Today, Joe asks Jamie what makes for an effective (or ineffective pastor). Jamie starts with the definition of "effective"...
Jamie: Hey everybody. This is Jamie Dew.
Joe: And I'm Joe Fontenot.
Jamie: And we want to welcome you back one more time to The Towel and Basin podcast.
Joe: Yeah. So today, Jamie, I have a question. It seems like a really simple question, but I feel like it's one in a lot of people's minds. What are the top reasons that keep pastors from being effective?
Jamie: Ah, keep people from being effective in ministry.
Joe: Yeah.
Jamie: Well, I can think of a lot of things, but I think before we jump in to start thinking through some of those issues, I'm interested in the word effective. What do we mean by that? What is it that determines effectiveness? I think in most people's minds effectiveness means growing numerically in various categories, maybe the head count of the church, the number of people that we baptized, amount of money that we give, and things like that, the size of the budget, the status of the facilities, and a whole host of other things like that.
Jamie: I want to be careful here, because I don't want to say that those types of considerations aren't indicators of things. They really are. But I would want to stop and challenge anybody that thinks about effectiveness only in those categories, because those things can be artificially produced too. Right? We see politicians, and we see businesses, and we see all sorts of groups and people gathering large groups of various kinds, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're doing God's work. And I think that the same is true, we probably have some cases where churches have done all sorts of things, but it doesn't necessarily produce conversion and discipleship either. So I don't want to equate effectiveness with numerical growth or financial growth or things of that nature.
Jamie: And again, think about it, biblically speaking, I can point to a lot of places seems to me throughout the Old and New Testament where people would not have been counted effective if that's the metric. For example, think about John 6. Jesus is sitting there, and he's got thousands of people following him. I guess he's effective. And then he says things like, "Unless you drink my blood and eat my flesh, you have no part with me," and stuff like that. And then people, lots of them, the indication seems to be thousands of them, turn away and follow him no more. And you know, Jesus let them roll. He didn't go begging them to come back or anything like that. Isaiah preaches for 60 years, and in his lifetime sees very, very little fruit in the sense of numerical growth. We can point to missionary after missionary throughout history that gave their life and never saw the fruit of their labor.
Jamie: Now in the end, we know that all those people's ministries really did have a long-term kingdom impact that was very positive and very big from a number standpoint. And so I would say this, while numerical growth and financial growth is not the end-all, be-all that we would want to use as the metric for effectiveness, we don't want to think of effectiveness as only that.
Jamie: Now we can say that, generally speaking, healthy things grow. If something is the way it's supposed to be, healthy and well-done, well, those things are life-giving, and they're going to bring growth. If your church is being effective in a spiritual sense, if it's healthy, then it seems to me, God's going to bless it and it's going to grow.
Jamie: Let's think about effectiveness in terms of faithfulness. Are we being faithful to being who God has called us to be? Are we being faithful to do what God has called us to do? And are we being faithful to do it in the way that God has called us to do it? Not just doing it, but am I doing it the way he would have me do it? And I think if we are the people he's called us to be, doing what he's called us to do, doing it in the way that he's called us to do it, then I think that's effectiveness. A pastor could be out there and doing everything in his ability and his staff's ability to do what I just said and may not yet be seeing lots of growth numerically, and I would just say, "Hang on, dear brother, you're doing what God's called you to do. And he'll bless. I don't know when, I don't know how, I don't know in what form it's going to take, but God's going to bless it."
Joe: I feel like there's a bit of personal latitude there as well too, because God talks to each of us individually. I mean, corporately, of course, but individually as well. And we can't just simply copy and paste what someone else is doing if God is [crosstalk 00:04:40].
Jamie: That's right. And look, it may very well be that God entrusts somebody else with more than he has entrusted you. Man, that's been my life, honestly, most of my ministry. Look, I know where I sit now, and given my role here at New Orleans, there's a lot more people today that know who I am and are familiar with my ministry than there's ever been in my life. Man, listen, my ministry up until recently was a ministry of obscurity. Nobody knew who I was. In fact, I asked the search committee right at the end of the process when they were finalizing everything and finishing it up, "Hey, at the beginning of this process, did any of you know who I was?" And they all said, no, we had no idea.
Jamie: I pastored a rural church in North Carolina that in the eyes of the larger SBC was kind of obscure. And at Southeastern where I served, granted, I carried a vice president role, but there were other vice presidents that were a lot better known than I was. My ministry has been a ministry of obscurity.
