A dear brother recently asked me a great question. It was one that I had thought about before, but when his asking it forced me to make it a bit more concrete. This was his question: “How do you define success as a pastor?”
My easy response is “faithfulness”. But how do I measure whether or not I have been faithful? What does that look like?
I know that my faithfulness is not determined solely by the response to my preaching and efforts at discipleship. If it was, and we were to judge folks like Isaiah or Jeremiah (or even perhaps the Lord Jesus) by the same metric we’d have to conclude that their ministry wasn’t much of a success.
But I also believe that not really caring much about response doesn’t reflect the heart of the New Testament. There is something to be said for Proverbs 22:29, “Do you see a man skillful in his work? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before obscure men”. We ought to work has hard as we can at what the Lord has called us to do.
Part of me wants to say that I measure success based upon whether or not I declared the truth. But then I think of Job’s miserable counselors and even someone like Balaam who declared the truth (at least in part)—but certainly weren’t to be commended. And so a bare declaring of the truth is not quite my measure of success.
So here is what I’ve come up with:
I’ll consider my pastorate successful if I have lovingly and winsomely declared the whole counsel of God’s Word to the people the Lord has given and in the season that the Lord has placed me.
I say “lovingly and winsomely” because this causes me to strive for saying things the best way possible. I don’t want to use the sovereign omnipotence of God as an excuse for laziness. Instead I want to be motivated to work as hard as I can to accurately deliver God’s Word in a way that matches the glory of God.
I say “the whole counsel of God’s Word” because this is our standard for truth. I get this from what Paul said to the Ephesian elders. He, using eschatological language, believed his ministry was successful because he did not shrink from declaring to them the whole counsel of God’s Word.
I say, “to the people the Lord has given” because I’m not called to shepherd someone else’s flock. God has sovereignly placed me here to shepherd the people He has given to my care. This means that I will “with all humility and with tears and with trials” declare the whole counsel of God’s Word to a real flesh and blood, warts and all, people.
I say, “and in the season that the Lord has placed me” because there might be seasons in which God’s Word will be used to harden instead of to harvest. If this is the case then I want to still faithfully declare God’s Word. This also means that if I’m behind a pulpit or standing behind a hospital bed, my mandate is the same.
That’s my answer. So how would you answer this question?
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