One of the challenges of people who want to go to church today comes in finding a good pastor. This challenge has always existed. The prophet Jeremiah declared God's judgement upon the religious leaders of his time who failed to attend to the people God had entrusted to their care. Instead of gathering and protecting them they scattered the flock and put them at risk. (Jeremiah 23:1-4)
Although it is easy to enumerate the failures of pastors--and as a retired pastor I have a long list of my shortcomings--it is better to spend our time in thinking about how to find a good pastor. The way to find a good pastor is actually straightforward. There is only one good shepherd. He is the one who has laid down his life for the people, the one who had the power to lay down his life and the power to take his life up again. (John 10:18) Jesus, the good shepherd, is the only one who can fulfill the needs of the flock. He is the one and only Son of God who came to take away our sins through his death on the cross. He is the one and only one who has risen from the dead never to die again so that he may be with us now and forever to give us the strength to live life as God created it to be.
The right minister is the one who points away from his or her own ministry to the ministry of Jesus. Someone has said you never make yourself and Jesus look good at the same time. As John the Baptist said, "He must increase, but I must decrease." (John 3:30) The same is true of every local church. We do not want people to talk about the great choir or the great worship team or the great educational program or the great youth organization or the great panoply of ministries to the poor we perform. When people think of our church and our ministers we want them to say, what a great Savior is Jesus. The best pastors and the best churches point to him and they make sure that he receives the credit for the ministry given. No ministry will last that is not offered under his guidance, and no one seeking a pastor will be satisfied until Jesus is recognized as the one and only good shepherd.
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Safety? Judy found a story on one of her news feeds that reminds me that we are never safe or we are only safe in the hands of God. A man in Georgia decided to shoot an armadillo, a creature with a very armor like covering. He fired a 9mm pistol at the armadillo and hit him, but the bullet ricocheted and went through a fence post nearby, kept going a hundred yards more and pierced the side of a mobile home, kept going and pierced a recliner in which his mother-in-law was sitting. She was struck by the bullet! Although she needed to be taken to the hospital, she made a full recovery. I'm sure this story will be retold in their family much to the chagrin of the son-in-law for the rest of his life. For me it is a reminder that one can be sitting in a recliner inside one's home and still be in danger. The only safe place is in the providence of God.
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