Kevin and Owen, welcome to the 9Marks block party!  Glad to have you both on the team!

A couple things I thought might interest readers:

Hereyou can see the video and find a time-stamped outline (those SovGrace guys do everything with class, don't they?) of Jeff Purswell's address called, The Pastor's Teaching.  Along with Kevin's piece on learning to be yourself when preaching, this is good food for thought for all those looking for a sermon break today, or trying to recover from their sermon on Monday!

Also, our brother Lig' is teaching us to pray scripturally.  If we preach the word, we'd better start by praying the word.

Whether preaching or praying, Tony Carter reminds us do so like a Calvinist all the time.

Does someone really want to make the argument that a group of individuals meeting virtually in SimCity is a biblical church? Apparently. See this article about pastor Douglas Estes's new book, SimChurch: Being the Church in the Virtual World. Thankfully, the article includes a healthy critique by a Portland, Oregon pastor who doesn't buy it: "The worship, equipping, and discipling ministries of the church simply can’t take place through the internet. Pieces of them can, but eventually the jump has to be made," he said. "A truly biblical Church requires that we heed the biblical call of Hebrews 10 to not give up gathering together and being present to one another in real, actual life." Well said.

It should be noted on this blog that this past Thursday, the congregation of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC gathered to surprise and recognize Mark Dever for fifteen years of gospel ministry. I was there when Mark was installed as the pastor--a tiny church and a sea of grey hair. God has done amazing things through Mark's ministry through the years. He has raised up men who have gone into pastoral ministry (many of us were there to surprise Mark). Some have planted churches others are in established congregations. God has raised up missionaries. Others have gone to labor in seminaries. I stayed through Sunday and the church is bursting at the seams with men and women eager to sing God's praises and hear his word preached.

Christianity Today posted multiple answers to this question from various pastors and professors.  Click here to see them.  I'm glad the question is being asked!  For a while there seemed to be no debate.

A few days ago Matt posted an internet baptism. Mike, Greg, and Jonathan followed up with some concerns not only about the implications this has for community (see Mike's comments here), but also about some of the dangers of technology (comments by Greg, and Jonathan).

The answer may seem obvious to you, but it has not always been obvious to everyone. This is one of the things I learned at a conference recently sponsored by the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies. Michael Haykin brought together several established historians and a bunch of fledgling historians to share papers on the topic of Baptist spirituality. 

Hi Dee,

Mike,

Last week our elders had a chance to get away for a day and develop a strategy for church planting.  I was wondering if you could pass on to us some of your abundant wisdom. 

So here is my question: What would be your top five lessons based on your experience of planting a church in Northern Virginia? 

Thanks in advance for your thoughtful, humorous, and (somewhat) witty answers.

Deepak

(BTW, is it true you are writing a book on the subject?)

For background and part One, go here.  For part Two, go here.  For part Three, go here. For part Four, go here.  For part Five, go here.

Sovereign Grace has put up their Pastor's Conference audio.  Check it out here, there's a lot of good stuff there.

Continuing with the 35 statements.  For part One, go here.  For part Two, go here.  My guess is that #15 should generate some comments.

Continuing with the 35 statements.  For part One, click here.

At the recent Sovereign Grace Pastor's Conference, Mark Dever led a seminar on how the church relates to the wider community.  He distributed a document containing "35 somewhat overlapping statements as a pastor to pastors concerning the topic of the congregation’s responsibility for its wider community".  I plan to post those 35 statements here in manageable portions in the coming days.  

I had lunch today with an older brother, a pastor who was born in Cuba and pastored and planted churches there before serving the Lord in Spain and the US.

Picking up you comment, McKinley, about delaying seminary (or skipping it), I'm totally with you that delaying seminary can be a great thing. Four years of church ministry before seminary taught me in some measure how ignorant and ill-equipped I was (and therefore gave me a strong desire for formal training) and enabled me to be thinking about the pastoral implications of what we were learning.

On the other hand, I think it is a hard path to learn what you might learn in seminary from books.It is hard to learn languages in the church context. There are several people who would love to learn NT Greek at my church. I don't think that I have the ability (or to be frank the time) to do an adequate job of teaching them. Perhaps when you're growing a mega-church that can no longer fit into the building you only extended 3 weeks ago, then you have the people who can do that.

