We celebrated a great day on Sunday as Life Spring ordained Dennis Burd to the office of Pastor. Having faithfully served our congregation for the past four years as a volunteer and as a full time Minister of Worship & Youth, Dennis has yielded to a calling which God has placed on his heart to serve in the office of Pastor.
As we mentioned on Sunday, we don’t anticipate major changes in Dennis’ duties and responsibilities. He’ll still lead us in worship. He’ll still minister to our teens and their families. He will preach for us from time to time and will occasionally administer the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, but for the most part, he’ll continue to operate in the future as he has in the past.
Dennis will officially be an Associate Pastor at Life Spring. Informally, we’ll undoubtedly refer to him as our Worship Pastor or our Youth Pastor. But he won’t have a big, fancy title, and knowing Dennis as I do, he wouldn’t want one.
If the Lord blesses us with future growth in the congregation, then we’ll add additional staff as well. Not every staff member who leads a ministry will necessarily be a pastor. As we said on Sunday, a man is made a pastor not by man nor ceremony, but by the very will of God (Ephesians 4:11-13). So if God has not placed that calling on a man’s life, we will not assume it for him. He may still lead or direct a ministry, even if he isn’t a pastor, but he won’t carry that title unless he has experienced that calling.
To the extent that we do add pastors to the staff, most of them will come on board as Associate Pastors. Again, we’ll try to stay away from giving people titles that have little meaning. Instead, we envision a staff that consists of a Lead Pastor, an Executive Pastor (a pastor to the pastors, so to speak) and Associate Pastors, who will oversee given areas of ministry such as Worship, Youth, Christian Education, Senior Adults, etc. Some of those ministries may be overseen by non-pastor staff members (e.g. Youth Minister) or by volunteer staff members (e.g. Director of Men’s Ministry). But only men called to Pastor will be recognized as Pastors, regardless of their area of oversight.
Of course, all of this assumes that we continue to experience numerical growth in the future. We’ve grown by a little more than 40% since we were planted 4 years ago. Given our congregation’s commitment to the Word and heart for the community, our leadership certainly believes that we will continue to grow. But whether we grow more or less rapidly over the next four years than in the past, our leaders desire that we plan for growth so that we are prepared for it when it happens.
The Lord is richly blessing Life Spring, and events like Dennis’ ordination help us to recognize the ways in which He is working in our congregation. There are lots of churches out there just going through the motions, limping along from Sunday to Sunday. May we remain submissive to the will of our Lord so that we are never plagued with such complacency and indifference.
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