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“Jared Wilson is one of my favorite thinkers. He writes with deep conviction, and I have been moved to tears at his robust sense of God and the glorious gospel he proclaims. Of the books he has written, this one is especially edifying to me. Jared writes from the trenches where he is shepherding, leading, doing weddings, and doing funerals. He knows the highs and lows of our calling. His conviction, passion, and wit pour out onto the page as he shepherds those of us who are shepherding the flock.”

Matt Chandler, Pastor, The Village Church; President, Acts 29 Church Planting Network

“It ought to go without saying that pastors who preach the gospel need the gospel desperately themselves—but it doesn’t. In The Pastor’s Justification, Jared Wilson boldly reminds ministers where their true measure of success and fulfillment is found. This book will help shepherd shepherds back to the confidence and humility found only in Jesus.”

Ed Stetzer, President, LifeWay Research; author, Subversive Kingdom

“Nothing has been more frustrating as a pastor than proclaiming the person and work of Christ in a sermon to my church and then realizing I have not applied the gospel to my own heart and life the whole week. Jared is a welcomed guide for pastors who want off of the performance treadmill.”

Darrin Patrick, Pastor, The Journey, St. Louis, Missouri; author, Church Planter: The Man, the Message, the Mission

“Why do so many pastors feel burned out, burned up, and simply burned? We allow ourselves to be shaped by the many ‘pseudogospels’ rooted in our guilt-driven, shame-based, performance-oriented approaches to ministry. The Pastor’s Justification by Jared Wilson exposes these idols and invites us to rediscover the gospel of grace and its application for pastors and church leaders. Jared exercises his considerable pastoral compassion and skill to offer a fresh, much-needed word for burned-out pastors.”

Daniel Montgomery, Pastor, Sojourn Community Church, Louisville, Kentucky; coauthor, Faithmapping

“Pastor, you are not alone—your feelings of loneliness, fear, insecurity, and mediocrity are shared by all pastors, to one degree or another. Pastors need other faithful shepherds to preach to us, admonish us, comfort us, and point us to Jesus. We need others to come alongside us as we look not primarily for better techniques or bigger churches, but to the unity, safety, security, and justification that we have in our Chief Shepherd, Jesus Christ. This book will engage not only your intellect, but your motives, your idols, and your dreams. Every congregation should want their pastor to read this book, and every pastor will want his congregation to do the same.”

Burk Parsons, Copastor, Saint Andrew’s Chapel, Sanford, Florida; Editor, Tabletalk magazine

THE PASTOR’S JUSTIFICATION

The Pastor’s Justification: Applying the Work of Christ in Your Life and Ministry

Copyright © 2013 by Jared C. Wilson

Published by Crossway

1300 Crescent Street

Wheaton, 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.

Cover design: Faceout Studio

First printing 2013

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway. 2011 Text Edition. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture references marked NIV are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-3664-9

PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-3665-6

Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-3666-3

ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-3667-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wilson, Jared C., 1975–

The pastor’s justification : applying the work of Christ in your life and ministry / Jared C. Wilson.

pages cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4335-3664-9

1. Pastoral theology. 2. Pastoral care. I. Title.

BV4011.3.W48 2013

2012047648

253'.2—dc23

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

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This book is dedicated to

Mike Ayers and Ray Ortlund Jr.,

two pastors Jesus used to restore to me

the joy of life and ministry.

I love you, brothers.

CONTENTS

Foreword by Mike Ayers

Introduction

PART 1

THE PASTOR’S HEART

1  The Free Pastor

2  The Holy Pastor

3  The Humble Pastor

4  The Confident Pastor

5  The Watchful Pastor

6  The Justified Pastor

PART 2

THE PASTOR’S GLORY

7  The Pastor and the Bible

8  The Pastor and God’s Grace

9  The Pastor and His Faith

10  The Pastor and the King

11  The Pastor and Glory

Conclusion

FOREWORD

In 1998, just three years after planting a church in northwest Houston, I was thirty-six years old, worn out, and frustrated in ministry. Despite my authentic passion for the church and my sincere desire to see fruit, I was new to pastoring, new to that level of church leadership, and naive about what I thought the experience would offer. Our congregation was not growing as I expected, and there were disagreements about what the church should be and do. Personally, there was also a deep stirring in my heart—something unresolved and broken—that left me unsure and without peace.

After several weeks of doubt about my leadership and feeling like a ministry failure, I began reaching out and seeking help. Over time I learned that the challenges I faced were really not about the church, but primarily about me. They were about a leader who was insecure, one who had never truly owned the trauma of his broken childhood, and one who didn’t affirm or celebrate his true identity in Christ.

It was through this deep time of spiritual introspection that God revealed some of my own misguided motivations. As a nineteen-year-old, I had surrendered myself to ministry out of a love for God, a love for the gospel, and a compelling vision to see people’s lives transformed. But somewhere along the way, ministry for me became more about proving to myself and to the world what a great person and leader I was. The truth is, I possessed a misguided definition of “success” in ministry and a lack of clarity and commitment to the biblical idea of the church.

Although disguised in spiritual and altruistic terms, a larger church, a bigger salary, and more prestige in ministry was what motivated me. It was only after the difficulties and failures I experienced in the challenge of planting a church that I “hit the wall” and became aware of my need for healing within.

If only I had had The Pastor’s Justification at that time!

Every pastor would readily say that the work of shepherding a church is uniquely challenging. What they might not be able to do is adequately describe those challenges beyond surface level or provide scriptural perspectives regarding them. My friend Jared Wilson explores the struggles and joys of being a pastor with unusual insight, and does so with his usual wit, skill, and biblical integrity.

This book sheds light on the paradoxes that every pastor faces—every pastor, that is, who seeks to be genuine and committed to long-term ministry. Jared explains the noble ambitions that accompany our calling, as well as the potential pitfalls of those ambitions. He draws upon the biblical images and imperatives for pastoral ministry and applies them in real-world ways. Pastors will find practical insight, genuine encouragement, and in-your-face truth. For those seeking proactive and prescriptive answers, this book will be a delight. For students planning to enter pastoral work, this book is essential!

Alternatively, The Pastor’s Justification is not just for those in pastoral ministry. Any caring church member, associate pastor, deacon, or elder board member will gain great understanding of the complexities often associated with pastoral ministry and find new ways to pray for, hold accountable, and emotionally support those who carry the mantle of church leadership.

During my discouragement in year three of pastoring, I would have been greatly strengthened through a book like this. Now after eighteen years of pastoral ministry in the same church, the lessons I’ve learned have been many, and almost all those lessons are reflected in this work. As I read, the words resonated with great clarity and encouragement.

I’ve concluded that God is as much, if not more, interested in doing a great work in us as he is in doing a great work through us. I’ve concluded that faithfulness to God’s calling is success, that the Bible always gets it right, and that leading from the place of security in Christ is leadership that is truly effective. I’ve learned that pastoring on this side of wholeness is worthwhile, both for those I lead and for myself. I’m grateful for a book that confirms the hard-learned lessons that real joy in ministry comes from joy in Christ, not in ministry, and that the real success to be celebrated is Christ’s finished work.

Thank you, God, for the reassurance, instruction, and inspiration that many pastors will gain from this writing. And thank you, Jared, for writing it.

Mike Ayers, PhD

Pastor, The Brook Church Community, Houston, Texas

Professor and Chair, Department of Leadership Studies, College of

Biblical Studies, Houston, Texas

INTRODUCTION

One summer day shortly after sunrise, somewhere in the wilderness of southeast Texas, a boy between his seventh- and eighth-grade years picked up his Bible and ventured outside for his morning devotions. The year was 1989, and so was the temperature, probably. That boy was me, and I was at something called 3-D Camp, a weeklong student ministry event. What I mostly remember is drinking lemonade all week and getting in the pool, even though I would never take my shirt off, because it was blisteringly hot. And of course I remember the morning I believe God’s Spirit called me into ministry.

I had been getting up every morning, as recommended (but not required) by the camp staff, to read my Bible and pray. I had no devotional book and no plan, just the hypersensitive religious sensibilities of a neurotic and timid preteen boy raised in a Southern Baptist church (and probably the desire to impress a girl who might’ve been up at the same time for her devotions).

It had never occurred to me before that morning that I ought to be in vocational ministry. Since the first grade, I’d wanted to be a writer of some kind, a storyteller. My teacher Mrs. Palmer handed out school record books where we students could paste our school photos and then record in the requisite blanks our favorite school subjects, our favorite foods, our favorite songs, and of course, What We Wanted to Be When We Grew Up. My classmates scrawled the expected: fireman, policeman, teacher, doctor. I wrote “author.” In 1989, my authorial ambitions consisted mostly of wanting to be a staff writer for DC Comics.

My family had recently moved from my hometown of Brownsville, Texas, to Albuquerque, New Mexico. I wasn’t happy about it. I was a pimple-faced, bowl-chested, low-self-esteemed skinny kid. And I stuttered. I had managed fairly well in school up to this time because I was smart, I knew how to make people laugh, and I was a pretty good athlete, all valuable commodities in the grade-school marketplace of social ideas. But I was in a new state, at a new school, and at a new church, and I was awash with fear. With God’s grace, my parents thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea for me to spend one last summer camp with my Texas friends. So there I was at 3-D Camp, trying to make sense of my adolescent delirium in the withering Texas heat, and one morning I found myself in the bewildering thicket of Exodus 3.

Moses literally heard God’s call. I did not hear an audible voice. I was not accustomed to “hearing from God,” but I had the distinct impression that God was calling me to be a minister. It really was as simple as that. No shining lights, no material visions, no angelic chorus. Just an alien idea suddenly in my brain. It didn’t make any sense. But I was listening. I was not gung ho. It did not feel like a good idea or something I wanted to do. (That was one reason why I believed it was coming from God.) I didn’t say anything about it to anybody that day.

At the end of the week, during the customary invitation time at the last evening worship service of 3-D Camp, as numerous students were going forward to rededicate their lives to Jesus, promising to stop drinkin’ and smokin’ and makin’ out, the camp preacher issued an invitation I had never heard before in my life. I had heard countless invitations before, earnest appeals plucking at the guiltstrings while the pianist made her way through “Just as I Am” for the second time. Sometimes many would go forward to make decisions of varying degrees; sometimes one impatient person would crack and go forward, deciding to “take one for the team” so we could beat the other churches to the Luby’s. I had seen and heard it all, but I had never heard this: “If anyone believes God has called him into ministry this week, why don’t you come forward for prayer?”

I was startled and saw in that invite a confirmation of sorts. Despite the hundreds in attendance, as far as I remember, just me and one other boy—the pastor’s son—went forward.

I didn’t know what it all meant, really. The biggest appeal to me was that I might get to be a youth minister, which meant getting all the cool CCM tapes, playing with water balloon launchers, and occasionally teaching Bible lessons. Sounded like a good gig. When I returned to Albuquerque, I found a letter waiting for me from my new youth pastor who was inviting me to be a part of a select group within the youth group called The Ministry Team. I took that as yet another confirmation I was on the right track.

Throughout high school, while my classmates were struggling to figure out what they wanted to do with their lives, what their futures might hold, the one thing this very unconfident boy knew with confidence was that I was going into “the ministry.”

As life unfolds, God tells wonderful, surprising, refining stories with our lives. My sense of calling never abated, even through the years of my life I wish I could take another swing at. Between my junior and senior years of high school, I served as interim worship leader and teacher for my youth group’s Wednesday night worship service. I took my first vocational ministry position the summer I graduated high school in 1994, when I became the youth pastor for Zion Chinese Baptist Church in Houston, Texas. In my first couple of years of professional ministry, I almost gave it up because of some difficult experiences with some ministerial superiors. Later I almost threw it all away because of my own sinfulness and the failure to protect my wife’s heart. But God was doing something. What I and others meant for evil, he meant for good. And I have learned in ministry and out over the last twenty years the secret of pastoral confidence, pastoral competence, and pastoral power: his name is Jesus Christ. I continue to relearn this secret every day.

The pastoral fraternity is an interesting one. We are a motley bunch of fools. Different personalities and tribes, different methodologies and styles, not to mention denominations and traditions and, of course, theologies. But there is something both lay elders and career elders have in common, something I’ve seen in the thirty-year senior pastor of a southern megachurch as well as the bivocational shepherd of a little, rural New England parish, the laid-back fauxhawked church planter and the fancy mousse-haired charismatic, and in nearly every pastor in between: a profound sense of insecurity for which the only antidote is the gospel.

Now, of course everyone is insecure in some way, and the security needed by all is union with Jesus Christ, but the insecurity of pastors seems a rare bird. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 11:28 of his “anxiety for all the churches.” I see it there in Moses’s hemming and hawing in Exodus 3. I certainly felt it that summer morning in 1989 when I pondered the notion of God’s call to vocational ministry the way my nine-year-old daughter might react to my asking her to move the refrigerator across the kitchen.

Is this insecurity a result of the kind of people who are drawn to ministry, or is it a result of the burden of pastoral ministry itself? I suspect a combination of both. In any event, the statistics seem crudely to bear out this line of thinking.

The Mayo Clinic warns that those in a so-called “helping professions” are high-risk candidates for burnout, because such people identify so strongly with their work that they tend to lack a reasonable balance between work life and personal life and try to be everything to everyone. This sounds like a lot of pastors I know.

From a variety of sources, ranging from the Fuller Institute to the Barna Research Group and Pastoral Care, Inc., we find these sobering numbers:

90 percent of pastors report working between 55 to 75 hours per week.

80 percent believe pastoral ministry has negatively affected their families.

90 percent feel they are inadequately trained to cope with the ministry demands.

80 percent of pastors feel unqualified and discouraged.

90 percent of pastors say the ministry is completely different than what they thought it would be like before they entered the ministry.

50 percent feel unable to meet the demands of the job.

70 percent of pastors constantly fight depression.

70 percent say they have a lower self-image now than when they first started.

70 percent do not have someone they consider a close friend.

40 percent report serious conflict with a parishioner at least once a month.

33 percent confess having engaged in inappropriate sexual behavior with someone in the church.

50 percent of pastors feel so discouraged that they would leave the ministry if they could, but have no other way of making a living.

70 percent of pastors feel grossly underpaid.

50 percent of the ministers starting out will not last 5 years.

Only 1 out of every 10 ministers will actually retire as a minister in some form.

Perhaps you identify strongly with some of these statistics. Perhaps you fear becoming a statistic yourself. Or perhaps you already have.

The right response to the survey of this wearying battlefield is not timidity or a pity party, but clinging more desperately to the gospel of Jesus Christ. The justification for the sin-prone pastor—by which I mean simply the pastor—is the same as it is for every sinner. There is no Justification 2.0 for ministers of the gospel. There is only the gospel itself—the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Fusing this reality—the reality of eternal life—to the ordinary life of pastoral ministry is what this book is about.

In Part 1: The Pastor’s Heart, we will explore 1 Peter 5:1–11, an especially helpful gospel-centered admonition to church elders. And in Part 2: The Pastor’s Glory, we will look at how the so-called “five solas of the Reformation” can help us see how to take more of ourselves out of our ministry and apply more of Christ and his gospel. My prayer is that you will find this book helpful not primarily to your pastoral “toolkit” but to your heart.

PART 1

THE PASTOR’S HEART

So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed: shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen. (1 Pet. 5:1–11)

1

THE FREE PASTOR

Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly. (1 Pet. 5:2)

The best and worst of times. Now you know what pastoral ministry is.

Becoming a minister is easy. At the very most, you will need multiple years of formal theological training at great financial, mental, and emotional expense to you and your family, an official approval from your denomination’s ordination committee or assessment council, and a divine call from God. Piece of cake. It’s being a pastor that is harder than all get-out.

There are lots of things they might teach you in seminary but you don’t actually learn until you’re nose deep in them. Things like:

- Churches really do split over carpet color.

- Firing volunteers is the pits.

- Leading formal church discipline against a friend is worse.

- Some women will be forever hurt that your wife doesn’t want to be BFFs with them.

- You will have some meetings that you’re not sure you will survive. Literally. Like, you might want to review your theology of self-defense and/or revisit your life insurance policy.

But also things like:

- Seeing enemies reconcile on the basis of the gospel is incredible.

- Counseling broken people into a time of healing is beautiful.

- Hearing people profess faith in Jesus is exhilarating.

Pastoral ministry is a trove of glories and deaths. It is the kind of cross-taking nothing can prepare you for except just doing it. John Newton conjures 2 Corinthians 6:10 in one of his poems:

What contradictions meet

In minister’s employ!

It is a bitter sweet,

A sorrow full of joy.[1]

The pastor can be the loneliest soul in the congregation, wandering out in the point man position, scoping the land for danger all by himself, yet always feeling the tug of those needing his attention on the back of his coat. The pastor is a multitasker not just of duties but of personalities and problems. Many Christians are focused on their own journey; the biblical pastor is too, but he’s also focused on yours. And his and hers and the next guy’s. In one day he might hold a dying woman’s hand, grieve in the office with a couple on the verge of divorce, celebrate one hundred days of sobriety with someone, and then go home and laugh with his wife and kids at a Munsters rerun. The pastor is ministerially multipolar.

The vantage point of pastoral ministry is a heavy and secret thing. Good pastors aren’t always spilling everybody else’s guts, so one hour he may be rushing out on a benevolence call on his day off, and the next hour hear from another the accusation that he is selfish. (True story.) The accuser knows nothing of the benevolence call, and the good pastor does not feel compelled to defend himself using it as evidence. He has his own perspective and trusts God will vindicate him in due time when all things are revealed. The recipient of the benevolence has his perspective too. And the next day he may be asking, “But what have you done for me lately?”

Sister Serious is concerned about the way Sister Broken lets her son squirm during the worship service without disciplining him. But the pastor knows that Sister Broken is recovering from an abusive ex and is growing in Christ, and that to clamp down on her about her squirmy son at this point would risk further bruising a heart in need of healing. (Also, good pastors know that little boys are squirmy.)

Very few people lose sleep over “the way the church is going.” But the pastor does.

The pastor and his flock are on cross-paths all week. Monday through Saturday, the laity are being drained from the pressures of daily life: jobs and families and shopping and just being human. The pastor runs counter. Monday through Saturday, he is being drained by the same daily life pressures, and besides that he is pouring himself out in grace as often as he can for the flock. But he is also constantly seeking to be filled up at every available opportunity, so that on Sunday, when his people enter the house of worship empty from the week’s toil, he is full to the brim with the glory of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Then, in preaching, he is broken open upon the rock of Christ that the living water of Christ might flow out freely and flood the valleys of his people. The laity starts Monday fresh, filled. The pastor starts Monday exhausted, empty.

This is a difficult arrangement week in and week out, mitigated wonderfully by a community of believers empowered by the Spirit to carry each other’s burdens and to encourage and edify each other outside the walls of the assembly, but it is still a difficult navigation, and many pastors and their congregations wind up too often as the proverbial ships passing in the night.

And yet, let’s not overthink it, brothers. Let us not think more highly of ourselves than we ought. Oh, we poor pitiful pastors, we sorry lot, we put-upon unprevailers! We special class, whatever will we do with ourselves?

We can nail self-pity to the cross, first off.

Deflated and Puffed Up

What do we do with this sorrowful joy? We pastors, like other normal human beings, run one of two ways, generally.

First, we wallow. We feel deflated so we act deflated. We tell ourselves we are just being honest and transparent and authentic. Really we are throwing a pity party in our own honor. Twitter and Facebook have become the new arenas for public lament, and these days we get to see just how similar some pastors are in temperament to teenage girls. But even without the spectacle of social media, it is quite possible for pastors to see themselves as merely husks of men, empty shells wafted by the wind this way and that. Always tired, always empty, menial, miserable. Swing low, sweet chariot; nobody knows the trouble pastors have seen.

But for all the brought-lowness of the minister’s task, this is not the way of pastoring. This is not the “boasting of weakness” Paul goes on about in 2 Corinthians 11 and 12. In 12:7 he says the weakness was given to him to keep him from being conceited! Not so that he would think less of himself, to paraphrase C. S. Lewis, but so he would think of himself less. This is how Paul sums up the purpose of weakness and suffering in pastoral ministry:

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor. 12:9–10)

At the same time, we are learning from Paul that contentment and strength is not about pulling one’s self up by the bootstraps. If a pastor does not react to the peculiar anxiety of his ministry in the manner of a milquetoast whiny-pants, he may instead swing to the other extreme. Not deflated, he is instead puffed up.

The stereotype of the arrogant, narcissistic pastor is a stereotype for a reason. You and I have likely both met him. We have likely at times been him. I remember working at a Christian bookstore for several years while in college; the absolute worst customers were pastors. This constantly confounded me. Time and time again, my coworkers and I were subjected to some of the most unchristian condescension we’d ever experienced. We were regularly confronted by ministers accustomed to commanding the rabble in their congregations, and so they thought nothing of commanding us. Congregational deference had turned them into hard-hearted idols—at least on shopping day—and they lorded themselves over us, flabbergasted that we could not invent products they imagined or order products they could not describe or hand out extra-percentage discounts due those of their elevated status. “Do you know who I am? I’m kind of a big deal. People know me.” They were terrible advertisements for their churches, not to mention pastoral ministry in general.

It is devilishly easy us as for pastors to believe our own hype.

Leadership Directives

Pastoral ministry is a peculiar anxiety. We’ve established that. Whining about it isn’t proper. Neither is becoming a self-important blowhard. What will help us, then?

Enter the leadership cult. What we need is know-how, the publishing Powers-That-Be reason. We lack skills, practical helps, and insider tips, and they’ve got just the evangelical gurus to deliver the goods. Don’t you want to leverage your synergy and catalyze your visioneering? Don’t you want to know the seven highly effective and irrefutable laws of unlocking the mystery of who moved your cheese’s parachute? Are you a starfish or a spider? This is all key to revealing the quality ministry hidden inside of you and to taking your church to a whole ’nother level.

Whatever that means.

David Hansen calls this “trend-driven ministry.”[2] Syndicated radio host Brant Hansen has skewered the evangelical leadership cult well in his blog series “The 417 Rules of Awesomely Bold Leadership.” Here is one excerpt:

Rule #398—Leave a Legacy of Awesomeness in Leadership

. . . so General Powell looked at me, his eyes welling, and said, yes, sure, there are leaders. But who is leading them?

Then he realized that okay, there are lot of people doing that. But who is leading those people, the ones who are doing that?

Well, yeah, some people are doing that. But—and here was his real question—who is leading THEM?

Well, I am.

But here’s another question, friends: Who is going to reach the next generation of leaders, and empower them to be led by someone awesome? We have a crisis here. Who will lead leading leaders when I die?

Answer: My books and CD’s, that’s who.[3]

Books and podcasts and conferences from the leadership cult bid us to believe that pastoral ministry is a technology, that our churches are businesses, that our flocks are customers. The answer to the sorrowful joy of pastoral ministry is not apparently “counting it all joy” but finding the sweet spot in our ministry style. People are problems to be figured out, and if they cannot be figured out, they are to be sorted out to others, and if they still cannot be figured out, they are liabilities. They simply didn’t “get the vision.”

The professionalization of the pastorate is killing the spiritual life of congregations, even congregations seeing an increase in attendance to Sunday worship. Despite the intricacy and efficiency of applied systems, many attenders of the consumer-driven church get everything they want except pastoral care. More and more, this is appearing to be by design, as more and more “awesomely bold leaders” denigrate any layperson interested in being fed and cared for. They are called babies. They are told to grow up. They are told that the church is not for them. They are called Pharisees or eggheads or “religious” jerks. A sheep who wants to be fed is seen as somebody in the way of the vision.

Mind you, it’s not that we can’t learn anything good from the titans of pastoral industry. It is just that more often than not, the good we find in them is not original, and the original we find in them is not good. Furthermore, too many of these experience-driven, management-minded promoters of ministerial technology seem pathologically unable to stick to the Scriptures. “You must be the Bible guy,” one conference speaker said to Matt Chandler in the green room. Matt replied, “Shouldn’t we all be the Bible guy?”

Brothers, there are aspects of professionalism that make sense in our modern ministry contexts, but when all is said and done, we are not managers of spiritual enterprises; we are shepherds. And shepherds feed their sheep (Ezek. 34:2–3; John 21:15–17).

Our lack of knowledge in practical pastoring is not for lack of divine revelation about the matter. The New Testament gives us plenty to work on (though never master). As I noted earlier, I’m going to walk through 1 Peter 5:1–11 in the first part of this book. It is quite likely that we need (daily) a practical “shift of vision,” but this daily process begins and ends with—and is held together throughout—by the ultimate vision of how God sees the Christian: with approval and delight, as one clothed in the righteousness of Christ. It is only from the grounding of the gospel of Jesus that the evangelical pastor is set free to pastor freely.

We will come back to the grounding gospel of 1 Peter 5:1 later, but for now let’s not gloss over the introductory charge. “So I exhort the elders among you” is a continuation of Peter’s thoughts in 1 Peter 4 on judgment for sin and on suffering. He then commands us to respond, beginning with the elders. Who goes first? The pastors, that’s who.

In 4:17 Peter quotes Ezekiel 9:6, reminding us that judgment begins at the house of God, and if judgment begins at the house of God, it would stand to reason that judgment of the house of God begins with those in authority. With the double honor of 1 Timothy 5:17 is the double responsibility of James 3:1.

The primary problem in pastoral ministry, brother pastor, is not them. It’s you. You are your biggest problem. And so what we see throughout the New Testament’s practical instructions to elders is the primacy of personal responsibility. God does not chiefly tell elders how to sort out the problems of others; he primarily tells elders how to get their own lives in order. In the introduction to his excellent book Jesus-Driven Ministry, Ajith Fernando writes:

You will see that most of the ministry basics discussed here have to do with personal lifestyle. I make no apologies for this. There is a great interest in ministry technique today, and technique is important. In a world that places high value on excellence and quality, our ministries must reflect a professional excellence that will favorably adorn the gospel and commend Christ to this generation. Paul also recommended excellence in ministry to the young minister Timothy (1 Tim. 4:11–15). But I believe the greatest crisis facing Christian leadership today concerns lifestyle—always the burning issue. The well-known evangelist D. L. Moody is reported to have said that he had more trouble with D. L. Moody than with any other person he met! [4]

We will not neglect the practical matters of pastoring, because the Bible doesn’t do that. But we will wrestle with them under the two-fold acknowledgment that (1) commands are first for us before they’re for others, and (2) the power to obey comes from God’s grace, not ourselves.

Let’s turn to the first divine directives.

Shepherd the Flock of God That Is Among You

In 1 Peter 5:2, the apostle instructs, “Shepherd the flock of God that is among you.” Well, of course. What other flock would we have? I will tell you.

We get ahead of ourselves in thinking of our churches as our churches. They are God’s churches. We shepherd these congregations as undershepherds of the Good Shepherd. The flock among you is not immediately your flock—these people are God’s flock. These people aren’t your people before they’re God’s people. (This mentality does wonders for pastoral elitism and arrogance.) Time and time again we think of our flocks as needing to answer to us. But this is not any more true than our needing to answer to them. And in the end, our local church has been given to us to steward humbly and wisely; we will have to answer for how we shepherd them.

And let’s not miss the importance of the seemingly obvious phrase “that is among you.” We frequently find ourselves trying to shepherd the flock of God that we want, the one we imagine them to be, the one we want them to be. But God through Peter commands us to shepherd the church we’ve actually got.

Pastor, the people you currently have in your congregation are those whom God in his wisdom has dispensed to you. They might not be the people you’d handpick if you had your druthers, but be measured by the fact that God handpicked you to be a citizen of his kingdom. What on earth was he thinking?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer cuts to the heart in Life Together:

If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even where there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith, and difficulty; if on the contrary, we only keep complaining to God that everything is so paltry and petty, so far from what we expected, then we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow according to the measure and riches which are there for us all in Jesus Christ.

This applies in a special way to the complaints often heard from pastors and zealous members about their congregations. A pastor should not complain about his congregations, certainly never to other people, but also not to God. A congregation has not been entrusted to him in order that he should become its accuser before God and men. When a person becomes alienated from a Christian community in which he has been placed and begins to raise complaints about it, he had better examine himself first to see whether the trouble is not due to his wish dream that should be shattered by God; and if this be the case, let him thank God for leading him into this predicament. But if not, let him nevertheless guard against ever becoming an accuser of the congregation before God. Let him rather accuse himself for his unbelief. Let him pray to God for understanding of his own failure and his particular sin, and pray that he may not wrong his brethren. Let him, in the consciousness of his own guilt, make intercession for his brethren. Let him do what he is committed to do, and thank God. . . .

What may appear weak and trifling to us may be great and glorious to God. Just as the Christian should not be constantly feeling his spiritual pulse, so, too, the Christian community has not been given to us by God for us to be constantly taking its temperature. The more thankfully we daily receive what is given to us, the more surely and steadily will fellowship increase and grow from day to day as God pleases.[5]

What is this “wish dream” Bonhoeffer is talking about? It is the vision we have for the church we want. In one sense, vision is a good thing. We should all want our churches to be moving forward, growing, and changing, conforming more with the image of Christ. But we shouldn’t let that image get in the way of loving our church where it is.

Pastor, do not let your vision for the church you want get in the way of God’s vision for the church you actually have! Let’s not be our church’s accuser. Someone has already taken that position. And let’s not keep constantly taking our church’s temperature. Let’s love and serve and submit and, yes, exhort and rebuke, and then let’s love and serve and submit more and more, believing that the Spirit is often at work in ways we are blind to. God will be faithful to finish the good work he’s begun in us, and he doesn’t need us walking around in our hall-monitor sash, handing out demerits.

Exercise Oversight, Not under Compulsion, but Willingly

Pastors must pastor. There is a good kind of must. There is a must driven by joy, the kind of compulsion that comes from the perfect storm of calling and empowerment. And then there is the must that is full of duty. Perhaps you’ve heard the one about the husband who asks his wife, “Must I kiss you?” “Yes,” she replies, “but not that kind of must.” Must pastors pastor? Yes, but not that kind of must.

Peter continues in 1 Peter 5:2: “exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you.”

I have mocked the Monday morning pastor hangover, but it is real. The fatigue begins for me as soon as the sermon is done. More often than not, I have “left it all out on the field.” But the gathering is not over. There are people to greet, visitors to meet, oftentimes theological questions to answer, and short counseling sessions to conduct. Many times there are impromptu meetings to attend or executive decisions to be made. At Middletown Springs Community Church, we enjoy Soup Sunday in the fellowship hall from the weekend after Thanksgiving until Easter every year. I am an introverted personality, which does not mean I don’t enjoy being with people or that I’m not good at interacting with people, only that it is work to do so. Extroverts tend to fill up in social settings; introverts tend to empty.

The social interactions I engage in after preaching on Sunday are fraught with ridiculous peril. It is difficult for me to listen well. I don’t always speak thoughtfully or carefully. I am running on fumes. Peterson puts it beautifully:

Each Lord’s Day worship divides the water of chaos that on command roll back to the right and to the left while the people march through in glad triumph. For an hour all truth is proportioned, contemporary, and complete. God’s word is proclaimed, affirmed, and accepted. Then the pastor lifts his arms in benediction, giving witness to the wholeness of salvation and promising the continuities of blessing through the week. He goes to the narthex to speak individually with the people as they leave “to take possession of the land” (Josh. 1:11). In another hour or so the sanctuary is empty on one side and the parking lot empty on the other. He goes to his study and begins to look over the notes from and about persons who need visitation and counsel. The telephone rings. He looks out of the window and sees that the waters have “returned to their place and overflowed all its banks, as before” (Josh. 4:18).[6]

Then comes Monday. Many pastors take Mondays off because of the Sunday hangover. I do not. It is my worst day, so I refuse to give it to my family. Instead I work through it. It is a slog. Monday morning is when the e-mail inbox and telephone mailbox are thickest. Monday morning is when people still have questions or concerns or criticisms about Sunday. (They are starting their week full, remember? They came to church for the pick-me-up, and most of them got it.) Like everybody else, pastors are taking stock of what all must be accomplished in the week ahead. But Sunday was not a day of filling up for pastors, but pouring out.

