How Do Your People See You?

Well, I'm off to Birmingham, AL. Our family is spread out here, there, and everywhere this week. Holly's off visiting her sis in AZ and the girls are with their grandparents in FL taking in Disney World. I'm attending a West Africa Missions Summit in AL with one of our church members. We'll be meeting with the missionary in Abidjan, where we will hopefully be taking a trip to in October.

Just one thought that I came across in the last couple of days that I thought I would share. It's from Ed Stetzer's blog here. At the end of this post on "Rethinking Discipleship" Ed asks the question,

Do your people see you as a great leader or a godly pastor. Hopefully both, but pick godly over great.

I hope that I will one day be a great leader, but I may not be. But what I want to strive to be more than a great leader is a godly pastor. I am not sure I find in Scripture the command of "Be a great leader," but I am certain I see the command throughout the pages of the NT of, "Be a godly pastor." And I think if you concentrate on being a godly pastor, then inevitably what you will begin to see happen is the people's definition of a "great leader" begin to change and hopefully what they will find is that the two, at least biblilcally though maybe not according to the standards of the world, are one and the same.

The Gospel: Good News or Good Advice?

I am currently reading Michael Horton's great book Christless Christianity:The Alternative Gospel of the American Church. It is a spot-on diagnosis of the current state of Christianity and understanding of the Gospel in the American church today.

In Chapter Five--"How We Turn Good News Into Good Advice"--Horton writes,

It is just as easy to lose Christ by destraction as it is by denial. We keep expecting the ball to be fumbled by the liberals, when conservative churches are as often likely to be interested in someone or something other than Christ crucified this week. A woman who was struggling in her marriage told a pastor friend of mine that she decided to visit his church because her home church was going through a series on "How to Have a Better Marriage." "What I need to hear most right now is who God is and what Christ has done for me even though I'm a wreck. My marriage needs a lot of things, but that more than anything else." She was right.

I find this to be the case as well with those I visit with. Just this week I visited with a believing couple who are trying to discern God's will about their church home. The comment that they made to me was, "I am tired of hearing about all that God can do for me to make my life better. I want to hear about who God is and what He has done."

What we as pastors preach, will be what kind of churches result from our preaching. If our preaching is geared around making Christ and the gospel "relevant" to the culture around us and focusing on practical, contemporary application each week--telling people what to do to make their lives better--then we will produce people that are depending on the law and not on the Gospel. They will constantly be asking the question, "What must I do?" and seeking the answer week after week. However if we week in and week out preach what God has already done in Christ for them, which is the Gospel, then the product will be people who are secure in their standing in Christ and who He is and what He has done, rather than who they are and what they must do. Their "doing" will flow from their "being" in Christ.

Horton writes,

I hear someone saying, 'But we have to make Jesus and the gospel relevant to people in our own time and place." But what does it say about Jesus Christ if the relevance of his person and work cannot stand on its own?

I am concerned that when the church's basic message is less about who Christ is and what he has accomplished once and for all for us and more about who we are and what we have to do in order to make his life (and ours) relevant to the culture, the religion that is made "relevant" is no longer Christianity.

And so what is the job or the task of the minister of the Gospel? Horton concludes,

Nevertheless, ministers are not trained to be experts in economics, business, law, and politics. People may get a lot better financial, marital, and child-rearing advice from wise uncles and aunts or even non-Christian neighbors than from their pastor. Rather, ministers are trained to be wise in the Scriptures, which center on the drama of redemption. They are not sent on their own mission but are ambassadors and heralds sent from God to a world of sin and death. They are called to proclaim the most important and relevant announcement, which cannot be heard anywhere else.

Humor In Preaching

Michael McKinley over at 9 Marks recently posted a good word on the use of humor in the pulpit.

Humor in the pulpit can be very dangerous. It's like a narcotic. Your people will love it (how much more entertaining to hear you riff on something than to teach Leviticus or talk about sin). You'll love it (less sleeping, more laughing at how hilarious you are!). And the temptation will be for you to give the people more of what they want and less of what they need. I listen to about 10 sermons a week, and some of the guys I listen to are both funny and really good teachers. But here's what I notice... they have to tell three jokes for every one that really lands. Two out of three just kind of linger there and die. And so the whole sermon feels like it's being interuppted by second rate comedy. Over time, my fear is that the people will come hungry for your humor and not necessarily for the word of God. They will be dependent on you and your charisma and your sense of humor, and you'll never be able to plant churches because you can't find anyone else as funny as you are, and so you'll have to pipe your sermons into other locations.

