Editor’s note: This column was written by a member of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention’s Shepherds Collective. For more information, visit sbtexas.com/networks/shepherds-collective.

There’s a saying that it takes a village to raise a child, and God’s village for raising godly children is the church. God has truly blessed me with a great village of men who have come alongside me to be the pastor I am today.

I began pastoring at 26. I knew I needed help if I was going to pastor well. God’s village stepped into this gap. I reached out to my godly friends and pastors regularly, and I’ve made many phone calls asking for help with problems I never thought I would have to counsel church members through.

It’s not that seeking godly counsel is a bad thing. In fact, it’s biblical. Proverbs 11:14 says, “Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety.” Godly counsel is a blessing to all Christians and especially pastors.

But one of the things I’ve learned about myself over my years of pastoring is how quickly I am to rely on that village rather than on God’s Spirit for guidance. I was so quick to pick up the phone to call pastors who have served longer than me rather than prayerfully waiting on the Lord in prayer on things involving His sheep.

Over time, I realized that if I can get immediate wisdom from godly counsel, it would make my decisions quicker and more informed. What I didn’t realize was how unwise that was in the grand scheme of things.

God’s greatest help to the Christian and pastor is the Holy Spirit. He should not be my second choice, but my first. While it is tempting to seek godly counsel before God’s counsel because of the immediate answers it offers, it is better for us to seek God’s counsel first because He knows His sheep best. He also knows us pastors best! He knows our blind spots, frustrations, worries, and sin. He knows our gifts, experience, and where we thrive. I say this to remind us as church leaders that while it is crucial to have many mentors, counselors, and advisors to call on, we should call on the Lord before any of them.

One of the greatest challenges for pastors is their easy accessibility to resources and wisdom. If you don’t know the answer, someone has written a book on it. If you don’t have time to read the book, you can ask ChatGPT to summarize it. If you want to talk to someone about it, you can call your pastor friends. Immediate answers and immediate wisdom are just moments away.

But let me offer a better way forward. Go to the Lord in prayer before you call, Google, or ask. Is that groundbreaking advice? No, but it is the best advice I have. I have found that the more I seek the Lord’s counsel first, the better I can navigate the godly counsel of others, the better I can discern what I should and shouldn’t say, and the better I can relate to the sheep He has called me to care for.

Church leaders, you have myriad problems to navigate. People are looking to you to help them with their spiritual problems. Please seek godly counsel, but not until you have approached the throne of grace first.

Editor’s note: This column was written by a member of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention’s Shepherds Collective. For more information, visit sbtexas.com/networks/shepherds-collective.

I was 31 when I preached my first sermon as a senior pastor. Compared to many figures throughout church history (and many rookie pastors today!), that’s not remarkably young. But if you were to ask many of those who were present for that first sermon, they would have said it was remarkable (“I’ve got grandkids your age!”). Even before then, at age 23, I was called to lead volunteers twice or even three times my age.

Most pastors and staff find themselves leading people who are older than they are. How can we lead well when we don’t have certain life experiences, relational capital, or a proven track record? We know 1 Timothy 4:12, but how can we be an example for those beyond us in years?

Lead from the front

By the front, I’m referring mainly to the pastor’s weekly responsibility of proclaiming God’s Word and applying it to God’s people.

In Herman Melville’s book Moby Dick, Ishmael stumbles into the Whaleman’s Chapel. The pulpit is shaped like the bow of a ship so that the preacher resembles a captain peering out over the waters. This imagery is not lost on Ishamel, who recognizes that “the pulpit leads the world.” As the bow of a ship must break through waves and set clear direction for the crew, so the pulpit of a local church must be stewarded as an opportunity to lead, especially for the young pastor.

As a younger pastor handles the text faithfully, applies pastorally, and preaches dependently, others will notice—including the older saints. While we’ve heard it before, it’s worth noting again (and reminding ourselves every Monday morning) that Paul’s command to the young Timothy was to preach the Word (2 Timothy 4:2). So much is out of our control as pastors, but that’s within it. As we rightly handle God’s Word (2 Timothy 2:15), we trust that the saints will follow. In his book, The Art of Pastoring, David Hansen writes, “The people of God will follow the pastor who feeds them the Word of God. That isn’t to say that they won’t balk once in a while … But week in and week out, year in and year out, Christians will not cut themselves off from the one who sets their spiritual table.”

Young pastors, lead from the front by handling God’s Word with accuracy, passion, and compassion, and believe that the Lord is building trust among those who hear you.

Lead from below

If preaching constitutes leading from the front, humility constitutes leading from below. Even in our preaching, our humility should be evident. Our tone, our illustrations, and our applications should all be clothed in gentleness, pointing our hearers to Christ and not ourselves.

