Tag: Pastors

The Respect of Men

When the apostle Paul writes to his apprentice Timothy about the qualities of an overseer (Gr. Episkopos), he adds an important quality for all men. He must gain respect. Paul says, “He must be well thought of by outsiders” (1 Timothy 3:7a).

Of course, the larger term “outsiders” can include men as well as women who are outside of the boundaries of the local church. Yet for a man, and in Paul’s teaching, it must be a man (v.2 ‘one woman man’), to be well-thought of by other men is to gain their respect.

To be well-thought of by other men may mean that they don’t agree with your viewpoints, your beliefs, or your confessions. But it does mean that you have lived your life with duty, dependability, integrity, resolve, and perseverance. There can be no respect from men without these things.

Respect from men renders a man qualified to be seen and heard among the company of all men in any given place. The fool will be mocked. The unreliable will be shunned. But the respected will be recognized and heard. In this sense, men who have gained the respect of men have earned the right to be heard.

The respect of men does not mean that a man has to be friends with the world, which is prohibited (James 4.4). A man can stand facing his own choices and actions without support from men, yet still be respected by them. He can even gain respect from his enemies when they see him prosecute his arguments and battles with high character.

 This kind of respect will be required if an outsider is to think well of an insider, such as the potential overseer in the church. That Christian man will have obeyed Matt 5:16, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” The men on the outside may not be glorifying God, but they will see the good works of a man who has the respect of men. The hope is that seeing those good works will result in a conversion among men, not just their respect. On the last day of judgment, even those outsiders will be made to recognize that those good works came from God to the glory of the Father.

Christians can forget about the necessity of respect among men. They can excuse their foolishness, fickleness, rudeness, inconsistency, and unreliability. Then they can assume that they don’t have the respect of men because of an enmity that men have toward Christians. But this misses the point. When a Christian man cannot gain the respect of men, he will not be well thought of by outsiders, and he will show that he doesn’t know how to relate to the wide company of men in the world. Lacking the respect of men comes from a failure of maturity and a lack of masculine character. Without these, a Christian man is disqualified from being an overseer.

Consider how different churches would be if their overseers were men who were respected among men, even outsiders. Such masculine character among the episcopate would bring greater integrity to the office of the pastoral role, as well as greater gravity to the church’s presence in the world.

On Choosing a Sermon Series

How do you decide which book of the bible to preach through?

1. Well balanced diet:

Have you only been preaching through Paul’s letters, or the Gospels or the Psalms? What about OT Narrative, or the Minor Prophets, or Wisdom Lit, or Apocalyptic? Switching between genres and testaments helps to teach “the whole counsel of God”(Acts 20:27)

2. Maturity

What are the most obvious areas your church needs to grow in? Are they fixated on the present, then OT prophets or Revelation could lift their eyes up. Is there a lack of understanding about how the church should operate, especially the pastor’s relationship to the congregation? The Pastoral Epistles is the goto. If general biblical illiteracy is a problem, try preaching through the large OT narratives of Genesis and the rest of the Pentateuch. And of course, it is always good to preach about the life of our Lord Jesus in the Gospels.

3. Calendar:

Churches operate on an annual calendar, even if they don’t follow the historic Christian calendar with its mushroomed number of saints’ days. You need to decide if you are going to have an open-ended series that pauses for Christmas and Easter. You can have a series that runs for a season (spring, summer, winter). You may want to have a short series then a long one. Estimating how many sermons match the number of Sundays available can give you a rough idea of how the series fits into your church calendar. Or you can ditch the calendar and keep your congregation guessing if you like.

