Young boys spend their afternoons shooting hoops with hopes of being like Steph Curry. Musicians riff endlessly aspiring to be like The Beatles. Entrepreneurs look for the next big idea like Steve Jobs. Politicians imagine being the next president. Yet as they aspire, they’re not always willing to pay the price.
So with young pastors. They dream of preaching like Spurgeon, winning souls like Whitefield, writing theology like Calvin, and pastoring like Baxter. But somewhere along the way their willingness to persist wavers. A congregation opposes them. Their preaching feels futile. The church numbers dwindle. They lose friendships because of a stance they took.
It’s easy to aspire to be a great pastor, but are you willing to do all that it takes?
The apostle Peter exhorts pastors to shepherd the flock of God or exercise oversight “not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock” (1 Pet. 5:2–3).
What Shepherds Are Getting Themselves Into
Peter focuses less on what elders should do—“exercising oversight”—and more on how they do it. He gives three contrasting pairs of phrases that describe what is appropriate
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