Ministering the Master’s Way is a unique little series published by DayOne. It is a series that knows exactly the audience it is trying to reach—the pastor or elder of the local church. Each of the books looks to a different practical aspect of the Christian ministry. Many of the titles deal with very niche topics, but ones that are largely untouched by any other author—visiting the sick, accepting a call to minister at a local church, offering pastoral comfort to those who grieve, even caring for the pastor’s voice.

There are currently 9 volumes in the series and, unless I am mistaken, several more are in the works.

• Visit the Sick: Ministering God’s Grace in Times of Illness
• Test, Train, Affirm & Send into Ministry: Recovering the Local Church's Responsibility in the External Call
• Teach them to Pray: Cultivating God-dependency in Your Church
• Make Your Church’s Money Work: Achieving Financial Integrity in Your Congregation
• Look After Your Voice: Taking Care of the Preacher’s Greatest Asset
• Handle that New Call with Care: Accepting or Declining a Call to a New Congregation
• Discipline with Care: Applying Biblical Correction in Your Church
• Counsel Your Flock: Fulfilling Your Role as a Teaching Shepherd
• Comfort Those Who Grieve: Ministering God's Grace in Times of Loss

This is a great series to buy for your pastor or elders. Get them a few of the volumes and I suspect they’ll be eager to complete the set and to seek out the new ones as they are released.

Today’s guest blogger is Ed Stetzer. That’s a name that is familiar to most of you, I’m sure. I recently spoke at an event with Ed and, having enjoyed his company, asked if he’d be willing to put together a guest post. And, as you’re about to see, he was kind enough to do so.

*****

A lot of kids grow up wanting to be a rock star. These days the term "rock star" is applied much more liberally than the days of heavy metal. Athletes are rock stars, movie stars are rock stars, software designers are rock stars. The rock star aesthetic has been democratized.

You don't even have to live a rock and roll lifestyle to be a rock star. These days even the most un-hip of occupations can achieve rock star appeal. Including pastors.

Somebody once said, "The Gospel came to the Greeks and the Greeks turned it into a philosophy. The Gospel came to the Romans and the Romans turned it into a system. The Gospel came to the Europeans and the Europeans turned it into a culture. The Gospel came to America and the Americans turned it into a business.” And business is booming. Millions of churchgoers file in to buildings each week, line up in rows like shelves at Walmart, and watch the stage. They come for one purpose: to see a show and hear a pastor.

This, by uncritical standards, is success. But while this phenomenon increases, I believe it can be damaging to the spiritual vitality of the American church.

I’ve never been mistaken for Brad Pitt. Not once. Neither has anybody ever stopped me on the street only to look disappointed, apologize and say, “I’m sorry, I thought you were Johnny Depp.” It just never happens. There’s a reason for this. Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp are remarkably handsome guys (says I in a totally heterosexual way). While we all know that, at least to some extent, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, there is no doubt that, at least culturally, there is some standard of what makes a person beautiful or exceptionally handsome. Depp and Pitt fit the mold quite well. I, like most others, decidedly do not. Some concerned therapist may write me concerned that I do not have healthy body image or some other pyscho-mumbo-jumbo, but I’ll assure him that I’m doing just fine, thank you. I know who I am and I know what I’m not. And I’m no Brad Pitt.

What is remarkable to me is that Aileen, who (thankfully) seems to have no irrational and deep-rooted crushes on movie stars, can still be perfectly content with me, with my not-so-chiseled-chin and my I-know-they’re-under-there-somewhere-abs. This is, in my books, a good thing. Her love is blind in all the right ways and I’m the grateful beneficiary.

A couple of days ago I was driving around Los Angeles (in a hybrid car, mind you—how CA-clich is that?) with a couple of friends (neither of whom look like Pitt or Depp) and we began to discuss celebrity culture within the church and the tough task of any but the absolute best preachers. I don’t think we can rationally deny that there is some serious celebrity culture in the church today, and even (or perhaps especially) within this New Calvinism. Whether this has always been the case, I do not know. But I consider it undeniable that, for good and/or for ill, it is a powerful force today. And those who face the tough task of forever “competing” with the brilliance of these celebrity preachers are the ordinary pastors who serve at churches just like yours.

