Jared C. Wilson's Blog, page 27

Sermon Clips: Pain and Fear

Below are a couple of clips from some recent messages. The first is from a sermon on Psalm 42 I preached at Church at The Cross in Grapevine, Texas titled “Despair and The Gospel.”

2016-07-31 Promo – Social from catctx on Vimeo.

The following clip is from a message titled “The Fear-Driven Life” (Genesis 12:10-20) and was preached at Redeemer Church in Tomball, Texas.

Go here to watch.

Faith and Hope and Love Endure Forever

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

— 1 Corinthians 13:13

Faith, hope, and love are said to abide (or, per the NIV, to “remain”) because they sustain the Christian through all manner of sorrows and suffering, through the temptations of success and the torments of despair. Faith, hope, and love remain throughout, and they will escort us through the gates of glory when our time is up. Whether our body or time itself has given out, faith and hope and love will be as young and new as ever.

Why?

Well, what is faith? Faith is the conviction of things not seen; it is not contingent on what is around us but what is above us, inside of us, and before us. Faith is the assurance of what we hope for.

And what is hope? Hope doesn’t put us to shame, because our hope is not the same as “hoping something happens.” Our hope is sure. Our hope is guaranteed; it is not the vain hope of earthly gods, but the blessed hope of steadfast love.

What kind of love is this? Godly love is patient and kind. Love keeps no record of wrongs. Steadfast love never fails. Love never stops. Love is always advocating, always mediating, always sustaining. God is love.

Yes, God is love. This is why the greatest of the three is love. And it is why faith and hope in the God of love remain, why they endure forever, why they will trail us into heaven like the glorious train of our wedding garment, the beautiful train of Christ’s Bride. With beaming gladness we will march into glory, our faith finally seeing face to face, our hope—at last!—met with the promised splendor, our Love before us forever, illuminating the new world with the greatest of what abides eternal.

Our frail earthly faith and our tender heavenly hope will meet their match in the Love that strengthens them, and we will enjoy this Love forever.

“There the fountain overflows in streams and rivers of love and delight, enough for all to drink at, and to swim in, yea, so as to overflow the world as it were with a deluge of love.”

— Jonathan Edwards, Heaven, A World of Love

The Attractional Church’s Growing Irrelevance

Say not, “Why were the former days better than these?”

— Ecclesiastes 7:10a

From my vantage point in the evangelical landscape, I am incredibly optimistic about the future of the church. I know we have lots of cause for concern about “the culture,” and I know the church tasked with proclaiming the kingdom in it seems pretty shaky right now. But I when I take a sober look at the young Christians (the millennials!) training for gospel ministry and thinking hard about mission, I like where their head’s at. The rest of us, on the other hand . . .

I find it incredibly interesting, sort of amusing, and more than a bit sad that the attractional church—what we used to call the “seeker church”—hasn’t seemed to grow up at all. Yes, it’s grown big. But growing big and growing up aren’t the same thing. I was thinking about this recently after a few people posted a video of one of the landmark attractional churches featuring a ’90s boy band throwback segment in their worship service. I’m sure it was a lot of fun. I’m also sure it was especially fun for those whose heyday was the ’90s. It’s the same fun that was had by the worship team in my ’90s attractional youth group who were constantly reworking rock hits from the ’70s to make them more Jesusy (“Peaceful, Easy Feelin,” anybody? How about a little “Talkin’ about my Jesus—he’s some kind of wonderful”?).

And it occurs to me that, exceptions being granted, the attractional church is specifically designed for what was said to “work” 20 years ago. What used to be cutting edge, relevant, and innovative is now standard fare. I mean, how many years can you keep recycling the At The Movies summer series and still call yourselves “innovative”? Or Winning at Work? Or Dare to Be a Daniel? How many pop song parodies can you generate and still call yourselves relevant? The truth is, the attractional church is perfectly contextualized . . . for the ’90s. With its Top 40 covers, Branson-quality “praise teams,” silly videos, and youth-groupy vibe, it’s now officially retro-relevant.

When you step into one of these places after years away detoxing, it’s like stepping into a time warp. The sensation is similar to when in the ’80s and ’90s we’d go back home to grandma’s church, which seemed frozen in the ’60s or ’70s. The attractional church is the happy-fun place where the post-Christian era never dawned.

