Preaching & Writing

Click here to view a sermon from Colossians 1:13-23

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]

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.

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“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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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