I’m talking about the sorts of ministry realities we have outside the pulpit: meetings, conversations in the hallway, the senior adult lunch, hospital visits, a card to a recent widow, a kind text message. If you can exude genuine humility in these spaces, your older members will see and embrace it.

Many of them already wonder if they have a contribution to make, and any whiff of arrogance threatens to accentuate their feelings of increasing irrelevance. If you can walk humbly alongside your congregation, you’ll help them feel valued and needed.

So don’t rush the conversation with an older saint. Walk slowly in the sanctuary before the service. Remember their grandkids’ names. Celebrate and honor the past. Poke fun at yourself. Humility has a knack for creating trust; after all, if they know you’re not in it for you but for them, they’ll grow to trust your discernment and decision-making. The only way to arrive there is through the habit and discipline of walking in lowly, Christlike humility.

Lead from above

By above, I don’t mean abusive or autocratic authority. Rather, I mean leading confidently in the role God has called you to and not shying away from the responsibility to lead even in discomfort and uncertainty.

If leading from the front is about preaching, and leading from below is about humility, then leading from above is about, well, leading. In other words, God has called you to lead regardless of your age. That means you shoulder the responsibilities, pressure, and expectations a leader assumes. For younger men, that will often include insecurities, doubts, and lingering questions about effectiveness. Yet none of those are reasons to fail to lead.

Here’s what I’ve learned: People appreciate leaders, even if they are younger. Don’t lead recklessly, but do not be afraid to take prayerful risks and take your people to places that may feel different or foreign. All the classic pastoral advice applies: Move carefully, show them in Scripture why this is necessary, encourage rather than drive, and the like. But above all—lead. Leadership by nature means we’re stepping into unknown places, unsure of how all this will go. Lead them anyway.

Being among the youngest in the room can be intimidating. But I think it’s a great opportunity to flip the script: You get to know, learn from, and love these men and women who have in some cases walked with Jesus longer than you’ve been alive. God, in His kind providence, has called you to serve and lead them in this season of your life and in this season of their lives.

Given that truth, fear not—lead from the front through preaching, lead from below through humility, and lead from above in your God-given calling as a shepherd.

Editor’s note: This column was written by a member of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention’s Shepherds Collective. For more information, visit sbtexas.com/networks/shepherds-collective.

If we’re honest, many of us have felt the tension around corporate prayer. We affirm it theologically. We schedule it strategically. We want our churches to value it deeply. And yet we’ve all felt how fragile it can be, especially when attendance fluctuates or participation feels thin. In those moments, it’s tempting to pivot toward something more measurable or immediately productive.

I’m convinced the issue isn’t whether the church believes prayer matters. The deeper question is whether we, as shepherds, are truly leading our people in it.

Corporate prayer doesn’t drift toward strength, but it will always drift toward neglect. That’s not because people are indifferent, but because every church is shaped by what’s consistently emphasized. Our rhythms reveal our theology. Few things expose our functional dependence more clearly than how we pray together.

Corporate prayer is one of the clearest expressions of a church’s dependence upon God. We can preach trust while operating from competence. We can teach grace while subtly modeling self-reliance. But when we intentionally create unhurried space to seek the Lord together, we declare with our actions prayer isn’t preparation for the work—it is the work.

In 2 Chronicles 20, when enemy armies stood at the doorstep, King Jehoshaphat didn’t begin with strategy. He gathered the families of Judah to seek the Lord. His prayer was marked by honesty and humility: “We are powerless … We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.” Before plans were formed, dependence was declared and demonstrated.

Corporate prayer also forms a people in ways preaching alone cannot. What we consistently pray for shapes what we long for. It trains reflexes of humility and deepens instincts of surrender. It reminds us Christ is the head of the church, and we are not its engine.

How can we, as pastors, lead our people to embrace these truths?

Clarity lowers fear

Many believers avoid corporate prayer not because they lack desire, but because they lack confidence. Lower the entry point without lowering the vision. Offer short prompts. Pray Scripture. Model simple, sincere language.

Pace communicates priority

If prayer is consistently compressed between announcements and the sermon, it will always feel secondary. Unhurried time, even moments of silence, signals that seeking God isn’t a transition but a priority.

Substance invites engagement

Pray for real things: holiness, repentance, unity, courage, endurance, the lost, suffering saints, boldness in witness. When prayers carry weight, people lean in.

Tone sets culture

A church often prays the way its leaders pray. So pray sincerely and with conviction rather than with polished perfection. Pray with honesty and humility. Over time, a culture of dependent prayer will grow.

If you want to strengthen corporate prayer, begin with one intentional shift:

• Reclaim meaningful space on Sundays. Build 5-10 minutes of intentional prayer into the weekly gathering. Frame it clearly and give people room to participate.
• Establish a consistent rhythm. Consider a monthly gathering dedicated to praise and intercession. Repetition shapes culture.
• Tie prayer to pivotal moments. Before major decisions, transitions, or during seasons of hardship, gather the church to seek the Lord together. Make dependence visible early and often.

