Well, good morning, everyone. Welcome to our Sunday school. It's so good to see you all here. This morning, we are beginning a new series that we are entitling The Careful Dance Between Leaders and Members. The Careful Dance Between Leaders and Members. And before we begin, I want to start with A few personal notes. I guess you could call it an apology, a confession, and a request. So last week after Daniel's Sunday school, fine Sunday school lesson, I stood up and gave a plug for this series. And it was a lousy plug for this series. A horrible advertisement for this series. And I want to apologize for that. I want to remind you that I am a sinner. The Lord is still sanctifying me and he's sanding off the rough edges. And you may have noted an air of pastoral cynicism in that plug. And I confess that after many years of pastoral ministry, I do struggle with cynicism. And so please forgive me for that unseemly advertisement. And I want to give a re-advertisement for it in just a moment. But the thing about cynicism, as A.W. Tozer said, is he said the problem with the cynic is that he's right. The problem is his attitude. And what he means by that is the cynic is not an optimist or a pessimist. The cynic is a realist. But the problem is that it can color his attitude in such a way that he doesn't do what Paul exhorts all of us to do, which is in all things give thanks. And I think that thankfulness is the remedy and the antidote to the constant temptation to cynicism. So thank you for your patience with me. And now let me give a re-advertisement for this series. So in October, the congregation is going to vote on a new elder and two new deacons. And we are so very excited for this. If you've been in the church for any amount of time, You know that any time that the Lord gives leaders to the church, it is a gift from the risen Christ. And good leaders are hard to find. Good leaders who are faithful and loyal and are going to stay there, whether things are good or bad or ugly, and weather the storm, are very, very hard to find. And we believe, as we have vetted Daniel Long to be an elder, and Zach Evie and Oscar Powell to be deacons. Number one, these men are thoroughly qualified to serve in those capacities. But at the end of the day, that is not our choice as elders to make. It is your affirmation as a congregation. And so we thought it would be the better part of wisdom to take the eight or nine weeks in the run-up to the vote to just talk about what elders and deacons are for Christ and for the church, and what members are to be to those elders and to those deacons for Christ and the church. And so we're gonna spend about five weeks on, or four or five weeks on elders, and then four or five weeks on deacons, and then we will come to the vote. So that's what we're doing, and we're calling it a careful dance, because that's exactly what it is. And really, this applies to many relationships, right? I would say that the marriage relationship is a careful dance. And so it is also in the relationship between leaders in the church and members in the church. It is a careful dance. A careful dance where, number one, we need to have a leader, and number two, we need to have followers, and both of them need to be following the same script. And that script, no doubt, is the Word of the Living God. And so we want to talk through what that means, what that doesn't mean, what do we do when we come up against very common obstacles in the life of the church, and the Word of God will be our guide. So I want to ask you this morning to turn to Ephesians chapter 4. And I'm going to read in your hearing verses 1 through 16, and this will be really a jumping off point for our consideration of leaders and members. And the title of my message this morning is, What Pastors Are to Be for Christ and the Church. What Pastors Are to Be for Christ and the Church. So let's give our attention to the reading of God's Word, Ephesians 4, verses 1-16. Listen carefully, for this is the Word of the living God. Paul says, "...I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But grace was given to each of us according to the measure of Christ's gift, Therefore it says, when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives and he gave gifts to men. In saying he ascended, what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth. He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens that he might fill all things. And he gave the apostles. the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. That's part of the reading of God's Word. May He add His blessing to it. Would you bow your heads as we ask the Lord for help this morning. Father, each and every one of us this morning stand in dire need of Your grace, of Your help, of Your illumination. We pray that You would send Your Spirit this morning to go about our hearts and show ourselves to ourselves that your word might be a mirror, but that it might also be a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. Father, we are privileged by your grace to have been placed in this body. this local manifestation of the universal body of Christ. And we do ardently desire to know our place and to function, just as Paul said here, in such a way where all the bodies, all the body members and the ligaments and the joints are doing their part so that the body can make the body grow. Would you help us to understand this better? Would you help us to put it into practice well? And would You help all of us to walk in humility? We ask these things in Christ's name, Amen. So I want to begin this morning with something of a thought experiment. You know, many people think, I think most of us probably think, that we are independent thinkers unhindered by any prevailing narrative. And by narrative, if you don't know what I mean by that, it's a term that is bantied about quite a bit in our culture today, but a narrative is a network of thoughts. And this network of thoughts has a theme, it has an arc, it has an agenda. Everybody has a narrative. Everybody has