Ministry

A Dangerous Calling (pt. 4): Embracing Obscurity and Seeking a Received Ministry

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young shepherd leading herd

So far, in this practical exposition of 1 Kings 1–2, I have made four points concerning seeking the kingdom of God righteously and serving the Lord wisely. Those four points include

  1. We should not seek positions in ministry; we should seek the righteousness to receive such a place of service. Instead, . . .
  2. We should abide by the word, and wait for an invitation to serve.
  3. When kingdom-seekers exalt themselves, their ambition follows a discernible pattern.
  4. When you see false ‘kings’ exalting themselves, humble yourself and seek the true King.

And now, I want to consider a fifth point, namely, that

5. Until the Lord calls us to serve him, we should embrace obscurity and wait upon the Lord.

More completely, we should serve the Lord where he plants us and beware of pining for something larger, greater, or more visible. Instead, we should master the imperatives of the Bible, be mastered by the truths of the Bible, and grow in a knowledge of our Master, the Lord Jesus Christ. Indeed, there is no better way to prepare for ministry than humbly submitting to the Lord and learning to wait on him. This is something we all must learn, as the Lord matures us in Christ and prepares us for ministry. Continue reading →

A Dangerous Calling (pt. 3): Humble Yourself and Seek the True King

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timothy-eberly-wnrxQGBhbh8-unsplash

Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him;
fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way,
over the man who carries out evil devices!
— Psalm 37:7 —

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,
and all these things will be added to you.
— Matthew 6:33 —

When I was in college, ministry became an idol. I had come to faith when I was 17, at a time when the kings of the court (Magic, Bird, Jordan, et al) were my gods. In college, those kings were replaced by the King of Kings, and Matthew 6:33 became my guiding light. To this day, seeking first Christ, his kingdom, and his righteousness, is the theme of my song. And yet to seek him truly, the Lord had to crucify many layers of ambition in my own heart. To various degrees, he had to do such work during my twenties, my thirties, and still today.

Encouragingly, I have learned along the way that God does this with all his saints. For Moses it was 40 years in the wilderness; before him Joseph rotted in a jail cell for thirteen years before his service as vice-regent in Egypt; for David it was years being chased by Saul that prepared him for the throne; and for the other Saul it was fourteen years before he began his missionary work. All in all, there is a pattern in Scripture of men waiting years before arriving at their appointed place. Just the same in the church, many fruitful saints have gone through years of barrenness, pruning, or pain before God planted them in the place of their greatest fruitfulness. And why would we think God has changed his methods with us?

So, when I come to the subject of seeking ministry, I am not unbiased. I have seen how God uses decades of obscure service to prepare men for faithfulness in the light. Equally, he has thwarted the vain efforts of earnest Christians in order to prepare saints the ministry that God wanted to give them.

And thus, in Scripture and church history, there is ample evidence for the way the Lord uses time to replace ungodly motivations for ministry with godly ones. In my own life this is certainly true, and I have seen it up close in the lives of others, too. But for today, I want to return to Adonijah and another lesson we can learn from his life. For review, here are the first three lessons, outlined in two parts of this series (one and two).

  1. We should not seek positions in ministry; we should seek the righteousness to receive such a place of service. Instead, . . .
  2. We should abide by the word, and wait for an invitation to serve.
  3. When kingdom-seekers exalt themselves, their ambition follows a discernible pattern.

And now, here is a fourth lesson that relates to those who see others exalting themselves falsely.

  1. When you see false ‘kings’ exalting themselves, humble yourself and seek the true King.

Continue reading →

Willingly and Truthfully: How a Pastor Demonstrates His Love

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herd of sheep on focus photography

The elder to the elect lady and her children, whom I love in truth, . . .
– 2 John 1 –

In 2 John 1, the Beloved Apostle declares his love for the church. This love is for the church (“the elect lady”), as well as for her members (“her children”), and it sets the tone for his whole letter. As John expresses it, his love motivates him to write, and his love leads him to warn the church against false teachers. Indeed, such is the love of a pastor. Love that is biblical must lead others to the truth. And any love devoid of truth is not truly loving.

