Audio Transcript:

Welcome to Missions on Point, the Propempo perspective on church and missions. Welcome to episode 15 of Missions on Point, the propo perspective on missions. We're in part four of a four part series on pastoral leadership of missions in the local church. The first part was episode 12, the necessity of pastoral leadership. Episode 13 was the obstructions to pastoral leadership. Episode 14 talked about the practice of effective pastoral leadership, and this episode 15 will deal with the enablement of the pastor's leadership of missions in the local church. This is talking to really lay people and perhaps other staff in the church to help the senior pastor do a better job. So senior pastors, you're in the audience as well. These are things that your people can do to assist you and help you make your job easier in leading your church. Admissions number one, befriend don't accuse.

For some reason, it's so easy for missions, passionate people to be accusatory about the senior pastor or the administration of the church in general, not giving enough priority to their pet ministry world. Missions befriend don't accuse simply means that you need to come alongside. The pastor probably does have some deficiencies, not all the fault of his own. That's why we dealt in episode 13 with the obstructions to pastoral leadership. Not all of them are the fault of the pastor or the administration of the church. You need to come alongside and befriend, take an advocate kind of position, not an accusatory one. Number two, interact. Don't dump. For some reason, people think that the way to get the pastor on board is to give him a big stack of books or journals that he's gonna study and read in all of his spare time and all of a sudden become a missions wiz.

Let me tell you, it doesn't happen that way. People are pushing books and resources onto the pastor all the time, not to mention the universality of what we see on the internet these days. There's just so much information. The pastor is gonna have major information overload. If you try to push all this stuff on him, don't dump it on him. Interact with him, talk to him, find out where his interests are, and use that as a starting point to develop it As interests in world missions, interact with him. Find out what he prefers in terms of what type of media or access, what time he may have interact with him. Don't dump. Number three, read and discuss together. If you have that enviable opportunity to be able to spend time with the pastor, maybe it is over coffee regularly. Maybe it's over golf. Maybe it's over family issues or sports of your kids together and you're at the games watching them, but you have time to interact, read and discuss together.

Use some resources, just the cream of the cream, and help him begin to get a foothold on understanding missions. You can help with that by just gently, carefully applying just the right information, the top level stuff for him to get a grasp of world missions. Number four, I kind of tipped it off already, is give him the cream of the crop. Don't give him so much material that he chokes or that he resists or he develops a  repulsion of so much material. Give him the cream of the crop. Find out just what is the best article this month? What is the best small, easy to digest book that he can read through or zip through in just a couple hours? What is it that would provide the best resources for him to get a grasp and begin to understand it better? I certainly recommend John Piper's book.

Let The Nations Be Glad as a primer for all things missions. It includes not only the biblical basis of missions, but a number of topics that John Piper feels are important in understanding missions today on the whole. So put him in touch with people that he respects and through those resources begin to build up his understanding of missions. Number five, a company and guide. Don't throw him into the deep end. This goes along with befriending and interacting, but it means that you're establishing a relationship here, a supportive relationship that he will appreciate. Don't overdo it, but continue to press the envelope till he gets to the place where he has enough momentum to continue on his own. A company and guide, you might have to be the discerning one to help figure out what are the best resources for him to continue with. You. Just don't wanna walk into an Amazon bookstore and throw something up in the search field and take whatever is there that would turn out to be disastrous.

There's a lot of junk out there, and you don't want your pastor reading just anything. So you curate the information for him. That's just especially for him, his interests, your church's interests, the missionaries you support, that kind of thing to give him the best view of what he needs to know for your church. Don't throw him into the deep end. Number six, fuel and praise every glimmer of progress. This is simple human dynamics. Your pastor gets lots of criticism a lot of the time from people who mean well, but they're always correcting or telling him that he ought to do this or that, or that he could have done better with this or that, or that he ought to be doing way more than he possibly could manage. Don't do that fuel and praise every glimmer of progress. If he reads one article about missions, just ask him about it.

Find out how it went, what did he like? What did he not like? Give him something else as a stepping stone to the next step, the next level, and as he progresses, praise him and encourage him and fuel that by giving him a natural progression of information and resources that will develop in his heart a passion for missions. Number eight, comfort and inform the pastor. Don't compete with him. He may have through a lot of time and experience a completely different vision for the church. That just doesn't include missions. That's regrettable, but you can comfort and inform him in helping 'em understand how all these pieces fit together. They're not in competition. Informing him about good practices from other churches. Read from the empo.com website, hundreds of articles explaining how missions can unfold and develop in your local church comfort and inform him as he makes progress so that he begins to appreciate.

In fact, it's a kind of funny thing, but if you'll do these things, you'll become the best friend of the pastor because he doesn't have very many people that don't have an agenda that they're trying to sell or put over on him. You want him to grow and develop to be the best pastoral leadership and missions that he can be for the sake of your church and for the sake of the gospel and missions through your church. Number nine, take him on a field trip. We dealt with this as part of the practice of effective pastoral leadership, but he may need his handheld. I remember taking a pastor overseas one time who had never been outside the borders of the United States. He was scared to death if he had not had people holding his hand, walking alongside him and explaining things and encouraging him. I don't know how it would've turned out, but take him on a field trip if necessary.

Take him on a cross-cultural field trip nearby in whatever your major metro area is. Go visit a neighborhood of a different ethnicity and have a restaurant meal there and find out what it's like to be in the minority in that neighborhood. Then take him overseas to visit missionaries and encourage him in his pastoral role there to learn all he can about what the ministry is like in that place. Number 10, walk through opportunities for discernment and growth process that together with him. When a pastor's just getting started understanding missions, he may not have developed the grid for discernment of what's good and what's not good about missions. So many people are naive about missions. They don't know what proper biblical values are associated with missions opportunities. So they think humanitarian concerns are equal to church planting concerns, and I'm telling you biblically, that's not the case.

So it takes some time and experience discernment to do that. You can help him. You can be the advisor sounding board for growing in discernment and asking the right questions so that together as you process it, he grows in discernment himself so that he can do it independently of you at some point. Walk through those opportunities for discernment and help him understand why it's good to say no to this thing and yes to that thing, or why it's good to adopt this practice and to stay away from this other practice. You can help him with that as you come alongside your pastor. So here's those 10 things. Again, befriend, don't accuse, interact. Don't dump, read and discuss together. Give the cream of the crop a company and guide. Don't throw him into the deep end fuel and praise every glimmer of progress, comfort, and inform.

Don't compete. Provide resources and connect him and network with people he respects. Take him on a field trip. Walk him through opportunities for discernment and growth and process those things together. I just about guarantee you, if you do those things, not only are you developing a sound friendship, but you're developing pastoral leadership vicariously through your impact on his life so that he can be effective at doing the very thing that God is calling him to do as the leader of the local church. I hope this works for you. I hope that you'll try the church missions profile@propo.com. Look it up. It is a great way to assess your church's missions performance in 12 categories of missions in your church, and it gives you, at the end a fantastic report of recommendations for how you can increase your church's benchmark performances at every one of those 12 categories. So check that out and encourage your pastor to listen to this series. Thanks again for listening. We cherish your listening and your patronage with us and encourage you to get others to listen and subscribe to the podcast as well. It helps us and the ministry to be more effective. It helps so many more churches that we can't reach personally. Hey, thanks for joining us today on Missions on Point, the Propempo perspective on church admissions. We trust that you'll find more resources and help on the website propempo.com.