Meanwhile, the young adult dropout rate is still somewhere near 70 percent. This hasn’t changed.

Meanwhile, no matter how much the decision scoreboard tallies each week, the attractional church is still mostly just shuffling around bored and de-churched suburbanites.

The Uncle Rico set loves the attractional church. I remember when our attractional churches would advertise with the slogan “Not your grandfather’s church.” Or “Church but different.” Well, now the attractional church is our grandfather’s church. Now it’s church replicated, McChurch franchised. And while the younger generation is looking for meat, the religious resource center down on the corner is still serving rounds of Zima. And it may not be shrinking any time soon, because there’s few things Gen-Xers and Baby Boomers love more than nostalgia.

There’s something serious to be considered here. I’m not just trying to make fun. Time and relevance have passed the dominant attractional paradigm by. The sheer mega-ness of these religious big box stores is misleading. Because the research is showing they aren’t making disciples. And as the spread of secularization increases in America, the irrelevance of the “relevant church” will only increase, as well. These days you can get fluff anywhere. You can get entertainment anywhere. You can get inspirational pick-me-ups anywhere.

The attractional church is still answering questions most 21st-century lost folks aren’t even asking. The attractional church is still assuming lost people have some working knowledge of the Bible and its stories. The attractional church still thinks lost people are impressed that a group of Christians will sing a Taylor Swift song at church. The attractional church thinks their decades-old bait is still good for the switch. The attractional church still thinks it’s cool, mainly because it’s full of aging Gen-Xers and Baby Boomers who know it’s cooler than the traditional church they left decades ago.

Meanwhile, it’s the traditionalist churches that are attracting young people. (Man, youth is wasted on the young, right?) It’s the young church-planting movements that are baptizing previously unchurched people and replicating themselves and making kingdom inroads in the culture. It’s the Bible-fixated churches sending people into the furthest reaches of the earth.

I hope my generation and my father’s generation will allow themselves to be led. Our time is, thankfully, passing away. These crazy evangelical kids who love Jesus, love his gospel and center on it stubbornly, love his sufficient Word and preach it faithfully, love the lost and go seek them rather than expecting them to come seek us—they’re our strategic hope. Maybe it’s time to take the self-diminishing risks necessary to question your system, your strategy, your models and listen to the wisdom of your kids. As even one of your own prophets has said:

Come mothers and fathers

Throughout the land

And don’t criticize

What you can’t understand

Your sons and your daughters

Are beyond your command

Your old road is rapidly agin’

Please get out of the new one

If you can’t lend your hand

For the times they are a-changin’

This testimony is true.

I’d cue up Whitney Houston’s lines about the children being our future, but that would just date me and contravene my whole point. Instead, let me simply reiterate that the growing gospel-centrality of the evangelical millennials is the best “model” for the church in the 21st century, mainly because it prioritizes the timeless gospel and makes contextualization obey it, rather than, as is the attractional church’s tendency, making the gospel obey the contextualization. I look around at all these seminary students I have the great privilege of serving, and as I travel around and meet young Christians all over the country, I am incredibly encouraged. In terms of theology, ecclesiology, and missiology, they are light-years ahead of where my generation was at their age.

So it’s time to grow up and pass the baton. Size and the whiff of success are no justification for missional irrelevance.

Or, we can do what we’ve always done, I guess, which is just turn the music up to drown out the reality.

Better was a poor and wise youth than an old and foolish king who no longer knew how to take advice.

— Ecclesiastes 4:13

Let Us Repent of Our Nonchalance

work out your own salvation with fear and trembling

— from Philippians 2:12

Fear and trembling. Paul uses this phrase a couple of other times (2 Corinthians 7:15 and Ephesians 6:5), apparently with the connotation of submissive humility and receptive meekness. It is an affections-full being put into one’s place, I think. A disposition appropriate to the circumstances. The command in Psalm 2:11 is “Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling,” showing us that fear is not without activity and trembling is not without joy.

Here I remember Emma Thompson’s beautiful portrayal of Elinor Dashwood at the end of the film Sense and Sensiblity when Hugh Grant’s Edward Ferrars reveals it was his brother who got married, and not himself. Thompson’s Elinor is an expert at keeping her emotions bottled up—until this moment where we see “fear and trembling” brilliantly and movingly in display. It chokes me up every time.

