You Can’t and Shouldn’t Do it All - And How that Helps You Respond to Substance Abuse in Your Church

One of the most crushing lies that movies, advertisements, and social media peddle is that you can do it all. I especially feel that weight for moms. If you watch carefully, in many movies you’ll find that mom holds a very successful career, is a wonderful wife, and an incredible mom while keeping herself active and fit. The only problem is that’s not real life.

Pastors, the same lie may be tempting for you to believe, too. Especially for pastors at smaller churches where you’re the only pastor, or maybe you have part time elders but you’re the only full-time elder. You may feel the pressure to be the one who must do everything.

To illustrate how crazy that is, if you feel like you must be a close friend with every single person in your church, even if that church had only 100 members from 40 families, that would mean you’d have to have a meal with each family every single month,  which would mean 1.33 meals per day with a family from your church. That’s unrealistic.

The question is not just what’s realistic, but what does a faithful pastor who wants to lead his church well for the glory of Christ do?  We’ll look at Ephesians 4 to help answer the question and then think specifically about what this means for pastors as they try to help their church members with substance abuse.

Ephesians 4:11–16 (ESV)

¹¹ And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, ¹² to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, ¹³ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, ¹⁴ so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. ¹⁵ Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, ¹⁶ from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

This text is jam-packed with help and encouragement for pastors. Here are three observations:

1. Pastors serve their church by training the members to do ministry (vv.11–12).

Verse 11 says, “shepherds and teachers” (i.e., pastors) are given to their church for the purpose to “equip the saints for the work of the ministry.” This means, you, as pastor, do not have to do everything. You must equip your people for the work of the ministry.

What does this have to do with helping members and families in your church with substance abuse? You don’t have to be the one doing the ministry to the person who is struggling with substance abuse. You may be helping the family who is working with their child who is addicted so that they are learning what is loving and helpful versus what is enabling and harmful. As you equip that family through that situation, helping them think about what Scriptures guide them in how to approach their child, you’ll not only be equipping them with their child but will be equipping them for helping the next family in your church that has a family member struggling with addiction. This is the multiplying ministry that Scripture commands us to have (cf. 2 Tim. 2:2).

Jesus, in the context of seeing crowds of people who were “harassed and helpless like a sheep without a shepherd” (Matt. 9:36) told his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore earnestly pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into the harvest” (Matt. 9:37–38). Jesus was seeing tons of people in need of help. And so, He encouraged his disciples to pray earnestly for more laborers. Pastors, we need to pray for more laborers and labor in our ministries to multiply ourselves to reach more and more people. And when I say, “multiply ourselves,” I don’t mean paid full-time pastors. I mean teaching our congregations how to care for and minister to one another. The number of people and families struggling with substance abuse are certainly some of the “harassed and helpless” that we are trying to reach and just don’t have the bandwidth to reach them all ourselves.

So what should you do?

1. Pray as Jesus commands in Matt. 9:37–38.

2. Work to equip others in your church. You’ll need to teach them that God has called them to minister to one another not out of their strength and expertise but out of their resources and identity in Jesus Christ.

3. Seek to equip yourself on how to build a church culture that is multiplying (2 Tim. 2:2) kind of ministry.

• To do this, I would make sure that you have relationships with other pastors in your area. Get to know them and meet regularly once a month to pray, be equipped, and help one another. Ask them about how they are helping and responding to folks in their ministry struggling with substance abuse and addiction.
• I would also encourage you to go to at least one conference per year where other pastors and ministry leaders will be present so that you can get to know other pastors and ministries. Often, there will be ministries and non-profits exhibiting their ministries. Go through and learn about the ministries seeking to help with substance abuse and addiction. Those ministries will be very helpful in referring to people and families.  See resources listed at the end of this blog for some conference suggestions.

2. Members must do ministry if they are going to grow up and be built up into Christ (vv.12, 15–16).

This second observation means that for a pastor to do his job, he MUST NOT do everything. Rather, he must equip his church to do the ministry if he wants the church to grow. This reiterates the point I made above under observation 1. Equipping the saints—your church members—to care for and support a family or someone who is struggling with substances is preparing your church to be more equipped to handle the next time substance abuse surfaces in the church. A pastor who doesn’t equip the saints for the ministry but DOES ALL the ministry himself¹ will actually weaken his church. All the members need to grow up and be built up into Christ which only happens if they are equipped and engaged in ministry. More and more members need to be encouraged and equipped to engage with those who struggle with substance abuse and to support their families.

