Archives For pastor appreciation

Prayer planned for pastors in October

Lisa Misner —  October 8, 2018

By John Carruthers

October is Pastor Appreciation Month

Some church members looking at the calendar saw Groundhog Day coming up and asked themselves, “If a groundhog can have its own day, shouldn’t our pastors?” So they started Pastor Appreciation Day in 1992. Since then, the day has grown to an entire month of celebration—not in February, but in October.

While churches may recognize their pastors in many different ways, the thing many pastors say they would appreciate is simply to pray for them.

During the month of October, the IBSA staff will lift up nearly 1,000 pastors and congregations in prayer, both individually and as a group. Pastors are welcome to share specific prayer requests at https://bit.ly/2PBcR9U, or by calling IBSA Church Relationships Manager John Carruthers at (217) 391-3110.

Based on recent interviews with IBSA pastors, here are five ways churches can support their pastor(s) in prayer.

1. Pray for wisdom. These men are confronted everyday with many decisions and they desire clarity from the Lord. Pray for God to supply them with his wisdom.
Proverbs 3:5-6

2. Pray for protection. Temptations and attacks come from many different angles and are continuous. Pray for God to protect the pastor from the enemy. I Peter 5:8

3. Pray for his family. Isolation, attacks, and bullying are very common for a pastor’s family to deal with. Pray protection around his family to avoid the fiery snares. Proverbs 12:22

4. Pray for financial pressures. Many pastors are underpaid and some live below the poverty level. They continue to serve joyfully through financial stress. Pray for God to provide not only basic needs but additional resources to provide for times of celebration and comfort. Philippians 4:19

5. Pray for gospel opportunities. Being a pastor can open up gospel conversations, or sometimes it can shut them down. Pray for the pastor to have friendships with unbelievers, and to have opportunity to share the gospel this week. Psalm 105:1

John Carruthers is IBSA’s Church Relationships Manager

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Knobloch retires after 38 years, multiple assignments at IBSA

ib2newseditor —  January 2, 2018
Sylvan-Kathy-Knobloch-Mark-Emerson

Mark Emerson (right) led prayer for Sylvan Knobloch and his wife, Kathy, during a retirement celebration in November. Knobloch said he’s not certain exactly what shape life after retirement will take, other than he “wants to be a good grandparent.” The Knoblochs have two adult children and six grandkids.

Sylvan Knobloch, currently the Illinois Baptist State Association’s longest-tenured employee, will retire at the end of this year after 38 years in the areas of campus ministry, church health, and leadership development.

Knobloch was honored at a Nov. 27 retirement dinner in Springfield, where friends and co-workers celebrated his work over the years—and the nearly one million miles he has traveled as a consultant for IBSA churches.

Bob Dickerson, pastor of First Baptist Church, Marion, and a one-time co-worker of Knobloch’s at IBSA, spoke during the dinner and cited the familiar passage in Matthew—“Well done, good and faithful servant.”

A native of Waterloo, Ill., Knobloch was working as a pastor and volunteer campus minister in Bowling Green, Ohio, when he met then-IBSA campus ministry director Bob Blattner at a missions conference. A few months later, Blattner asked him to consider leading student ministry at Eastern Illinois University. Knobloch, who had been looking for a full-time campus ministry position, sensed God was opening a door.

He worked in Charleston from 1979 until 1988, when he moved with his wife, Kathy, and their two children to Carbondale to direct ministry at Southern Illinois University. In 1993, then-IBSA Executive Director Maurice Swinford offered Knobloch the opportunity to join the Springfield-based staff as director of discipleship, singles ministry, and senior ministry, a job move that later morphed into a long stint in the areas of church/minister relations and church health. In those capacities, Knobloch helped churches and pastors navigate conflict, negotiation, and reconciliation.

He helped establish a severance process by which churches can ease a difficult transition for their pastor. He also aided individual ministries through Rekindling the Call retreats designed to refresh and renew pastors and their spouses.

In 2016, he took on the area of leadership development and helped IBSA continue to establish processes to help churches identify emerging leaders and equip current leaders by making available a spiritual gift and personality profile.

On the eve of his retirement, Knobloch talked to the Illinois Baptist about the joys of 38 years of ministry, the challenges still facing Illinois Baptists, and the journey toward true understanding between pastors and churches.

Illinois Baptist: What have been the greatest joys of your years of ministry in Illinois?

