How to Encourage Pastors

Encouragement in 1 Thessalonians 5:11 and the Call to Build Up One Another

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ. Based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, "...but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.".

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, ministry. It is a beautiful Thursday here today. I don't know what day of the week this show will air, our play, but I am taping it. That is digitally recording that on my Marantz recorder today.

Something's going on with Pastor Steve's microphone. I have no idea. Better get Charlie in here to figure that out. Don't forget, you can pull up our shows on NoCompromiseRadio .com, Facebook, NoCoRadio.

What else? I don't know, iTunes as well. So today, I did want to plug DoNotBeSurprised .org, and Erin is the lady's name, who puts that together. And if you'd like to know a veritable who's who of what's going on in evangelicalism with some positive things, Erin Bentz, B-E-N-Z, she likes to put praise songs on there, counted worthy to suffer quotes from J .C. Ryle.

But then she'll also put James McDonald up there with his tattoo as he's interviewed by Mark Driscoll on the vertical tour bus. And she'll put up, I don't know, some Beth Moore thing, critique. And so I want to support her.

Do not be surprised. I think actually you might even be able to see a No Compromise Radio, you'll see that someplace on our website too, but that's the Where's Waldo thing. Today I'd like to talk a little bit about encouragement.

What does the Bible say? First Thessalonians 5 .11, encourage one another and build one another up. And that's exactly what the church at Thessalonica was doing. They were encouraging one another, building one another up.

And Paul was trying to say that's exactly right. And as he said in chapter 4 verse 1 and 10, doing a great job, keep on doing that. So today I'd like to talk about encouraging your pastor. I want to say this from the get-go, and I mean this with all sincerity.

I'm not asking for any of this personally. The church, I've been here 15 years, and you can tell the strength of a church and the spiritual depth of the church, spiritual maturation of a church, by how they take care of their pastor slash pastors.

And I am taken care of very well. I have to admit early on when I first got here, you know, couldn't afford another car, and the car I could afford I called the Humble Mobile. You'd have to put the windshield scraper down on the accelerator and let it run for a couple of minutes.

I think it was one of those Pintos that were recalled back in 1970. Wasn't quite a Pinto, but it seemed like it. And moving from corporate America, selling everything, coming out here in 1997, I don't know what it was, $32 ,000 a year or something, wife, couple kids.

It was a rough go back in those days. But things have changed. And so what I'm not trying to do, and I mean this, I am not trying to ask for any of these things. I receive encouragement. I receive financial pay.

I receive sabbaticals. I receive all kinds of things. And so I am not asking for this. But what I am trying to do is since many of you listen across the country and actually the world, I want you to be able to encourage your pastors.

This is me, another pastor, knowing what it's like to live in the fishbowl, knowing what it's like when the phone rings at midnight or 4 a .m. Just recently I got a call at 4 a .m., someone calling with a crisis.

It just never ends. You are on all the time. And that's why I need to sneak out and go on a bike ride on occasion and go do other things because I just need to have some rest. That's why pastors need to have a good long vacation to get away.

That's why pastors need sabbaticals every seven years. How to encourage your pastor. So knowing what it's like being a pastor myself for 15 years and in gospel ministry prior to that for a few years, I'm trying to use this as leverage to try to get you to encourage your pastor.

In the last two days I have received two emails from pastors. One was a forward and one was directly to me. Pastors who are no longer at their churches, that they have resigned and they are going to move on.

And that is not because of moral failure or doctrinal failure, just the rigors of ministry, the rigors of those few people who try to make it hard on the pastor. And if you're a person who wants to make it hard on the pastor because you think you're going to get him to leave and you've seen three pastors come and go and you're going to make sure you do your best to try to discourage this pastor, I would encourage you to read Hebrews chapter 13 and repent.

That's what you ought to do. Who do you think you are to take it upon yourself to run the pastor out because the sermons aren't peppy enough, because he's not your best friend, because he said something once that offended you?

I don't really know. And of course, I'm not talking about someone who's, you know, a thief or someone who's an adulterer. We're talking about a guy who went to school and was called by God to be a preacher.

And he might not be like your favorite preacher on the radio or TV. He might not have all those skill sets. But if he's faithful, then your job is to support him. And so, if you're one of those people that says, I'm going to try to run this guy out by discouragement because I just can't get the quorum and the votes to get him out.

We're just going to try to run him down any way, shape, and form we can. Then you really need this message, I guess. And you ought to ask yourself the question, if Abendroth is right, you can tell a lot about a person in a church and how they teach and preach, how they treat their pastor.

This show would be for you. And again, I'm going to just have to say it over and over again because we just live in this culture. If your pastor is disqualified, then 1 Timothy 5 and Matthew 18 help you figure out what to do with a pastor who's not qualified.

