Viva Las Vegas
Today, the Lord called us to Las Vegas!
I’ll have the privilege of serving as the Lead Teaching Pastor at Twin Lakes Baptist Church ministering in the heart of this Send City. Retiring Pastor Norman Lourenco and the Twin Lakes family have been proclaiming the life-giving message of Jesus for decades and we cannot wait to join hands with this loving church. Today, the Lord turned the page.
The journey to this point has been one of a thousand small steps toward God. Perhaps, at some distant point, we will pen a reflection. But for now, the best posture is one leaning toward the future with a heightened expectation of God’s favor. God has given us a new start, and for that we are eternally grateful!
Before stepping into this new future, Heather and I can’t help but express our deepest gratitude to those who have walked through this time with us. You know who you are. More importantly, the Lord knows who you are. Your prayers, phone calls, text messages, notes of encouragement, cards, and gifts helped buoy us this past year. My dear friends, you were an agent of the Lord in our lives. Thank you for believing in us, praying for us, and putting legs to your prayers in practical ways. Blessed are you who have shown mercy, for mercy will be shown to you.
For those that have watched our journey from afar, let me invite you to be a part of what God is doing here in Las Vegas. If you’re interested in knowing more about how you can impact the frontier for Christ, please drop me a note in the comments section or on social media. The fields are ripe and you can be a part of the harvest!
Here, on 11 October 2020, we raise our Ebenezer. An Ebenezer marking the end of our waiting. An Ebenezer commencing the next phase of our ministry. An Ebenezer declaring the victory of God in our lives. It’s by His help we’ve come. And we hope, by His good pleasure, safely to arrive at home.
[Photo by Guido Coppa]
Quotes of Note: Pastoral Care
Photo by Jack Sharp
In his book, Pastoral Ministry, Deron Biles posits Ezekiel 34 as the quintessential guidebook for the Shepherding functions of the Pastor. Biles reminds the pastor that preaching is only one of his important duties. He writes, “One can feed en masse from a distance, but one only strengthens up close and one at a time.”
The call to pastoral care is fundamentally an incarnational task. Internet sermons and blog posts can achieve only so much. And when rightly understood, caring is an obligation for every Christian, not just the pastor. While pastoral care in the 20th century suffered from an entanglement with the secular healing sciences, a renewed effort has arisen to recapture pastoral care as was practiced for centuries. Namely, bringing the truths of God’s Word to bear on the lives of fellow saints–a true love of Christian neighbor.
As we begin to emerge from the cocoons we’ve erected during this Coronavirus pandemic, I pray we will once again lean into the up close and personal ministry of pastoral care. I pray we will find the scriptures sufficient to address the problems of our day and the sin that encumbers our witness. I pray the church once scattered-in-place may become the church now gathered in worship.
“Pastoral Care has been viewed mistakenly in the past as superficial do-goodism; as a crutch for life’s cripples; as God’s psychiatry aimed at ‘peace of mind’; or as a form of faith healing that might save us from suffering, fear, and death.” –C.W. Brister in Pastoral Care in the Church
“Freudian psychoanalysis turns out to be an archeological expedition back into the past in which a search is made for others on whom to pin the blame for the patient’s behavior. D. Elton Trueblood’s indictment does not seem too strong: ‘The entire basis of human responsibility is undermined.’” –Jay Adams in Competent to Counsel
“Before Freud, the study of the soul was thought of as a spiritual discipline. In other words, it was inherently associated with religion. Freud’s chief contribution was to define the human soul and the study of human behavior in wholly secular terms. He utterly divorced anthropology (the study of human beings) from the spiritual realm and thus made way for atheistic, humanistic, and rationalistic theories about human behavior.” –John MacArthur in Counseling
“Today clients in swelling numbers seek therapy not because they feel bad but because they do not feel good.” –William Clebsch in Pastoral Care in Historical Perspective
On the interaction between psychotherapy and the cure of souls – “The empiricist has no meager service to render, but the religious guide has no reason to go into retirement.” –John McNeill in A History of the Cure of Souls
“God’s truths turn man’s wisdom upside down.” –John Babler in Counseling by the Book
“But for the attainment of full health of personality, man must find a harmonious relationship in the realm of spiritual values. The primary obstacle to his entrance into this realm is what the Bible calls sin.” –John McNeill in A History of the Cure of Souls
“We see here [The New Testament] more vividly than elsewhere that the cure of souls is never merely a method, even a method derived from a doctrine, or a task for certain hours in the week, but that it involves both the faith we live by and all our daily activities and contacts.” –John McNeill in A History of the Cure of Souls
“Humanity’s true identification resides in the heart of God and was reflected in the face of Jesus Christ.” –C.W. Brister in Pastoral Care in the Church
“The Christian preacher’s goal is to challenge boldly all of human life with the truth of God’s Word.” –C.W. Brister in Pastoral Care in the Church
“Christian pastoral care is the mutual concern of Christians for each other and for those persons for whom Christ died.” –C.W. Brister in Pastoral Care in the Church
“The faithful ministers of Christ must not lightly give up on anyone.” –Martin Bucer in Concerning the True Care of Souls
Mutual Edification and Fraternal Correction as a characteristic of Protestantism “has often been erroneously interpreted as religious individualism.” –John McNeill in A History of the Cure of Souls
“…our Lord Jesus, now in his heavenly nature, is with us and rules and feeds us from heaven; this rule and feeding, that is, the work of our salvation, he exercises among us through his ministers, who he calls, ordains and uses for that purpose.” –Martin Bucer in Concerning the True Care of Souls
“Timeless, in this case as in many others, is a reward for taking the past seriously.” –William Clebsch in Pastoral Care in Historical Perspective
“The deliberate absence of symbols” in marriage vows or creedal statements “does not dispel the demands symbolized” –William Clebsch in Pastoral Care in Historical Perspective
“The more you are detached from ignorance, the more you are attached to willful disobedience. It is nothing but willful disobedience which destroys the fear of God.” –Tertullian
“Public offenses require public repentance” –John Knox
“The difficulties of discipline have led to its too easy surrender by the churches.” –John McNeill in A History of the Cure of Souls
Quotes of Note: Pastoral Theology
Photo by Pawan Sharma on Unsplash
“The weight of Ministerial responsibilities renders the work apparently more fitting to the shoulders of angels than of men.” [1] –Augustine
The work is daunting, the reward minimal, and the weight eternal. The Pastor’s only hope is to have an awe of God, a rock-solid sense of His calling, and the empowerment of the His Holy Spirit. Previous posts have emphasized the practices of Pastoral Ministry and Leadership. This post features quotes from the field of Pastoral Theology—the Pastor’s relationship with God and ministry on His behalf.
