Ordination Or Installation Service Charge To The Church

Ordination Charge to Church October 27, 2018

Main Idea: Based upon my experience with the people of Riverview Community Church, I think they have an awful lot together. So my challenge to you is to stay on track by continuing the Biblical attitudes that you have toward your pastors. But it doesn’t hurt to review and reinforce them.

I. Continue Remembering that Your Pastor is A Person, Not A FUNCTIONARY.

1. A man I knew from the post office. Never saw him except behind the counter. Ran into him at a restaurant one day. Doctors. Lawyers.

2. Steve is part of the body, and he and his family need your prayers. His wife is not a second pastor, and his kids are like everyone else’s kids.

3. He is not part of a special species, he does sleep in his church clothes, and he thinks about other things besides church or God.

4. This church has a heritage of understanding this concept, I believe. Continue to separate a man’s function from his value as a man who is a brother in Christ?

Acts 10:25-26, “When Peter entered, Cornelius met him and fell down at his feet and worshiped him. But Peter lifted him up, saying, “Stand up; I too am a man.”

II. Continue Remembering that Your Pastor Needs to Be HIMSELF, Not Somebody Else.

Illustration: Give birth to a child. Second one comes along. Guilty that you are not giving the first one as much attention. You adjust. You are not betraying your first child because you love 2nd child, too. Same with a pastor you love & new pastor.

A. Please don’t COMPARE your pastor to other pastors and speakers

Don’t share with him how a speaker on the radio or TV is your favorite. Not only are you reducing him back to a functionary, you are demoralizing him. The subtle message is, “you don’t rate.” Or, worse, yet, “Stop being you and let me engineer you to tailor make you to what I want you to be.” Very rude.

The Golden Rule applies toward pastors, too.

B. Allow your pastor to minister based upon his GIFTEDNESS, not his predecessor’s.

Your first child is a boy and love athletics. Your second a girl, and she loves art. Are you going to take the pencil out of her hand and replace it with a baseball bat and say, “I want you to be athletic like your brother!” Hopefully not. Apples and oranges.

C. A COMPETITIVE spirit in the church is a bad thing.

I Corinthians 3:4-5, “4 For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human? What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each.”

Don't try to make Apollos into Paul, or Paul into Apollos.

“I am of John MacArthur. I am of Tony Evans. I am of Charles Stanley.”

III. Continue Remembering that Your Pastor Is A Gift from God, Not a HIRED Hand.

A. God CALLS a man to ministry; if he is led to your church and the church is led to accept him, the church supports him but doesn’t own him.

B. He is to be ACCOUNTABLE but not the victim of obsessive CONTROL.

Ephesians 4:11-13, “ And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ…”

C. When you hire help, you don’t OBEY help; but God tells us to obey our spiritual leaders.

Hebrews 13:17, “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.”