Hope

While we pray and we work to see the Gospel change the hearts of those who advocate abortion, and this great holocaust of our nation come to an end, it may be that our generation never sees that day come. However, with those coming behind us like this 7th grader, there is hope and evidence that God is working in the hearts of the next generation to bring this plague upon our nation to an end.

Watch and be encouraged! (You can read the article here.)

Whitfield On Weariness

When a friend of George Whitfield's commented that he looked tired and worn down, Mr. Whitfield wisely responded,

While I am weary in the Lord’s work, I am not weary of the Lord’s work.

Amen.

Alvin Reid Has a Problem...And He's Not the Only One

Alvin Reid recently commented on the controversy involving the unfair treatment of Mark Driscoll by Baptist Press in a recent article,

Finally, I have a problem with my convention. I am a Southern Baptist. I have blogged before on why I am a Southern Baptist. But I have a problem with my convention, when we seem more intent on witch hunts than on contextualizing the gospel in our time, when we love to pick at each other’s differences than unite for the sake of the gospel, when we are more concerned about our total receipts than we are the lostness of our nation, when we continually confuse personal preferences with unchanging truth, and when we castigate younger men who love Jesus and His truth for simply doing what we taught them to do: study and honor the Word (when they come to different conclusions than some of us on secondary issues, they scratch their heads at the response they get). I was a supporter of the conservative resurgence before it was cool. But the resurgence I supported did not include a Pharisaical legalism that expects conformity in nonessentials. I supported a resurgence to stand on the inerrancy and sufficiency of Scripture, one that now has led me and many others to see the need for a Great Commission Resurgence to be built on the foundation laid by the conservative resurgence. I am tired of talking good younger men off the ledge from leaving the SBC.

So, I have a problem. I have many heroes. I did not name them all. But none of them are perfect. None of them are Jesus. I can live with that. I can honor people who may be more Landmark on the one hand or Reformed on the other than I am. I can learn from and respect people who love the Word and the Gospel yet who may do things a bit differently from me.

I wonder if I am the only one….

No, Dr. Reid, you are not the only one.

Don't Offend God With Small Expectations

Tullian Tchividjian (Billy Graham's grandson):

This past Sunday I reminded everyone that if we Christians are asked what we want to do with our lives and our answer is anything smaller than, “I want to change the world” than we are offending God with our small expectations because God is changing the world and he has enlisted his fallible people to join him in his work. Small things are used by the Devil to fuel big anxieties–which inevitably become big distractions. Don’t let him get a foothold. Don’t let the “ankle bites” steer you off course (and don’t allow yourself to become an ankle biter). If your vision is smaller than God’s vision, it needs to change. Focus on the Big Things!

If a church's vision or a believer's vision is not as big as God's, then it is not a godly vision.

Making Family Deposits

Ed Stetzer recently wrote an excellent post on balancing the demands of "ministry" and family. He lists three ways he makes relational deposits with his family.

1. Prioritize Your Relationship With Your Wife.

My wife is second only to Jesus in my life.

I know your conference is important to you, but my family is important to me. And, it is my job to advocate for them, even if it is not convenient for a conference. There are plenty of conference speakers, but only one husband to my wife and father to my kids.

2. Work Hard to Make Your Family a Priority In Your Life.

I don't have any hobbies. I used to, but not with a ministry and three small children. A friend of mine once told me that you can't be a church planter and a good golfer-- you don't have time for both. At least for me, I can't be a good husband / father, do what God has called me to do, and play golf, or fish or religiously watch football. But there is one exception - and this is important - if the kids want to do it, it is our hobby and another opportunity for investment.

3. Talk About Your Family All the Time

For those of you who follow on Twitter, you may get tired of hearing about my family. Get over it. It might remind you to spend some more time with your family. I talk about and brag on my family everywhere because I think of them all the time. The truth is we talk about the things we love, the things we value.

All of this investment is important because my family is my first calling and ministry. One day, I am going to leave LifeWay and the church I serve. We are all going to retire or perhaps make a move to another role. And, when you do, the only people that go with you are your family. Remember that.

Shepherds & Unregenerate Sheep

Here are a few challenging and convicting excerpts from Matt Chandlers recent message at the Desiring God National Pastors Conference. Matt is preaching on pastors preaching to unregenerate sheep from 1 Timothy 4. It was needed encouragement to my soul.