Jamie: Look, the fact is God does, it seems, entrust more to some people than he does others at times. We have parables about this, right? To one was entrusted five talents, and he took it, and he used it the right way, and he returned five back. And then to one was given only two talents, and he used those, and he returned two back. He returns now four total. You get the point. He adds two. And then to the one, they were only given one talent, and this person just hid it in the ground and didn't use it.
Jamie: Take what God has given you and be faithful to use it for his kingdom by being the person he's called you to be, doing the work he's called you to do, and doing it in the way that he's called you to do it. And you know, you're being effective. You're doing what you're supposed to be doing.
Jamie: Now again, I do suspect at some point, things are going to grow that are healthy. And so I do understand that when people ask these questions about effectiveness, they're largely thinking about numerical stuff. Let me talk about that for a minute. And I would say in terms of growing your church in terms of increasing baptisms, and if effectiveness is thought of in those ways, well, I would say, "Look, there's some things that the pastor can control, and then there's some things that the pastor can not control, and let's focus on the ones that he can control."
Jamie: But I'll start with the ones he can't control. Let's just get these out of the way real quick. You can't control your location, right? If your church is right smack dab out in the middle of nowhere, but the city around you or near you is expanding into that area, and there's thousands and thousands of homes being built in your area, then guess what? Just by default of your location, if you're doing half of anything right, you're going to grow numerically in a pretty substantial way.
Jamie: If you're out in the middle of nowhere, and you're 50 miles from anything, and there's not any growth out there, you're just not probably going to be growing thousands of people in your services. That's just the way it works. If you're in a church that's right next to a couple universities or colleges, you have a really good shot of having a very vibrant college ministry. But if you're 60 miles from the closest college or university, you probably don't have a good opportunity there to have a vibrant college ministry. Your location can have a big part on it. You can't control that. You shouldn't feel bad about that.
Jamie: Your resources, if you're pastoring a large church that has limited numerical growth potential and also has limited financial resources, you can't afford to build the extravagant buildings and things like that, so you shouldn't feel bad about that. You can't control that. If you have people that are just stiff-necked and will not follow or will always be difficult, there's not a whole lot you can do about that other than pray and be faithful to preach to them and love them and try to encourage them and pray for them constantly that God will work there. But you can't control them. That's my point. So look, pastor, if you're out there and those factors are there, you can't control those issues, and you shouldn't feel bad about those things.
Jamie: Now, there are some things you can control. And unfortunately, I think there's a lot of cases where churches aren't growing, the ministries aren't expanding, it's not going well because of a variety of factors, and these are things that can be controlled and can be addressed. Let me just deal with these very quickly. Let me mention, there are probably more, let me mention five very quickly.
Jamie: Number one, laziness. Man, it will always be tempting to just treat your job as a pastor as a standard nine-to-five, eight-to-five job where you walk into the office, and you sit there, and you tend to tedious administrivia tasks in the office and get comfortable and settle in those things and not lead and not think and not be active and not engage. And, man, ministry can be a place for lazy people to hide. I hate to say that. I'm not saying every pastor out there whose church is not growing is lazy, but for lazy people, ministry can be a place to go hide. And if that's present, then, man, yeah, you're going to get what you pay for. If you're not putting anything into it, it's not going to grow in the effectiveness. We've got to guard against laziness.
Jamie: Second of all, lack of vision. A lot of times, man, there is a rhythm to church ministry. I found it this way. Today in my job that I'm in now, I have to be a visionary. I have to cast vision for my institution and for people. And it's been a blessing that God has given me that gift and the ability to do that here.
Jamie: But what's astounding to me is back when I was a pastor, I didn't feel like I was a great visionary then. There's a rhythm to church life. Man, I preached every Sunday morning. I preached Sunday night. I preached Wednesday night. Just from the sermon prep alone, that was a massive amount of my hours every week of just preparing. And then I was tired. So you can get into a rut and into a rhythm and fail to lift your eyes up and think about the church. Where am I trying to get this church? What are my goals? Where are we going to get to? How are we going to get there? If you're not casting vision for your church, if you don't have a vision yourself, that's a problem. And if you're not able to communicate that vision and cast that vision for your church, I think that, well, the Bible says things like this, "Where there is no vision, the people perish." And so I think if you're not casting vision, that a problem.
Jamie: Thirdly, I'd mentioned lack of cooperation. It's tempting for the pastor to feel like he is the main guy, and therefore, I'm the one that makes all the decisions, and I don't solicit input, and I don't get buy-in. I'm in a role now, Joe, where I'm the president, and this weight and responsibility, I feel it.
