Author: Adam Mallette

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.

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“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

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[1] Augustine, Onus Angelicis Humeris Formidandum

Photo by Richard Sagredo on Unsplash

I’m privileged to serve on the Board of Trustees at Hannibal-LaGrange University (HLGU).  HLG is a Christian University affiliated with the Missouri Baptist Convention and located in Hannibal, Missouri.  The school is a wonderful place to bring a distinctly Christian worldview to bear on degree programs from Nursing to Business Administration.  If you are interested in Christian higher education, let me encourage you to consider HLG.

Today, we held our Spring Trustee meeting and I was afforded the opportunity to bring a word of devotional.  I’ve included that devotion below in the hopes it would encourage you.  As always, thank you for your continued prayers and encouragement. The devotional begins with a passage from God’s Word:

“I called to the Lord in my distress, and he answered me.
I cried out for help from deep inside Sheol; you heard my voice.

When you threw me into the depths, into the heart of the seas,
the current overcame me. All your breakers and your billows swept over me.

And I said, ‘I have been banished from your sight,
yet I will look once more toward your holy temple.’

The water engulfed me up to the neck; the watery depths overcame me;
seaweed was wrapped around my head.

I sank to the foundations of the mountains, the earth’s gates shut behind me forever!
Then you raised my life from the Pit, Lord my God!

As my life was fading away, I remembered the Lord,
and my prayer came to you, to your holy temple.

Those who cherish worthless idols abandon their faithful love,

but as for me, I will sacrifice to you with a voice of thanksgiving.
I will fulfill what I have vowed. Salvation belongs to the Lord.”

Perhaps when you heard the words of that prayer, you might be inclined to think it came from one of the great psalms of the Psalter. Perhaps a prayer from David at the end of his rope. Or maybe even Moses interceding on behalf of a disobedient people.  But, in fact, the prayer you just heard was breathed by the prophet Jonah and found in his second chapter.

Jonah is no hero.  He hated the people he preached to.  He is an anti-hero and accidental prophet.  However, Jonah is proof that God can use a crooked stick to hit a perfect lick.

Perhaps the prayer of Jonah’s desperation smacks of a familiar desperation in your own prayer life.  You find yourself in uncharted waters, ministering through the seas of a pandemic which are causing the boat of your life to rock.  You’re not sure which news is fake news and you’re not sure what life will look like on the other side of this crisis, much less next week.  You seek to operate is God’s wisdom, but you can’t find a verse of scripture to give explicit instruction for pandemics.  Your spiritual disciplines and daily routines have been reconfigured. Perhaps, it’s even possible, your routine and productivity have been exposed as the idols they were all along.  Then to you my friend, let me say: “Salvation belongs to the LORD.”

Have you ever considered that the very thing representing immanent death might actually be God’s deliverance?  For Jonah, in any other circumstance, the great fish swallowing him would have been his doom.  If the water didn’t get him, the compression of the fish’s jaws or the acidic composition of its digestive tract certainly would have.  But the very thing that represented certain death actually served to move him from a stormy sea, to a cry of desperation, and finally to dry land.  Instead of Death, there was Deliverance.

Perhaps the pandemic is the great fish in your existence.  The thing which looms and represents catastrophe is the very thing God is using to bring deliverance. To bring deliverance from ministry idols.  To bring deliverance from overcrowded calendars with no margin for family or margin for friendships with lost people.  To bring deliverance from programs and ministries that were sacred cows instead of sanctified service. Perhaps this pandemic and God’s sure deliverance isn’t even about you, but about getting the gospel to the people of your Nineveh.

The great fish of 2020 will be used by God to work all things for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purposes.  So, in this moment of seeming crisis, when your world has been upended and tossed into the sea, let me remind you that God can use even you—crooked stick.  He will use your imperfection to convey his message.  That as Sovereign, He has appropriated you to aid him in reigning over His Kingdom.

So, don’t allow yourself to be held captive by what you don’t know; what you can’t do; what you’re not able to discern.  Allow the Holy Spirit to work thru you to be a light to a dark world that is seeking to understand their own mortality.  Demonstrate to them the hope that is in Christ Jesus and the love that He promises; the Love that He is.  The perfect love that casts out all fear.

