The Secret to Being a Successful Pastor: A 5-Day Challenge by Andrew HébertSample

DAY 4

“Blessed are the peacemakers,” Jesus said, “for they will be called sons of God” (Matthew 5:9).

I’m going to argue that one of the most important responsibilities of any pastor, or any believer for that matter, is to be committed to the ministry of reconciliation. A peace-making pastor is a reconciling pastor. He seeks to reconcile people to God and people to each other.

If you reduce pastoral ministry down to its most essential task, you could say it is peacemaking. Our ministry should be about vertical and horizontal reconciliation, the reconciliation of people to God and people to each other. Every other pastoral task is for this purpose: to see people come to peace with God and live in peace with each other. The aim of every sermon, every counseling session, every pastoral interaction, is at its bottom an attempt to see people united to Christ and Christ’s people.

God’s plan is “to bring everything together in Christ” (Ephesians 1:10). As pastors, our aim is to see the lost united to Christ and the saved united to one another.

Peacemaking pastors seek to bring people to peace with God and into peaceful fellowship with God’s people. That’s what it means to be a reconciling pastor.

The eighth and final beatitude of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:10-12 confronts us with a hard, uncomfortable truth:

"Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs. You are blessed when they insult you and persecute you and falsely say every kind of evil against you because of me. Be glad and rejoice, because your reward is great in heaven. For that is how they persecuted the prophets who were before you."

If you live for Jesus, your life will become harder, not easier, because of your faith in Jesus. Pastors can bet on it. Persecution is a normative part of the Christian life. It’s a normative part of pastoral ministry.

Now pause and notice that Jesus doesn’t give a blanket blessing on those who are persecuted for any reason whatsoever. He says you are blessed when you are persecuted because of righteousness.

As we think about this beatitude in light of pastoral ministry, I believe the quality it calls for is endurance. As pastors we need to be clear-eyed about the fact that pastoral ministry is going to mean persecution and opposition. If we are going to cross the finish line of ministry, we need to be willing to endure whatever hardship comes our way in the course of our pastoral calling. If we are going to embody the character of Christ in pastoral ministry, we need, I argue, tough hides and tender hearts.