A Minister's Regrets

I was introduced to Geoff Thomas some years back at the Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary Conference that I attend each August. Thomas is a Welsh pastor who has served the congregation of Alfred Place Baptist Church for over fifty years.

The other day a friend shared with me a post that Thomas wrote in 2011 for Banner of Truth. In it, he drew from his considerable experience and shared what his greatest regrets have been in his half-century as a minister. He listed eight in all, and they were all convicting for this minister.

That said, the last one stood out above the rest. What a passionate, familiar, heart-felt expression of both regret and glorious gospel truth there is in these words:

I am sorry that my love for Jesus Christ is cool and shallow. ‘Weak is the effort of my heart and cold my warmest thought.’ It was true for Newton and it is true for us today. Sometimes I think, ‘Do I love him at all?’ Where is the affection, the glow, the delight and anticipation of meeting with him? M’Cheyne wrote in his diary, ‘Rose early to meet him whom my soul loves. Who would not rise early to meet such company?’ I wish that that reflected my own heart’s longing for the Saviour. I wish I could give myself to him anew each Sunday, thinking, ‘I am going to go where the Lord Jesus is.’ When I have nothing else to think about I wish my mind naturally gravitated to him. Here is someone who laid down his life for me. This is the one who delivered me from hell. Behold my Saviour who is taking me to glory for ever. Here is my beloved and here is my friend who is working all things together for my good. This dear Lord of mine is going to do an eternal makeover on my whole life. The Lord Jesus is my personal teacher and personal trainer and personal counsellor and personal bodyguard. He can protect me from the biggest devil in hell. Christ is so fascinating a personality, wise, caring, fresh, creative, stimulating, patient and so kind to me. It is my chief complaint, that my love is weak and faint. I who encourage others to love him am amazed that I can love him so little, but what is more amazing is the fact that I love him at all.

Pastors' Conference

Back in June I mentioned the pastors' seminar and Bible conference put on annually by West Cannon Baptist Church near Grand Rapids. This conference (to be held September 24 & 25) features Michael Horton and Kevin DeYoung, and registration opens today (only $35 if you register by August 31, $45 afterward). Check out the schedule below and for more information or to register, click here or call 616-874-6740.

West Cannon Pastors' Seminar

Each year, West Cannon Baptist Church near Grand Rapids hosts a wonderful conference for pastors. It is very inexpensive and the teaching is always top notch, including in past years such speakers as D.A. Carson, Joel Beeke, Voddie Baucham, Steven Lawson and Jerry Bridges. This year's conference will occur on September 24th & 25th and will feature speakers Mike Horton and Kevin DeYoung.

For those who register before August 31, the cost for the seminar is just $35 per person, which includes both a continental breakfast and lunch on Tuesday. If you can't make the whole conference, the Monday evening session is open to the public at no charge.

More details will be forthcoming, but pencil this event in on your calendar and plan on attending!

Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor

A couple weeks ago I made reference to D.A. Carson's wonderful biography of his father, Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson.
It was recently brought to my attention that the downloads of the book are available for FREE in PDF form thanks to The Gospel Coalition.

If you are a pastor, please read this book. It is certainly on my short list of those books which have had the most profound impact on me. In an age when we are especially prone to idolize "celebrity pastors" who have gifts and opportunities that most of us will never experience, Carson extols the virtue of faithfulness, which each one of us has the capacity to exercise.

The Virtue of Ordinary Faithfulness

A few years back, Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck co-authored Why We Love the Church: In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion. I was reminded of what a helpful book that is this morning when I saw a number of friends on Facebook linking to this post at Ligonier.com by Kevin (which is an adaptation of the book's epilogue). In it he calls us to the following:

What we need are fewer revolutionaries and a few more plodding visionaries. That’s my dream for the church — a multitude of faithful, risktaking plodders. The best churches are full of gospel-saturated people holding tenaciously to a vision of godly obedience and God’s glory, and pursuing that godliness and glory with relentless, often unnoticed, plodding consistency.

It's well worth reading the whole post -- or the whole book for that matter! I know I need to remind myself often that God doesn't necessarily call me to turn the world upside down, but he does call me to be faithful. This is a good word for us all, but especially essential for pastors to remember.

Another must-read for pastors that helps remind us of this fact is D.A. Carson's Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson. In the book, Carson weaves together his father's journal entries with biographical information to give a sketch of a man he profoundly respects and admires, even though the depth of his own direct impact and the level of his own fame have far outreached those of his father, who spent the vast majority of his life pastoring rather small churches. Carson notes in the book's preface:

(F)ew assessments of Dad's journals are likely to prove more penetrating than that of Michael Thate, my administrative assistant. Michael cheerfully transcribed the English parts of the journals. When he sent me the last digital files, he accompanied them with an e-mail that said in part, "I used to aspire to be the next Henry Martyn [heroic British Bible translator and missionary to the Muslim peoples of India and Persia]. However, after reading your dad's diaries, the Lord has given my heart a far loftier goal: simply to be faithful. I know we men are but dust, but what dust the man I read about in these diaries was!" And after proofing the manuscript he sent me a note telling me he was reminded of Tolkien's lines about Strider:

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.