Throughout the New Testament love and truth are joined as one. For example, Paul says that love always rejoices in the truth (1 Cor. 13:4). Likewise, John’s love for the church moves him to rejoice when God’s children are walking in truth (2 John 4). The author of Hebrews urges us to spur one another on towards love and good deeds (Heb. 10:24–25)—good deeds defined by the truth of Scripture. And even Jesus is identified as the one who is fullness of grace and truth (John 1:14, 17), or, as these two words come from the Hebrew pair hesed (lovingkindness) and emet (truth/faithfulness), he is full of love and truth. Just as John highlights in 2 John 3 reads, “Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us, from God the Father and from Jesus Christ the Father’s Son, in truth and love.

In short, those leading the church are to love the people of God in truth. Yet, to echo Pilate: What is truth? Or, for that is matter: What is love? In this blogpost, I will begin to explore that question: What does it mean for a pastor to demonstrate love?

Love Must Truth

In our modern age, love is defined by unbounded affirmation and the willingness to celebrate self-expression, whatever that expression may be. Accordingly, those who love in truth, or attempt to love others with the truth, may not be well-received. They may be hated!

For those catechized by the world and its therapeutic ideas of self-esteem, challenging someone may be received as harsh or even hateful. And more, any pastor who dares to disciple a church or a church member in ways that the recipient does not esteem acceptable may easily be assigned as unloving or even unsafe. In such a world, the truths of God’s Word do not change, but appreciation for them do. And thus, Christians face the difficulty of returning to the old paths.

In generations gone by, generations forged by Christian convictions, correction was received, if not pursued; authority was respected; and love was evidenced by service, sacrifice, and selflessness. Today, vestigial remains of true love remain, but not without careful attention to what love actually is and isn’t. And if this is true in general; it is especially true for pastors.

How do pastors love God’s church? What should congregations expect of those who lead them? And what does Scripture say about the pastor and his responsibility to love the flock? Those questions could easily invite a book on the subject, The Pastor and His Love perhaps. Yet, short of that project, let me offer two answers. And in the days to come, as the Lord allow, I’ll add more. Continue reading →

A Dangerous Calling (pt. 2): Five Steps to Self-Promotion

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gray and white concrete staircase

Throughout the Bible we find a divide between wisdom and folly, righteousness and sin, givers and takers, children of God and children of the devil. As Jesus said, he did not come to bring peace, but a sword (Matt. 10:34–35). And that sword not only divides humanity, which provides the context of his words in Matthew’s Gospel, it is also a sword that judges the thoughts and intentions of men. Indeed, God’s Word does more than declare behavior right and wrong; it does surgery on the heart, exposing why we do what we do.

In the Bible, and in the church, few things are more difficult to discern than motivations for ministry. For truly, as many good motivations as there are, there are also bad motivations. There is ambition that is godly and ambition that is anything but godly. And in every child of God who serves faithfully, there will be both impulses.

Just consider the Apostle Peter, who could confess Jesus as the Christ at the same time that he would deny him his cross (see Matt. 16:13–23). Indeed, at one time or another, all the disciples had a mixture of true and false ambitions, which is why Jesus had to correct their views on greatness (Mark 10:42–45). Truly, we are fickle creatures. And the best of men is both taught by God and tempted by the devil. Again, read Matthew 16.

So, knowing that, we should always be open to examining our motivations for ministries, and that is what this series is about. It aims to address false ambitions and to set a course towards true ambitions for ministry.

In Part 1, I offered two lessons from the life of Adonijah.

  1. We should not seek positions in ministry; we should seek the righteousness to receive such a place of service.
  2. We should abide by the word, and wait for an invitation to serve.

