Priorities of Ministry
Introduction to the Chafer Seminary Conference 2013
Ephesians 4
In the past on
the Sunday before the start of the Chafer Conference I’ve usually given sort of
an informal introduction to the topic and why we’re focusing on what we’re
focusing on during the conference. Each year we’ve focused on different distinctives of Chafer Seminary, distinctives
that are of most of the churches that support Chafer Seminary, the theological
framework of Chafer Seminary, as well as the Biblical philosophy of ministry.
Now that term, philosophy of ministry, might be a term that isn’t real familiar
to some of you. Many, many churches can agree to the same basic doctrinal
statement. We have a shorter summary statement which
we put in the bulletin so that people can basically understand our doctrinal
position and we have a more extensive detailed doctrinal statement that is
available for those interested in membership which explains more precisely what
we believe and why we believe it. That is something many people can agree to.
But what we
believe and what we actually do are different things. They are different in how
we implement and how we believe we should implement our life as a church in
order to fulfill the mandates of Scripture related to the local church. As you
travel around and visit with different churches you will discover that there
are obviously different personalities. Each church has a personality. Many
times they reflect the personality of their pastor. Sometimes it depends on the
size and the background and traditions in denominations. They have things like
that and have their own culture. A lot of that is shaped by how leaders or
founders of those denominational organizations have emphasized the priorities
within the ministry of the local church. So rather than call it a conference or
identify the topic as simply philosophy of ministry, I chose the title, “The
Priorities of Ministry”.
There are a lot
of different things that go on as ministry within a local church but there are
priorities. It’s not that it’s one thing over another but it has to do with how
much importance or significance we place on different things. You can go to a
number of different Bible churches within a twenty or thirty mile radius of our
church and their fundamental doctrinal statement will not differ very much but
what they do during this hour on Sunday morning will look quite a bit different
from one to another. Some of that is how they will understand and apply various
principles that are laid down, various mandates laid down in Scripture. It also
goes to how they view culture, how they view history, how they view the role of
the church in reaching the community.
On one extreme,
you have those who are influenced more and more by the culture around us so
what they do on Sunday morning has a lot more to do on marketing and a consumer
approach to church than it does, in my opinion, fulfilling Biblical mandates.
On the other end of the spectrum you have churches, including a few in Houston,
that are focused more on what I believe are Biblical mandates. What I’ve
observed across this country over the last fifty years or so is that churches
that were very prominent fifty years ago and that were known for teaching the
Word of God, verse by verse, chapter by chapter, line upon line, precept upon
precept, as Isaiah says, don’t do that anymore. It’s not popular. They lost
people.
I know a church
where Dr. George Meisinger attends in Albuquerque
that was a fairly large conservative Bible church. They had not conformed to
the fads and the trends of contemporary ecclesiology and they have lost over
half of their attendance. Now for that church, that’s significant. They had
around three thousand or more at one point, maybe ten years ago and they’re
down to less than half of that now. This has happened to a number of different
churches and congregations. There are certainly demographic shifts that have
taken place as people have moved from one area to another. There are other
things to account for the ebb and flow of church attendance. But one thing I’ve
seen is that the churches who basically teach and
proclaim the truth of God’s Word, like they did forty or fifty years ago, are
usually accused of not being contemporary enough. They haven’t followed the
fads of music on Sunday morning. They haven’t followed shifts related to how
sermons are put together. They haven’t followed a number of these trends.
They just keep
doing what they were taught to be doing and in many of those cases they have
followed traditions that extend back for hundreds of years and yet all of a
sudden, in the arrogance of post-World War II America, all of sudden there were
forces at work, externally and internally on Christian churches which produced
a change and fundamental to that change was the mentality that somehow if it
was very old it needed to be changed, that we needed to update everything we
did in order to appeal to a younger audience, a younger crowd. This has had
many, many negative by-products.
As a result we
have the consumer church today. We have mega-churches. We have all kinds of
things that take place within churches and congregations in terms of practice
that never would have been accepted by any orthodox, Biblically-centered church
forty or fifty years ago. Beyond that we have theological shifts, trends that
have developed in the last fifty years in terms of liberalizing the trends
preceding that and that, too, has had its impact on the local church. Let’s
face it, we are all products of our culture and we all come to Bible class, we
all come to church on Sunday morning with a certain amount of baggage from the
thought system of the culture around us. Whether we’re in India or Africa or
Ukraine or South Korea or Texas, it’s true for every Christian in every
culture. It’s been true since the beginning of Christianity. The issue is not
our comfort zone, not what our background is but the issue is what does the
Word of God say.
