I’ve been trying to keep links to material I found useful for growth in pastoral life together and publish them once a week.
Calling them all ‘Pastoral Helps’ is kind of bland, but that’s what they are and it means I don’t have to think of a new title each week.
Ray Ortlund has a blog, Christ Is Deeper Still, at the Gospel Coalition. His capacity for a brief post or quote which says something quite profound is extraordinary.
Last Saturday (19/12) he posted this:
“If there is any encouragement in Christ…” Philippians 2:1
Tomorrow many of us will be preaching. What is our goal? Not bashing people over the head with the law. That may make us feel better about ourselves, as if our opinions were needed, but it is not the ministry of Christ. What do we find in him? Encouragement. It’s so obvious to Paul, it’s the first thing he mentions when he inventories our wealth in Christ here in Philippians 2.
Do we find encouragement in one another? Sometimes. But that supply is limited. We come together at church not to amass the encouragement we bring in but to receive the encouragement he is pouring out. If we come to church only to draw strength from one another, that’s all we’ll get. And we will end up empty and angry at one another. Putting community first destroys community. Our encouragement is in Christ, and he is inexhaustible.
Those of us who are preachers — tomorrow, through the gospel, let’s lavish on our fellow-sinners the endless encouragement that is right now exploding out of the glorious risen Christ. If attendance at your church is down because people are out of town for Christmas travels, that doesn’t diminish your ministry at all. The Lord Jesus Christ is rich with encouragement, he is a big spender, and he is the measure of your ministry.”
I’m sure that there are other pastors like me, who worry about far too much, far too often.
At the Gospel Coalition’s own blog, Justin Buzzard had a post entitled “Grace Sufficient For Today”.
This is the type of worry Buzzard seeks to address:
“How much of Monday have you spent imagining? I don’t mean the good use of imagination: wondering, dreaming, thinking up new possibilities. I mean the negative use of your imagination: mentally rehearsing difficult or stressful circumstances from your make-believe future. Have you been wasting Monday by mentally “trying on” what it might be like to get through your forecast for Tuesday?
We become fearful, burdened, not a lot of fun to be around, and terribly ineffective in the present when we try to live life through our imaginations. What is this dynamic about?”
Conducting funerals and preaching funeral sermons is a tremendous privilege. In a country setting a pastor conducts funerals for folk who had a Christian testimony and for others who didn’t.
Michael Mckinley offers “Thoughts on Officiating the Funeral of an Unbelieving Friend” at the Church Matters blog.
Among Mckinley’s twelve points:
It’s really hard to preach with an eight-year old little girl bawling for her father right in front of you.
Your memorial service is a kind of judgment on your life. Your judges are your family and friends. The nice things they say about you will give a pretty clear picture of what your life amounted to and what you loved. Live your life in such a way that “Star Trek” is never mentioned at your memorial service.
[Gene Roddenberry and William Shatner would be excused from that one, I guess.]
My average day contains absolutely nothing that could be considered real suffering or pain. I almost never express any gratitude for this fact. I am an idiot.
Also at Church Matters, Deepak Reju provides “13 Thoughts on How to Show Compassion and Avoid Pastoral Burnout”
Raju provides short explanations of such points as: ‘You are not the Lord’; ‘Get accountability’; ‘Take a break’ and ‘Listen To Your Wife’.
Pastors will have heard these before, but we need to hear them again and again.
Finally for this week, I’ve had this hanging around for longer than a week, but Lane Keister at Green Baggins asks ‘What Is True Scholarship?’ and proposes that pastors will demonstrate the extent of their academic knowledge of the Scriptures by their capacity to preach and teach in a way that anyone can understand what they are saying.
Such ease of understanding can only really come by allowing Gospel understanding to master us. Says Keister: ‘I believe that the best route to go here is to have a mastery of the content. One can also say it this way: that a pastor ought to be completely mastered by his content. He ought to be mastered so completely by the deep things of the Gospel, that he can make anyone understand it. He ought to be able to use simple words to describe difficult concepts.’
Pastors should believe that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, especially in pulpits. The breadth and depth of our biblical knowledge should savour all our preaching. It should also help us to present that which may seem complex in straightforward terms.
That’s all for this week.
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