Pastoral Ponderings

August 20, 2026

It’s been so good to be back to work after a summer sabbatical! I’m thankful to be able to be in the pulpit again, and thus in the study again. Thank you for your prayers and encouragement for me as I’ve started back. I wish it were possible to sit down with each one of our members to hear how they’re doing, but unfortunately that’s impractical. So I’m doing the next best thing - sitting down with each one of our elders to hear about their shepherding group. Even that will take a little while, but it’s been good to catch up on how I can be praying for the sheep.

Please continue to pray for me as I get back in the groove of pastoral ministry and regular weekly preaching. With a fresh start in ministry, I’ve been thinking about some of the Scripture texts that describe the basic job description of a pastor. One is found

• Ezra 7:10 - “Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord and to practice it, and to teach His statutes and ordinances in Israel.”

• Galatians 4:19 - “My children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you—”

• Colossians 1:28-29 - “We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ. For this purpose also I labor, striving according to His power, which mightily works within me.”

• 1 Thessalonians 2:8 - “Having so fond an affection for you, we were well-pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God but also our own lives, because you had become very dear to us.”

• 2 Timothy 4:1-2 - “I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction.”

There are many more I could add, but these sum up what I’m aiming and praying for. Please be praying that I—as well as Pastor Charles and Pastor Matheus—will be given grace from the Lord to serve Him and you as we ought.

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One of the areas in which the Lord grew me during my sabbatical was the practice of meditation on Scripture. I’ve written on my Substack about some of what I learned. Check it out when you get a chance!

How Do We Effectively Pastor During This Time?

This is the question the entire Church is asking today: How do we effectively pastor during this time? This is the question that Jared Wilson responds to in his very helpful blog:

A friend messaged me yesterday asking, “How do we effectively pastor during this time?” In this odd season of quarantining and social distancing and church service suspending, how can pastors maintain their duties to the flock?

In some contexts, perhaps the work of shepherding continues fairly normally. For many others, however, the daunting prospect of ministry in the season of COVID-19 entails more than simply figuring out how to live stream a service. If you can’t be near much of your congregation, how do you pastor them? Some suggestions:

1. Keep preaching.

Obviously, conscience and conviction may dictate whether you want to preach via the internet, but it’s still important to put the gospel in front of your people as many ways as you can. If that means broadcasting a full sermon each Sunday, do it. It may also mean publishing podcasts, vodcasts, blog posts, tweets, or Facebook updates involving devotional thoughts. Right now, your people are taking in all kinds of messages—some helpful, some not, some simply distracting. Don’t let other voices tempt them in their loneliness or anxiety to tempt their eyes away from Jesus. Figure out the ways that work best for your convictions and your context to “show them Jesus.” This is your prime directive.

For the rest of the list, click here.

"The Plague of Lazy Pastors"

Whether you are in the ministry or not, this post is for you. There have been many books, and especially good ones, that have come out recently about the need for pastors and ministry workers to make sure they have a healthy work life. There is a need for proper and appropriate rest because of a noticeable amount of pastors who “burn out”. As true and good as the books are, there seems to be few that simultaneously promote a good work ethic (something that Protestantism and especially Calvinism has always done). Because of the gospel that speaks of the finished work of Christ on our behalf, Christians should be hard workers and not lazy workers. There is not only a need for good rest but there is certainly a need (if not a greater one) for truly hard work. Unfortunately, it seems that books tend to give more weight towards getting good rest at the expense of showing people how to work hard. But one will see that we must work hard in order to rest well.

Have you ever had the feeling that you needed a vacation from your vacation? There are several times when we spend a lazy Saturday to only feel just as tired the next day! In order to rest well we need to work hard. God gave us six days to work hard for His glory in order that we might rest hard for His glory on the Sabbath. When there is a sub-par work ethic, laziness abounds and rest escapes us.

David Mathis, pastor of Cities Church in Minneapolis and frequent writer for Desiring God, has written a brilliant and much needed post about the work ethic of pastors. In this post, he shows that the Bible frequently talks about how pastors should be hard workers and laborers. The pastor should be known as a hard worker so much so that he is a proper example of what it means to work hard and rest well.

Here is a brief excerpt from his article:

So, good pastors are not lazy. They are hard workers — even in the face of a modern society freshly primed to criticize a leaders’ workism and encourage what amounts to laziness. Outward hard work, however, can come from a sinful inward disposition. All of us, pastors included, can work hard for the wrong reasons. For selfish ambition. For mere kudos and applause. From deep emotional insecurity. What, then, are the right reasons for hard work in pastoral ministry?

First and foremost, we work not for God’s acceptance but from his full embrace in Christ. We first own, in our own souls the Christian gospel, not another. We aim to labor from fullness of soul, not from emptiness. Such is the heart of the Protestant work ethic, noticeably distinct from the prevailing medieval ethic, which came before it and challenged it at every turn.

The first word to every pastor, as to every Christian, is not, Work, but, He worked. It is finished. Look to the labors of Christ. Look how he rose early to meditate and pray, how he navigated intrusive crowds, and had patience with maturing disciples, and untiringly did the works of his Father, and fielded inconvenient pleas from the sick and disabled and disadvantaged.

For the full article, click here.