At the very
foundation of all of these issues really is the question is the church, the
true body of Christ that receives its mandate and its priorities and policies
from God Himself or is the church a group of human beings, man-centered,
need-driven, focusing on the culture and what the culture wants or desires? That’s the two poles. We’re either
God-centered or man-centered. So as we approach this conference I want to look
at some basic things in Scripture related to the nature of priorities in
ministry. In fact, this title is really just an abbreviated title for
priorities of ministry in the local church.
We’re not
talking about priorities of ministry at a Christian camp. We’re not talking
about ministry in a hospital chaplaincy. We’re only talking about the
priorities of ministry in a local church. So as we address this topic, we need
to define three basic terms in order to make sure that we understand what we’re
talking about. The first term we have to understand is the term “church”. What
is a church? What does that mean? The second thing we need to look at is the
concept of ‘ministry’. And the third thing we need to look at is the concept of
priorities and how we are to structure and organize our priorities.
So let’s look
at the term “church”. What exactly is a church? Up until the 19th
century, that was something that was fairly well understood. Now there were
difference between the Roman Catholic view of a church and the protestant view
of a church. In the Roman Catholic view of the church, you can’t be saved
unless you are in the church. There was no grace outside of the church and it
was the church where one received the dispensing of the merit of Christ, via
the sacraments. That whole view of church was rejected in the Protestant
Reformation and the main shift that occurred was the rejection of the ultimate
authority that was to control the Roman church. In Roman Catholicism the
ultimate authority was the Bible plus tradition.
You should know
that whenever you have the Bible plus anything, the anything always eats up and
destroys the Bible. So that the tradition began to overwhelm the meaning of the
text reaching a point by the 5th or 6th century when no
one really knew what the Bible taught. No one ever taught what the Bible
taught. They taught what they said the Bible taught. So you had sort of a
secondary teaching there between the individual and the Bible until it reached
a point when people had no idea what the Bible taught. The Bible at that time
was only translated into Latin with the exception of a few people who came
along later like John Wycliff and others who tried to
translate parts of the Scripture into the native language.
The services
were conducted in Latin and Latin was no longer the lingua franca of Western Europe so people no longer really knew
what the Bible said or what was going on even in a church service. They
just went through the sort of mystical, superstitious ritual. Then along came
the Protestant Reformation. You can see how their beliefs impacted them
theologically. If you’ve ever had the opportunity to travel in Europe and
to go to some of the ancient Protestant churches, the one thing that you see
which differs from the Catholic churches is that everything focused on the
pulpit. The pulpit is raised up so that people understood that it was the focus
on the Word of God and its teaching it that was the
focal point of everything in the church. The Word of God, itself, became the
authority.
So in the
Protestant tradition, church was viewed as the assembly of those who had
basically put their trust in Christ. They believed that the church was composed
of an invisible number which included every believer in Jesus Christ from the
first birthday of the church on the Day of Pentecost in A.D. 33 up until Jesus
Christ will return at the Rapture to take us to be with Him in Heaven in
fulfillment of what he said in John 14:1-3. That was the view of the church
because they had a high view of the authority of Scripture. Remember one of the
slogans coming out of the Protestant Reformation was sola scriptura, the scripture alone as their authority.
Now in the 19th
century the winds of human intellectual independence that had developed during
the 1700s and 1800s began to blow strongly across the landscape of the local
church, especially the American churches and the authority of Scripture began
to erode rapidly, and that is what became known as liberal protestant churches.
These were churches that rejected the absolute authority of the Bible; in fact
they just viewed the Bible as any other book. They began to view the church as
just a social group. They believed that the church was something human beings
developed in order to satisfy certain needs which they had within their own
soul or own spirit so church was no longer something that was related to the
organism of the body of Christ which was brought in existence by the substitutionary death of Christ based on the cross.
They no longer
believed it was composed of an invisible body of believers from all the ages
but it was just simply another social organization. This fit with their idea of
the social gospel and other things that were taking place and as we encountered
this wave of protestant liberalism in the 19th century, that began
to fall apart by the beginning of the 20th century as protestant
liberalism with its utopic optimism and belief in a
post-millennial perfect coming in which shattered upon the fields of battle in
World War I, there was sort of a retrenchment. They still held to this kind of
a view of the church as something that was driven by those who came together.
