Here is a trustworthy saying: whoever aspires to be an overseer desires a noble task.
In December 1926, a 27-year-old doctor, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, left a London medical career in which he was making stellar progress to become pastor of a small church in a steelmaking town in South Wales. His move provoked public astonishment, even reaching the papers. Headlines included this: “Leading Doctor Turns Pastor: Large Income Given Up for £300 a year.”
One result of his move was that he was sometimes asked to give his testimony about the sacrifice he’d made. He always refused. On one such occasion, he said, “I gave up nothing. I received everything. I count it the highest honour that God can confer on any man to call him to be a herald of the gospel.” Or, as the Apostle Paul put it – quoted above – the office of overseer is indeed a noble task.
When Paul wrote this to Timothy, he was not only encouraging him in the importance of his own work as a minister, serving the church in Ephesus, but was writing to be overheard by Timothy’s congregation (we know this because the letter ends with a plural greeting). It seems as if Paul wanted the congregation to value this work.
It is essential that we recover this sense of the value of pastoring in our world today. Not that I have the slightest personal beef: I am so thankful that our congregation is so positive towards its pastors! But we have a crisis of recruitment towards pastoral ministry – not only in the Church of England but across the denominations: I know for a fact that the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches is facing it, and the Free Church of Scotland, for instance.
Part of what’s needed to address this is congregations valuing this role – and therefore praying for candidates to emerge for ministry, and encouraging those who have the right gifts (even if they have a very worthwhile job already) to be willing to leave what they’re doing so that they might serve the Lord’s church.
We were in Scotland over the summer and for two Sundays I preached at the Free Church of Scotland in the gorgeous coastal town of Oban. They were scraping the barrel because they have been without a pastor for many months now. In the past it might have been easy to fill such a vacancy – but no longer.
If you are wondering if the role of vicar or pastor of a church might be something God might conceivably be calling you to, I have written a little book, published this week. It is called A Noble Task: why pastoring a church is a great role, and how to know whether it may be for you.
Please pray that this book proves useful; but above all that more pastors would be raised up, and that more would discover the privilege and delight of this work!