Christians today have access (via the Internet, of course) to vast libraries of the best sermons by the best preachers—the Pitts and Depps of the preaching world. Of course in place of square chins and rippling abs are amazing abilities to communicate lucidly, to illustrate lavishly, to speak passionately, to exposit brilliantly. These are men who, by any objective measure, stand head and shoulders above the crowd just as Depp and Pitt do above me. They are men who are extraordinarily gifted by God and who have been faithful to use their gifts for his glory. I certainly do not wish to speak ill of these men who are such a gift to the church.

But where my wife remains content with her husband, I see so many Christians who struggle to be content with their pastors. And why is this? Because all week long, these people are drinking from another cistern, to borrow a phrase from Proverbs (5:15). They are doing the equivalent of a wife who spends her week plastering her home with posters of movie stars and staring at them greedily. How can her husband hope to compete with those ridiculously good-looking guys? And many Christians today listen to their pastor on Sunday and then listen to fourteen sermons by fourteen pastors before the next Sunday comes around. And, more often than not, their own pastors’ sermon pales in comparison. Little wonder that we see increased cases where small-time pastors find themselves simply copying the top dogs, plagiarizing the brilliance of other men. Haven’t we almost driven them to this?

The fact is, God has put us in churches with less-than-perfect and often less-than-brilliant pastors. The fact that there are extraordinary preachers tells us that there must be vast numbers of perfectly ordinary pastors. This means that most of us have been blessed by God with a very ordinary kind of pastor, just as most of our wives have been blessed by very ordinary-looking husbands. These men, these ordinary pastors, are the ones to whom we owe our loyalty. They are the ones to whom Paul refers when he tells the church at Thessalonica “to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work.” These are the men God has given to serve you and to labor as pastors before you. It is through these men that God means to specially bless you in that unique body called the local church.

I do not mean to say that we ought not listen to podcasts or that we have to pretend that the extraordinary pastors do not exist. We can listen to their sermons and enjoy their great giftedness in teaching the Word of God and in calling us to live in light of it. But through it all we must guard our hearts. You would not want your child to be parented by another mother and father, paying lip service to you but giving his heart to others. You would not want to see that look in your wife’s eye, that disappointed, disgruntled look, after she has spent her day staring at posters of movie stars. And you need to guard your heart that you do not inadvertently turn it over to a pastor who is not your own, a pastor who in any measure you care to see, is superior to your own.

The Call by Os Guinness is a book that was on my list of things to do for a long, long time before I actually settled down to read it. But once I got into it, I was amazed at just how much wisdom it contains. At one point Guinness discusses the importance of living life for an audience of One. He begins the chapter by reflecting on Andrew Carnegie and his lifelong desire to be able to parade through the streets of the city of his birth to prove to them that he had been able to become fantastically wealthy. He desired to be seen and known by a human audience.

Guinness talks about other examples of people who have been obsessed with the praise of men. He mentions Marlene Dietrich who would record the applause given at the end of her performances and would then play the recordings for visitors to her home. She would gather friends such as Judy Garland and Noel Coward and play them both sides of a record filled with applause, telling them solemnly what city each round of applause was from. Guinness quotes Mozart who wrote to his father, “I am never in a good humor when I am in a town where I am quite unknown.” He quotes an old French story which tells of a revolutionary who, when sitting in a Paris cafe, hears a disturbance outside. Jumping to his feet he cries, “There goes the mob. I am their leader. I must follow them!”

Such narcissism is shocking, yet is all too common. Some time ago a reader forwarded me a link to a copy of Sharon Stone’s rider, the document that describes her requirements when she accepts a role in a film. Reading the document is almost nauseating, yet is no doubt not uncommon for Hollywood standards. She demands, among other things, $3500 per week in unaccountable “per diem” funds, three nannies, two assistants, presidential suites, first-class travel, a deluxe motorhome, and the rights to keep all of the jewelery and wardrobe items she uses in the film. Even more shocking, to myself anyways, were the requirements dealing with publicity of the film. The rider insists that her name is given first position in the credits for the film and that her name be at least as big as the movie’s title. Her picture, if it appears in advertising, must be at least as big as, if not bigger, than any other person’s likeness. It goes on and on. As I read this I thought of a friend who used to work in the special events industry. She tells of a particular musician who insisted that no one turn their back on him. People serving him had to, quite literally, walk backwards when they left the room lest they turn their back on him. Reading this is enough to turn one’s stomach.

