Five Imperatives for Being a Pastor/Officer

For three years my wife and I were appointed to the International College for Officers. During those years, some thoughts tumbled around in my head about my officership. On the sprawling grounds of Sunbury Court, you find a great place to work out such thoughts. I would like to share them here. My hope is that others, who may be struggling with any number of these points, will come to their own solution. Perhaps a younger officer/pastor might take these as a challenge for their future service.

With that short preamble, I offer you my Five Imperatives.

First, it is imperative that you know God’s voice.

 We often describe prayer as a conversation with God. But when we pray, we usually do all the talking. How often do we stop talking and just listen to what God has to say to us? If you’ve ever tried it, it’s not easy to do. Wherever we go in today’s world, noise is our constant companion. Shutting down that perpetually nattering inner voice in a challenge indeed. I wonder if God ever feels like Luke Skywalker in the garbage compactor when he urgently shouts:

“Threepio, will you shut up and listen to me?”

Some years ago, I came across a remarkable book about listening to God. “Can You Hear Me?”, by Brad Jersak, changed the way I communicate with God. In its pages, the author teaches how we can use our imagination (which was created within us by God to help us hear his voice) to connect with God. Since those days, I have become better and better at discerning God’s voice from all the others that clamber for my attention. All it takes is regular practice.

When you think about it, who wouldn’t want God to personally direct their daily steps? But it will never happen unless you learn to distinguish his voice and then actually take the time to listen. In John 10:4 Jesus said his sheep follow him because they know his voice. In Jeremiah 33:3 God informs us if we listen to his voice, he will tell us great and unsearchable things we do not know. Amazing!

Why would we ever think we could serve God in the first place if we don’t listen to his direction? For me, knowing God’s voice is the first and most important imperative of officership.

Second, it is imperative that you nail down your call.

Did you receive a call from God to be an officer/pastor? “The Call” comes in a wide variety of ways to a wide variety of people. We are not all the same and neither is our call. However, my concern here is that you are certain of that call. Before you start down the path of officership, there needs to be no doubt in your mind that this is what God wants you to do with your life. If you know for certain God chose officership as your path, it makes it much easier to hold on through difficult times when the enemy is doing everything he can to make you quit and do something else.

Before I entered training, I had a great job working in my chosen field of music. Once I was accepted to officer training, everything in my life seemed to come into line for me and I felt my life was almost perfect. I had a couple of important projects that needed my attention and more on the horizon. I was also involved heavily in my corps/church playing in the band, being the Band Sergeant, and teaching Sunday School. I really loved what I was doing and started to feel like maybe I should wait a year or two before entering the college. Then, I could earn some more money, make things easier on me, continue to do the things my employer and corps wanted me to do. So I started dropping hints at work that I might not be leaving after all.

When a Cadet friend of mine heard of my hesitancy, she told me a very similar story about what had happened to her just before she went into training. Great job, lots of money, loved it, etc. Then she realized it was just the Enemy trying to get her to not go to training. If she had balked for even a year, he would have had a lot more time to convince her to do what she wanted with her life. She saw the Enemy’s game, chose to defy him, and went to the college as planned. God used her story to convince me to do what he wanted me to do when he wanted me to do it. The rest is history, but I used that lesson to nail down my call. I am certain that God wants me to be an officer and nothing has convinced me otherwise since that day.

Yes, there have been times of struggle and pain (God has promised us that). There have been times when I questioned this plan for my life and wanted to quit. But I always came back to my original understanding of his call on my life and the fact that there is no doubt in my mind of what God wants me to do. I have decided I cannot ever choose to do what I want over what God wants.

Following God’s plan for your life is not easy. But in the struggles and pain, he shapes us to be a better person- more like Jesus. If you have a call to be an officer/pastor, I encourage you to nail it down so it doesn’t get away from you. Stick to it through thick and thin. Be faithful to that call- it is imperative.

Third, it is imperative that you know your purpose.

One of the first things you get at a new job is a job description. That’s how you know what you’re supposed to do. Imagine a new employee setting aside their job description and doing what they wanted to do? Or what seemed to be clambering the loudest for attention that day. No, an employee does what they were hired to do.

Likewise, God has created us with gifts, talents and personalities to accomplish the very tasks he has created us to do. These combine to form our purpose; our job description, if you will. Do you know your spiritual gifts? Do you know your talents? Do you know your personality? Without a firm grasp of these things, we’re merely hoping we hit the target (what target are we aiming at anyway?). This not only gives us direction in life, it also allows us to say “no” to the things we should not be wasting our time with.

