12). God saw to it that my herculean efforts led only to failure before showing me that I was acceptable with Him because of who I was in Christ as opposed to what I did for Christ.
After sinking deeply into an early “mid-life crisis” (my philosophy was to get it over with quickly) an older pastor friend suggested that “Maybe God brought you to Cedarburg for what He wanted to do in you, rather than for what you wanted to do in Cedarburg.” He was right.
If you have a deep confidence in Christ, borne of a profound understanding of Scripture’s “identification truths” and, more than likely, a personal application of these truths to your life by an unusually loving, Christian mother and/or father, you are blessed. You can by-pass the drama, skip the crisis, and avoid the failures that so many of us must experience before we are ready to accept by faith what we can never earn.
By all means, don’t try to be a pastor without getting these truths in your head and in your heart.
The alternative to doing ministry out of the abundance of your position in Christ, an overflow of the love of Christ, will likely be co-dependent shepherding, passive-aggressive problem solving, under or over-assertive attempts at leadership, emotionally unintelligent relationships and a stress-filled affect which attempts to mimic an abundant, joyful, fruit-bearing, faith-filled leadership persona.
Don’t ask me how I know all this.
If this sounds all-too familiar, stop what you’re doing and dig into these truths until you can dance and sing about your position in Christ. Then you can return to the pulpit.
- Seek to get Jesus Christ, obviously present and actively in charge of your church.
This phrase, from the late-great Oliver Price,2 captures the heart and soul of church revitalization, and, for that matter, the heart and soul of the vibrant, newly assembled group of Christian disciples.
We were meant and made to be Jesus-followers, with his living presence in our midst, worshipping Him with joy and following His Spirit’s leadership as we’re out and about seeking to make more disciples.
“Obviously present” means that people can walk in the door and sense that “there’s something different going on here.” The “something different” of course, is some one: Christ himself, living in, feeling at home in, filling, and blessing his people, as in Matthew 18:20, I Corinthians 14:25, Ephesians 3:14-21 and Revelation 3:20.
The “actively in charge” means that the pastor is not responsible for being a brilliant leader because someone much smarter than a brilliant human leader is present. The church is actively seeking and finding the leadership of the Holy Spirit (Acts 13:1-4).
Yes, you read that right: the pastor can experience the joy of Christ’s presence – like anybody else – and he can relax – like anybody else. It’s not his church; it’s not his responsibility; it’s not his show and it’s not his success or failure that is on the line.
What a relief!
And it has nothing to do with how many people we have, whether or not the church is growing, how famous we’re becoming or how brilliant our people think we are.
In heaven, the pastor of the smallest and most joyful church will not be distinguishable from the pastor who had a doctorate degree and a huge congregation.
For pastoral joy: Work at getting good at rejoicing in the Lord, take responsibility for your own joy, dig deep into your position in Christ and seek to get Jesus Christ, obviously present and actively in charge of your church.
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1I’m going to resist the temptation to start listing the “human” books which have helped me, as I’m just as likely to offend my readers by my suggestions as I am to help them. The measure of the worth of our books on this subject is how closely they conform to Romans 5-8 and Ephesians. You might want to look at the chapter I wrote on this for the Revitalization Playbook.
2Oliver W. Price, Pray With Christ, Shepherd’s Publishing, 1999
