Quotes about Pastors

It is impossible for us to indwell this Story and not assume that narrative's perspective. Again, that perspective is God's perspective. It is not our perspective; it is God's perspective. It is God's perspective on us, not our perspective on others. Bible readers, especially pastors (and commenters on blogs), inevitably begin to think like God about ourselves and others.

Angel Mena Garcia with the Assemblies of God in Panama described his ministry this way: "Our obligation as pastors is to teach and train members, so in any context of life they can also share in the evangelism. I don't consider myself a desk pastor; I am a pastor of the street.

Whenever pastors assume people in their congregation know certain things, they miss opportunities to teach. If a pastor makes assumptions year after year, then a whole generation has never heard [that truth] for the first time. If we assume too much, we communicate too little.

In the church today, we are falling prey to the appeal of "New!" The old truths of the gospel don't seem spectacular enough. We're restless for the latest, greatest, newest teaching or technique. We pastors in particular seem to search for a shortcut or some dynamic new strategy that will fire up our churches.

Just very practically, pastors need to be careful that while they have a right to call people to absolute allegiance to the Word of God, we don't have the right to call people to absolute allegiance to our programs or every ministry we have at the church.

Many pastors criticize me for taking the Gospel so seriously. But do they really think that on Judgment Day, Christ will chastise me, saying, 'Leonard, you took Me too seriously'?

The church expect too much from the pastors and there's barely anytime left for prayer.

It was in the mid-70's, '74 or '75 I started doing leadership conferences for pastors and in '79 I wrote my first book "Think On These Things".

It was while I was pastoring that I began to realize that pastors were not growing churches because they didn't understand leadership because they were not trained, adequate leaders.

There is one thing I should say, and it's important: Young Broadway singers and anybody who is an orator of any kind - lawyers who have to speak in court or pastors or anyone who has a lot of stress on their vocal cords: You should do the maintenance. You should do whatever it takes to feel fresh and good.

Pastors need to know what's going on in the world and what has been going on for 4,000 years. We need a way to read Scripture which is imaginative, interpretive.

The minute the church and pastors start saying what do people want and then giving it to them, we betray our calling. We're called to have people follow Jesus. We're called to have people learn how to forgive their enemies.