Reminder, This is an opinion everything should be taken with a grain of salt.
I am always interested in mega church pastors. They are always very inspirational to listen to. In many ways, they are the cutting edge of the Christian faith. They dictate large movements of people and lead them in God’s name for better or worse. That’s just counting people in their church. They affect a much greater swath by affecting the leaders of smaller congregations.
In fact, the leaders of my own church have taken cues from these pastors in attempts to grow their own congregations. This is most notable in the trend to move toward pure inspirational sermons with little deep teaching. This is partly due to a lack of spiritual depth on the pastors part. This part re-strategizing. The problem with this is inspirational style is it is not very inspirational because it lacks the skill of the megachurch pastor. Megachurch preaching takes a lot of skill. You might as well try to make it as an actor or musician. You have to do something different than be pure inspiration the Holy Spirit doesn’t give that gift to everyone.
By far my favorite to listen to is Matt Chandler. He is the only megachurch pastor that I have heard actually discourage people from coming to his church. He is different because he is deep. While he is inspirational to listen to he let’s the Bible be more inspirational than him. He let’s the other ministry staff and the unpaid volunteers be more inspirational. In many ways, he uses his role to just point to other people and entities namely God first and foremost.
That’s the trick of being a pastor. Everyone wants to raise the pastor up. Everyone wants to follow him. His/her job is not to convince people to follow him/her. It is to convince people to follow God. That’s even more tricky because then you can’t control them. Which means the pastor must always work hard to be the lowest and the servant of the people. It is a fundamental change of being a church leader. It is being a pastor. Pastors herd which by nature means being behind the sheep not in front like a leader. God is in front.
Something to remember about your pastor next time you are the sheep lagging behind the herd. The pastor may be waiting on you before he can rest with God.
Pastoring
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