Random Advice to Pastors, Part 1

1. Love your people and realize they probably deserve a better pastor.

2. Get to know at least one older pastor that you can respect. Go to him often for advice.

3. Get involved in the Association, State and National Conventions. You need the fellowship and encouragement. They need your support. They need you to keep them on track. You sometimes need them to keep you on track.

4. Preach the Word of God. Make it interesting and easy to understand. You are not preaching to impress your professors or seminary friends. You are preaching to the common folks in the pews. You are preaching to please your Heavenly Father.

5. More talented and godly preachers than you had their ministries destroyed by immorality. Avoid even the hint of scandal.

6. Your wife sees and understands things that you do not. Unless you are an idiot, you will listen carefully to what she has to say.

7. Have younger friends in the ministry. One day your peers will be dead.

8. When you retire, be your pastor’s best friend. Be the kind of church member you wished you had when you were a pastor.

9. Periodically renew your first love and passion for Jesus and His Word.

10. Preach all the Bible, but understand that there is a reason for some of the best loved Bible passages. Preach from them often.

11. It is not a sin to preach a sermon again. Sometimes you can improve on it. Soloists do it all the time. But don’t do it as often as they do.

12. Remember that you never get spiritually deeper than when you lead a little boy or girl, man or woman, to Jesus.

13. Don’t get hung up on a particular doctrine in the Bible. There are a lot of doctrines in the Bible. They are all good.

14. Preach and teach the fundamental, basic doctrines of the Christian faith. Teach them well. Explain them. Make them interesting. Tell why they are important.

15. Teach what Baptists believe and why they believe it. There are good biblical reasons for these beliefs.

16. Occasionally get out good literature to your people. Don’t just assume they know what you know. They don’t. Don’t assume they will look it up on the internet. They won’t. Good books, tracts, pamphlets, DVDs. Don’t flood them with literature. Just push something good every now and then. Have a good denominational state paper sent to every family, or at least to your church leaders. The printed word will not reach everyone, but some will read it and be reinforced by it.

17. Your church is important, your wife and family are more important. Spend time with them. Laugh with them. Joke with them. You’ll never be perfect, but live what you preach in front of them.

18. Work on your humility. This can be most difficult. Humility is something that when you think you have it, you’ve lost it. But humility is not so much thinking low thoughts of yourself; it is just not thinking of yourself. Put God first, family second, your church third, yourself last.

19. Don’t have something going on at the church every day of the week, unless it is a special week, like a revival. Families need time together.

20. Take at least a full day off every week. Two days a week is better.

21. Learn how to relax with your family and friends and not care what happens at church. There are times you need to care what happens at church, and times you don’t need to care or worry. Tell God you are going to let Him worry about your church on your day off.

-David R. Brumbelow, Gulf Coast Pastor, October 7, AD 2009.

Random Advice to Pastors, Part 2
Baptists and Eternal Security, or Once Saved Always Saved; Part 1 of 3
Other articles in lower right margin