a narrative. Anyone who thinks that they independently think about things disconnected from a narrative is fooling themselves. Now there are good narratives and there are bad narratives. There are true narratives and there are false narratives. There are narratives that are a mixture between air and truth. But there is a meta-narrative, which means a narrative over all the narratives, which is God's narrative that every Christian should be striving to align with. But the fact of the matter is that all of us, whether or not we're willing to admit it, are deeply influenced by thought narratives. These narratives could be cultural narratives, familial narratives, and narratives that grow out of our experience. So, I want you to imagine a man, 1,000 years ago, who is in an honor-shame society. And this man, as he walks about, he notices that he has these urges within him to kill people. It's just, he sees somebody and he wants to smash their face in. And I want you to imagine what that man thinks about that urge within him in this, again, honor-shame society. Now, in that society, he would probably feel very good about himself. He would probably fancy himself as a warrior. He would probably think this is what a man thinks and this is how a man acts. Again, in this honor-shame society. Now I want you to fast forward to the modern day and think of another man walking down the streets of Manhattan and he has the same urge. This urge to kill somebody. Now, what do you think he thinks about those thoughts within him? Well, he probably thinks that he needs anger management. He probably thinks that he needs to go see a therapist, or he may even think that he probably needs to be in jail with such narratives. Why? Because our culture today tells us that such urges are bad. And so what I want you to see in this thought experiment is how much of an influence cultural narratives have upon us, for good or for ill. This is just something that is natural and goes without saying. Our culture, to varying degrees, shapes how we think about things. Now conversely, Think about a man a thousand years ago who had homosexual urges. How would he think about himself? Well, he would think that it wasn't okay and that he needed to curb those passions. Why? Well, because again, that's what culture would tell him. Culture would tell him that such urges are despicable, unnatural, and base sin that needed to be mortified. But now again, think about a man today who had those same homosexual urges. What would he think about himself? He would think this is perfectly acceptable. I have to be me. This is who I am. Now he did not come to that conclusion all by himself. The cultural zeitgeist has conditioned him to think that way. So culture imposes narratives upon us, and the challenge the Christian faces is to test these narratives against the Word of God. I mean, after all, as Christians, we believe with Jesus that God's Word is truth, and we are to be sanctified by that truth. Now in the same way, as we follow this thought experiment, there are cultural narratives that have imposed themselves upon the church. And I believe that this is what Paul is talking about in Ephesians 4.14 when he says, "...so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine." By doctrine, just read their teaching. Okay? By human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes. You see, the goal as a Christian is to be hypersensitive to every thought that enters our minds and hearts and to test them against the Word of God. But I want you to back up from verse 14 and read that verse in context. Do you notice that verse 14 begins with a, so that. That's what's called a purpose clause. So if the purpose is that the church not be tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning and craftiness and deceitful schemes, what is the anchor of that purpose? Well, Paul tells us beginning in verse 7. So let's go there again. Verse 7, he says, But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore, it says, and he's quoting Psalm 68 here, when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives and he gave gifts to men. What are these gifts? Jump down to verse 10. He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens that he might fill all things. And here's the gift, verse 11. that the risen Christ gives to men, i.e. to the world. The gift that He gives is teachers. The gift that He gives is pastors. The gift that He gives is prophets and apostles and evangelists. How is this a gift to the world? Well, it is a gift because those teachers, those pastors, those evangelists are perpetuating the message of Christ and the gospel to the world via the institution of the church. Now, have you ever thought about that, that your pastors and your teachers are gifts? I hope that you do think that way. I've always thought that way about pastors and leaders in the church, that they are gifts. They're not perfect gifts. They are sinners, just like the rest of us, but nonetheless, in their capacity of expositing and explaining and pressing the Word of God upon our consciences, Christ is shepherding His people. And He's vouchsafing to them the eternal news of the Gospel. So He gives gifts to men. He gives apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers. And v. 12 tells us there's a lot of purposes here. what the purpose is, and the purpose is to equip the saints for the work of ministry for the building up of the body of Christ. You see, the pastors by themselves are not meant to do all the heavy lifting. The pastors are there to teach the Word of God, apply the Word of God, connect the Word of God to our lives in such a way that you as the people of God are equipped to do the work of ministry. The work of ministry is not exclusively the task of the elders and the deacons. The work of ministry is the work of the church. and you must be equipped to know how to function in ministry. We are all in ministry in the church. Elders, deacons, and members all are ministering to the body of Christ. Now, how long are we to do