Those ideas
began to impact evangelicalism after World War II. By evangelicalism I’m
referring broadly to those churches and denominations that still believed in
the necessity of a personal conversion for eternal life, the need to put our
faith and trust in Jesus Christ. But many of these churches had one foot on Biblical
authority and one foot on the authority of science or the authority of the
behavioral, social sciences. With one foot on the platform of the behavioral
sciences, especially sociology and psychology, they began to interpret the
church and the function of the local church more and more in terms of the
behavioral sciences. The ultimate authority for what went on in the church and
what guided pastoral ministry was no longer the Word of God.
To one degree
or another, they might give lip service to the Word of God but in many cases
what drove the pastoral ministry and seminary training were
the social sciences, sociology and psychology so that this eventually gave
birth to something that has become known as the church growth movement. You are
familiar with that, even if not the terminology or the details, by looking
around at everything from Joel Osteen of Lakewood Church to many other churches
that are around Houston. Some of these mega-churches are a little more Biblical
and a little more Bible-based than others. I’m not making a blanket judgment
statement on individual churches but I am critiquing the mentality that gave
birth to this, having studied most of the individuals who were instrumental in
its birth. They gave up on Biblical authority and the exclusivism
of Biblical authority.
A lot of this
came out of the seminaries in southern California in the late 50s and 60s such
as Fuller Theological Seminary that was originally founded by Charles Fuller.
He was sound, orthodox in his views but by the late 50s the faculty at Fuller
Seminary was giving up on the doctrine of the infallibility and inerrancy of
Scripture. They were giving up on sola
scriptura, scripture alone. Once you give up Biblical authority as your
basis for understanding the local church, then something has to move into that
vacuum. What moved into that vacuum was basically
principles of sociology and psychology and to make it more basic, just basic
pragmatism. We’re going to do whatever gets people into the pew so they can pay
the bills and we can have plenty of money. That became the bottom line. It was
no longer focused on the Word of God and the guidelines of Scripture. There was
this shift in this understanding of the nature of the church.
So let’s just
start with a basic understanding of the meaning of the word “church” in the
Scripture. Church comes from the Greek word ekklesia
which is a compound from Greek of the preposition ek meaning out of and the verb kaleo or the noun form klesas
meaning to be called. If you put that together it means ‘to be called out’.
That’s the etymological meaning of the word. Etymology simply means how a word
forms from the different components. It was never really used to mean
‘the called out ones’. No one ever derives meaning from etymology. It just helps
us to understand its historical development. The word was used to refer to
those who were summoned to come to a public assembly. In its original use in
ancient Greece, about 5th or 6th century B.C., it had to
do with those who were called out from their homes or businesses to attend the
public assembly of Athens. It wasn’t long, though, maybe a century or two,
before it basically became a word to refer to an assembly of people. It could
refer to an assembly of a crowd, a mass, or a demonstration. In Acts, chapter
19, when there’s basically a riot taking place in Ephesus against the Apostle
Paul, that crowd or mob is called an ekklesia.
That’s a non-technical use of the term in the New Testament.
But in the Old
Testament, in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, the meeting or
assembly of Israelites was often referred to by the use of this Greek word ekklesia to describe it and in the New Testament, the assembly of Jews in the synagogue is
sometimes referred to as an ekklesia. But what happens, starting in Acts,
chapter 2, is that this term took on a new meaning and a technical meaning and
it described the meeting of Christians getting together for the purpose of
studying the teaching of Jesus Christ, observing the Lord’s Table, and being a
faithful testimony to the gospel of Jesus Christ. One of the distinguishing
features about the word in the New Testament as opposed to secular or external
literature is in that they prefixed the word ekklesia
with the definite article in the Greek. In secular Greek there’s no article and
that is consistent throughout secular Greek emphasizing the quality of the
group. In the Scripture it’s always indicated with the article, indicating a
distinction about the assembly.
In the New
Testament the church has two aspects. One is that which is usually described as
the universal church or the invisible church which is
comprised of all of those who are believers in Jesus Christ, both living and
dead, from the Day of Pentecost in A.D. 33 up until the return of Christ at the
Rapture. Then there’s the local church, which is sometimes referred to as the
visible church, but the local church is not composed exclusively of believers.
There may, in fact, be some even here this morning who
have never trusted Christ as their Savior. This is the visible church. It looks
as if, for all practical purposes, that everybody here might be a believer but
we don’t know that. So there’s a distinction between the universal church and
the local church and the invisible church and the visible church.
