Expositional Leadership E-Book

R. Scott Pace

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

6 Categories of Leadership That Pastors Should Integrate into Their Preaching Shepherding a congregation comes with many responsibilities. In addition to preparing weekly sermons, pastors manage church teams and minister to a variety of people with different needs. Attempting to tackle these roles separately can be exhausting and may eventually affect the health of the church. How should leaders integrate their roles to effectively shepherd their congregations? This guide shows pastors how to simplify and strengthen their ministry work by integrating leadership, preaching, and pastoring in biblical exposition. Authors Scott Pace and Jim Shaddix clearly lay out 6 categories of leadership—scriptural, spiritual, strategic, servant, situational, and sensible—and explain how to leverage them through sermon development and delivery. Offering practical advice and biblical wisdom related to each role, they help readers find balance in their ministries while nurturing their congregations in healthy, sustainable ways. - Biblical and Applicable: Shows pastors how to integrate leadership, preaching, and pastoring to effectively lead congregations - Practical: Offers biblical advice for healthy church leadership and expository sermon design and delivery - A Great Resource for New and Veteran Church Leaders: Practical manual for vocational and academic training

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“What an invaluable book! Every pastor experiences challenges in trying to do it all: leading the church, preaching week by week, and helping people amid the ups and downs of life in a fallen world. Scott Pace and Jim Shaddix provide explicit biblical wisdom and immense practical help for every pastor who wants to do all of the above with faithfulness, joy, and love for God and the people he calls us to lead.”

David Platt, Pastor, McLean Bible Church, McLean, Virginia; Founder, Radical; author, Don’t Hold Back

“In Expositional Leadership, Jim Shaddix and Scott Pace combine experienced pastoring with years of training others for the pastorate to give insight into how the ministry of the word contributes to the fulfillment of the local church’s leadership, preaching, and pastoring responsibilities. This needed book shows how congregational ministry empowers the pulpit and how faithful pulpit ministry is integral to congregational leadership and health. What many only discover from decades of ministry is captured and treasured here.”

Bryan Chapell, pastor; author, Christ-Centered Preaching

“What a timely and much-needed work. I do not know of another book like it. Bringing together in beautiful balance the work of leading, pastoring, and preaching, Pace and Shaddix show us how we can fulfill our holy assignment with integrity, competence, and joy.”

Daniel L. Akin, President, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

“The sermon is by far the pastor’s most influential leadership opportunity. In Expositional Leadership, Scott Pace and Jim Shaddix demonstrate how preachers can steward that opportunity in a manner that is spiritually beneficial to the congregation and consistent with the biblical calling of the pastor-teacher. This rewarding book is, in equal parts, a pastoral theology, a biblical rationale for expository preaching, and a solid philosophy of church leadership. Expositional Leadership offers valuable guidance for both the beginner pastor and the experienced leader.”

Stephen Rummage, Senior Pastor, Quail Springs Baptist Church, Oklahoma City; Professor of Preaching and Pastoral Ministry, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary; author, Planning Your Preaching

“A biographer once said of John Calvin that the hardworking pastor and theologian assumed his whole ministerial labor was all about the exposition of Scripture. Everything centered on and flowed from exposition. In a similar spirit, Pace and Shaddix demonstrate how the numerous facets of pastoral ministry can and should be integrated by such a commitment. Expositional Leadership offers a model of pastoral ministry that allows the word of God to be the primary way a preacher leads, loves, and feeds the church. While there are many books on church leadership, homiletics, and pastoring, there aren’t many that demonstrate how all three should work together. I highly recommend this book and plan on using it in future events and courses.”

Tony Merida, Pastor for Preaching and Vision, Imago Dei Church, Raleigh, North Carolina; author, The Christ-Centered Expositor

“Expositional Leadership presents a threefold approach to pastoring, teaching, and preaching wherein leadership and pastoring are servants of preaching—not masters. This volume reenergizes leaders to respond to the actual needs of the church’s present-day challenges with powerful tools, and it does so without compromising the integrity of the eternal word or diminishing its authority. Jim Shaddix and Scott Pace’s Expositional Leadership is a book whose time has come for those dedicated to efficient and effective kingdom work.”

