Pastors cannot micromanage every detail of every ministry in their church. My congregation can’t serve well or grow and develop if I interject every time I think I could offer better counsel or oversight. As Jesus sent out the twelve in Matthew 10, so also we need to be willing to release our people for ministry. The ministry of the church belongs to the church. God has given his church pastors, teachers, and leaders to equip the saints for the work of the ministry.

Pastor, you aren’t doing your job!

I hadn’t been serving this small, rural congregation for long when God brought that problem to my attention. Though I’d been counseling a number of young Christians for only a few months, I was feeling drained. I wanted to blame it on the fact I was pastoring a church full of recovering drug addicts, but it was really my fault. I was attempting to carry out the ministry alone.

It’s the pastor’s job to equip his congregation to do ministry. Needless to say, I wasn’t doing my job.

Superman Pastors

Many pastors have learned and practiced a deficient model of leadership in the last century: the Superman model. A Superman pastor sees every ministry as either his responsibility or the responsibility of the paid staff. He functions like a CEO, like a paid professional, like the minister. It’s his role to do the church’s work, and it’s the congregation’s role to reap the benefits of his expertise.

There are a few things in this model we can commend. First, it takes seriously the role of the pastor; he does not abdicate responsibility. Second, the Superman pastor takes seriously his accountability to God, his training, and his calling as he works hard to oversee the mission of the church. Ultimately, however, the failures of this ministry model are grave.

1. This model of ministry undermines the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers and the doctrine of the church.

The Bible teaches that all Christians have access to God; all worship him, serve him, and lead others to do the same. Ephesians 4:16 depicts the church as a body of members working together to grow and build itself up. Paul writes that as the church speaks the truth in love, the “whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.” The entire church actively ministers to one another. The New Testament is laced with “one another” imperatives given to the congregation as a whole. Any model of ministry that circumvents the responsibilities of the church, no matter how well-meaning, is simply sub-biblical.

2. This model of ministry fuels pastoral burnout.

The pressure to be the minister is crushing pastors everywhere.

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