October is pastor appreciation month. While we think about our church leaders all year round, this month is a time to give extra consideration to the man at the pulpit.
Hopefully we as Christians have a good relationship with our pastors, one that exceeds a handshake at the door after service, and sending a polite card at Christmas and Easter wishing them and their family blessings. While those things are good, and to be sure appreciated by the clergy, these men who have been called to a life of dedication to the preaching of God's Word deserve vastly more consideration for the daily sacrifices they make for their love of God, and the flock He has entrusted to their care.
We may not realize the sermon we hear on Sunday that takes in most cases an hour or so to speak does not take an hour to write, that the study and research done often takes days worth of hours to pen, and hours of prayer to discern, that we may be sure of receiving all that God gives to his servant for the filling of our spiritual bellies. These hours are labors of love, many that take up extra time that may be spent with a loving wife, or anxious children longing for dad's attention. Sometimes meals are missed, and quiet times of much needed rest or meditation fall by the wayside as evening's hours turn to night, while the man of God chisels in ink the art of exposition for our ears.
The responsibilities of leadership in a church go beyond the Sunday sermon. We see these men wedding couples, and leading funeral services, dedicating babies, and comforting the dying in their last hours, then comforting the family of the deceased for days and weeks afterward. There are baptisms, conventions to attend, speakers to hear, and travel to meet and know other men of the faith that serve God as His shepherds, that they may edify and encourage one another. There are also difficult times to face, agonizing over a fallen member of the flock, who needs to be found and brought home to the congregation, and church discipline to be enforced in the case of the unrepentant. There is persecution to be faced from the world, angry folk who will not hear God's word that the pastor works so hard to purvey accurately and Biblically, leave the church in anger and disagreement. Like prophets from the Old Testament, they are sometimes ignored, often despised, and even threatened with incarceration or death when willful sinners inflamed with conviction turn their shame to anger and seek a target at which to vent their rage, or a government's desire to keep social order at the expense of truth.
There are missionary commitments to meet, ministries to explore, and the walk of faith in Christ by Grace from God to display in all situations as an example to the flock, yet at the same time being only human, subject to every temptation, fault, illness and error we all are.
Include with this responsibilities of family and daily life. Mortgage, car payments, a sick child. Physical ailments, the passing of a loved one, car repair and flooded basements. Comforting the kids in their grief when the family pet dies, the need to care for an elderly parent that can no longer take care of themselves.
Take time this month to think on these things, and this Sunday consider the man behind the pulpit and the message he brings from God and his Word. Take the time to talk with him as you would any brother in the Lord, and let him know how much his labor means to you and how much you appreciate his loving service to our Lord Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to the glory of God the Father.
