How Pastors Should Oversee Their Church

Here are 15 things a pastor should do in overseeing the people in his flock:

1. The ministry must be carried on purely for God and the salvation of souls, not for any personal, private goals.
2. The ministry must be diligently and laboriously carried on, because there are eternal implications for the pastor and his people.
3. The ministry must be carried on wisely and orderly.
4. He must primarily insist upon the greatest, most certain, and most necessary truths, and be more seldom and sparing on the rest.
5. Teaching must be as plain and simple as possible.
6. Work must be done with humility.
7. There must be a prudent mixture of severity and mildness in preaching and discipline.
8. He must be serious, earnest, and zealous in every part of his work.
9. The whole ministry must be carried on in tender love to his people.
10. He must carry on our work with patience. He must bear the abuse from those to whom he seeks to do good.
11. All his work must be managed reverently.
12. All his work should be done spiritually, as by a man who is possessed with the Holy Spirit.
13. He must keep up his earnest desire and expectation of success.
14. His whole work must be carried on under a deep sense of his own insufficiency and entire dependence on Christ.
15. He must be committed to the unity and peace of God’s church.

– adapted from Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor, (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 2001), pp. 111-123.