A Great Summary of Gospel Ministry

From David Wayne:

There is so much right with this quote in so many ways . . .

We declare what has been accomplished, not what we would like to be accomplished.

It’s on a live blog of the Desiring God National Conference for a talk by Doug Wilson.  Gospel ministry is all about what Christ has accomplished, yet it seems to me that most of what passes for life and ministry in the church is focused on what we would like to be accomplished, hence we miss Christ.

Of course I suppose you could argue that it is permissible, even necessary to discuss what could/should be accomplished based on what has been accomplished.  But it would help if we discussed this in reference to what Christ would like to accomplish, and then make sure we limit ourselves in this regard to what is revealed in the Word, to keep our own imaginations out of it.

And of course there is one thing yet for Christ to accomplish – the second coming and the bringing in of the new heavens and new earth.

 

Filed under: Christ crucified, Christian Ministry, Doctrine, Evangelical, Gospel-centred, Jesus Christ, Substitutionary Atonement, The Christian Life, The Church, The Gospel

What Kind of Man Is He?

Jerram Barrs, The Heart of Evangelism, p. 76:

I regularly tell our seminary students that if I happen to visit the church in which one of them serves, I will not ask first, “Is this man a good preacher?” Rather, first of all I will ask the secretaries, office staff, janitors, and cleaners what it is like to work for this pastor. I will ask, “What kind of man is he? Is he a servant? Is he demanding and harsh, or his he patient, kind, and forbearing as a man in authority?” One of our graduates may preach great sermons, but if he is a pain to work for, then you know he will cause major problems in any congregation. Leaders in the church are required by Scripture to set an example in the areas of love, kindness, gentleness, patience, and forbearance before they are appointed to preach, teach, and rule. If we obediently require these attitudes and character traits of our leaders, what will our “new community” look like?

(HT: Justin Taylor)

Filed under: Christian Ministry, Christian character, Discipleship, Holiness, Sanctification

Chuck Swindoll: 10 Leadership Lessons Learned in 50 Years of Leadership

Chuck Swindoll, accepting a Lifetime Achievement Award at Catalyst 09, offered the following lessons he has learned:

1. It’s lonely to lead. Leadership involves tough decisions. The tougher the decision, the lonelier it is.
2. It’s dangerous to succeed. I’m most concerned for those who aren’t even 30 and are very gifted and successful. Sometimes God uses someone right out of youth, but usually he uses leaders who have been crushed.
3. It’s hardest at home. No one ever told me this in Seminary.
4. It’s essential to be real. If there’s one realm where phoniness is common, it’s among leaders. Stay real.
5. It’s painful to obey. The Lord will direct you to do some things that won’t be your choice. Invariably you will give up what you want to do for the cross.
6. Brokenness and failure are necessary.
7. Attitude is more important than actions. Your family may not have told you: some of you are hard to be around. A bad attitude overshadows good actions.
8. Integrity eclipses image. Today we highlight image. But it’s what you’re doing behind the scenes.
9. God’s way is better than my way.
10. Christlikeness begins and ends with humility.

(HT: Justin Taylor)

Filed under: Christian Ministry, Discipleship, Leadership, Preachers

CHRISTIANITY: All About Christ

“To behold Christ and to make others behold him is the substance of his [Paul's] ministry. All the distinctive elements of Paul’s preaching relate to Christ, and bear upon their face his image and superscription. …The entire Christian life, root and stem and branch and blossom, is one continuous fellowship with Christ.” Gerhardus Vos

(HT: Matthew Morizio)

Filed under: Christ-centred, Christian Ministry, Christianity, Discipleship, Quotes, The Christian Life

The Focus of Puritan Preaching

“Puritan preaching revolved around ‘Christ, and him crucified’ – for this is the hub of the Bible. The preachers’ commission is to declare the whole counsel of God; but the cross is the center of that counsel, and the Puritans knew that the traveler through the Bible landscape misses the way as soon as he loses sight of the hill called Calvary.”

– J.I. Packer

(HT: Erik Kowalker)

Filed under: Christ crucified, Christian Ministry, Evangelical, JI Packer, Preaching, Puritan, The Cross, The Gospel, The word of God

The Loving Meaning of the Leftovers

I love this from John Piper:

After Jesus had fed both the 5,000 and the 4,000 with only a few loaves and fish, the disciples got in a boat without enough bread for themselves.

When they began to discuss their plight, Jesus said, “Why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand?” (Mark 8:17). What didn’t they understand?

They did not understand the meaning of the leftovers, namely, that Jesus will take care of them when they take care of others. Jesus said:

“When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?” They said to him, “Twelve.” “And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?” And they said to him, “Seven.” And he said to them, “Do you not yet understand?”