Listen. The gospel matters. Getting the gospel right matters. If you get the gospel wrong and you don’t distinguish between what the gospel is and what smorality is, then what you’ve done at best is restrain the hearts of people, but you won’t see their hearts transformed. If you don’t get the gospel right, you will inoculate your people to Jesus.


I preach through books of the Bible. The thing about doing that is that the Scriptures will gently and consistently, lovingly pressure your people’s assurance. It’ll press on it. I don’t think that by default most of us say, “I need to make everyone question whether or not they know this weekend.” But if you are faithful to the Scriptures, it will press on their souls.

You’d better decide very, very early what you believe about the Scriptures, or you will sell out to the idea that numerical success equals godliness. It’s subtle. Like those who are opponents of our faith. They are not going to come out and attack the faith. You just have to ask questions and never answer them. You’ll start to say, “You don’t have to go there.” You’d better decide early where your devotion lies.

No one unpacked for me that being a pastor was going to be a part of my own sanctification. It’s going to be the process of God disciplining me for the rest of my life. In this culture, it’s imperative to know that your calling is God’s calling to him on you for the body. If you don’t get this, then I don’t understand how you’re making it. God is the end. He is who we’re after. We get more of him by being obedient to his call to be pastors.

He’s the goal. Not more people. Not more baptisms. I am at The Village Church as an act of obedience. If anything else is your pursuit I don’t know how you will persevere. Sometimes it’s a long time that the baptismal waters stay still. I don’t know how you’re sustained in those hours if he’s not enough for you.

I also find that one of the things we don’t preach well is that ministry that looks fruitless is constantly happening in the Scriptures. We don’t do conferences on that. There aren’t too many books written about how you can toil away all your life and be unbelievably faithful to God and see little fruit this side of heaven.

Kay Yow's Life: To Live Is Christ and To Die Is Gain

I watched this evening Kay Yow's memorial service. Kay Yow was the head coach of the N.C. State women's basketball team for over thirty years. She died this past Saturday from cancer. Today was her memorial service held in Cary, NC.

The whole service is a testimony to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the whole servce glorified God. Twenty minutes of the service was a videotaped message from Kay Yow in which she shared her testimony and recounted the Gospel to all who were there to show their love for her. Wow! What a way to die! To live is Christ and to die is gain!

Memorial Service:




Kay Yow's Message:

A Good Read

Over Christmas, I was actually able to read some and was blessed and encouraged by reading David Horner's A Practical Guide for Life and Ministry: Overcoming 7 Challenges Pastors Face. David Horner is the Lead Pastor of Providence Baptist Church in Raleigh, NC. The book contains sound, biblical, encouraging and convicting wisdom for pastors and this was both convicted and encouraged. I wanted to share a few quotes that stood out to me.

On the Calling of a Pastor:

The good news is that God never intended for pastors to try to satisfy the demands of every model for ministry ever developed. He did not call you to crush you. God calls you to engage in a lifetime of effective, satisfying ministry in which he maximizes your spiritual gifts, considers your calling (not someone else's), recognizes your strengths and weakenesse, and commits to shaping you into a godly individual who grows more mature every day in your walk with Jesus Christ.

Our calling will often be misunderstood, challenged, and even attacked by those who see pastoral calling as a one-size-fits-all issue. The churches we serve will have stated and unstated unexpectations about the particular calling they envision for their pastor. Individuals within those churches will further complicate matters by adding their own expectations to the mix and keep us, as pastors, off balance by their constant questions about why we do not do what 'pastors shold do.' If that is not expasperating enough, deep down inside we wonder if perhaps they are right and we are not cutting it as a pastor. Talk about adding guilt on top of confusion! No wonder pastors have a hard time keeping their equilibrium!

You may ask, 'Since my calling is from God, should I be unconcerned about the expectations people have?' No, that is unrealistic. You cannot simply ignore them, but you do not have to satisfy them...Eventually I discovered what every pastor must learn: my calling is from God, and my equipping is from him as well.

Just because we are willing to do anything does not mean that we should do everything.

On Vision

As the shepherd of the flock charged with leading your congregation, you have been placed by God in a position of strategic importance. Without leadership, the status quo becomes the vision. Therefore, developing a vision falls to the pastor and his...leadership team in order for the church to make progress in its calling to be made complete in Christ.

