The Critical Functions of a Pastor Rarely Found in a Church Job Description

Welcome to the Rainer on Leadership Podcast, your online home for leadership lessons and advice for the local church.

We talk about practical solutions for pastors and church leaders.

Episodes are hosted by Tom Rainer, Sam Rainer, and Josh King.

Hey, what's up and welcome to this episode of Rainer on Leadership a Podcast for Leadership in General.

But particularly that of the local church. My name is Josh.

My name is Sam and I don't know. I'm going to have fun conversation today.

It's going to be fun. This is a.

It doesn't seem like a fun title when you first look at it, but it is fun. It's fun to talk about these kind of things.

We will throw in the serious with the off off the wall off brand humor.

I don't know what I'm saying there, but yeah, I should I, you know, I at least part of my living is saying things on the air.

So I should probably know what I'm talking about, but a lot of times I don't.

But hey, hey, you know, who does know who they're talking about?

Me? No, of course you do. That's why I have to have a co-host who actually is right.

It's paying attention. Yes. No, Southern seminary. Southern seminary.

Yeah, they listen, they have been one of the best ministry partners we could ask for.

And they've got a great doctor of ministry that we have been talking about.

Many of you have heard this. If you listen to the show regularly, you know what to do.

Go to spts.edu slash demon to go check out their doctor of ministry.

Because it is designed to help you address all of your ministry challenges head on, which by the way we're going to be talking about some of these ministry challenges today.

So they take the theoretical and the spiritual and the biblical and they apply to your church, a real problem in a real context.

Southern seminaries the place to go to get a doctor of ministry sbs.edu slash demon.

I don't know if you saw it, but it's that's her posted last night.

He had a post about seminaries association theological seminaries. Southern is the second largest seminary.

This is up to date numbers. Second largest in the nation.

Ed had a whole write up talking about the con. It was really funny because Ed's a Talbot.

And he somehow made every stat about Talbot, which was interesting, but nobody.

Nobody is as good at that as is as it's that's her is turning it back right back to himself.

So I said that with all of Ed may even be listening to the show.

It's his job. It's his job. So he was no. So there's a mentor of mine.

So credit where credit is due. I am partly who I am because of him.

One of the things seminaries do not give you and churches rarely give you.

It's a job description as a pastor. There are all kinds of things that we're supposed to be doing.

Some of those are spelled out. A lot of them are implied.

And we're going to sift through some of that this morning.

And today as we look at here's some of the things that tend to be there, but are not are rarely ever written down.

Yeah, that's the point of the episode is I think a lot of this is implied, but never rarely will use that word rarely explicit.

Like, you know, you put it you know with these things to be found in a job description, not typically.

And the first one I think probably should be in a pastor's job description.

And frankly, it should be top two top three somewhere up there.

Guard the doctrine of the church. I'm a wife, my finger guard guard the doctrine of the church.

My very first sermon, my girlfriend at the time, now my wife said, well, how was it?

You know, because I was really excited about preaching my first sermon at the high view of Baptist church, by the way.

And then low of a Kentucky. And she goes, well, it was actually pretty good, but you just pointed your finger at everybody.

At your time, it was kind of distracting. I was like, I did. She's like, yeah, you were like lagging your finger.

That's funny. Yeah, the doctrine of the church.

As a wife is, it is the job. If you don't do it, nobody else is going to do it.

This is very, very important. I think that's why churches should have very clearly articulated faith statements or confessions or creeds depending on your view of church for those who are Baptist.

We have confessions. Practically, there's not a whole lot of difference.

But yeah, you need to spell out exactly what it is that the church believes.

And then you need to guard that. And some of that means making sure that small group leaders are teaching according to that.

And if they step out of line, somebody needs to do that.

I've actually had a lot of pushback with this where I believe this is a job description.

It's something that pastors do. I actually had a person say, well, what gives you the right?