Understand what? The leftovers.

The leftovers were for the servers. In fact the first time there were twelve servers and twelve basketfuls left over (Mark 6:43). The second time there seven basketfuls left over—the number of abundant completeness.

What didn’t they understand? That Jesus would take care of them. You can’t outgive Jesus. When you spend your life for others, your needs will be met.

Filed under: Christian Ministry, Discipleship, God's goodness, Jesus Christ, John Piper, Missional living, The word of God

Ministry Idolatry

My thanks to Justin Childers for this challenging piece:

Driscoll’s second message at the Advance ‘09 conference a few weeks ago was the best message on idolatry I’ve ever heard. I would highly encourage you to listen to the audio or watch the video from that message. It is time for the church to begin identifying and repenting of the good things we’ve used to replace God. Here are the 11 types of idolatry Driscoll ended the message with, along with a penetrating question to help us identify these subtle idolatries (keep in mind he is talking to church leaders):

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1. Attendance idolatry: Does your joy change when attendance at church goes up or down?
2. Gift idolatry: Do you feel as if God needs you because you are so skilled?
3. Truth idolatry: Do you consider yourself more godly than more simple Christians?
4. Fruit idolatry: Do you point to your success as proof that God loves you?
5. Tradition idolatry: What traditions are you upholding that thwart the forward progress of the Gospel?
6. Method idolatry: Do you worship your method as your mediator?
7. Office/Title idolatry: Are you motivated primarily by God’s glory or your title?
8. Success idolatry: Is winning (however you define that) what motivates you at the deepest level?
9. Ministry idolatry: Do you use the pressure of ministry to walk with God instead of love for Him?
10. Innovative idolatry: Do you have to be considered “unique”?
11. Leader idolatry: Who, other than Christ, are you seeking to be like?

Filed under: Christ-centred, Christian Ministry, Idolatry, Mark Driscoll

Zeal and Resolve

The righteous are bold as a lion. Proverbs 28:1

“Two things urgently needed in ministers, if they would attempt great advances for the kingdom of Christ, are zeal and resolve. Their influence and power for impact are greater than we think. A man of ordinary abilities will accomplish more with zeal and resolve than a man ten times more gifted without zeal and resolve. . . . Men who are possessed by these qualities commonly carry the day in almost all affairs. Most of the great things that have been done in the world, the great revolutions that have been accomplished in the kingdoms and empires of the earth, have been primarily owing to zeal and resolve. The very appearance of a intensely engaged spirit, together with a fearless courage and unyielding resolve, in any person that has undertaken leadership in any human affair goes a long way toward accomplishing the intended outcome. . . . When people see a high degree of zeal and resolve in a person, it awes them and has a commanding influence upon them. . . . But while we are cold and heartless and only go on in a dull manner, in an old formal round, we will never accomplish anything great. Our efforts, when they display such coldness and irresolution, will not even make people think of yielding. . . . The appearance of such indifference and cowardice does, as it were, call for and provoke opposition. Our misery is lack of zeal and courage.”

Jonathan Edwards, “Thoughts on the Revival,” in Works, I:424, paraphrased.

Whenever the righteous are bold as a lion, the impact for Christ is unmistakable.

(HT: Ray Ortlund)

Filed under: Christian Ministry, Courage, Discipleship, Jonathan Edwards, News & Views, The Christian Life, Zeal

Biblical Preaching is Spiritual in Its Essence

This is one of the most vital truths about biblical preaching. Let me explain what I mean: the task of true preaching is not essentially intellectual or psychological or rhetorical; it is essentially spiritual.

Left to ourselves, we may do many things with a congregation. We may move them emotionally. We may attract them to ourselves personally, producing great loyalty. We may persuade them intellectually. We may educate them in a broad spectrum of Christian truth. But the one thing we can never do, left to ourselves, is to regenerate them spiritually and change them into the image of Jesus Christ, to bear his moral glory in their character. While that is the great calling of the church of Christ, it is essentially God’s work and not ours.

So it is possible to be homiletically brilliant, verbally fluent, theologically profound, biblically accurate and orthodox, and spiritually useless. That frightens me. I hope it frightens you, too. I think it is of this that Paul is speaking when he says, “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow” (I Cor. 3:6-7). It is very possible for us to be deeply concerned about homiletical ability and fluency and theological profundity and biblical orthodoxy, but to know nothing of the life – giving power of God with the burning anointing of the Holy Spirit upon our ministry. Campbell Morgan (Lloyd-Jones’s predecessor at the Westminster Chapel) divulged that at one crucial stage in his ministry he was in precisely this position, and sensed that God was sayingto him, “Preach on, great preacher, without me.” Alan Redpath used to say that the most penetrating question you could ask about any church situation was, “What is happening in this place that cannot be explained in merely human terms?”

