service and ministry

Three Ways to Minister as A Married Couple

/ Richard Bargas / 1 Comment

Luther was a confirmed bachelor until he was 41. He resisted marriage, and only chose to marry after he had preached on the need for the young ministers of the reformation to get married, against the unbiblical practices of Romanism (how romantic!).

On June 13, 1525 Luther married Katharina Von Bora, a former nun who had fled the convent with a group of nuns who had been convinced of the truth of the reformation. Katie was 26.

Luther was already very famous and a wanted man outside of Saxony. It was an overwhelming thing for Katie to be instantly known as Luther’s wife, but she took up the task with vigor.

A biography of Luther describes the woman behind the great Dr. Luther: “Katharina immediately took on the task of administering and managing the vast holdings of the monastery, breeding and selling cattle, and running a brewery in order to provide for their family and the steady stream of students who boarded with them and visitors seeking audiences with her husband. In times of widespread illness, Katharina operated a hospital on site, ministering to the sick alongside other nurses. Luther called her the “boss of Zulsdorf,” after the name of the farm they owned, and the “morning star of Wittenberg” for her habit of rising at 4 a.m. to take care of her various responsibilities….In addition to her busy life tending to the lands and grounds of the monastery, Katharina bore six children: Hans, Elizabeth, Magdalena, Martin, Paul, and Margarete. The Luthers also raised four orphan children, including Katharina’s nephew, Fabian.”

What is the saying? Behind every great man… It is also true of Martin Luther. Martin and Katie were so close, their hearts so knit together that Luther called Katie “my rib.”

In the New Testament we also find a couple who serve alongside one another. They pop up in six places in the New Testament, and always together. Their names were Aquila and Priscilla.

Acts 18:2 tells us that Aquila was a Jewish native of Pontus, which is in Asia Minor. They lived and worked in Rome until 49 AD when Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome, which sent them to the city of Corinth. It was in Corinth that they met the Apostle Paul on his second missionary journey. We don’t know for sure, but it might be that Paul led this couple to salvation.

From this amazing couple, I’ve chosen Three Lessons We Can Learn Regarding Ministry Together in Christ.

1. Ministry Together Means Ministering Where You Are (Acts 18:1-3)

Here is the first occasion that the New Testament gives of this ministry couple, and we find out a little about them—they shared the same trade as the Apostle Paul, they were tentmakers or leather workers.

Acts 18:3 says that the Apostle stayed with this couple and he worked with them. Paul worked by day in the trade of tanning hides and sewing together awnings and tents, possibly in the shop that Aquila and Priscilla owned.

At the end of a long work day they would retire to their home, which Paul shared with them while he was in Corinth. On the Sabbath, verse 4 tells us that Paul would move into the synagogue and would reason (lit. dialogue) with those gathered there, mainly Jews and some Gentile God-fearers who had converted to Judaism. Paul also ministered in the agora, the marketplace where all the merchants gathered.

What I want you to see is the way that Aquila and Priscilla were so key to this situation, right where they were. Their whole life, both work and home-life was sanctified for the sake of the gospel. Not only did their business help support Paul and his ministry, it must have been a place of wonderful theological training and edification!

Can you imagine the conversations around the dinner table? Aquila and Priscilla took advantage of the circumstance they were in and used it for the glory of God; using their lives together as a place of ministry help and fellowship for Paul as well as edification and spiritual growth for themselves.

Luther used his dinner table as a mighty tool in the church. It rivaled his pulpit in influence as he gathered theological students around his table to hash out the implications of the gospel. He called them “table talks.” A table and a meal became a place for the mighty Spirit to move.

What could your home and workplace become for Christ? You don’t need to change jobs, or go into full time ministry to be used mightily for God. You and your spouse can look at where you are right now and ask God to take your circumstance and use it mightily for him.

2. Ministry Together Means You Need to Be Both a Student and a Teacher (Acts 18:4, 24-26)

Because we are told that Aquila was a Jew, it is highly possible that so was his wife. They would have gone with Paul to the synagogue every Sabbath and listened to the debates that Paul brought to the people.

Over time, this couple became very well equipped in the gospel and doctrine. They knew their stuff! Their time with Paul was not spent in chit-chat and trivialities. They were focused on learning as much as they could about the Christ.