In The Call, Guinness discusses narcissim in the context of audience. Christians are to be motivated to serve and to please an audience of One. We are to called to seek the pleasure of God. Guinness finds it odd that in a century which began with some of the strongest leaders the world has known—Churchill, Roosevelt, Lenin and Stalin—has ended with a “weak style of leadership codependent on followership: the leader as panderer.” He quotes Winston Churchill, a man who had an amazing way of cutting to the heart of issues. “I hear it said that leaders should keep their ears to the ground. All I can say is that the British nation will find it very hard to look up to the leaders who are detected in that somewhat ungainly posture.” At another time he said, “Nothing is more dangerous…than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup Poll—always feeling one’s pulse and taking one’s temperature.” Violet Bonham Carter once said of Churchill that he was “as impervious to atmosphere as a diver in his bell.” Why was this? Because Churchill knew his mandate and sought to fill it to the best of his abilities. He was far from perfect. In many ways he was a troubled, rude, unkind individual. Yet he led the British nation through a dark hour and his name lives in history as an example of a great leader.

The application to the church is obvious. In our day we have leader after leader, teacher after teacher, telling us that the leaders of the church must take their cues from the people. Leadership is seen ever more as leading the people where they want to go, not necessarily where they need to go. Leadership is shaped by fleeting public opinion more than objective standards.

Yet what the church needs is leaders who serve the audience of One—leaders who, like Churchill, are sure of their calling and their mandate. They care nothing for the whims of their followers or potential followers, but only for pleasing the one who has called them to be leaders. These words from Spurgeon, sent to me by a friend, seem particularly pointed:

Never think of the Church of God as if she were in danger. If you do, you will be like Uzza; you will put forth your hand to steady the ark, and provoke the Lord to anger against you. If it were in danger, I tell you, you could not deliver it. If Christ cannot take care of his Church without you, you cannot do it. Be still, and know that he is God… When you begin to say, “The Church is in danger! The Church is in danger!” what is that to thee? It stood before thou wert born; it will stand when thou hast become worm’s meat. Do thou thy duty. Keep in the path of obedience, and fear not. He who made the Church knew through what trials she would have to pass, and he made her so that she can endure the trials and become the richer for it. The enemy is but grass, the word of the Lord endureth for ever.

Last night I grabbed a few of the newest Banner books from the rather well-stocked bookstore here at the conference.

This morning Rick Phillips preached his second message on the book of Hebrews, this was entitled “Outside the Camp.” It was based on Hebrews 13:9-14: “Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them. We have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat. For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy places by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp. So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured.” Those who were at Together for the Gospel will note that this was the same text that John Piper spoke on and while Phillips’ sermon was very different, there was certainly some overlap. He focused especially on verses 12 and 13, saying that these verses are the very heart of Hebrews. It is the heart of the pastoral message and motive that is being given to these Christians (and to us today). He warned against the lure of false teaching that draws big crowds and wins popularity and encouraged instead that pastors need to be willing to go outside the camp and to suffer there with Christ. The suffering of pastors as they face persecution for the message they preach is the same suffering that Christ passed through when He was on the cross. Pastors must be willing to bear the reproach that Christ has already endured.

After a brief break, Ian Hamilton took the pulpit to preach his second message, titled “The Minister’s Character.” His text was Isaiah 42:1-5. Looking to this text he showed that here we are introduced to the servant of the Lord—Jesus Christ Himself. There is no other kind of gospel ministry than that of servant ministry. So pastors need to consider, ponder, behold this servant. God raises up servant, the second man, the second Adam. He is God’s answer to the darkness and vanity. We see here that he is set up as the model of true servanthood.

