An interesting discussion took place a few weeks ago on CNN with Voddie Baucham about Gov. Sarah Palin and women’s roles in the church and government. The video clip is below. Well worth watching.
I especially appreciate Voddie dealing clearly with the role of the pastor in politics. He says:
“We’re about the Gospel. The culture doesn’t dictate truth. The Gospel is what dictates truth. My job is not to be a political pundit or a political activist. My job is to be a Pastor and proclaim the truth of the Gospel as clearly as I possibly can.”
There are two blog posts from Voddie related to this video that are worth time as well.
I have a new resource of challenge and encouragement for pastors to share with you — C.J. Mahaney, Jeff Purswell, and Joshua Harris have begun a new podcast. Go check out the Leadership Interview Series and subscribe to the RSS feed to get updates. The first podcast is on the topic of The Pastor and His Reading - find the show notes here and get the mp3 here.
Update: Here’s the piece on the T4G blog that refers to John Stott’s time allotments for reading and study apart from study for sermon preparation.
I just read a piece on C.J. Mahaney’s blog, which quotes C.J., Jeff Purswell, and Mike Bullmore and touches on so many areas that challenge and encourage me — a pastor’s abilities, calling, preaching effectiveness, and use of time. I think many pastor’s deal with challenges in these areas, so I share it with all who will hear me and go read this post.
For those reading who are not pastors you can read and learn how to encourage and pray for your pastor as he schedules his time and prepares to preach God’s Word, a very precious privilege, week in and week out.
When I finish my breakfast it’s back to my own studies, because Sunday ’s a comin’.
if the Lord called you to shepherd sixty uncool saints until they were safely home, with no spectacular revival or ministry explosion, would you consider that beneath you? Would it seem unworthy of your gifts and a waste of your life? If so, you are being motivated by pride.
Much of being a pastor is profoundly uncool.
There is a real danger in becoming so puffed-up over our freedom in Christ to wear black t-shirts that we begin to look down on the Ned Flanders-style Christians who love the Lord and have served him faithfully for years. In fact, it may be that the Lord is more pleased with their humble walk (though not as sophisticated) than he is with yours.
With a few exceptions, Christians who try to be cool are terrible at it.
Being like the culture can make it hard to see the gospel.
Just in case you think this applies only to pastors — it doesn’t.
Carl Trueman on the gift of baldness and the priorities of a minister:
The priority of the minister is not to be hip or cool. It is not even to `connect with the kids.’ It is to immerse himself in the word, to know the gospel inside out, and to communicate that gospel with care, clarity, love, and force. OK, my criticism of the hair obsession and vanity of so many ministers is overstated; and they are scarcely the only Christians with skewed priorities. We all know Christians who are more concerned about where children are educated than the doctrine of the Trinity, or who are more passionate about Bible translations than guarding their tongues from malicious gossip. But the point of priorities is basic and important: don’t let your mid-life crisis determine the way you think about the gospel and the church. A hairstyle which tries to hide the ageing process is one thing, ridiculous but harmless; a theological agenda which mimics the world’s obsession with locating wisdom in the very sector of society with least experience of, and perspective on, everything is far more serious and potentially damaging. Let’s hope that the hairstyles of the forty-something clergy with soul patches are not sacramental: outward signs of inward spiritual realities. As to my brothers who are follicle-challenged but who faithfully study, pray and preach the gospel week by week, Be bald, be strong, for the Lord your God is with you.
Reading a Spurgeon biography last night and came on this quote. Spurgeon once commented…
“I was reading some time ago,” he said on one occasion, “an article in a newspaper, very much in my praise. It always makes me feel sad—so sad that I could cry—if ever I see anything praising me; it breaks my heart; I feel I do not deserve it, and then I say, ‘Now I must try to be better, so that I may deserve it.’ If the world abuses me, I am a match for that; I begin to like it. It may fire all its big guns at me and I will not return a solitary shot, but just store them up, and grow rich upon the old iron.”
From: Charles Haddon Spurgeon, A Biography, By W. Y. Fullerton, Chapter 5
This is for all the pastors, would-be pastors in my family and those pastor friends of mine.
A few months ago C.J. Mahaney spoke at the Together for the Gospel conference along with several other pastors such as Ligon Duncan, John MacArthur, Albert Mohler, R.C. Sproul, Mark Dever and John Piper. According to Justin Taylor “the sessions from the conference are being compiled into Preaching the Cross, a book that will be published by Crossway in 2007.” —Read the Rest of the Entry…
From Power Through Prayer by Edward M. Bounds, chapter 4, Tendencies to be Avoided.