I'm also not sure that learning Systematic Theology or Church History from distance learning gives you the same rootedness in it as if you are able to do some intense study in the context of a class of people studying the same stuff, talking about it over lunch and sharing your lives with them for several years so that you become colleagues in ministry for the rest of your lives.

We need to help people to choose courses that would be useful to them, that don't try to do the church's job for them (I fear some seminary principle will get hold of Deepak's list and try to make sure that those gaps are filled in their seminary, rather putting their hands up and saying that it isn't the seminary's job to teach those things.) I'm sure you're doing that already, Mike.

One factor that I think plays against the usefulness of seminary education in the States compared to over here is the fact that most seminary students in the states seem to work full time jobs while they are going through seminary in order to fund themselves. I wonder if there would be more usefulness if they were able to be supported adequtely in order not to need to find another source of income during that time. I was able to work during vacations, but keep termtime free for study, and service in our church. Encouraging people to delay starting might be another way for them to save for more fulltime study.

I'm sure there are some people for whom skipping seminary is the right way forward - perhaps those who are far more disciplined learners than me; perhaps if the Lord's providence makes clear that he is directing them towards a particular opportunity that will not be there in 3 years time; but I think for most people preparing for a life-time of ministry it would be 3 years well spent.

Dee,

Can we get a moratorium on pastors talking about their clothing?  If I see another pastor talking on their blog or in newspaper articles about what he wears to preach (jeans by X, clever t-shirt by Y, hair by Z), I'm going to freak out.  

One thing that surprises me most about being a pastor is how few of the evangelical pastors in the area know each other. Maybe it's different in a small town, but in a megalopolis like Northern Virginia with hundreds of churches and church plants it is certainly the case.

It's a shame, because if they believe the same gospel, we are all on the same team. I have made it a goal to meet one pastor every month, and I would encourage you to do the same. It's easy:

1. Make a list of gospel churches in your area. Use Google to get started if you need to. You can get a pretty good sense from a church's website.

2. Choose a church, and then pray for them, privately or in your corporate gatherings or (preferably) both.

3. Email the pastor letting him know that you are praying for him and inviting him for a cup of coffee.

4. Let the camaraderie commence.

I have found that the Lord has used some men to encourage and challenge me. In other cases, the Lord has used me to encourage and challenge them. In every case, God is honored when we link arms with our brothers in Christ.

If you hang around Mark Dever enough, eventually you'll hear this gem. The keys to an effective pastorate (normally): Preach and Pray, Love and Stay.

Sometimes when I don't know what to do, I remember that little rhyme. It helps bring clarity.

Bethlehem Baptist Church has an interesting strategy for helping their pastoral staff guard their time with their families.

Something that the T4G guys talked about at the conference in April has been chewing on the inside of my brain. I think it was Lig Duncan who said it, and then the whole gang discussed it. But the gist of the quote is: pastors don't get their report cards until heaven.

Now, in context, this quote was meant to be encouraging. If you're serving faithfully as the pastor of a church and you're not seeing much evident fruit, then be encouraged. Pastors don't get their report cards until heaven. Don't allow yourself to be judged by the world's standard. Your "report card" will be based on your faithfulness, not your evident fruitfulness. Look forward to the day when you will hear the Master say "Well done, good and faithful servant." Yes, I could see how that would be very encouraging.

But when I heard those words, I puked in my mouth a little. Because if we're being honest (and I can trust you not to tell anyone, right?), I worry sometimes that my ministry is more "fruitful" than I am faithful. The report card cuts both ways, n'est-ce pas? If many pastors struggle faithfully with little that we would identify as success, isn't it also true that many pastors see fruitful ministries despite their own lack of faithfulness? When I look at my ministry, generally see my failures: laziness, ineffectiveness, lack of love for God's people, selfishness. And I'm not being super-humble (really. ask my wife, humility's not my style). I'm serious: the church I serve is doing far better than my ministry warrants.

And so it was a sobering reminder to me. A pastor gets his report card in heaven. Don't judge your ministry by the fruit you see in front of you. In God's sovereign wisdom, he can use me to build his church even if I'm not faithful.