Servants are answerable only to God and are committed to doing His will come what may. We are not only the servants of God but also of the people of God. If you do not have a heart for God’s people, you should not be in Christian ministry. If our hearers do not feel that they matter to us more than life itself, if they do not see, hear and feel in what we say to them and how we interact with them than their good matters to us more than life itself, our preaching will never impact their lives.

The remainder of the message was structured around found things the Lord tells us to behold in this passage. What is it that He is particularly reminding us to behold in Christ?

His complete dependence on God (“whom I uphold”) - The Savior was upheld by God and the Spirit of God was placed upon Him. It was by the power and grace that He was enabled to carry out His ministry. He lived and ministered in humble dependence upon His Father.

His unyielding faithfulness to God - He would allow nothing to distract or divert, far less determine, what He would do. He was utterly faithful to the calling God had given Him. We need to let this mind be in us—that Christ had a commission from the Father and though it would cost Him everything, He would pursue and fulfill it. Being united to this servant of the Lord, we must go through many tribulations to enter the kingdom.

His personal humility before God - The servant’s service was humble. He does not shout others down or seek to promote himself at the expense of others, for He is the servant of Jehovah. It is never enough to speak the truth; the way we speak the truth is every bit as important as the truth we seek.

His servant’s unimaginable grace that magnifies God - The Lord’s servant in this chapter is not less than God himself. He is the true revelation of Jehovah. Here is the animating pulse of the servant’s ministry—He is gentle with the weak and the fragile. But it is far easier to preach grace than to practice it. Christ doesn’t just welcome sinners—He runs after sinners and embraces them. Does this kind of grace mark our ministries? Does it mark our churches?

And finally, we need to note that God says “Behold my servant…in whom I delight.” God delights in those who preach His Word and He loves them. This gives grace and confidence to the servants of the Lord.

This evening’s session was based around a talk given by Iain Murray and entitled “Our Present Needs.” It was a message that felt like an older pastor lovingly exhorting younger pastors. He covered three great needs for pastors (he spoke in the first person plural and I will do the same even though the “we” doesn’t really apply to me as a layperson!).

Our Need for Less Self Confidence

Calvin’s Institutes begins with by saying that sound wisdom begins with two parts—the knowledge of God and of ourselves. When we are young we pursue the knowledge of God but often omit the knowledge of ourselves. We assume that the knowledge of ourselves is a comparatively easy study but this is really an expression of our self-confidence.

He showed a few ways that we inadvertently display our self confidence.

First, we set out in our work, find difficulties, and tend to think that they are not insurmountable; if we give ourselves to it we shall overcome and win. But we come to find that there are difficulties that can be overcome and we tend not to anticipate this. We do not realize the importance of spending time in the school of failure. We have to learn our inability.

Second, we show our self-confidence in our prayer lives. We all confess there is a discrepancy between what we believe about prayer and what we actually do. We could offer many reasons that this is so. God has given us great promises and yet we pray in secret so little.

A third illustration of self-confidence is in the satisfaction we have with our theology. The Lord has taught us certain great truths and we should love and honor these. Among these truths we hold fast to the doctrines of grace and in the past fifty years there has been a remarkable recovery in these doctrines. But the danger comes that when men think they’ve ascended to these heights they feel they’ve mastered any point of theology. There can be a satisfaction in theology that is warranted in the Scriptures, but we do well to remember that the most advanced in the school of Christ are still but little beginners. There is so much we do not know and do not understand. The man who thinks he knows anything knows nothing. “We are called to preach far more than we understand.”

Our need of increased and persevering faith in God

When we consider our weakness and our inability, is it not amazing how many have done such great things for the cause of Christ? Faith is the mainspring of the Christian life and ministry. With all that the Bible says about faith and the importance given to it, it is no surprise that our faith is the main point of Satan’s attack. There is such a thing as being an “unbelieving believer.” In a real sense this applies to all of us.

We need an increase in faith in Scripture as the Word of God. Such is the perversity of our nature that we can become hardened even during the exercise of studying the Bible week after week, day after day. One can study Scripture and be dry as a bone. We can become people who feel nothing for the Word we preach.