The Scriptures
in the New Testament make it clear through the local church that God has
determined that Christians are to come together in order to be instructed and
taught about God’s Word, and God’s will, and God’s purpose for their lives. Unfortunately,
beginning in the early 20th century, Christian churches and pastors
went through a major identity crisis. See, once you give up on the authority of
Scripture, and you call yourself a Christian, then you have to ask who we are
and why we’re here and what are we doing on Sunday morning. You have to start
looking around and trying to figure out what it is that you’re there for. So
the trend in the modern church, having gone through this identity crisis, was
to define the church more and more in terms of the market. The things that
churches did were more oriented to the latest consumer-driven trends shaped by
modern psychology and sociological theories rather than the teaching of the
Bible and the will of God.
The result
among mainline denominations, from the various measurements that were taken in
the late 50’s and early 60’s up to the present is that they began to decline in
attendance and membership. And surprise, surprise, surprise,
fundamentalist and conservative evangelical churches, beginning in the 50’s,
were on a growth curve and the more mainline denominations shrank, the more
independent and conservative evangelical fundamentalist churches grew. The
reason for that was because evangelical churches basically understood who they
were. They understood they were in existence because God called them into
existence and they were under His authority. But the liberal mainline churches
had no idea who they were any more and they existed basically to be some sort
of influence for sociological change.
In 1993
an article appeared in Christianity Today that was written by Jay Heidinger titled “Toxic Pluralism” in which he warned
fundamentalist or evangelical churches against following in the path of the
liberal churches. He said, “Evangelical pastors can learn from the mainline
experience of placing relevance above truth.” Let me just stop there a minute. I haven’t heard anything that disgusts me
more than that phrase “relevance above truth” or “I want Bible teaching to be
more relevant.” The problem with that is that it’s such a man-driven,
me-centered statement. I can’t even begin to tell you all the things that are
wrong with even thinking that. Because what people are saying is that they want
God to be relevant to them and what the Bible says is that because we’re
sinners, we’re not relevant to God. It’s not that the Word of God needs to
change to be relevant to me. It’s that I need to understand how I can conform
to the Word of God. But in self-absorbed narcissism and arrogance, people want
God to become relevant to them and approve and validate to one degree or
another their opinions, their views, and their ideas.
As we live in a
culture, as Christopher Lash said, a culture of narcissism, more and more we
demand that churches fit what we want rather than trying to conform our lives
and our thinking to what the Word of God says. Mainline churches majored in
being relevant. What happened? They might have had some momentary growth spurt
but in the long term they’ve lost membership and lost attendance. Heidinger goes on to say, “We must avoid the lure of
novelty and soft-sell which we are told will make it easier for moderns to
believe. Methods may change but never the message. We are called to be faithful
stewards of a great and reliable theological heritage.” What a great statement.
What makes Christianity great is that it is based on the never-changing God and
His never-changing Word and in the midst of all the fluff and chaos of
Christendom we can count on one thing. So why is it we all
seem to want to come along and reinvent the church every decade or two to
conform to culture changes. He goes on to say, “We have truths to affirm
and errors to avoid. We must not try to make these truths more appealing or
user-friendly by watering them down. We must guard against a trending
theological bungee jumping that merely entertains the watching crowd.” There’s
just such great insight in that one particular paragraph.
The church was
originated by God and He is the
one who defines its purpose, its mission, and its policies. The second term we
need to define is the term ‘ministry’. Since the 19th century there
have been basically two approaches to defining ministry in the local church.
The first is to define it in terms of the people, what the people want, and what
the people desire. The people define the purpose of the local church and it’s
viewed like any other sociological organization. In the view of many people the
church is culturally defined as a man-centered organization to solve basic
social needs. If the church, therefore, is an entity finding its source in
society, then its purpose and function will always change with the times and
the culture. Now the second approach to ministry is the Biblical approach to
ministry. It is to understand what the Bible teaches about ministry and to
identify the local church as a creation by God designed for the spiritual
growth of the individual believer. The church is there
defined by God. Its priorities and its policies are based on what God
has revealed in the Bible and these policies and procedures do not change with
the times or with the culture. This is the view of Chafer seminary and the view
of West Houston Bible Church.
