“We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work.”
—1 Thessalonians 5:12,13
Carolyn and I have been watching a series of murder mysteries on BBC featuring a stolid, plodding chief inspector and his long-suffering partner. Each segment takes place in a different village in his district. Since we’ve began watching the series there have been been 214 murders; eleven accidents, ten suicides and six deaths from natural causes.
The series is well done, but it carries with it an unsettling sub-plot: In each segment in which the Church of England appears, the clergy are depicted as either corrupt or crazy and sometimes both. Those who are not church–goers are the only sane and just people in town. It’s become painfully obvious to us that the writers have a burr in their britches.
I can’t speak for the village pastors in England, though I know a few there that belie that theme. They are good shepherds who are standing against the tide of secularism and spiritual antipathy that has engulfed Great Britain in the last 100 years.
And I can speak for the village pastors that Carolyn and I know in Idaho, many of whom are laboring in small communities where the spiritual environment is as hard and as cold as the physical environment in which they serve. Most of them are overworked, under-paid, and unappreciated, yet they labor on year after year. They’ll never make the big time; hardly anyone knows they’re there. But they are our heroes.
As I think about these men and women this morning I’m struck by the fact that most of them don’t shimmer and shine, or float six inches off the ground. They’re plain, ordinary, down-home people, filled with the Spirit of the living God.
Jesus made it clear that the best work is done by simple, humble folks who love Him and his people, live the truth, proclaim it plainly and pray. This, and not bells and whistles, is the power that touches the addled, the addicted, and the afflicted that gather around them.
A recent survey suggests that most people are disgruntled with their pastors because they don’t like their style. Commenting on the survey David Hubbard, former president of Fuller Theological Seminary, wrote, “I suppose they mean by this that they don’t think their pastor has a powerful personality. But Paul puts emphasis on his work, not his personality.”
The question is not, “Does my pastor light up the sky?” but, “Is he or she doing the work”? Is he a visible expression of the invisible Christ, expounding and explaining God’s Word to us, and devoted to prayer? Does he lovingly care for his flock? Is he leading us into deeper love for our Lord?
The fact that our pastor isn’t scintilating in the pulpit and rarely shines his shoes has nothing to do with his work. So he isn’t polished and articulate, the most artful guy in town. Those traits have no bearing on the worth of his ministry. Esteem him very highly in love because of the work he has been called to do.
David Roper
1.21.21
