Today’s passage has a lot to tell us about the job of a minister or pastor or elder. Maybe you think, ‘I’m not a minister or pastor or elder. This doesn’t apply to me’! But all of us have responsibilities towards other people. This passage has something to say to all of us.
Before I get started, I’d like to say something about the word ‘pastor’. In Baptist churches in the UK, the main leader of a church is often called the ‘pastor’. But in most Bibles, the word pastor only comes once. That’s in Ephesians 4:11: ‘So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the PASTORS and teachers…’
You might think that this is rather strange. Surely a pastor is an important person in a church? So why does the word ‘pastor’ come only once in the Bible? Actually, the ESV doesn’t use the word ‘pastor’ even once! It has the word SHEPHERDS instead of pastors. That’s because the word that’s translated ‘pastor’ in most Bibles is literally ‘shepherd.’
So, when we think about a ‘pastor’ of a church, we need to imagine a ‘shepherd.’ And we shouldn’t imagine a shepherd in a UK setting. We should imagine a shepherd in the time of the Bible.
Let’s now go back to our passage.
The apostle Paul is on his third missionary journey. He’s travelled through ‘Asia’, the area we know as Turkey. On his way, he visited Ephesus. He found some disciples there and ended up staying there three years. It looks like the church in Ephesus grew during this time. When Paul arrived, he found disciples. When he left, there were elders.
Paul left Ephesus and went to Greece. But now he’s decided to go to Jerusalem. On the way to Jerusalem, he wants to see the elders of the church in Ephesus.
Rather than stop in Ephesus, he decides to stop at Miletus, thirty miles south. When he gets there he asks the elders of the Ephesian church to come over. As I mentioned, Miletus was about thirty miles from Ephesus. Paul wouldn’t have asked the elders to make that trip if he didn’t have something important to say.
In the 500 or so words that he says, Paul has basically one instruction for the elders of the Ephesian church:
‘Be on guard for yourselves and for all THE FLOCK, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, TO SHEPHERD the church of God which He purchased with His own blood’ [Acts 20:28, NASB].
Paul talks about THE FLOCK and he talks about SHEPHERDING the church of God. He likens the job of looking after God’s people to the job of a shepherd looking after a flock.
Paul’s first three words are ‘Be on guard.’ That is his key message to the Ephesian elders. In a moment, we’ll take a look at that.
But first, I want to go back a bit. Paul has a lot to say to the Ephesian elders. He doesn’t start with this instruction to be on guard. What else does he talk about?
Paul first needs to set the scene, to bring the Ephesian elders up to speed. He tells the elders that he’s on his way to Jerusalem. He doesn’t know what will happen to him there. ‘But’, he says, ‘the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me.’ Then he continues, ‘None of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again’ [v.22-23,25]. To summarise: Paul is going to Jerusalem. He’s expecting trouble. He’s departing the scene.
Because Paul believes he will no longer be around he wants to tell the elders of the Ephesian church three main things.
THE FIRST PART of what Paul tells the Ephesian elders is ACCOUNTING.
I once worked on a large relief and development project in Azerbaijan. We rebuilt schools and clinics which had been damaged in fighting, got wells working again, supplied seed for farmers and so on. When we got to the end, we had to write a FINAL REPORT. And we had a ‘lessons learned’ session.
Paul is saying, ‘I’ve come to the end of my time with you. This is my FINAL REPORT.’
Or another analogy. You finish working for a company. Then you might have an ACCOUNTING. You hand back any company equipment you’ve been using: the laptop, the mobile phone, the company credit card.
Paul is saying, ‘I’ve come to the end of my time with you. This is my ACCOUNTING.’
You might think that in Christian ministry, God is the one to judge. Our own evaluation of our work is meaningless. But it isn’t! Baptist ministers are taught to be ‘reflective practitioners.’ We’re supposed to reflect on what we’ve been doing. In the project in Azerbaijan, we wouldn’t have learned anything if we hadn’t had a ‘lessons learned’ session, if we hadn’t reflected.