this? Well, he tells us in v. 13, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Now, when is that going to happen? It's not going to happen perfectly until glory, which means that the whole age of the church is this sanctifying project of the church growing up into the fullness, mature manhood of Christ. And so, beloved, we should not expect the church to be perfect. You should not expect your fellow members to be perfect. You should not expect your elders and your deacons to be perfect. And yet, this is the beauty of sanctification. Sometimes we talk about what is the church, and I think one of the best answers I've heard is the church is like a hospital. The church is like a hospital. And in that hospital, broken, diseased, and sick people come to receive healing through the word of God. And this is not like you come, it's one and done, it's every single Sunday. We're getting healed and made whole once again. And then we get prepared again to go back out into the world and to be salt and light to the world. We often talk about the church as the re-salination plant, right? Monday through Saturday, we're casting our salt, and then we lose our saltiness, or it gets degraded in some respects. We come back to the church, we get re-salinated, we get re-illumined, and we go back again. And we do this ad infinitum until Christ comes back. So it's for the whole church age so that we avoid what? Well that brings us back to verse 14. So that we would no longer be children tossed to and fro. Now there is another cultural narrative that we must avoid and that is how we think about pastors in the church. So let me give some rhetorical questions this morning. How do you think about your pastors? Do you think about your pastors as motivational speakers? Do you think about your pastors as therapists who are there to fix you? Do you think about your pastors as those who stand in the way of your agenda? Or do you think of your pastors as men who are there to merely affirm you? The church cannot be the church unless she first understands who she is and how she is to function within the structure that the Lord has given her. So this is why we're doing this series, and much of this will be a reminder, right? That's what we do in the Christian life. We are constantly remembering what our roles are. Every good company in the world has their vision, mission, and values. And every good company is going to constantly be putting that vision, mission, and set of values before their people. training them year in and year out so that they avoid what is called mission drift, right? And that same principle is inculcated, if you will, in the mission of the church. We come every week and we hear the Word of God. Now some of you say, well I've read the whole Word of God cover to cover 14 times, and yet we haven't exhausted it, right? And even if we knew it intellectually down to crossing the T's and dotting the I's, it's a whole other department to think about the application of those things. Every day life throws scenarios at you that you, through wisdom and following the lead of the Spirit, need to tease out and find out what principles need to be applied and how to apply them wisely. And so we want to talk about how to think about elders, how to think about deacons, how to think about members' role in the life of the church. And so what I want to do is I want to give you what a pastor is to be for Christ in the church. I have, I think, three or four, maybe five of these. And the first one is this. A pastor is to be a guardian of the truth. A pastor is to be a guardian of the truth. Let me read to you from 1 Timothy chapter 6 verses 20 and 21. Now just to remind you, this is Paul speaking to his protege Timothy. Timothy, I think, was probably the only elder in his church at Ephesus. There's disagreement about this, but just as you read the epistles of 1 and 2 Timothy, you kind of get the idea that Timothy was on his own. You kind of get the idea that Timothy might have been outnumbered by some false teachers and some disgruntled members in the congregation. For this reason, Paul is giving him exhortations like, don't let anybody look down on your youth. Reprove, rebuke, and exhort with all authority and with all power. Yet do it, Timothy, with complete patience. Don't get caught up in these endless genealogies and this irreverent babble of what people falsely call knowledge. But guard the deposit. This is what he says, O Timothy, Guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge. For by professing it, some have swerved from the truth." Grace be to you. Pastors are to be guardians of the deposit of truth. What is a deposit? It is the Word of God systematically understood and confessed. We have to say it that way because simply saying the Word of God, sadly, doesn't mean anything anymore. Every Christian claims to believe in the Word of God, but what about the Word of God do you believe? That's the question. And this is why the church has always utilized creeds and confessions. The church needs them, creeds and confessions systematize the word of God in an orthodox way. And by the way, Paul had a systematized understanding of the word of God. And he passed that systematized understanding of the word of God onto Timothy and onto all of his disciples. And that systematized word of God is what he means when he says the deposit. It has only been in the last hundred years with the infiltration of liberalism, relativism, and church growth movements that the church has moved away from confessions. Why? Because there is this inherent idea that doctrines divide. And there's much truth to that. Doctrines do divide. So the question is, which would you rather have? A church full of people who don't confess or believe the same things, or a church that believes and confesses the same things. And on the one hand, if you have a church that doesn't believe and confess the same things, you could say there's benefit to that, right? I mean, we want to include as many Christians as we possibly can. Because after