How would you spend your time each day, if you were the preacher? In a year you must preach roughly 104 sermons and teach about the same number of Bible classes. Would you think at all about your long-range subjects for sermons and the needs of the congregation or just make it up as you go along? Would you make any sort of plan or outline for the year? What would you decide to teach in your Bible classes and why would you choose those books of the Bible or those subjects? Would you think at all about goals and objectives you have for the church as the preacher and how much time, effort and study it would take for you to be sure you were heading in the desired direction in your teaching and preaching?

How long do you think it would take you to prepare a sermon? How long would it take you to prepare two sermons each week and two bible class lessons, one for Sunday morning and one for Wednesday night? How much time would you spend each day in study and preparation and how much time in general reading of religious books, periodicals, commentaries and the Bible along with personal prayer and study each week?

Would you do any writing? Would you write Bible class materials, study books, books of sermons, or articles for religious journals? When would you find the time to do the study necessary for such writing, especially if you made the effort to visit the home of every member of the congregation? I was once almost fired from a church because the elders said I should have visited in the home of every one of the more than 500 members of the congregation in my first year. If you were the preacher, when would you have the time to do that? During the day most husbands and wives work. A preacher should not visit a woman if she is at home alone. This is a dangerous business. When you got home in the evening after dinner, would you go back out in the evening to visit church members and leave your wife and children at home? I can’t tell you how many nights I have done that – gone tow or three places only to find no one home and get back at my home around 9:00 p.m. having seen no one. What a waste of time that I could have spent meaningfully with my family.

If you were the preacher, would you visit every sick member in the nursing home? And every member confined to home every week? In our small church of around 120-130 members, we have more than 25 such folk. Can you imagine how much time it would take to visit that many people in a week? One person couldn’t visit that many in a month. Imagine how many members to be visited a large congregation might have. What about a congregation of 500 or 1,00 or 3,000? No preacher on earth could do that and preach. No wonder so many preachers preach shallow, frivolous sermons filled with a lot of nonsense and lacking doctrinal depth and biblical understanding.

If you were expected to do that, you would wonder what the church hired you to do: visit and minister to church members or preach? If you did all the things members expect preachers to do and then hunted and fished and played golf with them, when would you have time to study and prepare to preach and teach, not to mention home Bible studies?

If you were the preacher, what would your wife’s job be? Did the church get two employees for the price of one? Exactly how much does the church expect the preacher’s wife to do and why? Do you think they feel that she is part of what the preacher is paid for? Is that fair? What if you were the preacher? What about your wife?

By the way, where in the Bible do you ever read of a preacher performing a wedding or funeral? Much of what churches expect of preachers comes from the Catholic Church’s Seven Sacraments: baptism, confirmation, Eucharist, penance, extreme unction, holy orders and matrimony. Not all of those were carried over into the denomination “pastor system,” but much of it was. In some denominations, the pastor must administer the communion service, pray for the sick, and perform baptisms, weddings funerals, etc.

Even in the Lord’s church, preachers are expected to perform weddings and funerals. If the preacher doesn’t come to your sickbed to pray for you, you haven’t been prayed for properly, although the Bible says to call for the elders” to pray for the sick (James 5:14 nkjv) Our preachers chase around an run themselves ragged trying to fulfill all the things the brethren expect preachers to do that brethren rally should be doing themselves. The idea of most church members is, “That’s what we hire a preacher for.” Others say, “I have no idea what our preacher does with all his time.”

The pastoral epistles do indeed give instructions regarding the work of shepherds, but Timothy and Titus were never told to “pastor,” rather to do the work of an evangelist and to preach the word. What is the work of a preacher? Preaching! Let the elders shepherd the flock, and the deacons serve the congregation, and the preachers preach.

Preachers must face problems in regard to their own financial support, as well. I could always make more in a week as a commercial artist than any church would pay me in a month or more. Continuing matters include life and health insurance, self-employment taxes, expected tenure, moving often (it destroyed our furniture), dragging the family around the country and the world, taking the children out of school in the middle of a school year, and aging and preparing for retirement. No wonder young men don’t want to preach. Our colleges used to be “preacher factories,” but have you noticed how few preachers they turn out these days? I was shocked the last time I witnessed a graduation from one of our universities. Our preacher training schools are dwindling, and some are shutting down. We have a preacher shortage.

I love preaching. I love being a preacher. It is the greatest work in the world. I have preached since I was 19. I just turned 76, but I made my own living most of my life and preached for churches that couldn’t afford a full-time man. I loved that because all they expected of me was to preach and teach and be an ordinary member of the congregation. I have made my peace with expectations of preachers and their work from a biblical perspective. Study carefully Paul’s letters to Timothy and Titus. What if you were a preacher?

 

Used by permission

Richard Norman may be contacted at

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