Sylvan Knobloch: One of the most significant joys from my years of campus ministry has been seeing the numerous students from the Baptist Student Union continue to serve faithfully in their respective churches across Illinois.

Another great joy is witnessing church growth and renewal in congregations that I worked with over the years. It is gratifying to know I played a small part in their transition.

IB: How have you seen churches and communities in Illinois change over the past 38 years, as far as how churches do ministry?

SK: There is more diversity in both the types of pastoral leadership and the types of churches. A growing number of pastors today simultaneously serve two churches, while other churches have more than one campus.

The single-staff pastor is not a new phenomenon, but many of these pastors today are serving in declining and aging congregations. Often these churches are resistant to the changes needed to reach younger families.

IBSA is meeting this challenge by encouraging ministers to build relationships with other pastors and to support each other through cohorts.

IB: What are some other challenges facing IBSA leaders today?

SK: Pastors need relationships. Pastors and staff today often are not going away to one of the six SBC seminaries for education like they did 38 years ago. Today’s minister often chooses to take advantage of online seminary degrees; a decisive advantage is the minister remains in Illinois serving their churches. But on the negative side, these pastors miss out on the relationships that develop naturally on the seminary campus.

IB: If you could tell church members one thing about their pastor, what would it be?

SK: I would ask search committees to spend time getting to know their pastoral candidate before calling him. He will be doing life with you; therefore, consider the iceberg. Don’t merely look at what is above the waterline, but consider what is below, the unseen: character, ministry goals, and dreams. Church leaders should ask the new pastor how they can help him succeed.

IB: If you could tell a pastor one thing about his church, what would it be?

SK: I would encourage him to spend time with church leaders to understand their dreams and goals, both for their church and for their own lives. Pray for ways you can enable each leader to become all he/she is called to be.

The prerequisite for this is for the pastor to have self-awareness, to understand his emotions and their impact on others. In this way, he will become an effective leader.

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Somebody’s prayin’

ib2newseditor —  October 2, 2017

Pray button

After my dad’s mother died, I remember him saying that he physically felt the absence of her prayers. Dad had, in some ways, a challenging personality for pastoring. He was introverted, in many ways non-assertive, a quiet thinker and reader who scripted his sermons by hand so that he could deliver them effectively.

So, if you only knew my dad personally, you may have been surprised when you first saw him step into the pulpit, or witnessed him in some other pastoral role. He was wise, articulate, bold, insightful, truly helpful. As a pastor, he was supernaturally equipped for the role to which God had called him, in a way that eclipsed his natural limitations. And I believe this was supernaturally sustained by the devoted prayers of people who supported him over the years, his mother and my mother chief among them.

Our pastors need our sincere and earnest prayer. They need us to intercede spiritually for them, every bit as much as they need us to support them in leading the ministries of our church. Not all pastors face the same challenges that my dad did, but all of them face their own unique struggles and obstacles. If it is primarily those closest to them that sustain them in prayer, just think what could happen with an entire church earnestly praying.

Pastors need our sincere and earnest intercession.

October is Pastor Appreciation Month. If this is not already your practice, let me encourage you to take the month of October to pray for your pastor, and perhaps other pastors you know, daily. At the IBSA.org website, there will be a daily prayer guide to assist you in that discipline.

You will not be alone. Throughout October, our IBSA staff will be praying for every IBSA church pastor, by name. We are also asking for specific prayer requests by e-mail, and personally calling more than 300 pastors for whom we don’t have a current e-mail address, to ask them how we can pray.

I hope many pastors will share specific prayer needs, perhaps some that are difficult to share with church members, and will allow us to pray for them personally in this way. For those from whom we don’t receive specific requests, we will simply use the prayer guide to pray for each pastor.

Many churches give gifts and other expressions of love to their pastors during October. Prayer, especially consistent, daily prayer, is one of the greatest appreciation gifts you can give. When something “appreciates,” it increases in value. And I believe that the sincere, consistent prayers of a congregation will “increase the value” of a pastor more than anything else. And by the way, that’s true even when you may personally struggle with your pastor!

In a recent IBSA chapel, we were talking about praying for pastors. Our state worship director, Steve Hamrick, shared about his dad, also a pastor, who prayed for him daily throughout his ministry. When his dad passed away a few years ago, his father-in-law noted at the funeral how special that prayer relationship was, and committed to him to take up the privilege of praying for Steve from that day forward.