So there is a world of difference between true biblical preaching and an academic lecture or a rhetorical performance. We are utterly dependent on the grace and power of the Holy Spirit. Thank God, he uses the weak things of this world to confound the mighty, and the things that are not to bring to nothing the things that are (1 Cor. 1 :2,8). This is why it is absolutely essential to marry prayer to the ministry of the Word. In our ministries prayer is not supplemental; it is fundamental. Of course we subscribe to the principal that “this work is God’s work, not ours.” We subscribe to that because we are biblical Evangelicals, but the logical corollary of that statement is that prayer is a fundamental issue in the ministry of the Word, as in every part of our labor, and not, as we tend to make it, a supplemental matter.

E. M. Bounds, who wrote the remarkable little booklet Power through Prayer, says, “The church is on a stretch if not on a strain, looking for better methods. But men are God’s methods and while the church is looking for better methods, God is looking for better men.”

That, of course, does not mean that we should not be interested in methodology. Nor does it mean that we have to be stupid enough to ignore new ideas and new insights, or to be careless in our administration and exploration of methods that are valuable and effective. But we do need to ask God to write on our hearts that this task he has given us is spiritual in essence.

[Excerpt From "What is Biblical Preaching" by Eric J. Alexander, P&R, 2008]

(HT: Reformation Theology)

Filed under: Biblical exposition, Books, Christian Ministry, Doctrine, Evangelical, Holy Spirit, Prayer, Preachers, Preaching, The word of God

The Main Thing to Rejoice About in Ministry

By Bill Walsh at Desiring God:

Praise God for the times of effective ministry that he allows us to experience. If you’re like me you get excited when you see the fruitfulness of any ministry that God calls you to do. It is a thrill to see him at work, putting to use the gifts and callings that he has granted to us for the cause of the Kingdom.

But in Luke 10 Christ challenges us to test our own hearts, by examining what we rejoice in most.

The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!” And he said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven…. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven. (Luke 10: 17-20)

We easily slip into over-emphasizing results rather than rejoicing most in our redemption. According to the Lord, the deepest rejoicing that we should seek is the joy of the impact that the Gospel has made on our own hearts and lives.

Some questions to regularly ask ourselves:

• Do I rejoice that God, by some mystery to me, chose me before the foundation of the world, due to nothing in me, and wrote my name in his Book of Life?
• Do I rejoice that God, from the beginning, had me in mind when he was carrying out his plan to redeem a people for the glory of his name?
• Do I rejoice that God sent his Son on a mission from heaven to become the Word made flesh on my behalf, in order to save me from my sins?
• Do I rejoice that Christ lived perfectly without sin, fulfilling the law in my place, in order that its righteous requirements might be fulfilled in me by grace through faith?
• Do I rejoice that the Lord Jesus bore my sins in his body on the tree, so that I could receive forgiveness for every sin that I have or will commit?
• Do I rejoice that day by day, these truths are sinking down into my soul and, as C.S. Lewis says, re-working my house; re-building, re-furnishing, preparing me for greater works ahead and ultimately for a greater Kingdom ahead.
• Do I rejoice in counting everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord who is bringing me to God?

Why does Christ tell us to rejoice first that our names are written in heaven? Might it be because he knows that the mustard seed of faith that he plants in us is what opens our eyes and lives to the Gospel in the first place? It is only because he chose us for salvation that we even have the possibility of reaching out and being a part of his work in bringing others to salvation and spiritual growth.

True ministry effectiveness and impact springs from a heart radically changed by the Gospel. No God-granted mysterious seed of the Gospel in us—no tree of lifelong fruitfulness.

Lord, make us aware and vigilant for where our deepest rejoicing lies. Keep us focused on allowing the amazing truth of your redemption to shape our hearts while we labor in your field.

Filed under: Christian Ministry, Evangelical, Gospel-centred, Jesus Christ, Power of the Gospel, The Christian Life, The Cross, The Gospel, The word of God

The kind of men God used

From Ray Ortlund:

Horatius Bonar, writing the preface to John Gillies’ Accounts of Revival, proposes that men useful to the Holy Spirit for revival have been marked in these nine ways:

1. They were in earnest about the great work on which they had entered: “They lived and labored and preached like men on whose lips the immortality of thousands hung.”