Acts 18:18-21 teaches us that Paul and Aquila and Priscilla went on to Ephesus together where they had to part ways.

Then in verses 24-26 Aquila and Priscilla met up with a man named Apollos who was a powerful preacher, but his theology was lacking in some areas that are pretty important. Verse 26 says that when this couple heard him, they took him aside and taught him “more accurately.”

If you think about it, every teacher was at one time a student. And that is where everyone needs to begin—sitting under the authority of the Word of God and walking in obedience to what it says. Priscilla and Aquila sat patiently under Paul, soaking up what he offered to them. They saw the need to be students first.

I once had someone in our church who said that they didn’t feel like they were being spiritually fed at our church. But here was the problem—our church has three preaching services a week (Sunday morning and evening, and Wednesday night) along with Sunday school classes, Bible studies, discipleship groups, and other ministries, all of which were available to this person. But he didn’t take advantage of any of them except for Sunday mornings, and at this service his attendance was sporadic. I told him, “We’re serving up the Word, you’re just not coming to supper.”

What about you? Are you a student of the Word? Husband, are you stopping your wife from getting fed under the guise of wanting “family time?” You’ll regret it. And wife, are you dragging your feet about your husband being at church so much? You’ll regret it.

And beyond your own spiritual benefit, the church will be poorer for it. Because you cannot give what you do not have. You can’t teach what you don’t know. You can’t lead where you have not first gone yourself.

Sometimes church members complain about the ministries of the church, but they don’t see their own part in it all. How can the Lord use you in your immaturity?

And those who are laboring need you! The church needs godly couples who love Christ and His Word. We need more people like Aquila and Priscilla who can come alongside the Apollos’ of the church and teach them more accurately.

Are you a student of the Word? Could the leaders of our church ask you to come alongside them to help teach and lead this church?

3. Ministry Together Means Working with a Kingdom Focus (Rom 16:3-4)

At some point Priscilla and Aquila moved back to Rome and became an active part of the church there. According to Romans 16:5, they used their home as a meeting place for the church.

Paul called them sunergos, fellow-workers. These two were more than a couple, they were team workers. They didn’t see their part in the church as building up their own little kingdom. They were part of something much bigger.

That meant that their view of this life was much more than living to make a buck. Even though we were told that they were tentmakers back in Acts 18, it is never mentioned again. I’m sure they kept practicing their trade, but they weren’t defined by that fact. Their life wasn’t about being the pre-eminent tent-makers of Rome. They were part of the mission of the Church, and that was where they focused their love and energy.

This is shown in what Paul says about them in verse 4. He tells that whole church something that we wonder how many knew before he wrote it—that Aquila and Priscilla risked their necks in order to save Paul’s life. We don’t know how they did this or any of the circumstances, but it is there, locked into Scripture for all eternity. Priscilla and Aquila were bold enough to be willing to die for the sake of the gospel, and they knew that Paul was a key player in God’s plan. They were so sold out that they would rather have died than to see Paul die. It didn’t happen, but they were ready to take a bullet, so to speak. That’s how focused they were.

They didn’t let pettiness, selfishness, career, ambition, or anything else derail them from the mission. They didn’t care who got the credit, they were working for the same goal—to see Christ magnified through the proclamation of the gospel to the whole world.

In her book, One with a Shepherd, Mary Somerville describes the attitude that God calls us to. Writing from the perspective of ministry together, she writes: “My marriage is unique in that I am one with God through Jesus Christ and that makes me uniquely one with Bob [her husband]. We have a complete oneness that those outside of Christ cannot experience. We have one Savior and Lord, one name, one new family, one goal, one Word to guide us, and one focus of our lives—to glorify God. We have the Holy Spirit living within both of us to empower us to love each other sacrificially and to help us work through all hinderances to our oneness. With Christ in our lives there is hope for any difficulty we face. By his grace we can forgive as we have been forgiven. The Spirit knits us together and gives us a new heart that desires to serve Christ and give sacrificially to one another in love.”

And even though Mary Somerville is writing as a pastor’s wife, there is nothing that she wrote that isn’t true of all Christian couples serving God in all capacities from the perspective of either husband or wife.

If God calls you to any ministry, he calls you together. You may not serve together (i.e., elder, teacher, nursery, etc.) but you’re marriage brings you together to mutually support and care for one another in every ministry.