Robert Smith Jr., Charles T. Carter Baptist Chair of Divinity, Beeson Divinity School, Samford University

“Many books on preaching today wrongfully separate preaching from the primary call of a pastor to ‘shepherd the flock of God that is among you’ (1 Pet. 5:2). What we need are trusted voices to push against this trend and skillfully demonstrate how preaching is a primary task of the pastor’s central calling. Pace and Shaddix are two of those voices. In Expositional Leadership they biblically and practically show how the preaching task is threaded through the shepherding call, not separated from it. Their insights are wise, helpful, and pastoral. Every pastor who desires to shepherd well through preaching should read this book.”

Brian Croft, Founder and Executive Director, Practical Shepherding

Expositional Leadership

Expositional Leadership

Shepherding God’s People from the Pulpit

R. Scott Pace and Jim Shaddix

Expositional Leadership: Shepherding God’s People from the Pulpit

© 2024 by R. Scott Pace and Jim Shaddix

Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Cover image and design: Jordan Singer

First printing 2024

Printed in the United States of America

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated into any other language.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the authors.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-8802-0 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-8805-1 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-8803-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Pace, R. Scott, author. | Shaddix, Jim, author. 

Title: Expositional leadership : shepherding God's people from the pulpit / R. Scott Pace and Jim Shaddix.  

Description: Wheaton, Illinois : Crossway, [2024] | Includes bibliographical references and index. 

Identifiers: LCCN 2023001084 (print) | LCCN 2023001085 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433588020 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781433588037 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433588051 (epub)  

Subjects: LCSH: Christian leadership. 

Classification: LCC BV652.1 .P323 2024 (print) | LCC BV652.1 (ebook) | DDC– 253dc23/eng/20230712 

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023001084

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023001085

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

2023-10-24 09:32:26 AM

Contents

Introduction: Leaders, Preachers, and Pastors

1  Scriptural Leadership from the Pulpit

2  Spiritual Leadership from the Pulpit

3  Strategic Leadership from the Pulpit

4  Servant Leadership from the Pulpit

5  Situational Leadership from the Pulpit

6  Sensible Leadership from the Pulpit

Conclusion: Follow-Through and Final Thoughts

General Index

Scripture Index

Introduction

Leaders, Preachers, and Pastors

Church leadership is challenging for a variety of reasons. Beneath the surface of a local church’s culture is a complex history that can be difficult to see and assess. Every church body consists of people with various backgrounds, personalities, family situations, needs, and expectations. Often, there is also a wide range of spiritual maturity among members of the congregation that requires personal consideration and a versatile ministry approach. These challenges are compounded by the unforeseen circumstances and unexpected obstacles that pastors are constantly required to navigate as they attempt to lead the collective whole. Other pastors, as well as elders, administrative staff, and church leaders, can help shoulder some of the load, but leading a team and working with people creates additional dynamics that come with their own set of issues. In short, human beings are unpredictable, churches are complicated, and leadership is hard!

In addition to daily leadership challenges, pastors are always living under the pressure of the impending sermon. As soon as we step off the platform and emotionally exhale, the anticipation of the next message and the anxiety about its preparation begins to build. Even those of us who enjoy the process of sermon development recognize the ongoing mental and physical demands of preparing and preaching weekly messages (and sometimes more).

The sacred trust of delivering God’s word is a sobering honor that we celebrate with gratitude and embrace with reverence. But if we’re honest, the most difficult challenge related to preaching is not the never-ending process of sermon preparation or the unique blend of exhilaration and exhaustion that comes with delivering a message. It’s the overwhelming disappointment we feel as we watch our people seemingly disregard the truth of God’s word that we so desperately strive to communicate to them. Their lives continue to exhibit the same broken pieces and patterns, and the church body feels unmoved and unmotivated. Our initial misguided feelings of betrayal eventually give way to frustration and discouragement as we begin to struggle with doubts related to our preaching or with questions concerning our calling and our church. Preaching, as enjoyable as it is, can become a real struggle.

