My first job description as an Executive Pastor had two pages of administrative responsibilities and two bullet points of pastoral duties. While this may be typical of most executive or administrative roles, we cannot forget that we are pastors and bear the responsibilities that come with this biblical office.  Here are some reminders to keep you focused in your ministry as an Executive Pastor.

1. You are a pastor

You are in your role as an Executive Pastor because you enjoy administrative tasks and are gifted that way. But let’s not forget our responsibility as a shepherd of God’s flock.  If you are at a church of a size that necessitates an Executive Pastor, then your membership is too large for your Lead Pastor to bear the burden of providing pastoral care alone.  Help to ease his burden by making calls, hospital visits, and helping with counseling sessions that are within your capability.

There are ways you can fulfill your shepherding responsibilities even in your assigned administrative responsibilities. You can do this by being intentional to pray with people after meetings, calling your key leaders to check on them personally and not only when you have ministry questions, and studying Scripture to teach your congregation the biblical principles that form your decisions.

2. Your ministry is people

Budgets, logistics, and facilities dominate most of our time. If we’re not careful, we forget that those are merely means to help us accomplish our main purpose to reach people. We stick to budgets to ensure we are committing the resources necessary to reach the lost. We guard mission statements to keep us on task in our Great Commission to make disciples. We build and maintain facilities as a homebase from which our members are equipped and refreshed from their work in the field.

A characteristic that makes us successful in our jobs is a bent toward being task oriented. Churches need staff members like us who drive the ministry forward and keep it on mission. Accomplishing this requires that we work with people, but sometimes we may look past them. Our instructions can be brief and pointed, our emails are sometimes terse, and the ministry feedback we deliver may be blunt. But when we overlook people to accomplish a task, we have lost sight of our true assignment. People are not assets we use to build our ministry; we build people and trust God to build the ministry.

3. You are a disciple

More than we are administrators, we are followers of Christ. As such, we are to continuously pursue Him. If you have served in your roll for several years, you may have reached a point where you can function effectively without great effort. The challenge in your day-to-day responsibilities may have declined. It is at this point where you must push yourself to keep growing lest you fall into a rut both professionally and spiritually.

You may be doing an excellent job in maintaining your existing skills, but look for other areas in which to grow. In many ways, this blog was birthed from my desire to push myself to grow in the discipline of writing. This will help me develop the ability to organize my thoughts and communicate them to others. Communicating through writing will also allow me to reach more of my church members efficiently and with greater detail than through church announcements.  

Maybe for you it’s preaching or teaching that you would like to develop, so take on a Sunday School class or small group. If you want to grow in finances or accounting, look at your local community college for class offerings. Maybe it’s time to consider a post-grad or advanced degree from seminary. Prayerfully consider an area of growth for you and pursue it as a faithful disciple of Christ.

4. You are a church member

As pastors, we often exhort our members that church membership requires more than sitting in a pew, but also involves actively serving. Let’s preach this message to ourselves and get up from our desks and serve in ways in which we are not compensated. The words of David in 2 Sam. 24:24 are reverberating through my mind as I write this, “I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God that costs me nothing.”   Yes, our role as a pastor is a servant role, but one in which we are compensated. Like most of your members, find ways to serve expecting nothing in return. 

Serve in church ministries, don’t just oversee them. I realize that your pastoral role may not allow you to be a consistent presence in any one particular ministry, but there are many ways to serve. Some examples are to host a youth or college get together in your home, volunteer to go on the next senior citizens trip, be a VBS volunteer, give one Sunday a month to be in the nursery. Your church context will dictate how you serve, but remember to be a church member, not just an employee.