I Believe It Is Not the Pastor’s Job to Grow the Church

I believe the modern church has often placed a responsibility on pastors that Scripture never gives them: the responsibility to grow the church. Pastors are frequently evaluated by attendance, budgets, buildings, baptisms, programs, and numerical growth. If the church grows, the pastor is considered successful. If attendance declines, he is often considered ineffective. This way of thinking may make sense in the corporate world, where executives are responsible for increasing market share, but the church is not a corporation and the pastor is not its chief growth officer.

The Bible gives the pastor a different responsibility. The pastor’s task is to faithfully shepherd, teach, equip, and protect the people God has entrusted to him. The work of ministry belongs to the entire church, and the actual growth of the church belongs ultimately to God. Paul makes this pattern especially clear in Ephesians 4:11–12. Christ gives pastors and teachers to the church “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.” Notice who does the work of ministry. It is not merely the pastor. The pastor equips the saints, and the saints carry out the ministry.

This means a healthy church should not revolve around the activity of one gifted leader. It should increasingly become a congregation filled with equipped believers who know how to serve, disciple, encourage, evangelize, counsel, teach, show hospitality, bear burdens, and care for one another. The pastor does not replace the ministry of the church. He prepares the church for ministry.

I believe this distinction is essential because the opposite model produces unhealthy churches. When nearly every meaningful ministry depends upon the pastor, the congregation can become spectators. People attend sermons, programs, and events while assuming that professional ministers are responsible for accomplishing the mission of the church. But Christianity was never intended to be a spectator religion. The New Testament repeatedly commands believers to minister to one another. Christians are told to encourage one another, teach one another, serve one another, bear one another’s burdens, forgive one another, confess sins to one another, pray for one another, show hospitality to one another, and stir one another toward love and good works. Those commands cannot be fulfilled by a pastor on behalf of the congregation.

The church grows spiritually when every member recognizes that he or she has a role in the body. Paul describes this in Ephesians 4:16, saying that the body grows as it is joined together and “each part is working properly.” That phrase matters: each part. Biblical church life depends upon the faithful participation of ordinary Christians. The church is not healthy merely because the pastor is busy. It is healthy when the members themselves are growing in maturity and carrying out the work of ministry.

This also means that pastors must resist the temptation to make themselves indispensable. A pastor may feel productive when everything depends on him, but biblical leadership should produce greater maturity and responsibility among the people. A good pastor does not merely gather followers around himself. He develops disciples who can serve Christ faithfully whether or not the pastor is personally present. Paul modeled this approach with Timothy when he instructed him to entrust biblical truth “to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also” (2 Timothy 2:2). The pattern is multiplication through equipping. Paul teaches Timothy, Timothy teaches faithful men, and those faithful men teach others. The ministry moves outward through equipped believers rather than remaining concentrated in one leader.

There is also another important truth: even the church itself cannot manufacture genuine spiritual growth. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 3:6–7, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” Paul and Apollos had responsibilities. They preached, taught, labored, and served faithfully, but neither of them could create spiritual life. God gives the growth. This should produce both humility and freedom in pastoral ministry. Pastors should work diligently. They should preach clearly, shepherd courageously, evangelize faithfully, train leaders intentionally, and call the church to obedience. Laziness cannot be defended by saying that growth belongs to God. At the same time, pastors should not carry the crushing burden of believing that every attendance decline, unsuccessful program, or lack of numerical growth proves pastoral failure.

Sometimes faithful ministry produces visible increase. Sometimes faithful ministry results in pruning, opposition, difficulty, or even numerical decline. The standard of success cannot simply be whether the room became fuller. A better measure is whether the Word was faithfully preached, believers were equipped, sin was confronted, people were discipled, sound doctrine was protected, Christians were taught to minister to one another, and the gospel was proclaimed. The important question is not merely whether the church became larger, but whether the church became more faithful and more capable of carrying out the work Christ commanded it to do.

I believe the healthiest churches are not necessarily those where the pastor does the most ministry. They are churches where the pastor has equipped the people so effectively that ministry is happening throughout the congregation. Homes become places of hospitality. Mature believers disciple younger believers. Christians counsel one another with Scripture. Members care for the hurting. Parents disciple their children. Believers share the gospel with neighbors and coworkers. People recognize needs and serve without waiting for a pastor to organize a program. That is what an equipped church looks like.

For this reason, I believe we need to recover a simpler and more biblical understanding of pastoral ministry. The pastor equips, the church ministers, and God gives the growth. The pastor is not called to build an audience around himself or to carry the entire ministry of the church on his shoulders. He is called to prepare the saints for faithful service to Christ. When every part of the body begins doing its work, the church becomes what Christ intended it to be: not a crowd gathered around a professional minister, but a living body in which every member participates in the mission of God.