You're the pastor. What gives you the right? Well, Titus 1.9 says, holding to the faithful message as taught so that he will be able to both to encourage with sound teaching and refute those who contradict it.

We are supposed to be contradicting or were supposed to be refuting those who contradict sound teaching.

And listen, I mean, I know there's their first level secondary tertiary doctrines.

I believe we should defend the first. I even think that we should guard the second.

That's what makes our church denomination or network unique is those second level ones.

The third ones, you don't really need to guard against those, but you need to referee those.

Make sure everybody's getting along, even if they don't agree on those.

And so there's a lot of doctrinal situation. I'm profoundly confused by people who think that those of these churches that require advanced theological degrees,

then have members that don't want you to give a theological opinion or guard that theological position.

So pragmatically, and this kind of goes into the job description.

I think many churches based on what they actually expect the pastor to do should really just look for degrees and event planning and negotiations.

That's literally what they want you to do, but there's everything you're supposed to do.

I was a professional negotiator for a little while, traded futures, won't get all that detail.

Maybe that's why I've served. I won't say I'm a good pastor, but maybe that's why I've survived the pastor for as long as I have negotiations as a big part of it.

All right. So this is critical. I agree with everything you said.

I do believe we should guard not only the primary doctrines, which those are the ones that make you a Christian or not.

The secondary doctrines as well, we're less forceful with the secondary doctrines and we're not forceful at all with the tertiary doctrines,

because those are where we can be a member of the church and still all disagree here.

But let me ask you a question. So my church, one of the things we had to do was we had to write our own confessional statement,

our practices, our doctrinal practices did not match the denomination.

We are open communion and the Southern Baptist Convention is very clearly close or closed communion, depending on your interpretation.

So I was kind of put in a weird spot of like the church doctrine, which has been since the founding,

since the founding was open communion, and we were openly violating the Baptist faith and message.

So we wrote our own, and in doing so, we also added an erudcy to our confessional statement,

because the Baptist faith and message much to the surprise of many people does not include a clear statement on an erudcy.

Yeah, I mean, I agree. We're right in the middle of that right now with our bylaws.

And so we've got what we call a summary of faith, and it's a little bit different.

Officially our statement is what's called the Baptist faith and message 1963, and it's a fine document.

It doesn't include some pivotal statements. It also includes some other things that may or may not be,

you know, there's a lot of churches that really hold to the 63.

Well, there's statements in the 63 that you probably don't hold to, such as you're not allowed to enjoy worldly pleasures on the Lord's Day.

Such as, you know, a football game or the Super Bowl.

So there's all kinds of things that these things, I think they need to be updated.

I think they need to be pretty simplistic and easy to defend.

But there are some missing things like we don't have a statement in our summary that talks about the details of the second return of Christ,

or male or female leadership as far as like deacons, because those are tertiary issues.

Those are issues that we can disagree on, but what it does is it helps the pastor when you have a clear statement like that.

It helps the pastor know when somebody's upset because their small group leader is, you know, expressing this view of the eschatology.

You say, yeah, that's a lot. That's actually a lot.

And you're allowed to have your view as well, but these ones, these are the ones that, you know, you kind of have to line up too.

It's very helpful, very important.

And, yeah, something that we do, but we have some more.

Number two, number two, proactively hunt, hunt wolves, which it should just be it's just that's what it should say.

If you've got bullet point list of things that a pastor should do, requirements of a pastor pro act in the key, there's proactively proactively hunt wolves.

Wolves and sheep's clothing are people who look the part better there to do harm.

You have to root them out. You have to hunt them. And then you have to very forcefully removes them.

And by forcefully, I don't mean you go assault somebody.

Never assault anyone.

I'm not condoning criminal activity.

Although, you know, you had to drag somebody out of the church by their ears, not saying I've ever had to do that, but sometimes you just have to.

I don't know that I would have to do that.

Proactively hunting wolves, yeah, I think I think it goes hand in hand with the doctrines.

This is why new members, prospective members should have conversations about the doctrines of the church say these are what we believe.

