THE PASTOR'S FIRST FLOCK IS HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN

By: Thomas F. Booher 

 THE PASTOR'S FIRST FLOCK IS HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN:

In many of our churches today, we have the exact opposite emphasis of what Christ Himself practiced. Pastors and churches today are hungry for numbers. I imagine the intent for many is mostly good -- they want to see souls saved. The problem is that, to be quite blunt, they don't understand salvation very well. Salvation broadly considered is a life-long process, it does not begin and end at that moment of being born again. Sanctification and growth as Christians will come only with faithful preaching and proclaiming of God's Holy Word, serious and diligent study, prayer, Christian fellowship, discipleship, counseling, etc. The Pastor is not merely an Evangelist, and he is not merely a preacher. He is a shepherd of the Lord's sheep.

The emphasis and "flow" that we find in Scripture is only men, qualified men, are to enter pastoral ministry. Teaching is one qualification, but the bulk is character, sanctification, being well-rooted in the Word of God so as to teach it and live it.

But before a pastor enters pastoral ministry, he already had a pastoral ministry. Before he shepherds the sheep of Christ in the church, he must show that he has shepherded well Christ's sheep that are in his home -- his wife and children. I Timothy 3:4-5 says of the qualification for a pastor/elder/bishop: "one who rules his own house well, having his children in submission with all reverence (for if a man does not know how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the church of God?)".

By today's standards, I have a big family. Of course, I only have one wife (also a requirement for eldership), but I have six children, and if God blesses in time, I pray that we have more. But seven people is a small "church". Yet the Christian family is a church in microcosm. How do you strengthen your family? Men are the heads of their home, heads of their wife even as Christ is head of the Church, and the wife must submit to her husband's headship, Eph. 5:22-23. The fact that most pastors are too scared to preach this from the pulpit, tells you they are too afraid to practice this headship in the home. Which means you know they aren't men qualified for gospel ministry. They are disqualified shepherds, who don't even take shepherding responsibility of their own household. How much less will they shepherd well the household of God, the Church?

Some go so far as to say that eldership requires being married and having children. I wouldn't go that far, but I would say it is normative and ideal. It also means that for someone to be examined to enter into gospel ministry, whether married with children or not, the duty of those who are already pastors/elders is to examine the character of the candidate for pastoral ministry, especially his personal and home life. Better a man who dearly loves his family and shepherds them well, who is an unpolished and not so skilled preacher, than one who preaches with a golden tongue yet neglects his family and leads his kids to perdition.

Yet in so many churches today, including Reformed ones, the only qualifications focused on are teaching/preaching, or for Evangelicals it is often not even that and just charisma, appeal, showmanship, and the ability to get butts in seats and "souls saved" to hear some truncated Gospel message. But in either case, if the priority is given to the household of God over the first household the man has, his wife and children, the emphasis is in the wrong place, and both the church but especially the family will suffer for it.

This all reveals that God's priority is small, not big and flashy. And here is the big secret -- building on what God prioritizes will lead to real, lasting, biblical, healthy growth in our homes and our churches! Intimacy of the family bond of husband, wife, and child is the building block of churches, and without strong families, you cannot have strong churches. And if the minister's family is weak and wayward, the whole church will totter. But strong families will beget more, strong/strengthening families. The church is built up spiritually, and indeed numerically, by what every joint supplies, Eph. 4:16.

But there is another "household" or "field" to consider. First is the man's household, then it is the Church, the household of God. But third, and only third, lastly even, is the "household of the world" or the "field" that is barren and must have seeds planted in it. Indeed, Jesus says "the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few" so we pray that the Lord would send laborers into His harvest. But even after Jesus said this and prayed, He only chose twelve apostles initially, presumably choosing those who would be well-qualified along the lines of what Paul would later tell Timothy about eldership in I Tim. 3 (of course, Judas's betrayal was all part of God's sovereign plan and served a different purpose ultimately, if nothing else to demonstrate that there is good reason an elder qualification is to not be "violent" or "greedy for money"). And yet, on that firm foundation of twelve Apostles, look how the Lord's church has spread and grown all over the world today! There are millions and millions of genuine Christians.

Now it would certainly be a mistake to say that a minister is not called to engage in all three "fields" at the same time. A minister who cannot preach and prepare sermons because he has to tend to his house/family/children needs to step aside at least for a season until he gets his household in order. A man who feeds his family and the sheepfold of the church congregation but utterly neglects the harvest in the fields is likewise without excuse over the long term. But just the same, the priority is family first, then the family of faith, and only after the uncultivated fields of the world. Another way of putting it -- tend to the plants that you already have, and nourish them to fruition, and do not seek to sow more seeds and establish more plants if the ones you already have are suffering or will suffer by overextending yourself.

If you have a small garden but it is full of weeds and thorns, you shouldn't just plant a much bigger one and hope for better results. You need to figure out how to be successful in your small garden first. Otherwise, you are abandoning the small garden to go to the uncultivated land and make a bigger one. Which means you are likely going to make a bigger mess and multiply thorns and thistles rather than good fruit. This is the same as the minister who fails to rule his own household well, but then neglects or outright abandons it for the sake of the bigger field of the church. He has given his wife and children over to sin and the devil, and thinks that has somehow prepared him to lead His church to Christ and in His Word and Spirit!

But often, Evangelical pastors starve not only their wife and children of the "fertilizer" of God's Word, but they also skimp their church of the meat of God's Word (see Heb. 5:12-14):. They give milk at most, and why? Because they are constantly bringing in new members who made hasty decisions for Jesus, and these are at most baby Christians who can only handle milk. Sure these pastors and churches may have swelling numbers with swirling light shows, and the may have flashy, splashy baptisms and declare the Lord is at work, but often it is empty professions of faith built on hype and emotionalism, with a shallow gospel proclaimed at best. All the while the one's baptized last year are apostatizing, and the families are being starved and resenting their pastors, and the pastor's wife and children grow to despise their husband/father who clearly loves the harvest fields and the congregation more than his own flesh and blood!

This is the scandal of our Evangelical churches. May God grant us repentance. May he cause us to cherish our little flocks of wife and children in our homes by nurturing them with the Word of God, and may the Lord build His church on that firm foundation.