Maybe you're there with me. If so, what should we do? Here's how I've been trying to respond since April:

1. Examine your life. Make a list of specific ways you need to change and grow as a pastor. Ask other pastors for advice and help. Get some trustworthy people in your church to pray for you and hold you accountable (if possible).

2. Make necessary changes. As Paul Tripp puts it, you haven't changed until you've changed.

3. Remember the gospel. The great news is that ultimately, we get Jesus' report card in heaven. He took my selfishness and foolishness on himself. I get his perfect life of obedience. There is now no condemnation for any of us who are in Christ.

That's always the silver lining in seeing your sin and failure more clearly... it makes grace all the sweeter! Turns out, there is plenty of grace and power and forgiveness for us to serve in.

Well, enough time blogging, back to serving the church (faithfully)...

My heart takes an inordinately long time to change. I find that my brain understands and acknowledges a spiritual truth months (years?) before my heart actually accepts and internalizes it. But I had a moment in our church's gathering a few weeks back where the light finally went on.

Through different circumstances, I've probably listened to this message by CJ Mahaney five times in the past two months. It's a great message, if you haven't listened to it, you should (though five times is a little overkill... the jokes begin to make you mad). The basic message is that Christian leadership involves identifying and celebrating evidences of grace in the lives of the people that you are called to lead and serve, which in turns requires a healthy trust in God's sovereign plan and care for his people.

Well, as I said, my head understood this truth quickly. I was excited about the message and even made fifteen other guys in the church listen to it and discuss it with me. But my heart was much slower to grasp and celebrate it.

Until that Sunday. We were singing "Great Is Thy Faithfulness" at the beginning of the service. And as we were singing, I saw a man walk in who, though he was a member of the church, hadn't attended a service in a long, long time. We had been pleading with him to return and were about to remove him from membership. But there he was. My heart leapt and I sang louder... God is so faithful! Then I saw a woman walk in (we have big 19th century windows that look out onto the parking lot)... she too was a member who had been absent for a long time. We had been pleading with her to return and had (have?) grave concerns about her spiritual condition. We were about to remove her from membership... but there she was. God is so faithful!

Then, as if on cosmic cue, in walked a couple that had been having horrible marriage struggles. Neither of them seems particularly repentant yet, and I've begun to despair of anything ever changing in their lives. And as we continued the song ("Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow!), my heart got it. This doesn't depend on me, it depends on our faithful and gracious God. As a pastor, I can serve them with joy and hope, knowing that God will not fail them.

Now, if God could just do something about my head-to-heart transition time...

Someone recently emailed us asking if we have any articles on how to find a pastor. Uh, I don't think we do. Seems like a significant hole in the topics we try to cover!

So what do you non-connectional church guys think--what advice would you give a church on how to go about finding a pastor? Advertise in Christian publications? Ask any denominational agencies for a list of resumes? Ask your old seminary profs? What?

I deliberately didn't immediately review last week's White Board Sessions conference (TheWhiteBoardSessions.com) so that I could think a bit about what I saw. Here are a couple of notable quotes from a few of the speakers -- you judge whether they're good or bad:

Mark Batterson:
1) "Systematic theology is an oxymoron."
2) "Your dreams are too small and it breaks the heart of God."
3) "Memory too often overtakes imagination."
4) "We expend too much sideways energy fighting with each other over trivial things."
5) "I'd rather have one God idea than 1,000 good ideas."

Vince Antonucci
1) "Jesus' heartbeat is for the lost and we're reaching the saved."
2) "Are you using the kind of hook and bait so that fish don't swim away?"
3) "Do the most messed up people want to hang out with you like they wanted to with Jesus?"

Tim Stevens
1) "How many people visit and find your church uncomfortable?"
2) "If Christ were here today he would try to leverage the culture and study the internet."

Mark Dever
1) "We don't pay staff to emotionally manipulate people to attend a weeknight meeting."
2) "Personal relationships are not at war with propositional truths."
3) "Imagine if churches began to talk about quality the way we talk about quantity."
4) "God must laugh at us when we discover something that 'works.'"

Perry Noble
1) " God is not green. Kermit is green. It will be a cold day in hell when I preach on recycling and not the gospel."
2) "You admit [preacher] that you love Jesus, just not the people who claim to love Jesus."