So, put yourself in Paul’s shoes. Your work with the Ephesian church is finished. So, it’s time for doing the accounts, for writing the final report. How would you evaluate your ministry?
Well … the church in Ephesus has grown! They’re a hard-working lot. They’re keeping going in testing times. If I was Paul, I might give myself ten out of ten!
But that isn’t how Paul evaluated his ministry. His evaluation wasn’t based on RESULTS but on WHAT HE DID and WHAT HE SAID ... especially on WHAT HE SAID.
Look at verse 20. Paul starts by saying, ‘You know how I LIVED among you.’ Then he continues, ‘…how I DID NOT SHRINK from declaring to you anything that was profitable.’ Now go on to verses 26-27. Paul says, ‘Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all of you, for I DID NOT SHRINK from declaring to you the whole counsel of God [v. 26-27].
Many years before, Jesus had appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus. He told Paul that he had appeared to him to appoint him as a servant and witness to the Gentiles, to open their eyes, so that they might turn from darkness to light [Acts 26:15-28].
Jesus had given Paul a job. Paul knew what it was. And he'd done it. He hadn’t shrunk from faithfully declaring and teaching God’s message. He’d had the thirty-nine lashes five times. He was beaten with rods three time. He was stoned once. But he’d pressed on. HE’D DONE WHAT JESUS HAD CALLED HIM TO. That was Paul’s evaluation. That was the basis for him to look back on his ministry and consider it a success.
Exactly the same principle applies to us as we evaluate whether our ministry is a success. It isn’t whether the church has grown or whether everyone is happy with us. The only question is, did I do what God told me to?
THE SECOND PART of what Paul tells the Ephesian elders is EXHORTING.
Paul EXHORTS the Ephesian elders to do something. Look at verse 28:
‘Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood’ [v.28, NASB].
‘Be on guard!’ Paul tells the elders. Why? Because there’s danger.
Notice that Paul doesn’t just say, ‘Be on guard for all the flock.’ He says, ‘Be on guard FOR YOURSELVES and for all the flock.’
Ministers and pastors first have to stand guard OVER THEMSELVES. John Stott commented that our duty to ourselves should actually take precedence because we can’t look after others if we don’t take care of ourselves. This is important! Ministers have moral failures. Ministers have burnouts. Ministers need to guard themselves.
Last month I needed to get in touch with some of the ministers in Churches Together in Boscombe. I sent an email out. I got a reply from one minister that he was away on retreat. Then a week later I got a reply from another minister to say she was on retreat too. Were they skiving off? No. They were doing what Paul told them to do: they were guarding themselves.
Let’s go back to the ‘Why?’ question. Why do overseers need to guard themselves and the flock? Paul explains:
‘I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them’ [v. 29-30].
Paul speaks of two dangers. Wolves will appear from OUTSIDE the church. And men speaking twisted things will appear from INSIDE the church. In v.31 Paul tells the elders, ‘Therefore be alert.’
At the start of this talk I said that the word for pastor in the Bible is literally ‘shepherd’.
I imagine that most of us have a view of what a pastor or shepherd of a church is supposed to be like. Let me offer you three pictures and you decide which of them is closer to what Paul is looking for.
My first picture of a pastor is THE THERAPEUTIC COUNSELLOR. When I trained to be a minister I had a course on ‘pastoral care.’ The course was about things like psychology, counselling, listening, bereavement, forgiveness, wholeness and growth. DON’T GET ME WRONG. I’M NOT SAYING THAT WE DON’T NEED COUNSELLORS. We do. But the word ‘wolf’ did not appear in this pastoral care course.
My second picture of a pastor is society’s mocking image of a pastor. The pastor is in a dog collar. He has a smarmy smile. He’s holding a cup of tea and chatting to people. You can even get mugs and teapots with the phrase ‘More tea, Vicar?’ This pastor is like a small dog that looks nice and wags its tail. It may bark if it sees a wolf. But it will never see a wolf off. I call him THE PUPPY-DOG PASTOR.