During that same chapel, Steve led us in singing the old Ricky Skaggs song, “Somebody’s Prayin’.” The first two lines of that song are simply, “Somebody’s prayin’, I can feel it. Somebody’s prayin’ for me.”

IBSA pastors, I will be one of those somebodies praying for you throughout the month of October, along with every member of our staff. I hope you “feel” it in the same way that my dad did from his mom. And I hope you will feel it from many faithful church members as well.

Nate Adams is executive director of the Illinois Baptist State Association. Respond at IllinoisBaptist@IBSA.org.

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What pastors really want

Meredith Flynn —  October 23, 2014

Eric_Reed COMMENTARY | Eric Reed

With one week left in Pastor Appreciation Month, you may be wondering how to appreciate your pastor. What does he need? Or want?

Not a Bible. He has many Bibles on his shelves, and hundreds more on his phone.

Not a painting of Jesus, and certainly not on black velvet.

Maybe a suit, if only for funerals, but let him pick his own.

Not a trip. As a church member, I once gave a pastor and his family a gift certificate for a getaway weekend. The smile on his face said, “I’d rather have cash.”

As a pastor, the remembrances that blessed me most (in addition to the occasional love offering) were handwritten cards and letters. Once while I was on vacation, a deacon had the congregation fill a three-ring binder with thank-you notes. And another time, as the children’s classes presented me with a three-foot tall card they had drawn, a young woman in the choir loft exclaimed, “He’s gonna cry!” I did.

Ted Traylor of Olive Baptist Church in Pensacola, Florida, told a story that still chokes me up. Many years ago during a stormy season in his ministry, Traylor arrived home one night to find three deacons sitting on the curb. “Oh, no,” he thought. “Here it comes.”

“Pastor, remember when you preached on the mighty men of David?” one of them said, “How when David longed for water from home, they snuck across the battle lines and brought it to him?”

Traylor nodded.

“Well, we went to your hometown today and we talked with your parents.” It was a twelve-hour round trip.

The pastor was astonished to learn they had brought him a sapling native to North Alabama to remind him of home, even as he served hundreds of miles away. They fetched a jar of water from the clear mountain springs to remind him of the living water of Christ. And they delivered two large stones from the hillside ledge where as a teenager Traylor was called by God to the ministry. The men instructed him to place the rocks in his own garden and whenever he felt unsure of himself or his calling, to stand on them as a reminder that he stands on the Rock.

And the three mighty men pledged their personal support of their pastor and his ministry, whenever and wherever he needed them, “unless you do something illegal, immoral, or unethical—then we’ll take you out ourselves,” he remembered, smiling.

That’s what pastors want.

Eric Reed is editor of the Illinois Baptist and IBSA’s associate executive director, Church Communications team.

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Young people are leaving, but why?

Meredith Flynn —  September 3, 2013

Tuesday_BriefingLeaders debate disconnect between millenials and the church

THE BRIEFING | Meredith Flynn

“Some millenials, like many from generations before us, want the church to become a mirror – a reflection of our particular preferences, desires, and dreams,” Trevin Wax blogged earlier this summer.

“But other millenials want a Christianity that shapes and changes our preferences, desires, and dreams.”

Those words from Wax, managing editor of LifeWay’s “The Gospel Project,” succinctly explain the debate sparked in July by a blog post by Rachel Held Evans. At issue: the millennial generation (generally defined as those born around and after 1980), the church, and the perceived distance between the two.

Evans, a 32-year-old author right on the edge of the millenial divide, shared on CNN’s “Belief” blog that too often, church leaders think they can bridge the gap with better, cooler style choices in music, technology, and the entire worship experience. But, “we’re not leaving the church because we don’t find the cool factor there; we’re leaving the church because we don’t find Jesus there,” Evans wrote.

She gives to church leaders who want to appeal to young Christians: “…I explain how young adults perceive evangelical Christianity to be too political, too exclusive, old-fashioned, unconcerned with social justice and hostile to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

“I point to research that shows young evangelicals often feel they have to choose between their intellectual integrity and their faith, between science and Christianity, between compassion and holiness.”

Evans’ column lit up social media and garnered thousands of comments on CNN’s site, where it’s still getting feedback more than a month after it posted. Other Christian leaders responded too, agreeing with some of Evans’ points but also offering their own take on the problem: 59% of young people disengage from the church for an extended period of time or for good, according to Barna.

