Pedro Heizer’s Kindle Notes & Highlights for Am I Called?: The Summons To Pastoral Ministry

“The home is the proving ground of Christian character and therefore the preparation field for ministry.”

the home is a laboratory for the called man; it’s where his skill in applying the gospel to others’ lives can be measured.

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Puritans called households “little churches.” The implication is clear: the quickest way to determine whether a man is qualified to lead or plant a church is to assess how effectively he’s leading his chief member (his wife) and his principal congregation (his kids).

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If you’re going to minister the gospel faithfully in the church, you’ve got to minister it at home.

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“Husband of one wife” means more than just “no concubines.” Some commentators have translated the Greek phrase mias gynaikos andra as literally “one-woman man.”

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the question isn’t whether the pastor’s marriage will exemplify something—that’s a given. It’s a picture of Christ and the church. The only question is, how good will the example be？ God calls pastors to be models in matrimony. If you’re summoned, it shows up in your marriage.

43%

It’s almost impossible to succeed in ministry with a wife who isn’t invested.

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Charles Bridges punctuates this point in his classic work, The Christian Ministry: “How momentous therefore is the responsibility of the Minister’s married choice.”6 Momentous indeed. So choose a woman who loves God, loves the gospel, and loves the church. A lady like that will follow a man like you, even to the ends of the earth.

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The lists are given primarily as “What to look for in selecting a pastor,” and not as “Pastors must be all these things at all times or they’re immediately disqualified.”

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There are a lot of things a pastor should be able to do. But there’s clearly one thing that he must be able to do to hold the office. He must be able to preach.

51%

“Whatever you may know,” says Charles Spurgeon, “you cannot be truly efficient ministers if you are not ‘apt to teach.’”

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Have you thought much about why the ability to effectively proclaim God’s Word is so important for pastors？ Look at it this way. If I asked you, “What was the preeminent problem for churches in the New Testament？” how would you respond？ Was it lax morality？ How about spiritual dullness？ Too little evangelistic zeal？ How about an anemic impact on the culture around them？ The answer may surprise us. It’s something we don’t often talk about today. I’m talking about false teachers and false doctrine.

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We’re not talking about nitpicky points of theology here, but doctrinal issues that distort or undermine the glorious gospel.

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getting the gospel right and keeping it right is the key to getting life right

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Preaching sound doctrine means you’re keeping the gospel crystal clear and at the center of everything you teach and do. The man called by God can grasp in increasing measure how the gospel links to life. He connects adversity, suffering, marriage, money, kids, death—the stuff of life—all to the gospel. As he does this, the gospel is built into the church and the church is built upon the gospel.

52%

Sadly, our cultural view of preaching is largely formed by what we see on TV. Now, the men (or women) I’ve seen on the tube are invariably gifted speakers. Some of them can preach—I mean it’s hard to take my eyes off them. But if you look past the delivery, the cadence, the carefully crafted words, and the volume, it doesn’t take long to realize that a magnetic TV presence doesn’t cut it. A preacher needs more than delivery. He needs content. He needs the gospel.

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To cultivate an enduring desire to study, we need to build a library.

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Any pastor who thinks he has all he needs to handle the Bible will find himself eventually in that “ashamed” category that Paul warns Timothy about. That’s why I’ve always told aspiring pastors that you must read to lead.

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Luther said three things make the theologian: oratio(prayer),meditatio (meditation), and tentatio tribulation). 8 I think the same might be said of preachers.

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John Piper is way more eloquent on this point than I could ever be, so listen in on how he says it: God never wastes the gift of suffering (Philippians 1:29). It is given to His ministers as He knows best, and its design is the consolation and salvation of our people. No pastoral suffering is senseless. No pastoral pain is pointless. No adversity is absurd and meaningless. Every heartache has its divine target in the consolation of the saints, even when we feel least useful.9

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comfort comes through the preaching of an afflicted man. So God will ordain trials to help you pastor and preach.

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The preacher of God’s Word will draw people and lift their vision to God. “To be able to gather a congregation,” says Charles Chaney, “is the seal of one’s call.”

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But when Peter said “shepherd,” his readers back then would picture a ruddy livestock worker. This guy is on the clock 24/7, scouting out pastures, corralling strays, dispensing first aid, fixing broken bones, making sure the sheep are safe and well fed. This dude works hard, gets dirty, and even knows how to go ninja with his staff.

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A shepherd of God’s people is responsible to care for them. He’s responsible to feed them the Word of God in his preaching, counseling, even everyday conversations. He’s responsible to protect the sheep from false teachers, from the poison of false doctrine, from the influence of the world.

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Shepherding is leadership and leadership is shepherding.

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church leadership in the New Testament was a shared endeavor.7 In the lingo of the twenty-first century, it’s known as team ministry.

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Biblical Eldership, Alexander Strauch states that “on the local church level, the New Testament plainly witnesses to a consistent pattern of shared pastoral leadership.”

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Doing the work of evangelism puts pastors in motion.

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if preaching is a pastoral priority (and it is), then doing the work of an evangelist overflows into our preaching.

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Preaching evangelistically means something far more fruitful. It means the called man must commit to a future where he prepares messages not for meetings but for people.

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A good pastor’s voice reaches both the church and the world.

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Studies show that much of the church growth that goes on today comes from saint-swapping—the movement of believers from one church to the next.

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when church plants or established churches grow at the expense of other gospel-preaching churches, is Christ’s kingdom really advancing？

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If you build a church with somebody else’s people, someday you’ll be the somebody else who gets left for the next new thing.

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“Evangelism is at the heart of pastoral ministry. Ministry is not about just dealing with immediate crises or problems, or about building numbers, or about reforming structures. It’s fundamentally about preparing souls for death.”

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The inner call stirring the soul is validated by a confirmation external to the man.

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Who weighs out the external confirmation？ It comes from two sources.

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Primarily, Church Leaders

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Secondarily, the Church Itself

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My call isn’t my call; it’s God’s call to his church. It’s not just about us; it’s about the lives of those we lead—or at least are trying to lead. Putting a man in a pulpit when he’s neither called or gifted to be there is a disaster in the making.