Lots of roadside standshave been erected on side streets because once passionate dreamers and visionaries found the main road to their dreams too touch and decided to settle for the place they landed when they fell asleep. When pastors and churches begin with the assumption that numerical growth is the only validation of effective ministry, for example, that presupposition can lead to compromise on important issues in order to attract people. Theological assumptions will give way to more practical and popular ones.

The Lord has given no vision, nor has he inspired any dream that can be realized without prayer. Never settle for any dream you can plot out and plan from beginning to end without any aspect of mystery. Dreams that require no walking by faith may be achievable, but they are unlikely to be expansive enough for the glory of the Lord to be made known through them.

Pastors cannot forge an identity as a pastor without first making sure they are living up to their identity as a Christian. Perhaps the surest and quickest test of the godly validity of your vision is to consider how sharply focused it is on Christ and how deeply rooted it is in his Word.

Nothing else matters more than to know that where we are going, Christ is, that what we are doing, Christ honors, and that how we are doing it, Christ applauds. Simply put, Christ Jesus is our vision and must remain so even as the rest of the details unfold before us.

My own vision of ministry primarily has to do with equipping, not evangelizing. Yet if I am to understand my vision in full balance as God wants it to be, part of my committment to equipping will always include training and preparing and teaching others believers how they can be actively involved in being witnesses for Jesus Christ.

When God gives a vision, it will always be proportionate to the majesty of God...If our vision as pastors is only to be a little more spiritually minded and a little less sinful than the world around us and a little less ambitious than the pagan junior executive, we may well succeed, and in so doing prove to know nothing of a vision from the Lord. If our vision is to keep from becoming fanatical about walking with Christ, careful not to become too concerned about being distinguished as holy unto the Lord, once again we may progress toward such shallow dreams but never know the glory of living in his way.

On Spiritual Leadership

It is far better to weather the storms upfront, during the selection process, than face years of unresolved conflict if unqualifed leaders take their place on the team. The standards of spiritual leadership cannot be compromised if you expect to enjoy fruitful years of ministry in a loving, growing community of like-minded teammates.

On Conflict as a Pastor

You know, there will always be cellar voices in the church. For them, nothing you ever do will be good enough, nothing will ever be right. But then there will always be balcony voices. They love everything...all the time...they take great pleasure in pumping you up. Still, the truth always tend to be on the main floor.

Who we are before God matters far more than what we want others to think of us.

As a pastor you are not called to protect and defend yourself but to proclaim Christ. If you succeed in destroying your attacker, then you have failed to shepherd someone in your flock.

Your role as a pastor is to lead the entire flock, not just those who agree with you...Although you cannot keep others from seeing you as their enemy, you can determine to never reciprocate and view them that way.

In light of eternity, how big a deal is it that not everyone likes who you are and what you do?

Although you are committed to the flock allotted to you, and you love them all, your primary calling is to serve Christ and enjoy His favor, not to serve in such a way that you curry the favor of the crowd. No one likes to do things that consistently upset people, but the bottom line is that we are not in ministry for the applause and approval of the people we serve. We are to be devoted to Christ first and foremost. It is for Christ that we do what we do, and it is ultimately to him that we will answer.

So if you know that you are doing what he wants, and as a result you stir up the ire of those around you, so be it. Basing your ministry on the eternal truth and unchanging principles of God's Word will seldom be without critics, of for that matter seldom ever be popular. But it is the Lord Jesus Christ whom we serve, and if he himself was hated, why should we be surprised when we run into opposition as well?

A Good Word for the President

Here is an excerpt from John Piper's sermon this past Sunday, celebrating the sanctity of human life and charging the President with truth.

The Life of Obama

Breaking the Silence

It seems like forever since I posted anything. But there is no more important day than today to break the silence. Today is the 36th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade--the Supreme Court decision to legalize abortion for practically any reason at any point in a woman's pregnancy. The result of that decision is in the U.S. alone, 50 million babies have been barbarically slaughtered. 1.3 million are killed annually from abortion. That number is more than all the U.S. war casualties of all wars combined. 40 million babies are killed by abortion worldwide each year. That's seven times the number killed in the Holocaust--each year!

All for what? All because of "want." "I don't want this baby at this time in my life." We have become a nation, not unlike the nations of the Old Testament, who sacrifice our children to the god of self. Today is a day for us as the Church to cry out to God for mercy upon us, for the end of this heinous practice and safety of these babies, and for repentance to be given in the hearts of those who advocate and participate in this atrocity.