On Monday mornings I enter my office at about 8:00 a.m. and find that, like Sisyphus, the stone I spent the previous week pushing up the hill lay at the bottom again, ready for another go. Monday morning I must pastor. But what kind of must?

I am faced with this challenge: will I shepherd under compulsion, or willingly, as God would have me?

My first instinct is to make my shepherding contingent on my energy level. But really, my ability to exercise oversight willingly flows from my vision. No, not a vision for an “awesomely bold” church—at least, not at first—but of my God and for the flock of God that is among me.

How we see God on Monday morning will affect whether we oversee his church willingly or under compulsion. And how we view the people in our church will affect whether we oversee them willingly or under compulsion.

Our omnipresent Savior is waiting for me in the office on Monday morning. “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” he says (Matt. 11:28). I am plum tuckered on Monday morning. I face ample temptation to wallow. But Jesus promises rest. I may be a shell of a pastor at this time each week, but God is no less God. His might is no less mighty. His gospel is no less power. His reach is no less infinite. His grace is no less everlasting. His lovingkindness is no less enduring.

Don’t Farm Out the Work to Hired Hands

My first thoughts on Monday mornings are to my fatigue and all I must do, but I must push them into thoughts of Christ, of all he is and all he has done. There lies the vision that compels my will.

Then I want to think of the flock God has loaned out to me not as items on a task list but as people made in the image of God, precious and broken and beautiful and sinful, like me. I want to see them as people, not problems. I want to see them not as obstacles in the way of some vague missional purpose but as the missional purpose itself. The minute I begin seeing God’s people as problems to be solved (or avoided) is the minute I’ve denied the heart of Christ.

Carl Trueman quotes an e-mail he received:

I worshipped this Sunday with my in-laws at their home church which is pastored by a man featured at this year’s [conference name supplied] with 6000 of my closest friends. My father-in-law has been dying for five years (renal failure) and is very likely within months of his death. I can’t get a pastor or elder from this congregation to come and visit him once, let alone make it a weekly priority to help him die well—in the full confidence of the Lord Jesus. But there’s time, mind you, for (yet another) conference.[7]

Trusting that this fellow really had tried to get an elder from his father-in-law’s church to visit him before he died, this is unconscionable. I know a pastor who once said to someone asking about hospital visitation that he didn’t do it. Ever. Somebody would visit, but not him. He wasn’t saying it in terms of disdain, just matter-of-factly that it was not in his particular job description.

I understand an individual pastor not making every (or even most) hospital/deathbed visits. But for the life of me, I cannot understand an individual pastor making none.

(Pastors, your platform is not your grounds for pastoral legitimacy. It’s the other way around. And you might be able to fool your readers or wider audience, but you won’t be able to fool your local church for long. And you will never be able to fool God. There will be a reckoning for “hired hands” who don’t feed his sheep.)

The struggle to shepherd willingly happens every time ministry becomes difficult. So we have to see people as Jesus sees them. “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Matt. 9:36). This compassion is not merely a “feeling sorry for.” It is a gut reaction. Jesus truly saw these people as people in great need of the gospel and was moved in the guts by brokenness for them. Pastors, let us then pray on Monday mornings, and every time we face the temptation to exercise oversight out of compulsion rather than out of free will, for the eyes of Christ.

What a great turning point to see that this is how Jesus sees us! There you sit on Monday morning, a pitiful bump on a log. Sipping your coffee, feeling sorry for yourself, worn out and daydreaming of life as a milkman. (Some pastors have “milk truck” Mondays; I have “hole up in a shack in the woods and be John Updike” Mondays.) But Jesus looks at us and feels compassion. He does not see us the same way we see the pop-in visitor approaching through the office window on Monday morning. “Oh boy. Wonder what this is about?” we think in our best Eeyore voice. Jesus neither sulks nor sighs about us. He ministers to us willingly, eagerly. And there is power there to extend that ministry of reconciliation to others in the hardest times.

Shepherd Eagerly, Not for Shameful Gain

John Calvin once identified three enemies to pastoral ministry: sloth, greed, and lust for power. All three are present in 1 Peter 5:1–11, and in verse 2 we see greed. Peter commands the elders to exercise oversight “not for shameful gain, but eagerly.”

Pastoral ministry is not the most lucrative of occupations, except when it is. On average, pastors are not paid enough. But very few of us have any grounds for complaint. In general, if it’s riches you’re after, ministry is likely not your first choice, unless you’re gunning for a time slot on TBN.

But there are times when we are not exercising our pastoral duties for any reason other than to pay our bills. This is pastoring for shameful gain, no matter the dollar amount.

Shameful gain doesn’t have to be about money, though. There are lots of things we can shamefully hope to gain: attendance numbers, pledge cards, altar call respondents, prestige, power, book sales, Twitter followers, blog subscribers, pats on the back . . . The list is endless.

Several years ago some friends and I planted a church in Nashville, Tennessee. God did not give us tremendous numerical growth. We were faithful to his calling, best as we understood it, but his plan was not for our increase. As the pastor of this church, I often took this very personally. I come from the land of the Bible Belt, where megachurches are flowing with soy lattes and money. There is a Six Flags Over Jesus on nearly every corner, and here we were, a little missional church plant, commemorating many Sunday services with more people in our band than in the pews.

It was a struggle on a soul level for me each week as our music would begin. I would make my way out to the foyer to pray. I would beg God to send just two more people, just one more, before I had to get up to preach. It wasn’t the Bible Belt or megachurchianity that made me seek my validation in attendance; it was my own flesh. And there was the whisper of the Devil, tickling my ear with his forked tongue, accusing me of my worthlessness, which only made me seek my worth in wisps and fog all the more.

I’m in a different place pastoring a different church now. Ironically enough, though I left a town of 610,000 for a town of nearly 1,000, my church is about eleven times the size of my previous church. In the last three years we have a bit more than doubled in attendance. We continue to grow, and Lord willing, we will continue to grow. By the most common of church measurement standards, things are good. But the struggle never leaves.

The dirty little secret underneath the desire for shameful gain is this: there’s never enough.

One of the most helpful things I’ve ever read on these matters comes from a pastor named Justin Anderson who realized the dream. “I’ve seen the ‘promised land,’” he writes, “and it’s just OK.”[8]

Isn’t that refreshing? Anderson elaborates:

For the last couple years, I have been living the dream. Our church has seen explosive growth, people be saved, baptized, and join groups all the time. We have four campuses, thousands of people, and a great staff. Finally, all the toil of church planting has paid off and the prospect of megachurch stardom was a reality.

Most of us want some version of this in ministry. I finally reached the promised land, and I can report that it’s just OK. Don’t get me wrong: there were parts that I loved, but at the end of the day there is always more to do, always another idea, hill to climb or battle to fight—it never ends.[9]

There is much wisdom here for all of us, big church or little church, succeeding or struggling. There is wisdom here for pastor and laity alike.

Too often we envision “successful ministry”—this vision may look different from person to person, church to church—and we pour our energies and affections into seeing that vision become a reality, assuming that once we finally “arrive,” things will be better, easier, and finally and ultimately fulfilling. This is, functionally, idolatry. It is a creation of a false heaven, not simply false in its falling short of the real paradise but false in its inclusion of talent, acquired skills, and grit to reach.

Don’t settle for the false heaven of a “successful ministry.” Because real success is faithfulness. Big church or small church, growing church or declining church, well-known church or obscure church—all churches are epic successes full of the eternal, invincible quality of the kingdom of God when they treasure Jesus’s gospel and follow him. Jesus did not give the keys of the kingdom with the ability to bind and loose on both sides of the veil only to those who reached a certain attendance benchmark. So do well, pursue excellence, and stay faithful. God will give you what you ought to have according to his wisdom and riches.

The reality is that, as Anderson is able to reveal from that fabled other side, there is no promised land until the Promised Land of the real heaven. We always think things will finally be . . . well, final when we get “there,” wherever “there” is for us. But there is no there. There’s only here. Because once you get there, there becomes here, and there’s a new there. On and on it will go until our discontentment with ourselves is shaped by the contentment found in Christ and our yearning for thisworldly “theres” is conquered by the vision of the everlasting “there.”

A vision of the everlasting riches of Christ is the antidote for pastoring for shameful gain.

The Pastor Set Free

Shameful gain is derived from what the pastor thinks he is owed. What he believes he’s earned. This is not the currency of the kingdom of heaven. Do you want what you deserve? That would be hell, then, pastor.

The freedom from shameful gain is found in the cross of Christ, the shame of which our Savior scorned, counting all the privileges of his deity but loss for the surpassing worth of the Father’s will in the purchase of the elect by his blood, freely given. So let’s talk about what we are owed. Jesus is the pastor who does his job; everybody else is the other guy.

There’s room to breathe in this reality. And room to obey with heads held high, straightened backs, soft hearts, and thick skins. It is for freedom we’ve been set free. When Paul gives the pastoral admonition to Timothy to “flee” sins and “pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness” (1 Tim. 6:11), he is picturing a continual running, as a fugitive. The jail bars are bent, the cell is open. Run, man! That’s the kind of eagerness Peter envisions in his command, a corollary to the willingness he’s previously mandated.

Where does this eagerness come from? It comes from the pure joy of sharing the gospel, and it comes from a heart set free. Eagerness comes from a real experience of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Everything else is just ministerial technology.

Every year I undergo a performance review at my church. There’s no particular reason why I ought to be nervous about these evaluations. Our church takes very good care of me and my family. I read the statistics and feel blessed. I get great feedback every week about my sermons. We have no wealthy people in our church and many are struggling in this terrible economy, but our people are generous and sacrificial, and so our offerings almost weekly exceed our budgeted need. We are months ahead of budget for the year. People are serving, reaching out, and showing enthusiasm about God’s mission. All indications are that we are doing well. And if you’re judging a pastor’s leadership on the church’s health, relatively speaking I ought to feel very secure. But there’s something about being evaluated, isn’t there? The spotlight shows everything, not just the bright stuff. What about what I haven’t done?

What do we do with this, pastors? Where do we get our sense of worth? It could all go away tomorrow, you know? (I say to my leadership, if you give me credit for the increase, you will give me blame for the decrease, so how about we just credit God?)

Pastor, will we seek justification in our reputations? In our church’s numbers and figures? In our retweets and links? In our podcast downloads? In a book deal or speaking engagement? In our own sense of a job well done? This is sand.

Or will we look up and out, away from ourselves, away from the fickle fellowship, away from Satan’s accusations and insinuations, up to the right hand of the Father, where our righteousness sits, firmly fixed eternal? There is your justification, pastor, perfect and big, bigger than you and better than you but bled and bought for you and birthed in you, yours irrevocably, sealed and guaranteed through both your successes and your failures, through the pats on your back or the knives in your back. There is your justification, there in Christ, and because in him there is no shadow of turning, you are utterly, totally, undeniably justified.

Brother, you are free.

______________________

[1] John Newton, “Travailling in Birth for Souls,” in The Works of the Rev. John Newton, vol. 2 (New Haven, CT: Nathan Whiting, 1826), 535.

[2] David Hansen, The Art of Pastoring: Ministry Without All the Answers (Downer’s Grove, IL: Intervarsity, 1994), 17.

[3] Brant Hansen, “More Excerpts from the 417 Rules of Awesomely Bold Leadership: Use Words and Spell Things with Them,” Letters from Kamp Krusty (blog) September 5, 2008, http://branthansen.typepad.com/letters_from_kamp_krusty/2008/09/the-417-rules-of-awesomely-bold-leadership-use-words-and-spell-things-with-them.html.

[4] Ajith Fernando, Jesus-Driven Ministry (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2002), 14.

[5] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1954), 29–30.

[6] Eugene Peterson, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1992), 74.

[7] Carl Trueman, “An Interesting Email,” Reformation21 (blog) April 27, 2011, http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2011/04/an-interesting-email.php.

[8] Justin Anderson, “Reflections on Seven Years of Church Planting,” Resurgence (blog) February 24, 2012, http://theresurgence.com/2012/02/24/reflections-on-seven-years-of-church-planting.

[9] Ibid.

2

THE HOLY PASTOR

Not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. (1 Pet. 5:3)

The evangelical world has not dedicated many ministry conferences to the subject of holiness. We might speculate as to why that is, but it is a noticeable absence in nearly every movement and tribe. The so-called “neo-Reformed” movement has not yet made the pursuit of holiness a dominant focal point; there is the (not unjustified) fear of plying moralism. Yet the instructions are plain:

Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God. (2 Cor. 7:1)

For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor. (1 Thess. 4:3–4)

Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. (1 Tim. 4:16)

Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. (Heb. 12:14)

It is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” (1 Pet. 1:16)

The last verse cited is both a command and a promise (thank God). Because of this, the pastor who is charged with being an example to his flock is promised that his Christlikeness will become more apparent the closer and longer he walks with Christ. Paul writes that by beholding the Lord, we are transformed from one degree of glory to another (2 Cor. 3:18). So let us look to and at Jesus as often as we are able.

The pastor who neglects personal holiness has forgotten who’s in charge. He believes he is an employee of his flock, so it is not holiness he is chiefly after but the appearance of success, of “having his act together.” When today’s pastors think of being an example to their flocks, they primarily think in terms of appearing well-off materially, having a happy family, and knowing the right biblical advice for the challenges of the day. The prosperity gospelists have a lot to say about the need for those in ministry to appear healthy and wealthy, but then again, they are probably damned, so it’s not wise to follow them.

You may say, “Plenty of pastors mind their religious p’s and q’s at the behest of their congregations,” but that is not what holiness is. In the same way, the pastor who pursues behavioral respectability out of a need to justify himself to God has not honored God at all, for our God is done accepting atoning sacrifices. Anyone can mind their religious p’s and q’s, either to impress a congregation or in an attempt to impress God, but holiness is not primarily or centrally about things to do, but rather things to be.

When we look at the fruit of the Spirit listed in Galatians 5:22–23, we notice that they consist of qualities, character traits. The Bible commands good behavior, but good behavior flows from good character (Matt. 7:17). Doing flows from being. Keeping this order straight is paramount if we want to understand the gospel well and deepen in our love for Jesus.

What is holiness, anyway? I remember leading a Bible study on the topic of Christian liberty when, after a few participants spoke of exercising their liberty to drink beer and smoke pipes, one nervous woman asked, “But what about holiness?”

Is that what holiness is? Not drinking beer or smoking tobacco?

Maybe.

Personal holiness may consist of lots of things relevant to different contexts and circumstances (1 Cor. 10:23–33), but among the nonnegotiables is the fulfilled desire to deny one’s sinful nature and to obey the commands of God found in Scripture. Christ is sinless and was perfectly obedient to the Father. Summarily speaking, then, the pursuit of holiness is the pursuit of Christlikeness. Holiness is Christlikeness.

We may look at Jesus’s ministry to find the shape of pastoral holiness. The very first thing the Son of God did in mission for the salvation of God’s people was become incarnate in the flesh and dwell among them (John 1:14).

Domineering and Dwelling

This is the pastoral posture we are exhorted to in 1 Peter 5:3: “not domineering.”

There are lots of ways pastors become domineering over those in their charge, but the first step is usually to remove oneself more and more from them. When the local church body stops being “the flock of God that is among you,” it becomes much easier to treat them as less than an assembly of human beings made in God’s image and deeply loved by him.

Every now and again I receive e-mails from young ministers seeking advice. Not wishing to undercut those in immediate authority over them, I usually ask, “What does your pastor say?” An astonishing number say they cannot get a meeting with their pastor. Again, these are not laypersons lost in the shuffle of a megachurch. In those situations, it might make sense that one could not procure a timely meeting with the senior pastor, but they ought to be able to schedule one with a pastor. No, these are either staff persons or young men training in ministry under the auspices of their church. And their pastor has no time for them.

It is possible they are exaggerating or flat-out lying. I might be more tempted to think so if this had not happened to me. While I was an intern for the student ministry of a midsize church (at that time attendance ranged anywhere from four hundred to six hundred), I became aware that the senior pastor did not much care for me. I was afraid I’d offended him, so I tried to get a meeting to ask how. I was put off for weeks about his availability, despite passing him in the hallway nearly every day. (This was nineteen-year-old timid and unassertive me; today’s me would have grabbed him by the elbow and said, “Dude. What’s going on?”) I know this nonsense happens.

This particular pastor began to isolate himself more and more from others, I learned later. His sense of superiority grew. Eventually he had an affair and was fired.

The pastor of another church I attended for a long time was fired too. When the elders were asked if any of his friends had been able to speak truth into his life, the elders essentially replied, “He didn’t really ‘do’ friendship.” This was the fellow, legend had it, who wanted a private parking garage just for him, so he could move from his car to his office at the church building without having to interact with anybody.

Pastors, personal holiness begins in the quietude of your study or office or bedside. Holiness begins in your meditation on the written word and supplication to the risen Word. But it is made an example outside the office door.

Don’t hide behind your particular giftedness. Don’t use your “kingly” gift to justify outsourcing the “priestly” work required of you. The more isolated you remain, the more temptation for domineering over your church grows.

Jesus often withdrew to lonely places to pray (Luke 5:16). This is how he refreshed and recharged. In Mark 1:35–38, we find this interesting exchange:

And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed. And Simon and those who were with him searched for him, and they found him and said to him, “Everyone is looking for you.” And he said to them, “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.”

Jesus draw away to commune with the Father. The crowds were growing, and there is ample evidence that in addition to the normal pastoral fatigue Jesus suffered from such energetic ministry, he also experienced a draining of sorts in the demonstration of his power (Mark 5:30). Jesus’s Mondays were worse than yours! He had plenty of reason to check out and start a publishing ministry away from the demands of personal soul care. He could have gone back to carpentering, a rather solitary pursuit. Instead, he made his solitude intentional to better maximize his reason for ministry: “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.”

Pastors, come out of your office. Or at the very least, let others in.

It is harder to treat people like numbers on a ledger, faces in a crowd, and problems to be circumnavigated if we actually spend time with them in community. The command is to be an example to your church, not a figurehead or ideal.

Five Signs You’ve Moved from Shepherding to Domineering

The shift can be imperceptible. Nobody drifts into holiness, but we sure drift into unholiness. It is the default setting of our flesh. And so the pastor is autoset to self-protect, self-justify, and self-exalt. How can we know this shift is taking place?

1. You Insulate Yourself from Criticism and/or Interpret Any Criticism as Attacks or Insubordination

Of course there is such a thing as malicious attacks, divisiveness, and nitpicking busybodies. But too many leaders treat all criticism as on par with those sins in an attempt to deflect or retaliate against any challenge to their sense of authority or rightness. It gets really bad when affected leaders treat any question, no matter how innocently or sincerely asked, as an affront to their authority, or when leaders cultivate a system that prevents questions, criticisms, or challenges from even reaching their eyes or ears. The minute leaders start insulating themselves from valid criticism is the minute they begin exalting themselves. And exaltation of anyone but Christ is death. Self-reflection, accountability, and openness to sharpening/correction are musts for healthy biblical leadership. Like Luke, let us find it noble when our congregants “check our work” for biblical fidelity (Acts 17:11).

Pastor, make sure you have honest friends around you, not sycophants. Stay in the company of truth-tellers and do not punish people for sharing with you inconvenient truths. “Faithful are the wounds of a friend,” but “profuse are the kisses of an enemy” (Prov. 27:6).

2. You Have a Paranoia about Who Is and Who Isn’t in Line

If a leader is constantly worried about who’s on his side and who’s not, who’s saying or thinking what about him behind his back, who can be trusted and who can’t, who are allies and who are obstacles, he is entering a world of insecurity that is hostile to the confidence of Christ’s righteousness. We have not been given a spirit of fear (2 Tim. 1:7). And really, most times when a leader frets about who may not be unquestionably submitting to his leadership, it is a sign he’s already lost credibility and trust. (Very closely related to this red flag is the tendency some of pastors to think of their people largely as statistics, consumers, assets, or liabilities, rather than as, you know, people.)

3. You Have a Need to Micromanage or Hold Others Back from Leadership Opportunities or Other Responsibilities

It’s been said, “All of us are ministers; some of us just happen to be clergy.” Good leaders don’t just hand off responsibility but also authority. A leader who micromanages trusts only in himself. Therefore, a leader who won’t trust other gifted and authorized leaders doesn’t trust God. And leaders who don’t trust God cannot lead life-giving churches.

Pastor, you can’t and shouldn’t do it all yourself. It’s not healthy for you, and it’s not good leadership of your church to attempt shepherding it as a one-man show. Nobody wins in that situation, no matter the glory it may earn you and the comfort it may afford others. That’s all temporary.

Don’t give anyone responsibility without also giving them authority. Make a commitment to delegate ownership along with tasks. This also is a trust-in-God issue.

4. You Have an Impulse to Hoard Credit and Shift Blame

Leaders who claim all the credit and clout for successes and deny any responsibility for failures aren’t leaders but self-righteous glory-hogs. Self-righteous glory-hogs will eventually find themselves denying responsibility for the failure of the movement they spent a lot of time taking the credit for. Healthy leaders on mission understand that double honor comes with double responsibility. Remember that Paul considered all his merit badges as loss (Philippians 3).

5. Your Progression Has Regressed to Reaction

Ever heard pro-Calvinism preaching that sounded more like anti-Arminianism? Or vice versa? Good leaders know that emphasizing what they’re for more than what they’re against is vital for fostering forward momentum. It’s okay to criticize or debate in appropriate measures, but so many pastors and leaders make the common mistake, fed by their emotions and the easy provocation of soapboxing, to rail and rant. Such stirring can draw a crowd and stir that crowd’s emotions, which can create a false impression of a coalescing movement. But a collection of naysayers and bitter critics can’t sustain movement over time. The content of our message can absolutely include what the message is not but if the shape of our message is what it is not (or what we hate or who we’re against, etc.), we triumphantly and enthusiastically shoot ourselves in the foot over and over again. It will be a frustrating—and ultimately failing—endeavor, attempting to maintain forward missional momentum if you are known more for your denials than your affirmations.

Be What You Want to See

God forbids pastoral domineering but commands instead “being examples to the flock” (1 Pet. 5:3). Therefore, pastor, whatever you are, your church will eventually become. If you are a loudmouth boaster, your church will gradually become known for loudmouth boasting. If you are a graceless idiot, your church will gradually become known for graceless idiocy. The leadership will set the tone of the community’s discipleship culture, setting the example of the church body’s “personality.” So whatever you want to see, that is what you must be.

This is another reason why plurality of eldership is so important. The most important reason to have multiple elders leading a church is because that is the biblical model. But a plurality of eldership also provides unity in leadership on the nonnegotiable qualifications while working against uniformity in leadership by establishing a collaboration of wisdom, diversity of gifts, and collection of experiences.

Elders must be biblically qualified elders, so in several key areas they will be quite similar. But through having a plurality of elders, a church receives the example of unity in diversity, which is to be played out among the body as well. Every elder ought to “be able to teach” (1 Tim. 3:2), but not every elder must be an intellectual sort (if you follow my meaning). Every elder must be “self-controlled,” but some may be extroverts and some introverts, some may be analytical types and others creative. Every elder must be “respectable” and “a husband of one wife,” but some may be older and some may be younger. The more diversity one can manage on an elder board while still maintaining unity on the biblical qualifications, the fellowship’s doctrinal affirmations, and the church’s mission, the better.

A plurality of elders can be an example to the congregation of unity of mind and heart despite differences. Pastors are not appointed to a church primarily to lead in the instruction of skills and the dissemination of information; they are appointed to a church primarily to lead in Christ-following.

A different set of traits is needed for pastors than for the business world’s management culture. Paul writes, “But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children” (1 Thess. 2:7). This is not exactly the pastoral image that is most popular today. In an age when machismo and “catalytic, visionary” life-coaching dominate the evangelical leadership ranks, the ministerial model of a breastfeeding mom is alien. There is a patience, a parental affection, a tender giving of one’s self that Scripture envisions for the pastor’s role in leadership. In 2 Corinthians 12:15, Paul announces, “I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls.” That is the pastor’s heart.

If we want our churches to be of one mind, to be of one heart, to assassinate their idols and feast on Christ, to be wise and winsome with the world they have forsaken, to be gentle of spirit but full of confidence and boldness, and to be blossoming with the fruit of the Spirit, we must lead the way.

A pastor goes first. In groups where transparency is expected, a pastor goes first. In the humility of service, a pastor goes first. In the sharing of the gospel with the lost, a pastor goes first. In the discipleship of new believers, a pastor goes first. In the singing of spiritual songs with joy and exuberance, a pastor goes first. In living generously, a pastor goes first. In the following of Christ by the taking up of one’s cross, a pastor goes first. All I am saying is that one who talks the talk ought to walk the walk. Don’t lead your flock through domineering; lead by example.

The pastor ought to be able to say with integrity to others, as Paul says to Timothy, “Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 1:13). It is not arrogant to instruct others to follow you, so long as you are following Christ and showing them Christ and giving them Christ. “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ,” Paul says again (1 Cor. 11:1).

Younger pastors especially are as eager to find role models as they are eager to be role models. But we are not about trying to create fan clubs and clone armies. We are about seeding Christlikeness through the Spirit’s power. “Let no one despise you for your youth,” Paul instructs his young protégé (1 Tim. 4:12), but he provides the way to do this: “set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.” The way you prevent others from looking down on your youth is by growing up.

Growing up. That is what God wants for his church.

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 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. (Eph. 4:11–13)

He is making us fit for the habitation he has already promised us and given us in our mystical union with Christ. He is making us holy as he is holy.

The Shape of Pastoral Holiness

The biblical qualifications for pastor show us the shape of his holiness. We pull from two passages:

Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church? He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil. (1 Tim. 3:2–7)

This is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order, and appoint elders in every town as I directed you—if anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife, and his children are believers and not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination. For an overseer, as God’s steward, must be above reproach. He must not be arrogant or quick-tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy for gain, but hospitable, a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined. He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it. (Titus 1:5–9)

Like the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5, these passages outline the characteristics of holiness. Holiness is Christlikeness, and 1 Timothy 3:2–7 and Titus 1:5–9 are sketches of what Christlikeness looks like in the ministerial context.

Holiness means in part to be set apart, not just from certain things but also for special things. Pastoral holiness is about being set apart for God’s glory in building up the church into corporate Christlikeness by the example of personal Christlikeness. So, pastor, the pursuit of holiness takes this shape:

Blameless

A good pastor will, with sacrificial gladness, take the hits aimed at Christ and his church. He will be out in front, taking the bullets. He will risk his reputation to fraternize with sinners. But he will keep a close watch on his life and doctrine in order that no disqualifying charge of sin shall stick. A good pastor is a good repenter. He will keep his nose clean and his accounts current. A clean conscience and an honorable record are worthy pursuits, so that a pastor may remain above reproach.

Familial

A pastor is faithful to his wife. He is after her heart. He seeks her good always. He is her friend, her protector, her lover, her leader. Sexually, he is sold out to her. He has made a covenant with his eyes not to look at another woman with sexual desire (Job 31:1), and he has made a commitment with his heart to rejoice in her as in the newlywed days, delighted by her sexually and intoxicated in her love (Prov. 5:18–19). He is, as they say, a one-woman man. That woman is his wife, and he is faithful to her needs.

There was a time when I wanted my wife to read Calvin and Luther and care more about theology, when what she really needed was a husband who cared about her heart. Pastor, if you are interpreting this qualification (and the qualification about managing the household) as a call to paint a pretty picture with your family that belies the pain beneath, you are reading it wrong.

Marital faithfulness often means others-forsakenness. You are not one flesh with your church, but with your wife. Christ will sanctify his bride; you sanctify yours (Eph. 5:25–33). Wife and family first; church second. This means that pastors are first charged with pastoring their family. Indeed, one cannot even be allowed to pastor a church if he cannot or will not pastor his family.

Some people in my church may not understand when I refuse to meet with them on my day off. That day belongs to my wife. I will obviously make exceptions for emergencies and other unavoidable circumstances, but otherwise, I protect Fridays fiercely. What some may not understand is that I am actually pastoring them quite well by refusing to sacrifice time with my wife on those days.

In a similar way, my children need to know I will not trade being their present and affectionate father for being someone else’s spiritual manager. I don’t want my children to resent the church, and the quickest way to do that is to betray them for it. I want them to be raised in a household where dad is gaga over their mom and he is leading them all to Christ as the answer to all things, over and over and over again. I am commanded to have submissive children, so when I discipline them, I want to do it in ways that edify, not exasperate (Eph. 6:4). If by God’s grace, my children continue in the faith of Christ, I want them to believe because of me, not in spite of me. My nondomineering, sacrificial example is first for them, then for my church.

Self-controlled

Short-tempered, irrational-minded, ranting blowhards make terrible pastors. They might make listenable preachers (sometimes), but they make terrible pastors. And while preaching is pastoring, pastoring isn’t preaching. (Let the reader understand.) A church with an un-self-controlled, intemperate, un-sober-minded, ungentle man at its head will become a dysfunctional mess. Because these kinds of men are forbidden the pastorate, the communities they lead are in danger of becoming less a church and more a personality cult.

It is plain to see that this is the opposite of holiness, which exudes confident, bold, strong, courageous gentleness. A pastor will need to rebuke. He will need to condemn heresy and judge sin and upbraid the disobedient. He will need to discipline the unrepentant. He will need to issue polemic against false teaching, false gospels. But a holy pastor recognizes more and more the difference between these things and getting up on his soapbox, going off on a rant, pontificating on nonessential matters, blowing off steam, bellowing gossip, spilling the guts of others, beating his chest, engaging in judgmentalism, and in general becoming a loose-tongued jerk. Such a man is unfit for the pastorate. Likewise, the nitpicker, the argumentative man, the critical spirit, the sniping man, the whiner—he is unfit for the pastorate. A man routinely impatient with sinners is unfit for the pastorate.

The pastor is to practice self-control at all times, including (if not especially) in his solitude. Can he have a drink without needing a drink? Can he surf the web without feeling the tractor beam of porn? Can he prepare for his sermon or research a writing project online without surfing the web at all? Can he spend long, unhalting periods of time reading a book or listening to sermon audio? Does he need constant stimulation? Can he take a nap? Can he read a critical letter without becoming sinfully self-defensive and self-justifying? Can he hear of the successes of others and not covet or begrudge? Will he rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep? All of these are issues of self-control.

Materially Wise

We have discussed the sin of “shameful gain” already, but here in the explicit New Testament qualifications for elder is the stricture against being “lovers of money” or “greedy.” Many a pastor worries about the giving levels of his church. Let him first begin with the giving levels of his own resources. A pastor need not publicize how much he gives, especially since this is difficult to do without boasting, but he should nevertheless trust that his leadership in giving is setting an example.

One biblically acceptable way a pastor may go public with his giving is in his giving of his material resources, namely the use of his home and possessions. Pastors should be hospitable. This will include the opening of his home to guests for meals and for stays but extend to the generous giving and lending out of his books, supplies, equipment, appliances, clothing, and whatever else he has that somebody else might need or use.

Generosity and wise stewardship are directly connected to holiness. A man who is becoming Christlike is grasping more and more the utter fulfillment and satisfaction there is to be had in Christ. He is being filled more and more with the incomparable riches of Christ. Therefore, the stuff that stuff affords loses its luster. Money becomes a tool. Money is a tool. It’s a tool like rope. With money, you can pull a man out of the ditch or you can hang yourself. A holy man knows money is temporary, that it cannot buy everlasting life, so he is dismissive of its claims to deity and yet wary of its pull. A romantic involvement with money opens the door to all manner of evil.

But, brothers, this is not the same thing as being cheap. The father of the prodigal son was not cheap. The giver of the great banquet was not cheap. A cheap man is just as much an idolater of money as the wasteful man.