Pent-up hopes and dormant affections brought near the super-electric current of a fearsome reality. The hair on our arms stands up, gooseflesh springing, a sense of fresh air and being winded at the same time. Overwhelmed. That’s fear and trembling.

As it pertains to having the living God draw near to us, fear and trembling assume it is truly God and the glorious Christ we have encountered and not some pitiful caricature. The god of the prosperity gospelists is a pathetic doormat, a genie. The god of the cutesy coffee mugs and Joel Osteen tweets is a milquetoast doofus like the guys in the Jane Austen novels you hope the girls don’t end up with, holding their hats limply in hand and minding their manners to follow your lead like a butler or the doormat he stands on. The god of the American Dream is Santa Claus. The god of the open theists is not sovereignly omniscient, declaring the end from the beginning, but just a really good guesser playing the odds. The god of our therapeutic culture is ourselves, we the “forgivers” of ourselves, navel-haloed morons with “baggage” but not sin. None of these pathetic gods could provoke fear and trembling.

But the God of the Scriptures is a consuming fire (Deuteronomy 4:24). “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31). He stirs up the oceans with the tip of his finger, and they sizzle rolling clouds of steam into the sky. He shoots lightning from his fists. This is the God who leads his children by a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire. This is the God who makes war and sends plagues and sits enthroned in majesty and glory in his heavens, doing what he pleases. This is the God who incarnate in the flesh turned tables over in the temple like he owned the place. This Lord God Jesus Christ was pushed to the edge of the cliff and declared, “This is not happening today,” and walked right back through the crowd like a boss. This Lord says “Nobody takes my life; I give it willingly,” as if to say, “You couldn’t kill me unless I let you.” This Lord calms the storms, casts out demons, binds and looses and has the authority to grant us the same. The Devil is this God’s lapdog.

And it is this God who has summoned us, apprehended us, saved us. It is this God who has come humbly, meek, lowly, pouring out his blood in infinite conquest to set the captives free, cancel the record of debt against us, conquer sin and Satan, and swallow up death forever.

Let us, then, advance the gospel of the kingdom out into the perimeter of our hearts and lives with affectionate meekness and humble submission. Let us repent of our nonchalance.

“Gospel Wakefulness” Turns 5

Last weekend I had the privilege of meeting a young man who told me he was converted during a men’s conference I preached a couple of years ago. As encouraging as that was to hear, the news was made sweeter when he told me the very first Christian book he read was Gospel Wakefulness. Two years later, he is growing by leaps and bounds in the faith and is prayerfully exploring God’s call to the mission field.

When we preach these sermons and write these books and articles and blog posts, we grow accustomed to hope-filled trusting that the Lord is using the material somehow, very often in ways we will never know about this side of glory. So I don’t know why I’m always surprised to learn how instrumental some meager literary offering has been in the life of some precious child of God. But this book Gospel Wakefulness, released in 2011, is probably the one I hear most about. I still receive messages regularly from folks who have found in the book some measure of hope or joy, some deeper level in their affections for Christ. (To be more specific, the chapter on depression is the section I hear about most.)

I’m really happy about this, and I’m sure it will sound prideful to some, but while I don’t think Gospel Wakefulness is my best work, it is still the book that best captures what motivates all my writing. It essentially represents the “vision statement” for my writing, my ministry, and my life. Readers who’ve followed me for some time will likely know that the concept of “gospel wakefulness” — which certainly is not original to me — was not born out of some theological speculation or desire to insert another “gospel as adjective” entry into the ever-growing resources of the young, restless, and Reformed (or whatever we’re calling it these days), but rather out of the dark well of my own life. Gospel wakefulness is something that happened to me. (I’ve shared this testimony in numerous places, publicly and in print, but it is probably most extensively retold in the last chapter of The Prodigal Church.)

Indeed, when I was originally trying to tease out what gospel wakefulness means — the shortest way to put it is “revival on the personal scale” — I had no clue there was a “gospel movement.” I was actually smack-dab in the attractional church I was trained for ministry in and trying to feel my way out. That gospel wakefulness eventually became a book was the result of numerous years of trying to wrap my mind and heart around the way that God’s grace saved my life.

