Matt Smethurst: If you’ve never experienced discouragement in ministry, I have an inkling you’ve never been in ministry. In a new roundtable video, Darrin Patrick, Paul Tripp, and Voddie Baucham explore reasons and remedies for pastoral discouragement. “I get most discouraged when I’ve had unmet, unrealistic expectations of myself or others,” Baucham observes. The hard-to-swallow truth in such moments is he’s typically thinking too much of himself. “If you’re looking to ministry to give you identity, you’re going down,” notes Tripp, author of Dangerous Calling: Confronting the Unique Challenges of Pastoral Ministry. Though glorious, ministry is “a messy war.” Patrick adds, “Even though we know in general that ministry is hard and warfare is real, we don’t always know why it’s hard.” It’s crucial, then, to ask, What’s the discouragement beneath the discouragement here? Receiving ministry as a pastor is just as important as giving it, Baucham contends. Or, as one of my favorite preachers, Tommy Nelson, puts it: “If your output exceeds your input, your
Voddie Baucham
Preach to the Affections, Don’t Manipulate Them
Matt Smethurst: Should preachers aim for the affections? Is this even possible without resorting to manipulation techniques? In a new roundtable video, John Piper, Voddie Baucham, and Miguel Núñez—all Council members for The Gospel Coalition—explore differences between “working the crowd” and awakening authentic, God-honoring emotion. “As long as preaching unpacks the greatness of God, the emotions should be moved,” Núñez observes. Faithful exposition, then, is a excellent way to cultivate godly affection and safeguard against squalid manipulation. A bored preacher misrepresents the God he proclaims, Piper adds, since God is not boring. Moreover, he explains, “the difference between emotion and emotionalism is whether you’ve awakened it with truth.” Baucham references a complaint sometimes voiced in more traditionally emotional (e.g., black and Latino) cultures that emphasizing truth and theology amounts to “denying your culture, your heritage, your ethnicity.” But the call to awaken affections with biblical truth is not culturally specific. As Piper quips, “I want to be known as the best black preacher there
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