Faithful shepherding has tangible benefits, not just for the church, but also for the pastor.

I love this post by Darrin Patrick about shepherding.

1. Shepherding Prepares the Pastor for Living

When you:

• deal with the sin of others, you become more aware of your own sin.
• shepherd the stubborn, you see your own stubbornness.
• shepherd the selfish, you see your own selfishness.
• shepherd the broken, you inevitably see your own brokenness.
• see others obey, you want to obey.
• see others use their gifts effectively, you want to use your gifts effectively.

The Holy Spirit reveals sin, empowers obedience, and imparts gifts. Both the Greek and Hebrew words for “spirit” mean “air” or “breath.” The English word “spirit” comes from the Latin spiritus, which also means “air” or “breath”. This is where we get words like respiratory (breathing) and expire (no more breathing). It is also where we get the word inspire. It’s as if when the Spirit is at work in those whom we counsel, we pastors are, by the same Spirit, inspired to repent, believe, and obey with the best gifts we have.

2. Shepherding Prepares the Pastor for Preaching

The more time you spend deep in pastoral care with people throughout the week, the more you will know how to contextualize your message, address specific sins, confront resistance to truth, expose cultural idols, and make concrete applications on Sunday.

3. Shepherding Helps Your Influence in Preaching

Shepherding humbles you and kills the self-righteousness and pride that prevents people from receiving your delivery of the gospel. When you have spent real time with real people, you gain an emotional connection with your hearers that engages both their minds and their hearts.

Many pastors are like the tin man: a hard outer shell with no heart. Though they preach the truth, they do not connect with their listeners. When your people know that you are involved not just in the “sweet by and by,” but in the “nasty now and now” of their lives, they tend to believe what you are saying. They might even, miracle of miracles, apply what you are preaching.

4. Shepherding Helps You Stay Close to Jesus

There is something about dealing with the enormity of people’s sin that necessitates staying very, very close to God. In preaching, it is easier to hide a lack of spiritual connection with God through good preparation and raw ability. But the unpredictability and sheer emotional content of pastoral work confronts you with your own necessity for a savior.

In preaching, you can prepare what you will say ahead of time. In pastoral work, there is a lot of room for insecurity and anxiety as you wrestle with the questions, objections, and arguments of your people in real time—it drives you to dependence on God.

5. Shepherding Tests the Genuineness of Your Faith

The fiery furnace of pastoral work can burn off the many rough edges of your personality and cause healthy refining and growth. Pastoral work, the real brass tacks of dealing with the day-to-day struggles of your people, does more to humble and test a minister’s spirituality than study itself could ever do.

I’ve heard Tim Keller say preaching is like firing artillery; it is a relatively safe and clean job because sharp shooters are removed from the actual battle line. But pastoral work is like being in the infantry. It is hand-to-hand, eyeball-to-eyeball combat. Being a good preacher may or may not make you a better shepherd, but being a good shepherd will definitely make you a better preacher.

This post is adapted from Darrin Patrick's book Church Planter: The Man, the Message, the Mission, available now.

Post: http://theresurgence.com/2010/09/27/5-ways-shepherding-helps-a-pastor-grow?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheResurgence+%28The+Resurgence%29

Preacher-Onlys Aren't Good Preachers

15 Oct 2009, by Tim Keller

In my blog post on Willow Creek, I said that many Reformed evangelicals think of sound, expository preaching as something of a 'magic bullet.' We may think that as long as we are preaching the Word--preaching the law and the gospel rightly--that everything else in congregational life will somehow take care of itself. We may give lip service to the other two marks of the church--the administration of the sacraments and discipline--but we don't give them proper weight. Fully considered, the administration of the sacraments includes pastoral care, education, and discipleship, while the ministry of discipline means rightly ordering the community, that is, pastoral leadership.

I have often seen many men spend a great amount of time on preparing and preaching lengthy, dense, expository messages, while giving far less time and energy to the learning of leadership and pastoral nurture. It takes lots of experience and effort to help a body of people make a unified decision, or to regularly raise up new lay leaders, or to motivate and engage your people in evangelism, or to think strategically about the stewardship of your people's spiritual gifts, or even to discern what they are. It takes lots of experience and effort to know how to help a sufferer without being either too passive or too directive, or to know when to confront a doubter and when to just listen patiently. Pastors in many of our Reformed churches do not seem to be as energized to learn to be great leaders and shepherds, but rather have more of an eye to being great teachers and preachers.

I'd point us to the example of John Calvin himself. No one put more emphasis on expository preaching as central to ministry. And yet Calvin sat nearly every Thursday in the Consistory, hearing hundreds of practical pastoral cases each year brought by the elders of the city to the council of pastors and other elders. He applied his theology to the intimate details of "adultery and fornication, disputed engagements and weddings, family quarrels, incest, rape, sodomy, buggery, prostitution, voyeurism, abortion, child neglect, child abuse, education disputes, spousal abuse, mistreatment of maids, family poverty, embezzlement of family property, sickness, divorce, marital property disputes, inheritance..." (Witte and Kingdon, Sex, Marriage, and Family in John Calvin's Geneva, Vol 1, p. 15.) Also, Calvin's voluminous correspondence shows what a forceful and wise leader and statesman he was. Because Calvin was not only a preacher but also a great shepherd and leader, he built up the church in a way that changed the world.

I pastor a church with a large staff and so I give 15+ hours a week to preparing the sermon. I would not advise younger ministers to spend so much time, however. When I was a pastor without a staff I put in 6-8 hours on a sermon. If you put in too much time in your study on your sermon you put in too little time being out with people as a shepherd and a leader. Ironically, this will make you a poorer preacher. It is only through doing people-work that you become the preacher you need to be--someone who knows sin, how the heart works, what people's struggles are, and so on. Pastoral care and leadership (along with private prayer) are to a great degree sermon preparation. More accurately, it is preparing the preacher, not just the sermon. Through pastoral care and leadership you grow from being a Bible commentator into a flesh and blood preacher.

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