I know 5 years is not a big milestone, especially not in “book years,” and especially not in a world where a new gospel book seems to drop every week (sometimes written by me!). But it’s a meaningful milestone to me and, I am learning, to others as well. I have to thank people like my long-time brother Bill Roberts (an original Thinkling!) for being the first guy to ask me to teach on the subject — which basically prompted me to learn how to articulate it. And also men like Ray Ortlund, as well as Justin Taylor and my friends at Crossway, who took the risk of publishing the eventual book.

About twelve years after God reached down into that little guest bedroom and woke me up and rescued me from despair, and five years after the book released, gospel wakefulness is still my life’s theme and mission. And if you’ve read it, I have to thank you too. I hope it has blessed you in some way and helped you enjoy the glory of Christ more than anything else.

The Gospel of the Kingdom Is Like an Old Hymn

The gospel is an old hymn. The gospel is sheet music printed in antiquarian typeface on a yellowed page in a dusty book. It’s the “old, old story” and the “old rugged cross.” It is four verses—and please don’t skip the third verse to expedite the invitation! The gospel is an invitation to a bygone time that feels new again, even in our age of ever-dawning progress and modernity. The gospel gets “dug up” and “trotted out” and sung ironically and apologized for by leaders too clever for their own good. But then it lands in the ears of those led as sweetly familiar, warms their souls like celestial comfort food, and it always gets sung louder than those Jesus-is-my-boyfriend ditties.

At first glance, the gospel of the kingdom is not much to look at. Too many evangelicals tend to take it for granted. It sits in the splintery pew rack of our imagination like some hallowed curiosity. And, when bored with the latest distractions, we happen to take it up again and turn to our favorite number, it’s like coming face to face with an old friend. It’s like we never neglected it. We pick up right where we left off.

I notice this phenomenon every time I hear audiences sing actual hymns during congregational worship time. It’s even noticeable at student ministry events, although you wouldn’t expect it to be so. It is young people, we assume, who find the old hymns most musty. “They only want the new stuff,” the common wisdom says. But I’ve spoken at more than a few student ministry events, and while most Christian teenagers seem engaged enough during worship music of all kinds, I hear the difference when some leader, immersed in the fog and lasers of newness, “dusts off” an oldie. The kids sing.

I notice this in plenty of other venues as well—at church services, men’s retreats, and Bible conferences. Why?

I don’t think it’s just because hymns are familiar. These audiences know the new stuff too. In fact, the new stuff dominates the worship scene for a reason. I think the persistent resonance of hymns does have something to do with the fact that hymns—for church folks, anyway—are historically familiar. These old songs take us back to simpler, more formative times in our life of discipleship, and few things beat nostalgia for warming the heart. But I don’t think it’s simply nostalgia that makes the hymns so affectionately singable.

I think many of the old hymns, the ones that have endured—and plenty of the newer hymns too, actually—tap into a deeper reality than a lot of the more explicitly emotive stuff. In a strange way, the old gospel hymns affect us more emotionally by not dealing primarily with how we feel. There are plenty of emotional exclamations in the old hymns, of course—“How marvelous, how wonderful!,” “Then sings my soul, how great Thou art,” “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,” etc.—but these songs don’t make the emotional the primary point. They make the emotional the response to something much sturdier—namely, the gospel.

Most of these old hymns follow the gospel storyline. The first verse usually presents the problem of sin in some way. The second and third verses typically introduce Christ and his cross, the work of the Spirit, or some other proclamation of redemptive narrative of the gospel. And the last verse typically puts the Christian in heaven, focusing on the blessed hope of Christ’s return and our glorification.

The classic hymns, like the gospel they help us exult in, are much bigger than they appear.

This is why I say my gospel is like the old hymns: I very often treat the gospel like something I’ve moved on from, but every time I bring it back to mind, every time I put my stupid little eyes on its familiar truths, it transports me to a more beautiful, more powerful, more helpful place than any of these newfangled messages I flirt with every day ever could.

