A Parish Pastor

Why I Love the Community God Has Given Me

On weekday afternoons during baseball and soccer season, you’ll often find me standing on a field instead of sitting behind my desk.

To some, that may seem like an odd place for a pastor. There are practices to organize, lineups to make, children to encourage, parents to talk with, and countless little moments that require time and attention. Coaching youth sports is not a hobby that conveniently and nicely fits into the margins of life. It requires evenings, weekends, emotional energy, and hours that could easily be spent elsewhere.

If I’m honest, there are plenty of afternoons when another few hours with my Bible, commentaries, and sermon manuscript sounds incredibly appealing. Preaching is one of the greatest privileges of my life. Every Sunday I stand before God’s people to proclaim His Word, and I never want to take that responsibility lightly. Good preaching requires disciplined study, careful exegesis, earnest prayer, and thoughtful application. There is always another commentary to consult, another illustration to refine, another sentence to improve.

It would be easy to justify spending every available hour in my study. In fact, many people would probably applaud that decision, but over the years I have become convinced that faithfully shepherding God’s people involves more than preparing sermons. It also involves loving the place where those people live.

When I stand on a baseball field in Dillon, I’m not stepping away from ministry. In many ways, I am stepping into it.

Those practices have allowed me to encourage young athletes, build friendships with parents, meet families who would probably never walk into my office, pray with people in difficult seasons, and simply become one more familiar face in the life of our community.

None of those interactions replace the ministry of the Word. They give that ministry a neighborhood. That realization has slowly shaped the way I think about pastoral ministry.

Several friends have described my philosophy as having a “parish mentality.” Some have even affectionately called me a “parish pastor.”

I have come to think they are right.

For many, the word parish might not be familiar. Yet historically it has been used for centuries by many pastors and theologians. The Reformers retained a robust parish vision of ministry. They envisioned pastors who knew their people, visited their homes, prayed for their neighborhoods, catechized their children, and genuinely loved the communities where God had placed them.

The parish was all about pastoral presence. It was a means for a faithful pastor to show that he genuinely loved the place where his congregation lives. Maybe the way to say it is tha the Reformers believed that the shepherd should know the fields surrounding his flock.

That vision has quietly shaped much of my own ministry.

I don’t simply pastor First Presbyterian Church. By God’s providence, I pastor in Dillon. That little preposition makes all the difference.

God Calls Us to Places, Not Merely Positions

One of the great recoveries of the Protestant Reformation was the biblical doctrine of vocation.

Martin Luther reminded Christians that God ordinarily governs His world through the ordinary callings of ordinary people. Farmers feed their neighbors. Teachers educate children. Magistrates restrain evil. Craftsmen create useful things. Mothers and fathers raise covenant children.

Every vocation becomes one of the ordinary means through which God cares for His creation. John Calvin likewise taught that every calling is assigned by God’s providence. He writes,

"The Lord bids each one of us, in all life's actions, to look to his calling. For he knows with what great inquietude human nature flames, with what fickleness it is borne hither and thither, how its ambition longs to embrace various things at once."
(Institutes 3.10.6)

Further in this section, Calvin explains that God appoints to every believer “his particular kind of living,” so that we would not wander aimlessly through life but faithfully embrace the work He has assigned.

That truth extends beyond occupations. God does not merely call pastors to preach; He calls pastors to particular congregations in particular towns among particular people.

Likewise, He does not merely call Christians to be faithful in the abstract. He places them in neighborhoods, schools, businesses, civic organizations, hospitals, farms, offices, and communities where their obedience becomes visible.

Vocation is never detached from location; both are due to God’s sovereign determination.

Many ask, “What has God called me to do?” That’s a searching and necessary question. But, we also need to be asking, “Where has God planted me to do it?”

Faithfulness begins by embracing both.

A Theology of Place

This theme runs throughout Scripture. When Israel found herself in exile, God instructed His covenant people through Jeremiah,

“Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” (Jeremiah 29:7)

Notice the remarkable balance! The exiles were not to become Babylonians, nor were they to adopt Babylon’s religion or compromise their covenant identity. But neither were they to withdraw into isolation. They were to build homes, raise families, plant gardens, pray for their neighbors, and seek the good of the city where God’s providence had placed them.

The people of God have always been called to faithful presence. Some might push back on that, and say, “But our citizenship is in heaven (Phil. 3:20)!”

Yet, have you ever considered that our heavenly citizenship ought to make us the very best earthly neighbors?

Pilgrims are not indifferent to the places through which they travel; they simply remember where their ultimate home lies.

Loving Neighbor Requires Loving Place

Jesus summarized the second table of God’s Law with a familiar command, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Neighbors are not abstract. They live down your street, own businesses downtown, teach your children, coach little league teams, serve in the civic sphere, work in hospitals, and gather in churches throughout the community.

To genuinely love our neighbor requires investing in the community where those neighbors actually lives.

It is difficult to pray sincerely for a town while remaining detached from it. Likewise, it is difficult to understand the burdens of a community if we never leave our offices.

Pastoral ministry has always involved knowing people where they actually live, not just where they worship.