4. Ability:

Few young men have the ability to sustain a long series like D.M. Lloyd-Jones. By long I mean a series that goes through a large book of the Bible at a slow, lingering pace. What ends up happening is that each single verse sermon becomes a springboard to talk about other things. However, when this is repeated, usually a sense of the context of a book of the bible is lost. We have to remember that New Testament epistles were letters read aloud in a single sitting. So the ability of a young preacher (or older one) may not match the skill needed to sustain the attention of the congregation in a granular study. Or the young preacher may easily distort the message of a whole book of the bible by granular proof-texting. Of course, if a preacher can engage in such epic sermon series, the congregation may be richly blessed. But there are many pastors whose own hubris assumed that they could “do like MLJ” and not get off track.

5. Challenge:

It is good to challenge yourself to try to preach difficult books of the bible. You shouldn’t do this as self-indulgence out of intellectual curiosity. But thinking about the souls of your people, ask yourself if they would be fed and equipped by a more challenging study like the book of Hebrews or the book of Job. Often, congregants are excited to have a sermon series preached on books of the bible that they have struggled to understand. So challenging yourself as a preacher and the congregation as listeners can be very fruitful.

6. Desire:

At the heart of the matter, the preacher should recognize what their soul needs. Does your soul need confrontation, encouragement, examples, instruction or application? Knowing what you want and what you think you need goes a long way to determining what you will preach. In other words, it is the question, “What is God teaching you?” You will find that if God has been teaching you from his Word, what you preach from that Word learned in your study will become remarkably relevant to your hearers. In this way, the Word is “living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword” (Heb 4:12). This will be true for you and them too.

A Brief Questionnaire for Potential Elders

  1. Do you have any differences with the church’s doctrinal statement?
  2. Do you have any differences with the church’s constitution? (i.e. how the church is structured and governed)
  3. Is there anything you are aware of that would prevent you from becoming an elder some day at our church?
  4. Do you see yourself as compatible with the church’s  pastoral emphasis, associations and overall tone?
  5. Other hot topics:
    • Views on creation, age of the earth, Adam
    • Views on the Millenium
    • Cessationism, Continuationism
    • Sabbath/Lord’s Day
    • Complementarianism
    • Other?
  6. How do you view yourself according to the qualifications of 1 Timothy 3:1-7, Titus 1:5-9?
  7. How do you think others would view you regarding these qualifications? Your wife? Your peers in the church? The elders in the church?

Preach it with tenderness

“Were you able to preach it with tenderness?”

That’s the question which came in response to the sermon on Psalm 9.17: “The Wicked shall be turned into hell”

How do you preach that text?  

Not just the content. Not just the truth of the text.  But how do you preach that text within the full compass of biblical revelation? How do you preach it within the gravitational pull of the glory of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ, the risen, incarnate One?

How do you do it?

So the question, with the gentle rebuke in it,  was asked:

“Were you able to preach it with tenderness?”.

Who were these two men? The preacher and the questioner?

The preacher was Andrew Bonar. The questioner was Robert Murray M’Cheyne.

You see M’Cheyne had been deeply concerned in his own life that he would not permit a bitterness to develop  in how he viewed the people. The reason was that although judgement needed to be preached clearly, it also needed to be preached so as to pierce through the conscience with God’s gracious love.  This meant that every grave and urgent warning needed to be marked with “angelic tenderness.”

Bonar said of M’Cheyne:

Of this bitterness in preaching, … so sensible was he of its being quite natural to all of us, that oftentimes he made it the subject of conversation, and used to grieve over himself if he had spoken with anything less than solemn compassion.  

Memoirs and Remains of Robert Murray M’Cheyne, 53.

Here are seven ways to avoid bitter preaching.

1. Watch Strong Passions

Desire is a key component to the preachers calling (see 1 Tim 3:1). Desire must be there. Passion for preaching the truth must be in hand.

However, the virtues of desire and passion for a good thing like preaching can get distorted later on into the vices of wrong passion and selfish desire.

Consider that all of Paul’s ministerial opponents (Judaizers at Galatia, Super-apostles in Corinth, etc) must have had a strong sense of ‘desire’ to preach their message!

Paul could say, “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!’ (1 Cor 9.17).

There was desire and passion in that statement. But there was never the distortion of passion into something else.