I don't want disqualified pastors preaching. If they're morally not qualified or doctrinally not qualified, if they're not called by God, if they're not teachers of the full counsel of God, Christ-exalting sermons, if it's a Hollywood screen clips played and videos and all that PowerPoint stuff, he's not preaching the Word, well, then he's not a pastor.

He's an entertainer. He's a leader. He's a CEO. He's a supervisor. He's a manager. He's a mentor. He's a coach. But pastors, I solemnly charge you, Paul says on his deathbed to Timothy, right? He's answering to Christ Jesus, so preach the Word.

And so if your pastor does preach the Word, but he is sinful and frail and finite and he's not perfect, right, like every pastor, then I want you to try to encourage him. So, so much for the exhortation at the beginning, but I'm fairly riled up about this just because when pastors resign because of congregations' stiff-necked responses to gospel ministry, to me that's like Edwards.

Edwards preached a sermon that when this particular pastor in the valley died, that it was judgment to the congregation. And so when the congregation runs out a Bible teaching pastor who's qualified according to 1 Timothy 3 and Titus chapter 1, it is judgment on that church.

That's exactly what that is. It is judgment to the church. But probably for most of you, you love your pastor. Maybe you like the old pastor a little bit more. Maybe you like MacArthur a lot more. But you love your pastor and you sit there week in and week out.

You don't do anything negative. So today I'm going to try to encourage you on the positive side to do something nice for your pastor. I am not asking for these things. Most of these I already received, so that's the scoop there.

Practical Ways to Encourage Your Pastor

So I pulled up some websites that said how to encourage your pastor. These are some of the things that I found. Some will be funny, some will not. One is pay attention to his labors. Pay attention to his labors.

So when he or he's preaching, pay attention. In discipleship, pay attention. That would be a good way to encourage your pastor. If you do the opposite, well, it doesn't really help me, it doesn't move me, I can't be bothered, you don't give any value.

So pay attention. Well, here's another one. Speak well of him to others. Speak well of him to others. And so let's think about our spouses for a moment. I don't think you will have ever heard, well, especially you on the radio, although I'm going to get Kim to guest host.

Steve's wife, Janet, can be the co-host, and Mrs. Abendroth and Mrs. Cooley can do kind of a ladies-only show. How's that? I think I'm also going to interview my wife, Kim. She's speaking to some ladies down in Valley Forge soon, so that's kind of exciting.

Back to the point here. If you talk to my wife, out of anyone, she knows my shortcomings and my failures the most. But she'd never say anything about it because love doesn't keep a record of wrong, and it's a glory to cover people's sin.

It's not something to brag about and boast about. It's a glory to cover. And so it's the same thing when it comes to your pastor, that you ought to speak well of him to others. And let's just cut to the chase.

Here's what happens. There are people that go around to try to undermine leadership, and so they go to someone else. Maybe they go to another elder. Maybe they go to another person, and they start unloading on the pastor.

If anyone comes to you regarding the pastor or anyone else in the church, we've talked about this before in the shows on gossip and slander and speaking down about people. That's the Greek words, to speak down, in James chapter 4.

Then you ought to say something like, well, certainly you're not asking me to sin right now by listening to gossip, so I assume you're trying to get me to hold you accountable to go to the person that you're talking about behind their back and say negative things about them and to clear it up with them.

Now you really have to do that if an elder is being talked about negatively and or pastor. But anyone in general, that's the rule, and that pretty much shuts things down. And I have to teach it to my kids and everyone else.

If someone says something in a derogatory fashion to me about my associate pastor or other elders, I don't allow that because I can't receive accusations against elders because 1 Timothy 5 is very clear.

It would be sinful. And so it's the same thing with anyone else. I don't want to hear gossip about other people. I know enough about people's sins not to have extra stuff, and they're not even there to defend themselves, and this person has an agenda.

You know, it's the whole classic. Somebody comes to you and says, well, Pastor, you know, there's quite a few families that feel the same way I do, bringing a theological weight to it or a massive body of evidence.

They're not just, you know, there's a few other people. There's many other people. And so I just always say, well, who are those people? You know, it's kind of like some of the voting people that we have in America.

Some people are dead when they vote. Some people aren't even at the church anymore and they've left. Some people, who are those people? Why are you all on the same page? You seem like you're the ringleader.

And so don't accept negative criticism about the pastor at your church. I think that would be very, very encouraging. All right, here's another one. This is still positive, right? Not funny. Pray for your pastor every day.

Now, that would be a great thing to do. There are people in my life who have said to me, I pray for you every day. Some of those people have died, and so we need to replace that praying for your pastor.

Obviously, this is a position where there's a lot of pressure and satanic attack, most likely. Who knows? I can just see the effects of issues. I don't really know the causes. But pray for your pastor.