all, as long as they confess with their mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in their heart, they shall be saved. So even if they have differing views on salvation, even if they have differing views on who Christ is and what God is, that's okay. Let's just put them all in the same group. Seems like a good idea at the time. But what ends up happening is division. Why? Well, because you've started off on the wrong foot in the first place. The idea of a deposit means that you have a systematized doctrine of belief that everybody adheres to, and that's how you're able to stay together. When you talk about the peace, purity, and unity of the church, that is predicated upon a common confession. And so we need a common confession that everyone can agree upon, and guess what? Even when you have that, you still have problems. But the kind of problem that you shouldn't have theoretically is differing views of doctrine. The impulse to downplay doctrine is motivated by a desire to have more people in the church at the expense of truth. And again, this may seem like a good idea on the surface, but it actually flies in the face of everything the New Testament teaches. Notice that in verse 20, Paul warns Timothy against the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge. There were all kinds of influencers in the church trying to steer people away from the systematized truth. Paul warns us in 2 Timothy 3, 1-9, that in the last days, people will be lovers of self and will stray from the truth. And just as Janus and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men will oppose leaders who uphold truth in the churches. So Paul warns Timothy to avoid them. He warns Timothy to fight the good fight. As guardians, pastors are soldiers for the truth. This is why we not only have a confession, but we also have a constitution and a membership covenant. We're essentially saying, by becoming a member, you agree that we are teaching this deposit of truth, and you agree not to oppose it. As a member of a church with a confession, we are not free to believe contrary to the confession. Now, one of the upshots of this, beloved, is that pastors often feel like a soldier. They often feel like they're constantly fighting. And isn't it interesting that elsewhere in 1 Timothy, Paul literally tells Timothy to be a good soldier of the truth. We should not shy away from this stereotype, from the stigma, because this is the job of the pastor. He is to be in the trenches fighting for truth. But to fight for truth, you have to have an established body of doctrine that tells you what truth is. And so don't grow weary of the fight for truth. Many of you know that John MacArthur just passed away. Very, very grateful for that man's ministry and witness. And I came across a sermon of his that I think it was around 2019, 2020. This is a time when the COVID stuff was happening. This is a time when BLM riots were going haywire. This is a time where many evangelicals were capitulating to a lot of the BLM nonsense and the transgender phobia. And what had happened is that MacArthur was taking a stand on things like social justice. He was taking a stand on things like, hey, we're gonna worship despite the government's command to the contrary. And he started noticing that he was losing a lot of his evangelical leader friends. And he just said, this has kind of been my whole life. I've taken stands and I've lost friends as a result of it. And some people can look at that and be like, well, maybe you're the problem. Maybe you shouldn't be taking these stands. But this is exactly what Paul tells Timothy he needs to be doing. Paul is telling Timothy that, you know what, if doctrine divides, then you need to divide. If avoiding heretics means that the church is smaller, then so be it. And this is hard for us to hear, right? We would like to think in a perfect world that we could all get along, right? But we don't live in a perfect world. There is error. There is contradiction of truth. And so pastors must stand as guardians for truth. So that's the first thing. I also want to say that this deposit was handed down from previous generations and must be handed off to the next generation. Listen to 2 Timothy 2, 1-3. Paul says, You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses and trust of faithful men who will be able to teach others also. Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. You know what's interesting here? And this is what I love about Paul. Paul is thinking about three generations ahead. He's thinking about his generation. Timothy is the next generation. And he's saying to Timothy, train other men that could train further men also. And what he's doing is he's thinking about the longevity of this deposit, right? Which of the many applications that has, here's one of them. Pastors are not free to invent things in their philosophy of ministry that contradict the deposit of truth that God has given them. Now, oftentimes this comes when the culture encrouches itself upon us and imposes itself upon us, and it becomes a stress test as to whether we're going to manipulate doctrine to be looked at with favor by the culture. And every generation has this. Every generation has this. The great Charles Spurgeon, he had to draw lines in the sand and he lost a lot of friends in what is now known as the downgrade controversy. And what it was is in the Baptist Union, this is the time when liberalism started flourishing, there were full-scale attacks upon the inspiration and authority of the Word of God. And guess what? These attacks were gaining traction in the evangelical world. And left and right, Protestant-Baptists were capitulating to these views. And Spurgeon stood firmly and said, I will not capitulate. We must maintain the inspiration and authority and infallibility of the Word of God, else we have lost the revelation that gives us the Gospel. And as a result, many of his friends alienated him. And he had pressure to capitulate. He had pressure to have people look upon him and think