We need an increase in faith in all of God’s attributes but particularly in His goodness and love. The first temptation of Satan was to tempt Eve to doubt the goodness of God. The message of the Bible is that God is benevolent and that He is friendly-minded towards sinners. Murray offered two reasons that this area needs to be strengthened: our spiritual happiness depends upon it and the recovery of the orthodox faith depends upon it. We can err in giving the impression sometimes that God is just interested in a small number of people whom He favors while the rest of mankind is outside of His compassion and interest. The way to counter this is to show God’s love for sinners. We can also fall into the trap of repeating truths but ones that have not been properly digested and meditated upon. For many people the intellectual priorities are too high while the priority of reaching the lost and serving the church is too low.

Our Need for Guidance on the Best Use of Our Time

When we first became Christians we became aware of the fact that time is precious; time is short. But as we get older it is a solemn reality that there is a divine inspection before us. We will all stand before the Judgment Seat to give an accounting. Only what Christ does in and with and through us will last; only that is of spiritual value. Should we not dedicate our time to those things? We need guidance about the best way to use the time we’ve been given. We need guidance to do the things we’re called to do and to leave aside the things we’re not called to do.

Here he offered six points directed especially to young men:

1. It has been the practice for many ministers to be away from the routine and to look closely at our lives in the light of eternity. This is a valuable practice—taking a day per month or a few days per year.
2. Watch your own temperament. If you love being out and about you probably need to be in your study more; if you love to be in your study you may need to be out and about more.
3. Read the best books and only the best and read them with a pencil in your hand or with some other system so you can recall even years later what you’ve learned.
4. Be sure you do not let emails and web sites control your priorities.
5. We need very carefully to avoid losing time on controversies. Sometimes it is necessary but most often it is not.
6. Do not “see” in your churches what you cannot change. In most churches there are things we’d like to see changed but that we can’t change. Sometimes it is good not to see such things—to just ignore them. It is better not to see a disputable matter that can disrupt the whole church.

The Need to Pray for a Great Awakening

We can become so accustomed to the status quo that we stop anticipating great change. The keenness of our expectation slowly disappears. Very few ministers keep up the edge on their spirit that was there at first. There is a sense in which being dissatisfied with the present is sinful, but we can still eagerly anticipate God’s works. The extraordinary is not ordinary and there is a real sense in which we need to be satisfied with what God is doing now. But at the same time it is true that we need to expect great things from God.

Murray’s final exhortation was this: we may not see a revival in our lifetimes but we have a present duty to be filled with the Spirit. There is a great danger that we’ve lost the awareness of the changes in our ministries if God was to fill us with the Holy Spirit.

This was a wonderful message and one that seemed to move the men in attendance. If you can find the audio, listen to it!

The Basics conference is just wrapping up with a Q & A session involving the three speakers (Alistair Begg, Jerry Bridges and Voddie Baucham). They are answering questions put to them by the people attending the conference. Questions have varied from the spiritual qualifications of men and women who serve in worship teams, to the place of parachurch ministries in the life of the church, to the reason there is no cross at the front of the sanctuary of this building. Good questions, good answers.

This is the second year I’ve been at The Basics and my experience this year has been much the same as last year. This is really a good conference and one that is geared very specifically and very sensitively to pastors. I especially enjoy the pacing of the conference. Often when I attend conferences I find them almost frantic—every session I’m thinking already of the next session (or how I’m going to track down some lunch or…). But at this conference there is really no reason to worry and there is no reason to leave the church campus or to hurry about. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks are all provided by godly volunteers. The speakers eat in the same area as the people attending and they are available to whomever would like to speak to them. There is a break after every session with no three hour periods of sitting still on a pew. The cost is minimal and the benefits great. It is a very good atmosphere with unparalleled opportunities for fellowship. It is easily one of my favorite conferences.

I’d encourage you to consider treating your pastor to this conference next year. Next year’s roster will include Alistair Begg, John Lennox and John Piper. It is bound to be a good one. Keep an eye on the web site for Parkside Church and get your pastor out here next year. It will be a blessing to him and to you.