Tag Archive - Pastoral Ministry

Tis Always First Quadrant

February 7, 2012 in Holiness, Personal Commentary, Renewal with 1 Comment

“Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.” – Acts 20:28

“Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.” – 1 Timothy 4:16

Pastor friends, there is nothing more important to you or your the congregation entrusted to your care than your own personal holiness and passionate pursuit of God. There is never a time when keeping your heart with all diligence is not most urgent and most important.  With all the needs, challenges, opportunities, and demands upon your time, money, and energy, be militant with your spiritual life. Persist in this. It will be good for you and those who benefit from your usefulness.

In all your task management and getting things done, keep these at the top. Assumption is not an option. Careful attention, close watching, diligent persistence is the order of the day. Every day. For Jesus’ sake, and His church.

May we be known not merely by the skillfulness of our hands or the swiftness of our feet or the eloquence of our words, but let it be our nearness to Jesus and the sweetness we’ve tasted in His gospel. Let it be known that we can be found at the banqueting table of our Lord–remembering–renewing–reviving with all joy and delight in His presence. And above all else, command our lives to the cause of our hearts, confessing “Jesus is Lord” in the power of the Spirit. Amen.

Preaching, Manuscripts, and Fraternal Critique

September 6, 2011 in I Love the Local Church, Life With Grace, Preaching with 38 Comments

“Pharaoh, let my people go!”

That’s a joke my mother uses on occasion with my friends regarding my first sermon preached.  Admittedly, it was not that great, and I did preach everything I knew in the Bible in one sermon.

Prior to coming to Grace, I had eight years of Bible college and seminary training and six years ministering as a youth and college pastors in local churches.  With that training and experience, you would think I had a lot of practical training in preparing and delivering sermons.  But the fact of the matter is I had no formal training in college and one class in seminary in which I preached one 20 minute sermon.  Although I preached many times, I still felt woefully unprepared for the fundamental task of pastoral ministry.

Then I came to Grace and immediately began to be helped by my fellow pastor and churchman Tom Ascol.

The first thing he did was pay a lady to transcribe my first message at Grace word for word and spend two hours working through the 17-page document full of grammatical errors, pointless commentary, and incoherent argumentation.  It was one of the most grueling and embarrassing things I had ever done.  The scalpel (Tom’s red pen) dissected and performed surgery and fully exposed areas of incompetency in my preaching.  While it was almost unbearable, it was the best thing that could have ever happened to my preaching.  In fact, it was what I need 12 years ago that neither Bible college, seminary, or two church positions offered.

I have heard it said from experienced practitioners like Tim Keller and others that it takes a pastor five years or more than 200 sermons before he finds his voice/style and feels comfortable in his own skin.  In the day of podcasting and sermon downloading where church members can listen to the best preachers evangelicalism has to offer, the pressure to perform and excel in preaching is daunting.  If you can listen to Matt Chandler on Monday, David Platt on Tuesday, Mark Driscoll on Wednesday, John Piper on Thursday, and Mark Dever on Friday, then for the that church member, the young and inexperienced preacher on Sunday morning feels “karaoke”. Only a church stubbornly committed to making disciples, including disciples in the pulpit, can celebrate amateur preachers and pitting them against more polished, seasoned practitioners in the pulpit.

As one of those young and inexperienced preachers, one of the best gifts God has given me is men who are committed to making me a better preacher of the gospel.  Every sermon I preach is evaluated.  Everything is considered: thesis, exegesis, illustrations, application, eye contact, speech, grammar, length, etc.  In the beginning, I dreaded that one hour in our weekly elder meetings; however, as I sought to apply the fraternal criticism to my preaching, I began to anticipate those meetings, knowing I was benefiting from an experience in true pastoral training that many, if not most, in my generation are not afforded.  The opportunity to receive real, significant preaching instruction and help is a stewardship I hope not only benefits my hearers but also those I may have opportunity to help in the future.

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War for the Gospel

August 10, 2011 in Excerpts, Gospel with 2 Comments

I needed this timely word from Paul Tripp. From his article, Pastoral Ministry Is War:

Not only should we actively battle for the gospel as the fundamental paradigm for every ministry of the church, but we must also fight for the gospel to be the resting place of our hearts as pastors. Pastor, no one is more influential in your life than you are because no one else talks to you more. The things you say to yourself about God, you, ministry, and others are profoundly important, shaping your participation in and experience of ministry. My experience with hundreds of pastors is that many pastors sadly function in a regular state of gospel amnesia. They forget to preach privately to themselves the gospel that they declare publicly to others.

When you forget the gospel, you begin to seek from the situations, locations, and relationships of ministry what you have already been given in Christ. You begin to look to ministry for identity, security, hope, well-being, meaning, and purpose. These are things you will only ever find vertically. They are already yours in Christ. So you have to fight to give the gospel presence in your heart. Also, when you live out of the grace of the gospel, you quit fearing failure, you quit avoiding being known, and you quit hiding your struggles and your sin. The gospel declares that there is nothing that could ever be uncovered about you and me that hasn’t already been covered by the grace of Jesus. The gospel is the only thing that can free a pastor from the guilt, shame, and drivenness of the hide (“never let your weakness show”) and seek (asking ministry to do what Christ has already done) lifestyle that makes ministry burdensome to so many pastors.