Ed Stetzer (the last speaker)
1) For most here today ministry won't look like what we have heard today. Conferences are like ministry pornography -- a picture of something we'll never have."

Fresh out of college I was in the management trainee program at Ford Motor Credit Company and required to take Dale Carnegie training. The White Board Sessions reminded me a lot of that training.

-"My dreams are too small."
-"Baite and hook."
-"Meet people where they're at."

With a few notable exceptions (Mark Dever and Darrin Patrick) the meeting was Carnegie dressed in jeans with a twist of Jesus. Not bad. But it struck me as more management and marketing (horizontal) than it did biblical and relational (vertical). In that sense the White Board Sessions were boring. I felt like I was watching a very familiar movie only dressed up in technology and labeled as "new" and "cutting edge." Glad I went? Yep. Glad I do what I do through 9Marks? Double yep!

Adrian Warnock has a good video interview with D. A. Carson filmed during the recent New Word Alive conference. Beginning at minute 2 is a discussion concerning the role of the local church and the role of the seminary and why professors should dream of being pastors. Here's a few lines:

• "The front line is the local church, and there's a sense in which the seminary is a back up slot."
• "The first impetus toward ministry and toward stamping people for what ministry ought to be ought to be within the context of the local church."
• "A good seminary, a good theological college, helps to provide the kind of training, and further exposure, more technical knowledge, grasp of the language, this sort of thing, that virtually no local church can produce."
• "Yet it's really important for those who teach in such places, nevertheless, to be pastors first, because if they think of themselves as teachers and scholars first, then they tend to produce teachers and scholars. So there's a stamping not simply from the course materials, but from your own values, what you think about, what you dream about."
• "So at  our seminary, we always hire a certain percentage of faculty who wish they were in the pastoral ministry or else, quite frankly, we don't want them. Now, they have to be academically competent and all the rest. But we don't want people who just want to be in a seminary.We want people who, in many ways, would prefer to be in the local church."

Jonathan,

I think Dr. Mohler's words are most helpfully understood to be descriptive rather than prescriptive.

I am sure that he's right in what he says. Most young pastors starting out in churches that are in need of reform will find a more receptive audience among younger people and newcomers. Since that is true, the situation calls for patience.

But that doesn't mean that the younger pastor should not love, teach, listen to, learn from, and value the older members. We shouldn't view the people in our churches in mercenary terms, as if they fall into two camps: obstacles to overcome or people who will further our change agenda. I try (and perhaps should try more often) to publicly honor the older members of our church, even though with the influx of newcomers they represent less than 5% of the people who are in the church now.

Al Mohler made an interesting remark about church reform late last night in Mark Dever's study: a young man entering a church should not expect to reform it so much by persuading the old guard, but by raising up and discipling a new generation of younger men and waiting for them to grow into positions of leadership.

Looking around Dever's study, he observed a room full of twenty-somethings. What that might mean for guys in their twenties is finding guys in college and pouring into them.

The problem with Mohler's counsel, of course, is that it takes patience and a total commitment. It means taking the long view. And who wants that?! There's gotta be a quick fix, right?

I've just begun reading the Letters of Samuel Rutherford.  I've heard or read a number of pastors commending these letters, so I thought I'd add it to my devotional reading.  I've not actually reached the letters yet.  I've been slowly reading through the biographical sketch of Rutherford written by Andrew Bonar.

At one point, Bonar describes Rutherford's call to a small country parish called Anwoth. 

The parish of Anwoth had no large village near the church.  The people were scattered over a hilly district, and were quite a rural flock.  But their shepherd knew that the Chief Shepherd counted them worth caring for; he was not one who thought that his learning and talents would be ill spent if laid out in seeking to save souls, obscure and unknown.  See him setting out to visit!  He has just laid aside one of his learned folios, to go forth among his flock.  See him passing along yonder field, and climbing that hill on his way to some cottage, his "quick eyes" occasionally glancing on the objects around, but his "face upward" for the most part, as if he were gazing into heaven.  He has time to visit, for he rises at three in the morning, and at that early hour meets his God in prayer and meditation, and has space for study besides.  He takes occasional days for catechising.  He never fails to be found at the sick-beds of his people.  Men said of him, "He is always praying, always preaching, always visiting the sick, always catechising, always writing and studying."  He was known to fall asleep at night talking of Christ, and even to speak of Him during his sleep.

