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guides the reader through the biblical teaching on this matter—carefully balancing the external and the internal aspects
Ministry can be a lonely and frustrating experience. We need others in our lives to help us get there and stay there.
I’m so glad I can look back and see how the Lord used all my experiences as preparation; and he’s still doing that today.
single ring from a phone would catalyze them into action and catapult them toward the source. Collisions were common, though no emergency room visits came of it. How come？ More sophisticated minds may not get it, but to them, unlocking the mystery of the caller was as suspenseful as a Hitchcock thriller.
It typically starts with who they are or what they’re destined to do. But that approach just doesn’t seem to line up with Scripture.
In an infinitely more profound way, our call to ministry, just like our call to salvation, ultimately says little about us and a great deal about the Caller.
The Caller is pursuing his enemies—those who never wanted to hear his voice (Rom. 5:10; Col. 1:21).
Then, in a moment, I saw that God was at the bottom of it all, and that he was the Author of my faith, and so the whole doctrine of grace opened up to me, and from that doctrine I have not departed to this day, and I desire to make this my constant confession, “I ascribe my change wholly to God.”
The Gospel Is Adequate—I’m Not
Well, buddy, here’s what the gospel says: we’re not perfect—we’re not even capable—but God loves to use human inability as an earthly canvas to display his glory.
“God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong ... so that no human being might boast in the presence of God” (1 Cor. 1:27, 29).
John Bunyan sat in jail for twelve years rather than allowing the gospel to be censored in his preaching. His thinking was, Why be a free pastor if I can’t preach the gospel？ It was clear to Bunyan: removing the gospel made pastoral ministry irrelevant.
As a believer, you already have a full-time ministry: to bear fruit as a disciple of Jesus Christ (John 15:1–16).
Somehow we reached the point where the most commonly accepted approach to training pastors is to draw gifted men away from the local church and educate them largely outside it.
Studies indicate that a pastor does not reach significant effectiveness until five to seven years into a pastorate. Some observers suggest ten years.
Pastoral ministry is ministry among God’s people. So why do we think we can train a guy best by extracting him from the very people he’s supposed to serve？
The church is not a career path. It’s a place you go to give your life away.
The history of the church is filled with great pastors who never received formal ministry training—maybe you’re familiar with names like Newton, Spurgeon, Tozer, and Lloyd-Jones.
He understood that clear gospel preaching was essential, while formal education was not.
It may indeed lead you into some formal academic study of the Bible. Don’t ever despise scholarship.
No church can or should hire gifted guys just to keep them in the church, but every church or family of churches should have a strategy for developing and deploying its own pastors.
It’s a nonnegotiable: churches need to train pastors as an investment into the future. Seminaries can supplement, but they never replace the local church. If we don’t identify and train called men, we’ll lose them.
Established pastors should be ashamed if they are not pouring themselves into the lives of young men whom God has called into the teaching and leadership ministry of the church.
God’s call upon a man delivers the grace necessary for the godliness needed.
Men don’t become pastors because of potential. They become pastors because God’s grace is already at work in them.
If you can’t come to terms with evil or break habits that continue to bring reproach to the name of Christ, please, do the Lord (and us in ministry) a favor and resign.
“Christ said we must become as little children to enter the kingdom of heaven. Dear God, this is too much! Have we got to become such idiots？”
Then he mentioned in passing that he and his wife attended different churches. To him it seemed incidental. To me, a flag had just been thrown, and the play needed to undergo review.
But I’m sticking with this proposition: the home is the hardest place to live the Christian
You can pose at the office or play religious at church, but your family knows and reveals the true measure of the man.
Let’s face it. It’s almost impossible to succeed in ministry with a wife who isn’t invested. Remember, ministry isn’t just a career track to something else. It’s a call to see the gospel connected to people and problems. For it to work well, your wife must be convinced that you’re called to ministry and she’s called to follow you there.
You can’t parent a kid into conversion any more than you can pastor people into salvation. We affirm regeneration by the power of God, not by parenting.
Not only have we been “made ... alive together with Christ” (Eph. 2:5), but we’ve also been saved “for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (2:10).
But thanks to my pastors’ care, I now love God more deeply and apply the gospel more thoroughly.
In my family of churches (Sovereign Grace Ministries), we’re very intentional about keeping eldership plural.
If you’re called to ministry, you must remember that Christ is the Chief Shepherd, not you.
When you exhort people who are suffering or serving, remind them of the Savior.