If leadership and preaching aren’t difficult enough, the daily grind of pastoring can make ministry feel impossible and, on some days, miserable. The strain on our families, barrage of unrealistic expectations, constant demands on our time, spiritual weight of empathy for our people, and apparent lack of appreciation can absolutely debilitate even the most gifted pastor. Indeed, apart from God’s sustaining grace and his supernatural strength, pastoral ministry is unbearable and unmanageable. As we struggle to persevere, we long to see God work in our congregants’ lives and desperately pray for his fresh work in our own. These earnest desires, along with the constant demands, make pastoring both a humbling privilege and a heavy burden.

Overall, these three core components of our ministries—leadership, preaching, and pastoring—are all essential aspects of our calling. Although most of us recognize the inherent challenges that come with each of them (and certainly don’t need a book to remind us), it’s easy to overlook how interrelated and mutually dependent they are on one another. As a result, we can also fail to see how addressing them collectively can simplify their individual challenges. Most importantly, if we fail to recognize how Scripture weds leadership, preaching, and pastoring together, we may find ourselves attempting to fulfill each of their related responsibilities without actually accomplishing any of them.

Surveying the Landscape

The unhealthy differentiation between leadership, preaching, and pastoring is also reflected in the broader landscape of contemporary ministry. In the same way that we compartmentalize these three core components of our calling, ministry resources typically address them separately as well. For example, leadership books often focus on principles and processes but rarely address practical aspects of pastoring. Similarly, pastoral resources provide helpful insights for our various roles and responsibilities but give little to no attention to preaching. And homiletics resources are designed to enhance our interpretation and communication skills, but they are largely silent on pastoral and leadership matters. While each of these subjects certainly warrant dedicated volumes, their artificial isolation and borderline exclusion of one another ignores the mutual dependence they share. This is one reason why expositional leadership is so important—it helps us integrate these foundational concepts.

But our segregation of these essential ministry components is not just theoretical—it’s practical. In each of our ministries we all have responsibilities that require us to allocate time for sermon preparation, pastoral care and counseling, and organizational leadership (strategic scheduling is a must for every faithful pastor). Yet, some pastors may recognize preaching as a ministry strength and devote an unhealthy portion of their time to sermon development while they neglect pastoral care for the flock. Others may be gifted in the area of leadership and overemphasize vision and strategy to a point that it devalues people and sees them as an obstacle to overcome or a necessary evil to be put up with. Still others may not see themselves as gifted communicators and thus dedicate themselves to caring for the flock but minimize the amount of time spent in sermon preparation.

While we all have areas of strengths and weaknesses, and each of us has different passions and preferences, we must avoid concentrating on one core component of ministry at the expense of another. However, this is not simply a balance problem; it’s also a blending problem. This is another reason why expositional leadership is crucial—it helps us determine how these core components of ministry overlap and how we can synthesize them together for maximum ministry impact.

Sadly, this unhealthy segregation of duties is not only obvious in our ministry approach and the related resources but is even more apparent in many ministry failures that occur. Pastors typically don’t lose their churches because they suddenly adopt some errant doctrine or stumble into a moral failure. To be sure, these are not uncommon, but they are not the most frequent source of ministry collapse. Rather, pastors are dismissed and churches split over unwise and unhealthy leadership. Further, pastors often resign because churches can become riddled with internal turmoil due to a lack of spiritual maturity, which ultimately reflects an anemic preaching ministry. Likewise, when the people don’t feel cared for and the sermons seem detached from their lives (no matter how exegetically accurate they are), a pastor can lose the trust and confidence of the congregation, forcing him to eventually leave.

When these types of situations begin to unravel, we find ourselves focusing on the symptoms instead of identifying and resolving the source of the problems. In other words, we point the hose at the smoke instead of the fire, which leaves the ministry in ashes, the people with scars, and the pastors severely burned. In each of these common scenarios, the failure in one core component leads to struggles in the others. But the opposite can also be true, and this is yet another reason why expositional leadership is critical. It helps us to leverage each component for the strength and success of the others, thereby solidifying and safeguarding our ministry.

