Preachers: What occupies your life?

“When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia, Paul was occupied with the word, testifying to the Jews that the Christ was Jesus.” Acts 18:5

There are a multitude of ministries in the church, and they are all vital to the Kingdom. Silas and Timothy served in a different way than Paul here. So this post is not about value, but it is targeted towards those who are called to preaching ministry.

Here is my question: Are we really occupied with the Word? Often we are occupied with so much else. Let’s be honest: Those of us given to full-time congregational ministry tend to spend much of our time managing, planning, and organizing (not to mention web-surfing, music listening and coffee drinking).

I’d like to suggest that most of us full-time lead pastors responsible for the ministry of preaching are actually bi-vocational. Working outside of ministry can be very honorable, as we see in with Paul in Acts 18. However, when we have been called by God and released by the generosity of our churches to focus exclusively on “prayer and the ministry of the Word” (Acts 6:4), but we are more focused on planning and the ministry of management, we’ve lost something important.

And that important thing may be different than you think. Paul used his “full-time” status not to simply prepare sermons for the weekend (he did that Electronic Cigarette bi-vocationally—see verse 3 & 4), but to do Word-occupied ministry to lost people all the other days of the week. If we are released to be full-time but are simply spending all that time navigating and building the religious structures in which we serve, I think we just might be missing the point.

I talked to a wonderful and godly full-time Pastor today who has spent all his time over the last few years chained to his church, because that’s what his congregation expected. He felt guilty about signing his kids up for little league, because that meant he would be hanging out at practice and not be available to his congregation during a couple of afternoon hours. As we talked we realized that this was his unique opportunity to touch the world around him.

I think directly impacting the world with the Word is part of what a full-time pastor is released to do.

There are some who love and are called to be bi-vocational, but most I know wish they could be serving full-time at their churches. For those of us who are blessed to not have other occupations, let’s not get sucked into work habits that cause us to be more occupied with everything but the kind of life in prayer and the Word that results in directly impacting the lost around us.