And this is what will be taught here.

And I also think that this is one of the reasons why small group leaders should affirm what it is that you're teaching everybody who gets into the pulpit to preach should affirm what the church believed.

This is part of guarding against those things.

Also, on social media, a lot of times, we'll see people share different influencers and those kind of things.

And with wit and wisdom, I think it's often very wise to speak against these sheep in wolves clothing.

I've said recently in a sermon that my thoughts on it backwards. It's not a sheep in a wolf's clothing.

I said it in a sermon not too long ago that you're not going to find the wolves very often in the pulpit.

What you will find them is in your social media feed.

And so it's important for pastors to speak into that and say, hey, this influencer, this pastor, quote unquote, pastor, this is a wolf.

And here's why.

All right, point number three. And this is where we're getting into some of the less serious ones.

Field inquiries about business recommendations.

What do you mean by that?

I cannot tell you how many times I've been asked, do you know a plumber? Do you know a lawyer?

Do you know a farmer?

Do you know? Do you know? Do you know? Do you know?

Sometimes I'm like, sure, I do. Do your little due diligence.

But I probably get asked for recommendations, business recommendations, whether it be I'm looking to partner with someone.

I'm looking to sell my business, or I'm just looking for somebody to hire out and do a renovation.

I would say at least twice a week, if not more.

Wow.

And part of the reason is because of the makeup of my church, it's a lot of local people who own local businesses.

And or work in the business, you know, kind of the business community of our of Bradenton.

It could be a boat captain. It could be, you know, somebody who owns the hair salon.

We just have a lot of people like that in our church. So I'm often, you know, engaging with these kinds of discussions.

Now, I have a business background. So I absolutely love this. It is not a problem for me.

But if you are a pastor and you happen to be in a community where you've got people in your church, kind of this is the constituency of you.

You just better be prepared for people to ask whether or not you want to make the recommendation. That's your call.

But you will be asked.

Yeah, I don't get this a lot at all.

It's just I just don't know why I don't get this.

The one time or two, I had a friend who lived on the other side of Dallas and they needed to do some car repairs over here.

I just kind of post it. I got a buddy that needs a mechanic. Anybody recommends somebody over here and got several suggestions.

People started saying, hey, I second this one. I second that one. And then he just looked into him and booked the one.

He was really pleased with that recommendation. So I don't mind bridging that gap for people.

Somebody was to ask me like, hey, do you know an AC guy? I'm like, I don't know. I mean, like there's a guy in our church.

He kind of knows some people like that. He should go ask him.

And so I just kind of bridge things. I never recommend I don't want to get into that.

Because, you know, there's a there's no I don't think there's real liability to it.

But there would be like implied liability.

Relational liability.

Yes.

Not legal liability.

All right. Guard the doctrine of the church.

Correctively hunt wolves.

Yep.

If you're in a certain community, you may be building inquiries about business recommendations.

Point number four.

Navigate community. That's key.

And internal church politics.

There is there is far more political.

There's far more of a political bit to the church than a lot of people realize.

And I mean that in a positive way because you're dealing with it.

And I'm going to oversimplify politics here.

But politics is simply the scarce allocation of the allocation of scarce resources.

So what I'm trying to say.

I mean, it just comes down to who's getting what and when.

And that's a gross oversimplification.

But you have a lot of that in the church just because it works that way.

And you know, it's weird to me when people are like, yeah, I just don't do politics in my church.

And I get what they mean by that is I don't do partisanship fair enough.

Like that's for the police.

Yes.

But if you don't do politics in your church, you ain't going to survive a week.

Because you know, the worship pastor going to eat your lunch at budget.

Budget time because worship pastors are incredibly good at getting more money through the budgetary process.

And that is a political process that all of church budgeting is a political process.

It is the allocation of scarce resources.

You only have so much budget and so many so many people are going to get it and everybody wants a piece of the pie.