For I was sinking deep in sin, far from the peaceful shore,

Very deeply stained within, sinking to rise no more;

But the Master of the sea, Heard my despairing cry,

From the Waters lifted me, now safe am I.

Love lifted me! Love Lifted me!

When nothing else could help, Love Lifted me![1]

 

[1] “Love Lifted Me” by James Rowe

Photo by 🇸🇮 Janko Ferlič on Unsplash

Life is constantly moving despite being at a pandemic standstill.  I’ve provided an update on some of our journey here.  Recently, I’ve completed the coursework for the PhD program at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary; only a comprehensive exam, prospectus, and dissertation remain.  While I’m grateful to have taken my last class, there is a sobriety in knowing the most treacherous part of this academic journey lay ahead.

As I prepare to sit for my comprehensive examination later this summer, I thought I would take the opportunity to pass along some of the quotes which have ministered to me these past few years.  Having been permitted the opportunity to read and engage with some of the brightest minds and scholars in the fields of pastoral studies and preaching, I feel a debt of gratitude and an obligation to steward these pearls of wisdom.  With that, expect several of these posts in the future with quotations of note as I continue my preparation.

May the Lord bless you and keep you during this season of Pandemic.  May He make His face to shine upon you.  May these quotes from the saints of bygone eras provoke your thoughts and affection for a wonderful God.

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“The test of Leadership is what happens when you leave.”  – John Bisagno in Pastor’s Handbook

“The Church is the mirror that reflects the whole effulgence of the divine character.” – Charles Bridges in The Christian Ministry

“He stands best but who kneels most. He stands strongest who kneels weakest. He stands longest who kneels longest.”  – W.A. Criswell’s Guidebook for Pastors

“When the chariot of humanity gets stuck…nothing will lift it out except great preaching that goes straight to the mind and heart.  There is nothing in this case that will save the world but what was once called, ‘the foolishness of preaching’.” – W.A. Criswell’s Guidebook for Pastors

“Pastor, preach for a verdict and expect it.” – W.A. Criswell’s Guidebook for Pastors 

“To love the Word is to love God.  To receive the Word is to receive God.  To believe the Word is to believe God.  Spiritually, to know the Word is to know God.” – W.A. Criswell’s Guidebook for Pastors 

On good preaching: “The difference between a bore and a good conversationalist is that the bore has not discovered the distinction between what interests him and what interests his hearers.” – W.A. Criswell’s Guidebook for Pastors

Take time for prayer and study and preparation.  If the message is of little cost to the preacher, it will be of little value to the congregation.” – W.A. Criswell’s Guidebook for Pastors 

“You cannot live on skim milk during the days of the week and preach cream on Sunday.” – R.G. Lee quoted by – W.A. Criswell’s Guidebook for Pastors

“A short pencil is better than a long memory.” – W.A. Criswell’s Guidebook for Pastors

“Christ did not come to develop programs to reach the masses, He came to develop men whom the masses would follow.” – W.A. Criswell’s Guidebook for Pastors

“The only investments I ever made which have paid constantly increasing dividends, is the money I have given to the Lord.” – W.A. Criswell’s Guidebook for Pastors 

“It does not take great men to do great things; it only takes consecrated men.” – W.A. Criswell’s Guidebook for Pastors

“The greatest, finest, noblest sermon any pastor ever delivers is that of his own example.” – W.A. Criswell’s Guidebook for Pastors

“Luther wrote in his commentary on Galatians, ‘Every minister of God’s Word should be sure of his calling, that before God and man, he may , with a bold conscience, glory therein, that he preach the Gospel as one that is sent, even as the ambassador of a king glorieth and vaunteth in this, that he cometh not as a private person, but as the king’s ambassador.’” – W.A. Criswell’s Guidebook for Pastors

“We go further on our knees than by any other way.” – W.A. Criswell’s Guidebook for Pastors

 “Indeed, he is a poor and unskilled physician, who aims at healing others but is ignorant of his own ailment.” – Gregory the Great in Regula Pastoralis

