You're Not The Boss Of Me

You’re Not The Boss Of Me

Hebrews 13: 17&18

Intro: There was a pastor sitting with his board of deacons and they were discussing the budget for the next year. The subject of the pastors salary came up and there was a discussion about his compensation for the next year. One of the deacons spoke up and said “pastor I don’t see why we should give you a raise for preaching just one average sermon per week” The pastor looked at the board and told them that he would preach the Gospel for free. What they were paying him for was to attend meetings such as the one he was in and for that, he was woefully underpaid.

. A preacher once took out the towel dispensers in the bathrooms at the church and replaced them with those electric dryers that we all hate. One Sunday morning he went into the restroom and there was a note on the dryer. It said,”please press button for a preview of the pastors sermon.”

. Play follow the leader with the leadership team for a minute.

. Today’sermon is on leadership.

. Who is the Boss.

. As seen in the previous illustration, leadership can be good when we are all going in the same direction and bad when we get people going in all different directions.

. God has designed His church in such a way as to lay out the leadership model.

. We see this in our scripture this morning.

. I have not looked forward to this message but we are here in Hebrews and I cannot and will not pick and choose the scripture that I like .

. I bring this message with the fear that some will take this message as self serving.

. Anytime the pastor preaches on pastoral responsibility and leadership it is with the certain knowledge that some will think that the sermon is self promoting.

. It’s been said that the church on its best day is the gathering of imperfect people. If you’ve been in the church long enough you’ve probably been hurt by Pastor or a leader in the church. Maybe they didn’t mean to hurt you, but they did and the hurt is real. Maybe you’ve seen a church blow up. Maybe you have bitterness towards a past Pastor. Maybe you got asked to leave your church. Many of us have been let down by someone. So the question is how could we ever trust a Pastoral leader again?

. The truth is that this is a difficult time to be a pastor in America. Every pastor is constantly compared to the greatest Preachers in our country. Because of Christian radio and podcasts, every Christian in this country has the opportunity to listen to a top handful of Christian preachers and teachers giving their best stuff, edited and packaged with artistically interspersed background music. As Kent Hughes points out, “When they come to church on Sunday they find the fare to be …dull in comparison.

. On Wednesday night we were in Bible study and someone was telling me how they had heard a great sermon by Tony Evans on the subject we were talking about. I jokingly told him that I sometimes felt inadequate because of the teaching and sermons of some of these great teachers and men of God.

. Like it or not, you are stuck with me until such time as God is finished with me here at the Creek.

. As we look at our scripture this morning we will see some responsibilities in leadership for the pastor/elder and some responsibilities for those that are being led.

. Lets read our scripture, Hebrews 13:17&18:

. 17Obey your spiritual leaders, and do what they say. Their work is to watch over your souls, and they are accountable to God. Give them reason to do this with joy and not with sorrow. That would certainly not be for your benefit.

18Pray for us, for our conscience is clear and we want to live honorably in everything we do.

. The first thing we see here a word that we all dislike don’t we.

. Obey

. We can talk about obedience to God and get away with that but when we talk about obedience to another human being well that’s just a little much for us.

. My wife is in children’s church this morning so I can talk about her.

. 31 years ago when we were putting together our wedding ceremony,(although in essence it was her and her mother because I was just along for the ride) we reviewed our vows. Now she wanted us to write our own and didn’t want to do that. Believe it or not, I won that round. I savor that memory because I haven’t won one since. I digress.