Ministry together means:

1. Ministering Where You Are

2. You Need to Be Both a Student and a Teacher

3. Working with a Kingdom Focus

What are some steps you can take to make these things happen?

1. Begin developing a family culture around the Word of God. Not just reading but discussing the Word. Husbands with wives. Moms with children. Dads do this with the family. Grandparents with children and grandchildren. Use that dinner table for the glory of God. Discuss the sermon on Sunday. Make your meal a theological feast, even if its around peanut butter and jelly sandwiches!

2. Tolle lege! Take up and read! We all need to be better students of the Word. That is primary. But after you have feasted on the Word, you cannot stop. Pick up good theological books. I know that many people think that they don’t have the time, but I will let John Piper convince you that you really do:

Now, I know what you are thinking: I don’t have the time or the ability to get anywhere in books like that. So I want to show you something really encouraging. When this was shown to me about four years ago by my pastor, it changed my life. Most of us don’t aspire very high in our reading because we don’t feel like there is any hope.

But listen to this: Suppose you read about 250 words a minute and that you resolve to devote just 15 minutes a day to serious theological reading to deepen your grasp of biblical truth. In one year (365 days) you would read for 5,475 minutes. Multiply that times 250 words per minute and you get 1,368,750 words per year. Now most books have between 300 and 400 words per page. So if we take 350 words per page and divide that into 1,368,750 words per year, we get 3,910 pages per year. This means that at 250 words a minute, 15 minutes a day, you could read about 20 average sized books a year!

3. Come alongside those already serving, including your spouse. Support them in regular prayer. Provide them resources that will help them and give them plenty of encouragement. In this way, you will have a part of their ministry.

May the Lord take all of us and make us into more Aquila’s and Priscilla’s. O how the church could use more like them. Focused not on our own agenda, but on the greatest mission this world has ever known, making our great God known to every corner of the earth!

The Growing Need for Bible Institutes

/ Richard Bargas / 3 Comments

Back at the beginning of the 20th century, a massive change was taking place in the evangelical church in America. Denominations had become overrun by the ideas of Higher Criticism which was nothing short of an attack on the authority and inerrancy of the Bible. But the changes in the churches and denominations were only the symptoms of something much worse. The average person in the pew heard sermons from these compromised churches that denied the fundamentals of the Christian faith—so much so that J. Gresham Machen called Liberalism “another religion.”

These sermons were coming from the men that were trained at denominational seminaries where the professors had embraced the lies of liberal theology in many forms. Although begun as biblical schools, liberalism had kept in and taken over. From Europe to America, the eventual result was that the unwary Christian found himself shocked to hear the assault on the Bible coming from their pastors. But many Christians were ill-equipped to respond.

The historic Christian church did respond though. New churches were planted. Fellowships were formed to work together. Missions agencies were begun. And seminaries were started to train men for the ministry, and Bible institutes were raised up to equip the layman. The Moody Bible Institute, Philadelphia School of the Bible, Bible Institute of Los Angeles, and others sprang up to meet the needs of the church.

With our nation currently undergoing a dramatic change, the church has not been untouched. For decades many discerning believers have been sounding the alarm that what was once “evangelical” has changed. Although it is still known by that name, it no longer teaches the same things. The church in America as a whole has slid far from its foundations, and with it so have the churches, missions agencies, seminaries and Bible institutes. The reality is that liberalism never builds anything because it is parasitic. It only takes over its healthy host and then devours it from the inside.

The time has come for rebuilding once again. We must continue planting churches, form fellowships and partnerships, rebuild or replace missions agencies, and begin training our pastors and laymen in Bible colleges and seminaries that are faithful to the truth.

Not all is lost. There are still many who have not bent the knee to Baal. But with the way things appear to be headed, larger Bible colleges, Christian universities, and seminaries will have a hard time staying open with greater pressure put upon them from our government. We need to remember the power of the Bible institute.

Bible institutes are a powerful blessing to the local church. They can train local church leaders to better serve the church. They can be a source of training an army of Sunday school teachers, Bible study leaders, missionaries, evangelists, counselors, and more. They have low overhead and don’t often offer degrees, so tuition is affordable enough for almost everyone.