So not only going to navigate internal church politics, sometimes you're going to get pulled into community politics as well.

And I'll say this, the smaller the town, the more likely you're going to be involved in politics if you're in the church.

Yeah.

I've never heard that definition of politics.

It's mine.

It's mine.

And it's a gross oversimplification.

Economics.

But politics, to me, in my mind, the way I think of politics is just the simple act of leading people.

It's collectively like people.

When people, when you have people, you have politics.

And yeah, I agree with you with the partisan sort of stuff.

But yeah, all I say all the time, past rings politics.

You have to, you have to whip up the votes.

You have to talk to this people and talk to that people.

There's negotiations involved.

There's all kinds of like helping people understand large things.

Yeah.

And so even in a lot of Baptist churches, we have a representative democracy.

That's what Baptist churches are usually set up like.

And so you got to function and act in those ways.

Same thing in the local kind of community as well.

When the school board is making a decision, a ton of your people are going to be very involved in that and passionate about it and know some stuff.

And so you got to be careful what you say and how you say it.

You don't want to lose relational points just because you made the wrong joke at the wrong time.

So politics is important.

Learn how to deal with people and learn how to be what I would say is don't worry about being political.

Worry about being diplomatic and you're going to go a lot further.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm fine with the way that you phrase that.

I would just say if used appropriately, politics can be a very powerful tool for leadership.

So I'm going to differ with you a little bit on some of your definitions there.

But you know, it's not the point of this podcast.

Yeah, Paul, if you if you don't use the political frame and leadership, you are as a pastor, you're dismissing like 50% of your influence.

That's an arbitrary number.

Like, you know, you're basically giving up on a boatload of influence that you can have.

Yeah.

And some people think that when we talk about this this way, it's like you're manipulating.

That's not what I'm saying.

No, we're not saying being manipulative.

But what we are saying is understand that there's influence and there's relationships all over the place.

And different people have influence and other people have different relationships.

And you've got to navigate all that.

You've got to somehow speak.

I stand in front of you stand in front of 800 people every Sunday.

And we say the same sermon.

It's one sermon, but it's to 800 years and different pockets and different family groups.

You've got to navigate all of that.

That's very, it eats a lot of guys.

Pastors up, but something to do.

All right.

This next one.

I'm just going to wind up Josh and let him go.

Point number five here in the show notes.

Be ready to, so another critical function rarely found in the job description.

Be ready to respond to questions about random YouTube videos.

People watch.

Go.

Oh, my goodness.

This is such a normal thing.

And it's not YouTube is bad.

TikTok is worse.

TikTok is just the most.

It's the strongest collection of stupid I've ever heard.

And I'm not on TikTok.

I just see it.

A lot of people will share it and they'll be like, oh, this is so impactful.

And I'm like, in what world is that even?

It's nonsensical.

It doesn't even make sense.

It's not a test of reality.

So that you do have to respond to this quite often because people have.

In the area of politics or influence, influence and time, these things have become.

Money, they become valuable.

And so somebody with a lot of following on TikTok becomes influential,

even if they don't know what the lick they're talking about.

So you've got to respond to these people will ask you.

They'll say.

They'll say, hey, did you see so inside?

They said such and such.

And I'm like, no, I didn't.

And you should turn off TikTok and stop watching YouTube reels.

Or shorts.

And so it would do a lot of people a lot of good to get off of that.

But you do have to respond to it quite a bit.

Facebook messages, text messages, Twitter.

I get sent stuff all the time.

And yeah, it's almost always well meeting people like, hey, check this out.

And sometimes I'm able to.

Sometimes I'm not.

And yes, social media is the greatest collection of stupid on the planet.

Although AI is catching up very quickly to that.

More on that later in another episode, point number six.

Engage the media in a way that elevates the reputation of the church.

This is so important.

Nobody.

And they need to do this as seminars.

Nobody gets PR training.

Something happens in the community.

Something happens in your church could be good or bad.

But something happens.

There are cameras there.