All true. And yet Tom was a most ordinary pastor.

Some of us are indeed called to wield massive influence. The vast majority of us are called to more ordinary things. Instead of seeking to revolutionize the world, let us simply seek the far loftier goal of being faithful. If God desires to use our faithfulness in ways that are beyond our wildest imagination, then so be it. May he receive all the glory. And if he should choose to use us only in the smallest of ways, then so be it. May he be glorified just as much.

The Duties of Pastors

As I prepare to preach this Sunday from Hebrews 6:9-12, I have been reading from John Owen's seven volume work, An Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews. In so doing, I came across two observations that he makes that were convicting to me, as they should be to every pastor. He states,

"Obs. I. It is the duty of the dispensers of the gospel to satisfy their hearers in and of their love in Jesus Christ to their souls and person."

Said another way, we could ask, do the members of your congregation have sufficient reason to be convinced that you love them on account of what Christ Jesus has done for you? There of course are two parts of this: They must know that you love them, and they must know that it is the love of Christ which engenders this love.

Owen's second observation is this:  

"Obs. II. It is our duty to come unto the best satisfaction we may in the spiritual condition of them with whom we are to have spiritual communion."

Do you know the members of your congregation well enough that you can confidently give an accurate appraisal of their spiritual condition? The key to accomplishing this goal is of course the same as in the first: The shepherd must spend time with the sheep of his flock! Now this is not just the job of just one man; biblically, the elders of a church are all called to shepherd the flock (1 Peter 5:1-3). But just as the elders are to set an example for the church, so too a pastor needs to be modeling this to the other elders.

Let me be quick to admit that I have not done as good a job at this as I would like. But it is my goal and my desire that in 2012 I would spend more time with the people whom God has entrusted to my care. I pray that I would know them better and that they would better know my love for them in Christ Jesus. May all who are called to be shepherds have a similar commitment.

A Biblical View of Church Leadership

Far too often our idea of church leaders is that they are to be a board of directors who run the business of the church.  Doug Wolter provides a helpful corrective to this view of church leadership:

The image of a spiritual leader in the church is not a CEO but a good mother and father. Someone worthy to imitate and follow. 1 Thess. 2:7-8, 11-12 says, "Just as a nursing mother cares for her children, so we cared for you. Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well.  For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory."

May the Lord raise up more leaders who lovingly train and guide the people of the church, not just oversee its administration.  Click here to read the whole post.

Good Questions for Church Leaders

The other day Tullian Tchividijian posted a letter at his blog which he had sent to all of the elders and deacons of his church.  In it he had asked them to consider the following questions, which he had already addressed to himself:

Do you rejoice in position, power, accomplishments, entitlement, control, degrees, knowledge, status, authority, numbers, and rank? Or do you rejoice in service, mercy, sacrifice, pastoral care, love, prayer, prudence, grace, relationships, and repentance? Are you proud or humble? Do you put others before yourself? Do you find your daily security and significance in your own accomplishments or in Christ’s accomplishment for you? Do you seek first place or last place? Do you boast on yourself or on Christ? Do you talk about yourself a lot? Are you prone to envy and do you get defensive easily? Do you weep with those who weep? Do you love people and look for opportunities to serve and shepherd them? Do you revel in self-confidence or self-sacrifice? Do you have people in your life that you confess specific instances of sin? Do the people in your life find it easy to correct you?

May all of us who are in church leadership be willing to examine our lives against such a list.  And as we do, may God give us the courage to be honest with ourselves, the humility to repent of our sins, and the grace to fully know that our righteousness is not found in anything we do, but only and always in the finished work of Christ.

Fulfill YOUR Ministry

Matt Chandler with a great reminder for young pastors...



(HT: Vitamin Z)

Advice for Young Pastors

I am constantly impressed at the sage advice and wise insights that come from the heart and mind of Kevin DeYoung. Though relatively young, Kevin is wise far beyond his years, and his sermons, books and blog posts regularly feed my soul.

Yesterday and today, Kevin posted a great two-part series with his advice for theological students and young pastors. Among his suggestions are the following:

4. Establish your priorities at the church early and clearly. I suggest: preach, pray, and people.

13. Learn to think in 5 year, 1 year, 6 months, and 1 month increments. When you start out at a church you’ll feel three months behind everyone else; you need to be six months ahead.

