My first essential for a pastor is that he is ethical. This means honest, transparent, and does the right thing, even at his own personal expense. Ethics is part of character. If you can’t trust a person’s word, as the story that was told about the pastor stealing and helping himself to whatever he wanted, that pastor should be judged and dismissed.
Mind you, I go to a congregation directed church. We had to dismiss or youth/children’s pastor recently. A lot of people left, because he was so charismatic, and they didn’t want to see him leave. But they didn’t even find out why the elder board wanted him dismissed. He wasn’t fulfilling any of the jobs in his contract. Like getting Sunday school materials ready. Instead, volunteers had to do his job. He was totally unorganized, he didn’t do this because he was lazy or evil. He just didn’t have the ability to fulfill his weekly tasks for ministry. Maybe ADHD? He was given huge support, money and names for a mentor, and he didn’t follow through on it!
Further, a pastor needs to be a leader. He has to have a vision from
God, and initiate ways to instil that direction in the church. No one mentioned administration, but our former pastor was a great teacher and preacher. He was personable and honest, but he couldn’t handle the administrative duties every senior pastor in a smaller church has. He got very depressed, took a leave of absence and then quit. Eventually he came back as a member, and he preaches, like me. We are the basic preaching team, with others also taking turns. Our pastor is a leader, gets people involved and challenges. Several of the younger women are preaching. One quit her job, she is going to seminary. That is inspiration.
Yet, this same leader, has horrible theology. He has a degree in counseling, and he saw so much hurt and pain, he abandoned tradition theology for open theology, which is a heresy. I don’t know how many people know this. It taints everything he preaches, for me. He doesn’t openly preach it, of course, but it makes all his sermons flat and empty.
So yes, theology counts!
Not every pastor is gifted in every area. The last church I was in, the pastor was an amazing man of God. He had a PhD in preaching. His sermons were Holy Spirit led. He had this amazing ability to preach at everyone’s level. A close friend of mine was from Peru, her English remains broken. We would sit together, and after church we would talk about the points that really hit us. Mostly, we didn’t agree, but he certainly touched us. Plus, he was big on passages and chapters. As opposed to a bunch of out of context verses.
That church had around 400 members, and most well to do. There was a business manager hat looked after the administrative duties, an associate pastor, who was big in missions, both evangelism and apologetics. The there was a youth pastor, etc.. It was big enough that people with gifts and training in specific areas used that gift.
Long post, and we always need to be discerning of a pastor. It is our duty to support the pastor(s), but also to be aware of areas where the pastor might need help, or if there are breeches of ethics, the proper people are advised.
I do agree with P4T that there aren’t a lot of biblical standards in this thread, including my post. I suppose that is the last thing, make sure you find a pastor that knows his Bible inside out, and loves Jesus more than anything.
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HAHAH just ribbin ya