2. They were bent on success: “As warriors, they set their hearts on victory and fought with the believing anticipation of triumph, under the guidance of such a Captain as their head.”

3. They were men of faith: “They knew that in due season they should reap, if they fainted not.”

4. They were men of labor: “Their lives are the annals of incessant, unwearied toil of body and soul; time, strength, substance, health, all they were and possessed they freely offered to the Lord, keeping back nothing, grudging nothing.”

5. They were men of patience: “Day after day they pursued what, to the eye of the world, appeared a thankless and fruitless round of toil.”

6. They were men of boldness and determination: “Timidity shuts many a door of usefulness and loses many a precious opportunity; it wins no friends, while it strengthens every enemy. Nothing is lost by boldness, nor gained by fear.”

7. They were men of prayer: “They were much alone with God, replenishing their own souls out of the living fountain, that out of them might flow to their people rivers of living water.”

8. They were men whose doctrines were of the most decided kind: “Their preaching seems to have been of the most masculine and fearless kind, falling on the audience with tremendous power. It was not vehement, it was not fierce, it was not noisy; it was far too solemn to be such; it was massive, weighty, cutting, piercing, sharper than a two-edged sword.”

9. They were men of solemn deportment and deep spirituality of soul: “No frivolity, no flippancy . . . . The world could not point to them as being but slightly dissimilar from itself.”

Filed under: Christian Ministry, Communion with God, Discipleship, Doctrine, Evangelical, Holiness, Horatius Bonar, Love for God, Preachers, The word of God, Zeal

Parakletos Ministries

This new video – made by my daughter Grace – is to help inform people about my bible teaching ministry. Click on the ‘Parakletos Ministries’ page tab (above) for more details. Or here!

Filed under: Biblical exposition, Christian Ministry, Evangelical, God's Kingdom, Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, Missions, Parakletos Ministries, Preaching, The Gospel, The Persecuted Church, The word of God

Concentrate on Depth!

John MacArthur celebrated 40 years as pastor of Grace Community Church this weekend.

In the book, Stand: A Call for the Endurance of the Saints, MacArthur shares the secret of his success in conversation with Justin Taylor:

Early in my first year or so at Grace Community Church, I had this little kind of motto that I used: “If you concentrate on the depth of your ministry, God will take care of the breadth of it.” My ministry hasn’t changed since that first year in that small, little church. For me, it’s all about getting into the depth of Scripture and my own personal walk with the Lord. Breadth is something that God does. . . .

(HT: Between Two Worlds)

Filed under: Christian Ministry, Church, Church growth, Communion with God, Discipleship, Doctrine, Evangelical, Jesus Christ, The Bible, The word of God

“Dyed with Jesus’ Blood”

From Michael Haykin.

On what constitutes a call to the ministry:

“Now we need numbers in the Ministry. The plenteous, perishing harvest wails out a despairing cry for more laborers. But we need purity more than numbers; we need intelligence more than numbers; we need zeal more than numbers. Above all, we need consecrated men, men who have stood beneath the Cross, till their very souls are dyed with Jesus’ blood, and a love like his for perishing millions has been kindled within them.”

[Basil Manly, Jr. A Call to the Ministry (Greenville, South Carolina: G.E. Elford’s Job Press, 1866), 16].

Filed under: Christian Ministry, Evangelical, Evangelism, Holiness, Jesus Christ, Missions, Sanctification, Substitutionary Atonement, The Christian Life, The Church, The Cross, The Gospel, The word of God, Worship

Suffering for Christ

by C.J. Mahaney

What constitutes suffering for the name of Christ? Often we recall the most severe examples of suffering—Stephen crying out to the Lord as enraged Jewish leaders hurled rocks at his body; Paul and Silas with feet shackled to a Philippian prison, still feeling the pain of their earlier beating; Jim Elliot and his four missionary friends rushed by armed Huaorani Indians. These are all graphic examples of Christians enduring great sacrifices for the advance of the gospel.

Scripture teaches (even promises) that all Christians will suffer, but these graphic examples are not the norm for faithful Christians in the West today. So what does suffering for the name of Christ look like in twenty-first century America?

During one panel discussion at the Together for the Gospel conference, Ligon Duncan and I interviewed our friend John Piper on this issue.

——

Ligon Duncan: John, you have done a pretty extended exposition on kinds of suffering, available on the Desiring God website. You have done it in different forms. You are addressing this very question that, that suffering just means taking a bullet or getting your head hacked off. You make a great point in that message about how any kind of suffering can become suffering for Christ if you will embrace it that way.