Now the church
as it began in 33 A.D. began in the midst of a pagan church and society. The Roman
Empire and the remains of the Greek culture, were
pagan through and through. It was pre-Christian and pre-modern, superstition
and mysticism dominated the Greco-Roman world. The teachings
and values and principles and ministry of the apostles in the first century
were not determined by what people wanted or consumer surveys. It wasn’t
determined by cultural needs. It was determined by God’s
direction and the Bible. Therefore, they were committed to Biblical
authority exclusively and the teachings of the Bible transformed that ancient
civilization because of a church that was committed exclusively to the
authority of the Bible.
Today the
contemporary church encounters a pagan post-Christian post-modern world but
most of the time the modern church sacrifices the authority of the Bible in
order to make Christianity more palatable and less offensive. As a result, pop
Christianity appears to be nothing more than a religious crutch, emotional
entertainment, or an ancient philosophy that has little to do with a person’s
everyday life and problems today. It’s our belief that God’s character and
God’s revelation and God’s will have not changed. Time and culture change but
the eternal principles that God embedded in the creation never change. So the
authority behind the local church is God and not man. We need to conform to Him
rather than have the Bible and Christianity conform to us. Biblical authority
is much maligned and misunderstood concept in our contemporary world. People
ask how we can believe that a book written 2000 years ago has authority and
relevance of where we are now. The answer is because of its source. Its source
is not just in the prophets and the apostles. It’s in God Himself, who has
actually breathed out the Word to us to study, to believe, and to obey. It’s
not just a good book. It is God’s book and God’s revelation to us.
Now the third
topic we need to define is priorities. Priorities reflect a scale of values,
what’s more important and what’s less important. Not that none of them are not important
but how do we balance out in terms of the amount of time and energy and effort
we spend on the different things that are expected of us as a local church as
believers. Priorities reflect our scale of values so we need to investigate the
Scriptures as our authority to see where the emphases are in the Scripture.
That helps us to understand what we are to do as a local church. In the New
Testament we see the churches and pastors are commanded to do certain things.
They do other things that are therefore examples to us and these are all part
of their mission and purpose. But there are other things that are there that
are not mandated and some things that should be excluded because they are not
part of God’s revelation to the purpose of the local church. Our priorities are
to be determined by Biblical revelation, not by demographics, not by
market-driven studies, not by human opinion, not sociology or psychology. The
church is to be Biblically based and exclusively so. It’s to be Christ-centered
and God-focused and led by God the Holy Spirit.
The role and
purpose of the local church is primarily related to serving God, not meeting
personal needs. How we manage our time and resources reflects that scale of
values. One thing that I noted in a number of articles in a number of books I
glanced over as I was preparing for this and thinking about what have others
said about philosophy of ministry, is that many start with the fact that one of
the primary purposes of the local church is to worship. Now I think there’s
some truth in that because the word ‘worship’ generally refers to teaching and
studying the Word of God, prayer, and singing. Singing is mentioned in both
Colossians 3:16 and Ephesians 5:19 as one of the results of the Word of God
growing in us and the filling of the Spirit. We are
challenged to pray again and again and again in Scripture. These are components
of worship but it’s interesting in light of the modern emphasis in pastoral
studies departments in seminaries is that we really have to get back to
worship. I’ve heard and listened to seminary professors go on and on about this
problem for most of my life as I was involved in some sort of professional
Bible study.
What’s
interesting is that between Acts 1 and Revelation 1, there are only about four
uses of the word “worship”. With the exception of one or two in Hebrews which describe the worship in the Old Testament,
four of them are in the book of Acts and two of them are negative. They’re
talking about worshipping the wrong thing. Only two are positive. In the
epistles there’s no mention of the word “worship.” Now don’t get me wrong. I’m
not saying worship isn’t to be a part of the church age. It’s just interesting
that the word “worship” isn’t used. We all understand as I just said that worship
is comprised of things such as prayer, singing praise to God, and studying
God’s Word. Those components are all mentioned many, many times in the epistles
but I just find it interesting that the word “worship” is not listed. In fact,
the only mandate that we could go to in the New Testament for worship in this
age would be John 4: 23 and 24 when the Lord is talking with the woman at the
well. He said, “The hour is coming and now is, when the true worshippers
will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such people the Father seeks
to be His worshipers. God is spirit and those who worship Him must worship in
spirit and truth.” It’s just an interesting observation that the broad category
of worship is not used in the epistles.