“Fear must moderate the desire of compassing authority, and when this is attained by one who did not seek it, let his way of life recommend it.” – Gregory the Great in Regula Pastoralis

“For no one does more harm in the Church than he, who having the title or rank of holiness, acts evilly.” – Gregory the Great in Regula Pastoralis

“Wherefore, the man gives testimony against himself that he is not desiring the office of a bishop, if he seeks the glory of that honour, but not the ministry of a good work.” – Gregory the Great in Regula Pastoralis

“The pastor is the more easily delivered from temptation, as he is the more compassionately afflicted by the temptations of others.” – – Gregory the Great in Regula Pastoralis

“The seed of the word does germinate promptly, when the kindness of a preacher waters it in the hearer’s heart.” – – Gregory the Great in Regula Pastoralis

“the mind of the elect must maintain patience, lest, being stirred by the wind of impatience, it lose in addition all the good they have performed.” – – Gregory the Great in Regula Pastoralis

“What unhappiness is that of people whose state deteriorates by the progress of their neighbor.”  – Gregory the Great in Regula Pastoralis

“Good should be loved for its own sake, not pursued under the compulsion of established penalties.” – Gregory the Great in Regula Pastoralis

 “If we lose the sense of wonder of our commission we shall be like common traders in a common market, babbling about common wares.” – J.H. Jowett in The Preacher: His Life and Work

“The absence of the sense of vocation will eviscerate a man’s responsibility, and will tend to secularize his ministry from end to end.” – J.H. Jowett in The Preacher: His Life and Work

“A man may be dealing with ‘gold thrice refined’ and yet he himself may be increasingly mingled with the dross of the world.” – J.H. Jowett in The Preacher: His Life and Work

“We may be professors but not pilgrims.  Our studies may be workshops instead of ‘upper rooms’.” – J.H. Jowett in The Preacher: His Life and Work

“The worldly spirit of compromise is just the sacrifice of the moral ideal to the popular standard, and the subjection of personal conviction to current opinion.” – J.H. Jowett in The Preacher: His Life and Work

“We may be more concerned to have a swelling membership-roll than to have the names of our people ‘written in Heaven’.” – J.H. Jowett in The Preacher: His Life and Work

“Yes, you will find that when your spirit is impaired, your Bible, and your lexicons, and your commentaries are only like so many spectacles behind which there are no eyes:  you have no sight!” – J.H. Jowett in The Preacher: His Life and Work 

“We are not going to enrich our action by the impoverishment of our thought.  A skimmed theology will not produce a more intimate philanthropy.” – J.H. Jowett in The Preacher: His Life and Work

“Cases are not won by jaunty ‘sorties’ of flashing appeal, but by well-marshalled facts and disciplined arguments marching solidly together in invincible strength.” – J.H. Jowett in The Preacher: His Life and Work

“Preaching that costs nothing accomplishes nothing.  If the study is a lounge the pulpit will be impertinence.” – J.H. Jowett in The Preacher: His Life and Work

“There is nothing mightier than the utterance of spontaneous prayer when it is born in the depths of the soul.” – J.H. Jowett in The Preacher: His Life and Work 

“Let the music be redeemed from being a human entertainment, and let it become a divine revelation.  Let it never be an end in itself but a means of grace, something to be forgotten in the dawning of something grander.” – J.H. Jowett in The Preacher: His Life and Work

“Multitudes of ministers can fish with a net who are very reluctant to fish with a line.” – J.H. Jowett in The Preacher: His Life and Work

“I believe that what the old world needs just now is not so much the multiplication of organization as the baptism of the Holy Ghost.” – J.H. Jowett in The Preacher: His Life and Work

“Brethren, your calling is very holy.  Your work is very difficult.  Your Savior is very mighty.  And the joy of the Lord will be your strength.” – J.H. Jowett in The Preacher: His Life and Work 

“If we have not the Spirit which Jesus promised, we cannot perform the commission which Jesus gave” – Charles Spurgeon in Lectures to My Students

 

 

 

Click here for a sermon from Luke 2

The Preacher Who Walks with God:  Why Walking With God Precedes Speaking for Him

Originally posted at PreachingSource.com on July 18, 2018

At this time of the year we are often focused on fall festivals, changing leaves, and the upcoming holiday season.  We drink our pumpkin spice latte and kindle our bonfires with the excitement of childhood.  But in the wonder of the fall landscape, let us pause to remember how our lives have been forever changed by a few days in latter October.   