Pastor, you are going to need to teach this to your congregation. Teach it in sermons, Sunday school classes, mid-week studies, and so forth. One way to help equip your people to do this kind of ministry is to recommend good books to your congregants to read regularly. You can recommend conferences for your people to go to. You can also specifically pray and seek out 1 or 2 couples in your church and ask them to head up a ministry to families in the church struggling with substance abuse and addiction. Task them with helping your church learn about your city’s resources.

Here are things you can task them to learn about  and research:

• What detox places are available in your area? What’s the cost, length of time, and what kind of resources do they have for people who need more than just a detox? Start by googling detox places, and then for each place you talk to, ask them if they know of other detoxes, etc.
• What kind of substance abuse and addiction support groups exist within your city? How do those support groups help people overcome addiction? As with detoxes, ask each group if they know other support groups.
• It would be good to know the secular and religious options in the area so you can begin to grasp what all is happening.

3. Christ is the head (v.15).

Jesus is the head of the church because he shed his blood to purchase the church and was raised again and is now seated in heaven (cf. Eph. 1:20–22). He is the Savior. He is the one has the power to transform people. He is the one who never fails and is always right.

Here’s the point: Jesus is the one that everyone needs—even pastors. One of the lies that is easy to start believing as a pastor is that you are the source of spiritual life, knowledge, and wisdom for your people, and if you don’t provide it, they won’t get it. That’s just not true. Our people need to see a pastor who is dependent on the Lord and His Word. Part of that dependence on the Lord is shown by our trust in other people also to do the work of the ministry, which means we have to give them ministry to do.  

Especially in severe situations like substance abuse, the weight of “I must have all the answers, and I must fix this” is crushing. And they are crushing because God didn’t call pastors to bear the weight that only Jesus was designed to bear. Our job is to help point everyone to Christ and be connected to him in a saving, growing way.

Conclusion

You’ve probably heard the phrase, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” Well, that’s somewhat where the church is finding itself today. The problems of substance abuse and addiction are forcing pastors and churches to figure out whether or not the church has any place in caring for and helping individuals and families struggling with addiction and substance abuse.

I believe the church must learn how to meaningfully and helpfully care for one another in the church. Pastors, it’s our job to lead our people to learn not to be afraid and to get involved in ministering to others even when we don’t know everything! Pastors, we don’t know everything, and yet, as the human leader of the church, we need to jump into things that we don’t know and learn with the Lord’s help. That doesn’t mean that we have to be experts at everything. But setting a pattern of not being afraid of problems and trusting that the Lord will help us as we seek to love people and families struggling with addictions is an important way to equip our people. As we jump into the unknown, ask others in your church to lead in helping your church learn and grow more equipped so your church can help more folks.

If you or your people are afraid of making mistakes, let me reassure you … you will! But the greater mistake would be to ignore this problem and do nothing. You’ll learn to love people more and more as you try to love others as God commanded you to do and become more like Christ.

Practical Resources:

Below are some resources to help you or the folks you recruit in your church to get started on learning how to help.

1. For various resources and ministries that help with substance abuse –  https://www.theaddictionconnection.org/
2. For resources on being equipped to counsel substance abuse – https://www.bctconference.org/
3. For information on the men’s residential addiction ministry I oversee – faithlafayette.org/restoration or our sister organization faithlafayette.org/voh
4. Blogs –
   1. https://www.biblicalcounselingcoalition.org/
   1. https://blogs.faithlafayette.org/counseling/
5. Books for parents struggling with children in addiction:
   1. Divine Intervention: Hope and Help for Families of Addicts by Mark Shaw
   1. The Painful Path of the Prodigal: Biblical Help and Hope for Those Who Love the Wayward and the Rebellious by Craig Svensson

©2024 Greg Wetterlin. Used with permission.

1. A full-time paid pastor will definitely be doing lots of ministry. And more ministry than a lay person, but he isn’t primarily paid to do ministry he is paid to equip his church members to do ministry (cf. Eph. 4:11–12). ↩︎