And now, in Part 2, I will suggest a third lesson from Adonijah’s life:

  1. When kingdom-seekers exalt themselves, their ambition follows a discernible pattern.

This pattern consists of five actions that Adonijah pursued in his attempt to be king in Israel. And, as the story goes, he nearly succeeded. What ultimately prevented him from claiming the throne illicitly is that genuine servants of God stood to oppose him. His false ambitions were thwarted because the ambitions of others were rooted in God’s Word.

Sadly, this sort of conflict continues today.

In truth, only when righteous men and women stand against falsehood will truth prevail. Yet, this is exactly why it is vital to learn the pattern of those who exalt themselves. For in ministry, when good works are pursued with bad motives, it can be very difficult to discern. Often, the falsehood of good works takes years, even decades, to discern. Yet, Scripture does give us light, if we are willing to look. And that is what we find in Adonijah’s play for David’s throne. Continue reading →

A Dangerous Calling: Two Ways to Seek Ministry

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boy wearing crown statue

Adonijah the son of Haggith exalted himself, saying, ‘I will be king.”
– 1 Kings 1:5 – 

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,
and all these things will be added to you.
– Matthew 6:33 –

There is nothing wrong with seeking the kingdom of God, or in seeking a place in that kingdom. In fact, it is absolutely right. Yet, with every good intention, there is the possibility to go astray, to take something good and to seek it badly. And for this reason, it is not sufficient to seek the kingdom. We must seek the kingdom and his righteousness.

In other words, seeking God’s kingdom is not the whole command. We must seek God’s kingdom righteously, which is to say, we must seek to be righteous in God’s kingdom. And this is the point that I want to pursue here and in the next two blogposts.

Unfortunately, too many followers of Christ have seen ministers who have sought the kingdom without righteousness. Likewise, too many who are now serving the Lord can reflect on the ways (multiple ways?) we have pursued ministry for vain reasons or with wrong motivations.

For instance, I learned of pastor last fall whose church had served as a money laundering front for his financial dealings. Clearly, he was seeking a kingdom, but not the Lord’s. Yet, as he stood in the pulpit each week, his vain pursuits were not seen. It took years for his self-interest to come to light. As Paul writes to Timothy, “The sins of some people are conspicuous, going before them to judgment, but the sins of others appear later” (1 Tim. 5:24).

So too, the fruit of ministry takes time to discover. Sometimes what looks like good fruit is not genuine. Similarly, for every ministry aspiration that is good, there are other aspirations that are corroded by pride, selfish ambition, and vain glory. As Paul David Tripp declared, ministry is A Dangerous Calling. How dangerous? So dangerous that three of the men who endorsed his book are no longer in ministry.

Accordingly, we should both be slow in seeking ministry (James 3:1). And we should be slow to affirm the ministries of others (1 Tim. 5:22). At the same time, we should be quick to learn from Scripture, what God says about seeking the ministry and a place of service in his kingdom. And to help us, I want to return to the book of 1 Kings and the story of Adonijah, the self-promoting son of David. For in him, and in comparison to Solomon, we can learn much about ministry. Continue reading →

Restoring the Right Hand of Fellowship: A New Sermon Miniseries

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jack-sharp-ShCVvQbQBDk-unsplashFour Truths About Fellowship: A Sermon on 1 John 1:1–2:6

As we know all too well, sin always separates. And thus, when fellowship breaks, there is, lurking somewhere, sin unconfessed. In those times, it is tempting to fix the problem(s) with our own wisdom and to work overtime to recreate the fellowship that was had before. Yet, in times when fellowship is lost, we must remember that God alone can “fix” it. And accordingly we should seek him first and all his righteousness.

To put it seasonally, before the Lord gives his church spring rains, he often makes us feel the bitterness of winter’s cold. This coldness may have known sources, or its chilling drafts may strike us without ever revealing the source of their cold. Yet, whatever the source of winter, we should remember that God is working, and that spring is coming. As Hosea 6:1–3 tells us, we must remember that the Lord is the one who breaks us, so that he can bind us; he hurts us (or permits us to feel pain), so that he can heal us (see Psalm 105). Then, from this place of weakened condition, we are invited to return to know the Lord.