20. God opposes the proud but gives grace to humble. Pray this into your soul before and after every sermon.

24. Don’t preach your issues from seminary. I can almost guarantee no one in your church doubts the Pauline authorship of Ephesians. It says “Paul” in their Bibles so they’re good to go.

28. Be comfortable in your own shoes. Preach through your own personality. Learn from, but don’t try to clone, your heroes.

33. Make time to make friends. In the long run neither you nor your church will regret the hours invested in personal relationships with other pastors, old friends from seminary, and kindred spirits in the congregation.

39. Love your wife. Spend time with your kids. Be very afraid if you no longer look forward to going home at the end of the day.

40. Be generous in giving credit to others and stingy in passing around the blame.

44. What your people need most from you is your own personal holiness. People want a pastor who has been with God.

45. Keep your passions in proportion. Not everything matters as much as everything else. Keep the gospel front and center.

If you are a pastor or seminary student, do yourself a favor and check out the complete lists. Read numbers 1-20 here and numbers 21-45 here.

West Cannon Pastors' Seminar

If you're a pastor in or near Michigan, let me recommend a great conference to you. Each year West Cannon Baptist Church in Grand Rapids puts on a pastors' seminar. I went last year and was greatly edified by both the teaching and the fellowship with other pastors.

This year's theme is Strength for the Inner Man and the speakers will be D.A. Carson & Voddie Baucham. The conference is September 27 & 28 and is very reasonably priced at $50. You can get more information here.

Ministry Idols

Last Sunday I got a call at 5:45 a.m. from our senior pastor's wife telling me that he was sick and asking if I'd be able to preach that morning (at 9:15 & 11:00). I was scheduled to teach a Sunday School class on the first commandment, so I spent a couple hours transforming it into a sermon and preached it. I survived and so did all of the congregation, so chalk another one up to the grace of God!

Having just dealt with the topic of having no other Gods, I've been thinking the last couple days about what idolatries I have in my life as a pastor. Low and behold, I was making my morning sprint through a number of blogs I follow and Justin Taylor has a post on that very topic. More specifically, he includes a Mark Driscoll sermon (posted below) in which he goes through a number of typical pastoral idols. Taylor summarizes them as follows:

1.Attendance idolatry: Does your joy change when your attendance does?
2.Gift idolatry: Do you feel that God needs you and uses you because you are so skilled?
3.Truth idolatry: Do you consider yourself more righteous than more simple Christians?
4.Fruit idolatry: Do you point to your success as evidence of God’s approval of you?
5.Method idolatry: Do you worship your method as your mediator?
6.Tradition idolatry: What traditions are you upholding that are thwarting the forward progress of the gospel?
7.Office idolatry: Are you motivated primarily by God’s glory or your title?
8.Success idolatry: Is winning what motivates you at the deepest level?
9.Ministry idolatry: Do you use the pressure of ministry to make you walk with God?
10.Innovative idolatry: Does it matter to you that your ministry be considered unique?
11.Leader idolatry: Who, other than Christ, are you imaging?

The Duty of Pastors

In doing some sermon prep I was reading Calvin's Commentary on John 10 and came upon this passage:

And he who is not the shepherd. Though Christ claims for himself alone the name of a shepherd, yet he indirectly states that, in some respects, he holds it in common with the agents by whom he acts. For we know that there have been many, since the time of Christ, who did not hesitate to shed their blood for the salvation of the Church; and even the prophets, before his coming, did not spare their own life. But in his own person he holds out a perfect example, so as to lay down a rule for his ministers. For how base and shameful is our indolence, if our life is more dear to us than the salvation of the Church, which Christ preferred to his own life!

What is here said about laying down life for the sheep, may be viewed as an undoubted and principal mark of paternal affection. Christ intended, first, to demonstrate what a remarkable proof he gave of his love toward us, and, next, to excite all his ministers to imitate his example. Yet we must attend to the difference between them and him. He laid down his life as the price of satisfaction, shed his blood to cleanse our souls, offered his body as a propitiatory sacrifice, to reconcile the Father to us. Nothing of all this can exist in the ministers of the Gospel, all of whom need to be cleansed, and receive atonement and reconciliation to God by that single sacrifice. But Christ does not argue here about the efficacy or benefit of his death, so as to compare himself to others, but to prove with what zeal and affection he is moved towards us, and, next, to invite others to follow his example. In short, as it belongs exclusively to Christ to procure life for us by his death, and to fulfill all that is contained in the Gospel, so it is the universal duty of all pastors or shepherds, to defend the doctrine which they proclaim, even at the expense of their life, and to seal the doctrine of the Gospel with their blood, and to show that it is not in vain that they teach that Christ has procured salvation for themselves and for others.

For those of us who are pastors, may we all exemplify this type of shepherd, willing to follow the example of our Savior. And for everyone else, pray for your pastors that this might indeed be true of them, and continue to keep them in your prayers.