Distortions come when we are overruled by passion for select truths and desire for select types of change.

Remember, the prediction made by Paul in 2 Tim4.3 that people “ will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions,”

Teachers who are passionate about the noble task, are easily tempted to be passionate about various selective passions, causes, movements,  and desires.

There was a man that I know whose ministry was very influential on me, introducing me to some of the more detailed elements of historic protestant theology. He was passionate about reformation. He was passionate about revival. Sadly today after a series of doctrinal changes, his passion is for unity between denominations with particular sympathy for the Church of Rome. He is not a Roman Catholic, but it is striking to see the following which he has among Roman Catholics who are courting dissatisfied Evangelicals.

His passion for ecclesiastical unity led him to find the grass always greener everywhere else, except in his own backyard. Yet in his new tolerance there is an edge of intolerance for the leaders and theology which he used to embrace, an apparent bitterness toward former friends.

When we adopt passion for individual causes we can develop bitterness for those who don’t do the same. Since others aren’t accompanying this “one-note tune” then it can be easy for us to feel frustrated and injured. Then we can get bitter in our preaching.

2. Avoid Being Quarrelsome

From this point I want to trace out 2 Tim 2.24-25, which begins with this statement, “And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome”.

Being the Lord’s servant, means you are owned by one greater than you.  By contrast, being quarrelsome means you are protecting your own bit of turf.

It is easy for us to think about people in our church as the opponents. And we are amassing our arguments to defend our positions so that we can slay our opponents in three easy moves.

When we are passionate about our position. When we have staked out our ground on the issue. It is quite easy to change our view of the sheep into a crowd of potential debate partners, adversaries and challengers.

This leads to polemical preaching which fights battles like Don Quixote— charging at windmills.

This is ‘battling for the truth’ that is akin to those who ‘devote themselves to myths and to endless genealogies’ (1 Tim 1.4).  

This is why guys who are known as being ‘battlers’ often lack what real defenders of the faith have: solemn compassion.

When a godly, learned man gives a denunciation of falsehood, it is always so thorough, so gracious, so comprehensive, so as to be utterly devastating.

But you can never say, “Oh, ya… that guy was just taking cheap shots”.   

No. The preacher’s solemn compassion for the deceived, makes him just and fair in denouncing the deceivers and their deception.

3. Seek Kindness to Everyone

Consider the next point in Paul’s bullet list in 2 Timothy 2:24-25, “be…kind to everyone”.
This makes pastoral unkindness an oxymoron. Yet how often are we given to speaking in unkind ways to people, and especially about people.

A pastor friend shared the counsel that he gave to a married couple who were struggling greatly and fighting often. He said to the husband, “She is not the enemy!”

And in the relationship between the pastor and the church, we must be careful that we don’t view each other as ‘the enemy’. Satan and sin — those are enemies. False teachers are enemies. Not blood bought sinners bound for glory.

In our preaching and our speaking, we must resist any temptation to pastoral unkindness. We must be valiant for truth, but we have to work at waging our warfare without unkindness.

4. Work at Teaching

Being “able to teach” (2 Tim 2:24) is that distinct qualification of an elder/pastor/overseer (1 Tim 3:2). And in this context of resistance, or potential confusion, clear teaching is what is required. To teach is to be compassionate. It is to empathize with where people are at and bring the truth to them. It is harder work to teach someone than it is to be careless of their lack of understanding. 

It is like the picture in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. Christian was given a telescope by the Shepherds. Through it he saw the gate of the Celestial City. So also a pastor’s teaching offers the vision of what lies ahead, and the pathway to get there.

When we are bitter or harsh we will wonder why these people can’t figure this out? But we will fail to work at teaching because it is simpler, and sometimes lazier to trumpet the goal, but offer no assistance to get there.

5. Patiently Endure Evil.

Fulfilling the calling as the Lord’s servant, the preacher must be marked by patience in enduring evil (2 Tim 2:24). 