So what is the
purpose of the church? I think what we have to do is look at scripture and say,
“What is it that the Bible says we’re to be in a local church and specifically
for me, as a pastor, what is it that the pastor is supposed to be doing?” If
you go around to very many churches you discover that pastors do a lot of
different things and there are many pastors who don’t spend very much time
studying and teaching the Word. I think one of the primary chapters and
sections that focus on this is found in Ephesians, chapter 4. I just want to
summarize a few things about this before we focus in on the center of this
passage which is Ephesians 4:11–13. Just some things to
observe. First of all, we’re told that the one who organizes and
provides for and supplies the local church is the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s the
reference for the third person singular pronoun “He, Himself” meaning the Lord
Jesus Christ. He is the one who supplies these leadership gifts.
There’s a big
debate among exegetists whether these are gifts or
gifted men. I find in my studies they set up false polarities between gifts and
gifted men. No, it’s both. It’s gifted men who have these spiritual gifts.
That’s what makes them leaders. God gives the gifted men but the reason they’re
gifted men is that they have the specific gifts. Four are listed: apostles,
prophets, evangelists, and pastor-teachers. Apostles and prophets are temporary
gifts. There is a way in which the Greek structures this that pastor is a
general term, which is further defined by teacher. Pastor is basically a term
for shepherd. How does a shepherd lead? What’s the significance of this
metaphor?
The
significance of this metaphor is leadership. That’s what a pastor or a shepherd
does with a literal flock of sheep. He leads them to a good pasture where they
are fed so they can be nourished and healthy. That is the primary role of a
pastor, to lead the congregation to spiritual nourishment so they can be fed.
That is part of this whole instruction here. Second thing we see is that Jesus
Christ supplies these gifts and gifted men. That means that these gifts and
gifted men are under His authority, not under the authority of the local church
in terms of their mission and their purpose. I see in a lot of churches where
especially young pastors get frustrated because the church wants the pastor to
do one thing and the young, new pastor believes that the Word of God says he
should be focused on studying and teaching and there’s a lot of frustration
that develops. The primary purpose that Jesus gives these gifted men is stated
in verse 12, “for the purpose of equipping of the saints.” That phrase begins
with a preposition that indicates the ultimate goal is the equipping of the
saints. This is done through the next two phrases, the edifying of the body of
Christ and building them to maturity as seen in verse 13. Ultimately if you
look down to verses 14 through 16 you see that the end result is the spiritual
growth and maturation of the body of Christ. It is done as Christ is the Chief
Shepherd (1 Peter 5:4), the Good Shepherd (John 10:11) and the Great Shepherd
in Hebrews 13:20.
All pastors are
actually under-shepherds who are laboring under the authority of Jesus Christ
as the Great Shepherd. So it is through these gifted leaders that the church is
to be equipped or provided for to do the work of the ministry. We live in a
world where pastors are called ministers. You’re the ministers; I’m the pastor.
You have to learn to use Biblical terms in Biblical ways. I’m not the minister.
You are. The people in the congregation are to be equipped by the pastor to do
the work of the ministry. The word that is translated equipping is the Greek
word kartatismos which refers to
preparation, training, equipping, and providing everything that’s used for a
soldier or athlete to complete their mission. It’s made up of two words kata which is a
Greek preposition which intensifies the meaning of the word and then the root
word comes from arti. We have the
shorter noun form artios in 2
Timothy 3:16 and 17 which is a verse familiar to many of you, “All Scripture is
inspired [breathed out by God] and is profitable.”
Four things are
listed as profit. The first is doctrine which is a
good old word from King James that’s been updated to teaching in most modern
translations. Teaching is instruction on how to think and how to live. It’s not
theology in terms of abstract theology. It’s the instruction of the Word of God
on how to think and how to live. The second profit is reproof, which means to
tell you you’re wrong and then third, correction, telling you how to do it
correctly or rightly and fourth, for instruction in righteousness. That
is how to live a life of obedience to God.
Verse 17, “So
that the man of God may be adequate.” That is completely sufficient; he has
everything he needs. “...thoroughly equipped for every
good work.” “Equipped” here is the word artios,
which is the root of katartizmas
and it refers to someone who is thoroughly equipped or
trained. So if the role of the pastor is to equip the saints to do the work of
the ministry, what do we use to equip you? According to 2 Timothy 3: 16 and 17,
it’s the Word of God. Now we should look at the Word of God as our ultimate
authority on what we should do and especially these letters Paul wrote to
Timothy and to Titus. They’re called the pastoral epistles
and they give us a framework for understanding the priorities of the pastoral
ministry in relationship to the local church.