Establishing the Boundaries

As we explore the concept of expositional leadership it is important to establish some doctrinal and philosophical boundaries. These theological guardrails can keep us out of doctrinal ditches and also serve as guides that will steer our conversation in the right direction. There are several theological convictions and commitments that undergird our perspective and ultimately guide our approach. Each of these foundational truths feed and fuel the nature and necessity of expositional leadership.1

God, Salvation, and the Church

We believe that the Creator of the universe is the one true, living, triune God who exists eternally in three persons—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. He uniquely created people in his image (Gen. 1:26–27), but all of humanity was separated from him and condemned through Adam’s original sin (Rom. 5:12). God’s eternal plan of redemption was promised and pictured throughout the Old Testament (Gen. 3:15), and it was accomplished according to the Scriptures in the person and work of Christ the Son through his virgin birth, sinless life, substitutionary death on the cross, and bodily resurrection (1 Cor. 15:3–4). By faith, all those who repent and trust Christ as their Lord and Savior are personally and eternally saved (Rom. 10:9–10), adopted into God’s family (1 John 3:1; Gal. 4:4–7), and established as new covenant members of Christ’s body and bride, the church (Eph. 5:25–33). Believers are called to live and serve within a local community of faith that is conforming them, individually and collectively, into the likeness of the Son (Rom. 8:29; Eph. 4:12–16). Ultimately, as the fulfillment of God’s redemptive plan, this life transformation is the goal of expositional leadership.

The Sacred Scriptures

God has revealed his eternal nature and divine power through the magnitude and majesty of his creation (Rom. 1:20). More specifically, he has disclosed his personal nature through the living Word, Jesus (John 1:1–14; Heb. 1:3), and his written word, the Scriptures (Ps. 19:7–9; 2 Pet. 1:20–21). The Bible is the inspired, infallible, and inerrant word of God and therefore is sufficient as the sole and supreme authority of everything that pertains to life, faith, and godliness (2 Tim. 3:16–17; 2 Pet. 1:3). Through the power and presence of God’s Spirit, believers are able to understand and respond to the Scriptures (John 16:13; 1 Cor. 2:12–16). God’s word is also the primary means by which his people are sanctified (John 17:17; 1 Pet. 2:2). Therefore, the word of God is the source and substance of expositional leadership.

Pastoral Leadership

While God’s people have equal worth and spiritual standing before the Lord, he has given leaders to the church to serve and equip his people (Eph. 4:11–12). In particular, he has established the office of pastor (or elder) within the church for those who are called and capable according to biblical qualifications (1 Tim. 3:1–7; Titus 1:5–9). As God’s appointed undershepherds, pastors are called to serve Christ, the chief shepherd, by leading and feeding his people (1 Pet. 5:1–4; Acts 20:28). Pastors have stewardship responsibilities for the spiritual health of the church, bear a unique burden for God’s people, and are called to exercise oversight in a loving and responsible manner (Heb. 13:17). These ordained responsibilities serve as the impetus for expositional leadership.

Expository Preaching

A primary, and arguably the most important, responsibility of a pastor is to “preach the word” (2 Tim. 4:2). The success of his ministry will largely be measured by his faithfulness to teach the Scriptures accurately and effectively (2 Tim. 2:15). The preaching philosophy and practice that most faithfully honors the Bible as the word of God, allowing the text of Scripture to determine the substance and structure of the sermon, is exposition. This systematic approach, which regularly preaches through books or extended portions of the Bible, includes the clear explanation, application, and proclamation of a passage of Scripture. In other words, “Expository preaching is the process of laying open the biblical text in such a way that the Holy Spirit’s intended meaning and accompanying power are brought to bear on the lives of contemporary listeners.”2 Since preaching is intended to be the central component of corporate worship and the Scriptures have the power to transform lives, the broadest congregational influence will occur when we preach to God’s gathered people (1 Tim. 4:13–16; see Neh. 8:1–8). As a result, expository preaching is the model and the means by which expositional leadership is accomplished.