There is a thought going around out there that we should be mindful to “strengthen our backhand.” While this is important in things like tennis, I do not agree we should waste our time doing this with our purpose. Think about it this way- if you were hired to do the job of cleaning the corps building, why would you get involved with the corps bookkeeping? That’s someone else’s job. Hopefully, that other person is skilled in that area and spends their time doing just that- not cleaning the building. That’s YOUR job and you’re probably very good at that!

In the same way, God has combined many things in you to be the person you are. He has given you skills, gifts, likes and dislikes, personality, and talents for the very reason of you accomplishing what he had in mind for you to do. Why would you then take time away from doing those things to learn something completely different than who you are?

I believe God created us all with a specific purpose in mind. He made us each a piece of an amazing puzzle that only he can see clearly. You have your role, I have mine, others have theirs. When we each do what we are supposed to be doing, we get better results than if we try to do things we’re not good at. Also, the larger picture begins to come into focus.

Know your purpose (who you are and how God put you together). Then get busy doing your part. It’s imperative that you don’t try to be someone else and do a job you’re not so good at.

Fourth, it is imperative that you trust God’s leading.

God has a plan. God has been working his plan since before he even began creating in the first place. He can see it all before it happens. In fact, he thought it all through even before he created. And I mean all. He knows the decisions you will make and has shaped his plan to include your free will choices. And the free will choices of those around you as well. With that in mind, why do we often complain when things don’t go the way WE want or expect?

The story of Joseph has always amazed me. The more I read it, the more I get out of it. First, God gives Joseph a dream. Joseph shares that dream and is ridiculed for believing in it. Then, you would think God would go about moving Joseph toward realizing his vision, wouldn’t you? Not so. God had a lot of training to do in Joseph’s life before he was to become the man who COULD fulfill that vision. In our eyes, those training days were terrible times for Joseph. Yet those often unjust situations were the very things that made him the man God needed for a much bigger task than Joseph ever imagined.

David has a similar story. God anoints David King, but instead of moving him closer to that reality, God sends David through the school of humility. God did this so David would not become the same kind of King Saul was. All those years of running for his life killed any part of King Saul that might have been found hiding in the depths of David’s soul.

God has a plan for your life (Jeremiah 29:11) and he is going to train you for it. Whether you know what that plan is or not, you need to trust the path God takes you down will shape you into the person he needs you to be at the other end. Can you trust that the place you are in right now is molding you for bigger and better things? It is imperative you do just that.

Finally, it is imperative that you live a holy life.

The Salvation Army is a branch of the Christian church that believes in holiness. Yet, I am saddened by how few of us have any real idea what holiness means except being set apart. Yes, we know the blue on our flag stands for the holiness of God, we have holiness meetings, and proudly display our chapel holiness tablecloths reading “Holiness

Unto the Lord.” But I don’t hear people talking about anything more than just being set apart. What about the facet of holiness that means living without sinning?

When I was filling out my application for training, one of the questions was

“What is your experience with personal holiness?”

The words caused me to stop dead in my tracks. I read and re-read the question repeatedly. Still, I could not make either heads or tails out of it. What were they looking for? What did they mean? Finally, I went to my Dad, himself an officer, and asked him to explain what they were talking about. His answer seemed like a foreign language to me, so I asked him

“If that’s holiness, why haven’t you preached about it before?”

His answer: “I have. You weren’t listening.”

So, before I could go any further, I had to know what holiness meant. This began my two-year quest of wrestling with my personal experience of holiness. Here’s what I discovered:

Holiness means living without sinning. Wait a minute, doesn’t the Bible say there is no one who is

without sin? Why yes it does, but that means there is no one who has not sinned. It doesn’t mean there is no one who is now living without sinning. In fact, until we leave this earth, there is always the possibility of sin. But possibility doesn’t mean it HAS to happen.

As an Army of God, we believe we can live for extended periods of time without sinning (offending God). Samuel Logan Brengle once wrote about going 14 years without sinning! To this day, I still marvel at God’s grace in his life.

Being holy is a command of God, who tells us in various places throughout scripture to

“Be holy, because I am holy” (eg: Leviticus 11:45).

If we believe in holiness, we should be living it. In fact, it is imperative we do just that so we can make the biggest possible difference in this world around us. Imagine the impact we would make. Imagine the impact you would make in your officership! It is imperative that you live a holy life.

In this short writing, I didn’t take the space to go into more depth than a basic introduction to my five imperative topics. Each topic certainly deserves more study. Might I say it is imperative you do just that?