(BEWARE... reading this could change your life and your church).
A great Biblical truth concerning pastoral leadership has been either hijacked or scuttled by Satan.
GOD’S ORDER
Though Jesus is our only High Priest, all Christians (in the Biblical sense) are priests of God. All followers of Christ have personal, immediate access to God the Father, through Christ and the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit enlightens, enables and empowers us to seek God and speak to God, through Jesus Christ, our High Priest, our intermediary.
Jesus receives our prayers and intercedes with the Father in our behalf.
The Father receives and responds to Jesus.
GOD’S SERVANT
However, God calls, gifts, empowers, appoints, and anoints men to serve in the position of local shepherds, who lead, feed, protect and correct the local congregation. These men are pastors (shepherds) and they are God's earthly leaders of the local church.
Satan seeks to destroy this divinely designed office and work by corrupting the men or the ministry of the pastor.
Satan seeks to hijack (pirate this ministry) by either leading the pastors into sin or by getting pastors to wield more power and authority than God has assigned to them.
Satan seeks to scuttle (sink) the ministry of the pastor by robbing him of his divine authority.
As a result, we see the office of pastor today as simply an administrator, who is more like a house boy than the steward of God's household. Remember, the local church is the household of God (Ga. 6:10; Ep. 2:19) and the pastor is its leader (1 Th. 5:12-13; 1 Tm 3:5; He. 13:7; 13:17).
IMPORTANT POINTS
A God called and God gifted pastor is Divinely enlightened and enabled to lead, counsel, correct his people concerning every area of their lives.
Sadly, to many people who have the title of pastor, are not Divinely called or equipped.
Sadly, people have bought into the Satanic lie that God has not given pastors the ability to lead their congregations, and therefor there is very little submission and respect for pastoral authority and leadership. (as a side not, it is interesting that those who are part of cults or very ritualistic organizations often give more heed to their unqualified leaders than Bible churches give to their leaders).
Sadly, too many pastors have yielded their God given responsibilities to the priests of humanism (psychologists, educators, politicians, jurists and worldly economists).
No one should follow the unBiblical or carnal leadership of anyone. However, individual believers, and the church, as a mighty marching army, should be of one mind with Biblical, wise, loving leadership.
Pastors have spiritual enlightenment through Biblical training, life experiences, observations, studies in many fields, spiritual gifts, spiritual wisdom, God’s leading.
Pastors can obviously be wrong in an assessment, but believers should be more inclined to trust and follow godly pastors than they should be inclined to disbelieve, doubt, criticize, rebuke a true man of God.
If you do not have a pastor that you trust, you need to either get in line with the Bible yourself or you need to get a Biblical pastor.
There is no honor for a pastor to rule for carnal reasons.
There is no honor for a pastor to relinquish his leadership to the world.
There is no honor for a congregant to blindly follow a pastor.
There is no honor for a congregant to constantly challenge a godly pastor.
This little note just scratches the surface of this subject, but it scratches a lot of itches.
