I Feel the Need... the Need for... Study?

I’ve spent much of my professional reading time in January just trying to finish a couple of books on my shelf that I started a few years ago and just never got around to finishing. (Honestly, half my bookshelf is like that.) So, a few of my posts over the next couple of months will probably be like this next one… a reaction to a chapter or book that I’ve recently read.

I’m in the middle of a book called Mastering Personal Growth. I just finished a chapter written by Donald McCullough about the importance of study in a pastor’s life. I really enjoy hearing about other pastors’ approaches in their study and sermon prep times. I don’t always take everyone’s advice, but I like to implement the best things.

One thing that he wrote that I agree with is how the role of the pastor has changed. Instead of being a theologian, the pastoral role has sort of turned into a CEO or management type job. A typical Lead Pastor has to prepare for a weekly sermon or two, but mixed into that... he is the vision-caster for his board and church… he is the administrator… (paperwork, statistics, and reports… oh my) he usually spends a lot of time on committees… he is the care-taker… not just of people (sick, hurting, and discouraged) but also of the church in some cases. (maintenance, snow shoveling, fix-it stuff) A pastor’s role continues to broaden… and his time and energy grow very thin.

On one hand, the pastor NEEDS to spend adequate time studying… but what good is a pastor if he isn’t available to people? Mind you, I’ve never been a lead pastor, so I am naïve to just how extreme this tightrope can be. If you fall off the side with too much study, people will start to wonder if you love them and care about them. If you fall off the side with too much ‘people’ time, it will become noticeable very quickly that your sermons are lacking depth and creativity. It is such a fine line to walk.

One thing that I really appreciated about McCullough was the importance he placed on reading Christian History and Systematic Theology materials. He indicated that he spends about two to four hours a week wrestling with that kind of reading… and this is reading that is not directly related to that current week’s sermon. He dives into topics that might not be immediately helpful in his sermon prep… but once he has a firm grasp of these theological issues… it will create a ‘breadth and depth’ in his sermons. That resonates with me very much.

McCullough discusses something in this chapter that I would like to become better at doing. He talks about how there are two things every pastor needs in order to be a good preacher: 1) A firm grasp of God’s word, and all the goes with it. (There is much to be responsible for here!) 2) A firm grasp of humanity. If we are to be effective preachers… we must know the issues that our congregation is struggling with. We must be able to discern current events and how the political, economical, and social undercurrents are affecting the people we are ministering too. The things that affect me for good or bad might not be (and probably aren’t) the same things that affect the people to which I am trying to minister for good or bad.

Anyway… these are just some various thoughts that I pulled from this chapter. Sometimes writing a blog (or any kind of writing for that matter), helps my mind separate what’s most important from what I can afford to forget in my reading. I get tired of reading books and forgetting what they say. Reacting to an especially interesting chapter in this way helps me glean more from the book and it helps me retain it longer.

Get ready for more like this one… and get ready for more that aren’t like this one. (Yeah, I think that pretty much covers everything, now doesn’t it?)