Reflections from a Pastor to Pastors on John 10
Dear Fellow Pastor,
Before you read this letter, I want to invite you to pause and formulate an answer to this question: What makes a successful pastor?
Do you have your answer? What picture did the idea of a successful pastor conjure in your head? Did you imagine a man with jeans too skinny and glasses too big preaching with charisma and passion to an enraptured audience in person and online? Was your picture more traditional? Did you think of a mature man leading a large group of increasingly mature believers?
While the exterior is different, these pictures share a common set of underlying assumptions about what makes a successful pastor. Successful pastors lead many people who presumably give generously while gathering to worship in a large, well-kept building. Whatever our stated values, we (at least those of us in the Western church) tend to measure success across three main metrics: attendance, giving, and facilities.
As a pastor of a small campus at a large church—a campus that has met in a high school for seven years—those metrics have kept me up many nights. We baptize new believers and welcome new members, but families also move away. Our attendance is stagnant, and I feel like a failure. Our people give sacrificially, but there are only so many of them. We’re not even going to talk about the building. Time and again, I wrestle with the question: Am I a failure because the metrics don’t match our collective perceptions of a successful pastor?
As I’ve wrestled with that question, I’ve found a comforting answer in John’s gospel. The apostle Peter is the first man called as an under-shepherd in the age of the church. After he runs desperately back to Jesus, diving fully clothed from his fishing boat to swim to his resurrected Savior, Jesus issues a three-part call to under-shepherding. Twice Peter is called to feed Jesus’s sheep (John 21:15, 17), and he is also called to tend Jesus’s sheep (John 21:16).
That’s how Jesus measures success in pastoring.
When I read John 21, my mind hearkens back to the description of the Good Shepherd in John 10. What makes a good shepherd? When Jesus calls himself the good shepherd, he says, “the sheep hear his voice” (John 10:3), and I think, Do my sheep know my voice? Later Jesus says, “A stranger they will not follow,” (John 10:5), and I think, Do my sheep follow me? As I keep reading, I hear Jesus say, “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11), and I ask, Am I laying down my life for my church?
For the past couple years, this has been my operating definition of success as a pastor. I’ve preferred it to attendance, giving, and facilities because it’s based on Jesus. However, while reading John 10 recently, I was struck by how wrong I’ve been. I’ve been missing the point of John 10. I am not the Good Shepherd. Jesus is. The sheep shouldn’t respond to my voice; they should respond to his. They shouldn’t follow me; they should follow him. I don’t need to lay down my life for my church; Jesus already did.
This isn’t only true for me. It was true for Peter as well. Peter, as an under-shepherd, wasn’t ultimately called to be Jesus; he was called to follow Jesus (John 21:19). Pastor, the apostle Peter was not the Good Shepherd. He was an under-shepherd, which is why he introduces himself to elders in his first letter as “a fellow elder” (1 Pet. 5:1). You are not the Good Shepherd; you are an under-shepherd. Jesus alone is the Good Shepherd.
I hope that sounds like good news to you. I know it has humbled and refreshed my soul since I first felt the Spirit speaking that truth through John 10. Serving as an under-shepherd following the Good Shepherd brings freedom from false yokes. Pastor, God has not called you to be a CEO. He is not evaluating you by the growth of your church. God has not called you to be a politician. He is not evaluating you by your ability to stir up a group of followers. Fellow elder, God has not called you to be Jesus. He is not evaluating you by your ability to save your church.
Lay these burdens down and trust your Good Shepherd.
Lay down the burden of being a business leader. Of course, we need people and budgets to do ministry and earn an income, but those are not what provide for us. Jesus is our shepherd. He tells us to seek first his kingdom and trust that he will provide for our needs. He may not provide the way we want, but we can trust that he who gave up his life for us will provide abundantly by his measure.
Lay down the burden of being Jesus. Whether you’ve taken it knowingly or accidentally, let Jesus be Jesus. Certainly all believers are called and empowered to grow “to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13). We should become more like our Good Shepherd, but we are never called to become him. There is a profound difference between being Christlike and being Christ. The Church is his bride, not ours. Our call is to betroth her to him.
When we choose to follow our Good Shepherd, rather than take his place, we can find contentment, security, and joy under his kind guidance. We find the freedom to be who we really are: sheep in need of a shepherd. John 10 ceases to be a new law and becomes a great encouragement. In it, we hear the call to pause and listen to his voice. We are reminded he is leading us and leading the church to which he has called us. We hear the reassurance that he has already laid down his life for the sheep, and he will not lose us, or his church.
As under-shepherds, our leadership task changes. It is not ours to set vision. Instead, we seek to listen to his voice, ask him to make it known to the church, and then speak it boldly, trusting him to lead.
As Scripture looked forward to the Good Shepherd, God said in Ezekiel 34, “I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. And I, the LORD, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them. I am the LORD; I have spoken” (Ez. 34:23–24).
There is one shepherd, and he feeds us all, pastors and church members alike. Let’s follow him.
Your co-laborer in the gospel until the Chief Shepherd appears and we receive the unfading crown of glory,
David
Dave Carlson has been in vocational ministry since 2010, first as a missionary overseas, then in Dearborn, as a campus pastor at a multi-site church and now as a discipleship pastor. He has BA degrees in International Relations and Economics from Michigan State University, and an MA in Biblical Studies from Moody Theological Seminary. He has been married to his lovely wife, Kelly, since 2011, and together they have two beautiful girls. He loves a good meal with good friends, MSU and Detroit Sports, watching or playing soccer, strategy board games, snowboarding and goofing off with his girls. Above all of that, he loves seeing the gospel work in communities to transform broken people into joyful disciples.