Corporate prayer isn’t a box to check, it’s a culture to cultivate.

In a ministry landscape driven by outcomes and efficiency, leading a church to say together, “We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you” may be one of the most faithful expressions of leadership we can offer.

“In your personal opinion, what do you understand it takes for a person to get to heaven?”

This key question has stuck with me since I first heard it training as a youth in Bobby Welch’s FAITH evangelism method. I remember going door-to-door with the church that equipped me to evangelize, and by God’s grace, I saw numerous people come to faith and brought into the life of the church.

While this method was effective in inviting people to consider how to get to heaven, I came under a conviction that we were unintentionally withholding a crucial element of the gospel. Sure, the FAITH method and other evangelism tools like it shared the truth that Christ died for our sins according to Scriptures, that He was buried, and raised on the third day. But its target question stopped short of telling the whole gospel, withholding an incredible promise—the resurrection of the dead unto eternal life with God in a new heaven and a new earth.

I experienced a significant shift in how I evangelize and train others in evangelism about 15 years ago while pastoring in Trenton. Our aim in sharing the gospel was to ensure that when people died, they would go to heaven. We would ask people, “Do you know where you are going to go when you die?” Certainly, this is an important question, but is it the goal of the gospel that people who die go to heaven?

I wrestled with that question and became convinced that, without realizing it, we pushed God aside as the goal of the gospel. As a result, there were unintended consequences that impacted the church.

We were no longer comforted by the hope of resurrection.

Believe it or not, many Christians do not know or understand the hope that we have of resurrection. In 2020, I attended a relative’s funeral where the pastor stood up and said death was a door that led to the next part of this person’s journey.

If the gospel was simply about knowing where we are going when we die, why would we need any hope of the resurrection? Paul could’ve just told the Thessalonian believers to comfort one another with the reality that their loved ones are enjoying an eternal disembodied existence in heaven with God. Or he could’ve said those loved ones already received their immortal bodies upon death and told them to find solace in the idea that death guides the dead to their final resting place.

But Paul never says that. Yes, he does say, “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.” However, that state was only to be temporary. He would go on to say in that same letter that he wanted to share in the sufferings of Jesus, including His death, so that he might share in His resurrection from the dead. Why? Because death is not a friend, not a doorway, or anything else positive and good.

To be clear, death is an enemy—the last enemy to be vanquished and placed beneath the feet of our resurrected king. When death is dead, no one will shed a tear, and until the resurrection, we find ourselves in an intermediate state, awaiting the day when Christ’s foot will once again step upon the earth. It will be on that day that we will all shoot up from the ground like bluebonnets in spring and receive our new bodies, enjoying the new creation where it will be said, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man!”

When heaven is the goal of the gospel, we fall short of seeing God’s ultimate plan. But when God is the goal of the gospel, we are filled with a hope that extends beyond death, for upon the resurrection of the dead, death will work backward.

We forgot heaven has already come.

What makes heaven beautiful is the full, unfiltered presence of God. One day, we will see Him as He is. There will be no sin, no unholiness that will pollute our experience of God and His presence. We will enjoy Him as our first parents did in the garden.

In the meantime, God has gifted us with a foretaste of heaven, sealing every believer with the promised Holy Spirit. The heavens were torn open, God descended, and heaven came with Him. As the Spirit of God abides in every follower of Jesus, we carry with us a burning reality of heaven. And when believers join together as the church under the lordship of Christ every Sunday to worship the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we get to enjoy a foretaste of heaven divine as God inhabits the praise of His people.

We forgot to live the reconciled life now.

Paul told the Corinthian church we are ambassadors of reconciliation calling on the lost to be reconciled and restored into a right relationship with God. The beauty in that message is that we can enjoy a redeemed relationship with God now. We don’t have to wait until death.

When heaven is the goal of the gospel, we focus on a destination. But when God is the goal of the gospel, we focus on a relationship that can be lived out now unto eternity. It is the glorious truth that God is already with us—in the midst of all the sin, death, and brokenness—that causes me to long in greater degree for the day when I will be with Him in a world where everything sad becomes untrue.

George Eldon Ladd’s The Gospel of the Kingdom played a great part in shaping my understanding of the gospel. Also, I have appreciated evangelism tools like Two Ways to Live and Three Circles as they keep God has the hope of the gospel.

Don’t get me wrong, as someone who has preached more funerals and experienced much death, I long for heaven. But it is not the streets of gold, the mansions, or the saints that stir my longing. I long for God to create a world where nothing again will separate us from Him or His presence. God is the gospel, He is heaven, and He is our eternal home.