A lot of the new songs—not all of them, of course, but a lot of them—head straight to how I feel about Jesus but never take me into the depths of why I ought to feel that way. We’re summoning the wind, calling down the fire, pleading for rainfall. (I begin to wonder if I’m worshiping God or reciting some kind of medieval weather report.) I’m telling God what I want, what I need (what I loooong for, ooooohh).

But what I really need is to rehearse what he’s already done for me, what he’s already done in Christ that has satisfied my desires, met my needs, and answered my longings. In the rush to emotional outburst, I miss affectionate remembering.

Here, I’ll tell you what it’s like: The difference between a lot of modern, emotional worship songs and the classic, gospel-rich hymns is the difference between the romantic ruminations scrawled in a pre-teen girl’s diary and the decades-long marriage etched upon the hearts of a tired-but-God-dependent man and wife. We take our old marriages for granted too; they become too familiar to us, old hat. It is hard to muster up the romance of the newlywed days, well nigh impossible to dig up the gosh-darn “twitterpation” of wet-eyed, dimple-cheeked courtship. In a hard-earned marriage between two survivors of the early mutual surprise that they married a more sinny sinner than they anticipated runs something deeper than mere feelings and stronger than flimsy romantic greeting card proverbs. In long marriages between two Jesus-followers we find a bedrock of true affection.

It’s not for nothing that God categorizes the relationship between his son and Christians as one between a groom and his bride. And just as in worship music and marriage, keeping the relationship fresh means frequently revisiting some old, familiar truths.

— this is an edited version of an excerpt from my forthcoming discipleship book (2017, Baker)

5 Ways to Keep Church Discipline from Seeming Weird

Recently, the subject of church discipline has hit the radar in many circles due to some high-profile controversies and scandals. The way some churches appear to poorly exercise church discipline is as distressing as the way many Christians reacted to the concept. There has been a collective incredulity about church discipline as some kind of “strange fire” in the evangelical world.

I can’t help but think that this aversion is partly because, as God has built his church, his church leaders have not always kept up with what makes a church a church. So even to mention the idea of a church disciplining its members strikes tenderhearted and undereducated Christians as weird, mean, and legalistic. How do we work at keeping church discipline from seeming weird? Here are five ways:

1. Make disciples.

Many local churches have simply becoming keepers of a fish tank. A surface level of fellowship is often in place, but the central mission of the church—to make disciples—has been neglected. Instead, churches are structured around providing religious goods and services, offering education or even entertainment options for their congregational consumers. People aren’t being trained in the context of ongoing disciple relationships. But this is largely what “church discipline” is—training.

“If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over.” — Matthew 18:15 

In discipling relationships, we are always disciplining one another, not chiefly or only in the fight against sin but largely in our encouragement of each other, edifying one another, teaching one another, and sharing one another’s burdens. In short, disciples know each other. And so Matthew 18:15 might be happening all the time, perhaps weekly within loving relationships where there is no imminent danger of somebody being kicked out of the church but rather a constant iron sharpening of iron.

In churches with healthy discipleship cultures, church discipline is going on all the time in helpful, informal, everyday ways. When the more formal processes of church discipline become necessary, they are much less likely to be carried out too harshly or received strangely. The church will already have a positive training context for knowing that discipleship requires obedience, correction, perseverance, and mutual submission.

2. Create clarity about church membership.

In many churches, there is no church membership structure at all. But even in churches that maintain formal church membership, the expectations and processes are unclear. Prospective church members need to provide more info than merely their profession of faith, previous church membership, and the area of service they are interested in. They need to know what the body is promising to them and what they are promising the body.  If church membership is a Christ-centered covenant relationship—and it is—their needs to be a clear, mutual promise between all invested parties that their yes will be yes and their no will be no, so that there can be no surprise when someone’s yes to sin is received with a no from the church.

3. Teach the process.

I remember a church meeting once upon a time where elders were sharing the grounds for dismissal of the lead pastor. The evidence was extensive and serious, and there was plenty of testimony about the elders having sought for years the pastor’s repentance and his getting counseling to no avail. One woman, visibly upset, shouted, “Where is the grace?!” The whole idea seemed weird and unchristian to her. She did not have the biblical framework to know that the last several years’ of pleading for the pastor’s repentance was a tremendous act of grace, and that indeed, even his dismissal was a severe mercy, a last and regrettable resort in seeking to startle him into godly sorrow over his sin. But churches aren’t accustomed to thinking of discipline that way; they think of grace as “tolerance” and “niceness.” This is because we don’t teach them well. Consequently, grace becomes cheap.