A holy man is a good spender. He holds money loosely precisely because his heart has been satisfied with the love of Christ, so he is free to buy his wife a nice dinner and his children a fun game, so long as he is motivated not by dinners and games but by love. This is the same love that helps a man spend on missionaries and the poor and the widow and the orphan. So long as our hope is not in the things of this world, we are free to use the things of this world to the glory of God. This is part of stewardship too, and comes with the wisdom holiness affords.

Instructive

What good is a knowledge of God’s Word that cannot be communicated or imparted in some way? Not much good, really, since we are commissioned to teach the nations all that Christ has commanded us. Many an elder candidate has gulped at the “able to teach” qualification, suspecting that it is limited to the pastor’s ability in the pulpit. We certainly need strong preachers, but there is no biblical command to be an eloquent preacher. Paul certainly did not claim to be one (1 Cor. 2:1). Moses was not one. No, the qualification means what it says: “able to teach.”

When Charles Spurgeon once was late for a preaching appointment, his grandfather, growing concerned for the impatient crowd, took the pulpit to begin the service. A bit of a way’s into his teaching, Charles finally entered the back door. His grandfather interrupted his own sermon to say, “Here comes my grandson. . . . He can preach the gospel better than I can, but you cannot preach a better gospel, can you, Charles?”[1]

The important thing is not whether you can call down thunder and set hearts aflame with your words, but whether you have personally felt the thunder and flame of the gospel’s word. Lots of people can preach the gospel better than you; but nobody can preach a better gospel than you if yours is the true one. We are all on level ground at the foot of the cross. The question is, can you talk about it plainly and personally? This is a necessity for every disciple of Christ, so there must be a gift of teaching required for pastors and elders that is distinct from what is required of laypeople, but this gift need not sound like George Whitefield or Tim Keller. It needs to sound like you, like you ably articulating the gospel, explaining a biblical text, and instructing disciples in holiness.

When you are at the pulpit, do you sound like you know what you’re talking about? Better still, when you’re talking to another person about the things of God, do you know what you’re talking about? Thabiti Anyabwile explains “able to teach” this way:

This ability is not limited to public teaching from the pulpit. Men with this ability might be gifted public teachers, or they might simply be gifted for one-on-one or small-group settings. Some men are not exceptional public speakers, but they are teaching and counseling the people around them from the Scriptures all the time. Such men should not be disqualified from the office of elder.[2]

The imperative is that a pastor is able to convey what the Bible teaches in a way that is instructive to others. Because the pastor’s role in this instruction goes beyond mere information-sharing and into the areas of doctrine-guarding and error-correcting, his role is weighted by the authority granted by the Spirit to biblically ordered churches. So while a pastor need not be a scholar, he ought to be a man of doctrine. “He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it” (Titus 1:9). A pastor not interested in theology is like a computer programmer not interested in technology.

A theology is only as strong as its ability to be communicated. That is why some of these more pernicious rebootings of old heresies will sputter out more quickly than their original versions—they are articulated in ways only the intelligentsia can make heads or tails of. Will your gospel play on the street? Or will your conversation partner need to know the verbiage? Will others need to be educated to understand you? Will they need to hunt for the gist? Or can you speak plainly? A pastor is supposed to be able to teach.

Mature

A church’s heart should be trusting of Christ like the heart of a child, but the church is not to be led by children. Pastors are supposed to be “upright, holy, and disciplined” (Titus 1:8) and are not allowed to be recently converted (1 Tim. 3:6). This does not mean they cannot be young. It only means they cannot have gotten saved yesterday. A faith worthy of example is a faith that is seasoned by time and trials. On the other hand, a mature Christian is not one who’s simply professed faith for a long time.

“Mature” is a big-picture label encompassing most of the other qualifications, similar to the adjective “holy.” What Paul is instructing in his list of qualifications, and what Peter is commanding in 1 Peter 5:1–11, is that elders exemplify the namesake “elder.” Grown-ups will lead the church. Not necessarily old people, but grown-ups. Grown-ups have grown up. They are quicker to think, slower to speak. They have accumulated wisdom through having the providence and the revelation of God correct their stupidity. They are less stupid than they used to be and are growing less stupid every day.

Grown-up pastors walk with a limp. They have had their feet knocked out from under them at some point and discovered that God is still good all the time. Grown-up pastors have developed healthy habits over time that cultivate godliness in their lives. Grown-up pastors are not impetuous. They are not drawn to this fad and that, or trying to impress you with experiential razzle-dazzle and tomfoolery.

Grown-up pastors know that the gospel is the only power to save, and that it is of first importance, so in their maturity they’ve grown weary of putting on airs or putting on shows or putting on millstones.

The Promise of Pastoral Holiness

The bar is set very, very high. “Set an example,” Peter says. This is a difficult thing, and the example we set for others ought to strike them as a difficult thing to attain, as well. And noble. “If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task” (1 Tim. 3:1). Nothing noble comes easily or instantly or cheaply.

Don’t despair. The command to holiness is also a promise. Take a look:

Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.

Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for

“All flesh is like grass

and all its glory like the flower of grass.

The grass withers,

and the flower falls,

but the word of the Lord remains forever.”

And this word is the good news that was preached to you. (1 Pet. 1:13–25)

“Set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you,” Peter writes. “You have been born again.” We do not pursue holiness as the means of salvation; we pursue holiness as the fruit of salvation. Pastor, you are to be holy. So obey. You will become holy. So obey.

To despair of our unholiness is a great sign of holiness in the making. It means we are coming to the end of ourselves. We are decreasing, and he is increasing. When we see that the call to holiness is to an unattainable standard, we remember “the good news that was preached to us,” that while we were yet unholy, Christ died for us, and that his righteousness is now counted as our righteousness, as he has traded our filthy rags for the covering of himself. Holiness is Christlikeness, and we who are justified by Christ will be sanctified in Christ and glorified with Christ. Indeed, pastor, while you are currently here, you are also there, having been seated with him in the heavenly places (Eph. 2:6). If we suffer, we suffer to be made like Christ. If we bear persecution, we do so to be like Christ. If we are tired, we are tired to be more like Christ. If we are insulted and condemned, we are being made like Christ. If we die, we die in Christ. If we live, we live to Christ. Make no mistake: he has declared us holy in Christ and he will make us so. He will complete the work he has begun in us (Phil. 1:6).

______________________

[1] Lewis Drummond, Spurgeon: Prince of Preachers (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 1992), 90.

[2] Thabiti M. Anyabwile, Finding Faithful Elders and Deacons (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 78.

3

THE HUMBLE PASTOR

Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.’ Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you. (1 Pet. 5:5–6)

Pride is the original sin, the one in which all other sins take rotten root and fester. No one is immune to this sin; we are all infected from conception. But there is an often overlooked danger in the ministry that connects a pastor’s pride to the gnostic transgression in the original sin. If you recall, a part of the serpent’s three-pronged temptation of Eve in the garden was this tantalizing morsel:

But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. (Gen. 3:4–6)

The fruit appealed to the eyes and the appetite, but it also promised a secret knowledge, a pride in the possession of godlike intellect. This is what I mean by “gnostic transgression.” This is a danger for every sinner, but for those of us who spend a lot of time wrapped up in our intellects and imagination, poring over the Scriptures and commentaries and theological volumes, contemplating the inner struggles and outward confessions of the people in our charge, it is a subtle but satanic draw to begin thinking, “I have possessed the knowledge of God.”

Pride is a poison most effective in pastors, and there is no guarantee that a congregation committed to forcibly humbling its leader won’t make the effects more pronounced. I am just as likely to become puffed up in pride in response to criticism as to praise, and so are you. Our little defense lawyer pops up onto our shoulder, reading off his litany of justifications of our attitude or behavior. When we are indignant about being challenged, we reveal directly who our god is. John Stott writes:

Pride is without doubt the chief occupational hazard of the preacher. It has ruined many, and deprived their ministry of power. . . . In some it is blatantly obvious. They are exhibitionists by temperament and use the pulpit as a stage on which they show off. . . . Other preachers are not like Nebuchadnezzars, however, for their pride does not take the form of blatant boastfulness. It is more subtle, more insidious, and even more perverse. For it is possible to adopt an outward demeanor of great meekness, while inside our appetite for applause is insatiable. At the very moment when in the pulpit we are extolling the glories of Christ, we can in reality be seeking our own glory, and when we are exhorting the congregation to praise God, and are even ostensibly leading them in praise, we can be secretly hoping that they will spare a bit of praise for us. We need to cry out with Baxter, “O what a constant companion, what a tyrannical commander, what a sly, subtle and insinuating enemy is this sin of pride!”[1]

Quoting Isaiah, Peter puts us in our place in the beginning of his letter: “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls” (1 Pet. 1:24). One of the biblical qualifications for the pastorate is that a man not be arrogant. Surely remembering that we are dust can help with that.

A Word to the Young Minister

When I was nineteen, I got married and left my home and ventured out into the adult world to establish my own identity. I began with all sorts of good things given to me by the church tradition I was raised in. I was raised to love and trust Jesus, to thereby believe in his gospel, and to affirm the basic essentials of Christian orthodoxy. But I’d also inherited my tradition’s perspective on, shall we say, less essential theological matters. For instance, eschatologically speaking, I was a premillennialist, a dispensational pretribulationist to be specific. Soteriologically speaking, I held to a fuzzy kind of Arminianism, what we might more rightly and more generally call “free will theology.”

I did not question these viewpoints, nor did I defend them. They were simply my default theological positions. As I became more exposed to alternative ways of thinking on these matters, I was forced to study the relevant biblical texts and actually make up my own mind for once. I was young and restless and eager for knowing more of God and his written word. I also very much wanted to be right. (We all do.) Eventually, I traded in my pretribulational dispensational premillennialism for a posttribulational historic premillennialism, which was later traded in for a posttribulational amillennialism. And I was introduced to Reformed soteriology (often called “the doctrines of grace,” or “TULIP,” or more commonly, “the five points of Calvinism”). I became a Calvinist.

These new ideas and their biblical resonance seemed beautiful and appealing to me. But there was a seductive appeal to their appearing more right, and therein lay a great danger. The forbidden fruit of pride promises a self-exalting wisdom, an obsessive possession of theological truth that begins to look like Gollum with his “birthday present,” or like the apes in 2001: A Space Odyssey going, well, ape at the introduction of the mysterious monolith. What promises satisfaction, revelation, or intellectual evolution then only brings dysfunction, monomania, and death. In rejecting pretribulationism and Arminianism, I very often embraced being a jerk.

In his invaluable booklet A Little Exercise for Young Theologians, Helmut Thielicke warns:

It is possible—and laymen have a very exact perception in regard to this—that theology makes the young theologian vain and so kindles in him something like Gnostic pride. The chief reason for this is that in us men truth and love are seldom combined.

It is also possible to say precisely why. Truth seduces us very easily into a kind of joy of possession: I have comprehended this and that, learned it, understood it. Knowledge is power. I am therefore more than the other man who does not know this and that. I have greater possibilities and also greater temptations. Anyone who deals with truth—as we theologians certainly do—succumbs all too easily to the psychology of the possessor. But love is the opposite of the will to possess. It is self-giving. It boasteth not itself, but humbleth itself.[2]

This is a good word for every person and every pastor, not just for the young ones, but I suppose there is a zeal intrinsic to young men on the verge of independent discovery and establishing their theological way that makes it extra pertinent for them to get this straight. It was the older ones who first gave up the inclination to stone the adulteress, after all (John 8:9).

Peter continues in his admonition to the elders, addressing the young: “Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders” (1 Pet. 5:5). He’s not just speaking to young elders, but to all young people, who are just as anxious today as they were two thousand years ago about the way the old folks are running the church. As equally prevalent to pastors isolating themselves and domineering over those in their charge are young men with authority issues. A young pastor with authority issues needs to be broken like a wild stallion.

Young men, be teachable. You do not know everything. And your theology and your position are never licenses for authoritarianism. If you don’t want others to look down on your youth, don’t look down on their age.

At conferences and other speaking engagements I often meet young men in the ministry who say things like, “I’m in a church where the gospel isn’t important.” They are looking for advice. “How do I,” they want to know, “as an assistant or intern, influence my pastor or elder board toward more faithful gospel-centrality?” The first steps are these: be submissive, be humble, be subject to your elders, and listen more than you talk. Your pastor may not be as gospel-centered as you’d like, but if he is a Christian who’s been pastoring for a while, he still possesses a wisdom that will benefit you greatly.

Young men, wield your influence peaceably, respectfully, and patiently. You have not been put in your position to establish vision or direct the pastor’s preaching focus. Do not seed division or discord. Shut up and listen a lot more, or get out.

Peter does not say, “Be subject to your elders, unless you disagree with their direction.” This is assuming they are not in sin. Do not submit to sin or heresy. But if it is a variance in philosophy, viewpoint on nonessential matters, degree of gospel-centeredness, or the like, remember that it’s not submission if you agree—it’s agreement. It’s submission if you disagree. If you cannot peacefully and respectfully win your superior to your side, and if you cannot in good conscience submit, the answer is not to stay and grumble (inwardly or outwardly), but to find another local church mission to join and serve.

It is a noble thing to be a missionary for the gospel to a local church that has relegated the good news to the periphery of teaching and mission, but it is a very difficult thing and not for the faint of heart, the quick of tongue, or the antsy of pants.

Clothed in Humility

The apostle continues in 1 Peter 5:5, writing, “Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.’ ” Now he’s talking to everybody, young and old, clergy and laity. The posture of the individuals who make up a church toward one another is to be one of humility. There is a requisite stooping, joyful servanthood, and mutual submission required of us all to us all, so that a pastor who demands one-way submission to his own unbowing authority is immediately in violation of Peter’s command not to be domineering. My church has articulated this relationship in our membership covenant as: “We submit joyfully to our leaders as our leaders serve us humbly.” I recall one person initially objecting to the phrase, “We submit joyfully to our leaders,” making no mention of the stricture on leaders serving humbly. That part was okay, I guess! But it is written this way on purpose; we are bound together in one Lord, one faith, one baptism (Eph. 4:5). We submit to our leaders as our leaders serve us humbly. A failure on either part creates discord. It is not just member submission we are after but leader humility. And neither is more or less important than the other. In fact, each part of this affirmation is married to the other. That is the function of that little word “as.”

This is what our covenant is—a commitment of mutual trust. Leaders “go first,” so if any leader will not serve humbly, he forfeits the expectation that a church member under his authority will submit joyfully. That member may submit under fear or coercion, but that is not the submission we’re after. Leaders must lead, not push. Leaders must serve, not domineer.

Likewise, church members commit to submitting joyfully, realizing that not doing so creates temptation for leaders to cave into the flesh in their work, abandoning humility and servanthood to adopt something else they think may “get the job done.” A leader’s sin is not a member’s fault—and vice versa—but a covenant community ought to be oriented around bearing with one another, leading each other not into temptation, forgiving each other as God has forgiven us, and outdoing one another in showing honor.

In this covenant agreement, which is larger than just this one phrase, we agree to treat each other unsuspiciously and unselfconsciously, working together in the love of Christ and in faith that the Spirit is building us together into a suitable habitation for his eternal presence. We show trust in God when we trust each other to submit joyfully and lead humbly.

“We submit joyfully to our leaders as our leaders serve us humbly.” There is the dance of mutual love in a gospel-centered—and therefore gospel-ordered—community. What have we done when we approach and receive each other this way? We have, as Peter says, clothed ourselves in humility. We sinful, broken Christians in messy community together are the body of Christ. So to put on humility is to put on Christ in union with him (Rom. 13:14; Gal. 3:27; Col. 3:3).

The proud pastor is an enemy of God. He is inviting God’s active opposition and wrath. But the humble pastor is God’s friend, a beloved child of God, precisely because he has covered himself in the righteousness of Christ, with whom the Father is well pleased.

How do we clothe ourselves in humility, then? There are some things we can do to pursue humility, and there are some things that simply happen to us that make us humble. If we would have the humility of Christ, we would seek to have the mind of the humble Christ in every circumstance (Phil. 2:4–6). The Lord says this mind is already ours in Christ.

Humbled in Suffering

To become humble is to have been humbled. Some choose humility; some have humility thrust upon them. I am mainly talking about physical suffering and other circumstantial afflictions. For believers in Christ, affliction often has a softening effect on the heart. This is why cancer patients are posting uplifting thoughts in my Facebook newsfeed and teenagers are complaining about their phones not working right. Suffering is when life gets real. Our interests are narrowed. Our attention is grabbed. What really matters?

The providence of God brings suffering to us not as punishment for sins but as a reminder of the sinful brokenness of the world and as a chastening instrument toward Christlikeness. Suffering exists, primarily, to make Christians like their Christ.

It is sometimes easy to pick out the pastor who has never gone through any serious affliction. He has a swagger. It is not always the case that the proud pastor has never suffered anything, but we are then left to wonder what his suffering taught him and if he is even a Christian at all.

Then there are the pastors with martyr complexes. This is not the same thing as being humbled by suffering. There’s being seasoned, and then there’s being a sissy. One normalizing effect suffering had on Paul is that it made him content in everything, including times of peace. He did not long for suffering; he longed for Christ. If having Christ meant suffering—and it did—so much the better.

Every normal human being has an aversion to suffering, which is why most every pastor has an attraction to comfortable, easy ministry. But every Christian must love Jesus more than comfort. My first mentor-pastor, Mike Ayers, once said, “To be a follower of Jesus, you must renounce comfort as the ultimate value of your life.” Pastoral ministry is cross-taking, and it is doing it out in front, for all to see, as much as in the privacy of the study or prayer closet, when the pastor is wrestling with the weight of the church.

“The daily anxiety of all the churches” (2 Cor. 11:28) is a cellar of affliction where God keeps his choicest wine, to borrow a line from Samuel Rutherford.[3] A pastor who’s been humbled by the toils and trials of life is best suited for this anxiety. His palate has developed. He has an acquired taste for the glory of Christ in hardship; he is able to discern the notes of joy in the wine of Christ’s blood.

I cannot tell you how to do this. As I said, brokenness, like the gospel wakefulness that may erupt from it, is something that happens to you. And yet, Peter says there is a humility to be chosen.

Humbled in Messy Ministry

For a pastor to become a man who seeks humility, he will need to stay on the front lines of messy ministry. He will continually seek to get in over his head with people in need.

Our churches are occupied by sinners of all kinds. If the gospel is regularly being preached in your church, you will eventually become a magnet for the messiest kinds of sinners. The kind of people Jesus attracted. The kind of people church people often fear messing up their tidy church. Those are the kinds of people pastors must stay tuned in to and in front of. We are back to talking about isolation and insulation. Many pastors mistake difficult people as someone else’s responsibility. And really, they are the entire church’s responsibility, but too many pastors hide behind that reality to create a zone of comfort from themselves. Zones of comfort are not where humility grows.

Pastor, how will you prove that Christ’s love has captured you if you’re storing it away in a place only “qualified persons” can access? You are the one who will set the tone in your community for how sinners are received. This will take a profound humility constantly reapplied. Paul writes:

They gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us. Accordingly, we urged Titus that as he had started, so he should complete among you this act of grace. But as you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in all earnestness, and in our love for you—see that you excel in this act of grace also.

I say this not as a command, but to prove by the earnestness of others that your love also is genuine. (2 Cor. 8:5–8)

Film director Mike Nichols talks in a recent interview about fleeing Nazi Germany as a child. German Jews were not allowed to leave the country, but Nichols’s family had Russian papers, so they exploited the loophole. His father, a doctor, had gone ahead and begun a medical practice in New York City. When the rest of the family arrived, Nichols says he was struck by the Jewish businesses proliferating. He was surprised to see a sign for a delicatessen, in Hebrew. “Is that allowed?” he remembers asking his dad.[4]

When people come into our churches with no church background or, like so many, with a painful church background, they are typically on guard. Their teeth are clenched, their eyes are scanning, their breath is held—perhaps not physically, but in their psyche. They are taking much more in than just the musical style and the sermon’s listenability. Those things matter a lot, but they aren’t usually dealbreakers.

I remind myself and my church often that a message of grace may attract people, but a culture of grace will keep them. They want to know—we want to know, the Lord wants to know—that what is being preached has sunk down through the hardness of our skulls and entered the bloodstream. That we are not puffed up with our spiritual knowledge but humbled by it and animated by it. Have we taken the message of the grace of God in Jesus Christ and taken it to heart? Have we, all of us, clothed ourselves in humility?

And when others catch glimpses, the surprise is telling. Is it too good to be true? As more people testify to the kindness of God in their lives and drop the pretense of righteousness by moral fortitude, as sins are confessed and covered with love, as pastors and laymen alike humble themselves and serve and exemplify with their hands and eyes what they preach with their mouths, the aroma of freedom wafts through the place. Messy people own their stuff. “Is that allowed?” timid souls venture. And it is. Sinners repent into the safety of the gospel. “They can do that here?” People have the freedom to question leaders, disagree with the pastor, and hold opposing views with each other, without distrust or rancor. “They can do that here?”

A culture of grace oxygenates the air. Watch people stand a little taller, breathe more deeply, feel free to be more themselves. My friend Ray Ortlund says, “I’ve never met a man who felt too forgiven, too free.” Grace is that kind of welcome (Luke 15:20). It’s the run-to-the-prodigal-while-he’s-still-far-off kind of welcome. It’s “the inhabitants of highways and hedges are welcome” kind of welcome (Luke 14:23). It’s the “come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” kind of welcome (Matt. 11:28). It’s the space to be broken kind of welcome. It’s the “we love you as you are, but we love you too much to want you to stay there” kind of welcome.

This kind of culture of grace scares people who believe God has delegated his sovereignty to them. We turn righteous judgment into judgmentalism very easily. But if we want to honor the gospel of Jesus, in whom there is no condemnation and through whom we are being built together, we will welcome each other and grow more and more into a place of welcome for the Spirit of the living God. In the kingdom to which the church is meant to bear witness, people flourish and become at the same time more like their real selves and more like Jesus Christ. Paul in 2 Corinthians 8 is urging generosity in giving; let this be but one application of the generosity of grace.

I have been in many a counseling session or discipleship meeting where, upon hearing the deep pain and conflict in the lives of others, so fresh in their hearts and fresh on my ears, I simply share in their feeling of being completely overwhelmed. Advice is cheap. My mind races for some wisdom. What can I do? I am powerless to help. I throw my hands up in despair of my own pastoral ingenuity. I take them (and myself) to Jesus. He will help us. He bids the harassed and helpless come to him. We will have to stoop, but if we will, he will lift us up.

Humbled in Prayer

Prayer is essentially acknowledged helplessness. We ask God for his glory, for his help, for his will, and for his favor because we know we are powerless to “make things happen” ourselves. (Consequently, when we are not praying much, it is typically because we think, even in our difficulty, that we can handle it.) To “clothe yourself with humility” (1 Pet. 5:5) is to put on the righteousness of Christ (Eph. 6:14), because he humbled himself from heaven to earth, gave up the exploitation of his deity, and prayed his guts out.

If the sinless God-man often withdrew to lonely places to pray, what is our excuse? Prayer is the ultimate humility, because it presents the empty cup of ourselves to God for his fullness in Christ. “Your will, not mine,” prayer says. “Your glory, not mine,” prayer says. “Your power, not mine,” prayer says.

Certainly there is a way pastors turn prayer into performance, but it’s difficult to do this when we are all alone, so that is where we should do most of our praying. Not all of it, but most of it. I knew a pastor who often referred to himself in the third person—like Jimmy on that episode of Seinfeld—only he did not say his name but his title. He dropped something once in front of me, and blurted out in exasperation, “Oh, pastor!” This man was full of himself, and in times of stress, it spilled out. I suppose he could have really been a prayer warrior, but I tend to think a vibrant private prayer life could’ve released some of that hot air.

You may think your prayers are nothing to write home about. That’s fine. You are not writing home, but heaven. God is merciful. He accepts your lame prayers. What he wants is not your eloquence but your heart.

When we cease praying for ourselves, it is because we think we are the captains of our destinies. When we cease praying for our church, it is because we think we can manage it quite well. When we cease praying in our sermon preparation, it is because we think our words are the power of salvation to all who believe. Let it be far away from us that we would sin against the Lord by failing to pray for our people (1 Sam. 12:23).

The humble pastor removes himself from the pedestal where the church’s Savior belongs and intercedes for his people like a faithful priest to the High Priest. It has been said that one of the ecclesial practices changed by the Reformers was the standing between the congregation and the Lord’s flesh and blood at the Table of Communion. Instead, they stood behind the elements to serve them. They were not the mediators between God and their churches; Christ was. In a similar way, when we cease praying for our churches, we cease serving them and instead think ourselves powerful enough to manage quite well without the Holy Spirit’s illuminating and enabling power. Prayerlessness is arrogance.

Humbled in the Word

In 1 Peter 5:6, Peter reiterates, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you.”

We might ask how we couldn’t be humble under the mighty hand of God, but Peter is speaking about consciously placing ourselves under God’s authority as much as he is speaking about our reaction when we realize we’re already there. “There are no crown-wearers in heaven who were not cross-bearers here below.”[5] In suffering and frontline ministry, we find ourselves humbled. In prayer and in Scripture, we humble ourselves. The prophet Isaiah promises God’s attention to those who pay submissive attention:

But this is the one to whom I will look:

he who is humble and contrite in spirit

and trembles at my word. (Isa. 66:2)

The Bible always shoots us straight. We can count on that. We will say more about the relationship between the pastor and the Scriptures in chapter 6, but for now we will say that the legitimacy for pastoral ministry is grounded entirely in the revelation of Christ in the revelation of Scripture, inspired and illuminated by the Spirit. You can’t be a pastor without the Bible. You can be a life coach, a therapist, a counselor, and a negotiator without the Bible, but you cannot be a pastor. This has, of course, not stopped many clergy from trying, but they are not pastors. They are posers.

Some pastors act like they’re preaching the Bible, but they are really just preaching around it, or putting in just enough Bible to make the sermon respectable. They may treat the Bible like Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. Their purpose in using Bible verses is not so that the Bible will be preached, but so that their own points will be illustrated. And of course some people who call themselves pastors don’t use the Bible at all. We have quite a few of those traitors in New England.

In general, the reason some pastors do not preach the Bible is because they’ve never been personally captured by it. They might have been inspired by it or affected by it, but they’ve never been humbled by it. On the occasion of the thirty-first anniversary of his call to preach, John Piper remembers:

In essence it happened like this: I was 33 years old. I had two children and a third on the way. As I studied Romans 9 day after day, I began to see a God so majestic and so free and so absolutely sovereign that my analysis merged into worship and the Lord said, in effect, “I will not simply be analyzed, I will be adored. I will not simply be pondered, I will be proclaimed. My sovereignty is not simply to be scrutinized, it is to be heralded. It is not grist for the mill of controversy, it is gospel for sinners who know that their only hope is the sovereign triumph of God’s grace over their rebellious will.” This is when Bethlehem contacted me near the end of 1979. And I do not hesitate to say that because of Romans 9 I left teaching and became a pastor.[6]

The Bible will do that to you if you will put yourself under it. If you’ll go swimming in the Scriptures, respectful of its ability to drown you at any moment it pleases, you will be dripping in living water for life and ministry.

It is very difficult for a pastor who goes to the Bible constantly in a submissive, prayerful, and open posture to come away from it thinking his ideas are better. God’s Word shapes us, fills us, and completes us. There is humility to be had in the Word of God, but we have to plant ourselves in it.

Birthrights and Being Ourselves

The immediate referent in Peter’s word on humbling ourselves is suffering on mission (see 1 Peter 4, as well as 5:10). So Peter is saying, “When God’s mighty hand allows suffering, don’t bristle or push back. Don’t shake your fist.” Whatever God gives you in your ministry, accept as his wise allotment to you, not as unjust or unbecoming your awesomeness. Will you accept good from God and not trouble?

Humility is about love. We want to love God and our neighbors enough to suffer for them if need be, to be near them in peace and distress, to pray with and for them, to be grounded in the words of everlasting life for their joy and glory. When Peter tells us to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, he assumes we love God. He wants us to be willing to take a lowly place if that’s where God wants us. Do we love God and others enough to drop the pretense and just be ourselves?

Only the gospel simultaneously provides the humility and the confidence the pastor needs to be his real self. The pastorate is no place for image-managing, for worrying about our own PR. In any event, if everybody likes you, something’s wrong, and if everybody hates you, something’s wrong. Hidden with Christ in God, you’ve got nothing left to hide. Further, we are totally okay with letting Jesus define our identities and the shape of our ministries. We give him the honor he’s due by humbling ourselves under his mighty hand.

I am struck by the way Jude begins his epistle: “Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James” (Jude 1). There is a lot wrapped up in this simple greeting. Jude’s “hello” belies a deep theology and a deep humility.

Jude is the brother of James, by which he means the James, James the apostle, the brother of Jesus. So this Jude is the Jude who is the brother of Jesus. But he doesn’t identify himself as such. He calls himself James’s brother but Jesus’s “servant.”

Jesus’s kid brother doesn’t say, “I’m Jesus’s kid brother,” but “I’m Jesus’s servant.”

If you’re familiar with the biblical narrative even cursorily, you are probably familiar with the younger brother/older brother dynamic that recurs throughout. According to Jewish custom, the oldest son is the honor-bearer of the family. His legacy has primacy. We see this in the law of levirate marriage, which says that if a man dies and leaves a widow, the next younger brother is obliged to marry the woman and thereby continue the lineage of his older brother. In fact, their firstborn would be considered the dead brother’s firstborn. (This may be one reason why what’s-his-name hands the kinsman redeemer dibs over to Boaz in the book of Ruth.) The older brother is the one owed the birthright.

But if you know your biblical narrative even cursorily, you also know that the honored older brothers throughout Scripture are blithering idiots. Family after family shows us the younger brothers outwitting, outlasting, and outshining their older brothers. The failure of the older brother to live up to his honorable position begins with Cain, proceeds through Esau to Joseph’s brothers and to David’s brothers, and culminates in the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son.

What we see is a gospel template gleaming beneath the religious/custom template in each story. God routinely chooses the B-stringers, the scrubs, the alternates, the lowly, the foolish, the weak, and the unassuming to shame the all-stars (1 Cor. 1:27–28). Indeed, of Jacob and Esau, we read, “The older shall serve the younger” (Gen. 25:23). Older brother after older brother offers failure after failure.

Then we get to the prodigal son story, and the older brother is put in place not just to show us again the shameful self-righteousness of those whose own honor seeks the dishonor of others but to show us the desperate need for—finally, for once in history—a good older brother. In the accompanying parables—lost coin and lost sheep—somebody goes looking for the item lost. In the lost son parable, nobody goes, certainly not the older brother who is busy in his room writing that hit song, “Alone in My Principles.” So who will go? Who will seek out the lost and rescue them?

The good older brother. The only good older brother. Jesus.

So Jude is perhaps looking at his older brother, the brother whose claims he apparently disbelieved until his brother returned from the grave with a glorified body, and saying to himself, “Finally, an older brother worthy of the name!” Jude will not refer to himself in the third person as pastor. He is humbled that his big brother is the Only Begotten Son of God (John 3:16), the head and the beginning and the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent (Col. 1:18). Jesus’s sheaf is elevated and his younger siblings’ sheaves are bowing to it, and the sun, moon, and stars encircle him in worship. Jude says of the One who is not ashamed to call us his brothers (Heb. 2:11), “I am not worthy to call my brother my brother. I am his servant!”

And we are his brothers if we will submissively acknowledge his birthright. This is humility. This is love. This is growing up into the measure of the fullness of Christ. This is being a grown-up pastor.