This is the promise: God will sanctify his people, and he will bring them to confess their sins. And until sin is confessed, joy will be withheld. Yet, when we seek his light and see our darkness, it will prompt true confession, repentance, forgiveness, and grace. And this grace will bring a new season of fellowship, all provided by the Lord. Continue reading →

Preach the Manuscript: Ten Ways to Improve Sermon Delivery

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jesusA few years ago I led an online class on the subject of preaching. As expected, we discussed all sorts of questions pertaining to preaching—sermon length, the use of illustrations, the necessity of expositional preaching, as well as how to preach Christ from the whole Bible. Among these conversations, we discussed the place for manuscripts over against using or not using notes.

In seminary, I learned from two gifted preachers who both taught that manuscripts were not helpful for preaching. For the first few years of pastoring, I followed their advice and brought into the pulpit four to five half-sheets of notes. This taught me how to preach to people and not just read notes. But a few years in, I deviated from their counsel and now manuscript all my sermons.

That said, I strive to preach the manuscript and not just read it. In using a manuscript, I value the clarity and forethought I can put into the message. And ultimately, that is why I change to a manuscript somewhere around 2011. At the same time, manuscripting does lend itself to a dry delivery. Still, I believe the benefits of manuscripting outweigh the costs, so long as preachers learn to do more than read their notes. To that end, here are ten things I’ve learned in preaching a manuscript that might help others who use a manuscript. Continue reading →

“But He Just Gets Me”: Three Responses to Pragmatic Arguments for Plagiarism (pt. 1)

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freestocks-I_pOqP6kCOI-unsplashWhat do you say to the person who laments that the former pastor of the church, the one who was disqualified from ministry because of his verbal and physical abuse, is no longer preaching? Never mind the fact that this preacher held the Bible with violent hands and sealed his unrepentance with a divorce, this woman argued the merits of his preaching and said, “But he just gets me.”

In such an instance, personal sentiments have far eclipsed biblical standards. Ignoring whether this man was objectively qualified to preach, this woman’s subjective interest was in having someone who made her feel a certain way. Such is the case in many churches today.

Rather than upholding pastors to the biblical standards of leadership, many church-goers are looking for someone with a certain gift of communication, inspiration, or entertainment. Today, TED Talks have replaced Timothy and Titus as the standard for good preaching. And communication skills have exceeded a commitment to character.

To that point, I once talked with an elder from a large church who argued for their multi-campus model on the basis of the senior pastors extraordinary giftedness in preaching. More specifically, he said if this man doesn’t preach people will leave the church. He continued, so instead of trying to have different campus pastors, we record his sermons and replay them in our various campuses. This is pragmatism at its finest.

Addressing the Pragmatism of Pulpit Plagiarism

Today, I’m not here to talk about the demerits of multi-site churches or what makes for good preaching. Instead, I want to address the pragmatism that funds those churches and invites church-goers to value charisma over character. More specifically, I want to address the practice of using another man’s sermon and preaching it for themselves.[1]

Already, I’ve addressed this subject in two blog posts—On Plagiarism and Preachers: Why Plagiarizing Sermons is Popular, But Biblically Indefensible; The Sermon Begins in *Your* Study: Why ‘Apt to Teach’ Means More Than ‘Apt to Speak’—but now I want to respond to three pragmatic arguments that were raised against my first post. Continue reading →

On Plagiarism and Preachers: Why Plagiarizing Sermons is Popular, But Biblically Indefensible

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nycholas-benaia-2wGjjX8Qb-g-unsplashIt seems, frankly, utterly unthinkable to me that authentic preaching would be the echo of another person’s encounter with God’s word rather than a trumpet blast of my own encounter with God’s word. Now to be sure, my sermon should be an echo. It should be an echo of the voice of God. But not an echo of an echo of the voice of God. So that is my conviction.
— John Piper  —

When it comes to light that a pastor has been borrowing the work on another—what we might call plagiarism in the pulpit, sermon borrowing, retweeting, or any other euphemism for violating the seventh commandment—it is deeply troubling. But if that pastor has any influence on the life and ministry of other pastors, it is even worse, because it says to younger men, who are finding their way in the wilderness of pulpit ministry, that it is acceptable to use the work of others. 