So, in the war of pastoral ministry, are you a good soldier? Remember that the Holy Spirit lives inside of you, and he battles on your behalf even when you don’t have the sense to. Remember too that in Christ you have already been given everything you need to be what you’re supposed to be and to do what you’re supposed to do in the place where God has positioned you. And remember that since Emmanuel is with you it is impossible to ever be alone in the moment-by-moment war that is pastoral ministry.

Give Them the Gospel, Yes, But Give Them You, Too

June 7, 2011 in Church Planting, Gospel, Preaching with 0 Comments

I have always admired and sought to emulate the pastoral heart and compassion found in C.J. Mahaney. Speaking to a group of church planters, he implored them to love, love, love, and then preach to their people.  When I first watched this, the following verses came to my mind . . .

7 But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. 8 So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.
- 1 Thessalonians 2:7-8

Honoring a Faithful Shepherd

June 2, 2011 in I Love the Local Church, Leadership, Life With Grace, Personal Commentary with 0 Comments

Last night, I had the privilege of joining my church family in honoring Tom Ascol on his 25th anniversary as pastor of Grace Baptist Church.  The evening was spent with members sharing stories and testimonies of how God has impacted their lives through Pastor Tom, and I began it with a few words about the call of a shepherd, explaining how he has led our church through the years.  I provide them below because I know many of my readers know Tom from his blog, articles, books, or role as director of Founders Ministries.  I’m fortunate to know him as a fellow pastor, father in the faith, and personal friend.  

Honoring a Faithful Shepherd:
Reflections on the Ministry of Tom Ascol
on His 25th Anniversary as Pastor of Grace Baptist Church

If you were alive in during biblical times, there is one vocation that every person in the community would be familiar with. That would be the work of a shepherd. It is widely understood that shepherds were in many ways considered to be heroic men, known for their independence, resourcefulness, adaptability in severe circumstances, courage amidst all kinds of opposition, and vigilance to their calling. Their work required of them an intense capacity for attentiveness, self-sacrifice, and compassion. As a result, shepherds were looked upon in Scripture as an icon of leadership, and no doubt one of the reasons why Jesus referred to Himself as the Good Shepherd and of whom Peter called the Chief Shepherd.

There are many ways to describe the work of a pastor, but none are more comprehensive and clear than that of a shepherd. When a pastor is faithful to the people he is called to lead, he images forth the shepherding ways of God. Indeed, God Himself said, “I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord God” (Ezekiel 34:15). In the popular Shepherd Psalm, King David begins by saying, “The Lord is my shepherd” (Psalm 23:1). So in a very significant way, God communicates his heart and ways with His people as a shepherd. That alone should alert us to the significance of the work, given to those who are called to lead by “shepherding the flock of God” whom Jesus purchased with His own blood (Acts 20:28).

But what is it that encompasses the work of a faithful shepherd? Tonight, I want to briefly give you three aspects of a faithful shepherd in light of what this evening is all about. For 25 years, God has given us a pastor who has served this church as a faithful shepherd to the flock entrusted to his care, and tonight, I want to honor the man who has honored Christ and discharged his calling as a dedicated pastor, committed churchman, and stubborn herald of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This weekend marks the 25th anniversary of our beloved pastor, Tom Ascol, and though it pains him for us to draw any attention to him, we are going to do it anyway. It is fitting for us to honor and recognize what God has done in and through him.

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Triperspectival Pastoral Priorities and Practices

May 24, 2011 in Leadership, Triperspectivalism with 2 Comments

Yesterday, Dustin Neeley (who runs Church Planting for the Rest of Us) drew our attention to an interview he did with Mark Dever in which he asked about balancing time between sermon preparation and shepherding people.  Here’s the video:

I resonate with everything that Dever is saying in this interview.  One of the more profitable studies I’ve done over the past year is to evaluate my pastoral ministry practices and priorities in light of what Scripture reveals descriptively and prescriptively about pastors.  Principally, I focused my attention on Paul’s exhortation to the elders of Ephesus in Acts 20, Paul’s instruction to Timothy in 1 Timothy 3 as well as Titus in Titus 1, Paul’s explanation of church life in Ephesians 4, and finally Peter’s instruction in 1 Peter 5.

Without being overly simplistic, I came away with three overarching roles of a pastor/shepherd/overseer. They are to be exemplars in their holiness/gospel-centered living (leadership dynamic), they are to be shepherds of the flock (body dynamic), and they are to be equippers of the saints for the work of ministry, edification of the church, and advance of the gospel (mission dynamic).  Accordingly, I have sought to find practical ways in which my practices as a pastor most align with what I’ve discovered in Scripture to be normative, which is often undermined or rivaled by a corporate, business (professionalized) mindset of church leadership.

As Dever noted regarding sermon time and sheep time, they often overlap and compliment one another. This is one way in which I see the triperspectival model helpful in thinking through pastoral priorities because each perspective sheds light on the particular ways in which ministers are to fulfill their ministry.  Each perspective intends to illuminate the other perspectives in ways that don’t compartmentalize the calling but recognize them as interdependent roles which comprise the calling holistically.

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