The Greatest Job in the World
Last night I attended a dinner that Life Pacific College hosts for the local pastors of churches where our students serve while at school. It was a great celebration, a time of community, and a big thank-you to leaders who are doing the work of modeling what a real pastoral experience looks like and providing discipleship to called and emerging leaders.
You see, even though LPC is a Bible College, students can not be trained for ministry apart from the local church. They can learn theory and theology here; they can be partially developed and discipled through our faculty, staff, and our well thought-through programs. But without committing to and working with a local church, their education is radically incomplete. Like Luke Skywalker leaving Yoda and the Dagobah system too early to face his enemy Vader, these emerging leaders who have “learned” the Bible and Ministry but didn’t actually serve to “test it out” during their learning phase are heading into a huge shock and big trouble…but I digress (this is another blog post waiting to happen).
So, at the thank-you last night, Larry Powers, one of our most respected and long-standing professors (and an elder at Lifehouse Church where I am the pastor) read a quote from early American minister Cotton Matther about the importance of the job of a pastor. It’s the best job in the world, he says, and I concur.
For all you non-pastors, your ministry is just as vital as your pastor’s is (1 Cor. 12), and all of us are called to do much of what is in this quote. But as Hebrews 13:9 & 17 say, a good spiritual leader is worthy of our imitation, respect and honor as that leader must give an account not only for his or her own life, but for our lives as well. For all you Pastors out there, I wanted to share the quote to encourage you. In a time when vocational ministry is often downplayed because of the correct theology of the priesthood of all believers, there is still something amazing about the pastoral vocation.
The Job Of A Pastor (Cotton Mather): The job of a pastor, rightly understood is the most honorable, and important job that anyone in the whole world can ever have, and it will be one of the wonders of all eternity to think about why in the goodness of God he would ever let any of us have such a job! A pastor has the awesome privilege of being a bridge between God and the world He sent His Son to save! A pastor gets to tell about measureless width, length, height, and depth of the love of God, and invite all who are willing to come into personal relationship with God through Christ. This is a work which an angel might wish for as an honor to his character, indeed a job which every angel in heaven might covet to have for a thousand years to come. It is such an honorable, important, and useful job, that if anyone is blessed by God to have it, they may look down with disdain if they were ever asked to be a king, and shed a tear of pity for the brightest ruler of the earth!