It's not your legacy, pastor

Pastors may have some wonderful things to say, some interesting cultural insights, and some personal stories to make us feel connected to them. But in their office they are no longer private persons but Christ’s ambassadors. (Horton, Ordinary, p.115)

People tell me I'm funny. Sometimes I find this hard to believe. Other times I foster it and use humour as a defense mechanism. And humour plays an important role in my preaching as well, mainly as a tool for connecting with the congregation.

But what if all the congregation remembers is the joke? Do I use humour to connect, or to build myself up, allowing the people to say, Oh our pastor is so funny. Interesting and convicting questions which Horton takes us through in chapter 6 of Ordinary, "Practicing What We Preach: No More Super-Apostles."

Here Horton is at his most Reformed, at least as far as church governance goes. He instills the notion of a congregation's accountability to the wider church, as well as the pastor's accountability to a board of elders and other pastors. Using this example it should prevent the sort of go-it-alone pastoral realtionships that develp into hero-worship.

His use of Paul's instructions to Timothy as the basis for solid pastoral work. And he reminds Timothy that his call is not to build his own legacy, but that only Christ has a legacy.

There were no instructions about a succession plan. After all, he would be succeeded by those who, like him, were trained, tested, and ordained by the church’s officers in assembly and most likely not selected single-handedly by Timothy. (p.115)

Paul is saying, Timothy work for today. Christ's work will come after you are gone, so now tend the garden. Water the fields. Harvest the fruit. And then start to tend again... Even though it may be difficult.

He sympathizes with churches that have felt their moral influence wane. The church swims upstream against a culture that's very essence seems to diminish and degrade the value of faith. And he sympathizes with pastors who feel as if they are looking out at the dull blank faces of the losers in a culture war, numb to the effects, resigned to the defeat. And the pastors take the burden on themselves, and then it becomes all about them and protecting their own little piece of turf, their little pieces of middle-class suburban living, their pensions and health plans, their salary packages and vacation time, their honorarium and applause.

Horton uses Jesus' own words to his frightened disciples, "Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom" (Luke 12:32, ESV).  We need to be convinced that Christ has already bought for us the victory over the forces of evil. "It is marvelously liberating no longer to imagine that we have to build or preserve a kingdom that Christ was not building in the first place" (p.120). Liberating, to be freed from the informal hierarchies that dominate so many churches. The informal hierarchies of our own pet issue. The informal hierarchies of our own doctrinal standards. The informal hierarchies that put the pastor, not the Lord as the head of the church. 

As the apostle writes, "But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us." (2 Cor 4:7, ESV) And it is that weakness, the weakness of clay jars, battered, bruised, stained, that weakness will keep us focused on the kingdom we receive that cannot be shaken, not the one we build that totters and falls.