The forty-one-year-old teacher who left his wife and children in 2012 to be with a former student is “pathologically immature.” This, according to therapist Bethenny Marshall, who has interviewed the awkward couple. Marshall elaborates: “This is what we see with teachers who have inappropriate relationships with their students. They imagine themselves to be age mates or peers with the students.”[7]

“Pathologically immature.” There is a real application in this for ministry. We could go one way and discuss the immature compromises made by pastors who cheat on their wives—because what we often see in the details of such events is a disturbing amount of immature “ickiness” from grown men acting like hormonal teenage boys. Or we could go another way and discuss the trend among aging pastors to keep up with the wardrobe, hairstyles, and speech of the younger generations, a phenomenon that gets more and more pathetic with time. But the reality is that while pathological immaturity plays into both of those scenarios, it plays into the temptations of all pastors.

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 9:22, “To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some.” This is what we suppose we’re doing—contextualizing, some call it. It’s being a good missionary, we justify. But the line between what Paul is actually talking about in that passage and the sin of “fear of man” is really not so thin.

It takes guts for pastors to just be themselves. (It takes guts for anyone to do this, really, but let me start with pastors, since judgment begins with the house of God and that judgment begins with leaders.) We crave validation so much that we will put on any persona we think will work, that we think will help us appear and feel successful, popular, dynamic, attractive, or acceptable. We enter into “inappropriate relationships” with our congregations because we imagine we are ultimately beholden to them and dependent upon them.

But the gospel of God’s grace in Jesus Christ frees us from hypocrisy. It frees us to boldly own our inadequacies, our flaws, our failures, and especially our sins.

The pathologically immature pastor imagines himself really getting down to the level of the people he’s trying to reach; he thinks he’s really connecting with them. He thinks he’s being authentic, transparent, relevant. But that sort of self-consciousness is none of those things. Remember what Lewis said about humility? “Humility isn’t thinking less of yourself; it’s thinking of yourself less.” And so in a curious irony, when we are trying so hard to “keep it real,” we usually end up mired in pride, tempted to project an image or put on a persona that really isn’t us. (Because we fear the real us would not be as missionally effective.)

What we need is real humility. Real humility consists partly in the boldness to be yourself. Being reconciled to the Father through faith in Christ, having thus been united with Christ, becoming mystically indistinguishable from him, made as secure as he is through this mystical union, and having this justification from God himself frees us to be our real selves. Having put on Christ, I have nothing left to prove.

When I think of all the fig leaves I put on in attempts to conceal my sin, my weaknesses, my insecurities, my inabilities, and my utter ineptitude, I realize that while the fig leaves of timidity and neuroses might make me look humble, they are really self-centered self-protections. And in that sense, I am just as self-conscious as the pastor projecting himself as the Type-A, get-your-answers-here, pastorpreneurial guru. Putting on humility—which is putting on Christ—however, frees me from both self-pity and projection. Breathing a sigh of gospel relief, I can be myself, whatever that means for whoever’s watching. If God is for us, who can be against us, anyway? They can get glad in the same pants they got mad in.

Being all things to all people, if this is our ministerial goal, ought to begin with being all ourselves to God who approves us, qualifies us, commissions us, and loves us. We have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer we who live but Christ who lives in us, and the life we live in the flesh, we live by faith in the Son of God who loves us and gave himself for us (Gal. 2:20). As we mature in the faith, then, he increases and we decrease. And we can put the stupid fig leaves away. They aren’t helping. The gospel is fuel for courageous unself-consciousness.

And this is what people really need from us! The freedom to drop the pretense, to be radically un-self-conscious—not un-self-reflective, by any means, but un-self-concerned—and so liberated by God’s approval of us in Christ Jesus that we’re okay with owning our non-okayness.

Let us take heart. All this “humble yourself” talk in the Scriptures tells us that God is accepting prideful idiots.

______________________

[1] John Stott, Between Two Worlds: The Challenge of Preaching Today (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1982), 320–21.

[2] Helmut Thielicke, A Little Exercise for Young Theologians (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), 16–17.

[3] The Westminster Collection of Christian Quotations, ed. Martin H. Manser (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 382.

[4] “Mike Nichols Reflects on His Life,” Entertainment Weekly (March 9, 2012), www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20578407,00.html.

[5] Charles Spurgeon, Gleanings among the Sheaves (New York: Sheldon and Company, 1869), 57.

[6] John Piper, “The Absolute Sovereignty of God: What Is Romans 9 About?” (sermon, Bethlehem Baptist Church, November 3, 2002), http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/sermons/the-absolute-sovereignty-of-god-what-is-romans-nine-about.

[7] Cecilia Vega and Kevin Dolak, “California High School Teacher-Student Romance: Therapist Calls Man ‘Sexual Predator,’” ABC News online (March 5, 2012), http://abcnews.go.com/US/california-high-school-teacher-student-romance-therapist-calls/story?id=15847356.

4

THE CONFIDENT PASTOR

. . . casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. (1 Pet. 5:7)

One thing pastoral ministry is very good for is stripping a man of all his confidence. It is a baptistry of mineral spirits for the self-varnished. It is no wonder so many try to pastor without actually pastoring. But when we seek the position without its problems, we stifle our sanctification.

Many times ministry feels like running on a treadmill. There are places I want to go, mountains I want to climb, objectives I want to reach. And the church says she wants to accomplish those things too.

A couple calls for counseling. It’s an emergency. They are on the brink of calling it quits. He is too silent; she is too much of a nag. They’ve put years into their dysfunction, and it now feels helpless. We meet, and I listen and mediate. I give some insight, some instructions, and a good dose of gospel. Week after week, they make slow and steady progress. Something comes up that prevents us meeting one week, then perhaps a second. By week three, they are on the verge of divorce again. The stone has rolled back to the bottom of the hill; the waters have overflowed their banks yet again.

Person after person will not seek refuge in the gospel. It seems too strange. They may flee their present idols, but only for new ones. Every person is on his own roller coaster of personal tragedies and fleeting moments of okay-ness. There is a mission to be on, but every week is spent in the triage tent. One year passes, two years pass, three years, and we are no closer to movement than when we started. We’re still servicing the vehicle.

Perhaps this is what pastoral ministry is supposed to look like? Maybe applying the gospel to those in the holes they keep falling into is the mission. Or part of it, anyway. Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23), so we should expect that every day feels like death and be shocked if and when we experience a day that doesn’t. But evangelicals have so effectively promoted the idol of success that it is rare to find a pastor who understands that starting over each day is ministry.

We certainly want to be growing and changing, we want to be on mission to proclaim the gospel, but this is not accomplished by throwing under the bus the very people the gospel is designed for. Who are these hypothetical people who need the gospel more than the people put right in front of us? Why do we expect these missional phantoms to be easier and more well-adjusted than the people we’ve already got? And if they were easy and well-adjusted, why would they need the gospel anyway?

“Shepherd the flock of God among you,” Peter said. He knows we crave the wish dream. He would not be surprised to see today’s missional emphasis on “centers of influence.” The byways and hedges are neglected for the more “important” places, from which gospel influence may perhaps trickle down. This is the same philosophy I remember from high school evangelistic strategy, where we were urged to take the gospel to the quarterback of the football team, the captain of the cheerleading squad, and the student body president. These were the “key kids.” The key kids need Jesus very much, of course. But we forgot then and we forget now that Jesus is for losers and for losers only.

This is good news for you, pastor.

I have a theory as to why Christianity seems to pick up only the C and D-list celebrities as converts and never the A-list. Those nearer the bottom of the barrel are more in touch with their utter need. They are more ready to admit they do not have what it takes. Those at the top are still drunk on money, fame, and praise. They are further from bottoming out. They are less ready to admit they are losers. And so if we would stay close to Jesus in our ministries, we would not begrudge him taking us through the dark valleys and the lions’ dens.

Where Does Our Help Come From?

Peter has been piling on the instructions. Shepherd the flock. Don’t be greedy. Don’t be domineering. Be an example. Be humble. Good pastors feel the weight of these imperatives. We want to know what we’re supposed to do. Peter is clear with us about the tasks and qualities required. But hearing what we must do does not lessen our anxiety. This the great deficiency of the law. God’s commands are perfect for what they’re designed to do: instruct us what to do, convict us that we can’t do it, and reveal to us the righteousness of the One who can. So the law cannot empower obedience to itself. It stands over us, accusing. Only the gospel empowers its own implications.

Every day of ministry is a struggle to do and be what Peter says I must do and be. Arturio Azurdia runs down the internal temptations:

To be sure, the minister of the Gospel is vulnerable to trials and temptations distinct to his calling: jealousy (“Why are his gifts more esteemed than mine?”); bitterness (“Why does the congregation criticize everything I do?”); fear (“Will they leave the church if I teach particular redemption?”); depression (“Will this church ever grow?”); grief (“Why have there been so few conversions?”); frustration (“Why does the board appear to distrust my motivations?”); doubt (“Why has God caused such suffering in the life of this family?”); anxiety (“How will we ever afford to send our children to college?”); sexual indiscretion (“Why does it seem that my wife is not as responsive to me as other women in the church?”); despondency (“Why doesn’t the congregation love Jesus with greater fervor?”); desperation (“Have I rightly discerned my call to ministry?”).[1]

Our flocks are frequently helpful but also frequently not. Our churches want their pastors to be just like one of them, except when difficulty hits, and then they want them to be Obi Wan Kenobi. They want their pastors to be totally accessible, on call 24/7, and thoroughly involved in the extracurriculars of congregational life, but they also want them to be the Energizer Bunny. They don’t want the pastor to spend too much time locked away in his study, but they want him to sermonize like Matt Chandler or Andy Stanley. They want their pastors to be transparent and honest and authentic, but they don’t want to be made uncomfortable by confession and pastoral brokenness. They want their pastors to be dispensers of abundant grace and mercy for sinners, except when it comes to those people. They demand a king and Saul will do.

This is no grounds to become our church’s accuser. Really, what their heart wants—and what our heart wants—is Jesus; they just expect to find him in you.

And find him in you they will, if you will keep pointing them to the real Jesus and away from yourself. Like the psalmist, we lift our eyes up to the mountains (Ps. 121:1). Where will our help come from? Well, some trust in chariots and some in horses (Ps. 20:7). Some trust in attendance figures and some in pats on the back. Some trust in book deals and some in speaking engagements. Some trust in tithing records and some in salaries. Some trust in dynamic sermons and some in excellent production values. Some trust in the favor of the husbands and some in the stolen glances from the wives.

But we will trust in the name of the Lord our God.

In some sense the “daily anxiety of all the churches” is good precisely because it keeps us dependent. Woe to the easy pastorate! Let’s remind ourselves that God does not grant trouble without granting strength, and he orders no cross without the promise of glory. He disciplines those he loves. He purposes suffering to make us like Jesus. Nobody is more trustworthy than our God who loves us and does not lie.

Therefore, Peter wraps up his instruction on humility with this one: “[Cast] all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you” (1 Pet. 5:7). When God is ordaining affliction for us, he is not saying, “Take that!” He’s saying, “Here, I’ll take that.” We may throw our troubles to God, because he alone is able to sustain us in them. Really, what this means is throwing ourselves to God. “This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promise gives me life,” the psalmist says (Ps. 119:50).

I have a love/hate relationship with Jesus’s disciples. I love ’em because they’re just like me. I hate ’em because they’re just like me. All along they’re wanting the Romans physically overthrown and Jesus on a literal throne in Jerusalem, and all along Jesus is consistently telling them the kingdom of God isn’t like that. No swords and horses. Palm branches and donkeys. No ear chopping. Foot washing.

So he goes all the way to the cross, dies, and is buried. He resurrects three days later. And as he’s ascending into heaven, they’re asking, “So, um, do we get that kingdom of Israel now?”

This is me. This is you.

“Gee, thanks for the cross and resurrection, Jesus, but do you think I could have a little more? Something for me?”

It’s sort of a “What have you done for me lately?” kind of faith, and none of us is immune. We naturally and sinfully lose perspective. We put ourselves at the center. What we do with the story of David and Goliath is a prime example of this. Do you know where you and I are in that story? Countless preachers, teachers, and inspirational writers have gone into 1 Samuel 17 with applicatory guns blazing. The story makes for some great applicational translation. Like so:

The Christian is David. Goliath can be all manner of personal problems and anxieties, social issues or anything plaguing us personally, or the church corporately. And then the five smooth stones David picks up lend themselves so easily to five points, keys, or tips.

Let’s say Goliath is financial insecurity. The expositor can neatly point out that the five smooth stones can be budgeting, saving, tithing, generosity, and investing. That was easy.

Or perhaps you want to be a bit more “spiritual” and say Goliath is “your past.” Your five smooth stones can be prayer, forgiving others, self-forgiveness, positive attitude, and walking in freedom. Or some such thing. (Ideally your five smooth stones will each begin with the same letter, because alliteration is some kind of cardinal rule for preachers.)

Those are just two applicational approaches. I didn’t invent either one. And there are lots of other options. And they all miss the point of the story.

You’re not David. I’m not David. Goliath isn’t some problem or issue or anxiety.

We so often miss our place in this story (and most of the other biblical stories). Here is where we are:

And the Philistine said, “I defy the ranks of Israel this day. Give me a man, that we may fight together.” On hearing the Philistine’s words, Saul and all the Israelites were dismayed and greatly afraid. (1 Sam. 17:10–11)

Did you see us? We’re the ones in the background, “dismayed and terrified.”

But we are not that way for long. David (not us) has been anointed to represent the children of God in battle. I don’t know why he needed five smooth stones, because it only took one. He kills Goliath, and then for good measure he chops off the dude’s head.

It’s a pretty awesome story, honestly.

Then we show up again:

When the Philistines saw that their hero was dead, they turned and ran. Then the men of Israel and Judah surged forward with a shout and pursued the Philistines to the entrance of Gath and to the gates of Ekron. Their dead were strewn along the Shaaraim road to Gath and Ekron. When the Israelites returned from chasing the Philistines, they plundered their camp (1 Sam. 17:51–53).

We’re not scared anymore. We’re chasing and plundering. Because someone else did the work.

We didn’t do the work; someone else did.

That’s the Christian life. That is pastoral ministry. The work is not ours. It’s Jesus’s. Jesus did the work we were unwilling—and unable!—to do. He killed sin and murdered death. And that is freedom. Knowing we’re not at the center of the story of our church keeps pastoral ministry in perspective; it makes the yoke easy and the burden light, because Jesus is bearing them.

This is the key to confidence: we can work because the work is already done. We give the daily pressure of all the anxiety of the church to God.

The Kingdom Is for Those Who Know How to Die

When I see the topics and interests that sell out ministry conferences every year, I am tempted to think we ought to rewrite the Beatitudes. Perhaps something like the following will better suit the modern age’s self-confident church:

Blessed are the type-A personalities,

for theirs is the enjoyment of success.

Blessed are those who remain unfazed,

for they will be self-confident.

Blessed are the powerful,

for they will inherit celebrity status.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for temporary success,

for they will have their reward.

Blessed are the dynamic purveyors of religion,

for they will be the envy of many.

Blessed are the pushy,

for they will have much to be proud of.

Blessed are the cool,

for they will be called gurus.

Blessed are those who are recognized because of their achievements,

for theirs is the renown among men.

And this is from a pastor’s blog (I kid you not):

It’s the elite, the excellers, the achievers, the succeeders, and those who raise their game to a level of “must” who end up with the money, power, and satisfaction. It will cause you tension, aggravation, and sleepless nights. It will wear you out and push you down the road. But that’s what you were made for.

This is what we were made for? For money, power, and satisfaction? Does that description not sound like shameful gain?

This is why the real Beatitudes are today the powerful scandal they were in Jesus’s day. Because the kingdom is for the hurt, the grieving, the mourning, the poor and poor in spirit, the meek, the downtrodden, the marginalized, the discarded, the weary, the torn, and the broken. And why is that?

I believe it is because those people have a keener sense of their own need. When you are on the drug of money or power or success (or any kind of drug), you can be numb to your basic, fundamental deficiency. Why do we keep trying to fill the God-shaped hole with any god but God? Because the other gods are just ways to believe we have no needs, that we have the power inside of us. Any worship directed to anyone or anything other than God is essentially self-worship.

And those who keenly feel and know their own brokenness know self-worship is stupid. When we look upon the cross of Christ and see in it not just our security for salvation but the mandate for working out our salvation, we are much closer to beholding the gospel’s power to save than if we see the cross as the metaphorical key to some self-improvement project. This is why the crippled (generally speaking) got it, and the Pharisees (generally speaking) didn’t.

“For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 14:11). The kingdom of God is for those who know how to die. Pastoral ministry is for those who know how to die.

Measuring Reality

Every day facing the “sorrowful joy” of ministry is a reality check for the pastor. That is to say, he must ask himself, “What is real?” What reality will I pastor according to? Russell Moore reminds us of David’s doubts:

The shepherd-king jeopardized his kingship by ordering a census, a count of all Israel’s men and armaments. This hardly sounds all that treacherous to us, especially those of us who live in countries that regularly conduct a census. But David was seeking out the numbers of a potential standing army. And this, in the words of one commentator, was to be “a kind of barometer of the Lord’s favor.” But David shouldn’t have needed a barometer. He had the Word of God. This test exposes a hidden flaw in David’s heart, a craving for verifiable security apart from a faithful trust in God.[2]

Trusting in chariots and horses, indeed.

Our churches may be bursting at the seams or struggling to keep the mortgage paid, but both trusting in and despairing of those measurements is laying up our treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy. God can give and God can take away. Will we trust the increase or curse the decrease, or will we say, “Blessed be the name of the LORD?”

The way we are typically programmed to measure the success of our ministries sets us up for hollow victory and desperate failure. But this is not to say we should never do any measuring. It is only to say that what we measure and how we measure shows where our confidence lies.

For instance, not all attendance increases are created equal. Joel Osteen boasts the largest church in North America, but it is not likely that the majority of these attendees are subsisting on the gospel, because Osteen does not preach it as “of first importance” (1 Cor. 15:3). For that matter, the Mormons, whom Osteen considers fellow Christians, are a movement growing in numbers and influence. Clearly, attracting a crowd cannot be our measure of success.

Jesus called us to make disciples, but many churches seem to think simply counting raised hands, signed cards, or spontaneous baptisms will suffice. One prominent pastor routinely shouts “Scoreboard!” as a tone-deaf response to critics of his ministry. Spurgeon is devastatingly wise:

Do not think that soulwinning is or can be secured by the multiplication of baptisms and the swelling size of your church.

What do dispatches from the battlefields such as the following mean? “Last night fourteen souls were under conviction, fifteen were justified, and eight received full sanctification.” I am weary of this public bragging, this counting of unhatched chickens, this exhibition of doubtful spoils. Lay aside such numberings of the people, such idle pretense of certifying in half a minute that which will need the testing of a lifetime.[3]

Some seek to measure how they are growing creatively or in the subjective realm of “excellence.” When we make these our benchmarks, we start doing stupider and stupider things, as anyone who’s seen the promotional videos from the church that hosted a fart-themed sermon series can attest. One pastor sleeps on the roof of his church with his wife to promote his sex study and directs a worship service for dogs. Another has dirt bikes jumping ramps over the pulpit. Measuring the wrong things makes us silly.

Measuring these temporary things keeps us always discontent, like the fellow who checks how his 401K is doing every day. It leads to a pragmatism and a pretentiousness the Bible strictly forbids.

Jesus fed five thousand. Then he began preaching the gospel of himself, and the crowd fled. Perhaps constantly measuring is not such a good idea.

We ought to be tuned to a deeper reality, a foundation that holds sure through gain and loss, increase and decrease, victory and defeat. This reality is the kingdom of God unshakeable. Faithfulness to its values and trust in its promises will ensure success both in season and out.

The pastor who will calibrate himself to the reality of the kingdom of God will have the strength not to be swayed by every wind of pragmatism. He will not be moved to congratulate himself or castigate himself. He will have the confidence born of eternity.

Gloriously Free to Be the Nobodies We Are

When that summer morning at 3-D camp found me in Exodus 3 and sensing God’s call into vocational ministry, I obviously did not grasp all that this might entail. (I still don’t today.) There is a weight in the call of Moses that my junior-high heart could not fathom. And a freedom.

When God called Moses to demand release of the Israelites from Egyptian captivity, Moses felt inadequate and unqualified. He asked, “Who am I to do such a thing?”

Now, when I ask this question of God, I usually ask in false humility. What I really want is God to reassure me of my qualifications and giftedness. What I really want is God to pump up my self-esteem, to inflate my already in-danger-of-popping ego. I am really saying, “Please remind me how awesome I am so that I’ll be confident enough to do this.” And I fully expect God to respond, “Jared, you’re good enough, smart enough, and doggone it, people like you.”

This not what God said to Moses. In fact, he really didn’t even answer the question, who is Moses? He answered the question, who is God?

The answer, of course, is God.

But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” He said, “But I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain”. (Ex. 3:11–12)

“Who am I?”

“Never mind who you are. You’re right; you’re a nobody. But you are called. I will be with you. And the sign of your success will not be a gold watch and a plaque and a place in Superduper Church Magazine’s 100 Most Awesomest Churches and Pastors with Mad Leadership Skills, but worship of me.”

“Oh.”

Moses’s “oh” consisted of more questions.

Moses said to the LORD, “O my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and tongue.” Then the LORD said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the LORD? Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.” (Ex. 4:10–12)

You’ve likely heard the dictum “God doesn’t call the qualified, he qualifies the called.” This is why God uses shepherds, fig farmers, youngest sons, prostitutes, and widows. This is why he uses sinners. Not so that they will realize their potential. Not so that they will finally see how inherently awesome they are. Not so they can live their best life now or become a better you (a better them?). Not so, as a church radio advertisement I once heard promised, God can bring out the best in them.

Nope. God uses sinners so that he will get the glory and so that he will get the glory in the vivid, repeating imagery of turning ashes to beauty. God made man out of dirt. We are dirt.

We only need to read a little bit of Paul to see how little he cares about human credentials and qualifications. And Paul actually had them.

The gospel is not the power to save because of our knowledge, our techniques, our systems, our innovations, our preaching style, our music style, our creativity, our conferences, our degrees, our viral marketing, our evaluations and efficiency, or our selves. None of those things are bad, but we make all of them idols so easily. They take so much effort, and yet we make them idols so effortlessly.

“Who are we?” we ask ourselves. “We’re awesome!” we answer.

But the gospel is the power to save because of Jesus’s work. Because God is with the gospel.

Pastor, take your ego out to the woodshed, then, every day. And don’t just whup it. Put a gun to its head and blow its brains out. Let us resolve “to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2).

Somewhat ironically, what happens to a gospel-wakened pastor who has cast his cares upon God is that he becomes joyously free. He can lead confidently because he knows things aren’t up to him, but to God. He knows Jesus will build his church in spite of a pastor’s mistakes and missteps. He is thoughtful and conscientious, but he makes decisions confidently because he knows the weight of the world doesn’t hinge on himself. God is sovereign.

The gospel-wakened pastor frets much less about petty criticism and legalistic slander. Whenever I am tempted to discouragement by nitpicky grapevine chatter about myself, I preach the gospel to myself. And if the chatter is truly nitpicky and not about actual sin I’ve committed, I throw it on a gospel fire and let it burn. Jesus is king, so everything’s good. I won’t waste any time on wastes of time. I will cast my cares upon him. Why? Because he cares for me. It is for freedom that I have been set free, and I will no longer return to a yoke of slavery.

______________________

[1] Arturio Azurdia, “Reforming the Church Through Prayer: The Pastoral Contribution,” in Reforming Pastoral Ministry: Challenges for Ministry in Postmodern Times, ed. John H. Armstrong (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2001), 179.

[2] Russell D. Moore, Tempted and Tried (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2011), 106–7.

[3] Charles Spurgeon, The Soulwinner (New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House, 1995), 13.

5

THE WATCHFUL PASTOR

Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. (1 Pet. 5:8–9)

The mobile home smelled of rotten food and animal droppings. The lady who’d invited me there was not an attender of my church. I’d never met her before, actually, but she’d called and asked me to come to speak to her about a grief she was facing, so I obliged. I was engulfed in a severe spirit of oppression as soon I’d entered her ramshackle trailer.

The lady of the house had wild hair and wide eyes. In her sixties or early seventies, she was dressed sloppily, which fit her environment (and showed the beginnings of obsessive hoarding). Dirty dishes were piled high in the sink and on the kitchen counters. Magazines and newspapers and bags of assorted papers and trash were stacked everywhere. Several cats skulked about. The walls and refrigerator were adorned with odd pictures of Eastern gurus, one of which she told me was Jesus.

She cleared off a chair for me at her table and in her two-hour monologue I got her life story, which included once being rich and semifamous, working in the fashion industry and for wealthy financiers in New York City, and now living in this trailer with holes in the floor through which her “pet” raccoon and possum would enter to visit. When she regaled me with her experience of spirit guides and Indian ashrams, I was not surprised. I pegged her early on as one subsumed and corrupted by her idolatry; I could feel the demonic aura in her presence.

She took my hand and asked if she could read my palm. I did not snatch it away or snap at her. I simply withdrew my hand from hers and said very politely, “I’d prefer that you not do that.” The change in her face was just a blip, a fleeting transformation. But her face indeed changed. There was a flash of hate, of evil. She snapped at me. Do you remember in the film adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring when Bilbo tries to snatch the ring back from Frodo at Rivendell and his face changes? It was a bit like that. A frantic evil consumed her face in one half second and was gone the next.

This experience was a somber reminder to me of how much the Evil One hates us and wants us dead.

The Adversary and the Church Watchman

“Be sober-minded; be watchful,” Peter warns. “Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Pet. 5:8). Here is an excellent reason to shepherd the flock willingly and eagerly, with a heart toward holiness. There is someone who wants you and your church dead. Since a good pastor is the church’s point man, he should receive more of the flaming arrows of the Evil One.

The image we receive is of the shepherd, diligent at his watch, panning his gaze around the borders of the sheepfold for encroaching wolves, scanning the flock itself for any wolves in sheep’s clothing. He must be constantly on alert against the schemes of the predator and his minions, so he must keep himself from becoming drunk with wine or power or self-pity. He must stay sober-minded.

Pastor, you and your fellow elders are your church’s watchmen. There is no autopilot setting for thwarting the designs of the Devil. In 1 Peter 5:8–9, Peter orders sobriety, watchfulness, resistance. The Devil loves tempting and destroying pastors, so it is imperative that God’s appointed men live and think with “their heads on a swivel.” The adversary’s schemes are myriad.

What should pastors watch out for?

Watch Out for Heresy

Heresy takes root in a church that has no doctrinal walls or watchmen. Many churches with clear statements of faith in their bylaws have lily-livered pastors with no interest in holding to them; these churches are especially susceptible. Small group leaders and Sunday school teachers are left unchecked, theology is neither studied nor preached, and consequently the community becomes a petri dish for false teaching. The watchmen aren’t watching or are too ignorant or passive to do anything about the problems. Rebuking heresy sounds so intolerant. And this is because it is.

“I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves!” Paul writes in Galatians 5:12. How can Paul justify such language? And does this kind of language teach us anything about how to respond to false teaching? Or is it completely an apostolic privilege, off limits to us modern, more sensitive Christians?

Let’s step back and see what Paul is doing. Anyone familiar with Paul’s letter to the Galatians knows it is punctuated with this kind of exclamatory language. The shepherd is perplexed and heartbroken over the Galatians’ apparent departure from the gospel once established, and he is livid, indignant toward the Judaizers who are leading them astray. If this were written today, we would be tempted to chastise Paul for his tone—and indeed, some do reject Paul’s teachings today for this reason, among others (like alleged misogyny, etc.).

But rebuking false teaching is not about flying off the handle. Shooting down wolves is not at odds with the requisite pastoral gentleness. It is mandated by it. Galatians 5:12 shows us that Paul is being both rational and angry. It is possible to be both. Paul has not lost his temper, as harsh as his call for the heretics to castrate themselves is. (And let’s not say it just sounds harsh. It is harsh.)

Paul’s harsh words here are rational because he’s working from logic previously established: If you accept circumcision, you must obey the whole law (Gal. 5:3). Using that logic, then, he’s asking, “Hey, if circumcision justifies you, why not just castrate yourself altogether?”

Paul is being rational, but not coolly rational. Having anathematized the false teachers, repeated several times that they bear the penalty, that they will be accursed, he is hot with the wrath of God owed to teachers of false gospels.

But isn’t he coming across . . . mean? How can this be justified?

First of all, Paul didn’t invent harsh language for false teachers. They stoned such people in the old covenant. Jesus in his mercy only verbally lacerated false teachers, calling them sons of hell and whitewashed tombs, impressing upon us the worse death of eternal death (compared to physical death).

The Bible never speaks kindly of false teachers.

It suggests restoring those who fall into falsehood gently. But it never suggests treating offenders gently. Indeed, you can see throughout Paul’s letter that he is pleading with the Galatians even while rhetorically punching the Judaizers. His tone when referring to the Judaizers is angry; his tone in referring to the Galatians’ susceptibility is sadness. Galatians 4:18–20 is the most vivid example; you can practically hear his tears.

Here is the bottom line, assuming Galatians is a good test case, and kept in the context of all that the Scriptures show us about dealing with false teachers: Protecting the sheep from wolves often involves roughly handling wolves.

Isn’t that unloving? Isn’t that hateful?

No. In fact, it shows real love for the sheep. It shows real love for Jesus! Real love stirs active affections, both positive and negative. Because I love my wife, for instance, I give her physical affection. Also, because I love my wife, I will do physical violence to anyone who attacks her.

Do you see how that works? Because God loves justice, he hates sin. Because God loves the truth, he hates lies. Because God loves his Son, he hates teaching that demeans his Son, and legalism does that. Heresy does that.

Therefore, because God loves his children, he hates false teaching. And we ought to take the kid gloves off with false teachers endangering the sheep, if our love for Christ and his church is real.

There is gospel to be found in this harsh language. Because God loves sinners, he does the harsh thing of sending Christ to suffer violence, to deal harshly with sin by being dealt harshly with by sin, and to lay his life down for the sheep.

Christ was cut off, cursed, made sin, made heresy, that we might be brought into the truth. The cross is the ultimate harshness to sin. What a loving thing to do to conquer that sin and rescue sinners!

Watch Out for Apostasy

Heresy is false teaching brought into the church by wolves. Apostasy is the abandonment of the church by those led astray by heresy. Apostates may be true believers exercising a dangerous lapse of belief, or they may be false converts showing their real god. How we handle these cases will take great courage, great wisdom, and great care.

We can only discern whether someone in error is a believer or unbeliever through gentle but firm church discipline, carried out according to the Scriptures. Heresy is to be rebuked. Victims of heresy are to be restored with gentleness (Gal. 6:1). But this assumes they are the kind of sheep who will bow to the rod of correction. If they have dug their feet in over time, remaining stubborn in clear error and unsubmissive to clear correction, we get a clue as to their heart. How do you know when someone is repentant?

Jonathan Leeman is helpful:

A few verses before Jesus’ instruction in Matthew 18 about church discipline, he provides us with help for determining whether an individual is characteristically repentant: would the person be willing to cut off a hand or tear out an eye rather than repeat the sin (Matt. 18:8–9)? That is to say, is he or she willing to do whatever it takes to fight against the sin? Repenting people, typically, are zealous about casting off their sin. That’s what God’s Spirit does inside of them. When this happens, one can expect to see a willingness to accept outside counsel. A willingness to inconvenience their schedules. A willingness to confess embarrassing things. A willingness to make financial sacrifices or lose friends or end relationships.[1]

I would add, as it pertains to belief in false teaching, when shown the error of their beliefs, do they repent and believe in the faith once delivered?

Watch Out for Gossip

“So also the tongue is a small member,” James 3:5 says, “yet it boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire!”

Gossip starts with little sparks. Unchecked, these sparks can turn into an inferno. Gossip starts with little nitpicks and henpecks, little nips at each other that turn into ravenous consumption (Gal. 5:15).

The pastor must not tolerate gossip. When he hears it, he ought to stop it and correct it. When he hears of it, he ought to intervene and correct it. Gossip often is disguised as concern. Some concern isn’t gossip, but a lot is. Gossip is when we say things about someone we won’t say to them. If you have a concern about someone that you aren’t willing to take to him, it should be forgiven or forgotten. Any serious concern—about sin, about error, about immodest associations—ought to be brought to the person for discussion.

