A pastor’s advice to pastors

O

ne of my favorite blogs is Reformation 21. I recommend it as one of your daily stopping points online.

As part of the blog author’s preparations for an upcoming conference, he is beginning a series on pastoral character—something the readers of my blog will recognize as an issue of supreme importance to me. Please take a look at Reformation 21 and follow it in the near future so you may benefit from this research. We all need to pursue the character of Christ. And, so much more, our church leader need to pursue this holiness.

As a personal aside, my pastor is one of the good ones—one of the shining stars. I praise God every day for what He has done in my pastor’s life to make him the man of God he is today.

[The pastor]

must have the heart of a preacher; that is, he must stand in awe of the God in whose Name he preaches, and with love seek the welfare of the souls to whom he preaches. He must know himself to be entirely undone in himself and have a lively impression of his own inability, so that he will not trust too much in having studied properly. He ought to pray much beforehand, not so much to get through the sermon, but for a sanctified heart, for a continual sense of the presence of God, for suitable expressions, and for a blessing upon his preaching to the conversion, comfort, and edification of souls. His concern ought not to be whether the congregation will be pleased with him and will praise the sermon, but his motive must rather be a love for the welfare of the congregation.

Wilhelmus à Brakel, The Christian's Reasonable Service, 2:138