of him in high favor, but he refused to do so. And he did so at great loss. Now what this means is that the church should expect a conflict of ideas. It is going to happen because people with agendas and false doctrine will creep into the church. You should expect your pastor to be a bulldog for truth and guard the flock from errant thinking. If he is not, he's not a good shepherd and he's not doing his job. And what pastors should expect of her members is that they do their part to ensure that the agreed upon doctrine is preserved in the life of the church. Again, the pastors can't do everything. Everyone must play a part within the congregation to be guardians for the truth. So, the first thing that our pastors are is guardians for the truth. Here's the second thing that they are. They are overseers. They are overseers. This is what bishop means. And just for clarification, Paul will use the word leader. He will use the word pastor. He will use the word bishop. He will use the word shepherd. And what you need to know is in the New Testament's use of those four words, they are all synonymous. So a bishop is a pastor. A pastor is a shepherd. A shepherd is a leader. These are all synonymous terms. We don't believe that a bishop is different than a pastor, like Episcopalians and Roman Catholics. So a bishop is an overseer. He is overseeing all things in the church. And this means, among other things, that pastors are to rule in the congregation. First Sympathy 517, Paul says, let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching. This Greek word for rule means to exercise a position of leadership, and you could translate it with a number of different terms, but some of them are rule, or direct, or be at the head. And there's a lot of disagreement, obviously, in evangelical circles about how to think about this, but the Word of God is clear here. Pastors are rulers. Now, let me just make one little qualification, especially within the context of our Baptist polity. When it comes to choosing leaders and defrocking leaders, when it comes to bringing in new members to the church and putting out members from the church, pastors do not rule ultimately on earth in those categories. In those categories, what kind of leaders we will have and what kind of leaders we will depose, what kind of members we will have and what kind of members we will put out, that is the prerogative of the congregation. And so we say that the congregation in those areas has final earthly authority. But now once the congregation has affirmed a leader, now those leaders exercise the rule that is a derived rule from Christ to the leaders And that rule is to be carried out in the life of the church. That means that the everyday operations of the church, from week to week, month to month, year to year, is in the hands of the elders. They are overseeing the operations of the church. Leadership in the church is not a decentralized form of government like it is in groups like BLM or any other socialist scheme. Again, the congregation has final authority with respect to leaders and members. But the ruling in the congregation is the prerogative of the elders. And not only that, but Christ, who is the head, gives that authority to the church, and specifically to the elders. And then the elders, with that derived authority, bequeath authority to the deacons, who are assistants to the elders, to carry out their function in the diaconal ministry of the church. So this is a careful dance. Leaders need to lead courageously and valiantly, but they also need to be sensitive to the state of the flock. Now, what do I mean by this? While leaders need to lead courageously, we also need to have a pulse on the state of the congregation. There's this little phrase couched somewhere in the book of Genesis, and it goes like this. Jacob was traveling from point A to B with all of the tribes. All of the tribes, the women, the children, the men. And there's this one little phrase that Moses used that Jacob went at the speed of the women and the children. Now what does that mean? It means very simply that he didn't want to go so quickly and so aggressively that he would break the spirit and the bodies of the people. But at the same time, he had to challenge them enough to stay on pace. And I think that this is a very good model for leadership in the church. Pastors have to know their congregation. I've heard countless stories of pastors who have come to a church, and they are convinced, for example, that the church must practice church discipline. They must. or else we lose one of the marks of the true church. But at the same time, they realize, as they look out on the congregation, that the congregation wasn't quite ready for that. So you have a few different options. One option is to say, you know, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. And I've seen pastors institute church discipline, and it just broke the congregation, and the church shut its doors. It just folded, right? On the other hand, an option is you wisely and methodically but forthrightly take time to teach through the concept. Show people that the concept of church membership and church discipline is anchored in scripture and trust the spirit of God that he will bring the congregation along. And so this is a careful dance, right? It's the same thing in a marriage, right? As men, we are the heads of our wife and our children. But the Bible also says that fathers are not to exasperate their children. It also says that husbands are to treat their wives as the weaker vessel and as a co-heir of the grace of life. So this means that in any given direction that we would have our wife or children go, we also need to take into consideration their frailty. their weaknesses, their proclivities. And we need as much as possible to adjust to their abilities at that time, while at the same time challenging them to go further and higher. Now this is a very, very difficult thing. And it doesn't take just leaders, it takes the whole church. Leaders need to be sensitive