Why does Paul have to say this?

He says it because the tidal wave of evil in the world makes one a) impatient for an end of it, and b) unwilling to endure the waves rolling over us.

Bitter preaching or harsh preaching is often impatient and unwilling to endure evil. It calls for justice and change and transformation now. It is unwilling to trust in the superiority of God’s global solution in Jesus Christ, a salvation for sinners that is both cosmic in scope and personal in experience.

Solemn compassion in preaching exhibits a clear view of the now/not yet of the kingdom, and so patiently endures the evil tide.   Solemn compassion knows that ultimately this tide too will pass (Rev 21:1).

6. Correct Opponents with Gentleness

 This is where preaching that has a corrective function is proven whether it is done compassionately or with harshness.

Can correction by Spirit-wrought, biblical argument be made without resorting to strong-arm tactics?  Or is the bully pulpit required to ‘correct’ others.

Often the use of the harsh bully pulpit by a preacher betrays their lack of thought, prep, study, and reasoning about an issue.

The ethos is this: You don’t agree with me—- So let me shout louder!

Of the many examples in Jesus’ ministry, his lament over Jerusalem epitomizes his strongly convinced condemnation of Jerusalem’s sin. He is compassionate in telling them the truth but unbending in the truth of it. He said:

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!

Matthew 23:37

We need to be Christ-like in this way, loving people enough to clearly tell the truth and not hiding behind gentleness as a cover for our negligence. In the same way we should love people enough to temper the edge of our truth-telling with gentleness. 

It’s like the blacksmith crafting the iron of the forged knife. It will never keep a sharp edge unless the hot blade is quenched and cured. Our preaching can be sharp and surgical when its unbending truth is holding the keen edge of gentleness.

M’Cheyne made the observation:

It is not saying hard things that pierces the conscience of our people; it is the voice of Divine love heard amid the thunder. The sharpest point of the two-edged sword is not death but life

Memoirs and Remains of Robert Murray M’Cheyne, 53.

7.  Look to God to Change People

This is the final perspective that creates compassion versus harshness in our preaching, even in the midst of controversy.

We must look to God to change people.

There is a calm and secure resignation in the ability of God to “grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim 2:25).

Trusting in God’s sovereign ability is always a good policy. We should be expectant of the possibility that God, in his freeness, may choose to grant repentance to the stubborn. When we aren’t expectant of this, we betray our own creeping unbelief. Such unbelief is soil for bitterness in our preaching.

Of course we must look to God because in all of our conflict, we are engaged in spiritual warfare, especially when we are attempting to correct opponents who need to “come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will” (2 Tim 2:26). Only God can do this supernatural work of changing stubborn hearts.

We must look to God to change our own hearts that we would repent, and then expect him to be able to do the same for others. 

So in all of our ministry, like M’Cheyne said to Bonar, the question remains:

“Did I preach it with tenderness?”

What does the pastor do?

How does the pastor spend his time? That is a question that sometimes arises from some who are critical and most who are just curious.

Medieval monks would spend their time at appointed hours praying, singing and chanting at their home, while transcribing texts in the intervening hours.

At the Reformation, so little of the previous centuries work had been dedicated to preaching, that the Reformers stood out for their emphasis on the pulpit.

The consistory of Geneva spent a great deal of time reviewing pastoral care issues, thinking through them biblically and apply counsel to people and situations. Sometimes the counsel and care was disregarded and some Genevans preferred to be disciplined out of the church, than to be discipled in the church. All of this took organization and care. But the primary driver of the ministry was the Word work. Calvin’s preaching through the bible provided the basis for doctrine in the church in Geneva, and the surrounding village churches that worked together with Calvin’s, seeking counsel from Calvin’s elders, even making requests for pulpit supply.

Some things have changed, but others have stayed the same.

