What\u2019s your relationship like with your pastors? Non-existent? Distant? Cordial? Warm? Now, a follow-up question: who do you think is responsible for improving or investing in that relationship?<\/p>\n
I know how a lot of church members would respond to that question: \u201cOf course it\u2019s\u00a0their\u00a0<\/em>job!\u201d<\/p>\n Some church members expect their pastors to do all the pursuing and all the follow-up. They\u2019re instinctively supposed to know what\u2019s going on with everyone at all times. But one-way relationships are draining; they\u2019re frustrating. We should aim for something better.<\/p>\n The point of this article is simple: church members should pursue their pastors. And by \u201cpastors,\u201d plural, I mean to suggest that church members not simply pursue meaningful spiritual contact with their senior pastor or lead pastor, but with the pastors or elders in general (the NT uses the terms interchangeably) in their churches. To that end, what follows works best in a church where a plurality of elders exists, where multiple men share the load in shepherding the flock. My suggestion is that you prayerfully open up your life to at least one of them, for both your and their spiritual good.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll offer two reasons why members should invite their pastors into their<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Don\u2019t let your pastors live on a ministry island. Let them get to know you, and the Lord\u2019s love for them through you. They need you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":388,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[793],"tags":[339,312,327,933],"class_list":["post-32359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9marks","tag-church-membership","tag-leadership","tag-life-together","tag-pastor","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/388"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32359"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32361,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32359\/revisions\/32361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}