to where their members are. Now, all of that being said, There do come times when a pastor finds himself in a situation where things are so bad in the church that you really don't have the luxury or the time to wait until everybody comes along. Certain very strategic doctrinal things. And so you just must act, and if people leave, people leave. Now, what is the precedent for this? Well, I think of Josiah's reformation. In Josiah's reformation, they found the law, it was hidden in the janitor's closet in the temple, and it comes out, and they read it, and Josiah realizes, wow, we've gotten way off the mark. Now, Josiah didn't say, all right, I've got a 50-year plan, right? I've got a 50-year plan to bring people back to the true and pure worship of Yahweh. No, he instituted things right away, just from top down, like we're doing this, right? And in the Reformation, John Calvin and many of the Reformers thought the very same way. John Calvin has this famous article that he wrote, and it was something to the effect of the necessity of thorough Reformation in the church now, right? And make no mistake, the Reformers, if you read the history, they tried very, very hard to reason with Rome. They tried to show Rome her errors. They tried to say, can we talk about this? Can we reason together? But Rome just put their palm in their face and said, no, we'll have nothing of it. And so the reformers said, we can't wait 100, 150, 200 years for this to happen. The gospel is at stake. This is the burning center of the revelation of God, and Rome has perverted it. We must act now. And they broke away reluctantly. But nonetheless, they broke away. So the challenge of the pastor, and shall I say the pastors in a plurality of an eldership, is carefully weighing out and teasing out Which issues are issues that we need to die on a hill for? And which issues are issues that we can maybe take a generation to tease out? And let me just say, please pray for us because these questions, these challenges are not always simple. In fact, they're oftentimes fraught with many, many difficulties. Now, as overseers, one of the things that we do is we implement what is called a philosophy of ministry. What is a philosophy of ministry? We've talked about this from time to time in the context of this church. Very simply, a philosophy of ministry is a grid or a framework through which you apply things in the Word of God. So, for example, some in the evangelical world will have what's called a seeker-sensitive model of the church. That is a philosophy of ministry, right? And what that philosophy of ministry is, is basically this. The church really should be geared toward unbelievers. The goal of the church is to get unbelievers saved. And so we are going to prioritize the experience and dare I say feelings and consciences of unbelievers over believers in the church. And that is going to be our goal. And so when the church growth movement in the 1970s and 80s with Bill Hybels and that whole movement got going, what they saw is that the church got incredibly large. It got bigger and bigger and bigger. And they thought to themselves, well, this is a good thing, right? I mean, if the church is getting bigger, that's a good thing, right? But after many years of evaluation, they came to the conclusion we were operating off of pragmatic considerations. A pragmatic consideration says, if it works, it's right. But that's not always true, is it? In fact, it may be that what you're doing is giving thousands of people a false sense of assurance that they're okay when they're not okay. And furthermore, in this philosophy of ministry, the New Testament is very clear that the church is for believers, not unbelievers. Certainly, we want unbelievers to come in. Certainly, we want you to invite unbelievers, bring them to church, and have them sit under the sound of the gospel. But the family represented in the church is believers. The membership of the church is a regenerate church membership, which means people who have been saved and baptized and are legitimate members of the new covenant. And if unbelievers want a part in that, they need to become a member of the new covenant through church membership. So that, you know, seeker sensitive approaches is a philosophy of ministry. Another aspect of a philosophy of ministry is your vetting of leaders and how soon you put them in office. So many of you are familiar with the with Mark Driscoll's church, Mars Hill. They did a podcast series on it, and it was a big to-do, and basically this podcast was exposing many of the problems with Mars Hill. One of the interesting things I learned from that podcast is that after they had evaluated everything that had happened, after the smoke cleared, one of the conclusions they came to is that they were putting leaders into ministry far too quickly. And they weren't vetting their leaders according to the qualifications, for example, for elders in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. They were vetting leaders according to how effective they were in filling seats. They were vetting leaders according to how gifted they were in speaking. They were vetting leaders according to how charismatic their personality was and how well they managed the operations of the church. And what they found is that these leaders were being disqualified left and right. So another dimension of a philosophy of ministry is how you think about leaders in the life of the church. So what is Grace Covenant Church's philosophy of ministry. You could summarize our philosophy of ministry very simply. Ordinary means of grace. Word, sacrament, and prayer. Deep discipleship paired with the exercise of the keys of the kingdom. No frills, no gimmicks, just the basics. Why? Because we believe with all of our heart that this was the model of the apostles, and that when people genuinely seek Christ through word, sacrament, and prayer, they are sanctified and God is glorified. Our philosophy of ministry is not trying to fill the church with people who are not