Several things struck me.  Obviously Rutherford's faithfulness was striking, even if the repetition of "always" this or "always" that was a bit daunting and depressing.  I was also reminded of how many technological advantages in pastoral ministry we have compared to Rutherford's day. 

But what I most appreciated was this line: "But their shepherd knew that the Chief Shepherd counted them worth caring for; he was not one who thought that his learning and talents would be ill spent if laid out in seeking to save souls, obscure and unknown."

I wonder if one of the main challenges facing churches might not be that too many potential shepherds think their education, gifts, and abilities would be wasted in humble, anonymous service?  If there are not too many of us who remember too infrequently that the Chief Shepherd knows His blood-bought sheep in country villages are worth caring for?  I wonder how many men "settle" for this or that little congregation as a "stepping stone" to a bigger, "better" ministry?  How many fear that anonymity is synonymous with unfruitfulness and a certain kind of death? 

And, yet, Rutherford speaks to us hundreds of years later and his faithfulness shames the most gifted and talented among us (well, let me not project onto others; it certainly shames me).  Bonar adds this line a couple paragraphs later:

Anwoth was dear to him rather as the sphere appointed him by his Master, than because of the fruit he saw of his labours.

Because Christ place him there--not because he saw "great fruit"--Rutherford rooted his heart in that place and that people.  May we all be satisfied to serve, and find satisfaction in serving, wherever the Master places us.  And may we never regard our congregations--however small--as unworthy of our gifts or our care.

The other day I saw a video of a prominent pastor with a huge church preaching about preaching. Maybe you've seen the same video. He's mocking Christians who complain that they're not being fed by the Sunday sermon in their church. The pastor in question climbs up in a high chair and imitates a baby screaming for food. The point: mature people feed themselves. It's only infants who need to be fed by someone else. You see an echo of this in the Reveal report from Willow Creek. If you keep up with blogs from around the mega-church world, you'll see that this is a pretty common way of thinking.

A few thoughts:

1. Never, under any circumstance, should you climb into a high chair and imitate a baby during your sermon. No one wants to see a grown man doing this... seriously, it's disturbing in a way that I haven't fully been able to shake.

2. Usually the pastors making these points accuse the "complainers" of being lazy. "Go home and do the work of feeding yourself!", they seem to be saying. But could it be that there is a laziness on the part of pastors? After all, learning languages is hard work. Careful study requires discipline. So called "deep" sermons require us to do a lot of work that isn't a ton of fun. IMHO it would be much easier (or at least more fun) to crank out a topical message full of humor and props. Anyway, we need to watch that we're not the lazy ones.

3. I'm not sure why there's such a divorce between what happens at home and what happens at church. It seems like people should feed themselves at home and be fed at church. The church should be teaching the Bible, teaching people how to read their Bibles, reading the Bible in their services, and showing people from the Bible that they should be reading the Bible at home. This is seems like a no-brainer, a win-win.

4. It strikes me that the whole question is very Western and modern. We can't define "mature Christian" as "one who reads their Bible at home". What about societies without widespread literacy? Are the believers there less mature because they are taught the Scriptures instead of reading them themselves?

5. I was reading the Bible at home the other day and I noticed that Jesus seemed to think pastors should feed the sheep. Paul seemed to think that Timothy should teach sound doctrine. Yes, the Bereans are a model of the way we should reflect on Scripture, but they are reacting to a "deep" sermon by the apostle Paul! They weren't merely "feeding themselves", they were making sure the meal they were being fed by Paul wasn't poisonous.

It seems to me that pastors are shepherds: if there's malnutrition in the flock it may or may not be our fault, but it is most definitely our problem.

In a world of strong human desires and cultural trends, pastors must constantly keep abreast of the cultural drifts and ideas that float in the hearts and minds of their congregation.