My third picture of a pastor is THE PSALM 23 PASTOR. In Psalm 23, David talks about God, his shepherd, leading him through the valley of the shadow of death. Valleys in Israel are dry and craggy, strewn with boulders which provide shadow and concealment for predators. So, the shadows may literally be shadows of death. But David knows he’s safe. His shepherd is on the lookout. His shepherd can take care of those predators. His shepherd is gentle – but as hard as nails when he needs to be.
Paul exhorts the Ephesian elders to SHEPHERD the church of God. Which of those pictures of the pastor or shepherd corresponds with the kind of pastor or shepherd Paul wants the Ephesian elders to be?
The shepherds Paul wants will be on guard. They will be alert. They will fight off fierce wolves.
THE THERAPEUTIC COUNSELLOR kind of pastor won’t do. This pastor doesn’t even think about wolves.
Society’s mocking PUPPY-DOG PASTOR won’t do. This pastor is inoffensive – and completely ineffectual against a wolf.
The only kind of a pastor that can do the job is THE PSALM 23 PASTOR. In contrast to the puppy-dog pastor, this pastor is like an alert guard dog. Listening. Sniffing. Suspicious. Growling at every stranger. Barking when danger comes close. And fighting with wolves if it comes to that.
That is the kind of shepherd Paul was calling the Ephesian elders to be.
Is this the kind of shepherd we need OUR pastors to be? If there are no wolves in England then we don’t need this kind of shepherd. But the reality is that any number of fierce wolves have come into the church in England and have not spared the flock. We need to be and call and train shepherds who are on guard, who are alert, who will fight off fierce wolves.
The therapeutic model of the pastor that ignores wolves is simply not helpful.
We’re into the home straight!
THE THIRD PART of what Paul tells the Ephesian elders is INSPIRING.
As Paul concludes his message he briefly returns to his own ministry. He says how he operated. ‘I coveted no one’s silver or gold or apparel … these hands ministered to my necessities’ [v.33-34]. He continues, ‘IN ALL THINGS I HAVE SHOWN YOU…’ Paul is pointing to his own pattern of ministry as an example to the Ephesian elders. He hopes they will learn from him, be INSPIRED by him.
That should be true for us too. Of course, we take Jesus as the model to follow. But we can also learn from people like Paul. Like the Ephesian elders, we can look at Paul’s LIFE as well as his TEACHING and take inspiration from it.
That brings us to the end of what Paul says to the Ephesian elders. The time has come for him to say goodbye. It would be a great movie scene, it’s so full of pathos. Listen and try to imagine it:
‘And when he – that is, Paul – had said these things, he KNELT DOWN and PRAYED with them all. And there was MUCH WEEPING ON THE PART OF ALL; THEY EMBRACED PAUL AND KISSED HIM, BEING SORROWFUL most of all because of the word he had spoken, that they would not see his face again. And they accompanied him to the ship’ [20:36-38 ESV].
Ouch. Paul, the Ephesians’ wonderful shepherd, was going. It was very painful. But it reminds us that when we choose to commit to really caring for and protecting a group of God’s people, to really being a shepherd to them, there will be these moments.
PRAYER
Lord Jesus.
Paul did his ACCOUNTING. Help us, please, as we do our accounting. Help us to evaluate on the right basis. Did we understand what you were telling us to do? Did we do it?
Paul EXHORTED the Ephesian elders to be shepherds who are on guard, who are alert, who will fight off fierce wolves. Help us, please, to be shepherds like that for the flock that is so precious to you.
Finally, Paul wanted to INSPIRE the Ephesian elders by the example of his own life. May we also find it a source of inspiration.
We ask this in your name, Amen.
Talk given at Rosebery Park Baptist Church, Bournemouth, UK, 15th October 2023, 10.30 a.m. service.