A pastor will sometimes find himself the recipient of hearsay. What I mean is, he will occasionally receive reports of concerns about his character from anonymous parties delivered by parties willing to deliver them. In a few circumstances this might be acceptable. But in general, a pastor facing anonymous criticism will be asked to answer to ghosts. Very few things discourage a pastor more than anonymous criticism. More often than not, a wise pastor will need to say, “If someone is concerned about that, they need to bring it to me personally. As it is, I won’t entertain it.” The wise pastor will then personally consider whether the concerns are valid, anonymously generated or not, and “hold fast to what is good” (Rom. 12:9). But he is under no obligation to entertain the charges of nobody in particular. “People are saying . . .” can be emotionally crippling to even the most secure pastor. Which people? How many people? One person, two people? Members? Regular attenders? Someone who likes me? Someone who doesn’t? Suddenly every interaction with someone in the congregation is covered by a dark cloud. Is this one of the people who has concerns? Can I trust this person? Nobody can be trusted now because some anonymous somebody has not trusted the pastor with directly delivered concerns.

The pastor should give no harbor to “about” talk that avoids “to” talk. The gospel is a great creator of order in this regard. When people are reminded of the gospel constantly, and the church’s teaching and programs are centered on the gospel, gossip finds itself in a hostile environment. “Gossiping” the gospel, then, creates an environment where sinners are more inclined to talk to and for each other rather than about and at each other.

Watch Out for Division

Gossip sows division. So does every other sin. Many times when a church’s authorities speak out against sin in the church, they are charged with being divisive. But it is not discipline that starts division. It’s sin that’s divisive. We do not say to a surgeon that he is harming a body by cutting a tumor out of it.

Division doesn’t always begin with clear-cut sin, however. It quite often begins with disagreements in perspectives and preferences. A lot of churches embrace these divisions and will create separate groups and even worship services to accommodate them. Not all of these segmentations are sins, but many of them are, especially as they capitulate to the consumeristic idolatry of the Western churchgoer.

Mountains are easily made out of molehills when preferences fill the center of spiritual desire. Two people may develop a difference of opinion about music style. It’s not an argument at first, just a difference in personal taste. But as discussions go on, factions are formed. Unequivocal statements like “I can’t worship to that kind of music” get bandied about. New is pitted against old, or contemporary against traditional. To keep the peace, church leaders may introduce an alternative gathering. Has division been prevented? No, it’s been accommodated. Division has now been made a feature of the church, treated like an asset instead of a liability.

I once led a church largely made up of young adults—twentysomethings and thirtysomethings, mostly. Many lamented that we weren’t more multigenerational (you know, like the church), but at the same time the married young people wanted to be in a separate small group from the single young people because they didn’t have anything in common with the singles. “You mean, besides Jesus?” I asked.

We divide when we place our preferences above community with people who differ from us. We divide when we are more interested in what we want than what we can give. We divide when we are more inclined toward ourselves than our neighbors. Thom Rainer wisely says, “When the preferences of the church members are greater than their passion for the gospel, the church is dying.”[2]

Peter writes earlier in his letter, “Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind” (1 Pet. 3:8). When the gospel is well-seeded in a church, the community is marked more by Romans 12:10 than 1 Corinthians 12:21.

Watch Out for Yourself

Remember, the pastor’s biggest problem is himself. “Be sober-minded,” Peter commands, “be watchful.” Paul instructs the young Timothy: “Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers” (1 Tim. 4:16). Even when restoring a wayward sheep, Scripture tells us: “Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted” (Gal. 6:1).

The pastor must be on guard against personal temptations. In times of fatigue, boredom, stress, disappointment, and depression, the pastor is particularly susceptible. And most other times too. The pastor has to be eagle-eyed over his own soul. Personal devotions, a balance of power in pastoral plurality and congregational oversight, real friendships, and gospel-centered accountability are all great means to this end.

To that latter safeguard we now turn.

Who Watches the Watchman?

Pastoral integrity does not develop in a vacuum. It is made or broken in a community of friends where the gospel is well applied. We might call these “accountability groups,” although that term has been co-opted by moralistic masculinity in the church and distorted into a kind of evangelical version of the Catholic confessional rites. But ground rules for accountability relationships don’t have to be moralistic, so long as they adorn the gospel. John Ortberg’s list of rules for friendships that matter is a good start:[3]

1. We can ask anything, no holds barred.

2. If you answer, you must tell the truth, as much as you know it.

3. If you don’t answer, you must say why you won’t or can’t answer.

4. Everything that is said to each other will be held in absolute confidence.

5. We will make absolutely no judgments of each other.

This list is decent, if “we will make no judgments of each other” means we will not condemn each other. It is always necessary to make righteous judgments about unrepentance, harmful habits, or other serious areas needing attention. Good friends will do that in good and friendly ways.

Unfortunately, what the church calls “accountability groups” operate a lot of times arbitrarily and mechanically. I don’t think we need to jettison “accountability groups” altogether, but we could call them a whole number of other things. (I would suggest simply friendships.) What we need instead is that grace-encouragement.

The most life-giving “accountability group” I was ever a part of was called a “pastor’s gospel group.” Three of us pastors and one layman met regularly in Ray Ortlund’s study in Nashville for prayer, confession, and sharpening. Ray introduced us to an abbreviated version of John Wesley’s famous accountability questions:

1. Am I consciously or unconsciously creating the impression that I am better than I am? In other words, am I a hypocrite?

2. Am I honest in all my acts and words, or do I exaggerate?

3. Do I confidentially pass onto another what was told me in confidence?

4. Am I a slave to dress, friends, work, or habits?

5. Am I self-conscious, self-pitying, or self-justifying?

6. Did the Bible live in me today?

7. Do I give the Bible time to speak to me every day?

8. Am I enjoying prayer?

9. When did I last speak to someone about my faith?

10. Do I pray about the money I spend?

11. Do I get to bed on time and get up on time?

12. Do I disobey God in anything?

13. Do I insist upon doing something about which my conscience is uneasy?

14. Am I defeated in any part of my life?

15. Am I jealous, impure, critical, irritable, touchy, or distrustful?

16. How do I spend my spare time?

17. Am I proud?

18. Do I thank God that I am not like other people, especially the Pharisee who despised the publican?

19. Is there anyone whom I fear, dislike, disown, criticize, hold resentment toward, or disregard? If so, what am I going to do about it?

20. Do I grumble and complain constantly?

21. Is Christ real to me?[4]

These are all good questions, and they are self-directed as written, which is important. Also important is that very last question, and I remember once that Ray answered it in a way that changed the entire room. I can’t adequately describe what exactly happened as Ray told us about his friend Jesus, but the entire room changed. In his beautiful, devotional commentary on the book of Isaiah, Ray writes, “The remedy for our deadness to God’s grace is more grace.”[5]

This gets at something Bonhoeffer argues for in Life Together. While telling us not to be constant takers of our fellow believers’ temperatures, he tells us to be constant givers of the gospel to our fellow believers. We need the gospel that is in our brothers, and they need the gospel that is in us. So accountability must ask the hard questions, but it must do so as if Jesus were real. Because he is.

And since Jesus is real, his personality and his judgments should shape the personality and judgments of accountability groups. Our hearts should not be shrunken after examinations, unless we are hardened to God’s grace altogether, because it ought to be abundantly clear that questions are asked that we might walk in the freedom of Christ’s accomplishments for us and the Spirit’s power in us. The more Romans 8:1 flourishes in a space, the more James 5:16 will fill it.

A Proactive Watch

Too many pastors are in reaction mode when it comes to temptations to sin and symptoms of personal burnout. What a watchman does can appear merely observational to the casual observer, but the biblical pastor is not passive. He is leading the sheep and feeding the sheep. He is mending fences, chasing after strays, and fending off wolves. He stays alert precisely so that he can run proactively to these tasks at the first sign they are necessary, rather than waiting until the situation is nearly out of control.

This process of pastoring is essentially what we call church discipline. Church discipline strikes many today as strange, mainly because so few churches exercise it, and of the ones that do, too many don’t practice it well. It has become synonymous with excommunication for many, but that is because we are not proactive about positive discipline and instead wait until it must be punitive. A watchful pastor can do better to bring positive, life-giving discipline to his church in the following ways.

Make Disciples

Many local churches have ceased fishing for men and instead become keepers of the fish tank. A surface level of fellowship is often in place, but the central mission of the church—to make disciples—is neglected. Instead, churches are structured around providing religious goods and services, offering education or even entertainment options for their congregational consumers. People aren’t being trained in the context of ongoing disciple relationships. But this is largely what church discipline is—training.

If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over, Jesus instructs in Matthew 18:15. In discipling relationships, we are always disciplining one another, not chiefly or only in the fight against sin but largely through encouraging each other, edifying one another, teaching one another, and sharing one another’s burdens. In short, disciples know each other. And so Matthew 18:15 might be happening all the time, perhaps weekly within loving relationships, in churches where there is no imminent danger of somebody being kicked out but rather where iron is constantly sharpening iron.

In churches with healthy discipleship cultures, church discipline is going on all the time in helpful, informal, everyday ways. When the more formal processes of church discipline become necessary, they are much less likely to be carried out too harshly or received strangely. The church will already have a positive training context for knowing that discipleship requires obedience, correction, perseverance, and mutual submission.

Create Clarity about Church Membership

Many churches have no church membership structure at all. But even in churches that maintain formal church membership, the expectations and processes are unclear. Prospective church members need to provide more information than merely their profession of faith, previous church membership, and the area of service they are interested in. They need to know what the body is promising to them and what they are promising the body. If church membership is a Christ-centered covenant relationship, there needs to be a clear, mutual promise between all invested parties that their yes will be yes and their no will be no, so that there can be no surprise when someone’s yes to sin is received with a no from the church.

Teach the Process

I remember a church meeting once upon a time where elders were sharing the grounds for dismissal of the lead pastor. The evidence was extensive and serious, and the elders testified to having for years sought the pastor’s repentance and requested him to seek counseling, to no avail. One woman in the congregation, visibly upset, shouted, “Where is the grace?” The whole idea of church discipline seemed weird and unchristian to her. She did not have the biblical framework to know that the last several years of seeking the pastor’s repentance was a tremendous act of grace, and that indeed, even his dismissal was a severe mercy, a last and regrettable resort in seeking to startle him into godly sorrow over his sin.

Many churches aren’t accustomed to thinking of discipline that way; they think of grace as comfort and niceness. This is because we don’t teach them well.

For some, church discipline will always be objectionable because it seems outdated and unnecessary. But for many, the objection is a reflection of simply not knowing what the Bible teaches on the matter. If a church never broaches the subject until its response to someone’s unrepentant sin must be made public, church discipline will always seem alien. “What are you doing bringing all this law into a place that should be filled with grace?” And the like. So we have to preach the relevant texts.

One word of caution, however: Some churches love teaching the process of church discipline out of all proportion; they love it too much. In some church environments, church discipline is mainly equated with the nuclear option of excommunication, and the leadership of the church is not known for its patience but for its itchy trigger finger. Teaching the process of church discipline is not about filling the church with a sense of dread and covering the floor with eggshells. It’s about providing enough visibility about the guardrails and expectations so that people can actually breathe more freely, not less. Church discipline rightly exercised is motivated by real, sorrowful love and concern.

Follow the Process

Once again, we fail our congregations when we don’t begin church discipline until we feel pressed to remove someone from membership and refuse them the Lord’s Supper. It’s as if there aren’t previous, patient, hopeful steps in Matthew 18. Even the context of Paul’s command in 1 Corinthians 5:13 appears to demonstrate that excommunication is the final straw, not the only one. If we will follow the biblical process of church discipline, beginning with confidential and humble rebuke of a brother’s or sister’s sin, and if unrepentance persists and the circle of visibility widens, expulsion will be seen as a regrettable and sorrowful necessity, and as something intended for a person’s repentance and restoration, not for their condemnation.

Practice Gospel-centeredness

God will get the glory and our churches will give him glory when church discipline is practiced in the context of a grace-driven culture. You can expect church discipline to seem unnecessary and legalistic in churches where the gospel has not had any noticeable effect on the spirit of the people. But in churches where God’s free grace in Christ is regularly preached and believed, church leaders will be regularly setting aside their egos and narcissistic needs and the laity will be bearing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things, and believing all things (1 Cor. 13:7), including that while no discipline feels pleasant at the time, in the end it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it (Heb. 12:11).

The Pastor’s Armed Resistance

Let’s be honest again. You, brother pastor, are way in over your head. You need Jesus. But as a believer, you have him. When the adversary accuses and attacks, you are not left unarmed.

Peter continues: “Resist him, firm in your faith . . .” (1 Pet. 5:9). What is faith? Faith is the empty vessel of trust. You cannot resist Satan with your own wherewithal. That is a losing gambit. But with the empty vessel of faith we have the fullness of the riches of God’s glory in the marvelous grace of Christ. This grace is security and it is power. This grace is impenetrable armor. Let’s put this grace on, then, brothers.

You know this passage well:

Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. (Eph. 6:11–17)

Paul prefaces this call to spiritual militancy with this: “Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might” (Eph. 6:10). “Be strong,” he says. But he tells us to be strong in the Lord’s might, not ours, which is why before we get to praying and making supplication (Eph. 6:18), we are to put on the armor of God. Notice that this armor consists entirely of things God does or provides for us. We don’t put on the helmet of self-affirmation. We don’t put on the shoes of motivation. We don’t put on the belt of intestinal fortitude. No, we put on what God has done for us in Christ, which is to say, we put on Christ.

When the enemy attacks my heart, I don’t want my self-righteousness standing guard, but the breastplate of actual righteousness, Christ’s righteousness. When the enemy whispers his accusations into my ear with his forked tongue, I don’t want Stuart Smalley-esque daily affirmations sitting there; those would protect me about as much as cotton-ball earmuffs. But the helmet of salvation is another story. If my mind is ready with the great salvation of the gospel encasing it like a force field of grace, I am really prepared.

Which is why we must wear this armor constantly. We should never take it off. We should wear it to bed as pajamas. We should make sure we’ve got it on first thing in the morning by turning to the gospel as immediately as possible. This is wartime. Don’t take the armor off. You don’t try putting on your seatbelt when you see the Mack truck bearing down on you at 60 mph; you put it on before you pull out of the garage. Likewise, don’t wait for the enemy to show himself before you start suiting up. You don’t know when the attacks will come; best to sleep with your boots on and your sword by your hand.

On Alert with the Church

Pastor, dwell in the gospel daily. Intimate familiarity with the gospel activates clarity and alacrity. It will sober you and keep you reflexively bold against the spiritual forces of wickedness and merciful to flesh and blood. The gospel helps us not mix up the two, which Paul cautions against in Ephesians 6.

In 2011, a few families ventured from the American South to a small rural town in Vermont to plant a church. Many places in Vermont are not hospitable to the gospel. They are downright hostile, in fact. The enemy has many strongholds here. But these folks planted their church anyway because they understand that Vermont and its villages belong to King Jesus and they want God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. So they came to Vermont, declaring the at-handness of the kingdom of heaven and the freedom to be had in Christ through repentance and belief in his gospel. Some in the town welcomed them. Many in the town became foes.

A sizable contingent of people is protesting the town to forbid the church from meeting in a public space, despite their signed lease agreement. The church plant became the subject of malicious gossip and hyperbolic fabrications. The believers responsible for the church silently subjected themselves to accusations and aggravations at stressful town meetings. One Sunday during their worship service, a fellow entered the downstairs room and began working on a construction project very loudly. The church gathering was soon drowned out by the banging around of lumber and equipment and the loud buzzes of electric tools. A man from the church went downstairs to respectfully ask if the worker could wait until after the service to continue his project. The worker loudly cursed him out.

The racket continued throughout the church service, and the church body did their best to sing, pray, and receive the preached Scriptures despite the assault on their ears. After the service, a few men of the church went back downstairs to straighten the fellow out.

Do you know how they did that? By helping him with his project.

This new church understands that the war is not against flesh and blood, but against the demonic schemes flesh and blood so often falls prey to. And they understand that God’s kingdom will prevail. Evil’s days are numbered. Satan’s doom is sure.

The Devil is like a rat in a jar that is filling with ether. We should expect that as his death gets ever-nearer, he will beat his claws more furiously against the glass.

We should expect no less. “In the world you will have tribulation” (John 16:33). “For false christs and false prophets will arise” (Matt. 24:24). “But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty” (2 Tim. 3:1). “Scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing” (2 Pet. 3:3). “They will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors for my name’s sake” (Luke 21:12).

As the gospel takes over your ministry and the kingdom of God grows in your church like yeast in dough, you can expect that our enemy will not go quietly. You can expect opposition from the world. You can expect false gospels and false accusations. You can expect to be reviled and persecuted. Things will likely get worse in the West in terms of suppression and oppression. Many of your people, and perhaps you yourself, will go out as missionaries into a deadly world. Perhaps our relatively free world will become deadly in time. We are perhaps not far off from being jailed for preaching the Bible, which is becoming subject to “hate speech” legislation in otherwise civilized nations. Peter has an odd encouragement: “The same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world” (1 Pet. 5:9).

Oppression and persecution are never cause for self-pity. You think you’re so special? It is Christ that is special. Let us learn to count it all joy when we undergo these trials (James 1:2), knowing that we are filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions (Col. 1:24) and being counted privileged to share in the sufferings of Christ (2 Cor. 1:5).

We don’t know the kind of shared suffering Peter is referencing, though. I wonder how much humility could be afforded the Western church if we acquainted ourselves more with the suffering of the church in the two-thirds world. Suddenly Monday morning pop-ins don’t seem like such a big a deal. Let us stand with our brothers who are being slaughtered every day all around the world by being strong, faithful, and watchful under much lesser pains, for the moment. What we undergo presents to the Lamb the reward for his suffering, and for ours. We know whom we have believed, and we are convinced that he is able to guard that which we’ve committed to him until that day.

Pastor, our brother Peter assures us that that day will be glorious beyond all compare.

______________________

[1] Jonathan Leeman, Church Discipline: How the Church Protects the Name of Jesus (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 72.

[2] Thom Rainer, Twitter post, January 28, 2011, 2:51 p.m., twitter.com/ThomRainer/status/31107227125288960.

[3] John Orberg, “Higher Stakes Friendship,” Leadership Journal (February 2012), www.christianitytoday.com/le/2012/February-online-only/higherstatkes.html.

[4] Adapted from John Wesley, “A Scheme of Self-Examination,” in The Works of the Revered John Wesley, ed. John Emory, vol. 6 (New York: J. Emory and B. Waugh, 1831), 579–80.

[5] Raymond C. Ortlund, Jr., Isaiah: God Saves Sinners (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005), 81. Emphasis in original.

6

THE JUSTIFIED PASTOR

And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. . . . And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen. (1 Pet. 5:4, 10–11)

Roger[1] was a straight-talking tough guy from Michigan with a shaved head and a penchant for wearing leather pants. He was a large equipment mechanic in town and had been restless since wandering from the faith of his parents. One day he wandered into one of our worship services, during which he sat with a rather stoic look on his face, and after which he quickly left. The next week he came back, arriving early. He became a regular. He told us that he thought all churches were full of hypocrites, until he came to our church. He’d visited a few other area churches, and nobody was as welcoming or as forthright with the message of grace as our church.

I confess that the ego stroke felt good. As much as I believed we were not in competition with other churches, as a struggling church planter in the suburban Bible Belt, I knew we were in competition whether we wanted to be or not. And it felt good to hear a rough-around-the-edges guy say he’d finally found a church where grace reigned.

Roger appeared to be growing in Christ. He was confessing sin at our small group meetings, expressing as best as he could how difficult it was to exemplify his faith in Christ in a work environment full of obscene talk and lewd jokes. He broke up with his girlfriend. “It’s your fault,” he said to me, jokingly. “You convinced me with your teaching on grace-driven relationships and unequal yoking that it wasn’t right we were together.” He seemed to be making great strides in walking repentantly in the love of Christ.

Then one Saturday night at a fellowship event, as a few of us sat around a bonfire talking and laughing, a young lady asked the group if we could have a sing-along. Nobody felt comfortable leading music, least of all me, so it never got off the ground. The next day Roger was not at church. And that night I received a Facebook message from him that said, “All she wanted was one song. You couldn’t give her one song? And you call yourself a pastor? Is that on or off the clock?”

Immediately my inner self-defense lawyer leapt to my justification.

I’m not a song leader! Why should I lead songs if I don’t feel like leading songs? He was just angry because he has a crush on this girl; if it had been anybody else who had made the request, he wouldn’t have cared. And what is this stuff about “on or off the clock?” I’m pastoring this church for free; I don’t take a salary. There is no clock!

I felt crushed. Two weeks before this offense, Roger and I had shared a moment at the hospital where we’d both gone to visit a church member recovering from congestive heart failure. As we walked out into the parking lot to leave that night, Roger had asked me to pray for his grandfather, who was also sick. The combination of our friend’s health danger and the prospect of losing his grandfather was overwhelming to him, and this big tough-guy mechanic began to cry. I gave him a hug.

Now I felt as though he were stabbing me in the back.

I tried calling him, because hashing such things out over Facebook or e-mail is stupid, but he wouldn’t take my calls. When I reluctantly replied to his online message, his reply was terse and left no doubt about his disappointments in our church and in me as a leader.

Had I failed? Maybe. Probably. I had failed countless times before that night around the bonfire and countless times after that. If I wrote down all the ridiculous and stupid things I’ve ever done, all the books in the world could not contain them. I am still haunted nineteen years later about the prank video I made as an intern that led one hysterical mom to think her junior-high-aged son was in trouble with the police. It was a huge violation of trust and woefully immature besides, and I can’t shake it. I have botched the handling of personal offenses, taught terrible lessons, avoided handling conflicts, dealt with conflicts in an overbearing and oversensitive way, and ignored and dismissed and spun my own sins and the sins of others to their great harm and the dysfunction of the church. If I had to sum up my roughly twenty years in church leadership positions, I would say it is a sterling record of awkwardness, foolishness, and outright idiocy, punctuated by brief moments of accidental competence and covered totally by the grace of God in the love of Christ.

Over the years in ministry, I’ve learned two things: I am a dummy, and God is good.

As I study 1 Peter 5:1–11 and the other biblical imperatives for church leaders, I begin to feel overwhelmed. The kind of man the Scriptures call into church oversight seems beyond my power to become. And this is because he is. Left to my own devices and trusting in my own power, I can never be the pastor God has called me to be or the pastor my church needs. But the message of our faith is not “I am justified because I obey,” but “I obey because I am justified.” Embedded in the gospel is the power to fulfill its implications.

Pastor, Where Is Your Security?

The promise to pastors is the promise to every truster in Christ: complete and perfect righteousness and deliverance, conferred from Christ’s riches to the sinner’s account. God is no miser! Look at what he lavishes upon us! “And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you” (1 Pet. 5:10).

The cross-taking of pastoral ministry lasts but for a little while. Paul calls even the most difficult suffering a “light momentary affliction” (2 Cor. 4:17). Why? How? Because he knows that it is virtually nothing compared to “the eternal weight of glory.”

Peter says we are called to God’s “eternal glory in Christ.” Everlasting glory is the reward held out to us, and it is our calling even now. So, pastors, as we wrestle with the text, wrangle with difficult brethren, or suffer repression or temptation or persecution, as we navigate our church’s reputation in her neighborhood and our church’s harmony in the ranks, as we teach and preach and pray and counsel and rebuke and discipline, let us revel unapologetically in God’s eternal glory in Christ. Let’s not glory in anything else!

This is the glory that is declared by the heavens, sung by the mountains, revealed in the Scriptures, delivered by the Spirit, and secured by Jesus. Why in the world would we seek to boast or exult in anything else? We labor in God’s glory for the joy of our people. Everything else is ear-tickling, wheel-spinning, vomit-inducing messing around.

When God calls a man to pastoral ministry, he calls him to deal exclusively in the glory of God. God’s glory is our trust, our means, and our end. Suffering is promised us, but for those of us who are committed to the calling of God’s glory, there will be an all-consuming vindication. And Peter says in 1 Peter 5:10 that God himself will do it.

Pastor, are you broken down? He won’t outsource your restoration.

Are you struggling with validation and approval? He will confirm your status himself.

Are you weak, tired, stressed, or depressed? He will strengthen you himself.

Are you grabbing for a handhold, desperate for roots, or looking to build for his kingdom in the face of turbulent times or places? He will establish you himself.

God has promised himself to you in Christ, and he will secure you to himself in Christ. To be hidden with Christ in God is to be as secure as Christ is.

Pastor, Where Is Your Control?

Peter begins this admonition to elders with the imperative, “Shepherd the flock of God that is among you” (1 Pet. 5:2) and closes it with, “To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen” (5:11). Front to back, the ministry is the Lord’s, because the world is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.

Pastor, it’s his ministry, not yours. Your people are first his flock, not first yours. So it’s his dominion, not yours.

At first, this is a bitter pill. But it is sweet to those called to God’s glory. It is difficult for control freaks like pastors to remember that they are not in control, but there’s great contentment to be had in finally realizing that the salvation of the souls of those in the pastor’s care is not ultimately up to him. It is liberating to realize that the spread of God’s kingdom is not ultimately dependent on the work of a pastor.

Therefore, in shutting the mouths of lions or dying in obscurity, in overseeing a ten-campus multisite megachurch or retiring known only for ministry by the fifty people in your parish, there is contentment and joy to be had now and ever after. Because Christ is king with total dominion, simple faithfulness to his kingdom is success.

And the reality is that Christ’s lordship makes every ministry eternally epic. He has given you the keys to the kingdom (Matt. 16:19). Whatever you bind or loose is bound and loosed in heaven. So take heart, all pastors, the God whose angels rejoice at one sinner saved rejoices over your ministry—massive or mediocre—with the great delight and approval of a beaming father.

Pastor, Where Is Your Glory?

And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. (1 Pet. 5:4)

The unfading crown of glory. Everything else is cheap imitation. We peddle these like they are of surpassing worth. Big attendance, big buildings, big followings, big book deals, big paychecks, big platforms. All of these crowns are cardboard Burger King trinkets. They will be burned up in the last day. The achievements of undershepherds will fade like the glory on Moses’s face. Brothers, we should not attach our affections to these things. They will let us down, always and forever.

Can we be honest? Some of you are storing up personal glories, selfish claims to fame, and badges of success, as if these will be presentable to Christ when he appears. James 3:1 and Hebrews 13:7 ought to slap us sober about such things. We who teach will be judged with greater strictness. We will have to give an account.

Look around you. Look into your heart. What are you trusting in? What are you clinging to? What are you feeding your people? Is the tone and tenor of your ministry proving that your glory is in Christ alone?

What are you going to do on that last day when Jesus appears and you crawl your sorry self across the finish line of life? Will you present to him your accumulation of personal accolades, growth charts, Twitter followers, affirmations, and achievements? Are you going to shout “Scoreboard!”?

Judgment begins at the house of God. It begins with the elders. It begins now.

How many times have you boasted or gloried in numbers and dollars?

How many times have you gloried in appearances and assumptions?

How many times have you neglected orphans and widows?

How many times have you failed to lead decisively, avoided conflict, or neglected to discipline someone?

How many times have you botched the text or “phoned in” the sermon?

How many times have you daydreamed during a counseling session?

How many times have you sacrificed your family on the altar of ministry, or your ministry on the altar of family?

How many times have you listened to the same struggling church member recount the same sins over and over and wanted to just say to them “Shut up, get a life, and leave me alone”?

How many times have you seen the weekly pest approaching your office door and thought he wasn’t worth your time?

How many times have you blown somebody off?

How many times have you thought ministry would be great if it weren’t for the people?

How many times have you resented someone’s valid correction of your hermeneutical mistakes or pastoral missteps, hated them in your heart, and given reign to bitterness against them?

How many times have you bristled because you consider yourself above critique or challenge?

How many times have you envied the pastor across the street for his skill in the pulpit or his way with people or his high attendance or big building or nicer car or better behaved children or hotter wife?

How many times have you measured your church against another?

How many times have you been disgruntled in your heart over your people for being too lazy or too legalistically radical or too something else in between that makes you uncomfortable?

How many times have you frittered working time away on Facebook or Twitter or YouTube?

How many times under stress and exhaustion have you peeked at pornography or lusted after a woman not your wife?

How many times have you failed to confess your sins to another and be held accountable?

How many times have you failed to seek help or seek sharpening or seek counseling?

How many times have you chased countless poisonous idols of approval and validation?

How many times under the weight of the elder’s task have you given in to sloth, greed, and pride?

You and I both know that you have transgressed over and over and over again. And you’re going to stand before a holy God to be judged by these things, according to a stricter standard than all others because you are a pastor, and he will ask you to give an account. And looking back over the failures of your life and ministry, you will grasp at straws. What do you think he will say to you?

“Justified.”

Pastor, Where Is Your Justification?

The elder’s security, control, and glory are in Christ—indeed, they are Christ. And in Christ is our justification for sin and stupidity.

Let’s return to the very first verse of our focus passage, 1 Peter 5:1. Peter identifies himself “as a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed.”

It is curious that Peter says he is “a witness of the sufferings of Christ.” Peter was a witness to many, if not most, of Christ’s earthly accomplishments. He was a part of the inner circle inside the inner circle. He witnessed most of the miracles. He witnessed the transfiguration. He witnessed the empty tomb. He witnessed the ascension. But Peter does not make any of these events or others the focal point of his witness. He issues his qualification as being “a witness of the sufferings of Christ.” This is even more intriguing since Peter messed up his witness of Christ’s suffering. His zealous swordsmanship in the garden at Jesus’s arrest revealed the depths of his misunderstanding of Christ’s mission. And while Jesus’s suffering begins, Peter denies him three times.

Why, then, would Peter pick these moments, his moments of greatest infamy, as his grounds for qualification? Because he knows what Christ’s suffering purchased for him. Total forgiveness, total security, total justification. Peter brings to mind Christ’s death on the cross as the central point in his own pastoral vision and connects this vision to his status as a “partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed.”

Peter is presently partaking in the glory yet to come. Peter is a believer in the gospel.

The pastoral admonitions of 1 Peter 5:1–11 are couched in the gospel proclamations of 1 Peter 5:1–11. The justification in verses 1, 4, and 10–11 reveals the justification from which the exhortations flow.

Because of these realities, Peter is saying, you can do these things. Because you are a present partaker in the glory to be revealed, a future partaker in the crown of glory, and a beneficiary of God’s total saving dominion, you are free and empowered to shepherd the flock of God among you. You are justified in doing so by Christ’s doing so.

Herein is the justification for the sin-prone pastor (by which I mean “pastor”): because of Christ’s perfect work on your behalf, your failure, your daily anxiety, your unwillingness, your stress, your sin, your brokenness, your ineptitude, your ignorance, your awfulness, your regrets, your pride, and your arrogance are no match for the deep and abiding grace of God given to you before time began and now and forevermore.

______________________

[1] Name has been changed.

PART 2

THE PASTOR’S GLORY

Sola Scriptura—

Scripture Alone

Sola Gratia—

Grace Alone

Sola Fide—

Faith Alone

Solus Christus—

Christ Alone

Soli Deo Gloria—

To God Alone Be the Glory

7

THE PASTOR AND THE BIBLE

And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. (Deut. 8:3)

I came of ministry age at the height of the seeker movement. This means that I was taught to craft sermons this way:

- Establish a sermon topic that addresses a felt need.

- Write three to five “how-to” points about that topic.

- Develop illustrations and Bible verses for each point.

As both an intellectual and creative type raised in the church, I was really good at this approach. I didn’t have the theological framework in the beginning to understand that I was treating the Bible like an illustration book; When done well, these lessons were hard work to compose, so it was easy to give myself the impression that I was studying the Bible a lot and working through its teachings with fear and trembling. This was in the days before widespread use of the Internet or even most comprehensive Bible software programs, so just finding Bible verses to match sermon points was no small feat. The best verses used words found in the sermon points, so this involved searching through several concordances and Bible translations.