I’d encourage you to look up your local Bible institute and support it through sending students, praying for them, teaching if you are trained, and supporting them with your gifts.

If you attended a Bible Institute, what was your experience? Would you recommend them and how did it bless you and the Church?

What Happened to Evangelistic Visitation?

/ Richard Bargas / 5 Comments

If we are honest, we would have to admit that many churches in the U.S. are not growing from conversions but from transfers from other churches. I’ll admit that there are some valid reasons for a Christian to leave one church to attend another, but the Great Commission isn’t about shuffling believers from one church to another. There are many things a church can do to bolster its outreach, but one that is consistently missed in the vast majority of churches today is evangelistic visitation. What is that you ask? Keep reading and I’ll explain.

Every Saturday for many years there were at least two people from Grace Baptist Church that would go out to share the gospel with our community—myself and one of our deacons named Everett. Some Saturdays there were others that would join us, but many times it was just the two of us. Everett and I shared Christ with gang members, homeless people in the park, people in half-way houses, and everyday people that look like you and me.

We had dogs chase us, people scream at us, a couple of doors slammed in our faces, and even a few people that I am convinced were demon possessed. Although we visited door to door in order to hopefully share Christ with our neighbors, we found that this method wasn’t too successful. Instead we found that evangelistic visitation was far more productive.

Whenever a person visited our church, they would receive a bulletin and a small visitor’s card that we asked them to fill out as a record of their visit. These cards were placed in the offering plate when the offering was received. When the deacons counted the offering, they would take out these cards and give them to me for follow up.

In my discussions with many pastors and church leaders, many churches don’t do anything to record visitors anymore. I’m not sure why, but they don’t seem to even collect a card to record visitors. In my many visits to different churches, most didn’t request a card to be filled out, and of those that I have filled out, only one has ever done something with it.

On Tuesday when I came into the office, I would send out a welcome letter thanking the visitor for coming. If they wrote the name of who invited them on their visitor card, I would include that as well. Sometimes I would call the friend of our visitor and ask them some questions to find out more about what brought them to our church.

But my follow up didn’t stop there. On the following Saturday, Everett and I would take that card and drive over to the visitor’s house to pay them a visit. Yes, you read that right! We actually showed up at their front door! When we did this, we followed a few rules that worked for us:

1. We only visited on Saturdays from 10am-12pm. This is because before 10 some people were sleeping in and after noon they would be leaving for the day. Three day holidays were almost worthless as far as visiting goes.

2. We took a church flyer or business card with us to leave if they didn’t answer the door. We wanted our visitor to know we came by and missed them. A quick note on a church invite flyer or the back of my business card was slipped in the door jamb for the visitor to find when they returned home.

3. We didn’t call to make an appointment. We found that when we made arrangements we would often find nobody home. It was better to surprise our visitors. Even so, the vast majority were happy to see us.

4. We thanked them for their visit and asked if they had any questions about what they heard. Their visit showed us that they had some interest in church and the Bible. Our conversation helped us determine if the visitors were Christians or needed to hear the gospel.

5. We made sure to express that we were there because we had an important message that we wanted them to hear. We assumed God had sent us as His messengers and we were not ashamed, but bold ambassadors for Christ.

6. We invited them to come back Sunday (the next day). Many people were shocked that the man that preached the sermon had taken the time to personally visit them. This impression made them more open to come back, and it showed them in a tangible way that we truly cared for them.

Having successfully visited our visitor, we usually asked them if we could pray for them and if they had any special prayer needs. The visit often ended with smiles, laughs, and a new relationship begun. Of all the people that returned a second time, many were those that had been visited by someone in our church.

When you think about what connected you to your church, what sticks out the most? What were the things that turned you off about visiting a new church?

Putting the Cookies on the Right Shelf

/ Richard Bargas / Leave a comment

Have you ever sat in church and been frustrated by the sermon? How about bored? Have you ever been completely confused? If you have been any of these things, you’re not alone. Although we preachers sometimes like to think that only those who are “less spiritual” or aren’t interested in “the deep things of God” are the problem–but truth be told, many times its the preacher who is at fault. It reminds me of the pastor who stopped his sermon to tell a little boy to wake up his sleeping father. The little boy replied, “You put him to sleep, you wake him up!”