To date, I can think of two pastors I knew personally who were fired for preaching someone else’s sermons. And I have heard many reports of the same. I can also think of many others whose ministries I have written off as unfaithful after learning that they were reheating the meals of others. And most recently, I have watched the unbelieving world make sport of God’s people because of plagiarism in the pulpit.

In recent days, it has come to light that the president of the SBC, Ed Litton, has been found retweeting sermon material from J.D. Greear. You can watch his expositions of Romans 1 and Romans 8, both of which demonstrate word-for-word dependence on Greear’s work. Both men have released statements explaining the matter (see here and here), but with 140+ sermons pulled from the Internet, more explanations are needed.

Without addressing the specifics of the Litton situation, I want to step back and ask the question: Is it wrong for a pastor to borrow material from another? What does it mean to plagiarize in the pulpit? Why is this such a common practice? And what does Scripture say?

To start with, I am not first to tackle this subject. Albert Mohler has discussed it, so have D.A. Carson, John Piper, and Justin Taylor and Andy Naselli (who lists many others). Letting Carson speak for the bunch, he expresses the severity of the problem.

Taking over another sermon and preaching it as if it were yours is always and unequivocally wrong, and if you do it you should resign or be fired immediately. The wickedness is along at least three axes: (1) You are stealing. (2) You are deceiving the people to whom you are preaching. (3) Perhaps worst, you are not devoting yourself to the study of the Bible to the end that God’s truth captures you, molds you, makes you a man of God and equips you to speak for him.

Carson’s words are severe. And they are matched by the severity of others listed above. Yet, the consensus of these evangelical leaders does not mean there is consensus on the issue. For on the trusty Internet, you will find James Merritt’s permission for plagiarism, websites selling pre-packaged sermons, and encouragement for pastors to partake in the practice of using the work of others.  Thus, in what follows, we need to answer three questions.

  1. What is Plagiarism? And does it apply to borrowing the work of another when permission is received and attribution given?
  2. Why is Plagiarism so prevalent today? Who is championing it?
  3. Is Plagiarism Biblically Defensible? (My answer: No, it is not!)

Answering these three questions, we can define our terms and evaluate from Scripture the practice of retweeting sermons. Continue reading →

A Heart for Excellence: Thinking Biblically about Skill in Singing

/ davidsschrock

sven-read-4yZGWYCul-w-unsplashSing to him a new song; play skillfully on the strings, with loud shouts.
— Psalm 33:3 —

They were all under the direction of their father in the music in the house of the Lord with cymbals, harps, and lyres for the service of the house of God. Asaph, Jeduthun, and Heman were under the order of the king. 7 The number of them along with their brothers, who were trained in singing to the Lord, all who were skillful, was 288.
— 1 Chronicles 25:6–7 —

So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
— 1 Corinthians 10:31 —

To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.
— 1 Corinthians 12:7 —

Music is a gift from God. And in the church, those gifted in song are given by Christ to build up his body. To that end, those who lead the church in song should serve with true faith, pure hearts, and skilled hands. For various reasons, the combination of head, heart, and hands is not always easy. But it is something we should pray for and work towards

To that end, I offer the following eight points on the place of skill in song. These eight points summarize a larger article on the biblical necessity of excellence in music. (You can read that article here: True Worship Includes a Heart for Excellence.) Let me know what you think of these eight points, and/or what you would add or improve. Continue reading →