Perhaps the practical too often supersedes the relational. The machinery of ministry encroaches at the expense of divine intimacy. The attempts to work for God are done in one’s own strength. The anecdote for all that ails is a fresh view of God. Allow these quotes to pierce your soul and awaken your thirst for Christ. Minister in the days ahead out of an overflow of gratitude and a renewed filling of the Holy Spirit.
“Seduced by the lure of modernity (‘whatever is latest is best’), we find ourselves awash on the sea of pragmatism (‘whatever works is right’), indifference, and theological vacuity. The results are all about us: Church rolls stuffed with so-called ‘inactive members’ no one has seen or heard from in years, trendy sermons which lack both biblical depth and spiritual power, a generation of young people uninstructed in the rudiments of the faith, fractious controversies which sap our strength and strain our fellowship, shallow worship services geared more to the applause of men than the praise of God, a slackening interest in evangelism and missions, all amidst a hurried activism steeped in this-worldly priorities.” –Timothy George in Theologians of the Baptist Tradition
“In our postmodern culture which is TV dominated, image sensitive, and morally vacuous, personality is everything and character is increasingly irrelevant.” –David Wells in No Place for Truth
“It is a palpable error of some ministers, who make such a disproportion between their preaching and their living; who study hard to preach exactly, and study little or not at all to live exactly.” – Richard Baxter in The Reformed Pastor
“Leave me as I am; for the one who enables me to endure the fire will also enable me to remain on the pyre without moving, even without the sense of security that you get from the nails.” –Polycarp’s Prayer cited in The Apostolic Fathers
“Study hard, for the well is deep, and our brains are shallow.” – Richard Baxter in The Reformed Pastor
“Make careful choice of the books which you read: let the holy Scriptures ever have the preeminence. Let Scripture be first and most in your hearts and hands and other books be used as subservient to it.” – Richard Baxter in The Reformed Pastor
“The loss of center in Christian education is arguably due to a serious default of pastoral leadership; when the teaching elder does not teach, the effect is felt throughout the entire Christian congregation.” –Thomas Oden in Pastoral Theology
“To live among such excellent helps as our libraries afford, to have so many silent wise companions whenever we please.” – Richard Baxter in The Reformed Pastor
“Every generation brings forth a company of Stalwart Champions who assume that they alone are the true custodians of truth, and who by a blustering manner and a swaggering rhetoric induce the undiscerning to accept them as special agents of heaven.” –Charles Jefferson in The Minister as Shepherd
“Lay siege to your sins, and starve them out by keeping away the food and fuel which is their maintenance and life.” – Richard Baxter in The Reformed Pastor
“Let no man think to kill sin with few, easy, or gentle strokes. He who hath once smitten a serpent, if he follow not on his blow until it be slain, may repent that ever he began the quarrel. And so he who undertakes to deal with sin, and pursues it not constantly to the death.” – Richard Baxter in The Reformed Pastor
“I preached as never sure to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men.” – Richard Baxter in The Reformed Pastor
“Alas! can we think that the reformation is wrought, when we cast out a few ceremonies, and changed some vestures, and gestures, and forms! Oh no, sirs’! it is the converting and saving of souls that is our business. That is the chiefest part of reformation, that doth most good, and tendeth most to the salvation of the people.” – Richard Baxter in The Reformed Pastor
“Protestants now recognize that the Reformation itself had deeply pastoral roots. The concern was not for the reformation of doctrine and the church as such, but for the care of people in their lives before God, with the realization that thinking wrongly about God leads us to live wrongly.” –Andrew Purves in Pastoral Theology in the Classical Tradition
“Be no respector of persons in reproving a man who is in fault, for riches can have no power with the Lord, nor does the Lord give more honor to dignities, nor has beauty any advantage, but there is equality of all these things with Him.” –Translated from the Syriac The Didascalia Apostolorum
“The power of example remains one of the most potent influences in men’s lives and is of crucial significance for the work of the pastor.” –Derek Tidball in Skillful Shepherds
Referring to Titus 2:13 and 3:6 – “The theology of mission intimated here is a rich one and parallels the teachings in the acknowledged Paulines: God is the initiator of mission and Jesus Christ is the agent of his redemptive plan. There is a historical and a future perspective in the message of the gospel; we proclaim the saving work of Christ as a historical event and hold up Christ’s future appearing and the promise of eternal life as the hope of every believer.” –Chiao Ek Ho in Entrusted with the Gospel edited by Wilder and Köstenberger
[1] Augustine, Onus Angelicis Humeris Formidandum
Adam Mallette 