At our Summer Gathering and AGM, both Bishop Mbulelo Maliza (the Area Bishop of Gauteng for REACH SA – Reformation Anglican Church South Africa) and Matt Pope, our mission partner in Chile, spoke about the need for healthy pastors.
Bishop Mbulelo put it simply: ‘Ultimately, my prayer is for healthy churches and this will mean healthy ministers.’
Bishop Mbulelo and Matt weren’t talking about prioritising the gym, getting to bed early or focusing on diet – they were talking about the spiritual health of pastors. And sadly, this is often under threat, particularly in resource-poor countries.
In Gauteng Province in South Africa, Bishop Mbulelo described how many ‘ministers are struggling. No one looks after them well.’ He said these pastors ‘have committed their lives to serving and often their families take a big hit as they lead.’
Similarly, Matt described his context: ‘If you’re a pastor in Latin America, you are probably poor, probably very lonely, probably bi-vocational or tri-vocational and you’re a pastor on top of that. The pastors I meet are wonderfully godly, committed men who work like trojans for the Lord but they are on their own, with very little time to spend with their family and no time to meet other pastors.’
Supporting and encouraging pastors is not just about lifting their morale and keeping them going. Matt explains why the health of the pastor affects the entire church. ‘In the Old Testament, if the king was bad, the people were bad. Whereas if the king was good, the people were good. It translates across into the New Testament. If a pastor is healthy, the church will probably be healthy.’
That’s why Matt devotes most of his time to working alongside pastors. He currently supports pastors from 12 denominations in Chile as well as gospel workers in other Latin American countries. He is involved in various initiatives, all with the end goal of nurturing the spiritual health of pastors. He focuses on the ‘ABC of the Christian life – asking them if they are spending time with the Lord, saying no to sin, spending time with their wife, discipling individuals and evangelising.’
As Matt spoke, one initiative that particularly stood out was Red Santiago. Matt described it as a ‘club for pastors’. He said, ‘pastors need mates in the gospel’ and so Red Santiago seeks to bring pastors together, once a month, to connect with one another, build one another up and collaborate. When they meet, they seek to encourage each other as well as think about how they can be better pastors, share resources, and plan city-wide evangelism together.
Matt and Bishop Mbulelo both asked for prayer as they seek to encourage frontline pastors. Bishop Mbulelo said it is his job to really love and serve the pastors who are working so hard and he would love prayer to be freed up to do this well.
Many other Crosslinks mission partners are involved in this sort of ‘pastoring the pastors’ role. Please pray for all of them – that they would find creative ways, such as Red Santiago, to gather and encourage pastors, and that through their ministries the pastors they meet would endure hardship and ‘run with perseverance the race marked out’ before them.