For some, church discipline will always be objectionable because it seems outdated and unnecessary. But for many, their objection is a reflection of simply not knowing what the Bible teaches on the matter. If a church never broaches the subject until a church’s response to someone’s unrepentant sin must be made public, church discipline will always seem alien. “What are you doing bringing all this law into a place that should be filled with grace?” And the like. So we have to preach the relevant texts.

One word of caution, however: Some churches love teaching the process of church discipline out of all proportion; they love it too much. In some church environments, church discipline is mainly equated with the nuclear option of excommunication and the leadership of the church is not known for its patience but for its itchy trigger finger. Teaching the process of church discipline is not about filling the church with a sense of dread and covering the floor with eggshells. It’s about providing enough visibility about the guardrails and expectations that people can actually breathe more freely, not less. Church discipline—rightly exercised—is motivated by real, sorrowful love and concern.

4. Follow the process.

Once again, we fail our congregations when we don’t begin church discipline until we feel pressed to remove someone from membership and refuse them the Lord’s Supper. It’s as if there aren’t previous, patient, hopeful steps in Matthew 18. Even the context of Paul’s command in 1 Corinthians 5:13 appears to demonstrate excommunication is the final straw, not the only one. If we will follow the biblical process of church discipline, beginning with confidential and humble rebuke of a brother’s or sister’s sin, if unrepentance persists and the circle of visibility widens, expulsion will be seen as a regrettable and sorrowful necessity, and as something intended for a person’s repentance and restoration, not for their punishment.

5. Practice gospel-centeredness.

God will get the glory and our churches will give him glory when church discipline is practiced in the context of a grace-driven culture. You can expect church discipline to seem unnecessary and legalistic in churches where the gospel has not had any noticeable effect on the spirit of the people. But in churches where God’s free grace in Christ is regularly preached and believed, church leaders will be regularly setting aside their egos and narcissistic needs and the laity will be bearing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things, and believing all things (1 Cor. 13:7), including that while no discipline feels pleasant at the time, in the end it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it (Heb. 12:11).

21 Thoughts on Preaching

In no particular order, here are some reflections, musings, and bits of advice on the noble task of preaching the Word of God.

1. I’ve heard it attributed to Tim Keller that you have to preach at least 200 sermons to get good. (Or something like that.) I think this is generally true. For those gifted to preach, it does take a long time to hit your stride and become reliably good, and even then, you keep growing and refining. For those who aren’t gifted to preach, I think even reaching the 200 mark shows no discernable growth. Someone is ungifted to preach when they’ve been at it a long time and show no real development. Sermon 201 is probably not noticeably improved from sermon 1.

2. I personally favor the use of manuscripts, but I understand they’re not for everyone. If you can’t preach from a manuscript without sounding like you are reading a manuscript, it’s probably not for you.

3. When I started preaching, I used outlines (2-3 pages). I expected that as I got more experienced and confident in the pulpit, I would be taking less material. The opposite has proved true. The longer I go, the less I trust myself to speak without the train-track of my manuscript (usually 10-12 pages).

4. I don’t think short messages are usually very good, but there’s nothing worse than a sermon that is too long. Don’t try to say everything. Do the text justice, proclaim the gospel, and don’t feel the need to turn your weekly sermon into a conference talk. For most preachers, I suspect 30-40 minutes is probably the best range, but, again, a bad sermon can’t be too short.

5. I believe that your devotional prep should take longer than your exegetical prep. Don’t overcook your sermon, but don’t pressure-cook your communion with God.

6. Thinking missionally, I think there is some truth to the admonition to “preach to who you want.” But it’s not for no reason Peter says to “shepherd the flock of God that is among you.” Preaching to the congregation of your vision is often a great way to lose the congregation God in his wisdom has given you.

7. Work with the text on your own first, consult commentaries last. Always better to borrow than to steal.

8. I think topical sermons are fine so long as they’re preached expositionally.

9. If Christ is as glorious as he says he is, making him the point of the sermon—no matter the text—makes the most sense.