Expositional Leadership

Based on these doctrinal convictions and the foundation they provide, we can establish the concept and core components of expositional leadership.

Expositional leadership is the pastoral process of shepherding God’s people through the faithful exposition of his word to conform them to the image of his Son by the power of his Spirit.

Each component of this definition deserves a brief explanation.

Expositional leadership is pastoral because preaching is the foundational and indispensable responsibility of those who are called to lead the church.Expositional leadership is a process because it is ongoing and continual. Leadership builds over time, not only in its leverage and influence but in its direction and progress.Expositional leadership involves shepherding God’s people because it considers a particular context and congregation that must be led and fed according to their spiritual needs.Expositional leadership occurs through the faithful exposition of God’s word because it requires the timeless truth of Scripture to be rightly interpreted and proclaimed.Expositional leadership is intended to conform the congregation to the image of God’s Son because its ultimate goal is the individual and corporate transformation of Christ’s followers.Expositional leadership is only possible by the power of his Spirit because preaching for real heart transformation is utterly dependent on his supernatural work.

This working definition and its corresponding explanations provide the basis for our approach to expositional leadership in the chapters that follow. Each of the elements that comprise the definition are woven into various expressions of pastoral leadership through expository preaching.

Charting the Course

Leadership is a multifaceted concept that includes various forms and functions, particularly within pastoral ministry. As we explore the concept of shepherding God’s people through biblical exposition, there are six categories of leadership that can provide some structure to the conversation. Each chapter in this volume will focus on a specific aspect of pastoral leadership that can be leveraged through sermon development and delivery. The facets of leadership identified and discussed are not intended to be comprehensive, but, in our experience, they cover the most common (and essential) elements of pastoral leadership that should be employed through the faithful exposition of God’s word.

The first chapter focuses on scriptural leadership. Here we aim to establish a biblical basis for a pastor’s role in shepherding a congregation, the responsibilities it involves, the character and calling it requires, and the inseparable nature of expositional preaching and pastoral leadership. We will also consider how scriptural leadership must be distinguished from secular leadership in its form, function, and focus—otherwise, our preaching simply qualifies as motivational monologues, religious pep talks, or moralistic rants.

Chapter two explores the spiritual leadership that we should exert through our preaching. Ultimately, our faithful exposition is intended to result in spiritual transformation for us and for our congregations. Our ability to provide spiritual leadership depends on our own spiritual growth and maturity, which is enhanced through sermon development and expressed through sermon delivery. Beyond our own spiritual progress, a healthy pulpit ministry also determines the spiritual vitality and vibrancy of the church. In this chapter we explore how individual and corporate discipleship can be accomplished through the sermon and how biblical exposition equips our people to study Scripture in their own spiritual disciplines and devotion.

In the third chapter we address strategic leadership and how our messages should be designed for our specific contexts and congregations. Exposition should always be grounded in the authoritative meaning of the divine author as expressed through the biblical writer. This hermeneutical conviction and commitment guides our understanding of how the text can be pastorally applied in various churches. Yet, in order to effectively mobilize our congregations, we must also contextualize our messages for them as a distinct spiritual community. Through faithful exposition we can cast vision for our people and challenge them with congregational initiatives and collaborative efforts to accomplish God’s mission and fulfill his will for our churches.

Servant leadership is the focus of chapter four. Here, we’ll consider how to cultivate and establish a culture of humility and service among our people through text-driven preaching. This is not simply accomplished by preaching on servant-related passages, but is primarily achieved through our pulpit demeanor and preaching style. As pastors, we must demonstrate a Christlike humility through our sermon delivery as we exhort, challenge, plead, and compel our congregations according to the truth of the passage. Our disposition should display a love for our congregation and our community that models a compassion for people and motivates our members to live on mission with a servant mentality.

Chapter five focuses on situational leadership through our preaching ministry. Every church inevitably goes through difficult seasons of trial and hardship. These can be some of the most important times in the life of a church, and they require our careful consideration as we navigate them from the pulpit. People are looking for guidance and listening for truth that will anchor their hope in Christ, help them process circumstances through a biblical lens, and teach them how to respond accordingly. Whether it is a community tragedy or church crisis, we have the responsibility to preach with conviction and compassion as we shepherd our people through various situations with expositional messages.