Jamie: Technically speaking, I could just make all the decisions completely by myself. There's a handful of decisions I got to get trustees with. Man, there's a lot of decisions I could just make them, but I'd be a real idiot to lead that way, because if I'm not getting my vice presidents and my associate vice presidents and my deans and my provost and my faculty and, man, even my student body and certainly my trustees, if I'm not getting them to buy into where we're trying to go, then, man, not only am I going to have tension and difficulty, which is going to cripple your ministry, but in addition to that, I'm not going to hear really good information and good data. I might not always like the information I hear, but it's probably really good for me that I hear all the information and that I have as many eyes on a project and as many ears on a project as I can possibly get, because the collective wisdom is greater than Jamie Dew's wisdom.
Jamie: A lack of cooperation, I think, is a lot of times for guys their Achilles heel. They don't work well with their deacons. They don't work well with their elders. They don't work well with their staff. They don't communicate well with their people. There's a lot of people that end up having major ministerial problems simply because of a lack of working with people.
Joe: That totally makes sense in a lot of ways, like why that setup would exist, right? Because if the pastor was the one that went to seminary, and the pastor is the one that's done all the deep dives and all of the different studies and all this kind of stuff, it's the pastor who is ultimately responsible to be the pastor. And then you've got these other people. They don't always present themselves well. They don't always play nice themselves. It's a very natural thing to be like, "Look, I just don't want the headache. I'm just going to do what I know is right."
Jamie: That's right.
Joe: But you said something else too that I thought was really a side benefit but really a huge one to cooperation and that's when you bring all these people in what you do is you say, "Hey, I value you." And as a result, you get their trust, which you really just can't buy. It's a cliche, but you have to earn it. And it's not hard to earn. It's just, show people value and treat them seriously.
Jamie: Well, sometimes it's hard, because sometimes you really just do, "Look, I could do it quicker and easier if I just made the decision."
Joe: Well, that's true.
Jamie: And maybe that issue would have been easier, but the long-term benefit, you don't get the long-term capital from getting trust and buy-in. In the long game, that's going to be far more valuable to us than probably any of the immediate decisions or issues we're facing. We want to get a win in.
Joe: No doubt.
Jamie: Just cooperation, you've got to learn people are messy. Groups are messy. Leadership is messy. It will always be the temptation of a leader to take the pathway of least resistance in leadership and go around people or through people or plow over people. That's not going to be the best route forward for us. We've got to learn to work with people and cooperate with people well, and so lack of cooperation is one major thing.
Jamie: Let me mention two others real quick. One's going to be super obvious. I probably don't even need to elaborate on it a whole lot. But let me mention this one first. Clumsiness, there's a lot that we do that maybe even if we've done everything I've said, we're not lazy, we've cast vision, we're cooperating with people, we're just clumsy. We're clumsy with details. We're clumsy with the way we come off. We're clumsy with the way we structure things. We're clumsy with the way we market things or fail to market things. And I can't tell you how many times in my ministry, we've put together something good, and then right the day of or the day before we realize, "Oh man, if we'd have thought about it, we could have included this too." That's just clumsiness. And it's a clumsiness from not thinking long-term enough. I started my thinking process too late when there's too much downstream and you can't include stuff. And so we're just clumsy, clumsy way we talk, clumsy way we communicate. Clumsiness really can trip us up a lot.
Jamie: Let me mention this last one real quick. It's sin. Look, I think a lot of times there are just sin patterns in our lives. Being a pastor is stressful. Man, I've had a lot of stress in my life, but I'll just say this to all my pastor friends out there: I sympathize with you. I've been there.
Jamie: There is no stress like pastor stress. There's just something about pastoring that is a deeply stressful thing. It doesn't always make sense, but it is a stressful thing. And when we're stressed, we're far more prone to be tired. And when we're stressed and tired, we're far more prone to sin. And so the pastor as much as anybody else has to guard his heart and guard his mind and guard his life and reject patterns and to crush sin in his life. Because to put it simply, if I'm living in sin, well, then the spirit's not going with me, and I'm doing everything in my own power, and there's just not going to be any fruit.
Jamie: So those are the things the pastor can control. And I would urge pastors everywhere, listen, think through those things and make sure that you're being the person that God's called you to be, doing the things that God's called you to do, and doing them in the way that he's called you to do them. I think you'll be effective.