It’s an important conversation to have, said Chase Abner, IBSA’s collegiate evangelism strategist. “Like it or not, Millenials will soon be at the helm of our churches, schools and governments. Let us labor that they might hear and respond in faith to Christ.”

It’s the in’s and out’s and how to’s of that labor that had leaders talking about Evans’ blog post. Trevin Wax noted that although Evans says Millenials long for Jesus in the church, the ideal church she describes may not look like Him.

“When I read the Gospels, I’m confronted by a Jesus who explodes our categories of righteousness and sin, repentance and forgiveness, and power and purity,” he blogged. “I see a King who makes utterly exclusive claims, and doesn’t seem to care who is offended.”

Wax writes later, “Rachel says Millenials want to be ‘challenged to holiness,’ but the challenge she appears to be advocating is one on our own terms and according to our own preferences.”

Several leaders who commented on Evans’ post turned the focus away from the church and took a harder look at Millenials themselves. Are today’s young Christians giving the “me generation” a run for their money when it comes to self-centeredness?

“I’m sorry Millenials, but I’m going to have to throw us under the bus here: we do not have everything figured out,” wrote author Brett McCracken on The Washington Post’s “On Faith” blog. “And if we expect older generations and well-established institutions to morph to fit our every fickle desire, we do so at our peril.”

In response to Evans’ suggestion that church leaders sit down with young Christians and talk about what they’re looking for in a church, McCracken proposed the opposite. “Millenials, why don’t we take our pastors, parents and older Christian brothers and sisters out to coffee and listen to them?”

Jason Allen, president of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, echoed that idea in a column on Baptist Press, but took it a step further by calling on church leaders and parents to help young people experience the church as a member of the body, rather than just part of various age-graded programs.

“When they are disconnected from the congregation, it should not surprise us that young adults, who have never known the church as a whole, are disinclined to embrace it when their age-graded group has run its course.”

Allen wrote he wants his children to get to know people at all stages of life in the church – from young couples to senior citizens. That focus on relationships is increasingly important to young Christians, Abner said. In a day when technology can make anyone an expert on anything – even Christianity – young people want to know whether the information we have is making a difference in the world.

“They can’t see that just from shaking your hand before or after a service. They can’t see that just because you teach the Bible well,” Abner said. “But they can see it in the way you love your spouse and children. They can see it in the way you follow Jesus at work. They can see it in the way you refuse to compartmentalize your devotion to the Gospel.”

Read more about young people and the church in the next issue of the Illinois Baptist, online this Friday at http://ibonline.IBSA.org.

Kazakh Baptists fined for meeting
Authorities in Kazakhstan fined 18 Baptists this summer for participating in religious activity not authorized by the state, Baptist Press reports. The country’s Administration Code bans participation, leadership or financing of any unregistered religious community. Forum 18, a religious freedom organization based in Norway, reported three Baptists fined an two months’ average salary for leading the meetings, and 15 others were fine one month’s average salary for attending worship.

Kazakhstan’s Council of Baptists don’t seek state registration, maintaining that the country’s constitution and international human rights commitments forbid requiring government approval for worship. Read more at BPNews.net.

Doves offer something for everyone
The nominees for the 44th annual Dove Awards showcase Christian music’s diversity, from rock to hip-hop, Southern Gospel to praise & worship. “The Doves represent the best of the best – in all genres of Gospel music, celebrating talent, ministry and outstanding performances,” said Jackie Patillo, executive director of the Gospel Music Association. The Dove Awards will be presented Oct. 15 and broadcast Oct. 21 on the UP network. Worship leaders Matt Redman and Chris Tomlin each received nine nominations, and will vie for song of the year with “10,000 Reasons” and “Whom Shall I Fear,” respectively. Read the full list of nominees at DoveAwards.com.

NAMB offers online resources to encourage church leaders
With Pastor Appreciation Month coming in October, the North American Mission Board is providing churches with resources to encourage and support their leaders. NAMB is encouraging churches to pick one Sunday to lift up their pastors during a worship service. The web page NAMB.net/honoring_pastors offers posters and bulletin inserts with 50 practical, specific ways lay leaders can encourage their pastors and their families year-round. Read the full story at BPNews.net.

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