Word Work & Prayer Work

Today the work of the Word and Prayer (cf. Acts 6:4) are the two greatest tasks which the pastor must undertake. Both of these are work. It is not enough to tell the congregation that you just didn’t ‘get anything out of the Word’ this week. It requires mental and spiritual ‘sweat’. It is taxing. It makes you tired like all work does.

The Word work and Prayer work  have the added problem of being difficult to measure. Prayer is done ‘in the closet’. Word work is  done ‘at the desk’. But consider that the person who is in the closet or at the desk is largely out of sight. That means that it can appear as if the faithful pastor is unaccountable or unavailable or invisible.

What is the measure of the Word and Prayer work? It is seen in the fruit of the ministry. It is seen in the healthy diet which people feed upon. It is seen in the Spirit’s illumination of people to understand God’s word better, to be helped by God’s truth, to glorify God’s ways.

The weakness of the pulpit speaks to the emptiness of the closet and the barrenness of the desk.

Pastoralist Work

But there is another aspect to the pastoral ministry that must have a part. It is the pastoralist part. That is, it is the awareness and care for the condition of the sheep. The pastor must know the people he is feeding. If he doesn’t know what their condition is, then the diet he offers will be too thick or too thin, too spicy or too sweet.

So the pastor exhorts and teaches personally in his interactions with people. He hears their anxieties and cares. He points them to Christ. This is the pastor’s task also.

Not Shopkeeper Nor Therapist

Sometimes people can get confused about their expectations for the pastor. Pastors can be viewed as shop-keepers or therapists.  Some sheep don’t wish to be led to feed in green pastures, but wish to be treated like a pet in the shepherd’s home.

As David Wells has pointed out, our era is a Therapeutic Age. And this emphasis has dominated the thought of pastors and church members. The people expect the pastor to be a therapist, on call to fix them, and the pastor moves increasingly to be responsive to the ‘felt needs’ of the people. This mindset came to dominate the pastoral style of the seeker sensitive movement. And with it, the sufficiency of the Scriptures was lost as desks and closets were left empty.

So there is a constant struggle which the pastor faces. He must be jealous to guard the desk and closet time. As John Macarthur said many times, “the task of the pastor-teacher is to keep his rear-end in the chair until the job is done”. On the other hand, the pastor must know the sheep, and be able to offer feeding and protection according to their needs. He must do this without subtly giving in to worldly expectations of his role which come from the people or from himself.

When Leaders Break Down

In Paul’s letter to the Greek church in Philippi, Paul feels obligated to highlight the ministry of Epaphroditus, a guy sent to Paul from that church. Paul praises him saying:

I have thought it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus my brother and fellow worker and fellow soldier, and your messenger and minister to my need” (Phil 2: 25).

Paul goes out of his way to showcase Epaphroditus. What is a bit strange is why he would have to do that since Epaphroditus had come from Philippi. They would know him already.

But the reason Paul has to reassure the Philippians about Epaphroditus is because something happened.

He got sick.

Paul explained it to the Philippians:

Indeed he was ill, near to death. But God had mercy on him, and not only on him but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow. I am the more eager to send him, therefore, that you may rejoice at seeing him again, and that I may be less anxious. (Phil 2:27-28)

So the fact was that Epaphroditus had failed, sort of.

Yes, he delivered the money to Paul (see Phil 4:18). But when Epaphroditus got sick, he wasn’t able to assist Paul, and instead he needed to be assisted by Paul.

The fact is, when people are shown to be weak— a health breakdown, a mental breakdown, a lack of skills, a lack of capacity, —- then all of us in the cynicism of our flesh will look down on them a little bit.

When it comes to weakness in others we can have a critical spirit.

Imagine the conversation near the back door of First Church of Philippi.

‘Oh yeah… Epaphroditus… We paid all his expenses and sent him on the big trip from Greece to Rome —- I’d love to go to Rome—- and then when he got there, he said he was sick and couldn’t come home. Wow… Rome would be a great place to be sick in….. I wonder how sick he really was? Sounds like a nice gig if you can get it. Why did we send him if he couldn’t even help Paul out. That was a waste of money. We should’ve sent someone else…..’