Since the heart of any relationship is its communication system (e.g., marriage, parenting, friendships, church family, etc.), formative and corrective discipline are the two big tools pastors have to lead and love the church. Practically, this should show itself in 4 specific ways (Aaron, Mike, and Thabiti have all helpfully touched on most of these):

Formative Discipline
1. God’s Word – Christians must always begin with God’s sufficient, inerrant, and clear Word. God is there and he has spoken. Aaron makes this point well in his entry below: pastors should preach scripture powerfully.
2. Clear-Important/Unclear-Important Spectrum - In preaching, pastors should constantly help people discern between matters in scripture that are clear and important and matters that are important but unclear. Thabiti and Mike illustrate this very well in their posts. Clear and important matters may require a strong stand, even at the cost of unity. Unclear and important matters should never lead to church division. Matters that are clear and important (e.g., the truth of the gospel and exclusivity of Christ, the biblical commands for marital fidelity, etc.) are explicitly and plainly revealed in Scripture and are essential to matters of salvation and the witness of the gospel. These issues require faithfulness at all costs since they cannot be compromised without compromising the very gospel itself. Important but unclear matters (e.g., should children only be homeschooled, should the church budget process be this way or another, should women be ushers in communion, etc.) should not divide a church, but rather add to its diversity and witness to the multi-faceted grace of our diverse God and his body (1 Peter 4:10: As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace).
3. Building a culture of biblical communication – To that end, pastors must create a church culture where it is normal for the body to meet together regularly in discipleship relationships, fellowship, and accountability in order to give and receive both godly encouragement and godly constructive criticism in a spirit of love, humility, unity, and purity. This, of course, is a mix of both formative and corrective discipline.

Corrective Discipline
4. Formal church discipline – Lord willing, formative discipline and prayer in such matters will prevent a church from having to employ the blunt but clearly biblical instrument of formal church discipline. Nevertheless, if such issues raise factions and divisions within a church, pastors must be willing to follow the gospel steps of church discipline outlined in Matthew 18 and 1 Corinthians 5.

Aaron, thanks for your thoughts. I found them really helpful.

Practically, this is something that is best addressed before the people come into membership. Our church has developed an awesome church culture that commends the gospel, and so I guard it jealously. So in membership interviews, I walk would-be members through that church culture. I tell them the things that we value (love, unity, mutual care, diversity) and the things that aren't important to us as a church (alcohol, tattoos, homeschooling, style of dress). My hope is that people who might cause problems would either self-select out at that point or be prepared for peaceful life in our body.

Once such a person is in the church, all you have is the Word of God and a powerful example (as Aaron mentioned). Make it clear what it means (and doesn't mean) to be a Christian. That should help.

Jonathan asked how a pastor responds to cultural movements that find their way into churches that take the Bible seriously. The simplest and best answer that I know of is for pastors to recognize that their word and example are extremely powerful. Pastors who preach Scripture, emphasize the main points of the text, and avoid hobbyhorses will go a long way to building a church that finds the “better” and “worse” Christian phenomenon distasteful. However, we all have our opinions! So, pastors would be wise to allow for and even encourage diversity in the body without compromising doctrine or holiness. Jesus said disciples, when trained, will be like their teachers (Luke 6:40). Pastors, secure in the saving work of the cross, will not be afraid of cultural movements and will, by God’s grace, build churches that are not upset by these movements either.

Cultural movements do not come into our churches as ideas floating through the air—they come with people. Some individuals, attracted to the expositional preaching of the Bible, may have one or two strident opinions that are at odds with the majority of the church. Their opinions may even be divisive. How should they be shepherded?

First, it is helpful to take their view seriously and, to the best of our ability, to address it (as opposed to dismissing a view because it is militantly held). Second, this is yet another opportunity to lead by example. Proverbs 10:12 reads, “Hatred stirs up strife but love covers all offenses.” It is easy to get flustered and defensive when an aspect of our leadership is called into question. This is not helpful. Modeling Christ-like love and forbearance is always better (though harder!). It is possible, third, that separation is in the best interest of the church and the individuals in question. If the opinions are both deeply held and divisive, it may be that the best way to avoid the start of a big faction is to allow the departure of a small one.

