How to Care for Your Pastor, Part 3: Remember Him

Part 1: Receive the Word | Part 2: Respect Him

The last chapter of Hebrews mentions two other ways we can care for our pastor. The first is in verse 7:

Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation (He 13.7).

The passage starts out simple enough, telling us simply to “remember” him. But there’s considerably more depth to that word in the biblical world than in ours.

Today we view remembering as a skill, an ability:  “I can’t remember names”; “I don’t remember where I put my car keys.”  Remembering is an intellectual ability over which we typically have little or no control.

In the Bible, however, it’s often not like that.  For example, God is said to not remember our sins:

For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more (He 8.12).

And we know He has the ability to remember; he’s omniscient.  So there’s more to the word than that.  What does it mean?

One clue comes from the fact that remembering is commanded or requested:

Only, they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do (Ga 2.10).

I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. Remember my chains. Grace be with you (Co 4.18).

Note that these verses imply an action that we take as a result of thinking about the situation:  “remember the poor.”

It also implies placing a priority on what we’re thinking about:

If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return (He 11.15).

By faith Joseph, at the end of his life, made mention of the exodus of the Israelites and gave directions concerning his bones (He 11.22).

In both of the preceding verses, the underlined words translate the same Greek word for remembering.

So remembering, in this context, is something we choose to do.  It is to place our minds on something, to think about it intentionally. It’s something young lovers do when their minds are idle. It’s what Scarlett O’Hara refused to do: “I’m not going to think about that.”

So what is our original passage saying? “Turn your mind to him; let your thoughts dwell on him.”

Some years ago I was sitting quietly at home when an elder from my church called to say that our pastor had just collapsed in the church parking lot. He had been taken to the emergency room. (We later learned that his collapse was the result of a malignant brain tumor, the same kind–glioblastoma–that had taken my brother’s life the year before. It would take our pastor’s life, too, a year later.)

My immediate thought was to go to the hospital, but I realized that a lot of people were already there, and I would just add to the congestion in a place where medical professionals were trying to get their jobs done.

So I prayed. Long. Hard. Intensely.

And then it occurred to me.

My pastor was just as much in need of my prayers the night before, and the night before that. But I hadn’t prayed for him then.

I hadn’t remembered him.

I had missed countless opportunities to help, to be of service.

Our verse goes on to say that we should take his faithfulness—and his faith—as an example to follow. We should imitate him when he’s right. And why? Because we consider “the end of [his] conversation.”

Most of us know that in the KJV, the word conversation does not mean a session of talking with someone; it means a lifestyle, the way we choose to invest our time, energy, and other resources.

If our pastor has been faithful, he has invested in valuable things with no speculative risk, and with infinite payout.

That’s an investment worth imitating.

Part 4: Obey Him | Part 5: Reward Him | Part 6: Closing Thoughts

Photo by Francesco Ungaro on Unsplash