regenerate. Our philosophy is not to suggest that people repent of their sins, rather than calling them to repent of their sin. Our philosophy is not charming people with our magnetic and charismatic personalities. Rather, it is, as Paul says in Ephesians 4.15, speaking the truth in love. We are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ. So this is what we're about, word, sacrament, and prayer. And the stage upon which word, sacrament, and prayer are primarily distributed is the Lord's Day, the market day of the soul. We don't ask much of you during the week. We do have home groups that if you want to come to, that's great. But our philosophy is Monday through Saturday, raise your families, go to work, Be responsible, be a good neighbor, be a good worker, be a good father, a good husband, a good mother, a good wife, and then Sunday come back and get resalinated, get filled back up, get encouraged, and then instructed and exhorted, and believe in the gospel, and repent of your sins once again, and then go back into the world and be Christians. That's our simple philosophy, which means that our Lord's days are very full, and that's very intentional. Because if it is truly the market day of the soul, if it is truly the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it. It is the day when we as Christians are recharged. So now thirdly, we want to think of our pastor as a shepherd. And let me unpack this concept of word, sacrament, and prayer under this heading. As a shepherd, your pastors feed you with the Word of God. Every Sunday your minister is preparing a banquet for you, and that banquet is meant to feed your souls. Those venues for those banquets are Sunday school morning worship and evening worship. The pastor is not here to entertain you with his preaching. He's not here primarily to make you feel good. Pastors have a similar role to the prophets as they spoke forth the Word of God. And like the prophets, pastors sometimes deal with people who come to the Word of God for the wrong reasons. Let me give you one example of this. I'm going to read to you from Ezekiel 33, verses 30-33. And I want you to keep in mind, this is the struggle that Ezekiel had. that was revealed to him by the Lord, and it is the struggle that pastors sometimes have. Listen to this, Ezekiel 33, verses 30 through 33. As for you, son of man, your people who talk together about you by the walls and at the doors of the house say to one another, each to his brother, come and hear what the word is that comes from the Lord. And they come to you as people come, and they sit before you as my people, and they hear what you say, but they will not do it. For with lustful talk in their mouths they act, their heart is set on their gain. And behold, you are to them like one who sings lustful songs with a beautiful voice and plays well on an instrument, for they hear what you say, but they will not do it. When this comes, and come it will, then they will know that a prophet has been among them." In God's providence, He has specifically given you these pastors to minister to your soul. We are not YouTube influencers. We are not conference speakers speaking to generic, nameless, faceless Christians. We are men who shepherd your souls. We speak with you, we pray for you, and we are acquainted with your struggles to the degree that you allow us to be acquainted with those struggles. And when we go into our studies to prepare a banquet, make no mistake, After we first apply that Word of God to us, we are thinking about how that Word of God is applied to you. We're applying it to your struggles. We're applying it to your discouragement. We're applying it to your despair. We're applying it to your proclivities. And to the degree that you get offended that your minister might be talking about you, you've thoroughly missed the point of what the ministry of the Word is supposed to be. It is meant to speak to you in real time. If you experience conviction, you should bless God that He has been pleased to break through your heart and communicate grace through the Word. And so I say, don't be like the people in Ezekiel's day, who like to come in here and be entertained, and they like if the pastor has a good turn of phrase, but they're unwilling to actually do it, because at that point, the word of God becomes void. What we need is to sit under the word of God and let Jesus shepherd our souls through its application. So let us not fight against the Word. But as Peter says in 1 Peter 2, 2, like newborn infants long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation. If indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good, the Word of God brings life to those who want it. So we as shepherds feed you with the Word of God. We give you the sacraments, which is the visible representation of the gospel. And we also, beloved, we lead you in prayer. And I confess to you that over the course of my ministry here, Pastor Ken and I have labored diligently to cultivate a culture of prayer in this church. And we faced opposition over the years, but we forged ahead because Paul tells the church that they are to gather together and pray as a normative part of the church's life. You know what we've seen over the years? We've seen the church grow leaps and bounds through prayer. Spurgeon was once asked, what is the best litmus test to measure the spiritual vitality of a church? Without missing a beat, he said the prayer meeting. He said, the prayer meeting. He said, when you go to the prayer meeting, you will see the health of a church. A praying people is a growing people. A praying people is a caring people. A praying people is a people who desires to bear one another's burdens. A praying people is a people who knows what dependence on the Lord looks like. A praying people is a people who makes the most of the Lord's day. And then as shepherds, we also exhort you to godliness. The pastor should never think that everyone is okay. We all need to be growing and challenged in our walk with the Lord, and this is what preaching