Pray for your pastor every day. I'm trying to remember the hand reminder on how to pray for people. The pinky would be pray for weak people, right? Your pinky's the weakest. No, no, it's the smallest.

Then your ring finger is the weakest. Pray for weak people. Your middle finger is the tallest, so pray for those in leadership at the church or in the government. Your index finger is the pointer. That is, I don't know, for teachers or something.

I don't know. Thumb. And then finally pray for yourself. It points to you. Okay, let's see. There's some other ones. This is on mypastor .com. Give him a hug. Now remember, this is not asking for me. I actually do hug people.

If it's in public, I'll hug. Stop by the church and wash some windows. Let's make this for Ted something from Nebraska slash Missouri. Stop by the church and wash some windows. Windows. Wash some windows.

I guess you could do that. That would be very nice. I guess let's put it positively. Serve the local body here. That would encourage the pastor. When people serve, it does a lot of things. Number one, they are responding to the great grace that God has given to them in the person of Christ Jesus, who can cover all the sins, can absorb God's wrath for all the sins.

A lot of guilt we have. There's greater grace to be found, and the response is gratitude. And so when people serve, it does a lot of things. Number one, other people are benefited. The body's benefited.

The person who's serving benefits because he's then responding to God's grace by showing gratitude in his service. And it's also a lot easier to criticize when you're not involved. When you're involved with ministry, you realize how hard it is, not just getting a task done, but ministering to people.

As you get the task done, very, very difficult. Take his wife to lunch. Oh yeah, if you're a lady. Mow his lawn or shovel his driveway. Actually, I used to have people who'd come over until he moved, and he would plow my driveway.

That was pretty nice of him to do. But I'm not asking for me, remember? Visit someone in the hospital. See, that goes back to serving, serving other people. Call a homebound church member. Exactly, same thing.

Here's another one on this website. Smile a little during his sermon. Smile a little. I guess maybe pastors like that. My favorite thing is to look up and see people looking at me, and then when I say, the Bible says, they all look down and see the crown of their heads.

Call his wife and ask what kind of pizza they like. Order it, pay for it, and have it sent to your pastor's home. Wow. Now maybe I do want that one. Babysit his kids so he and his wife can go out. My kids are old enough now, so I don't need this.

This isn't self-serving. That's a huge one. I remember my brother used to tell me that somebody had a ministry to go babysit my brother's five kids, and so he and Molly could go out on a date. That's a great thing to do.

Actually, we've had people do that in the past. I think of Karen Uloh. I think of my wife. I think of Janet Robinson. I think of Candace Jeffries, ladies who have come over to babysit, and they just do it for ministry.

You don't have to pay for it or anything. They just come over to your own house. What a great way to serve your wife. Okay, here's a funny one. Rent a billboard and use it to express your pastor appreciation.

Now here's one that would never happen at Bethlehem Bible Church. I wouldn't allow it, but I guess it could be done in a non-Sunday setting, so maybe it would be allowed. On the gong show night, talent night, perform a surprise pastor appreciation skit.

What would that look like? Now this one wouldn't be allowed, but there would be a time that I would allow this, but not in a worship service. Have the four to ten-year-old children in your church write down their answer to the question, what does a pastor do?

Read the responses during a service. Okay, here's a good one. Loan your pastor your boat, four-wheeler, or snowmobile. Oh, see, there you go. How about your Carbon Trek Madone? Maybe that would be nice.

Buy his entire family tickets to a sporting event. Wow. Include a pastor appreciation poem in your Sunday bulletin. Okay, I really like this one. Sing your heart out at your church worship service. Okay, that'd be good.

I can never figure out why people don't sing. Why parents don't make their children sing. Why dads think it's too cool to sing, and they say, well, I don't have a good voice, I won't sing. You sing like you're holding the hymnal with Jesus.

How about that? Sit closer to the front during a service. Well, not too close, because you don't want to take my seat in the front row. Because I don't want to know what's going on behind me with people's hands and singing and dancing and swirling and twirling.

Okay, here's some more. Submit to the leadership of your pastor. Right, Hebrew says, obey those who rule over you and be submissive, for they watch out for your souls as those who must give an account.

Let them do so with joy and not grief, for that would be unprofitable for, you'd think the text would say them, but it says unprofitable for you. All right, let's keep going. Mike Abendroth, No Compromise Radio.

More Ways to Encourage a Pastor Through Service, Generosity, and Support

How to encourage your pastor. Stand with him through tough times. That's a good one. Stand with him through tough times. Toss out the cookie cutter. In other words, who was it? Philip Brooks said, preaching is true through personality.

Every pastor is different. God has so providentially put together them as a person with parents and where they were born and the things that happened to them, good things, bad things, et cetera. You can't expect the pastor as a person to be similar to other people.