John Piper: If you pick a text on suffering and you try to apply it to cancer, when it is dealing with persecution, a lot of people will say, “I don’t think that applies to me, because that is really applying to getting suffering from somebody hurting you or saying something evil.” So I have developed an argument: All suffering that a Christian endures in the path of obedience is suffering with Christ and for Christ (though not in the same way).

And there are a couple of reasons for that.

One is that in suffering, the temptation is the same whether it is coming from cancer or slander. And the temptation is to say, “God is not good and it is not worth serving him, and escaping from this suffering in some sinful way is to be preferred.” Those are the same. And so the real battle is the same, whether it is coming from a physical thing or another.

Secondly, I don’t think historically you can draw a line between suffering from persecution and physical suffering. Just try to imagine a particular kind of Pauline persecution, like being whipped 39 lashes, five times (2 Corinthians 11:24). Well, let’s just take the third time. You can imagine what his back must have looked like—39 times five is a lot—and it healed five times. So the third time his back is turned into jelly again.

Now they don’t know anything about antibiotics. When they are done with him, they throw him on the floor and his back is now covered with dirt. What happens when your back is lacerated and it is covered with dirt? I’ll tell you what happens: infection happens. What happens when you get an infection? Fever happens.

Now which is the physical suffering here and which is the persecution suffering? Where are you going to draw that line between the fever and the lashes? Which is why I say that any fever experienced in the path of obedience—getting my sermon ready, making hard calls, staying up late with the suicide situation, and not enough rest and I have got this awful sore throat—tell me these are not the same suffering as being criticized for your ministry. It is the same essential suffering.

And so I think I can develop textual and thoughtful arguments for why almost all texts on suffering can help our people, whether their pain is coming from a difficult marriage, coming from slander, coming from cancer, or coming from wherever.

The issue is in all suffering, when we trust him and keep trusting him, we will find some evidences of his sovereign mercy toward me. And the source of it is a very minor part when it comes to the real battle down here of “Will I trust him? Will I hold on to him or not?”

C.J. Mahaney: Knowing you, John, and knowing your church, you have devoted much time to addressing the topic of suffering and to preparing your church for suffering. Why and how would you recommend that local pastors here do the same?

JP: Well, the why is because the Bible promises, “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22, ESV). It is a given that to come to Jesus is to compound your suffering, not minimize your suffering. Certain kinds of sufferings get minimized. The suffering that comes from drunkenness will probably go down. So don’t hear me saying nothing changes or is beneficial. That is not true. There are amazing releases for conscience. A lot of psychological things will improve, but others will get worse.

So, if you are now in a marriage where one of you is a believer and one is not, that is this sort of thing. They will suffer.

And the second is because you see it out there. You see the little Down-syndrome kids, and you see the people in the wheelchair, and you see the painful marriages that are out there. You see it, and you either are going to just ignore it, or you are going to give them something to help.

Third, I don’t think Christ is glorified anywhere more than when suffering people rejoice in him as their treasure. If everything is going rosy for all my people, the possibilities of us making a name for Jesus in the city is smaller than if things are going hard for our folks. Then the possibility of making a name for Jesus is greater. What the world wants to see is not for you to tell them, “Jesus makes things go well for me.” Things are going well for them, too, probably better than for you, and it is money and doctors that are doing it for them. So that argument has teeny-weeny effectiveness.

Rather, when neighbors know that the baby in your womb has a liver outside his body, no spinal column, and you have carried this baby to the end and they watch you, the possibilities of making much of Jesus are staggering.

Not many people see life that way. My job as a preacher is to help that mom, way before the pregnancy, get ready for it so that she has some resources. And one of the most satisfying things in ministry, guys, is to do this long enough so that you get a steady stream of testimonies that come to you at funerals and in hospitals and other places where a mom or a son or a relative just takes you by the hand and says, “So glad we have been at Bethlehem. We would be insane if we didn’t have a big God, if we didn’t have a strong God, if we didn’t have a sovereign God, if we didn’t have a holy God.”

I love those testimonies and I get a lot of mileage of late-night work out of testimonies like that, and they are pretty common stream.

We have got a lot of strong women at our church. They bear a lot of things. They endure pain through marriages and through kids that are disabled…Strong women are magnificent testimonies to Christ because, if they are complementarian, they are combining things the world can’t explain. They are combining a sweet, tender, kind, loving, submissive, feminine beauty with this massive steel in their backs and theology in their brains.

————

Listen to the T4G panel discussion here.

Filed under: CJ Mahaney, Christ our treasure, Christian Ministry, Discernment, Discipleship, Evangelical, Faith, God's wisdom, Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, John Piper, Sanctification, Sovereignty of God, The Christian Life, The Church, The Cross, The Gospel, The word of God