And they want to interview you.

They are rolling.

You have not gotten advanced notice about what is going to be said in this interview.

Are you ready and capable of getting in front of a camera and saying something?

This is another reason why I tend to stay fairly well dressed, by the way.

Whenever I am like on duty, so to speak, as a pastor.

If I'm at the church Sunday or Wednesday or whatever.

Because I never know when the camera is going to get shoved in my face for some reason.

It could be media or it could just be somebody in my church that wants to record something on whatever that is.

But you've got to be ready to talk to reporters.

You've got to be ready to give statements.

You've got to be ready to very quickly.

Get under your toes and get on your toes and say what you need to say.

Because if you don't, then things can kind of fly back on you if you don't issue a statement.

And I have seen so many churches fumble and pastors fumble this opportunity because it is a big opportunity.

When the hurricane hit, for instance, here in Braydenton, I was on all sorts of national news.

I was on Dana Prano's show and others talking about what we were doing because they saw that I was willing to do interviews.

I was okay at it because I got a lot of practice doing stuff like this.

But I was prepared and it was very good.

And because of that, I was able to solicit donations for about a quarter of a million dollars.

And we used every penny of that.

Did not keep any of it to help people in our community.

So this is not a negative thing.

It's not like, oh, there was something that happened at church and somebody wants to attack somebody in the media wants to attack me.

It could be that something good is going on and you have an opportunity to put yourself out there in a way that really elevates the reputation of the church.

Yeah, I've never had the camera situation happen to me.

And I always dress like I'm dressed right now, which is T-shirt and jeans.

So I don't know that I'd be great at it.

I think I can think on my feet pretty quickly.

I tend to stiff arm.

When I get newspaper, they'll be news or online.

They'll get they'll call and they'll ask for a comment on these things.

I always just respond.

Oh, well, there's a lot of times I just don't respond at all.

And they'll go find somebody else to kind of do that.

Now, if you're...

I take all of those.

You and I are so different here.

I take all of those opportunities.

I just ignore them.

Yeah, I can't control what they're going to say and how they're going to spin it and how they're going to do things.

And so I just don't want to be involved in them.

And then as far as the camera in my face, that's not happened to me, thankfully.

I would have just...

I'm quick on my feet and I'm diplomatic.

So I would have been fine with that.

But it immediately made me think of protesters disrupting a worship service and going in unlawfully.

And how well that well dressed pastor took care of that.

So I thought he did a great job.

So that's one way to do that.

Okay, yeah.

That would be an extreme example.

It's likely not going to happen in your church, although it'd be good to be prepared for that.

It's not going to happen.

Let me give you another example.

First, first church.

For...

Yeah, I haven't been to church for a long time.

I haven't been to it very far.

It's in Florida, by the way.

Yeah, problem.

We may not have the chip on our shoulder, but we're just as armed as you are.

Just as armed.

I don't know.

I'm iguanas of people.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, we got our pediglons in Caligators.

They're unleashes in the church.

They're service animals.

They're service animals.

So, in First Baptist Church, Murray, we had this huge debacle of the situation with stained glass windows

and being on the National Register of Historic Places, on the Historic Overlay District,

dealing with a very combative group of people that would not let us change our windows.

And I won't get all the details of that.

But I was doing national interviews.

So, church state issues of like, you know, how can the government basically claim your facility

and not even allow you to do this?

And I was like, I don't know.

So, I had to put myself out there because it was an issue with our church.

Now, eventually it all worked out.

It was fine.

But here I am, you know, 20-something years old doing these national TV interviews over church state issues

because my church can't put in new stained glass windows.

Because the Stink and, you know, committee in my local town wouldn't let us.

That were part of the history committee or whatever.

Those are the things that you're more likely to deal with.

Don Limon's probably not coming to your church.

But somebody from your local town may try to exercise a little too much power.

And, you know, you may not be able to do something you want to do as a church,

whether it be a code issue or something like a, you know, historical overlay district issue.