If you’re a pastor or preacher and you have seen the stifled yawns and the impatient looking at watches, I’d like to help in one area that you might need to consider–your target audience.

I have been blessed (and not-so-blessed) to hear hundreds of sermons by seminary students as a professor of preaching for 12 years. Some were confusing, others were boring, while some were too scholarly, and others were simply biblical history lessons. A good strong cup of coffee was helpful in getting through some days in preaching lab.

J. Vernon McGee used to say that a preacher needs to put the cookies on the bottom shelf where they can be reached. By this he meant that preachers and teachers need to make sure that their sermons are accessible to the common man. Dr. McGee died over 30 years ago, but his radio teaching is still popular all over the world because he made sure to teach at a level that was easy to understand.

One way to help sermon preparation hit the target of listeners is to make sure that the cookies are not only on the lower shelf, but also on the right shelf. By this I mean that every teacher and preacher should understand his audience’s spiritual maturity in order to teach in a way that everyone is fed. In a healthy church there will be several levels of spiritual maturity–unbelievers, new believers, spiritual “teens,” and spiritually mature. If you aim your teaching only at the mature, the unbeliever and the immature will be confused and not get anything out of the teaching. If you aim at the unbeliever or the spiritual infant, you will find that your more mature listeners will become frustrated, and bored.

If you are stubborn and only supply a steady diet of spiritual steak (sometimes raw) or spiritual baby food, you will find that those that are babes in Christ or those that are mature will eventually leave your church because they are not being fed in a way that benefits them. That’s not their fault, it’s yours. So what is the answer?

Put the cookies on the right shelf. In each sermon, and I’d even say in each teaching point, make sure that you speak to every level of maturity. Make sure you use theological language for the mature, but define it for the immature and growing. Give application for those that are still learning how to apply the Bible for themselves. Stretch the younger in Christ, but make sure you patiently explain the difficult concepts. Use illustrations to shed light on abstract truths, and make sure that you point to Christ so that the unbeliever can hear the message they need most: how to be saved.

When you put the cookies on the right shelf, everyone will be fed. And a well fed congregation is a happy congregation.

How to Use Bible Commentaries More Effectively

/ Richard Bargas / 2 Comments

Commentaries are a huge blessing to those who study the Bible. From them we can glean from the years of hard study of thousands of Christians who have come before us. Their knowledge of culture, language, grammar, background information, and theology can fill out our understanding of the biblical writers. For pastors, Bible students, and scholars, Bible commentaries act as a check on their own study, allowing them to see if they are coming to similar conclusions as those who have studied the same passage. This helps to make sure that our own conclusions aren’t going off in a direction that might lead to error, or even worse. But there are a wide variety of commentaries out there, and it is often difficult even for those trained in seminary to know which to use and when to use it. I thought it would be helpful to describe each type of commentary commonly available, how it is helpful, and then what order I use commentaries to best help me develop my sermons and Bible studies.

Like a lot of Christians, my first experiences with Bible commentaries were mixed. Some seemed to be written in a foreign language, even when they were written in English. They were so complicated and hard to understand that they were frustrating and useless to me. Others were understandable, but they often read like sermons. This made them enjoyable to read, but they often skipped over large portions or failed to explain the one verse I was needing help with!

Later, after attending seminary, I learned that there are different categories of commentaries for different purposes. And I learned an incredibly important lesson: commentaries should be used after I have done my own study. The temptation can be to take a great teacher’s study and sermon outline from their commentary and teach or preach it as if it was my own. Not only is that unethical, it robs you of the blessing of encountering the Word for yourself when you do the hard work of studying.

To help myself, I came up with a simple system of when to read the types of commentaries I use in a specific order. I’ll give you that system a little later, but first I think it would be helpful for me to lay out some of the different types of commentaries out there. This will help you know what you already own, their strengths and weaknesses, and hopefully it will give you a better idea of what you should buy the next time you purchase a new commentary.

