I sat in that Pastors’ Conference and shamefully shrunk into my chair, feeling smaller and smaller as the speaker said, “Pastor, the greatest thing you can do is to get your people to pray.” Citing historical instances and contemporary accounts, he drilled into this. I felt condemned and accused. Why? Have you been to one of our prayer meetings? What? You haven’t? Neither have a lot of people in the church! Of course, this doesn’t mean that they don’t pray. It only means that they haven’t turned up at one of our corporate prayer meetings. Yet this was the meaning of the speaker – the greatest thing a pastor can do is to get the people in the church to show up and participate in the All Church Prayer Meeting. I felt like I wasn’t a real pastor, just someone masquerading as one. And I sensed that everyone around me knew this, too.
And who can challenge this without looking defensive and pathetic and unspiritual? Of course, prayer is important. Of course, corporate intercession is a powerful expression of the Body of Christ. After all, Jesus said that when two or more are gathered in His name, He is in their midst. Of course, telling God how much we love Him and need Him and desire Him is a good thing. Of course, asking God to heal Aunt Patricia’s arthritic knee in Wyoming is a good thing.
And so, at risk of looking defensive and pathetic and unspiritual, I want to push back a little. I asked myself the question, “Where does the Bible teach this? Where do the Scriptures teach that getting the people to pray is the greatest thing a pastor can do?” I looked in the concordances, and the dictionaries, and the systematic theologies and guess what – I couldn’t find it! The Bible does not teach, the Scriptures do not say, Jesus or Peter or Paul never said that getting the people of the church together to pray is the greatest thing a pastor can do. Whew! What a relief! I no longer have to be berated for the size of the All Church Prayer Meeting. OK, but if not prayer, what is the greatest thing a pastor can get the people to do?
In Matthew 22:36, a lawyer came to Jesus and asked, “Which is the greatest commandment in the law?” Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”
In 1 Corinthians 13:13, Paul wrote, “But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
In 1 Timothy 1:5, Paul instructs Timothy that, “the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.”
After listing many outstanding virtues, Paul writes this in Colossians 3:14, “Beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity.”
Jesus said in John 13:35, “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
There – it is spelled out clearly and repeatedly. The greatest thing a pastor can get the people to do is love God and love people. Let me be a smart-aleck for a minute. Jesus didn’t say, “The greatest commandment is to pray.” Paul didn’t say, “But now faith, hope, prayer, abide these three; but the greatest of these is prayer.” Paul didn’t say, “The goal of our instruction is to get as many people as possible to pray.” No – the greatest, the goal, the beyond all is love. Now prayer is easier to measure than love. We ask, “How many people were at the prayer meeting and how many prayers were prayed?” But who can measure and weigh love?
Pastor, the greatest thing you can do is to get your people to love God. Christian, the greatest thing you can do is to love God. Non-Chrisitan, the greatest thing you can do is to surrender to God’s love for you demonstrated in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ!
Tim Brown has been in some sort of ministry since February of 1973 – as a youth pastor, an assistant pastor, and a senior pastor. Tim planted Calvary Chapel Fremont in January of 1997 and continues to pastor there. Tim has been married since August of 1976 to Fran. They have three children and nine grandchildren.
