I’m a member of a church that is fortunate to have five elders who shepherd, teach, and oversee our congregation. All five pastors work full-time jobs which enable them to provide for their families. Since we are currently in a transition period to hire a staff pastor, they take on all the pastoral tasks. These five men counsel our members, fill the pulpit, and make tough decisions\u2014all while working 40 to 50 hours a week in their jobs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Here are four ways to care for lay pastors who go the extra mile for their flocks.<\/p>\n
1. Provide an honorarium for lay elders who labor in preaching.<\/p>\n
Throughout the year, the senior pastor will need time to rest. Typically, a lay elder will fill the pulpit when the senior pastor takes a Sunday off. For this to happen,\u00a0lay pastors make sacrifices to ensure their congregation will have a message from the Word of God on Sunday. Sermon prep takes time, which may temporarily take them away from family and other weekly commitments.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Paul tells Timothy: \u201cLet the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching\u201d (1 Tim. 5:17).\u00a0Paul has in mind<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
1 Timothy 5:17, “Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor,” includes lay elders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":597,"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":[331],"class_list":["post-48417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9marks","tag-membership-discipline","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\/48417","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\/597"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48417"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48419,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48417\/revisions\/48419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}