The Pastor and his Staff, Part 2 (9Marks Journal)

The local church’s central work, 9Marks believes, is a prophetic one—proclaiming the Word of our Priest and King. But should God provide, you should want to build a big platform for that Word, and to set it in a teacher’s lectern, and to sit it in a counselor’s chair, and to give it a piano, and to send it out the doors and overseas, and to do everything you can to let that Word reverberate through your church and beyond. But doing all this takes the wisdom of Solomon, so to speak. It takes skill in wisely discipling people and sometimes even hiring them to facilitate the work of the church.

I almost wrote, “hiring them to do the work of the church.” But Jamie Dunlop’s excellent article reminded me of why we should hire staff—to facilitate the church’s ministry, not to do it. If his article helps to know when to hire, Matt Schmucker and Phillip Jensen help to think about when (or whether) to fire. Mark Dever, Ryan Townsend, and Patrick Traylor offer a few other nuts and bolts of staff management. And Greg Gilbert and Shawn Wright duke it out over whether we should call anyone a senior pastor. Through all of this we pray that God would grow you in the wisdom of him who was wiser than Solomon, so that everyone in your church, too, would prosper in holiness, love, and grace.