Every week I spend hours preparing to preach to the people of First Presbyterian Church, but doing things like coaching little league sports reminds me that those same people are more than faces in pews. They are fathers cheering from the bleachers, mothers packing snacks after long workdays, grandparents watching with quiet pride, children learning perseverance after striking out, and neighbors carrying burdens that rarely surface on Sunday mornings.

Somewhere like a ballfield has become another place where I learn to love the people I am privileged to pastor.

Influence Is Stewardship

Influence is not something Christians should pursue for its own sake, but it is something we should steward.

Jesus described His followers as the salt of the earth and the light of the world.

Salt preserves. Light illuminates. Neither fulfills its purpose while absent.

Christians should not seek influence because we desire recognition, but we should be faithful whenever God opens doors.

Sometimes that means preaching to hundreds, and sometimes it means praying before a city council meeting. Sometimes it means coaching nine-year-olds to play baseball with patience and integrity, and sometimes it means encouraging a struggling business owner.

Influence often begins with availability.

Many Christians rightly long to see greater Christian influence throughout our nation. So do I. I often pray for revival and lament moral decline. I desire to see righteousness once again exalted in our country.

But I wonder if sometimes many are guilty of overlooking the place where God has already given us influence? Too many men have become passionately concerned about America while remaining largely detached from our own communities.

They love to spend hours debating national politics online, but they also never learn the names of our city council members. They habitually argue about educational policy, but never encourage a local teacher. They can lament the decline of our culture, but never invest in the neighborhood where God has planted them.

That seems backwards. Healthy nations are built from healthy communities, healthy communities are strengthened by faithful churches, and faithful churches are filled with Christians who genuinely love the neighbors God has already given them.

National renewal rarely begins on Capital Hill. It usually begins around dinner tables, on little league fields, in classrooms and local businesses, and through ordinary conversations.

Perhaps one reason we sometimes feel powerless to influence our nation is because we overlook the sphere where God has already entrusted us with meaningful influence.

One subtle temptation facing pastors today is measuring influence by “being platformed.” Many pastors long for conference invitations, publishing deals, podcast downloads, and social media followers. None of those things are inherently wrong, but they can quietly teach us that significance is found somewhere else.

However, historically, the pastors whose influence has reached the many first became known for faithfully loving one particular place. From the Reformers to the Puritans to the early American Presbyterians, those men loved their communities.

Consider how Robert Murray M’Cheyne loved Dundee, Thomas Chalmers labored diligently in Glasgow, John Calvin reformed Geneva, Heinrich Bullinger faithfully ministered in Zurich, Samuel Davies preached zealously in Hanover County, John Lafayette Girardeau devoted himself to the lowcountry of South Carolina, and Francis Grimké essentially spent his entire ministry in Washington DC.

Even Charles Spurgeon, though internationally known, relentlessly invested himself in London through church planting, orphan care, theological education, and mercy ministry.

Their influence became broad because their faithfulness was first local. Have we have spent too much time trying to change America, build platforms, and gain influence? Scripture more often asks how faithfully we are loving the neighbors who live next door.

Why I Love My Community

I do not attend community events because I believe the church’s mission has changed. I do not build relationships because I am seeking political influence. I do not volunteer because I think the gospel needs a civic endorsement to become effective.I do these things because this is where God has placed me.

Dillon is not merely where I work. It is where my children are growing up, our church worships, my neighbors live. It is also where sinners need the gospel and Christians need encouragement. Dillon, SC is where the Lord, in His wise providence, has chosen for me to spend these years of ministry.

How could I not love it?

If I truly love the people Christ has entrusted to my care, I should also love the town where they live, work, raise their families, and seek to follow Christ.

Faithfulness in the Local Community

The kingdom of God usually advances through ordinary believers living ordinary lives in ordinary places displaying extraordinary faithfulness.

The Christian who quietly serves on a school board with integrity, coaches youth sports with patience, owns a business honestly, mentors younger families, volunteers in the community, befriends his neighbors, faithfully serves his church, and shares Christ with those around him is participating in something profoundly biblical.

God delights to bless places through faithful people.

I certainly hope to see our nation flourish under the blessing of God. I pray for faithful leaders, just laws, and widespread spiritual awakening. But I have become increasingly convinced that if I desire to see greater Christian influence in our nation, I must first labor to see greater Christian influence in my community.

The same is true wherever God has planted you.

The Christian life has always been remarkably local. Love the people God has placed before you, serve the town He has given you, pray for its welfare, work for its good, bear faithful witness to Christ, and leave the larger story in God’s hands.

After all, the God who governs nations is also the God who numbers the hairs on our heads. He delights to accomplish extraordinary purposes through ordinary faithfulness.

If you are a pastor who hopes your community remembers you decades from now, I do not hope it is primarily because of sermons you preached, books you wrote, or conferences you attended. I hope people remember that there was a pastor who genuinely loved the community. Who prayed for it and invested in it. Who sought its welfare because he believed God had planted him here by His wise providence.

Perhaps recovering that old parish vision would do more for the witness of the church in America than another thousand debates about how to change the nation.

If we long for a more Christian America, perhaps the place to begin is by faithfully loving the communities God has already entrusted to us.