I have a question I'd like to pose based not on an email, but on a phone call received from a pastor several days ago. I'm going to generalize his situation because I think the principles apply in a number of similar situations:

In conservative, theologically minded churches like ours, members or newcomers will sometimes take strong stands on issues that are not directly touched on by the statement of faith. Several examples that I have heard about lately include homeschooling, keeping your children in the service (anti-children's church), biblical counseling vs. psychology, the perennial issue of alcohol, and I'm sure we could all add more to the list. This pastor who called in was troubled by a family who was considering joining his church, but who took a strong, even militant, stand on one such issue; and he was concerned, based on past experience, that they would seek to promote their values in a way that could create a "serious Christian" and "less serious Christian" dichotomy in the church's culture. In spite of Paul's instruction in Colossians 2, it seems we Christians are always trying to create categories for "better" and "worse" Christians based on the basic principles of this world. (I, of course, never do this, and I despise everyone who does!)

Actually, just the opposite is the case. Recently my wife and I heard about a couple who planned to keep their young children with them during the times of corporate gatherings, and we had to talk about the sinful temptation in our hearts to want to do the same in order to prove that "we take family worship seriously too! We're hard core too!" Now, let me say, this couple was NOT trying to prove or promote anything. The problem in this situation was with our own lack of faith in the justifying work of the gospel.

But the question this pastor wanted answered is, how do you respond practically to these various cultural movements that take hold among conservative evangelicals? How do you prevent factions (I know of people leaving and churches dividing over such issues)? How can we shepherd people individually, and how can we shepherd them from the pulpit?

Hey Jonathan (and my other non-posting comrades... ahem),

Thanks for qualifying my point. I was just thinking that I needed someone to gut it with petty nuances (insert smiley face here so that people know I'm sort of joking).

I wouldn't recommend a full confessional from the pulpit. I just had coffee with a brother, and I shared some personal struggles with him that would be unhelpful to talk about in the pulpit.

But I do think that we're fooling ourselves if we don't think that our personalities and our personal lives play a role in our preaching. People aren't watching a robot preaching, they are hearing God's Word from a sinner saved by grace. And so my sinfulness is very much at issue, it's only a matter of how I portray it. Do I cultivate an air of impressiveness, so that others feel guilty that they don't live up to the standard of the professional holy man? Or do I step down off the pedastal so that I can put Christ up on it?

To give you an example, a few weeks back I preached on the end of Ephesians 5. I've been married for 10 years and I have not been the kind of husband that Ephesians 5 describes. By God's grace, I have changed and am changing. But as I preached that passage, I felt like I had to acknowledge that I was going to tell husbands to do things that I had not done myself. I wanted to avoid hypcorisy, to cause the people in my church to trust the authority of God's word, and to encourage husbands to seek hard after the grace to change that we all need.

I would agree that, as with any virtue, we can be humble and honest to a fault. I also suspect that, given my own prideful nature, I do not have to worry about crossing that line any time soon.

Hmmm… most of my work on the internet falls into the category of “anonymous rant” or “unfounded speculation” or “tenuous conspiracy theory”. So forgive me if I’m a little out of my league here.

But I’ve been trying my hand at this pastoring thing for just over two years now, and the real thing that I’ve learned about myself in this experience is this: I am passionately devoted to giving others the impression that I am, if not perfect, a great guy.

I am a husband, a father, and a pastor. These are three tasks that work like ultra-violet lights to make all of my shortcomings glow bright white for everyone to see. But I’ve realized in the past months how much I am committed to giving the impression that I never make a mistake or do something selfish. And so I will lie to myself, avoid difficult conversations, and explain away problems in order to never, ever have to admit that I have sinned or failed or wasn’t the perfect pastor/husband/father. I so often become defensive and self-justifying the moment someone dares to point out that I messed up.

I realize now how important it is for me as a pastor to be able to admit my failures to the people in my church and in my family:

-- It promotes the gospel of grace. I am a sinner in need of a savior.
-- It encourages them to trust Christ ultimately, not me.
-- It encourages other Christians to be honest about themselves and promotes a
culture of transparency in the church.
-- It protects me from nurturing the hypocrisy that hardens our hearts.

Tim Keller put it well in the most recent Journal of Biblical Counseling:

The gospel gives you psychological freedom to handle the wrong things that you will do. You won’t have to deny, spin, or repress the truth about yourself. These things don’t make it impossible to know who you are. Only with the support of hearing Jesus say, “You are capable of terrible things, but I am absolutely, unconditionally committed to you,” will you be able to be honest with yourself.

I wish I hadn’t wasted so much time trying to hide the truth about myself. Imagine how our churches would change if their pastors were more committed to being godly than seeming godly!