A Letter to Young Men Seeking the Call to Pastoral/Elder Ministry

Jun 18

This month we’ve been focusing on roles of Godly men. We’ve written over the last few weeks on biblical expectations on the role of men as Fathers, and the biblical command for husbands to love their wives. Thus far we’ve seen throughout the Bible that God has expectations of men as fathers and husbands in their own home. Today we broaden that discussion to include expectations for men whom the Lord may be calling into serving in the church as either elders or pastors.

This year marks 15 years of preaching and pastoral ministry for me. From time to time, I find myself in prayer and contemplation thinking back to how the Lord has worked in the lives of those around me. One of the greatest joys in pastoral ministry is seeing believers use their God-given gifts put to use. No farmer plants a row without hoping to reap also that same row. It is a joy when the Lord gives us seasons of harvest as the seed scattered grows into fully matured and beneficial fruit.

One of the ways I’ve gotten to see others use their gifts is in young men growing into their spiritual gifts and laying down their lives for the benefit of the church. I’ve had the privilege of seeing men at all stages of life seek after and prepare for ministry in the church as elders and pastors. It has been a privilege to befriend and help train some of these men (though many of them were by earthly age much older than me!).

What I write below is a letter intended for men who are somewhere along the line thinking the Lord may be calling them into His service as pastors or elders.

Men Seeking to Serve as Elders and Pastors

Dear brothers,

I write this to you who are considering if the Lord's purposes for you are to serve in the church as pastors and elders. It is a good and right thing that you desire to serve the Lord as elders, pastoring the people of God. This is a weighty thing, not lightly to be considered, and certainly not lightly to be entered into. As a result of the great responsibility and weight of this calling and work, I write to encourage you should the Lord choose to use you as elders and pastors, and I write to you to guard you against some of the temptations and traps that lay ahead of you as you pursue this noble task (1 Timothy 3:1).

You must be on guard against your own sin. You must come to know of, repent of, and by God's grace, crucify your own sin. No one is following Christ if they have not picked up their cross. You cannot lead or point others to follow that which you are not following. You must daily deny yourself and seek after the Lord in your own thoughts, words, and actions. You must know what sin and temptation in your own life creeps in, not allowing or affording it any secret guarded reserved place in your heart. How can you possibly warn and aid others against secret hatred of God and His ways if you yourself have not had the darkness of your own soul exposed to the light of God’s grace?

Look after your own affairs well. How can someone serve well in overseeing more, when they have shown they are unable to oversee less? The Lord Jesus gives this principle in the parable of the bags of gold (Matthew 25:14-30, Luke 19:12-27) Servants who are entrusted with something, and shown to be unfaithful, are not then subsequently entrusted with more. There is no "Peter principle" of "failing upwards" in kingdom service. There are plenty of hypocrites who have things seemingly "together" on the outside, out of their homes, and on display on Sundays, but at home, they are disturbed and destructive, far away from the Lord. To serve and lead well the people of God, those who desire the noble task of overseer ought first to make it their passionate ambition and daily pursuit to pursue the things of God in their own homes. This is the example that the scripture speaks to in both Titus 1 and 1 Timothy 3. Character, not talent, ability, Charisma, or aptitude, character is what the Lord grows in his servants. Christ-like character to be exact. And the home, where we "let our hair down" or "take off our Sunday clothes" is where we learn and exemplify if our character is Christ-like and our spiritual life is growing by the Spirit, or is all a facade of the flesh.

The service of shepherding the church is not one for those who merely show a fascination with academic study or philosophical conversation. Many young men have thought they were fit to serve the Lord and His people through pastoral ministry simply because they enjoyed reading theological books or debating or deliberating or discussing finer points of systematic theology or interpretations of Bible passages. That is a pit unto itself that claims many a well-meaning young man who thought the ministry was an intellectual matter only. It is a pit of academic pharisaism. To see the scriptures as something abstract, or only for the “other”. This is an attitude that if you find it in yourself, mortify it quickly. For one of the two things must die, either your usefulness in kingdom service to Christ’s people, or your intellectual theoretical theology. It can be good to study, be curious, and take time to read broadly, but if it is your great delight in kingdom service to be alone in books, instead of the benefiting God’s people, visiting and in fellowship and worship with God’s people, then it is best for the church and for you that you should pursue a more academic service to the kingdom rather than in local elder or pastoral ministry. The church needs good scholars, and perhaps you are gifted and called to be a scholar working for the Lord among the learned academy, rather than in a local church among the less educated sheep of the Lord.