Types of Commentaries [1]

  1. Devotional-These commentaries are written for the average Christian and are heavy with application. They are broad in scope, meaning they cover a lot of Bible in a little space. Often, they are a short book written to cover a whole Bible book. Warren Wiersbe’s “Be” series and J. Vernon McGee’s Thru the Bible Commentaries are of this kind.
  2. Expositional-These commentaries are based upon the preaching of a particular pastor’s sermons. They may or may not be heavily edited, but they often include coverage of a preaching portion: illustrations, application, and explanation of the text. The MacArthur New Testament Commentary series and James Montgomery Boice’s commentaries are good examples of this type.
  3. Exegetical– These commentaries rely upon the original languages of the biblical text, and aid the Bible student in understanding the significance of the language, grammar, and syntax. Additionally, the exegetical commentary will give large sections of study to introductory matters, translational issues, contextual matters, and interpretive challenges. Although useful without the knowledge of biblical languages, they are most helpful to those who have a working knowledge of Greek and Hebrew. The Hendriksen New Testament Commentary set and Word Biblical Commentaries are representative of this type of commentary.
  4. Critical/Technical– As far as traditional commentaries go, these are the most specialized. These commentaries deal with original languages, biblical manuscripts, and many other issues that are important to biblical scholars. Many (although not all) of the contributors to these commentaries are theologically liberal, and they are usually very expensive, although they often contain gold when the student knows how to use them profitably. Some examples of these commentaries would include the International Critical Commentary (ICC) series and Hermeneia Commentaries.
  5. Background-Normally biblical background information is included in most commentaries, but there are some commentaries that focus on this aspect in a commentary format (using book, chapters, and verses divisions). An example would be the IVP Bible Background Commentary.

So, how do I choose which commentary to use first, and does it really matter?

My System for Choosing Which Commentary To Use First

After I have studied the passage for myself, I usually will have several questions and observations about the text. But because of my study, I will have a good general understanding of the main idea. If this is the case, I will choose commentaries from the above categories and read them in this order:

  1. Critical/Technical
  2. Exegetical
  3. Background
  4. Expositional
  5. Devotional

I may not read any commentaries in categories 4 and 5 (Expositional and Devotional) every time. I’ll explain in a moment why.

The reason I begin with the harder and more technical commentaries and move toward the easier and more popular ones is because when I turn to my commentaries I am still wrestling with the text and any unanswered questions. I want to find the answers for myself from my work with the language, grammar, and syntax. If I move too fast to the expositional commentaries, I will be tempted to adopt the interpretation of the writer. And since they are human, they might be wrong. Until I have answered these questions for myself and my interaction with the biblical text, I need help with exegesis before moving on to interpretation.

After I have successfully understood the hardest ideas in the text, I move to the next level of commentaries. The expositional commentaries will help me understand how another pastor has preached and outlined the text I am studying, and a devotional commentary will show me how it has been illustrated and applied. If I understand the text well enough, application and illustration may begin to form easily for me and I won’t need to look at the devotional or expositional commentaries I have.

So, why not flip the order? Because I consider it “cheating” for me, since I will be given an explanation, outline, illustrations, and applications of a passage that I did not myself discover for myself. Additionally and most importantly, I am not trusting the Bible and the Spirit to inform my study, but instead am giving another human author a great amount of influence in my understanding of the Bible. When I teach the Bible, I want to have the confidence to say, “Thus says the Lord” because I have done the hard labor of study. If I cheat and simply read the fruit of someone else’s study, then I am not truly being a biblical expositor; I am simply a parrot.

But there is one exception to my rule when I will actually begin with either an expositional commentary or a devotional commentary. That is when I have studied the text in-depth for myself and I am left completely without a clue as to how I would preach or teach this particular text. I may understand the words, sentences, and paragraphs, but how I can teach this particular passage has stumped me. At this point, I will choose a faithful devotional or expositional commentary and read the section I am studying. This will usually help me see how the author taught it and clarifies for me the main idea to teach. At this point, I stop reading and begin going through the list as I gave it above, beginning with the more technical commentaries and moving down the list.

I don’t necessarily think that this method is the only way of using commentaries, but it works for me and helps guard my heart against taking the route which might cause me to shortcut my study. What about you? How have you used commentaries that have helped your study? What are your favorites and why? If you have any followup questions about how I use commentaries, let me know. I’d love to help.

Footnote:

[1] I’ve added the Amazon.com links to each of these commentary series’ to help you identify them. I have done this for reference only and don’t necessarily endorse everything in them. Also, I don’t gain anything from you purchasing a book through the link. Shop around, you might find great deals elsewhere. More money saved means more money for books!