In the end, what I’d gotten adept at delivering to the poor souls under my care was a body of homiletical work, characterized by legalism, predicated on my own wisdom.

Clever preachers can craft a gospel-centered “how-to” sermon, but they are rare, and most gospel-centered preachers have an aversion to “how-to” sermons to begin with. The reason many of us never realized we were preaching legalism was because we made the mistake of thinking legalism only manifested itself in the negative sense. “Don’t do this, stop doing that.” Or, “If you don’t obey, you will go to hell.”

But, “If you do obey, you will go to heaven” is just as legalistic, even if you’ve lowered the bar of heaven to a successful family, workplace, sex life, or whatever else. “Do these things and thereby reap these rewards” is in essence legalistic. But, again, many of us didn’t realize that, because we thought of legalists as frowning fundamentalists who were always preaching condemnation through disobedience. We were happy “relationship, not religion” people preaching better living through obedience. Nothing legalistic about that.

So it came as a shock when, over time, the fruit of such teaching began to appear. “How-to” sermons are specifically designed to help people become better (read: “more fully devoted”) Christians. Yet as the research data on this relatively young movement began to emerge in the twenty-first century, the findings were discouraging. The attractional, seeker-driven church did not appear to be developing disciples at the rate we thought it was.

Sally Morgenthaler was one of the early proponents of the “worship as evangelism” paradigm of church ministry, but she later began to overhaul her assumptions as the results of the paradigm became more apparent.

For all the money, time, and effort we’ve spent on cultural relevance—and that includes culturally relevant worship—it seems we came through the last 15 years with a significant net loss in churchgoers, proliferation of megachurches and all.[1]

In short, the number of large churches has increased while the number of Christians has not. Many of these churches serve not as covenant communities where Christians can grow together in life and ministry, but as life-stage pit stops for Christians at certain points in their felt needs and desired preferences. Where churches are plenty, families with young children will attend the church with the most appealing children’s ministry. As the children age, they may drift to where the student ministry appears most vital. Once the kids are gone, parents may move on to a place where Dad likes the preaching or Mom likes the music. The church drop-out rate for young adults graduating high school has been placed somewhere near 70 percent, and some of evangelicalism’s best minds think the solution is to continue the common approach of church youth ministry well into college and adult ministry.

The long and short of it appears to be that an entire ministerial enterprise dedicated to meeting felt needs, supplying biblical advice, and providing top-notch production values has quietly become a huge success at drawing crowds but a huge failure at what the Bible actually calls the church to do.

Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois, made waves with the release of their REVEAL survey, a project that disclosed in part that the processes the church had employed to make mature Christians weren’t working. In their research, Willow revealed what they discovered to be the number one catalyst for spiritual growth—Bible study.

Well, what do you think about that?

Sola Scriptura

The seedless fruit of the seeker-driven church movement brings me back to the fundamental malfunction in its teaching paradigm: a legalistic message predicated on human wisdom. Putting some Scriptures in your sermon is not the same thing as preaching the Scriptures.

The pastor must ask himself, “Whose words?” Whose words is he charged with proclaiming? And whose authority is he speaking from?

When Martin Luther nailed his famous Ninety-Five Theses to the Wittenburg Church post, the fires of the Protestant Reformation had already been kindled. He was only serving up a fresh splash of kerosene. The problem niggling at Luther and the Reformers throughout was reflected in this question: “Is the church the infallible authority over the church, or is the revealed Word of God?”

The Roman Catholic Church insists that the church gave us the Scriptures. But the church has only recognized the canon of Scripture. The church has not given us the Scriptures; God has given them to the church in his grace and by his Spirit. Sorting through the relationship between the church and the Bible is what eventually resulted in the Reformational view of sola scriptura, a Latin phrase essentially meaning “Scripture alone.”

Sola scriptura does not mean that the Bible is the only authority over a Christian. In a variety of ways the Christian must be submissive to civil governments, to church leadership, and even to fellow Christians. In addition, a Christian can look to church traditions and creeds and overseers as authorities over his life and doctrine. But sola scriptura means that all these other authorities are subject to the supreme authority of God’s Word. The Bible may not be the only authority in our lives, but it is the only infallible authority, and therefore it is the supreme authority, over any pope or pastor.

Because the Bible is the only infallible authority over our lives, it is pastoral malpractice to treat it as a supporting document for our own good ideas. Our words ought to stand under Scripture, not vice versa. When we come to the biblical text, it is meant to shape us; we are not to shape it. We are the ones to be malleable, not the Bible.

Furthermore, the Bible’s words are authoritative power. Pastors are urged to preach with power, with dynamic quality, with winsomeness, and with eloquence. All these things might be important, but if we trust in our abilities, we ironically diffuse our ability to preach transforming sermons. Only the word of the gospel in the word of Scripture is called the power to save (Rom. 1:16; 1 Cor. 1:18; 2:4; 1 Thess. 1:5).

There is authoritative power to heal and sustain in the Scriptures when well studied and well preached. One prominent pastor has called expository preaching “cheating,” suggesting it is the lazy pastor who seeks to submit his message to the prerogative of the Scriptures. But this is not laziness; it is wisdom. Pastor, you are just as likely to reach burnout through neglect of the Scriptures as you are through ministerial busyness. You need the water from this well early and often. Don’t study as if drinking shots or preach as though dispensing from an eyedropper. Drink deeply, pour out generously.

What Is Preaching?

Contrary to popular wisdom, good preaching has little to do with eloquence, fashion, or the length of a sermon. Good preaching is all about content and posture. By content, I mean, “What is the message about?” and by posture I mean, “How is it about it?”

Film critic Roger Ebert said that a movie is not what it is about, but how it is about it. In other words, what makes a movie bad or good is how it presents its content. Similarly, a preacher can preach on nearly any subject found in the Scriptures so long as he does so in a scriptural posture.

Good preaching goes with the grain of the Bible. So we are not flippant where the Bible is not flippant. We are not angry where the Bible is not angry. We smile where the Bible smiles, and we yell where the Bible yells. (Some preachers only preach smiling sermons or angry sermons, which shows they aren’t really preaching the Scriptures faithfully.) Good preaching is dependent on content (the Scripture’s words) and posture (in their scriptural sense).

That is what good preaching is. But what is preaching itself? Lots of theologians and ministers define preaching in different ways, but I tend to think that preaching is proclamation that exults in the exposing of God’s glory.

Proclamation

Preaching can employ conversation and laid-back chit-chat, but preaching cannot be typified by conversation and chit-chat because it is first and foremost declarative. The Bible does not come with fill-in-the-blanks. It isn’t Mad Libs. Preaching in essence declares, “Thus saith the Lord.”

Because the gospel is good news, not good advice, we come proclaiming “It is finished,” not “Get to work.” Because the gospel is a God-authored story, we come proclaiming his wisdom revealed in Christ, not our wisdom revealed in fortune-cookie bon mots. With our sermons we are to deliver what we’ve received, not what we’ve created:

The soundest and safest Christian reflection consists in “what you have received, not what you have thought up; a matter not of ingenuity, but of doctrine; not of private acquisition, but of public Tradition; a matter brought to you, not put forth by you, in which you must not be the author but the guardian, not the founder but the sharer, not the leader, but the follower.”[2]

Preachers approach God’s Word as its recipient, its servant, and its deliverer, not its author, manager, or marketer. Because our triune God is holy, infinite, almighty, and wise, we preach like he is. Preaching assumes authority from God and from his infallible word. So we don’t preach like ninnies, as if every sentence ends with a question mark. And we preach like we’re at a pulpit even when we’re at a music stand or plexiglass lectern. These words from Lloyd-Jones offer powerful wisdom:

God is not a subject for debate, because He is Who He is and What He is. We are told that the unbeliever, of course, does not agree with that; and that is perfectly true; but that makes no difference. We believe it, and it is part of our very case to assert it. Holding the view that we do, believing what we do about God, we cannot in any circumstances allow Him to become a subject for discussion or of debate or investigation. I base my argument at this point on the word addressed by God Himself to Moses at the burning bush (Ex. 3:1–6). Moses had suddenly seen this remarkable phenomenon of the burning bush, and was proposing to turn aside and to examine this astonishing phenomenon. But, immediately, he is rebuked by the voice which came to him saying, “Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.” That seems to me to be the governing principle in this whole matter. Our attitude is more important than anything that we do in detail, and as we are reminded in the Epistle to the Hebrews, God is always to be approached “with reverence and with godly fear: for our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:28 and 29).

To me this is a very vital matter. To discuss the being of God in a casual manner, lounging in an armchair, smoking a pipe or a cigarette or a cigar, is to me something that we should never allow, because God, as I say, is not a kind of philosophic X or a concept. We believe in the almighty, the glorious, the living God; and whatever may be true of others we must never put ourselves, or allow ourselves to be put, into a position in which we are debating about God as if He were but a philosophical proposition.[3]

I don’t believe we ought to forbid talking about God in any position, whether it be from an armchair or from a ditch on the side of the road, but as it pertains to preaching, Lloyd-Jones’s point is sound and important. We do not approach preaching casually unless we approach God casually. We can make jokes about ourselves and be self-deprecating when we preach, because we do not “preach ourselves.” In the preaching ministry, we take ourselves lightly and the Word of God heavily.

We preach the terrors of God’s wrath as if they are terrifying, we preach the joys of God’s salvation as if they are joyful. We preach hell in serious, sober ways, neither being glib about it nor speaking as if it is the only word. And we preach the gospel in declarative ways, bold and certain and full of Christ’s glory.

Proclamation That Exults

Preaching is proclamation that exults. As I’ve said, preaching takes the content of the text and proclaims it according to the posture of the text. Preaching is fundamentally an act of worship. We don’t stop worshiping when the music is done. We keep worshiping during the preaching of God’s Word, and we hope our preacher is worshiping as he’s preaching God’s Word.

Preaching is a kind of singing in itself. Not literally, of course, but in its declaration of God’s worth and work, it is a worshipful projection of God’s anthem of his own awesomeness. When we preach with exultation, we are out-singing the enemy and giving voice to the wordless groaning and declaration of creation.

Preaching that exults necessarily entails a preacher who understands his sermon text in the spiritual sense. His affections have been charged and shaped by the text. He feels the Scripture he is preaching. In the crucible of his daily life, he is dedicated to the Bible generally, and in his prayerful, watchful, thoughtful study and preparation in his office, specifically, his heart is broken by and filled with the text. This is a Spiritual work, and the preacher is praying all along that it will happen for him and for his hearers.

He ascends to the pulpit, then, carrying the mantle of God’s call and prepared to joyfully work and seriously play, to preach what John Piper calls “gravity and gladness,” but not to mess around.[4] He’s not throwing things out to see what will stick. He is playing his instrument and launching arrows. Like Nehemiah’s men, he is building the wall with a trowel in one hand and a sword in the other.

The gospel-centered preacher is not blasé or boisterous. He is exultational. If he is impressed with himself, this won’t work. But if he is awed by God, he might find the jet stream of the text and ride it into rapture. The Spirit may grant him unction, but even if the Spirit doesn’t, the gospel-centered preacher knows he has not exulted in vain. God’s Word will have its purposed effect according to the wisdom of God.

Proclamation That Exults in the Exposing

Preaching is exultational proclamation in a text that is taught. In other words, preaching is not simply reciting the Scriptures with feeling (although it can and should include such work); it also explains the Scriptures. Nehemiah and Ezra’s epic project required that proclaimers not merely read the Law, but teach it. “They read from the book, from the Law of God, clearly, and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading” (Neh. 8:8). Jesus “interpreted” to the disciples in the Scriptures all the things concerning himself (Luke 24:27). He didn’t simply recite the Bible; he “gave the sense.”

This is what is generally meant by the label “expository preaching” (or “expositional preaching”). Jonathan Leeman explains:

One thing is definitive for an expositional sermon: It lays out the meaning and purpose of a biblical text clearly. It says, “Here is the point of this text, and it’s relevant to you, no matter who you are, where you are from, or what’s happening in your life right now.” The preacher concentrates all his powers on reproducing the burden of the Bible in the hearts and minds of the people, and he avoids letting anything in his person get in the way of that goal.[5]

Expository preaching can involve a variety of means of exposition: message points (with or without alliteration or acronyms, of course), stories and illustrations, and quotes and scholarly interpretations, but expository preaching is primarily about sticking to the text to reveal what the text says and what the text means.

Expository preaching does not have to be rigid verse-by-verse preaching. In fact, many times verse-by-verse preaching can end up obscuring the meaning of the text, because it may reflect a lack of immediate context or a disconnect from the Bible’s larger story line. So not all expository sermons “give the sense” of the Scriptures, which is the overarching truth that God saves sinners through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. As Jesus walked with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, he showed them all the things in the Scriptures pertaining to himself. Christ provides a motivational template for Christ-centered preaching. This means it is possible to preach a message from Leviticus in an unchristian way.

What expository preaching aims to do is explicate what the text means, expound on how it applies to the lives of the hearers, and explain its connection to the gospel story line of the entire Bible.

Proclamation That Exults in the Exposing of God’s Glory

Moses says, “Please show me your glory” (Ex. 33:18). Deep down, this is the cry of every human heart. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says eternity is written there.

The gospel of God’s glory in Christ must be central in our preaching because nothing else even comes close to filling the eternal gap.

We all agree that fallen man has a “God-shaped hole,” but many pastors suggest all kinds of fillers that are not God—financial success, good sex, promotions at work, healthy relationships, happy spouses and children, community service, outlets for our creativity, etc. These might be good things, but they’re all things you can have and do and still be eternally bankrupt.

Our scale is far too small. The Bible speaks to all manner of good things useful to men, but the church is starving (starving!) for the glory of God. We too easily forget that the gospel covers the scale of eternity, that it is the division between real life and death, and that God is infinite and our sin is a condemnation-worthy offense against an eternally holy God. We preach and we settle for much less than, “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!” (Rom. 11:33).

Every week people file into our church services aching for eternity. In our zeal to provide something they may find comfortable and useful and inoffensive, are we offending the God who wishes to offend us in awe of his glory? Are we dismissing our brother Jesus, whose formula for victory includes crucifixion?

The scale is enormous, the stakes are high. Instead of spiritually dressing up the idols we know people want, let’s give them what they need—God as all in all, the filling of the Spirit, the exaltation of the risen Lord. “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God” (1 John 3:1). That should be the chief service of our worship services—beholding. Behold our glorious God and his lavishing of grace on us in his precious Son.

When we “expose” what God’s Word means, how it applies to our lives, and what it reveals about his saving purposes in Christ, we are showing his glory.

We are aiming for awe of God. Preaching advice is a poor means to that end. We want the Lamb to be beheld, so we must hold him up high and long. We proclaim not helpful hints but eternal visions. We can’t do this if we are making the Bible’s words serve our words. Biblical preaching trusts that the Bible can be set loose to work its power.

Brothers, isn’t it wonderful that we are set free from the tyranny of our good ideas to the power of the Bible’s good news?

What Happens When the Scriptures Are Preached

It sometimes appears that preaching the Scriptures has no demonstrable effect on the hearers. And in truth, this is often the case. The Bible shows us plenty of examples, and it speaks to the Spiritual reality behind the gospel’s power to save. Preaching and sharing the gospel is sometimes like tossing a ping-pong ball to a statue.

Jesus gives parables that people will either understand or won’t. He preaches hard texts, and people disappear in droves. The difference is made by the softness of their spiritual senses. Isaiah is sent to minister to a people who will not listen. Moses is sent to preach to Pharaoh, who will be hardened. The prophets cry out to generations that do not take God’s word to heart.

It very often has nothing to do with a pastor’s rhetorical ability, conversational style, or production values. Paul simply tells Timothy that sometimes the word is “in season” and sometimes it’s “out of season” (2 Tim. 4:2). The problem is not with the seed but with the soil. Sometimes it’s the preacher who is “out of season.” If we are in places where we are not called, or if God has willed us to be in a place where others enjoy success while we suffer failures, even while preaching and leading faithfully, it is only because he wants to conform us more to the image of Christ, who was despised and rejected.

But sometimes it goes the other way. We are in season and the word is in season in a particular place at the same time. I was once in a place where many enjoyed the success of gospel-centered ministry, but I did not. The problem was not with the word. But in my particular ministry, the preached word was regarded like the arrival of a UFO, only much less interesting.

In my current ministry context, church attendance has increased steadily. People are finding freedom in Christ. Our giving frequently outpaces our budgeted need each month. People are excited, sparkling about the eyes and bringing their lost friends. We’re baptizing adults and enjoying the gurgles of babies in the service.

And I am not doing a thing differently than I did in the lean days. I’m in a different place, sure, and I minister to different people, but my preaching, my counseling, my leadership, and everything else is the same ol’, same ol’. I am the same guy stubbornly doing the exact same thing. I am insanely repeating the same “methods” and expecting different results. And it appears to be working. This proves to me it has nothing to do with me (which is quite liberating, actually).

There is an “in season” and an “out of season.”

In my pride, I wish I could take credit for having devised a new system or appropriated the right model. When I am tempted (often) to glory in accomplishments and visible signs of success, I remind myself of those agonizing floor-of-the-foyer moments in the olden days, when I wanted to trust in the stuff God takes away as easily as he gives. I recalibrate my spirit on the gospel often, beating it into my head continually so that faithfulness to its proclamation is my measure of fidelity, my gauge of success. Everything else can be taken away like that.

What I remind myself is that we are not charged with creating fruitfulness but preaching the Word. The growth is up to God. Luther remarked that he simply studied and taught and then the Reformation happened while he was sleeping or drinking beer.

Brothers, let us be faithful to simply, as Spurgeon said, open the cage and let the lion defend itself. The word will not return void in God’s time. The gospel will create its glorious disorder among God’s people according to the movements of his Spirit. And when the gospel takes hold, when God signals that the word is now “in season,” the results are glorious and indicative of the gospel’s power to build and restore.

We aim in our “how-to” talks to impart uprightness, but it’s the Bible that gives us backbone. The gospel creates order, even as it stirs up a sort of disorder. Notice what kind of people flocked to Jesus, but also what he said to them and how they responded.

When a church is faithful to preach the gospel and demonstrate the gospel’s implications, it will usually find that it attracts and is attracted to the kind of people Jesus attracted and was attracted to. People who are, shall we say, rough around the edges.

The gospel well preached and applied will make ministry messy. Things will change. I often think of it like the beating of a rug—you’re gonna get a lot of dust in the air. There will be a thick cloud. The gospel stirs stuff up. But our God is not an author of confusion. So as things get messy, while the gospel is creating a safe space for sins, hurts, and struggles to rise to the surface, it is outlining that space really well. The same gospel that exposes mess creates order.

How? In a gospel-centered church, one will find:

Leaders who are humble and confident and grace-ready.

Church members who are grace-ready.

Opportunities for counsel.

Opportunities for discipleship.

Biblical church governance, church membership, and church discipline.

A safe space is not an amorphous, undefined space. The gospel brings junk up and then sorts junk out.

I recall from my days in a “how-to”-sermons church, which grew to nearly four thousand in attendance, that we constantly struggled to maintain small groups and Bible studies. We had a difficult time finding competent teachers. Ironically enough, we were regularly dispensing tips for growth, and very few people were growing into maturity. This is the result of legalistic messages predicated on human wisdom. The Scriptures preached with conviction, however, do what good religious advice cannot, ensuring “that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:17).

The Word of God is a creative force. So we can expect that in a church where the Scriptures are preached faithfully, the membership structure is becoming more clear and more healthy, the experience of community in groups, classes, life-on-life togetherness, fellowship, and hospitality is becoming more pronounced, the leadership is biblical and qualified and becoming more humble, the theological understanding is becoming stronger, the dedication to the sacraments is increasing and deepening, and the enjoyment of God’s glory is becoming more expansive and more liberating from doubt, discouragement, and sin.

Only the Word of God brings real freedom.

Preaching Freedom to the Captives

There is a powerful moment in the Stephen Spielberg film Amistad in which a group of slaves is being tried for a rebellion aboard their slave ship. It gives me goose bumps. The African slaves are largely lost to all that is going on around and about them, because they don’t understand English. But little by little, the more observant among them have picked up the meaning of a few English words, and some even discern the outline of the story of Christ from pictures in a Bible given to them. During a particularly heated courtroom scene in the film, as white men debate the innocence and guilt of these largely clueless Africans, one of the imprisoned men, Cinque, begins to softly chant, “Give us free.” The chant gains strength; Cinque gets more bold. As the judge bangs his gavel, and the court’s attendants demand order, Cinque rises to stand, shouting, demanding, “Give us free! Give us free!”

Legalistic messages predicated on human wisdom are an insidious trick to keep people in bondage. We don’t mean them that way, but that is the effect. It doesn’t matter if they sound comforting, if we deliver them in blue jeans from stools with lattes in our hands and conclude them with a movie clip. They only prolong spiritual captivity.

When the sunlight of Christ, the radiance of God’s glory, broke into the dungeon of my soul, I finally knew what I’d been trying to ask for all along: the all-satisfaction of Christ in his gospel. I have heard from many others since I began writing about gospel centrality, so I know I’m not alone in this experience. I was asking for help, for rescue, for restoration, for happiness. Suddenly, in the Spirit’s awakening of me to the gospel, I knew I had been asking for all of Jesus.

Perhaps you’ve been there too. Like Amistad’s Cinque we find our mouths fumbling about with words previously unknown. But they must come out. The routine and rigmarole of daily life—even of church life—begins to grate. What are we doing on these Sunday mornings when we entertain all our senses with showmanship, but not our souls with Christ?

One Sunday morning, my heart could take it no longer. I had tasted and seen that the Lord was good and couldn’t accept stones for bread anymore. I ached inside. It was too much to keep on keepin’ on. That is when I turned to my wife and whispered, “I can’t do this anymore.”

So, pastors, I speak as one of you who was once one of them: Will you continue to preach in such a way that you are tempting your people to finally throw up their chained hands and demand freedom? Are you going on about the business of religious busywork, as dynamic and heartwarming as it may sound, and neglecting the very power that provides the freedom to run for the prize?

As we prepare not just for Sunday sermons but for the entire life of our ministry, let us plan with this heart-cry foremost in our minds: “Give us free!” Don’t make your people beg you to give them free. Give them free at every opportunity. Give them the glorious, infallible, authoritative, powerful Bible.

______________________

[1] Sally Morgenthaler, “Worship as Evangelism,” Rev.org (May/June 2007), http://www.rev.org/article.asp?ID=2409.

[2] Vincent of Lerins, quoted in Christopher Hall, Learning Theology with the Church Fathers (Intervarsity, 2002), 27.

[3] D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), 58.

[4] John Piper, The Supremacy of God in Preaching (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2007).

[5] Jonathan Leeman, Reverberation: How God’s Word Brings Light, Freedom, and Action to His People (Chicago: Moody, 2011), 114.

8

THE PASTOR AND GOD’S GRACE

And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified. (Acts 20:32)

Can you imagine attending classes on the mechanics and operation of automobiles for the rest of your life but never actually driving a car?

Or, imagine your father one day gives you a car. Now imagine that the car has no gas tank or battery. All the driving tips in the world wouldn’t make that car go.

This is what we do when we orient the message of our churches around steps to success in the Christian life instead of the gospel of God’s grace in Christ. It is liking giving a lot of instructions on how to drive a car to people who do not have cars. Or handing out to people cars that have no gas tanks.

People need to know what God’s law says, but we need to remember that the law cannot produce obedience to itself. When we center on the law—which is what we do when we center on how-to’s—it is like cracking a whip over a dead body. Ain’t no amount of whip-crackin’ that will raise a dead man up. John Bunyan’s little poem says it sweetly:

Run, John, run. The law commands

But gives neither feet nor hands.

Better news the gospel brings;

It bids us fly and gives us wings.[1]

The gospel of grace is the power of salvation, which includes our definitive justification, our progressive sanctification, and our future glorification. The pastor’s commitment in the pulpit until the day he dies, then, ought to be to the theme of Christ’s redeeming love. But it ought to be our theme out of the pulpit too.

In Working the Angles, Eugene Peterson writes about the functional Pelagianism of many:

We are, most of us, Augustinians in our pulpits. We preach the sovereignty of our Lord, the primacy of grace, the glory of God: “By grace are ye saved . . . Not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9, KJV). But the minute we leave our pulpits we are Pelagians. In our committee meetings and our planning sessions, in our obsessive attempts to meet the expectations of people, in our anxiety to please, in our hurry to cover all the bases, we practice a theology that puts our good will at the foundation of life and urges moral effort as the primary element in pleasing God.

The dogma produces the behavior characteristic of the North American pastor: if things aren’t good enough, they will improve if I work a little harder and get others to work harder. Add a committee here, recruit some more volunteers there, squeeze a couple of hours more into the workday.

Pelagius was an unlikely heretic; Augustine an unlikely saint. By all accounts, Pelagius was urbane, courteous, convincing. Everyone seems to have liked him immensely. Augustine squandered away his youth in immorality, had some kind of Freudian thing with his mother, and made a lot of enemies. But all our theological and pastoral masters agree that Augustine started from God’s grace and therefore had it right, and Pelagius started from human effort and therefore got it wrong. . . . How did it happen that Pelagius became our master?

Our closet Pelagianism will not get us excommunicated or burned at the stake, but it cripples our pastoral work severely . . . it is catastrophic to the church’s wholeness and health.[2]

This is the main reason why a pastor who preaches grace but is not otherwise fixated on it or captivated by it can often be a cranky sourpuss among his congregation, or worse. Many of us know of churches that make a big deal out of their commitment to “sovereign grace” but have a gracelessly stifling communal climate. Some of the most theologically robust devotees of the doctrines of grace are some of the biggest jerks you’ll ever meet. Similarly, plenty of the casual, laid-back, “come as you are” kind of ministry leaders can be some of the most narcissistic, image-managing, Type-A control freaks you’ll ever meet. In both cases there is the appearance of grace but the denial of its power.

The pastor who views grace as an idea or philosophy is headed to hollow success in the best of cases, or weakness and burnout in the worst. He needs grace not as a big idea or mere ministerial philosophy but as power, which is to say he needs the Spirit of Christ manifest in his soul.

Sola Gratia

The Reformational tenet of sola gratia means that we are saved only by God’s grace, not by our effort. Paul proclaims this truth emphatically in Ephesians 2:8–9. We are not saved by any combination of God’s grace and our effort. If that were the case, “grace would no longer be grace” (Rom. 11:6).

Sola gratia applies to the work of pastoral ministry the same way it applies to the Christian life. It is like the little disclaimer on our gas tank that says “Unleaded Fuel Only.” Your car is telling you that it will run only on unleaded gasoline. God in his word is telling us that we will run only on grace. Even the nicest and most successful and most admirable of do-gooders, apart from God’s grace, goes straight to hell.

We have to help our churches understand what grace is. Many Christians have the mistaken notion that grace is a variety of Christian niceness or tolerance. Even a cursory reading of Paul’s letter to the Galatians ought to dismiss such superficial ideas.

Grace can result in niceness, but in fact is not itself niceness. Some think that grace means “not judging,” by which they mean “not telling anybody they are sinning” (or at the least, hemming and hawing around a way of telling them that). But grace compels righteous judgments and biblical discernments. Grace can result in furious anger (as we see in Galatians) because it is motivated by love, and this means grace might look like making sure a wife beater is in jail and a paroled child molester is never left unsupervised. These severe mercies are acts of grace to victims but also to offenders, as they help sinners not sin. That is grace too.

In fact, it is sola gratia that helps us navigate all these rough waters. Because committing to grace alone keeps us out of the modes of men’s wisdom and men’s power, it tunes us in to the wisdom of Christ and the power of Christ. We can filter our difficult decisions and missional emphases through the question, “What would make Jesus look big?” That filter is a way to be “grace only” about our ministry.

Grace is the premise that salvation is all of God through all of Christ for all of us. There’s no wiggle room for smuggling in even a bit of law or good advice. The sign on the fuel door says “Grace Only.”

Departure Dangers from Grace Alone

Paul writes, “Only let us hold true to what we have attained” (Phil. 3:16). A commitment to the operating principle of sola gratia in life and ministry is what many of us call “being gospel-centered.”

There are lots of distractions from and temptations to discard a commitment to gospel-centeredness. Here are a few.

The Devil’s Accusation

Every now and then I hear some variation of this accusation from the Evil One: “How can you go on and on about the gospel? You’re a self-righteous hypocrite.” Satan often tries to stifle gospel proclamation by reminding the proclaimer of his unworthiness. The specific accusation may change, but the motive is the same: get the gospel-centered preacher off his game. If the Devil can get us to doubt our calling, our legitimacy as ministers, our capability as proclaimers, or merely our authorization to present the gospel, he knows he’s closer to getting the gospel unheard.

The Devil’s Insinuation

This word from the Accuser is one I hear more often than any other: “This gospel stuff is going to get old. Don’t you think if you play this same old record every day people are going to get tired of it?” The Devil would love to convince us that the gospel is not versatile or resilient, that it is not the everyday power of salvation for all who believe.

Exasperation

Many times we are tempted to depart from gospel-centrality because we are fed up in not seeing the results we want or expect. Don’t do that. Don’t give up. In due season, if we stay faithful, we will reap a harvest according to God’s timing, not ours.

Rationalization

One distinguishing mark of heresy is just how reasonable it sounds. Paul warns not of wild-eyed malarkey but plausible arguments (Col. 2:4). Some very sincere, honest, intelligent people who have been believers for a long time say that the gospel-centered stuff is all very nice but they know the gospel already, and what they really need to know is what the Bible says about getting out of debt or surviving the workplace. Sounds totally reasonable, no? Law-drivenness almost always does, and legalism rarely shows up these days in a three-piece suit, red face, and fist pounding on a pulpit, but rather in sweetness and light, from faithful tithers with kids in the youth group.

Accommodation

The rationalizers may not be able to get you to abandon gospel-centrality altogether, so they will instead try to get you to adopt “gospel plus.” They’re not saying to stop with the gospel stuff, they’re just saying you need to be, you know, balanced. “Give us the gospel, sure, but also some of this and that too,” they say. But Jesus plus anything is not Jesus. Our people need the unadjusted, unadulterated gospel. They need it straight up, not mixed in some fruity moralism/grace cocktail.

Minimization

Gospel minimization comes in a variety of forms, and it is itself a form of the error of accommodation. One claim gospel-minimizers make is that the gospel is not as important as other things. They claim it’s the ABCs of the Christian life, perhaps, but what Christians really need to mature is the meat of “deeper teaching,” which can encompass anything from systematic theology to eschatological speculation. Very often minimization comes in the form of gospel obfuscation, by which I mean the insistence that we simply imply the gospel to make seekers more comfortable, or tack it on to the end of a sermon in a public invitation, or save it for a special sermon series or other special occasions. Sometimes minimizers want to dress up the gospel with songs from the radio, dance productions, cool videos, lasers, fog, stage-jumping acrobats, glowstick wielding ravers, or any number of other things the idol factory of our hearts haven’t even manufactured yet. Once you begin minimizing the gospel, you find it can’t get small enough for somebody’s taste.

Irritation

The same sun that melts the ice, they say, hardens the clay. Some people will just be flat-out offended or irritated by gospel-centered preaching, teaching, counseling, and ministry. A fear of man may lead us to acquiesce to their disgruntlement to keep the peace.

Insulation

Here is a departure-from-the-gospel danger we don’t often prepare for. A steady dose of faithful, robust gospel preaching will likely attract fringe-y people. Jesus had a way of attracting “those people.” So it is today when Jesus is preached faithfully. If you commit to preaching the biblical Jesus and the radical grace of his gospel, you ought to commit to accumulating the kind of people that were attracted to Jesus during his earthly ministry. And God willing, if your church grows from gospel preaching, it will change. You have no choice there. It must change. To grow is to change. And then what happens is that people who’ve been with the church a long time, people who may have been a part of your core or at least your core supporters and cheerleaders, may begin to turn on you. Because their church is looking different. Things are changing. And people don’t tend to like change. Because the gospel enables us to obey the Great Commandment and empowers us to join the Great Commission, insulation is the enemy of the gospel.

