pastoral ministry

Not All Glory is Gold

/ Richard Bargas / 1 Comment

“I do not receive glory from men;…How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and you do not seek the glory that is from the only God?” (John 5:41, 44 LSB)

The glory of men is intoxicating. I know a lot of Christians who won’t touch alcohol, but I see many who constantly sip at the bottle of glory. What’s that saying about pointing at others and there are three fingers pointing back at you? Yes, in many ways we struggle with receiving glory from men.

In a section of John 5, Jesus is instructing the Jews about His identity, and they are very clear on at least one thing, Jesus is “making Himself equal with God” (Jn 5:18). As Jesus teaches, He doesn’t try to diffuse the bomb he has handed to them, but rather adds more gunpowder to the already explosive conversation.

Christ speaks about being able to break the Sabbath, and how he keeps the Father’s will perfectly. This includes the power to judge and give life. Both of these references were not meant to simply refer to common everyday judgment and life-giving actions, but rather to the eternal prerogative of God, to cast into hell or raise into heaven, as well as to raise the dead in the resurrection.

These verses, and the self-reference to the title “Son of Man” (Jn 5:27) refer to Daniel’s vision of the Son of Man being given such powers from the Ancient of Days, the Father.

All of these are powerful references and images that pull back the mask of Jesus’ full identity, showing to his audience that He is more than the carpenter’s son from Nazareth.

In this mix of self-revelation, Jesus adds the truth about these self-righteous leaders. They loved to honor one another, give one another honorific titles, and pat each other on the back. We read about Jesus chastening them often over their self-congratulatory attitudes. And when I read about this, I often see a not too dim reflection of what I see in myself and in many of my fellow Christians at times.

Sometimes called a “humble brag” or couched in “praise reports” or displayed in our Instagram, X, or Facebook feeds, we see the boasting of those who acknowledge that pride is a sin. And when we see another fall, we hear the roar of prideful men speaking with what appears to get the back-slapping approval of their fellow Christians, I am reminded of how cancerous our pride can be.

I, for one, am not done with my personal fight with pride in my own heart. When I am walking in the Spirit, I don’t want to steal the glory from God, and I don’t want to garner the praises of men. So that means I need to watch carefully my life and doctrine, because pride is always there, lurking in the shadows not too far away.

Pastors or Shopkeepers?

/ Richard Bargas / 2 Comments

“The pastors of America have metamorphosed into a company of shopkeepers and the shops they keep are churches. They are preoccupied with shopkeeper’s concerns-how to keep the customers happy, how to lure customers away from competitors down the street, how to package the goods so that the customers will lay out more money. The marketing strategies of the fast-food franchise occupy the waking minds of these entrepreneurs; while asleep they dream of the kind of success that will get the attention of journalists.” —Eugene Peterson

Peterson’s statement strikes at the root of the modern evangelical church today. Don’t speak on controversial issues. Make sure your social media strategy keeps up with the latest trends. Watch where the “market” is driving the tastes of the most “customers” and shift your marketing strategy in that direction. God help us.

What might look like “market dominance” and “success” in this false narrative for so many of these types of ministries will turn out to be more like cotton candy. Appealing to the eyes and the flesh, and yet truly amounting to just a little bit of colored sugar spun into a frenzy that appeals to children and those who hunger for flash over substance.

Give me a church where men stand before their congregation and open up their Bibles and thunder, “Thus says the Lord.” They aren’t harvesting social media followers or their brand. They aren’t gathering up lieutenants who are loyal to them more than to Jesus. No, these men and the churches they lead are content to be faithful and be forgotten.

These types of men aren’t tending to their shops, strategizing how they can better market to the masses under the guise that they are doing evangelism. These men are more on their knees than on TikTok, more in the Word than on Instagram. Instead of selfies they are selfless. Instead of harvesting followers, they are walking with the Savior in humble obedience.

It’s not flashy. It’s doesn’t draw a crowd. But the world doesn’t need a phenom, or a CEO. We need pastors who will gently lead us to Jesus.

The Reluctant Pastor

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“…shepherd the flock of God among you, overseeing not under compulsion, but willingly, according to God; and not for dishonest gain, but with eagerness;” 1 Peter 5:2 (LSB)

I think that possibly every child runs into a school teacher who has had it with children. When I say this, I don’t mean the teacher that has had a rough week, or even a rough year. I mean that teacher that no longer loves teaching, and has moved beyond the loss of love to an actual disdain for students that borders on hatred. In the children’s book Matilda, this person is portrayed in the character known as Agatha Trunchbull, whom the children fearfully refer to as “The Trunchbull.” I wonder if Roald Dahl went to my high school…

I think it is tragic when a teacher reaches this stage, where what was (I assume) once a love for teaching has become drudgery and buying time until retirement. But this danger is not one that only school teachers face; pastors can fall into the same trap and patterns of ministry. No longer loving people or ministry, just buying time until retirement or Jesus returns, but mostly retirement.

