Know Your Church

Effective pastoral ministry comes from knowing your ministry context well and spending your time on what your church most needs in its present ministry season.

At the beginning of September this year, I was unexpectedly hospitalized for multiple nights.

It was a normal Wednesday — until it wasn’t.

My heart was beating out of control. My Fitbit congratulated me for getting zone minutes. The problem? I wasn’t working out. I was just standing there. My wife took my blood pressure. It wasn’t good. Off to the Emergency Room we went, where they stuck me with needles and couldn’t get my heart rate down after many attempts. I was totally confused: What in the world is happening to me?

Treat the Patient, Not the Number

After sending me to the hospital in an ambulance, I stayed for multiple nights, where they ran tests on me and poked me several times, once around 4:00 am on the top of my hand while I was trying to sleep. I have a high pain tolerance, but that hurt. I had a procedure that Friday morning, and they sent me home roughly that evening after I pushed for it. My back was in debilitating pain from the hospital beds, and I longed to be at home.

I’ve had to wear a heart monitor and take blood thinner meds, and shortly after I post this, I’ll have a follow-up with my cardiologist. While sitting with friends over dinner, a former nurse asked how I was doing. She eventually shared helpful advice: “When I was working in the emergency room, we used to say, ‘treat the patient, not the number.’”

That advice stuck with me. So did the advice from an older saint: “You’re a person, not a number.” She shared that with me after I told her I wasn’t allowed to have caffeine for a week after my procedure. Was she really encouraging me to consider going against the doctor’s orders? I guess life isn’t so black and white after all.

The heart behind “Treat the patient, not the number” is to focus on the particular individual and their needs, not allow the data, heart rate, and lab results to rule all of your decisions. People are complex creatures, and lab results were made for man; man was not made for lab results. “Treat the patient, not the number” and “You’re a person, not a number” are good advice — and surprisingly applicable to pastoral productivity.

Do You Know Your Church Context Well?

After resting for many days at home, I got cabin fever. I was already scheduled to attend the Church Leader Summit Conference in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, with my staff and elders, and was technically cleared to attend, even if I was wearing a heart monitor. So I got off my bed and went. And what a great time we had: we learned about church culture, systems and structures, staff values, and other practical ideas for ministry.

After the conference concluded, however, I went back to my friend’s comment: “Treat the patient, not the number.” Why?

Most of the church leaders who spoke pastored churches of thousands, if not tens of thousands. I couldn’t relate. Neither could most pastors there. So while I learned valuable information, there isn’t a direct one-to-one correlation of utilizing the information in my own ministry context. I must consider my own ministry context before making any changes.

I wonder how many pastors are pastoring a church in their minds, not the actual church they have. I wonder how many pastors make comments in sermons that sound great for short-form video content but are not helpful or relevant for the people they pastor. I wonder how many of us are spending time on the wrong things in our ministries because we are pastoring a church we wish we had or used to have. I wonder how many of us don’t truly know the people God has entrusted to our care and are not intuitive enough to know how to spend our time well.

It is true that in every church the pastor must be godly, lead by example, and prioritize preaching and teaching of the Word. These are non-negotiables for every pastor. But the way a new seminary grad spends his time in his first pastorate will be different from the way John Piper spent his time in his last five years of pastoral ministry. The way a church planter spends his time will differ from the way an associate pastor in an established church spends his time, just like it will be different from the seasoned pastor who is working on revitalizing a church that’s 120 years old. While every pastor must prioritize Word and prayer, from there, what you should spend your time on will depend on your title, experience, geographical location, specific ministry context, and season of your church life. The inability to know your context well and know how to spend your time in relation to your context has rendered many well-intentioned pastors ineffective.

Treat the patient, not the number.

Ministry is Service, not Self-Serving

Church planters, for example, must be able to raise money. If you don’t feel called to raise money, God is not calling you to plant a church. Crucially, church planters must spend their time wisely. They must prioritize their time on preaching, leadership development, evangelism and outreach, hospitality, and raising money, and they are kidding themselves if they think they’re truly productive because they updated the church’s Facebook page once.

Of course, at that stage of ministry, you may not have much help, and church planters must be willing to stack chairs, print bulletins, and send emails. My point is we can mistake busyness for productivity: it is possible to be busy and yet remain ineffective. And just because your favorite celebrity pastor doesn’t lead meetings and spend most of his week in study doesn’t mean you get to do the same.

I’ve had to onboard two new full-time employees in the past 13 months. I had to onboard two part-time employees before that, and now we have two new elders on our team. For me, treating the patient looks like spending more time building relationships with new staff and elders, which means retreats, prolonged meetings, lunches, and recreational activities, and being together a lot. I lean slightly introverted, and I often feel taxed in this ministry season. But I can’t blame my personality for my lack of involvement with the leaders of my church.

A pastoral friend of mine shares the painful story of having to move on from an associate pastor. The associate pastor wanted to do what he wanted to do, not what the lead pastor hired him to do. Eventually, they parted ways.

Why was the associate pastor ineffective? He lacked situational awareness. He was doing ministry in his head, not ministry in real life. He didn’t develop the skill of completing tasks he didn’t feel like doing. He didn’t understand power dynamics in the church. His job existed to serve himself, not the people entrusted to his care.

Ministry is not about always doing what you want to do. It’s about doing what is needed in your particular ministry context. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his book Life Together, writes about the wish-dream church. He pushes back against having an idealized vision of Christian community. Bonhoeffer writes: “He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.” Pastors do the same when we are stuck pastoring the church of our dreams rather than the church that we have.

If you want to be productive in ministry, you must pastor the church you have, not the church you wish you had, and spend your time accordingly. This often takes intuition, honest self-assessment, and feedback from other godly voices in your life. While certain aspects of ministry pertain to every pastor, truly effective pastoral ministry comes from knowing your ministry context well and spending your time on what your church most needs in its present ministry season.

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