The final chapter addresses sensible leadership in our preaching ministry. Too many churches have been damaged, too many ministries have been derailed, and too many pastors have been disqualified by the failure to exercise godly wisdom (and common sense) in preaching. Common pitfalls that seem obvious can actually become subtle traps that pastors fall into. As faithful preachers, we must avoid using our privilege to preach God’s word on a soapbox by proclaiming our opinions, airing grievances, strong-arming the church, undermining others, or promoting ourselves. The pulpit is not a place for public arguments, political agendas, or personal ambition, so we must be careful to honor our calling and Christ’s name through sensible leadership as his spokesmen.

Each of these six leadership concepts are essential to pastoral ministry and are best leveraged through our preaching ministries. They are practical areas that can help us weave leadership, preaching, and pastoring into a unified approach when guiding and feeding the congregations entrusted into our care. We pray that our journey together through Expositional Leadership will be one that deepens your walk and strengthens your work for our Savior!

1  In John Stott’s classic Between Two Worlds, he sets forth five core convictions that establish the theological foundations for preaching. He argues that our homiletical approach will be determined by our convictions about God, Scripture, church, the pastorate, and preaching. John R. W. Stott, Between Two Worlds: The Art of Preaching in the Twentieth Century (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1982), 92–134.

2  Jerry Vines and Jim Shaddix, Power in the Pulpit, rev. ed. (Chicago: Moody, 2017), 30.

1

Scriptural Leadership from the Pulpit

Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.

1 Timothy 4:13

Those of us who champion expository preaching are sometimes asked whether the Bible mandates such a practice. We hear questions like, “Where in the Bible are we commanded to preach expositional sermons?” or “Can the sermons in the Bible that were preached by the prophets, Jesus, and the apostles legitimately be categorized as expository?” These are fair questions. The oversight in them, however, is the assumption that one of the reasons we have the Bible is to provide us with a homiletics textbook or a compilation of great sermons. The truth is, neither is the case. In fact, most of the “sermons” in the Bible are just fragments or summaries of sermons, and the number of texts that offer instructions on how to preach are few.

So where do we find a biblical foundation for expository preaching? We find it mostly in the way the Bible describes how preachers in the Old and New Testaments went about their tasks. For example, we learn in Nehemiah 8:1–12 that understanding and explaining Scripture is critical for the corporate gathering of God’s people. We glean from Jeremiah 23:9–40 that God’s prophets are responsible for being in his counsel to ensure that they say only what he says. We draw from Luke 4:16–21 that Jesus followed the rabbinic pattern in the synagogue of reading a passage from the Old Testament and then giving an exposition of it to the people, a pattern from which the apostles and the early church later took their cue.1 And in 1 Corinthians, we see Paul describing himself as a “steward” of the gospel and refusing to compromise the message as he proclaimed the “testimony of God” (1 Cor. 2:1; 4:1). The common denominator in these representative passages is simply the responsibility of preachers to say—or uncover—what God says. That is exposition in its simplest form.

In addition to these descriptive references, the Bible also contains some imperatives regarding exposition. Peter says those with speaking gifts should “speak the oracles of God” (1 Pet. 4:11), and that certainly includes preachers. But maybe the most concise and direct command regarding exposition is Paul’s instruction to Timothy: “Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching” (1 Tim. 4:13). This charge reveals the important relationship between leadership, exposition, and pastoral ministry. Paul weaves instruction about preaching together with Timothy’s overall pastoral leadership, and he doesn’t make much of a distinction between them. In fact, he appears to imply that Timothy’s practice of public exposition of Scripture is the heart and the hinge of his leadership as a pastor.

The immediate context of this verse reinforces and further explains this interpretation. First Timothy 4:6–16 provides several critical principles involved in shepherding God’s people from the pulpit, and each of these reveals some intersection between leadership, pastoral ministry, and