Let me just run
through a few of these for you. 1 Timothy 3:15, Paul says to Timothy, “But in case
I am delayed, I write so that you will know how one ought to conduct himself in
the church of our living God. The pillar and support of the truth.” That’s the
local church. How are you to handle yourself as a pastor in relationship to the
people of God and the local church? Right away the Bible clashes with our
contemporary understanding because it views the local church as the pillar and
support of the truth and contemporary culture doesn’t believe there’s anything
that’s the truth. So let’s see what Paul emphasized for Timothy. He said first
of all if you instruct believers in these things you will be a good minister of
Jesus Christ.
Back in
Ephesians 4: 11 and 12, we’re to equip the saints to the work of ministry. The
word ministry there is the same word we have here, diakonos. It really refers to a low laborer, someone who is
doing something nobody wanted to do. He waited on tables,
he was just at the lowest level of common labor in the culture, serving
someone. It wasn’t held up as a very respectful position by anybody in the
Greco-Roman culture. So Paul says you’re to do this by instructing the
brethren. That’s the word hupotithemi
which is a synonym for didaskalos
which is teaching or instructing. How are you a good pastor? You instruct
people in the Word of God. That’s the value that God sets forth. 1 Timothy 4:11
says, “Prescribe and teach these things.” That’s a command
which indicates authority on the part of the pastor to command people to
obey the Word of God. 1 Timothy 4:12 goes on to give some
other instruction to Timothy. He’s to be an example to the believers in word
and conduct, and love, faith, and purity. Verse 12 says, “Until I come, give
attention to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, and to teaching.”
Reading has to do with the public reading of Scripture which
is one reason on Sunday morning I read a passage of Scripture. I’ve read from
the Psalms, Proverbs, and different books because of the exhortation here that
a pastor should give public reading of Scripture. Exhortation simply means to
challenge people to obey the Word of God and to doctrine, which is sound
instruction.
Then in verse
14 Paul says, “Do not neglect the spiritual gift
within you.” This indicates an ongoing emphasis on training and study on the
part of the pastor. That means continuing education. Just this last week a
pastor who has been very faithful over the years with his professional ministry
and faithful to attend pastor’s conferences was taken home to be with the Lord
in the middle of teaching Bible class on Wednesday night. I saw him at the Pre-Trib conference in December. His name is Gordon Shearer. He
could hardly wait to come to the conference this year. Gordon came all the
time. He was a great pastor. We’re going to dedicate the conference this year
to Gordon. He recognized the need for continuing education. Sadly there are too
many pastors who think they’re just so busy with their local church that they
don’t have time to ever go sit and study with other pastors, specialists in
different areas, where they can learn and study. It shows a tremendous lack of
humility and a lack of integrity on their part. It’s also disobedience to
Scripture.
Paul says, “Do
not neglect the spiritual gift within you, which was bestowed on your through
prophetic utterance with the laying on of hands by the presbytery. Take pains
with these things; be absorbed in them so that your progress will be evident to
all.” The pastor needs time to think without interruption on the Word of
God, to study it deeply, and to give himself entirely to these things so that
his progress made be evident to all. Verse 16, “Pay close attention to yourself
and to your teaching.” In 1 Timothy 6:2 we read
the command to “teach and preach these principles”. This is didasko again.
You don’t
really have the word ‘preaching’ here. It’s found in 2 Timothy but not
here. It’s teach, teach, teach. What’s the
difference? Those of you who come to the Acts lessons on Tuesday nights
understand that the object of kerusso,
Biblically preaching, is focused on giving the gospel. When a person is
explaining the gospel, that’s preaching. It’s not his style, it’s not his
personality, but it’s the content. When the focus is the gospel, it’s
preaching. When it is anything else related to the Scripture, it’s instruction
or teaching, no matter what his rhetorical style may be. The Bible doesn’t
define preaching and teaching in terms of rhetorical style.
In 1 Timothy
6:17 we read, “Instruct [command] those who are rich in this present world not
to be conceited or to fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God
who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy.” Then in verse 20, Paul says,
“O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you, avoid worldly and empty
chatter and the opposing arguments of what is falsely called
‘knowledge’—which some have professed and thus gone away from the
faith.” In 2 Timothy 1:13 he says, “Retain the standard of sound words
which you have heard from me.” Stay the course. Don’t give up. Don’t change
your doctrine. Don’t change your views.