It is impossible for the preacher to keep his spirit in harmony with the divine nature of his high calling without much prayer. That the preacher by dint of duty and laborious fidelity to the work and routine of the ministry can keep himself in trim and fitness is a serious mistake. Even sermon-making, incessant and taxing as an art, as a duty, as a work, or as a pleasure, will engross and harden, will estrange the heart, by neglect of prayer, from God. The scientist loses God in nature. The preacher may lose God in his sermon.
The ministers of the Gospel should be men who are not too easily affected by praise or criticism, but simply speak of the benefit and the glory of Christ and seek the salvation of souls. Whenever you are being praised, remember it is not you who is being praised but Christ, to whom all praise belongs. When you preach the Word of God in its purity and also live accordingly, it is not your own doing, but God’s doing. And when people praise you, they really mean to praise God in you. When you understand this–and you should because ‘what do you have that you did not recieve?’–you will not flatter yourself on the one hand and on the other hand you will not carry yourself with the thought of resigning from the ministry when you are insulted, reproached, or persecuted.
It’s been a long week. It’s Saturday night. I just finished studying for tomorrow’s services. I’d usually like to be ready before now but an eye problem took me to the doctor today, then I couldn’t get the van started, someone called and wanted to see the truck we’re selling, we had a little birthday party for Zack tonight, then… well you get the idea.
It’s times like this I remind myself why I do this–I love to preach God’s Word–I love being a part of God’s work in preaching His Word to His people. And then there are guys like Al Mohler who shoot straight about what the church really needs that give a good shot in the arm too.
“Preaching is so important that the preacher must be willing to suffer to advance the proclamation of the Gospel, he said.”Every single Christian pastor ought to be ready and willing at a second’s notice to say, ‘I can put up with virtually anything if I get to preach,’” Mohler said, adding that preachers should rejoice in sufferings when they open the door for preaching opportunities.One difficulty of preaching is that frequently it produces no visible response in the congregation, he said. But preachers should not become frustrated at a lack of visible response because the Word of God often works silently in people’s hearts in ways that are undetectable to the eye, Mohler noted.”The Word of God goes in and does surgery that the hearer does not even immediately recognize is taking place,” he said. “It’s in the mystery of the preaching of the Word of God, accompanied by the Spirit, that the believer is conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ in the silent, invisible surgery of the soul.”If you want quick results, you’ll be tempted to do something other than preaching. If you want instant gratification, you’ll look at some other form of programming or you’ll get excited about some other dimension of ministry at the expense of preaching. But if you want to build Christ’s church and if you want to see Christ’s people conformed to His image, preaching is the indispensable mark of the church.”
As a pastor I’ve found great encouragement from Charles Spurgeon. Preaching pastors–those who truly wish to preach God’s Word–those who would devote themselves to the work of preaching when it seems the world around them has better ideas for giving direction to the church and reaching the lost than with preaching–should find great encouragement in these words from Spurgeon we’re reminded of today by Jim Bublitz at sliceoflaodicea.com.
In the great day, when the muster-roll shall be read, of all those who are converted through fine music, and church decoration, and religious exhibitions and entertainments, they will amount to the tenth part of nothing; but it will always please God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. Keep to your preaching; and if you do anything beside, do not let it throw your preaching into the background. In the first place preach, and in the second place preach, and in the third place preach.
Believe in preaching the love of Christ, believe in preaching the atoning sacrifice, believe in preaching the new birth, believe in preaching the whole counsel of God. The old hammer of the gospel will still break the rock in pieces; the ancient fire of Pentecost will still burn among the multitude. Try nothing new, but go on with preaching, and if we all preach with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, the results of preaching will astound us.
–Charles Spurgeon, How to Win Souls for Christ
Speaking of preaching–I’m looking forward to the one-day Pastors’ Enrichment Seminar I’m headed to on February 9 at West Cannon Baptist Church, Belmont, Michigan. The theme is “The Foolishness of Preaching - A Crucial Call to Biblical Preaching to a Postmodern Mind,” with guests Dr. Colin Smith and Dr. James Grier.
It is impossible for the preacher to keep his spirit in harmony with the divine nature of his high calling without much prayer. That the preacher by dint of duty and laborious fidelity to the work and routine of the ministry can keep himself in trim and fitness is a serious mistake. Even sermon-making, incessant and taxing as an art, as a duty, as a work, or as a pleasure, will engross and harden, will estrange the heart, by neglect of prayer, from God. The scientist loses God in nature. The preacher may lose God in his sermon.
Kevin is a husband, dad of eight, pastor and blogger from beautiful Higgins Lake, Michigan 
