My wife and I are members of the Central Baptist Church in Crandall, Texas (Dallas area). I’ve told everyone who will listen that our pastor, Charles Wilson, is the best pastor I’ve ever known. (Disclaimer: I have not had the opportunity to observe Dave Miller and William Thornton in action.) Charles Wilson is not the best preacher I’ve heard (that is Adrian Rogers), but Brother Charlie does a great job. This prompted me to think about the question—What makes a great pastor? So, in this essay, I’ll try to answer that question. I’ll write about what makes a great preacher in a separate post.
Good Character/Integrity. First Timothy 3 lists the qualifications for a pastor, and it is interesting that all but one of the characteristics have to do with personal character and family life. A great pastor leads an exemplary life that demonstrates his good moral character.
Devotional Life. A great pastor maintains his devotional life. A pastor cannot feed his people spiritual food long-term if he is not spending time with the Lord in prayer, devotional Bible study, and meditation.
Evangelism. Paul exhorted Timothy to “do the work of an evangelist” (2 Tim 4:5). A great pastor is a soul winner and leads his church to do evangelism.
Knowledge. A pastor needs an adequate knowledge of Bible, theology, and Baptist polity (church governance).
Interpersonal Skills. A great pastor can interact appropriately with people of all ages. He knows how to say the right thing at the right time.
Encourager. A great pastor is an encourager. He can encourage folks who are hurting, discouraged, and grieving. Bro. Charlie comes into the auditorium before the worship starts, and he moves through crowd, loving on people and encouraging them.
Pastoral Care. A great pastor visits his members who are sick and grieving. This means going to the hospitals, nursing homes, and funeral home visitations. Some young pastors believe they should stay in their offices most of the time, preparing a doctrinal treatise to deliver on Sunday. I suggest spending half time in the study and half time out evangelizing and shepherding the flock.
Counseling. A great pastor can counsel his people. Counseling can include marriage troubles, personal conflicts, and moral issues.
Administration. A pastor needs to understand church organization and financial administration.
Leadership. A great pastor develops a vision for his church and can communicate that to the congregation. Leadership also involves helping the church to plan for the future.
Change agent. Research tells us that 80% of our SBC churches are plateaued or declining. That means churches need to change. An effective pastor can lead his church to make necessary changes.
Mission-minded. A great pastor prioritizes the Great Commission. He leads his church engage in missions, pray for missions, and give to missions.
Teacher. The only practical qualification mentioned in 1 Timothy 3 is “able to teach.” A great pastor can teach the Bible, teach doctrine, and train lay leaders.
Mentor. An effective pastor can mentor new believers, staff members, and people who announce a call to the ministry. A veteran pastor may well mentor inexperienced pastors who serve nearby.
Reprover. A great pastor has the courage to reprove church members who need correction.
When you list all these qualities, it is amazing. A pastor needs to know about a lot of different things. I should add that these qualities are not listed according to priority. I’m sure our readers will want to add some qualities to this list. So, what would you add?
How can one person possess all those qualities and knowledge in good measure? And readers are encouraged to add more? This would seem to discourage a pastor. It might have been helpful to add a closing paragraph explaining no man can be all those things as he should be. Every minister falls short in one way or another. No one, bar Jesus, could live up to that.
We all fall short. The key to pastoral leadership is not perfection, but being out in front of our people enough to lead them.
Exactly. I wish the article had been balanced with that truth. It seems to set a standard no one could live up to.
As a non-pastor, may I add that one thing which will help to defeat a pastor’s ministry is the all too common tendency to become isolated and detached from attendees, those God has entrusted to his care. In my experience this is not a volitional act, but over time too many pastors find comfort and support only from fellow pastors. Extend this out for several years and a pastor will find himself without the connections, the relationships, which would sustain during the inevitable times of trial.
I will assert that Bart Barber of FBC Farmersville is the second best pastor. Many argue over who is number one but few dispute a number two ranking. Besides, we know number two tries harder. ?
Brad, my first response is to ask you this question: Which one would you leave out? Would you want a pastor who is incapable of counseling someone, or leading someone to Christ? My second response to to try to clarify my intention. My purpose in writing was not to set the bar so high that no one could measure up; rather, I meant to commend thousands of pastors who must demonstrate their capability in these areas. As Dave commented, no pastor is great at all these things, but we are good at some and get by in regard to others. For example, I served as a bi-vocational pastor for five years. Looking back, I would judge that I was good at teaching and leading, but just fair at counseling. I got by, but I did not believe I excelled in that aspect of ministry. Proverbs 31 comes to mind. The writer set the bar high for a godly wife. I often point out to my wife, Barbara, that she does not arise early in the morning to provide food for her maid servants. She replies, “If you would hire maid servants for me, I would get up early to feed them.” Paul set the bar hight for Timothy and Titus in the Pastoral Epistles.