As he writes to the church that is scattered abroad, Peter warns pastors, as a fellow pastor, that there is a danger of overseeing the church in such a way that one feels that they do so “under compulsion.” The calling of God has been overshadowed by a sense of duty, which has devolved into buying time until retirement. Slowly pastoral duties are left off for someone else to do, or not done at all. Small ways of serving others are replaced with complaints and a bitter heart. The pastor who reaches this stage can sometimes be heard reliving the “good old days” when people really cared about things, and how now “nobody” has a passion anymore.

The vision has died in many of these churches because it has died in the heart of its leader. No longer can the disenfranchised pastor see the crowds of people as an opportunity to proclaim Christ. Instead, the oceans of humanity are seen as a trial to be endured. The traffic, the graffiti, the constant cries of those needing help. It seems never-ending, and the burnout grows each day. There is no “eagerness” anymore. Instead, some hang on, knowing they need a few more years to reach their retirement funding goals, or maybe because they don’t have retirement funds, and so they keep pastoring in order to provide for their daily needs. The ministry has become a job, and the paycheck is the motivation as much as anything.

I write this to both young and old in ministry. Be careful. If you find yourself in ministry for the money (no matter how little or much you receive), then it’s time to leave. It would be better to serve as a volunteer while working a secular job than to serve God for financial gain. By this, I don’t mean that being supported financially is wrong–because motivation is the heart of the issue here. Peter is warning about the motivation. Do we serve King Jesus willingly, even through the hard times, long hours, and dry years, or do we put up with the Church because we think we can’t do anything else, or do we find that the path of least resistance means to stay in ministry until something easier or better comes along?

I hope that no one reading this finds themselves in this place. If you are there, take some time for prayer, seek wise counsel from a good friend who can point you to God and help you as you examine your heart and motivations, and then see where God leads. You might find that the Lord brings a refreshing breeze back to your life and ministry that will once again restore you to a place of renewed usefulness in the Lord’s house.

Pastor, Why Do They Come to Your Church?

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“As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds concerning John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind? What then did you go out to see? A man dressed in soft clothing? Behold, those who wear soft clothing are in kings’ houses. What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet.” (Matthew 11:7–9, ESV)

Christmas and Easter are the two holidays that cause a jump in attendance at churches all across the United States as people attend who don’t normally darken the door of the church. Many come to “feel close to God” during these precious Christian holy days.

But for those “churches” and “pastors” that are enamored with nickels and noses when people come into their buildings, Christmas and Easter are opportunities to “wow” their audiences with a spectacular show that will hopefully get them to stay and “experience” all that this type of church has to offer.

I don’t mean to disparage those churches that see the infrequent visitors as a mission field to whom they can minister to and share the wonder of the incarnation and resurrection with. We would be remiss as Christians not to take advantage of this opportunity. But there is a definite philosophy that loses the baby Jesus with the bathwater when productions, lighting, and stage histrionics take the place of the power of God vested in the gospel.

I point to Jesus’ words above from Matthew 11:7-9 as sobering truths for all of us. We need to ask ourselves, “Why do people come to our church?” In doing so, we reflect this time when Jesus asked the disciples why the crowds went out to see John the Baptist. Did they go out to see a reed shaken in the wind, or as we might say it today, a man taken by the latest fads and opinions of men? No, the people didn’t go out to see that.

As a matter of fact, Jesus asks if they went out into the wilderness to see a man dressed in soft clothing. But John was famously known to wear a rough-cut animal skin with a strip of leather for a belt around his waist. He ate what he could scavenge out there in the wilderness–locusts and wild honey. John wasn’t a skinny-jeans wearing, cappuccino-sipping, bearded hipster having “dialogues” with the people. He must have looked like a wild-eyed madman compared to the refined religious leaders of the times. Instead John looked like an Old Testament prophet of God, most notably, like the prophet Elijah. His sandals weren’t Birkinstocks, and his beard wasn’t oiled with shea butter and lavender. They knew if they wanted to see a man in soft clothes that they wouldn’t go out to the wilderness.