Pastor, you will find out your church’s idols by changing things.

And you will join the Spirit in driving out the idols by committing to sola gratia.

Seeding the Gospel

Once upon a time, a fellow in our church shared his testimony with me. He said he used to take his young family to church because he figured it was a good thing to do. He said that he’d attended there for two years, sitting week in and week out under gospel preaching, before finally one Sunday it occurred to him: “I’m a sinner! I need this gospel!”

I imagine the internal struggle of his pastor for those two years. I know it well myself. Ever preached the gospel dickens out of a text in front of a crowd of stoic rural New Englanders? My lands, it can keep a preacher humble! (And the assorted experiences of gospel wakefulness can keep a preacher hopeful.) But the gospel can warm up any church, Lord willing.

What are we doing when we commit to gospel-centered preaching and teaching in the face of nonapparent results? Every chance we get, we hold up Jesus Christ as preeminent and precious, we exult in his glorious excellencies, and we present the gospel boldly, clearly, and with unction. Still nary a crack in the surface of reception. It is like preaching, as they say, to a brick wall.

Should we switch things up? Try another tack? Measurable nonresults is one of the reasons so many churches tuck the gospel behind fog and lasers or adjust their teaching to the “7 Steps” busywork of moralistic therapeutic deism. I mean, isn’t the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?

Yes.

Brothers, let us be “out of our minds” (see 2 Cor. 5:13) together on this. Let’s preach the word in and out of season. Let’s commit to the utter foolishness of preaching (1 Cor. 1:23), understanding that sometimes God puts us on purpose before a crowd whom the gospel hardens, not softens (Isa. 6:8–10).

There may be other reasons (fixable or not, adjustable or not) why we see little fruit, but it will never be because the gospel is being preached.

The pastoral imperative, then, is to get the gospel indicative into every nook and cranny of church life as we can. We want to be seeding grace in every space. We pastors want a ministerial technology, but the gospel that creates order does not thrive in programmatic rigidity. It blossoms in the spaces of ordinary life and interaction. It arrives not out of processes and programs but out of preaching and praying.

Here is a good exchange from Total Church by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis:

The need for gospel intentionality means that leaders must work hard to create and reinforce this gospel culture. I remember speaking at a conference about ordinary life with gospel intentionality. Questioner after questioner asked me about the structures that needed to be in place. But you cannot program ordinary life! “When do you do evangelism?” people asked. “When do you pastor one another?” “While I do the washing up” did not seem to satisfy them, but it was the only answer I could give! All this requires people who are proactively committed to speaking the gospel to unbelievers (and other Christians).[3]

That is the blueprint for a proactive seeding of the gospel in the life of a covenant community. We see this exemplified in the ministry of Christ, who never appeared busy architecting an institution but instead was teaching, moving, and teaching as he moved. This is not to say that institutions can’t be helpful, only that they are a trellis upon which the vine grows. But building a trellis does not generate a vine.

A community whose culture is gospel-intentioned is the antidote to programmed discipleship, where “church” is not the people but a set of programs and activities, and is relegated to fitting into the sovereignty of people’s schedules.

The seeding of the gospel into the life of the church begins in the pulpit preaching but extends to the messages of our classes and counseling, our children’s ministry and our singles’ fellowships, our private friendships and our public platforms. From top down and side to side, we want the grace of God to radiate with Christ’s glory over every aspect of church life.

Forcing the Issue

Remember, pastor, what you win them with is what you win them to. And yet, we are always drifting away from the gospel of grace.

As a pastor committed to gospel-centrality, it can be frustrating and distressing to relearn every day how difficult it is for people to “get it.” Every day in gospel-centered ministry is a new lesson in “Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive” (Isa. 6:9).

This is not a deficiency of pulpit preaching, because people seem very good at remembering the parts they want to remember, and the gospel is the primary message of everything else I do, from counseling to children’s talks to friendly chit-chat to Facebook status updates and the like. Still, many seem pathologically devoted to anything warm and fuzzy that is not the gospel. “If I just stay positive, things will be okay.” Well, no, they won’t. And I’ve told you that a billion times. “If I just pray more, my life wouldn’t be so difficult.” Are we reading the same Bible? “Just keep hoping; that’s all we’ve got.” That doesn’t even make sense.

My least favorite times are when those who hear the gospel clearly articulated on a regular basis couldn’t tell you in their own words what the gospel is.

In the Scriptures we find the phrase “lay it to heart” or “take it to heart.” We find that there are many who hear the words of God, but they never lay them to heart. We’re still failing to do that, and I think every fleshly bit of us is still attracted to anything shiny. We’re like babies this way, or cats. Anything that smells of the cross activates the reverse polarity of our flesh.

We must force the issue. With ourselves first, and then with our churches.

“Let us fix our eyes on Jesus” (Heb. 12:2 NIV). Martin Luther’s instructions to the minister are sobering and helpful:

Here I must take counsel of the gospel. I must hearken to the gospel, which teacheth me, not what I ought to do, (for that is the proper office of the law,) but what Jesus Christ the Son of God hath done for me: to wit, that he suffered and died to deliver me from sin and death. The gospel willeth me to receive this, and to believe it. And this is the truth of the gospel. It is also the principal article of all Christian doctrine, wherein the knowledge of all godliness consisteth. Most necessary it is, therefore, that we should know this article well, teach it unto others, and beat it into their heads continually.[4]

We are not automatically set to gospel mode, so we all need help in constantly resetting to grace.

What does the power of grace do to a church? Paul gives us a clue: “We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians; our heart is wide open. You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections. In return (I speak as to children) widen your hearts also” (2 Cor. 6:11–13).

An open mind—if by that we mean a discerning mind that tests all things and clings to what is good—is a very good thing. But it must be partners with an open heart. A wide open heart. An open heart is much preferable to what the world considers an “open mind.” The point of an open mind, like an open mouth—paraphrasing G. K. Chesterton here—is to shut it again on something solid. Or, if you prefer Steve Taylor, don’t be so open-minded that your brain leaks out. If your mind is closed in the right way, shut on the solid things of Scripture, an open heart makes a lot of difference.

What does an open heart look like? It probably doesn’t wear its feelings on its sleeves, but is certainly transparent in its dispositions. An open heart has developed a thick skin but remains tenderhearted. It’s funny how that works.

An open heart feels no compulsion to self-protect or put on airs. An open heart sees no advantage in putting up a facade. An open heart knows it is hidden with Christ in God, so there is nothing left to hide. An open heart bleeds out grace. An open heart is generous with its affections. An open heart is missional with its passions. An open heart is hospitable to the joys and pains of others. It rejoices with those who rejoice and weeps with those who weep. An open heart sits across the table from another open heart and does not check its watch.

An open heart feels the circumstances it finds itself in but, inhabited by the Holy Spirit, is tuned to the deeper frequency of the gospel’s indomitable joy.

A heart wide open speaks freely—and love comes out.

At the end of every Middletown Springs worship service, after we’ve corporately prayed a blessing over our community and sung the doxology, I dismiss my congregation with these words: “I love you.” Why? Well, because I love my church! I look at them and I can’t help saying it. But I make it a discipline to say, “I love you,” so they know it’s okay to say such things to people who aren’t children or spouses; so they know that their pastor, who might have been challenging them or even rebuking them in the midst of proclaiming the gospel to them, does so out of love; and so they will have a reference point for the freeness I feel to cry, laugh, walk around, yell, whisper, and do all the other sorts of things that may be involved in exulting in the Scriptures. Over the last year or so, I’ve started to hear more and more, “We love you too,” from a few corners.

They are widening their hearts also.

______________________

[1] Quoted in Jerry Bridges, The Discipline of Grace (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1994), 90.

[2] Eugene Peterson, Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 73–74.

[3] Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, Total Church: A Radical Reshaping Around Gospel and Community (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008), 64.

[4] Martin Luther, A Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (Philadelphia: Smith, English, and Co., 1860), 206.

9

THE PASTOR AND HIS FAITH

Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.” (Gal. 3:11)

It is said that one day Martin Luther ascended the Lateran staircase in Rome, the steps of which had apparently been brought from Pilate’s palace in Jerusalem because they had been made holy by the feet of Christ. Pilgrims would come from far away to climb the steps in penance and abasement, many times on their knees. That fateful day when Luther was making his absolution, tormented by religious anxiety, a verse came to his mind like lightning. Habakkuk 2:4: “The righteous shall live by his faith.” (It is also quoted by Paul in Rom. 1:17 and Gal. 3:11.)

According to Luther’s son, in that moment Luther felt born again. The gift of life received through faith had infiltrated his heart, vanquishing the idols of legalism and the flesh. The “nothingness” of faith made a hospitable home for the Holy Spirit, where all the religious furniture in the world could not.

The place of faith in the life of a pastor is crucial. Indeed, he will not live without faith. But many of us try.

Wanted: Ordinary Men, Mostly Losers

What kind of men is God looking for to serve as the Good Shepherd’s undershepherds? People who “walk by sight” (see 2 Cor. 5:7) want the Type-A guerrilla evangelist from the pastorpreneurial tribe. But it wasn’t always that way. Michael Horton explains:

Whereas Peter organized the diaconal office so that the apostles could devote themselves to the Word and to prayer, ideal ministers seem increasingly to be managers, therapists, entertainers, and entrepreneurial businesspeople.

Open up the average issue of Christianity Today to advertisements for pastoral positions and you’ll find descriptions like “team builder,” “warm and personal style,” “outgoing,” “contagious personality,” and “effective communicator.” (Catholic friends tell me that something like this affects Catholicism, too.)

I think they’re looking for a Director of Sales and Marketing, whom they may (or may not) call “Pastor.” I’m not against directors of sales and marketing; I just don’t think that this is what we should be looking for in the way of shepherds.

We wouldn’t have had Paul, for example. Who, having advertised for an outgoing team builder with a contagious personality, would have hired a pastor who openly disclosed the fact that he was not a great communicator, suffered everywhere he was sent, was nearly blind, and lacked the natural charisma of the “super-apostles,” who were only too happy to point out these weaknesses themselves?

Perhaps, like the immature and sectarian Corinthians (1 Cor. 3:5–9), we celebrate the extraordinary minister more than the ordinary ministry of the gospel.[1]

Horton has hit the nail squarely on the head.

Remember that when Moses was sorting through his available skills and qualifications, God did not seem bothered in the slightest by Moses’s mediocrity, and in fact sort of implied that that was an asset.

As if it weren’t bad enough that many churches seek out pastors without being sticklers for the biblical qualifications for eldership; now they have to invent new qualifications alien to the Scriptures. The pastor search teams conduct their process by sight, not by faith.

I am grateful for Middletown Springs Community Church because they took a leap of faith with me. At the time I was interviewing with them, I had no publishing credits and no impressive resume. My ministry history was nothing to write home about, and there was in fact a gap of time where I was in no professional ministry position at all. Because of my freelance writing work, a few of the names in my reference list would have been recognizable in the larger evangelical media world, but they were not recognizable to these good folks in rural Vermont. This place is a bit out of that loop.

Likewise, if I were looking to establish a ministerial career and put myself in the best position to build my publishing platform, I should have stayed in Nashville, the Mecca of American evangelicalism. Instead, I was drawn to these humble people in this little town in this largely missionally neglected state. I don’t wish to sound noble about that; I had no idea what lay ahead for me and for my family. What we did was considered foolish by some, and one friend flat-out told me that I’d “kill my career” if I moved here.

I’d never even visited New England until I first visited the church to meet the people and preach “in view of a call.” We are Southern people. I am from Texas, and my wife is from Louisiana. Uprooting our family to begin again in Vermont made no sense, except in faith.

What the church and I did was trust God together. None of us could see the future, and some of them were concerned that as a young pastor I might be looking at their church as a stepping-stone to greener pastures. I was concerned they would realize that I don’t really know what I’m doing and tend to find landmines by stepping on them. But in faith, our relationship began, and by faith our relationship continues.

This does not mean, of course, that churches that hire and presbyteries and denominational agencies that place should do so without consideration and assessment of the pastoral candidates. It only means that too often our grounds for consideration and assessment are things the Bible cares virtually nothing about and that faith ought to overcome.

We have to stop being drawn to flashy things. Flashy things tend to burn out quickly. And as many have learned, extraordinary gifts can take a man where paltry character cannot keep him.

When a church and her pastor walk by faith, they are prepared to count all things loss for the sake of Christ, including machismo, dynamism, extraordinary credentials, impressive references, and public platforms. Every good thing God gives he can take away. And successful ministry—if we can call it that—is made not in achievements, but in faith.

When God calls a man, he calls him to come lose himself, and so it is no wonder that the most eager of those called tend to already know what it is like to lose. The Beatitudes help us see the upside-down ethos of the kingdom of God. To preach the good news of his kingdom and build legacies of faith, Jesus is looking primarily for losers.

Sola Fide

The hallmark of the Reformational tradition is perhaps this tenet of the five solas—sola fide, which means “faith alone.” We are saved by God’s grace alone received by us through our faith alone (Eph. 2:8–9).

Now, just as sola Scriptura does not mean that Scripture is the only authority in a Christian’s life (just the ultimate and only infallible authority), sola fide does not mean that all Christians need to be saved is some disembodied intellectual assent. This is the controversial point that James makes in the second chapter of his epistle. The way many Reformed scholars and preachers have put it is this: We are justified by our faith alone, but not by faith that is alone. It is impossible, then, to have faith and not have works corresponding to that faith. That would be nonsensical. Faith, then, would not be faith. Yet we are not justified by our works, but by our faith, which is evidenced by our works.

While we can often make this distinction pertaining to definitive justification, however, it can be a difficult thing to maintain this distinction throughout the Christian life. When Martin Luther recalled Habakkuk 2:4—“The righteous shall live by his faith”—he was not just bringing to mind the new life experienced at conversion but also the new life experienced day to day thereafter. When an unsaved person, by God’s grace, exercises faith in Jesus Christ alone, he suddenly lives by faith. And when a saved person, by God’s grace, exercises faith each day in Jesus Christ alone, he is living by faith.

Sola fide is not just for justification, but also for the working out of our justification in the ongoing work of sanctification. It is not as though what has begun by faith is now continued by works (Gal. 3:3). Here is another gem from Spurgeon:

Oh that we might always live so that the Lord might see in all our actions that they spring from faith. Then shall our actions as well as ourselves be always accepted of Him by Christ Jesus, for the Lord has plainly declared, “the just shall live by faith; but if any man draws back, My soul shall have no pleasure in him”—that is, draws back from faith and runs in the way of sense and feeling. Having begun by faith we are to live by faith. We are not to find life in the Gospel and then nourish it by the Law. We are not to begin in the Spirit and then seek to be made perfect by the flesh, or by confidence in man—we must continue to walk by the simple faith which rests only upon God, for this is the true spirit of a Christian.[2]

But what is faith? If it is not mere intellectual assent—which the demons exercise but not to their salvation (James 2:19)—how can we define it? The author of Hebrews defines faith this way: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1).

Faith is convicted trust, not vague belief. Faith is a placing of hopes in such a way that hope gets redefined. In the Scriptures, hope does not have the connotation of “I hope such and such will happen,” as if there is some chance it may not. No, in the Scriptures, hope is an assured trust. Our hope is Christ, and this hope will prove true; it will not put us to shame (Rom. 5:5).

Another simple way of illustrating faith is by the empty hand. That is what faith is: an empty hand with which to receive Christ and his riches. Or an empty vessel in which to be filled by the Spirit through trust in Christ. The reason why these illustrations are helpful is because they necessitate the emptying of our hands of all else.

Primate specialists study the way chimps reason through desire and logic by placing food outside of a hole in a barrier that is too large for their fists to pass through. The chimps are able to slip their open hand through, but once they grab the food, they cannot bring it back to themselves. Frustration ensues. The chimps cannot figure out that to get their hand back, they have to unclench their fist and drop the object of their desire.

We can be much like chimps this way. We will always be shackled until we release the idols we so desirously clutch. And then, with that free open hand, we receive a treasure incomparable.

This is an important perspective for pastoral ministry, because we pastors far too easily succumb to trust in the idols of our churches or in our own power and giftedness. I find myself wielding my well-preached sermon or my successful counseling session or my high attendance like badges of merit, not realizing the demonic bondage these things can keep me in when my faith is put in them.

Growing in grace entails gospel-driven effort on our parts, so it is not legalistic or pharisaical to expect work from ourselves. But we ought to always set our sights on Christ, trusting his work for our completion, not our own.

Pastors, let us commit to “walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7).

Pastoring by Faith

To walk by faith and not by sight is, as the verse indicates, to trust God despite what we see. God is good at helping us to remember to do this.

When my wife and I decided to move to Vermont, I came up with our two daughters, but Becky stayed in Nashville, because our house there had not sold and we needed her income to cover the mortgage. About nine months later, I was falling apart. The toll of adjusting to a new place, pastoring a new church, and being a “single” dad was taking effect. And Becky was struggling too, heartsick over our separation and confused as to why God would call us somewhere only to prevent us the provision of getting there together. We couldn’t see the future. Our faith was shaking.

I could feel the cusp of depression setting in. I have experienced depression before, so I knew the signs. But I didn’t know what to do.

One evening Becky and I were on the phone, commiserating. She could tell I was not doing well. “You need to talk to somebody,” she said.

“I’m not going to do that,” I said.

“You need to call Dale,” she said.

Elder Dale is a dear friend and a man I greatly respect in our church. Every pastor should have a guy like Elder Dale in his corner. I know he always has my back. I can be myself around him. In an Exodus 17 moment, he’d be a guy holding up my arms.

But I wasn’t going to call him.

“What would I say?” I asked Becky. “That after just nine months of being your pastor, I’m already burned out? That would go over real well.”

I was living by sight.

After we hung up, I lay there in my bed, exhausted and pathetic. I started to cry. Not too much later, the phone rang. I looked at the caller ID. It was Elder Dale.

“Did Becky call him?” I thought to myself.

No, she hadn’t. When I picked up the phone to say hello, Dale said, “Hey, how are you? I just had the feeling I ought to call and check.”

This was a wonderful reminder not just that Elder Dale was looking out for me, but that God was. He was reminding me that perception is not reality. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed,” Jesus said (John 20:29).

I laid everything out, and soon a plan was underway. I was told to tell Becky to give her notice at work and prepare to join her family in Vermont. So I did. And church members began pitching in to cover our mortgage each month.

The problem with pastoring by sight is not just that it places hopes in things that can be taken away, but it neglects to hope for what only God can give. Pastoring by sight negates faithful watchfulness and expectancy. And it keeps us timid. Here are some areas where pastoring by faith can make all the difference in the world.

Faith in Preaching

People will always hear what you haven’t said. Or they will hear the minor points and miss the major ones. The same people will come to church week in and week out, hear the gospel repeatedly, sometimes for years, and never show the slightest indication of being moved to trust Christ with their lives in the least. Do we give up? Figure it’s not working? Try another approach? No, we keep preaching, in the faith that God will give a harvest in his timing. And maybe that means that after we’re dead, the one guy we’ve discipled well will lead his son to Jesus, and that son will be instrumental in a revival of the church. Blessed be the name of the Lord! Let’s be faithful to preach.

Faith in Evangelism

Knowing that the Spirit softens whom he will is a confidence booster in personal evangelism, because it reminds us that the result is not dependent on us. Certainly we want to be kind and winsome, and also bold and articulate. But our responsibility in evangelism is to scatter the seed, not produce the harvest. It can be tempting to give up when we notice no observable results. But knowing that God’s purposes in raising dead souls will be fulfilled help us evangelize by faith, not by sight.

Faith in Formal Discipline

For pastors seeking to formally discipline a church member in accordance with the Scriptures, the unknown can be a terrifying thing. How will this process end up? What we desire is repentance and restoration. We wish we’d never been put in this position to begin with. What if the disciplined start causing a ruckus in the church? What if they start spreading lies? What if they file a lawsuit? Isn’t this whole thing just mean and graceless? Most of us do not like conflict very much and wish to avoid it at all costs. But knowing that God is sovereign helps us to obey him with meekness and courage, trusting that his church will survive. We can discipline by faith, not by sight.

Faith in Church Vision

I lose sleep over how my church is doing. Why? Because I’m a good pastor? Maybe. But it also might be because I think that how my church is doing ultimately depends on me, because I think I’m sovereign. This is the core sin of the workaholic and the perpetually anxious—self-sovereignty. The reality is likely that your church will do just fine without you. They can get another pastor. And if you have arranged things in such a way that your church can’t survive without you, she is certainly unhealthy and requires less of you, not more. Pastor, shepherd your church by faith, not by sight. Some ways you might need to do this include delegating responsibilities, going to bed at a reasonable hour, taking naps, observing the Sabbath, and using your vacation time. (We will talk about this more in the next chapter.)

We Can Follow Him into Battle

Christ is the head of the church. Pastors lead their churches, but not without the lordship of Christ over their own heads. We are undershepherds.

The good news is that the Good Shepherd can be totally and eternally trusted. He will never let us down. He may lead us through some low places, even to our deaths, but in every case we will find the glory of everlasting life. This is his promise, and while things may look dark or uncertain or distracting or overwhelming, Christ our Shepherd is a faithful commander worthy of our faith. Regardless of what we see, we can safely follow him into any danger.

Paul addresses Timothy:

Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.

Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel, for which I am suffering, bound with chains as a criminal. But the word of God is not bound! (2 Tim. 2:3–9)

A good soldier joins the fight for the faith, committing to be faithful to the cause of Christ, his brothers in the church, the church as his family, and the elders to whom he’s accountable. He has the cause in view, understands the mission (if not totally, at least to the extent of his role in it), and throws off distractions and entangling temptations. He is eager to please those to whom and that to which he is pledged.

A good soldier follows the rules, not merely out of duty but out of his guts, out of an understanding of the importance of the rules. He doesn’t just obey the law, he delights in it, having lost his taste for the way of the world. He rejects passivity, puts his nose to the grindstone, gets his hands dirty, develops blisters on his feet, and then calluses. He spends himself for the glory of God.

A good soldier ponders the Word of God; he mulls it over, chews on it, and eats it so that he will bleed it when cut.

But a good soldier will keep foremost in his mind not his own wherewithal, gumption, or courage. That will all be sapped. In the chains of hardship, persecution, imprisonment, sin, or suffering, a good soldier will resolve to know nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified.

Dear pastor, you good soldier, if you are flagging, dragging, or slacking, “Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David” as preached in the gospel. As you strive, remember you are also seated with him in the heavenlies. And while you use your body up, perhaps even to the point of death in service to the Lord, your heart is expanding to fit the scale of eternity. The risen, glorious Christ shines in you, over you, and before you, supplying his approval, his grace, and his glorious might so that you will finish the race, reap the harvest, and receive the soldier’s highest honor.

The body they may kill

God’s truth abideth still

His kingdom is forever.[3]

This is something you can go “all in” on, because Christ is someone we can put the whole of our faith in.

______________________

[1] Michael Horton, “All Crossed Up,” Touchstone, vol. 21, no. 2 (March 2008), http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=21-02-011-v.

[2] Charles Spurgeon, “The Hiding of Moses by Faith” (sermon, Metropolitan Tabernacle, n.d.),

www.spurgeongems.org/vols22-24/chs1421.pdf.

[3] Martin Luther, “A Mighty Fortress,” 1529.

10

THE PASTOR AND THE KING

For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. (1 Cor. 2:2)

Jesus Christ alone is the hope, treasure, joy, and purpose of pastoral ministry. Not church growth, not church planting, not church success, not church business, not church programs, not church activities, not church popularity. Let everything be a means to this end: the treasuring of Christ and the enjoying of his glory.

The pastor is not the missional conqueror—Jesus is. The pastor is not the chief shepherd—Jesus is. The pastor is not lord of the kingdom—Jesus is.

What we are getting down to, brother-pastor, is just who your church belongs to. The answer is obvious in the Scriptures but not so obvious in the life of many churches. Some conduct ministry as if the church belongs to the leaders, or more often, the senior leader. Some conduct ministry as if it belongs to the congregation or the members. We talk about people “owning” ministry, and there can be legitimate use of this phrase, as well as the phrase “my church,” but we ought never drown out the reality in our hearts and minds that a biblical church is Christ’s church. She is beholden to Christ, not to shareholders or ministry directors.

One way pastors can wage war against the pernicious philosophy that “the church belongs to the people” is by, as Paul says, deciding to know nothing among them except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

Church people present temptations to drift from Christ in a variety of ways, almost none of which are bad in and of themselves. Church people may want a church to be more politically active or to teach more on the end times or on predestination or to be more mobilized in arenas of social justice or to offer more programs for different age or interest groups. None of these things are bad in and of themselves, but as distractions from the central purpose of the church, they can be deceptively dangerous.

The mission of the church is to make disciples, not “save the world,” whatever that means, because only Jesus can save the world. Because of this, our vision ought not be our mission efforts but our missional captain, Christ himself, a steady gaze upon whom actually and effectively changes us (2 Cor. 3:18).

Being Jesus-Full

I have been and always will be doggedly suspicious of pastors who rarely (or never) mention Jesus. I have listened to podcasts from some well-known pastors who mentioned Jesus only in passing. And some not at all. One fellow wanted his congregation to be like Daniel, facing danger courageously because of trust in God. In the context of his ministry, one could ascertain that he meant the triune God of the Scriptures, but not in the context of the message, as Jesus Christ was never referenced. The message could have easily been preached in a Mormon tabernacle or a Muslim mosque.

Why do so many pastors seem pathologically unable to fixate on Christ?

“Sin” is a good catch-all answer. But I wonder if the way this particular sin manifests itself is in the pastor’s lack of experience of Christ’s gospel and lack of awe about Christ’s glory. Once you’ve been wakened to the glory of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ, it should be hard to talk about anything else!

John Piper says, “What we desperately need is help to enlarge our capacities to be moved by the immeasurable glories of Christ.”[1]

We ministers of the gospel can fumble this commission in three main ways.

1. We Speak in Vague Spiritual Generalities

Love. Hope. Peace. Joy. Harmony. Blessings. It all sounds nice. It’s all very inspirational. But when disembodied from the specific atoning work of the incarnate Jesus and exalted Lord, it’s rubbish. He himself is our peace (Eph. 2:14). He himself is love (1 John 4:8). He himself is life (John 14:6). He does not make life better. He is life. Any pastor who talks about the virtues of faith, hope, and love, with Jesus as some implied tangential source, is not feeding his flock well.

2. We Speak of Christ as Moral Exemplar

Even if that podcasted pastor had included a reference to Jesus, it would not have served his flock too well to have limited the reference to “be like Jesus.” At least, that would not serve his flock as well as saying “You can’t be like Jesus. That’s why Jesus is Jesus, for you.” We tell people to be nice because Jesus was nice. We tell them to be sweet because Jesus was sweet, good because Jesus was good, hard-working because Jesus was hard-working, loving because Jesus was loving. This is all well and good, but you could substitute “Mother Theresa” or even “Oprah” for “Jesus” and essentially have the same message.

3. We Avoid the Real Problem—Sin

Because we avoid sin, we either ignore the real solution—the cross—or confuse its meaning. In many churches, not only is sin never mentioned—because it hurts people’s feelings or what have you—the cross is rarely mentioned. And when the cross is mentioned, because we don’t want to talk about sin, it becomes the great affirmation of our specialness rather than the great punishment for our unholiness. The cross becomes not the intersection of God’s justice and mercy but the symbol of God’s positive feelings about our undeniable lovability.

People in these kinds of churches are inspired and enthused, but they are moved by God’s recognition of their own awesomeness, not by the glories of Christ. They became puffed up with the hot air of self-esteem.

Even angels long to gaze into the life-giving riches of the gospel of grace (1 Pet. 1:12). We prefer to drink deeply from the well into which we’re gazing—our navels.

Pastors, inspiration sells. But only Jesus transforms.

Solus Christus

Because only Jesus transforms, the focus and message of our ministries must be only Jesus. The exclusivity of Christ is not just a test of Christian orthodoxy; it is a test of Christian orthopraxy. What are we trusting in our churches to change people, to truly help them? If it is a what, let it be Christ’s gospel, for that is the only what that gives us the who that saves.

The Reformational pillar solus Christus refers to the object of our faith. What do we trust in to be justified before a holy God? It must not be our works, otherwise our faith would not be faith, and otherwise we would not be saved, because our works are tainted by mixed motives and incompleteness. Who can work perfectly? Christ can. So we believe we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.

There is one mediator between God and man (1 Tim. 2:5), and it is not the pastor or his church programs.

Neither is our mediator our faith! This is a crucial point, because while our faith may waver and weaken, the object of our faith does not. Joel Beeke communicates gospel richness here:

Too many Christians live in constant despondency because they cannot distinguish between the rock on which they stand and the faith by which they stand upon the rock. Faith is not our rock; Christ is our rock. We do not get faith by having faith in our faith or by looking to faith, but by looking to Christ. Looking to Christ is faith.

Nor is it perfect faith, great faith, fruitful faith, strong faith that justifies. If we start qualifying our faith, we destroy the gospel. Our faith may be weak, immature, timid, even indiscernible at times, but if it is real faith it is justifying faith (Matthew 6:30). Our degree of faith affects sanctification and assurance, but not justification. Faith’s value in justification does not lie in any degree in itself but in its uniting us to Christ and His glorious achievement. As George Downame illustrates:

A small and weak hand, if it be able to reach up the meat to the mouth, as well performs its duty for the nourishment of the body as one of greater strength, because it is not the strength of the hand but the goodness of the meat which nourishes the body.

Far too often we are prone to look to the quality of our faith, the quality of our conviction of sin, the quality of our evangelical repentance, the quality of our love for the brethren for confirmation of our justification, forgetting that it is Christ alone who saves by gracious faith alone.[2]

What heart-filling, soul-nourishing truth! It is not a strong faith that saves, but a true faith, because even a mustard-seed-sized faith can move mountains. The least faith, if it is true, receives not a portion of Christ but all of him.

Since this is true, it is Christ alone that should be the focus of our message and ministry. Trust in all else will fail, because all else fails. Trust in Christ will prevail, because Christ has prevailed.

Resisting Codependency

Overworked pastor, take care that you are not positioning yourself, or allowing yourself to be positioned, as your church’s functional savior.

In my neck of the woods, the traditional Congregationalist, one-pastor model of church ministry is still quite common. This model has its distinct advantages, and it certainly is preferable to the figurehead pastor isolated from his flock that is so dominant in the larger churches in the West. But this approach to church ministry has its drawbacks and can create a diseased discipleship culture in a church.

The solo pastor model is hard to root out because it is so ingrained. In New England congregational churches, this model is a holdover from the old days of traveling ministers. Lemuel Haynes, a great pastor for a lot of reasons, is just one example of the pastor who traveled between towns to minister to multiple congregations. Many pastors continue to do this today. This model is also difficult to root out because folks figure that the pastor is the one who is being paid to do ministry, so he’s the one who should be doing the ministry. It puts the body in a passive role and the pastor in an overactive role.

This model of church ministry is a perversion of biblical soul-care, because it goes against the biblical establishment of a plurality of elders and the priesthood of the believer. And because this model is deformed, it can have serious negative consequences when left in place too long, including, but not limited to, individuals in the church not receiving the level of pastoral care they need, expectations being placed on the pastor that lead to workaholism and then depression and then burnout, and the usurping of Jesus Christ as the Savior of a church’s soul.

What often results is a presumptuous and idolatrous level of expectation on the pastor, and even codependency. Pastor, you must shepherd wisely to keep your congregation from becoming codependent with you (or you with them).