10. Preach a biblical text. The only reason not to is if you think your ideas are better than God’s.

11. A steady diet of “how-to” sermons doesn’t make Christianity more accessible or relevant to people; it actually, over time, burdens them and makes them feel constantly on spiritual probation.

12. It takes some people all the faith they’ve got that week to get through the church doors on Sunday morning. Why would we want to offer them anything but good news and the comfort of Christ?

13. If the Bible is right when it says the gospel is the power of salvation—and it is—and if the Bible is right when it says it’s only by beholding Christ’s glory in the gospel that people can be transformed—and it is—it doesn’t make sense to marginalize the gospel or save it for special occasions.

14. Preaching expositionally with the unity of the whole Bible in mind is a great way to make sure you’re emphasizing both law and gospel according to their biblical proportions.

15. Obviously, if you’re faithfully preaching God’s Word, it doesn’t really matter if you’re preaching from a music stand, lectern, high-top table, or with no stand at all, but I personally do like a good old-fashioned wooden pulpit, because I like the way it reinforces the idea that God’s word is solid, firm, “big,” an anchor in the stormy seas of life. A good solid pulpit conveys aesthetically the authority and the firmness of God’s Word. Again, no reason to be dogmatic about something so preferential, but maybe consider what your preaching environment communicates?

16. The sermon can serve as a biblical course of correction to pervasive disobedience in the church and a spur to repentance, but please don’t use your sermon to passive-aggressively address problems (or problem people) in your congregation. No subtweet sermons.

17. I learned early on that homiletical rants directed at certain subgroups—young men, for instance, who need to grow up or whatever—tended to be ignored by those who most need to hear them and instead hurt the hearts of sensitive souls who don’t necessarily need them. When I would yell Driscoll-like at young men especially, I learned that those in my crosshairs didn’t think what I was preaching applied to them and that I was stepping all over men who were already working hard. This is immature preaching. There are better ways.

18. You can’t make everybody happy. That’s not the point of preaching, anyway. Don’t preach as an employee of the church. Preach as a servant of God, accountable first and foremost to him.

19. Personal illustrations should mainly serve in the area of confession or self-deprecation. Always holding up yourself as a good example is a fantastic way to preach yourself instead of Christ crucified.

20. A simply good preacher who can look in the eyes of the flock beats a really great preacher on a video screen any day.

21. Passion, brother, passion. Give us your theology, yes. Don’t short-shrift us on the text. Don’t confuse yelling for preaching. That’s not what I’m saying. Give us your rhetoric and your logic sure, but give it to us affectionately. “Preaching,” as Martyn Lloyd-Jones put it, “is theology coming through a man who is on fire.” (See also #5 above.)

Where I’ll Be, 2016

For those who care about such things, I thought I’d share some of my upcoming speaking dates for the rest of the year. If you’re in any of these areas and able to attend, would be great to meet you.

August 25-27, 2016 – ERLC National Conference. Nashville, Tennessee. Looking forward to joining a panel on cultural engagement with Daniel Patterson, Matt Anderson, Trevin Wax, Jackie Hill Perry, and D.A. Horton.

September 11-14, 2016 – Ocean City Bible Conference. Ocean City, NJ. I’ll be speaking three times at this conference on the attributes of God and the glory of Christ.

September 26-27, 2016 – For The Church Conference. Kansas City, MO. At the third annual FTC conference — themed Portraits of a Pastor — I am tasked with presenting on “The Pastor as Shepherd.”

October 3-5, 2016 – Spurgeon Fellowship. Western Seminary, Portland, OR. I will be speaking 4 times at this event on the topic of pastoral ministry and the gospel.

November 3-5, 2016 – Doxology & Theology Conference. Louisville, KY. Hosted at Southern Seminary. This year’s D&T Conference is held in honor of the upcoming 500th anniversary of the Reformation, and I will be preaching a plenary session on “Faith Alone” and leading a breakout on gospel-centered worship.

November 14-15, 2016 – Acts29 Europe Pastors Conference. Belfast, Ireland. Details still TBA.

My full speaking calendar is available here. And if you’re interested in having me speak or preach at your church or event, inquiries may be sent via here.