So why did they go out to see John? Because they wanted to hear from God. And to do that, they needed a prophet. Not a fancy boy who spends his days taking selfies in a mirror to gain more followers. Not a politically correct parrot who takes the temperature of the world to adjust his message to fit the popular opinions of men. They needed a faithful messenger who would speak the truth–unvarnished and true.

So, the next time you are considering what you can do to polish up your look, your sermon, or your church’s “stage,” remember John. People came out to hear a word from God. And if they want to hear something else, there are plenty of false churches and false teachers that will accommodate them.

“I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.” (2 Timothy 4:1–5, ESV)

Help for New Expositors: How to Find the Main Idea for Preaching (part 1)

/ Richard Bargas / 2 Comments

Whether you call it the “main idea,” “big idea,” “propositional statement,” or something else, we are going to be looking at how to make sure you preach the main idea of a section of Scripture so that you are not preaching about an ancillary idea or worse, force your own idea upon the passage. In this post I will be walking through a process I have developed for myself. To help myself with this, I have made a worksheet. In a previous post, I shared it on this blog. You can see it and download it here: https://always-reforming.com/2014/07/24/a-simplified-sermon-preparation-checklist/

The first thing that you need to make sure you do is to be as familiar as you can be about the portion of text you are preaching from. Make sure you have included the whole pericope (pəˈrikəpē), which is the whole unit of thought—in other words, don’t choose only a few verses within a section, or half a narrative section. The pericope will be at least a full paragraph, but might be more. Don’t worry if there is too much to preach at one time. You will be able to break the section into smaller preaching units later, but for now, you need to study the whole section together as one unit. If you are able to read Greek or Hebrew, those texts will also help you see the major units of the text.

To familiarize yourself with your text, you need to begin by reading it over and over again. I’d suggest you do this in your preferred English translation for preaching. Read it over at least 25 times. As you read through, take notes about what you see, questions you have that will need to be answered, and other observations about the text. Don’t stop to do research at this point, but rather set aside these questions and observations for your study later. When you are finished reading the text repeatedly, you should almost have it memorized—or at least be very familiar with it. Why 25 times and not more or less? Although this is only my suggestion, I think that 25 times will yield more in observations and the flow of the textual outline than less readings will. More reading will be helpful, but with limited sermon preparation time and diminished return for your time investment, reading more times is a luxury many cannot afford.

After having read the chosen text over and over you need to read it in multiple English translations. Bible software makes this easy to do. Read it in the most common translations and paraphrases available—ESV, NASB, NIV, KJV, NKJV, CSB, HCSB, The Message, TNIV, etc. You only need to read each of them once, but note the places where there are significant changes or disagreement. This might clue you in to translational issues or manuscript variants that you will discover later.

The next step will not be possible for everyone. If you can, translate the passage from the original languages. If you do not know Greek or Hebrew, you can use aids and software, but please understand that this is not the same as knowing the languages—recognize that tools are helpful but they are not the same as knowing the language. I have seen some students of the Word who do not know the original languages say wrong things, even embarrassing things, while giving the impression to their congregation that they know more than they do. Since most pastors are not linguistic scholars (even those who do know Hebrew and Greek), we need a strong dose of humility in this area and to know our own limitations.

While you translate your passage, note key words, repeated words, word plays, hapax legomenon (words that occur only once in the Bible), inclusio (a type of textual “envelope”), chiastic structures, and other linguistic markers that your text might have. These are the hidden gems of the text that expositors are blessed to see firsthand. Some of these we may expose to our congregation because they are helpful to them to understand the passage, while others we may not include in our sermon but will enjoy their richness and depth for ourselves.

Next, diagram your text either from the original language or in your preferred English translation. The practice of sentence diagramming will help you to see subordinate clauses and phrases, controlling verbs, and other grammatical clues to the structure and the intended emphases of the biblical writer. By doing this, you will make sure that you are not emphasizing a minor idea when the author is emphasizing something else. If you don’t know how to diagram a text, I would highly recommend you learn how to do so. A book like Walter Kaiser’s Toward an Exegetical Theology can help and give examples. For further help, Lee Kantenwein’s book Diagrammatically Analysis is also a good place to look. Both are available to purchase from places like Amazon.com

If you have done all of the above so far, you will have deeply immersed yourself into the passage and will have becoming aware of the theme(s) of the passage you are intending to preach—textually, and theologically. You aren’t there yet and this exegetical data isn’t yet a sermon ready to preach, but you are well on your way.

My next post will pick up from here and move on to the next few steps that will help us on our way to finding the main idea of a passage before we put together our sermon and proclaim, “Thus says the Lord.”