I think all should be present certainly. But they will not a part of every pastor to the same degree. All pastors should be evangelistic, knowledgable and a good leader, etc. But they simply cannot ALL be a attributes every pastor excels in. Maybe they will excel in 5-7. One of the problems with pastor search committees is they tend to look for someone who excels where their previous pastor was weak. They ASSUME all pastors excel in those things the previous pastor was good at. But that is simply not true. When this pastor moves on the search committee will likely look for an outstanding preacher. Sounds like your church needs to work hard to keep the one they have!
I’m sorry for commenting. It was an overreaction.
Dave Miller is probably in the same solar system as your pastor. I’m not in the galaxy. My churches were great churches partly because they put up with so much from their pastor.
I nominate Mark Terry as a great church member. Would that we all had such encouraging folks in our congregations.
I wonder to what extent the gifts that a pastor needs can be taught? Put another way, will going to seminary really do much to improve some of the topics that have been mentioned?
It looks to me like KNOWLEDGE is the only topic that seminaries address. However, to the extent that seminaries have practicums where a student is in a church setting, guided by a mentor, then some of the other topics might also be addressed by seminary training.
I am only a layman so I don’t know too much about how pastors prepare for ministry. But my guess is that seminary training touches on only about 20% of the practical skills needed. When I attended seminary about 20 years ago, I was working on my MDiv. I took hermeneutics, Hebrew, New Testament Survey, Wisdom Literature, Daniel / Revelation during the first and second semester of my training.
I didn’t learn anything about church administration, conflict resolution, being a shepherd to the flock, counseling, mentoring others, etc., etc. Maybe that is because I went to a seminary operated by the Conservative Baptists rather than Southern Baptist Convention !!??
I have not looked at the school catalogs to see what it takes to get an MDiv as say Southwestern, Southern, Southeastern, or New Orleans. I was recruited to Golden Gate back in the days when the campus was up in Marin County. I don’t know what classes — if any — Golden Gate would have accepted as transfer credits from the other seminary.
A note of explanation is in order. My wife was diagnosed with MS at about the time that I was one year into my seminary work. I didn’t have even the remotest call to be a pastor. Instead I wanted to fit in the mold of IBM’s LIMITLESS paradigm. I was a Software Engineer who managed a microcode development department at large computer outfit in Silicon Valley. I was on the cusp of retirement at the time and felt that the Lord would lead my wife and myself to do some type of mentoring to teach kids rudimentary computer skills. My target field was Imperial County in California where kids coming up through school need some kind of a lift to have any prayer of going to a decent school — such as any of the California State Colleges [and probably “zero” chance of going to a top school like Stanford, any of the campuses of the University of California, etc.] . Imperial county has the lowest HS graduation rate of any of California’s 58 countries. I couldn’t pursue this path because of my wife’s health. For the last several years her care has consumed about 100% of my bandwidth — i.e. a 24/7 job.
BTW The seminary I attended was Western Baptist Seminary. The school is in Portland but I attended their branch campus in Silicon Valley.
One last item relative to seminary training. I wonder what percentage of MDivs are granted to people — both men and women — who have no interest in or calling to become a pastor.
Replace “IBM’s LIMITLESS” with “IMB’s LIMITLESS”. I am talking about the International Mission Board not a large computer company that was my former employer.
Allen, I agree with you about pastor search committees. I’ve served as the interim pastor at 10 churches and advised their search committees (when asked). At one church, which achieved 100 in attendance on a good Sunday, I asked the committee–“Do you want a strong preacher or good administrator or caring shepherd?” They replied, “We want it all.” Of course, that was unrealistic.
Roger, I believe seminary students can be taught most things on the list. I’ve participated in designing several seminary curriculums. When professors do that, they realize there are things a pastor should be (discipleship), things a pastor should know (Bible, theology, church history, etc.), and things a pastor should be able to do (preach, counsel, baptize, perform weddings, etc.). Seminary students can learn how to compose a sermon and deliver it adequately. They can learn counseling techniques. You get the idea. What a pastor excels at depends on his spiritual giftedness, intellegence, personality, and interests. You make a good point about practical theology. When I studied at Southwestern Seminary, I served as an assistant pastor in Dallas. My senior pastor, Dr. Dan Kent, took me with him on many calls. Most of what I know about pastoral ministry I learned from his mentoring.
Reminds me of a blog post Thom Rainer did a few years ago, about the unrealistic expectations of the congregation for there pastor. Once all the hours were added up, the total expected hours of work for the pastor were 114 hours a week!
https://thomrainer.com/2013/07/how-many-hours-must-a-pastor-work-to-satisfy-the-congregation/
Most who graduate from seminary with an MDiv degree pastor a church, their first pastorate, where they are the only paid staff member. Of course, big churches have a staff counselor, administrator, etc., but in a pastor’s first church the people expect competence in all the items above, plus preaching. When you add up all the hours required, as Thom Rainer did, pastoring becomes a daunting task. When I talk with students about beginning their first pastorate, I caution them about unwritten expectations, which are usually based on what Pastor So and So used to do.