Below are a few links/quotes that are helpful on this day as we remember and as we pray and as we hope.

http://www.abort73.com/

Here's what really happened in Roe vs. Wade from the Roe herself.

In commenting on 1 Peter 2:17 in relation to abortion and our current President's attitude towards it, John Piper asks the following questions of our new President:

1. Are you willing to explain why a baby's right not to be killed is less important than a woman's right not to be pregnant?

2. Or are you willing to explain why most cities have laws forbidding cruelty to animals, but you oppose laws forbidding cruelty to human fetuses? Are they not at least living animals?

3. Or are you willing to explain why government is unwilling to take away the so-called right to abortion on demand even though it harms the unborn child; yet government is increasingly willing to take away the right to smoke, precisely because it harms innocent non-smokers, killing 3,000 non-smokers a year from cancer and as many as 40,000 non-smokers a year from other diseases?

4. And if you say that everything hangs on whether the fetus is a human child, are you willing to go before national television in the oval office and defend your support for the "Freedom of Choice Act" by holding in your hand a 21 week old fetus and explaining why this little one does not have the fundamental, moral, and constitutional right to life? Are you willing to say to parents in this church who lost a child at that age and held him in their hands, this being in your hands is not and was not a child with any rights of its own under God or under law?

Robert P. George has written an excellent article concerning abortion and our fight against it here. He concludes with these words:

Thanks be to God, the conflict over abortion has not produced, and will not produce, a civil war. Still, we must not forget that we are a people under judgment. We are called to account for the national sin of abortion. Like Thomas Jefferson reflecting on the evil of slavery—an evil in which he was personally complicit—we must "tremble for our country when we consider that God is just." Like Abraham Lincoln, whom President Obama invokes but does not emulate, we must pray that God, in His mercy, will not abandon us, but will rather restore us to the true and lofty moral ideals of our founding. Even at this dark hour for our movement, let us here highly resolve to hasten the day when this nation, under God, will be truly and fully and finally dedicated to the proposition that all are created equal.

I'll end with this video:

"What If We..."

Well, our family is packing up and about to head back to NC for Christmas. It will be such a blessing to see family and spend time with them. It will be difficult, to say the least, with this being our first Christmas without my Granddaddy. I'm really not looking forward to this "first." However, I know that God's grace is sufficient and in our weakness His strength is shown to be perfect. Please pray for our family and pray for us as we travel A LOT over this next week.

Well, to the point of this post. With a new year comes the usual end of year preparation for a pastor. I've hammered out most of my preaching schedule for the upcoming year. But also, one of the end of year New Year preparations for most pastors is brainstorming as to what the church can do "different" this year to serve the community and engage more lost people with the Gospel.

Now, before I make this point please do not interpret this to mean that I think we shouldn't work to adapt to the changing times in regards to finding new and appropriate ways to communicate the Gospel. But with that being said, I have wondered recently that if in the midst of all the "What if we..." thoughts that run through pastors heads as we approach a new year, if God doesn't look at our brainstorming with the response, "What's wrong with My plan?"

I mean is there really anything better than "By this shall all men know that you are My disciples, that you love one another?" Is there really anything more effective than the Church simply being the Church in its community. I just tend to believe that if a church in any community would get serious about being the Church in that community, reaching people with the Gospel will be a natural outflow of that. What can be more of a witness in a community of lost people who are dead in their sins and trespasses before God and who continually supress the truth they clearly see about God than a group of people in their same community who are distinctly different than them. What an impact a Church could have on a community if it simply treasured Christ above all things and let that treasuring of Christ affect every aspect of their life: how they raise their children, how they love their spouse, how they spend their money, how they spend their time, how they serve their community, what they talk about to each other and to their lost neighbors, how they have a yearning for a people half-way around the world to know Christ and they are sacrificing immensely to see that take place.

Do you know what will happen as a church like that lives a radically agressive and distinct life as the Body of Christ in their community? Well, not only will they naturally be talking to people about the Gospel "as they are going," but those around them (family, neighbors, co-workers) will begin to ask "for the reason for the hope that lies within them." And as the Church begins to answer that question, the Gospel finds a natural path to travel down and hearts will begin to be changed by that Gospel and communities will begin to be changed by that Gospel.

You see, it's not that God's plan of the Church being the Church in its community has failed at reaching that community with the Gospel and changing it, but rather that God's plan of the Church being the Church in it's community just simply has not been attempted.

So, "what if we" just started being the Church this New Year!