You are my pastor. You are not perfect. You get frustrated like everyone else. You don’t always say exactly what you should say. You do indeed make some mistakes. On that reality you readily agree.

But your imperfections are often magnified in the light of your leadership role. When you please one congregant, you often displease another. You can’t make everyone happy, and you hear criticisms more times than most of us could endure.

You Are My Pastor Who Loves

Despite your imperfections and the critics who vocalize them, you still love the people in the church you serve. You sat by that man whose surgery was a matter of life and death. You gave him the assurance that God would be with him. Your presence gave him the calm and peace he needed to come through the procedure safely.

You also met with that homeless man who came to the church. You could have ignored him, but you saw him as one of “the least of these.” You ministered to him. You gave him food. You found a place for him to stay. And you shared the gospel of Christ with him.

You are my pastor who takes calls in the middle of the night. You were awakened abruptly by the teenager’s parents when he was in the terrible automobile accident. You arrived at the hospital in time for his mom and dad to fall on your shoulders . . .

Read the rest here (please!).

In this interview, I talk about both pastoral searches and forgiveness.  The section where they interview me begins at about the 13 minute mark.

Click here.

I am really excited to be leading a panel discussion tomorrow at 8:00 AM at the Gospel Coalition on transitions in pastoral ministry.  Participants will include Mark Dever, Ligon Duncan, and Rick Thompson.  Our objective will be to interact about pastoral searches and transitions in a way that motivates and equips churches  and pastoral candidates to be Word-centered in pastoral transitions.

In the mean time, below is a video I did with Tony Kroening and Ken Sande about transitions in the midst of conflict.  More videos are available here.

At our church, we aren’t looking for people who blindly accept whatever they hear – - but, rather who humbly listen with their Bibles in front of them.

Today the Gospel Coalition published an article I wrote which summarizes in more depth what to look for in biblical preaching.  Consistent with my recent book,When the Word Leads Your Pastoral Search: Biblical Principles and Practices to Guide Your Search, the article speaks to pastoral search committees.  But what is good for the pastoral candidate is good for this pastor as well – - -I encourage our people to consider if my sermons, “Fire a biblical bullet at the life of the listener.”  But, you’ll have to read the article to understand what I mean by that phrase. . . and I admit going in that some sermons are better bullets than others.

Here to read the article.

More resources for churches looking for a pastor are available at pastoralsearchresources.com.

You can read it here.

Visit the web site for my new book, When the Word Leads Your Pastoral Search here.