He might not even be similar to you, but he does have to have those gifts from God and he has to preach the word. So toss out the cookie cutter mold. Here's another one. Give him the benefit of the doubt.

So remember, submission means you go along even if you disagree, right? So husbands like their wives to submit. The husbands that go around telling their wives to submit the most usually are the men that submit to their boss and the church leadership the least because, see, there's a problem that goes both ways.

It goes above them and goes to those who have to submit to them. And so what you do is you say, well, I'm just going to give him the benefit of the doubt. I think if you reread 1 Corinthians 13, you would see that love chapter, of course, in the context of gifts, but spill over into this very thing.

Okay, another one, squelch gossip. Oh, here's a good one. Email him on Tuesday, right? Most pastors need to take the day Monday off. Some I know don't. They wait until Friday, kind of on the roll on Monday.

What I'd end up doing is Sunday night after I get home from preaching, so Sunday morning preach once, then discipleship during Sunday school, then preach again and go home, take a nap, maybe go work out a little bit, get something to eat, come back, preach on Sunday night, go home, say goodnight to my kids, maybe eat a little bit more, then eat some more, then have some Ben and Jerry's.

And then I get my computer, and maybe in front of a TV show or something to just unwind, I begin to work on my sermon Sunday night for the next week. And then on Monday, I inevitably work for a few hours.

I try to take most of the day off. And so here it says email them on Tuesday. So I get regularly emails from people. Now, if it's an emergency, fine. Email me, call me on Monday. That's fine. But some people just can't wait.

So if you want to email your pastor on Monday, I think you should wait. Now, if you even want to encourage him on Monday, why don't you just wait? Send it on Tuesday. That'd be a good way. You get back into the study, and then on Tuesday, here's an encouragement, or here's a question.

You know, I want to know this about the sermon, this, that, and the other. Just let him go on Monday. That's the point. Speak well of their spouse. That would be important to do that, your pastor's spouse.

I don't know why this is so generic here where it's pastor's spouse. How about his wife? Right? That's what we should do. Give generously. That would be excellent. That'd be a good way to encourage the pastor.

Let me just give you a few other things before I get too caught up. How do you encourage your pastor? Well, get him out of the parsonage, because one day you'll kick him out, or he'll leave or die, and then he has no equity.

You want equity, right? Whatever you think you want for yourself, love says you should want that for your pastor. So you need to get him into a house so he can build up equity. And parsonages are nice because then they're basically free for the church once you get them paid for, but that doesn't help the pastor.

So get a pastor into a house as soon as you can. One of the best ways to do it, if you don't want to get burned, is you say to the guy, all right, it's a $100 ,000 home. I'm going low, but just to make the math easy.

We will give you $10 ,000 as a church to buy this home for $100 ,000. For every year you spend, for the first 10 years, 10 of the original $10 ,000 will be deducted from what you owe us. In other words, if you stay for 10 years, you get to keep the entire down payment.

If you leave after two, you owe us $8 ,000. And that is a good way a church can get a pastor into a parsonage. Here's another way you can encourage your pastor is pay for his health insurance. Don't give him a health insurance allowance because it goes up and up and up and up so much he's never going to be able to make it.

Just take care of that. Pay for the dental, pay for the medical, and just say, we will cover that. And when that goes up, then in fact, the pastor doesn't have to rearrange everything. What else do I want to say?

I think your pastor should have a paid vacation quite a few weeks. If he's brand new, four weeks. As time goes on, five, six, seven weeks just to get away from things. Every seven years, he should have a three-month sabbatical, half-working sabbatical.

He should have something that he needs to accomplish for that very thing. He needs a very hefty book allowance so he can buy books to try to help you. Show me a pastor without any books, I'll show you a pastor who preaches week sermons.

Now, of course, when you're a brand new church and you don't have the money, I get all that, but you can start saving. That's what you can start doing. Start saving for some of these things. All right, is there anything else on here?

I think that's probably it. So, my name's Mike Abendroth. This is No Compromise Radio. I wanted to talk a little bit today about encouraging your pastor and so there are probably other things that could be said about encouraging your pastor, but I just wanted to give you a few.

And again, I'd like to say that this has nothing to do with I'm trying to get something here. I'm using No Compromise Radio because I want money. I want Pete's coffee. I want this, that, or the other.

That isn't the point. I get plenty around here. Many people do lots of nice things for me. It's for the other person. So I want you to take care of your pastor. And so this is Mike Abendroth, No Compromise Radio.

Closing Appeals, Resources, and Station Disclaimer

Don't forget, do notbesurprised .org. That would be a valuable site. Reformation 21, reading some Carl Truman things. Go to Greece with us. Your down payment needs to be in pretty soon. That is www .nocompromiseradio .com.

And info at No Compromise Radio. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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