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Through hands-on work, church techs guide and inspire those around them.
Production leader, you probably have the word “pastor” in your title, but you might not be doing many pastoral things—preparing sermons, giving spiritual counsel, or spending office hours in prayer. Instead, you have a list of hands-on tasks, administrative work, and a roster of events to plan and execute. That doesn’t feel pastoral, but I think it’s all very pastoral, and you can thrive under the title of pastor even though much of your work doesn’t look very spiritual.
Let’s talk about how to navigate a pastoral role that is mostly hands-on work.
This is 70% getting stuff done, and that’s ok.
You’re more Stephen than Peter, so just lean into that. The mistake is to think that Stephen’s work wasn’t spiritual; it was very spiritual. It turns out that Stephen, all while waiting tables and doing the hands-on work the apostles determined they didn’t want to do, ended up sharing the gospel so often that he was martyred for it. He worked miracles and helped bring resurrection life change to the people he served.
What the apostles did was no less important, but of equal value to Stephen’s work. While they were busy wrangling out the theological implications of Christ’s resurrection and spending time with the Holy Spirit in prayer, Stephen spent his time with the Holy Spirit in a no less significant way.
Love is an action, and is deeply spiritual work.
We read later on in the New Testament, from the voice of the one the apostles themselves, that God is love. It’s his very nature, the stuff he’s made of, and so what is of love is of him. This means that when those of us tasked with less “spiritual” work spend our time loving those we serve, we are connecting with the nature of God. This means our task lists are a kind of prayer in and of themselves, so long as we accomplish those tasks from a place of love and with actions of love.
That might sound hippy-dippy, but just because various flowery movements, cults, and other half-truthing organizations have stolen the truth of scripture for their own ends doesn’t mean we have to be shy about the nature of our God or the new commandment that Jesus left us: to love one another.
What you’re doing is pastoral so long as you’re working it out with love. So love --- love your team, love your co-staff members, love your church people. You will find yourself spiritually connected to God in a way that might surprise you, brothers and sisters.