The False Heaven of a Successful Ministry

“Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly”

- 1 Peter 5:2

Pastoral ministry is not the most lucrative of occupations, except when it is. On average, pastors are not paid enough. But very few of us have any grounds for complaint. In general, if it’s riches you’re after, ministry is likely not your first choice, unless you’re gunning for a time slot on TBN.

But there are times when we are not exercising our pastoral duties for any reason other than to pay our bills; this is pastoring for shameful gain, no matter the dollar amount.

Shameful gain doesn’t have to be about money, though. There are lots of things we can be shameful in our hopes to gain. It could be attendance numbers, pledge cards, altar call respondents, prestige, power, book sales, Twitter followers, blog subscribers, pats on the back . . . The list is endless.

Almost ten years ago some friends and I planted a church in Nashville, Tennessee. God did not give us tremendous numerical growth. We were faithful to his calling, best as we understood it, but his plan was not for our increase. As the pastor of this church, I often took this very personally. I come from the land of the Bible Belt, where megachurches are flowing with soy lattes and money. There is a Six Flags Over Jesus on nearly every corner, and here we were, a little missional church plant, commemorating many Sunday services with more people in our band than in the pews.

It was a struggle on a soul level for me each week as our music would begin. I would make my way out to the foyer to pray. I would beg God to send just two more people, just one more, before I had to get up to preach. It wasn’t the Bible Belt or megachurchianity that made me seek my validation in attendance; it was my own flesh. And there was the whisper of the devil, tickling my ear with his forked tongue, accusing me of my worthlessness, which only made me seek my worth in wisps and fog all the more.

Then I moved to a different place and pastored a different church. Ironically enough, though I left a town of nearly 1.6 million for a town of less than 1,000, my church was about eleven times the size of my previous church. In six years we about quadrupled in size. We kept growing the entire duration of my time there, and Lord willing, they will continue to grow. By the most common of church measurement standards, things are good. But the struggle never left.

The dirty little secret underneath the desire for shameful gain is this: there’s never enough.

One of the most helpful things I’ve ever heard on these matters comes from a pastor named Justin Anderson who realized the dream. “I’ve seen the “promised land,” he said, “and it’s just ok.”

Refreshing is what that word is. Anderson elaborated:

For the last couple years, I have been living the dream. Our church has seen explosive growth, people be saved, baptized, and join groups all the time. We have four campuses, thousands of people, and a great staff. Finally, all the toil of church planting has paid off and the prospect of megachurch stardom was a reality.

Most of us want some version of this in ministry. I finally reached the promised land, and I can report that it’s just OK. Don’t get me wrong: there were parts that I loved, but at the end of the day there is always more to do, always another idea, hill to climb or battle to fight—it never ends.

There is much wisdom here for all of us, big church or little church, succeeding or struggling. There is wisdom here for pastor and laity alike.

Too often we envision “successful ministry”—this vision may look different from person to person, church to church—and pour our energies and affections into seeing that vision become a reality, assuming that once we finally “arrive,” things will be better, easier, finally and ultimately fulfilling. This is, functionally, idolatry. It is a creation of a false heaven, not simply false in its falling short of the real Paradise but false in its inclusion of talent, acquired skills, and grit to reach.

Don’t settle for the false heaven of a “successful ministry.” Because real success is faithfulness. Big church or small church, growing church or declining church, well-known church or obscure church—all churches are epic successes full of the eternal, invincible quality of the kingdom of God when they treasure Jesus’ gospel and follow him. Jesus did not give the keys of the kingdom with the ability to bind and loose on both sides of the veil only to those who’d reached a certain attendance benchmark. So do well, pursue excellence, and stay faithful. God will give you what you ought to have according to his wisdom and riches.

The reality is, as Anderson is able to reveal from that fabled other side, there is no promised land until the promised land of the real heaven. We always think things will finally be . . . well, final when we get “there,” wherever “there” is for us. But there is no there. There’s only here. Because once you get there, there becomes here, and there’s a new there. On and on it will go until our discontentment with ourselves is shaped by the contentment found in Christ and our yearning for thisworldly “theres” is conquered by the vision of the everlasting “there.”

A vision of the everlasting riches of Christ is the antidote for pastoring for shameful gain.