By Matthew F. Leighty
Executive Director

If you were writing the help-wanted ad for a pastor, one would think it wouldn’t draw many applicants.

Nights, weekends, and especially holidays. On call for every emergency, including the 3 a.m. kind. Regular public speaking to the same audience, every one of whom will have thoughts about it. Two ancient languages required, plus the ability to explain documents written thousands of years ago to people living now. Also expected: conflict resolution, snow removal, and enough technical skill to run the sound board, update the website, and design the weekly bulletin. Some singing, unaccompanied, in front of everyone. Compensation: modest. Prior experience with the dying preferred.

God does not advertise the pastoral office. He calls men into it, and Peter told them how it was to be carried:

“Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight … not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock” (1 Peter 5:2-3). A pastor is not separated from his flock. He is put in the middle of it all. Most of that work never appears on an award show or plays out in a blockbuster movie. It is the care of souls, which the faithful and the lost so desperately need.

In the early 2000s, I remember a weekend I intended to spend with my parents. I did not get much time with my dad, however, because he wasn’t home. My father was a Lutheran pastor, serving a congregation for the deaf in Iowa. An elderly couple there, both deaf themselves, had a son with a long history of drugs and trouble. He had boarded a bus on the West Coast, headed to them in the Midwest. Somewhere along the way, they lost track of him. They did not know where he was or whether he was alive.

So, my dad made the calls. Police departments. Bus stations. Shelters that might have seen the son. He spoke the couple’s questions into a telephone and signed the answers back to them — concern gripping their faces. It went on the entire time I was there. He was one of the very few people in their world who could help. I do not know whether they ever found their son. I know my father kept calling.

It wasn’t a sermon, elders meeting, or church picnic. It was a man sitting between two frightened parents and the rest of the world, being their voice. That is what Peter is describing.

My whole career has kept me in the company of pastors. What they talk about most is their people — the souls in their care.

A pastor today has a growing number of members who no longer come through the church doors. They are scattered across care facilities, second-floor apartments, and farmhouses 20 minutes out of town. He visits them, and he knows exactly who sits alone on Sunday morning while he is in the pulpit.

You may know one of those members. Perhaps the drive to church became too dangerous, or the steps into the narthex too difficult to climb. Nothing about their faith has changed. They were baptized into Christ, and they belong to Him and to your congregation still. But on Sunday morning the hymns are being sung across town, and they’re no longer there sitting in “their pew.”

That is why Worship Anew exists. Not to replace your pastor. Nor would we ever want to. No television program can baptize a grandchild, administer Christ’s body and blood, or speak absolution by name at a bedside. That is a pastor’s office, given by Christ.

What we can do is make sure that every Sunday an ordained Lutheran pastor preaches about Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection wherever the sheep are, be it their living room or a hospital bed. The hymns they knew from the time they were children are sung. The Word is boldly read and proclaimed. And this ministry does not stop when the program ends. Hope-Full Living puts Scripture in their hands daily, bringing the encouragement that comes only from the Word. Our Care Ministry keeps it going, too, with comforting items and encouraging resources that come alongside cards, calls, and prayers from people near and far. And this magazine is here as a resource for you for everyday challenges.

Peter does not leave the shepherds without a promise: “And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory” (1 Peter 5:4). Your pastor is himself a sheep, kneeling for the same absolution he pronounces over you. He is an under-shepherd. Christ is the Chief.

So, love your pastor this month. Thank him for something specific. Pray for him and his family. And when he speaks about the members he cannot reach every week, take some of that weight off him. Call them. Sit with them while the program plays. Tell them the pew is still theirs. And if you are the one whose pew sits empty, hear it for yourself: The Shepherd has not lost you, and He never counts a sheep too far out to carry home.

As the dearly loved hymn “The King of Love My Shepherd Is” so comfortingly proclaims:

“Perverse and foolish oft I strayed,
But yet in love He sought me
And on His shoulder gently laid
And home rejoicing brought me.”

— Henry W. Baker, 1868 (LSB #709)

Above photo by Ashley Wiehe: This stained glass window stands in the middle of the chancel where the pastors record “Worship Anew.” This stained glass was provided by Trinity Lutheran Church in Glencoe, Ill.