I was talking
to Jim Myers one day not too long ago. Jim was just so proud. He’d just come
back from Arkansas, I think the church where he had pastored
there many years ago and was having a thirty or forty year reunion. A man came
up to him and said, “You know, Myers, you haven’t changed what you teach in
forty years.” Jim was just so proud of that. We ought to be. We shouldn’t be
changing our doctrine to conform to what’s popular today. Incidentally Jim
arrived at 6:30 this morning from Brazil and we’ll hear about that next Sunday
morning. He will be speaking next week and attending the conference also.
“So hold fast
the sound words which you [Timothy] heard from me [Paul]. In 2 Timothy 2: 1 and
2, Paul says, “Therefore, my son, be strong in the
grace that is in Christ Jesus. The things which you have heard from me in the
presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to
teach others also.” That’s the key verse for Chafer Seminary. We are to
take what we have been taught and pass it on to the next generation. Personally
Timothy is told to flee youthful lusts and avoid foolish and ignorant disputes
knowing that they generate strife. Sometimes you generate strife by not wanting
to get sucked into somebody’s little agenda. I’ve certainly seen that over the
years. “Robby, I want to know about this.” I say, “That’s an irrelevant
question.” They answer, “No, no, no.” They just want to demand your time
on an irrelevant question and now you’ve created a strife
because you won’t accede to their ignorance.
2 Timothy 4:2
says, “Preach the word.” It’s not just the gospel. We always tend to translate
that as the word but it’s the message, the gospel. “And be ready in season and
out of season.” As I was told when I was ordained, “Be ready to preach, pray,
or die at a moment’s notice.” Reprove, rebuke, exhort,
with great patience and instruction”. Notice how again and again the
emphasis for the pastor is on teaching and on instruction.” Going back to
Ephesians 4: 11 and 12. How do we equip believers to do the work of ministry?
It’s through the teaching of the Word of God because that’s the only change
agent. It’s not politics. We talk about politics at times but that’s not the
ultimate answer. It doesn’t mean we ignore it but it’s not the answer. The only
thing that has ever changed people is the Word of God and the Spirit of God.
Not all this other stuff that the people focus on these days. Not the music,
certainly.
Now music is
very important. That’s a major emphasis at this conference because it’s become
so divisive in the last twenty years. We need to really understand it and I
think we’re going to have a lot of good training from our keynote speaker this
year. But we are to equip the saints for the work of ministry. So what does the
Bible require of a pastor? 1 Corinthians 4:1, Paul says it very succinctly that
what’s required of pastors that one be found faithful to the Word of God,
faithful in his doctrine, faithful in his teaching. So we are to be faithful in
equipping the saints. Now one last thing. John 21:15–17. At the end of Jesus earthly
ministry, on the beach at the Sea of Galilee, Jesus asks Peter three times if
he loves Him. Peter answers that he does each time. There’s a lot of interplay
between different synonyms but the main thing I want to focus on are the three
basic commands that Jesus gives. The mandate is to “feed My lambs.” Now the word used in verse 15 and verse 17
is the word bosko which tells us it’s
feeding, providing nourishment. Sandwiched in between is a synonym poimaino. That’s the verb form for the
noun for shepherd. So what does it mean to be a shepherd? It means to feed the
sheep. That’s the objective.
This is what
the apostles understood as the church was first getting started in Acts 6 and
they were being overwhelmed by all kind of details with the mass of probably
ten or fifteen thousand new believers at that point or more, they realized they
couldn’t do it all. They had to have a division of labor. So they chose six men
to help “serve the tables”. The word diakineto
is used there. Why? “So they could give themselves continually to prayer and
the ministry or service of the Word.” That’s the focal point of the pastor
because that’s the focus of the local church, the purpose for the local church.
There are lots of good things we do, serving one
another, praying for one another, helping one another, teaching one another,
admonishing one another, all these things are part of ministry. Paul commanded
Peter to do the work of evangelist and many other aspects but it all flows from
the one key priority which is teaching. The
instruction of the Word of God to equip people to do the work of ministry.”
This conference
is about priorities for the local church. We’re going to talk about music as it’s
a major and significant aspect of worship and it’s a controversy today. We’re
going to talk about some other aspects of ministry. We’re going to talk about
the importance of the pastoral ministry. George Meisinger
is going to deal with that. Later on David Roseland will deal with it. We’re
going to have a special presentation related to the chaplaincy by Bryan Hult. He retired last year as a Brigadier General. His last
job in the Army was as an assistant to the Chief of Chaplains. He’s going to
talk about the future of the chaplain ministry and also the chaplain ministry
in hospitals and things like that. It’s all going to be important to help
pastors understand what we do and what our priorities are for the local church.