October 31, 1517

An Augustianian Monk named Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg, crystalizing a protest known today as the Protestant Reformation.  This reformation included core convictions which span into the present church.  In concert with the development of the printing press, this reformation placed the Word of God, in the language of the people, at the forefront of Christian worship.  Here is a helpful article by Justin Holcomb and short-video from my friend Dr. J.T. English explaining a little more about what happened on this day in history.

 October 28, 1966

A few hearty souls came together with a desire to worship God here in the City of Republic.  They were bound together by a common belief that the bible was God’s Word and the church was His possession.  From these beginnings came Calvary Baptist Church.  With a heritage of faith expanding fifty-one years, Calvary has been used of God to change the landscape of this community.  Our 50th Anniversary Video captures some of our unique history is southwest Missouri. 

Re-Formation

As we step into our future let us remember our past.  We are forever changed by the contribution of those five-hundred and those fifty-one years ago.  We are the beneficiaries of their courage and conviction.  Let us be challenged to be a people of courage and conviction.  Let us be challenged to believe that it is by God’s grace alone, thru faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone that the sinner is saved to bring glory to God alone.  Let us hear the words Sola Scriptura and be reminded of all the ways the Word of God is re-forming us.

We honor those who came before us, but let us remember the source of their strength.  They were ordinary men empowered by an extraordinary God.  We move forward in time because He created time.  We stand on the truth of His Word, because He is the Word.  We assemble as a church, because He gave us the church.  We shine a beacon of light because He is the light.  

May the Lord bless you richly in the weeks ahead as we reflect on the past and inaugurate the future, always allowing God to re-form us into the image of His Son.

-Pastor Adam

I am proud to wholeheartedly endorse the Christian Standard Bible (CSB) and will continue to prefer it in my preaching ministry.

Within the past week, Jonathan Merritt, son of former SBC President Dr. James Merritt and writer for Religion News Service (RNS), wrote an article entitled “Southern Baptists Embrace Gender-Inclusive Language in the Bible”.  The article, published in the Atlantic, took great pains to portray Southern Baptists in a light of compromise and contradiction.  It did this by inferring that the gender-inclusive language of the new CSB represented a significant break from the Southern Baptist moorings related to gender complementarity.  Merritt argued that Southern Baptists were inconsistent on the issue of gender-inclusive language in adopting the CSB, yet opposing the release of the TNIV in 2011.  

There is no controversy here.  The article fails to adequately portray the translation philosophy adopted by the CSB or the issues being raised revolving around the TNIV 2011.  Dr. Denny Burk wrote an excellent critique of the article which you can read here.  The article amounted to making a mountain out of a non-existent molehill, no doubt intentionally timed to produce controversy on the eve of the 2017 Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting in Phoenix, Arizona.  I can assure you that the General Editors of the Christian Standard Bible–Dr. Tom Schreiner of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Dr. David Allen of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary–hold a high view of scripture and gender complementarity.  To suggest they let something slip thru the cracks or adopted a more liberal view on scripture is simply ridiculous.  

The CSB combines an ideal blend of textual faithfulness and contemporary readability, providing a translation that will minister equally to the savvy saint or the inquiring visitor.  Dr. Trevin Wax and Brandon Smith of Lifeway Christian Resources have provided the church with an excellent resource in this new translation.  Southern Baptists have always been bound by their cooperation in confession and mission.  And with the introduction of the CSB, Southern Baptists can be proud in yet another added dimension to their cooperation.  

So for the members of Calvary Baptist Church-Republic, let me assure you that you’ll hear the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth when I preach from the Christian Standard Bible on Sunday’s.  The CSB–for Conservative Southern Baptists.  

 

Originally posted January 2016 at markdance.net