How this plays out is through a strategic withholding of oneself. Not a distancing, not a neglect of real duty and care. Not an insulation or isolation. That would be directly violating Peter’s commands in 1 Peter 5:1–11 and Jesus’s command to feed the sheep. But the pastor’s role is to equip the saints for ministry, and this can’t happen if he does all the ministry himself. It is good to regularly hold back enough that if you were to get hit by a bus today—or worse, have an affair with your secretary—your church could live (and grow!) without you. Very few churches advertise for a pastor who will lead a church in such a way that they don’t need him very much.

There are a variety of ways to resist the development of codependency, including:

- Establishing a plurality of elders, or releasing into ministry the plurality of elders you already have. This assumes that these elders will be biblical elders and not church businessmen or trustees operating under the title.

- Observing the Sabbath, taking your day(s) off, and using your vacation time. The people of the church will survive. I promise.

- If you have reached the stage of qualifying for one, take an annual sabbatical.

- Share the preaching duties, and not just when you’re out of town.

- Develop a system of discipleship groups, community groups, and lay counselors.

- Refer counseling clients with needs out of your training or wisdom (perhaps some abuse victims, addicts of various kinds, the suicidal) to trained and licensed biblical counselors.

- Put your family’s health above your church’s expectations.

- Delegate responsibilities with attendant authority to others.

- Don’t attend every church meeting.

Pastor, your church wants a Savior. You’re not him.

Kingdom-Minded

Again, pastor, your church is not your church, but Christ’s church. Peter makes sure we know that the flock of God among us is “the flock of God” (1 Pet. 5:2).

When we remind ourselves of this truth, we become free to be generous with our church building, resources, and the church (the people) itself. These do not belong to us. They belong to God.

When we remember that our church is Christ’s church, we remember that the wider church is Christ’s church. And then we are set free to cooperate and collaborate.

I once announced to some folks that I was going to have a local church planter come to our service and share with the congregation his vision for a new church nearby. I thought it would be a great way to continue cultivating the value of missional church planting within our community. Someone raised a concern: “He better not take any of our people.”

I said, “That would be great if some wanted to join him.”

Because they are not “our people” but God’s people, we can choose to see it not as a loss for our church but as a victory in sending some of our own to be on mission in an area that has virtually no evangelical church to speak of. If we are thinking of our church as Christ’s church, we know that we are not in competition with other biblical churches. They are our sister communities. Their pastors are our brothers. We will gladly join hands, sharing what we have with each other if it means glory to Christ.

Lots of pastors say they are kingdom-minded, but their reaction when a new church starts up near theirs will show their true colors.

Self-interested kingdom building is not true kingdom mission. When we realize our church is Christ’s church, we will celebrate when a new work begins in his name, knowing that people will be reached by that body of believers that will not be reached by us. Will we be so vain and so idolatrous of our own dominion and authority that we would begrudge our brothers joining the work of God around us?

There is freedom in relinquishing this control. It does wonders for our critical spirit, our irritability, our power trips, and our cynicism. A pastor who yields his church to the lordship of Christ will be Spirit-driven in love more and more to those inside the church and outside. How can you not grow to resent those you have trained to be codependent on you?

But when we cede the church to its true Commander, when we have a heart for his kingdom, then we are finally free to be our church’s pastor! We stop being her accuser, her manager, her Holy Spirit. We are free to be her friend! Ray Ortlund writes:

When the risen Lord of the church sends you to a people as their pastor, he is not sending you to them as their critic but as their friend. They may be immature. They may be bogged down in tradition or dazzled by neomania. But they are yours by the gracious appointment of Christ, and you will know them forever. If you hope for the gospel to work in their hearts with power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction, as of course you do, then don’t just preach to them; desire them. Desire not what they can do for you but what you can do for them. Love them, enjoy them, delight in them, honor them. When other pastors gripe about their churches, you set another tone. Lift your people up. Be their champion and defender. They are your glory and joy at the Second Coming.[3]

Christ-Centered Revival

“Christ-centered revival” is redundant. There is no real revival without Christ at the center of it. Revival is the thing most of us want for our churches, which is why we try scheduling it every year. To no avail.

Don’t do that. The minute you schedule a revival, you ensure revival won’t happen. That is not the way revival works. It is given by the Spirit according to his sovereign purposes and timing. But we do know that no real revival comes that has a pastor or his church at the center of it. The Spirit will not bring a revival that does not glorify anyone or anything but Christ alone. Jesus says this of the Spirit: “He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you” (John 16:14).

Jonathan Edwards gives us this perspective from his place in history:

In all companies, on other days, on whatever occasions persons met together, Christ was to be heard of, and seen in the midst of them. Our young people, when they met, were wont to spend the time in talking of the excellency and dying love of Jesus Christ, the gloriousness of the way of salvation, the wonderful, free, and sovereign grace of God, his glorious work in the conversion of a soul, the truth and certainty of the great things of God’s word, the sweetness of the views of his perfections, &c.[4]

It is the Spirit’s raison d’etre to shine the light on Christ. The Spirit is often called the “shy” person of the Trinity because of this. He is content—no, zealous—to minister to the church the Father’s blessings in the gospel of Jesus. He quickens us to desire Christ, illuminates Scripture to reveal of Christ, empowers us to receive Christ, and imparts Christ to indwell us even in his own indwelling. For this reason, then, any church or movement’s claim of revival better have exaltation of Christ at its center, or it is not genuine revival.

At the front end of Paul’s excursus to the Corinthians on the sign-gift charismata, he reminds us: “Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says ‘Jesus is accursed!’ and no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:3).

What we often see in false revivals is the exaltation of particular figures or the worship of a worship experience itself. You can turn on nearly any religious television programming and see this work in action. Christ is given lip service, but exhilaration, personal revelation, warm fuzzies, and spectacular manifestations are the real objects of worship. Charlatans are at the helm, and they purport to wield the Holy Spirit as if he were pixie dust. In these cases and others, it is not the Spirit stirring, but the spirit of antichrist.

Edwards writes elsewhere:

When the operation is such as to raise their esteem of that Jesus who was born of the Virgin, and was crucified without the gates of Jerusalem; and seems more to confirm and establish their minds in the truth of what the gospel declares to us of his being the Son of God, and the Saviour of men; is a sure sign that it is from the Spirit of God.[5]

Revival, given of the Spirit of the living God, places Christ always and ever at the center.

Pastor, isn’t this what we want for our churches? Spirit-filled, disciple-making, gospel-believing, and gospel-sharing exalters of Jesus? Then let us feed them the bread of Christ alone.

______________________

[1] John Piper, “Why I Don’t Have a Television and Rarely Go to Movies,” Desiring God (June 25, 2009), http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/taste-see-articles/why-i-dont-have-a-television-and-rarely-go-to-movies.

[2] Joel Beeke, “The Relation of Faith to Justification,” in Justification by Faith Alone, ed. Don Kistler (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 2003), 93–94.

[3] Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., “Power in Preaching: Desire (1 Thessalonians 1:2–5), Part 2 of 3,” Themelios, vol. 34, no. 2 (July 2009), http://thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/article/power_in_preaching_desire_1_thessalonians_125_part_2_of_3.

[4] Jonathan Edwards, A Narrative of Many Surprising Conversions in Northampton and Vicinity (Worcester, MA: Moses W. Grout, 1832), 13.

[5] Jonathan Edwards, The Marks of a Work of the True Spirit, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 1 (London: F. Westley and A. H. Davis, 1835), 266.

11

THE PASTOR AND GLORY

For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea. (Hab. 2:14)

The vision God has set for the fulfillment of all time is that his glory will gleam in every nook and cranny of creation. There is a new heavens and a new earth coming, and because Christ is the radiance of God’s glory (Heb. 1:3), Christ will be the sun of this new creation (Rev. 21:23). He will stand upon the earth, and all flesh will see him and behold him as he is truly is, for better or worse.

God’s strategy in accomplishing this plan is the church. The church universal, yes, but your local church. This is why we make disciples: that God’s name would be feared and praised in all the earth. This is why we send and go: that God would gather to himself a people for his own possession. This is why we preach, teach, pray, evangelize, counsel, visit, fellowship, and greet one another with a holy kiss: that the knowledge of God’s glory would fill the earth like the waters cover the sea.

Pastors, we are privileged to shepherd the flocks of God among us into this glorious reality. We are on the forefront of God’s glory made manifest in both our strengths and our weaknesses. And we will learn the secret to joy in all ministerial circumstances when we set our hearts on God’s glory above our own.

Soli Deo Gloria

This Latin phrase is perhaps the best known of the five solas, but it also may be the least understood. Some use it as a way to sign correspondence or give our ministerial aims a religious gloss. But if we really understood what “to God alone be the glory” means, it might solve a lot of the sinfulness and dysfunction in the evangelical church.

Paul exults in Romans 16:27, “To the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ!” We are summoned to join Paul in his exultation by God’s finished work in Christ Jesus. The King of Glory has come to glorify the Father of Glory by dying to forgive those who have fallen short of this glory and rising gloriously to purchase glorified bodies for the forgiven, that they might share in real glory forevermore. The gospel is, as you can see, glorious.

When we commit to center on the glory of the gospel, then we commit to center on God’s glory, the weight of his immense being and attributes, his holiness revealed. We commit to center on Christ so that the glory of our church will be her groom, her kinsman redeemer, her head and Lord. We seed the gospel into every nook and cranny of our churches so that with the sons of Korah we can sing, “All my springs are in you” (Ps. 87:7). These springs can fill our churches with the living water that is Christ, immersing our covenant community in the radiance of the glory of God like the waters that cover the seas. It is the pastor’s role to lead the sheep to the fountain of Christ’s glory over and over again.

Your Praise Is Not the Boss of Me

We can be so lustful for adulation, craven consumers of personal praise. We will settle for the acquisition of accolades because they are a more immediate satisfaction to our flesh. This is why some pastors like posting photos of themselves that resemble war memorials on their church websites and describe themselves as catalytic, innovative agents of change, or some such nonsense. We want the glory that is due Christ. We want to point to ourselves with all fingers available—thus, all the qualifiers.

One of the worst things a pastor can do is test his popularity among the flock. There are times when your entire church may love you . . . for the wrong reasons. And there are times when your church may hate you . . . for the wrong reasons. This is something the gospel does: it afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted. While we aim to stay winsome and kind, self-deprecating and congenial, and loving to our neighbors, seeking the approval of everyone is futile. Likewise, seeking the approval of most at all times is futile. Sometimes a pastor’s faithfulness to God’s Word will set him at odds with his flock. The shallow, cowardly pastor will side with his flock against God. It might seem a safe thing to do at the moment, but it will prove dangerous at the final judgment. It is better to be fired than to court hellfire.

The distinction the Bible uses is “fear of man” versus “fear of God.” The fear of man is a trap, Proverbs 29:25 reminds us. Safety lies in fear of the Lord. But the thing about traps is that they often contain bait. In Acts 5, Peter and the apostles are imprisoned and told not to preach the gospel any further under threat of death. An angel of the Lord opens the prison doors, though, and Peter and his comrades go right back to preaching the gospel. Gathered up again by the high priest and his officers, they are confronted about their failure to comply. Peter responds, “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).

As Western culture increases its speed in the race away from Christendom, as hostility to orthodox and evangelical Christianity increases and becomes increasingly legislated, we will eventually see a separation of the men from the boys. Which pastors will cave to worldly wisdom in fear for their own livelihoods and comfort, and which will fear God, rather than men? The ones who find their justification in the definitive proclamation of God’s grace in Christ instead of public opinion polls will stand firm.

This problem is not new. Hitler knew the ministers of his day would be easy to walk all over because they were lily-livered men, protectors of their own well-being. (He did not count on Bonhoeffer.) In every major cultural revolution that has spurred on the church or harmed it, there has been a revelation of which ministers pursued God’s glory and which pursued their own. In the days of the Reformation, devotees of soli deo gloria risked death from Catholic authorities and counter-Protestant churchmen. Glory-monger pastors were a problem even then. Martin Luther is particularly incisive:

The trouble with these seekers after glory is that they never stop to consider whether their ministry is straightforward and faithful. All they think about is whether people will like and praise them. Theirs is a threefold sin. First, they are greedy of praise. Secondly, they are very sly and wily in suggesting that the ministry of other pastors is not what it should be. By way of contrast they hope to rise in the estimation of the people. Thirdly, once they have established a reputation for themselves they become so chesty that they stop short of nothing. When they have won the praise of men, pride leads them on to belittle the work of other men and to applaud their own. In this artful manner they hoodwink the people who rather enjoy to see their former pastors taken down a few notches by such upstarts.

“Let a minister be faithful in his office,” is the apostolic injunction. “Let him not seek his own glory or look for praise. Let him desire to do good work and to preach the Gospel in all its purity. Whether an ungrateful world appreciates his efforts is to give him no concern because, after all, he is in the ministry not for his own glory but for the glory of Christ.”

A faithful minister cares little what people think of him, as long as his conscience approves of him. The approval of his own good conscience is the best praise a minister can have.[1]

The pastor who will see God’s glory is the pastor who pursues God’s glory in exclusion of everything that falls short. All lesser glories may be placed on the altar.

The Hope of Glory

Nellie was a member of my church, although she’d never attended while I’d been pastor and had never, as far as I know, heard me preach a sermon. When I arrived in Vermont in 2009, the retired pastor, Roland, began introducing me to the dear ladies in area nursing homes, and I inherited pastoral care of her from him. She stood out right away. Despite being in her midnineties, fairly immobile, somewhat hard of hearing, and enjoying vision in only one eye, she was always spirited, joyful, and flat-out mighty with cheer.

Her beloved King James Bible was always near-at-hand. Once she told me the print was too small for her to read any more. So I got her a giant print KJV. She said she couldn’t read that either. But I think she just didn’t like the idea of a “new” Bible. She knew a whole lot of it by heart anyway.

One thing that always struck me about Nellie was her phenomenal memory. Sometimes it would be a month between my visits, but she always remembered details about my family and things going on at church. I remember her asking about Becky and how she was doing while we spent those nine months living in different states. I was blessed and impressed by that.

Nellie was part of an aging generation of Vermonters that I fear are the last for a while faith-holders in this area. They lived during Vermont’s days of richer spiritual health and held the faith while those following behind have not.

Nellie began writing poetry in 1987, when she was seventy-two years old(!), as a way to grieve and remember the passing of her daughter Norma. Ten years later some relatives collected all her poems and bound them. Nearly all of them gleam with gospel. Here’s my favorite, a work called “My Only Hope Is Jesus”:

My Jesus I love thee

I love thy written word

It’s the sweetest story ever told

that I have ever heard.

You are always with me

you live within my heart

and if I ever need a friend

you are there to impart.

You are always there to listen

to what I have to say

and you answer all of my prayers

in your own special way.

I can come to you in spirit

I can come to you with love

and know some day I’ll dwell with you

in my Heavenly home above.

When my work on earth is over

and my work for you is done

you’re my only hope for Heaven

you’re the only one.[2]

I love it. This poem, like all Nellie’s poetry, is guileless and without pretense. I love the theological sophistication belied by the simple lines in the last stanza that basically say “after my life of work for God is done, my only hope for heaven is nevertheless Jesus.” No, this poem won’t win any awards, but the faith it displays has won the joy of Jesus, which is a treasure beyond compare.

One day Pastor Roland let me know that the nursing home had contacted Nellie’s family to tell them she likely only had days to live and to start preparing for her passing. I visited her that night. She indeed did not look good. Slumped over, breathing with much labor, coughing, she welcomed me, but she didn’t recognize me. She began referring to conversations we hadn’t had, picking up trains of thought midstream that made no sense. I could see she was going.

I held her hand. I prayed for her. I read 1 Corinthians 15 to her, the whole long thing, and she sat in silence. When I was done, I said to her, “Jesus loves you and is proud of you, Nellie.” I told her that even though her body was weak, she was strong as Jesus inside. She looked at me and began reciting Psalm 23 perfectly, in the King James of course. When she was done, she recited it again. She knew it was too good not to rerun. Then she said, “Jesus died for me. I love my Jesus.” Sometimes I don’t know what “joy . . . inexpressible and filled with glory” (1 Pet. 1:8) means, but at that moment I did. I had no words. So I just squeezed her hand gently and smiled at her through tears and sat there. That’s what you do in the presence of greatness.

Nellie died three days later. She was ninety-five. I look forward to seeing her dancing, double-eyed and spry-legged, on the streets of the new creation. Her only hope was Jesus, and therefore she got him. She got him, brothers!

Do you see how glorious simple faith in our all-conquering Redeemer is? Your ministry, like Nellie’s poetry, may be nothing to write home about. Except it is. It may not be worthy of any rewards. Except it is. It may go down in the annals of history concealed by obscurity. Except it won’t be.

When Christ alone is your hope of glory, glory is what you get!

Glory and the All-Access Pass

The world-renowned pastor who once said no church has a money problem, but only an idea problem, filed for bankruptcy recently. I suppose he was out of ideas. He built an enormous monument to the glory of his ministry, and it is now sparsely attended and being fought over by relatives. This seems altogether unglorious.

I have a suspicion that this fellow would have left a better legacy had he not posited glory as the building of an architectural monstrosity and the self-help of moralistic therapeutic deism. If he had shown his people consistently for the decades of his ministry that God’s glory is accessible to us 24/7 by virtue of Christ’s finished work alone, who knows how his ministry would have ended? Perhaps in pain still, but at least it would have been in spite of him rather than largely because of him.

Pastor, take your people into the throne room. Rather, show them that the door is open to them because of Jesus’s work. Don’t create an obstacle course of the Law for them to complete first. Proclaim that belief in the gospel procures the all-access path to God’s glory. This passage from John Phillips’s Exploring Hebrews commentary has always moved me:

Imagine a Moabite of old gazing down upon the tents and tabernacle of Israel from some lofty mountain height. Attracted by what he sees, he descends to the plain and makes his way toward the sacred enclosure surrounding the tabernacle. It is a high wall of dazzling linen, which reaches over his head. He walks around it until he comes to the gate, where he sees a man.

“May I go in there?” he asks, pointing through the gate to where the bustle of activity in the tabernacle’s outer court can be seen.

“Who are you?” demands the man suspiciously. Any Israelite would know he could go in there.

“I am a man from Moab,” the stranger replies.

“Well,” says the man at the gate, “I’m very sorry, but you cannot go in there. It’s not for you. The Law of Moses has barred the Moabite from any part in the worship of Israel until his tenth generation.”

The Moabite looks sad. “What would I have to do to go in there?” he insists.

“You would have to be born again,” replies the gatekeeper. “You would have to be born an Israelite. You would need to be born of the tribe of Judah, perhaps, or of the tribe of Benjamin or Dan.”

Says the Moabite, “I wish I had been born an Israelite, of one of the tribes of Israel.” As he looks more closely, he sees one of the priests, having offered a sacrifice at the brazen altar and cleansed himself at the brazen laver, go on into the tabernacle’s interior.

“What’s in there?” asks the Moabite. “Inside the main building, I mean.”

“Oh,” says the gatekeeper, “That’s the tabernacle itself. Inside there is a room containing a lampstand, a table, and an altar of gold. The man you saw is a priest. He will trim the lamp, eat of the bread upon the table, and burn incense to the living God upon the golden altar.”

“Ah,” sighs the man of Moab, “I wish I were an Israelite so that I could do that. I would love to worship God in that holy place and help to trim the lamp, to offer Him some incense, and to eat at that table.”

“Oh, no,” says the man at the gate, “even I could not do that. To worship in the holy place one must not only be born an Israelite, one must be born of the tribe of Levi and of the family of Aaron.”

The man from Moab sighs again, “I wish,” he says, “I wish I had been born of Israel of the tribe of Levi of the family of Aaron.” Gazing wistfully at the closed tabernacle door, he says, “What else is in there?”

“There’s a veil,” replies his informant. “It is a beautiful veil, I’m told, which divides the tabernacle in two. Beyond the veil is what we call ‘the most holy place,’ ‘the Holy of Holies.’ ”

The Moabite is more interested than ever.

“What’s in the Holy of Holies?” he asks.

“There’s a sacred chest in there called the Ark of the Covenant,” answers the gatekeeper. “It contains holy memorials of our past. Its top is made of gold and we call that the Mercy Seat because God sits there between the golden cherubim. You see that pillar of cloud hovering over the tabernacle? That’s the Shekina glory cloud. It comes to rest on the Mercy Seat.”

Again a look of longing shadows the face of the man from Moab. “Oh,” he says, “if only I were a priest! I should love to go into the Holy of Holies and there gaze upon God and worship Him there in the beauty of holiness.”

“Oh no!” says the man at the gate. “You couldn’t do that even if you were a priest! To enter into the most holy place you would have to be the high priest of Israel. Only he can go in there, nobody else, only he.”

The Moabite’s heart yearns once more. “Oh,” he cries, “if only I had been born an Israelite, of the tribe of Levi of the family of Aaron. If only I had been born the high priest! I would go in there, into the Holy of Holies. I would go in there every day. I would go in three times a day. I would worship continually in the Holy of Holies.”

The gatekeeper looks at him again and once more shakes his head. “Oh no!” he says, “You couldn’t do that. Even the high priest of Israel can go in there only once a year, and then only after the most elaborate of preparations, and even then only for a very little while.”

Sadly the Moabite turns away. He has no hope in all the world of ever entering there.[3]

Enter Christ, the hope of glory.

Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith. (Heb. 10:19–22)

The place of God’s glory is accessible in and through Christ. Though God is jealous for his glory, he is not stingy with it.

Here it is, a tremendous word of welcome, extended to Jew and Gentile alike, to come on in and worship, not in the holiest place of the human tabernacle, but into the Holy of Holies in heaven itself “by the blood of Jesus.” This, pastor, this! This is our theme, this is our song, this is our proclamation! This is our vision. This is what we welcome our people with and send them away with. Christ in them, the hope of glory (Col. 1:27).

He Must Increase, We Must Decrease

From the historical record, we learn that Jonathan Edwards was irrevocably captured by the gospel upon reading 1 Timothy 1:17: “To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.” The glory of God in this biblical doxology struck his heart, lifted him up, and made him feel as though he’d like to be swallowed up in God forever.

What happened? By the Spirit’s power, Edwards was engulfed in the bigness of God to feel both small and yet inconquerable. This is something odd the gospel does. John the Baptist, who was martyred for speaking the truth to power, now enjoys the glory of his risen cousin Jesus in the ever after. His commitment: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).

Pastor, in our lives and ministries, Christ must increase, we must decrease.

Some of us will have little choice in the matter. Our ministries will put us in a position where God will be our only hope because God will be our only hope!

I’m quite fond of Isaiah 6:9–13 in this regard. This passage is not the likeliest text for a message on gospel ministry, but it is a necessary one.

The message of Isaiah 6:9–13 is necessary for anyone interested in long-term planting of the gospel in a community. Ministry is a marathon, not a sprint. And not everyone can hang up a sign and have insta-church, anyway. But if your plan is to shepherd with a long obedience in the same direction, an openhearted meditation on Isaiah 6:9–13 would do a world of good.

As pastors we are tempted by countless hills to die on, banners to wave, programs to juggle, and campaigns to wage. What we do in the Isaiah 6:9–10 times is our true measure of success.

This is why most Christian spokespeople stop at Isaiah 6:8. Who will go? “Here I am! Send me!” The enthusiasm is fit for our Christian coffee mugs. What comes after is when our cup is empty.

And he said, “Go, and say to this people:

“‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand;

keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’

Make the heart of this people dull,

and their ears heavy,

and blind their eyes;

lest they see with their eyes,

and hear with their ears,

and understand with their hearts,

and turn and be healed.” (Isa. 6:9–10)

Here is the mission none of us aspire to but many of us receive.

The theological reality in play here is something we have to get settled about in our minds and hearts: God determines the response, not us.

Even Jesus’s ministry endured this reality. He quotes this passage when asked the motive behind his teaching in parables (Matt. 13:10–16). Some will hear and not hear. Some will see and not see. The gospel that softens also hardens.

How will we respond in “out of season” times?

One thing we must remember is that difficulty doesn’t indicate a lack of calling. I can’t think of any notion more antithetical to the biblical template for gospel ministry. The idea that God’s calling is sure only when a minister is comfortable, prosperous, and happy is not a scriptural one. So pastor, don’t confuse a difficult season in your ministry with lack of calling to a particular place or to ministry altogether. It could be that God has called you precisely to and for this difficulty.

We do have a Great High Priest who will sympathize with our weaknesses, however. Isaiah cries out: “How long, O Lord?” (Isa. 6:11).

There is a brokenness here we would do well to study. “How long, O Lord?” is a recurring cry throughout the psalms. What is Isaiah crying for? What are the psalmists crying for?

They desire God’s glory made manifest in the lives of the people. Gospel mission, pastor, is contingent upon real love for where the gospel isn’t. Your mission field and ministry circuit is not your territory to conquer, but your assigned place for prayer, sacrifice, and gospel proclamation. Not for your fame, but for God’s.

When Nehemiah saw the destruction of the Jerusalem gates, he broke down and wept. The devastation had occurred 140 years before that! When was the last time we were that broken about the spiritual devastation of our city? If we would be desperate for God’s glory in our community, we must see it with the compassion of the Good Shepherd.

The reply to “how long?” comes to Isaiah:

And he said:

“Until cities lie waste

without inhabitant,

and houses without people,

and the land is a desolate waste,

and the LORD removes people far away,

and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.” (Isa. 6:11–12)

The forsaken places are many now, as well. Perhaps God’s word to you about your ministry is that you will be laying some invisible foundation that will only be seen when your successor builds upon it. Perhaps you are seeding and someone after you will water. Perhaps for many of us, ministry will be simply planting trees whose shade we will never enjoy ourselves.

We have to be okay with this. It’s God’s glory we’re after, not ours, remember.

Don’t confuse lack of gain with lack of success. In John 6, Jesus would be a failure by contemporary measures of success. Everyone came for the free all-you-can-eat buffet, but scattered when the real meat got served.

God’s word to Isaiah about his ministry continues:

“And though a tenth remain in it,

it will be burned again,

like a terebinth or an oak,

whose stump remains

when it is felled.”

The holy seed is its stump. (Isa. 6:13)

Pastor, here is a ministerial secret not often publicized: sometimes things that shrink are getting healthier. So here we are: totally dependent. In ruins. Vulnerable. But hopeful. A remnant will always remain.

Stay faithful, stay faithful, stay faithful. God will have his glory.

“The holy seed is its stump.”

Don’t you know what God does with little seeds? He moves mountains and provides havens for all the birds of the air. With a little bit of leaven, he infiltrates the dough and raises it.

The good news is that the good news will prevail. God’s plan might be for your ministry’s smallness, but it is not for his! Paul tells us in Colossians 1:6 that the gospel “has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing.” The gospel is a power in spite of us, a force all its own. The Spirit goes where he wills.

So then we stay faithful and hold on to the hope of glory, Christ in us, because, again, this hope will not put us to shame. Indeed, this hope that may not culminate in our ministry success and personal fame will nevertheless culminate in our indomitable joy. “The hope of the righteous brings joy” (Prov. 10:28). There, you see, the Bible says so!

Perhaps it’s not the big wins we ought to be swinging for, pastor. Perhaps it is not pastoral glory upon glory we ought to be jumping to. Instead, even in forsaken places, we’re going for the dam break. We just keep picking away, inch by inch. Some days we knock out larger pieces than others. We are stronger some days than others. But we keep picking. We keep picking at the dam until we can feel the wetness on our fingertips, until someday the whole thing crumbles around, be it in our lifetime or lifetimes from now. We keep kicking at the darkness and the kingdom of the Devil until more and more daylight bleeds through.

The cry of Isaiah 6 is answered in Isaiah 61:1–4:

The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,

because the LORD has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor;

he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim liberty to the captives,

and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;

to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor,

and the day of vengeance of our God;

to comfort all who mourn;

to grant to those who mourn in Zion—

to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes,

the oil of gladness instead of mourning,

the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit;

that they may be called oaks of righteousness,

the planting of the LORD, that he may be glorified.

They shall build up the ancient ruins;

they shall raise up the former devastations;

they shall repair the ruined cities,

the devastations of many generations.

No one exults in the expansion of God’s glory like God himself.

His plan is for the saturation of the world with his glory. And here again is the good news as it pertains to the gospel mission of pastoral ministry:

He has given you the keys to the kingdom and all authority. Whatever you bind or loose here is bound or loosed in heaven, and since the gospel is always scaled to eternity, even in the lean seasons, your ministry is epic. It is eternal. Your weak ministry echoes in the halls of heaven.

Men of God, because your Savior is Lord of the universe and he sustains it with his powerful word, because his word is good news to the poor in spirit and the weary and heavy-laden, because his gospel is going forth into the world, bearing fruit and growing,

You shall build up the ancient ruins;

you shall raise up the former devastations;

you shall repair the ruined cities,

the devastations of many generations.

Faithful, gospel-loving men of God, the Lord is not slow in keeping his promises. The world will see in due time that your ministry—big or small, strong or frail—is an epic success because of the finished work of Christ. May we be desperate to be swallowed up forever in the expansiveness of his wonderful glory!

Thank you for reading this book. I share all these words with you to the praise of his glorious grace and for the fame of God’s name in our churches and among the nations.

______________________

[1] Martin Luther, Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, Christian Classics Ethereal Library online, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/luther/galatians.ix.html.

[2] Monelvia May Fitzgerald, The Blessings of My Life: A Collection of Poems (unpublished, 1997), 31.

[3] John Phillips, Exploring Hebrews (Chicago: Moody, 1977), 140–42.

CONCLUSION

The apostle Paul suffered severe hardship, physical pain, persecution, and demonic oppression during his service to the gospel, and nearing the end of his life and ministry he wrote these words: “From now on let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus” (Gal. 6:17). His difficult ministry was an experience of the power of Christ and the undergoing of Christlikeness. Lehman Strauss expounds on Paul’s words in a quite stirring way:

The subject has been fully and satisfactorily dealt with. His apostleship has been proved and the authority of the Gospel of Grace has been vindicated. Paul had become God’s chosen vessel to utter His final word against legalism. Now he will be troubled about the matter no more. He had given God’s Word, and with it the promise that the message would not return void. In his body he bore the brand-marks of his devotion to Jesus Christ (6:17). The scars testified of his loyalty to his Lord. Yes, he belonged altogether to the Lord Jesus Christ. At one time he was proud of the mark of circumcision, but now he can point to those scars received in the service of a new Master. He was not an inexperienced recruit, but an old veteran of the good fight of faith. Thank God for Paul! And more than this, let us praise Him for His matchless grace whereby we are justified in His sight.[1]

I just love that. Isn’t this what Christ in us wants? Whether we are young or old, to live our lives in such a way that “to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21) and to thereby become “old veterans of the good fight of faith”?

Picture yourself so doggedly clinging to the cross for as many days as God will give you, that when he’s ready to take you home, you’ve got thick skin and a soft heart, both testimonies to your faithfulness to God in his faithfulness to you, and you’re ready to go. You know you’ve run the race because you’re out of breath and your feet are calloused. And you can rightfully say, “Well. That’s it. No more trouble. I look like Jesus now.”

Or he may take you today or tomorrow. He might take you when you’re a young man, while you’re still spry and full of big dreams. Nobody is promised the next millisecond.

The justified pastor—the man justified by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone to God’s glory alone, who happens to be a pastor—when taken on his good day or bad day, ministry high or ministry low, will be received with gladness and welcome. Clothed in the righteousness of him in whom you trust, how can you be turned away?

You will not be. Indeed, in the mystical union with Christ, you are already there (Eph. 1:20). Feeble, failing, flailing, sin-prone pastor, you are a mighty man of God. You are as secure as Christ is. Let’s pastor in this reality, brothers, until our hearts burst with joy.

______________________

[1] Lehman Strauss, Devotional Studies in Galatians and Ephesians (Neptune, NJ: Loizeaux Brothers, 1957), 101.

For more information, visit crossway.org.