And on and on. You know how it goes.

The Philippians were a church that had a tendency to be proud of their strength. They needed to have the mind of Christ, in order to be humble (Phil 2:5). They needed to be reminded of the worth and value of godly servants in the church who were faithfully doing their jobs through great personal trial. The Philippians needed to be reminded to show some grace toward Epaphroditus.

So just in case the Philippians were missing the point, Paul is explicit in verse 29:

“So receive him in the Lord with all joy, and honor such men.”

The three takeaways are these:

  1. When we stop expecting leaders to be supermen, then we will stop being surprised and offended when they fail us.
  2. When we rejoice at leaders of proven worth and sacrificial service, we will be in a better position to distinguish who the faithful ministers are from all of the dogs and enemies of the cross.
  3. When we honor such men, even our honor is framed by grace. Which is just as it should be.

Also you might want to check out the 9Marks Journal on Pastoral Burnout, and the podcast on the same topic.

 

 

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Calvin as Pastor-Scholar

The grandeur of this achievement becomes all the more evident when we remember that these Commentaries were the work not of a detached scholar, but of a Reformer whose days were filled largely with pastoral work both in the church and in the state. His multiple activities and preoccupations in the latter capacity, especially in the light of his delicate and sickly physical condition, leave one amazed at the diligence and perseverance which made Calvin’s literary output (fifty-nine volumes in his Works) possible. One must not forget the several versions of the Institutes, his numerous tracts and thousands of letters. Calvin believed not only in the Word of God, but also in human words as means of promoting the gospel and serving the church.

 

In Calvin: Commentaries, Haroutunian, ed.

5 Assessments of Pastors According to Calvin’s Geneva

In the Draft Order of Visitation of the Country Churches January 11, 1546 [1], there are some points made about what to watch for in assessing the ministries of pastors.

1. Doctrinal unity.

The first order of business was to make sure that the pastor maintained, “proper uniformity of doctrine in the whole body of the Church of Geneva.” This was done by having two Genevan pastors visit the country churches in order to, “enquire whether the Ministry of the place have accepted any doctrine in any sense new and repugnant to the purity of the gospel.” So the churches weren’t little labs where pastors could exercise their speculative experiments. They were expected to be fairly conservative, that is, unchanging in their doctrine.

2. Wise Application

Not only was the doctrine to be in line with the other Genevan churches, there was an expectation that the minister would preach with wise applications. He wasn’t to preach, “anything at all scandalous, or unfitting to the instruction of the people because it is obscure, or treats of superfluous questions, or exercises too great rigour.” In applying his expositions, the pastor wasn’t grinding axes or riding hobby-horses. How many ‘Calvinist’ pastors today are guilty of ‘exercising too much rigour’.

3. Congregational Support

The pastor wasn’t the only one who was held accountable. The congregation was urged to be diligent not only in attending church services, but “to have a liking for it, and to find profit in it for Christian living.”  Many congregations need to be reminded of their responsibility to support the pastor’s ministry, and to like it.

4. Pastoral Care

Pastors were supposed to be engaged in ministry outside of the pulpit, through visitation of the sick and counselling. Specifically pastors were to confront those who needed it, as well as applying counsel to prevent patterns of sin.

5. Pastoral Integrity

The last element that was examined was whether the pastor had a testimony marked by integrity.  Basically, did the pastor live as an example to others, leading “an honest life”? Also, the pastor’s reputation was checked to see if people viewed areas of his life as lacking self control (“dissoluteness”) or being flaky (“frivolity”). Finally,the pastor needed to have a harmonious relationship to the congregation. And above all of these he needed to have his family life in order.

These priorities are quite basic. But how often do pastors fail to maintain these basic emphases? May God grant us mercy to fulfill our duties.

[1] JKS Reid, Calvin: Theological Treatises, (SCM Press, 1954), 74