There is a need for the use of intellect in ministry, but not the sort of intellect that is self-serving, self-displaying, or self-aggrandizing. Or even the sort of intellect that sees theology and Christian living as mostly a rhetorical or abstract proposition. All our study of theology, as elders and pastors is intended to be a blessing for the Lord’s people. While the scholar and academic can write to a broad and general audience. Our minds and intellect will be filled with the needs, struggles, joys, triumphs, sins, and temptations of our own particular congregation. The intellect of the elder or pastor must be a sanctified intellect that loves God and the people of God we are locally called to oversee. For the elder and pastor, all theology is practical, rather than theoretical theology.

You will be the one to pray with and visit a couple whose child has been tragically killed. You will be the one called upon to bring a word of encouragement to a dying saint weary and in pain. You will be charged to teach truth and only truth, with your words judged accordingly by the Lord (James 3:1). You will be the one privileged to greet and call others into the worship of the Almighty. You will be the one to answer the most difficult and worldly-oriented questions - and they do not always come as outwardly wicked things, but often under the guise of sincerity and goodness, for the evil one loves to deceive and is the father of lies. You will be the one to discern the right dividing of the Word and those who are wolves seeking to devour the flock of Christ. You will be the one expected to have answers in moments unexpected, and prayers to offer for those you’ve only just met. You will be the one to baptize new believers and covenant children. You will be the one to serve the Lord’s Table. You will be the one to proclaim good news and expose the dark souls of men to the light of God’s Word. You will be the one to stay up late into the night in tears of joy and tears of sorrow for others who sleep undisturbed. You will be betrayed, the Lord Jesus himself was betrayed and abandoned by the closest of his friends. We ought not to expect to be spared from such moments. Instead, as the Lord did, we ought to fervently pray entrusting ourselves to our great God.

Do not be distracted by someone else’s definition of elder, pastor, or what it means to be a Godly man. Often nowadays there is a “traditionalist” move to recapture what has been forgotten. This is a different impulse than a reformation desire. The traditionalist seeks to look back to previous generations to see what it can only guestimate were better patterns or ways of living. Possess a reformation desire to continually look back to what God has said in His sacred Word regarding who you are to be, and how you are to be formed into the Godly servant the Lord is calling you to be.

Books, beards, cigars, work, sweat, and wives are not what makes us men, or defines us as Godly men. We are men because God has made us so. If we are Godly men, it is because God is remaking us more and more into the mold of Christ Jesus. If you would serve the Lord, rather than amassing wealth, books, or even spiritual counselors or heroes, you would do well to look to these characteristics that are Godly, that are on display in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. He is your example, and he has set His method for molding and shaping you before you. You are to pick up your cross (Mark 8:35), suffer, and do so all with the glory of God as your aim. Live with the burden of sin freed from you and instead trend in all your ways under the yoke of the savior which is easy and light (Matthew 11:30).

Of every piece of reading that passes through your eyes, may the scriptures be your comfort when you wake up, and may the scriptures be the most well-worn book you have. Search them to know where you must grow, and search them to follow your Lord who will call you and direct you which ways you are to go.

Your life, if you are called to this ministry of elder or pastor, is not your own. Whatever ambitions you have will change as God works within you to grow an unending desire for His ways, His purposes, and His glory rather than your own. Whatever you used to be, you will (by God’s patient and gracious hand) no longer be. You will be remade and repurposed for the explicit benefit and blessing of God’s people. You will love the Lord as you love His people, be they yet converted or unconverted! Your life is not your own, it is the Spirit of Christ within you to live in service to the precious bride of Christ.

When you are tired, lonely, or uncertain, look to the character of the God who is love. Study God’s great works and revelation of Himself, not as though for an exam, but as though the very eternal condition of your people whom you serve depends upon it. The scriptures as a whole ought to be your constant companion, with the pastoral epistles of 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, of particular interest. It would be wise for you to make every effort to commit these scriptures to memory, along with the sermon on the mount (Matthew 5-7). Seek out and after Godly men with either hair more grey and white than you, or those with no hair at all! Seek out those who have walked these paths before that you may watch them, learn from them, and be encouraged in your service of the king through them. If you do not know where to start, I am happy to help you prayerfully begin taking your next steps in discernment and preparation for this incredible task. With all the difficulty, challenges, and toil, I can say after 15 years there is incredible joy and blessing in serving the Lord Jesus Christ and his people in ministry as elders and overseers.

I heartily recommend for your accompanying study two books, one big and one little. The little book is by Edmund Clowney titled “Called to Ministry” and the big book is by Alexander Strauch called “Biblical Eldership”. Outside of the inspired Word of God itself, I have found no other books to be so helpful in preparing men for the noble and glorious work of ministry as elders and pastors.

I write this to you for your benefit and blessing,

Yours in Christ,

Jacob