Surprising Insights #3: Pastors and Preaching are Critical

Rainer gives two reasons why he was hesitant to publish this chapter.  

Firstly, earlier research on four thousand churches in the USA showed that a majority were abandoning the biblical model of pastoral ministry: that is, a commitment to Acts 6:4 and a model of leadership that allowed pastors to focus on ministry of the Word and prayer.  

Secondly, he feared that many readers would use this material to say that the reason their churches weren’t growing was inept pastoring - when in fact his research shows that ‘pastors are among the hardest working and yet least respected persons in America today’. 

But publish the chapter he did, because the ‘pastor and preaching’ factor was found to be so outstandingly critical to evangelistically effective churches.  97% of respondents answered ‘Yes’ to the question ‘Did the pastor and the preaching play a part in your coming to this church?‘  Asked a more open-ended question about factors that led to respondents choosing their church, ‘pastors or preaching’ were mentioned in 90% of cases, ‘doctrine’ in 88% and the next most mentioned factor was ‘friendliness’ at 49%.  

Around ‘pastors and preaching’ there were 8 statistically significant characteristics:

1. preaching that teaches the Bible - by which is meant expository or ‘line-by-line’ Bible teaching (as one respondent described it. 
2. preaching that applies to my life
3. authenticity of the pastor - down-to-earth, friendly, willing to admit mistakes, real, regular guy
4. pastor’s conviction - of the truth and the importance of it
5. personal contact by the pastor
6. pastor is a good communicator
7. pastor is a leader - especially with regard to the vision and purpose and direction of the church
8. pastor’s class - by which is meant an introductory class to the church, or a church membership class that is taken by the senior pastor. 

Each of these eight are described in more detail in this chapter, which ends with a word of encouragement for pastors - for it does seem that a ‘superman pastor’ is what is required!  Rainer notes that in a previous study he discovered that a majority of pastors spend around two hours a week on sermon preparation.  That staggered me, I need most of the week whenever I’m preaching!  So he concludes that making a few decisions about the relative importance of preaching and teaching, the ministry of Word and prayer, can yield great fruit in a pastor’s ministry.  That’s not a bad conclusion, nor a bad word of encouragement.