Being Before Doing: A Pastor with a People
1 Thessalonians 2:8 – “So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves…”
When I stepped into full-time ministry, the word “pastor” felt enormous. It came with expectations—some spoken, others silently handed down from tradition or culture. I thought being a pastor meant doing the job well: leading programs, preaching powerfully, showing up for counseling, running meetings efficiently. But doing these tasks is not what made me a pastor. Instead, these tasks threatened my ability to BE a pastor.
In seasons where I viewed my vocation as a pastor as a job to be done Ministry became heavy. I felt more like I was cranking a program machine than being present to people. The work was gospel work but when that work became disconnected from the people I was supposed to love it became a burden.
A pastor cannot be a pastor without a people.
Pastoring Is Always Personal
I’ve always been struck by the way that the Apostle Paul talks about the church in Thessalonica. More than any other church Paul has a kinship with them. He spends half the book of 1 Thessalonians talking about how badly he wants to come visit them! He speaks not only of his love for them but of the ways that they loved and cared for him.
My first full-time role was at New Life Church in Toms River. The task was simple: get the student and children ministries back on their feet. That task sounds really impersonal. But with only 5 teenagers at the church the way I lived it out was to pour myself into our teens and leaders. I visited them in their spaces, they spent time in my home, we adventured together, and God knitted our souls together in powerful ways.
When I moved to Calvary Baptist Church the job description involved the oversight of seven different youth and young adult programs. For the first year I was buried in the task of keeping these programs afloat. I felt like I was giving endless hours to cranking the machine of the programs. In that first year I felt more like a program director than a pastor. The job and the doing overtook the pastor and the being. But something wonderful happened in those early days, I met two students named Owen.
Owen and Owen helped to reawaken my vocation to the simple, slow work of walking with people. They re-taught me the job of being with people and that my calling was as much to lead others as to be shaped by them. Sitting across from students in coffee shops. Getting to know their stories, their questions, their pain. Listening instead of planning. Laughing together. Crying together. Letting the ministry happen in the in-between moments, not just the planned ones. They made me a pastor again.
Vocation begins with people
Vocation begins with people, jobs begin with a task. We’re tempted to believe that our calling is about what we do for people. But so much of the pastor’s vocation is about what we do with people—and sometimes even what we receive from them. I’ve had students, parents, elders, and friends minister to me in profound ways. To pastor with a people means that we’re shaped alongside them, not above them. And that’s exactly how Christ pastors us—by walking with us, not merely working on us.
Love people before running programs
Doing the job of ministry director was appealing to me because running programs makes it look like we are ministering to large numbers of people. From a stage I can teach crowds of people, from the coffee table I can only love one or two. But the longer I walk with Jesus, the more I realize He never seemed in a hurry to scale. He loved the few. He poured into a handful. He noticed individuals in the crowd.
And when I’ve been most rooted in my pastoral vocation, it’s been when I’ve loved the few well. The most fruitful seasons of ministry have always been when I had a small number of deeply committed students to invest in. We laughed together. Prayed together. Played together. Served together. It was church. Not because we had a formal service. But because we embodied the love of Christ to one another.
Let me be clear, I still ran ministry programs. Many different ones of the years. But it would be out of these relationships that the programs would form. The programs came to serve the people and became a tool to bring us together. This not only made the programs more effective, it made running them life giving for me. Many who find their vocations take more joy in their jobs because they understand the job is the tool that allows them to accomplish a greater calling.
As you pursue your vocation and seek to find your calling are you looking for a people or a task? Can I encourage you to ask the question “Who are my people?” Instead of looking for a kind of work you enjoy doing, look for a people who you can love and be loved by.
Take Peace With You,
Zach