These are the things that I'm talking about.

Those are the, you know, you need to be prepared for that because likely,

they're likely to happen at some point in your ministry.

Last issue.

Yeah, this one kind of dovetails right in there.

Be knowledgeable about local infrastructure changes impacting the church.

So, similar to the cities getting involved in this or the cities making this change or that.

Even things like the school district is making this change or that.

They'll impact the people of your church.

And a lot of times people want you to weigh in on that.

They're going to widen the road that your church is on and they're going to practice imminent domain and take up.

Take part of your parking lot to do it.

One of the things that we specialize in at church answers are these imminent domain issues.

And we've done without, obviously, without saying anything on air.

We've done some of the bigger cases in the United States that involve first amendment cases and others where imminent domain was practiced wrongly.

Little, you know, too well and horn here.

We're batting a thousand on winning all of these cases as expert witnesses and all of that.

So you may think, I'm just going to shepherd my people.

I'm just going to take care of my people.

I'm just going to care for them and state, you know, stay focused on my church.

Okay, that's great.

That's a wonderful attitude.

It's inadequate leadership though.

Like you're not, there are going to be things that happen that you have to be prepared for as a leader.

And you will get run over a lot of times if you're not, if you're not ready, particularly with these infrastructure issues.

Because if you don't say anything, you better believe they're just going to plow that road right through your property.

And I would say largely, like, I mean, if you're hearing this and being like, I need to be prepared, I need to go get a law degree or a PR degree.

That's not what we're saying.

I'm not even sure, you know, like none of this kind of stuff has ever happened to me.

And I'm in my 25th year of ministry.

It doesn't mean it won't happen, but I'm not intimidated if it was to happen tomorrow.

Because I've built a network of relationships with people.

And I know who to call.

And I know who I will.

Churchesters.com.

Yeah.

Or Texas Baptist or church law group.

Or Texas passes.

They're good too.

I like that.

There's a lot of work with them at church answers.

So I'm just saying that you need to have the, you need to have the network and the relationships.

And at least be aware somewhat of some stuff not to do.

Maybe some general rules of thumb.

That's why I don't ever respond to newspapers.

And so.

Speaking of which I just, I have a, I have a Texas Baptist example that we were a part of.

Not technically hired to help with this shallow water Texas is a community that is about to have their water cut off by Lubbock.

There's a whole situation with that.

I won't get into it because we don't have time on the show.

But we did talk with one of the local pastors who is basically coming to us and what do I do?

It was a major infrastructure change that was going to negatively impact this community, negatively impact his church.

And he, and he's doing a great job.

I mean, honestly, the guy is doing an amazing job.

So this is a good example of a pastor doing it right.

But he's seeking out the help to know what to do about it.

These are, I mean, he told us he says, I'm just a relational guy.

I'm just a guy.

I just love my people.

But I know I need a plan.

And I know I'm going to have to deal with this.

That's a pastor who is everything you'd want in a pastor.

But at the same time, understanding, I'm going to be very knowledgeable about this because I don't want my church to get hurt.

Yeah, you can't just let it go.

You're the one that's going to make these calls, whether it's theology or talking to the mayor.

And you got to do both of those things.

And it's just part of the job.

It's not fun often.

But, um, oh well, sometimes it is fun.

A lot of this is fun.

I like this stuff.

And that's why I do what I do.

Anyways, that's all the time we got for the day.

It kind of went along.

It did.

Thank you, Southern Seminary, for being a sponsor to, uh, church answers.

And the episode sbts.edu slash demon is where you can go to learn more about their doctor of ministry.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much for listening.

We'll get you next time.

Thank you for joining us today here on the Rainer on Leadership Podcast.

Be sure to watch on YouTube or subscribe and listen on iTunes, Google Podcast, Spotify, or in your favorite podcasting app.

For additional resources on church leadership and to join the conversation online, visit churchanswers.com where we are growing healthy churches together.