does. Preaching is meant to shake us out of our spiritual lethargy. Preaching is meant to stir up the grace of God within us. Preaching is meant to challenge false thinking and sinful mindsets within the congregation. Did you ever notice that while Jesus was quite patient with His disciples, He also addressed their childish ways and challenged them to greater and greater dependence upon the Spirit? He called them to come pray with Him, and what did they do? They fell asleep. And He rebukes them for it. Do you notice that the disciples don't say, Lord, why are you laying a guilt trip on us? Why are you making us feel bad? Such a response would be a fleshly response that would itself have been rebuked by our Lord. But then finally, as a shepherd, your pastor is a counselor and discipler. What is discipleship? It is cooperation with the Holy Spirit of God through the medium of the Word of God. Notice that pastor is nowhere in that definition. A pastor or discipler, for that matter, is merely there to point you to the Word of God, explain it, and apply it, and give accountability for you to live it out. We live in a clinical and psychological society where people think that going to a therapist will solve their problems. We just don't think that way as Christians. As a pastor, I'm here to come alongside you and feed you with the Word of God. Sometimes that means just listening. Other times that means encouraging you. Other times that means praying for you. Other times that means rebuking you. Other times that means confronting. If you seek counsel or discipleship from a pastor, you should expect to work hard and exercise self-control. Oftentimes, It gets worse before it gets better. And I've noticed this time and time again. It often gets worse before it gets better. But I'll tell you this. If you experience that in your effort to be discipled and to be sanctified, it does get worse, but then gets better. You're probably on the right track because sanctification means killing sin. Killing sin is not pleasant. Killing sin is incredibly difficult. It requires discipline, it requires denying yourself, it requires rewiring how you think about things, identifying thoughts as toxic and doing away with them, putting them off and putting on Christ. And at the end of the day, that's what pastors are here to help you do, is to put on Christ. To put on Christ. And that is our effort through the distribution of word and sacrament and prayer. That is our goal as we lead. That is our goal as we oversee. That is our goal as we guard the truth. We want this place to be a habitus of Christ-centered, God-glorifying, Spirit-filled growth and grace. And that growth, if you trace it all the way down to its root, comes down to this, Christ and Him crucified. Christ and Him crucified. That Christ was sent from the Father to live a perfect life and to die a sinner's death in your place. And all of our sanctification is looking back to that and out of gratitude killing sin and denying ourselves and exercising self-control so that we might, just as Paul said in Ephesians chapter 4, grow up into mature manhood. We don't want to be children tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine, but we want to be fitted into the image of Christ. So may the Lord give us help to do this. Next week I'll come back and give some specific application of how this fleshes itself out. So let me stop there. The microphone is open. If anybody has any questions or comments, come on up and ask your question. Before I close this out, I want to make a reading recommendation. This book is by a fellow named Christopher Ashe, and it's called, The Book Your Pastor Wishes You Would Read, But Is Too Embarrassed To Ask, okay? So I guess I'm not too embarrassed, but I do, in humility, ask you if you get a chance to give this a read. Once again, Christopher Ashe, The Book Your Pastor Wishes You Would Read, But Is Too Embarrassed To Ask. It's put out by the Good Book Company. It's a very easy read, and one of the things that this book does is just kind of give you some insight into the life of a pastor, his struggles, his proclivities, what he's trying to accomplish if he's doing his job, and how you, as a member, can encourage him. And let me just say, my... greatest privilege apart from having my wife and my children, my greatest privilege so far in my life has been the privilege and the honor of shepherding you as a people. It'll be nine years in August, and I have never regretted it. I've had travails. I've been through the ringer. I've been in the crucible. I find myself in the crucible quite often as a pastor. And what I'm learning, albeit as I fight back my flesh, what I'm learning to appreciate is that every struggle that a pastor has is a struggle as he's walking in the path of Jesus, because Jesus was a man of sorrows. Jesus had a burden that he carried all of his life. And yet Jesus had joy. Jesus said things like, take heart, I have overcome the world. And so I want to thank you publicly for the rich privilege and honor that it has been, and I pray continues to be, to shepherd you. I want to thank each and every one of you. You know who you are for the many ways that you have encouraged me and Pastor Ken and our deacons. It is a great privilege to serve in this congregation, and I pray that the Lord gives us many more years together. So let me pray for us, and we'll conclude. Our God and Father, thank you for your instruction this morning. We do thank you, O Christ, that you have given gifts to the church. And we pray, Father, that we would treat these gifts the way you intend them to be treated. We do pray for this congregation and ask that as we, week by week, engage in this careful dance of ministry between leaders and members, that you would give all of us grace, patience, a proclivity toward forgiveness and long-suffering, and overall, Father, joy, Because in this vineyard, we are doing your work. In this vineyard, we are proclaiming Christ and Him crucified. And in this vineyard, we have seen and continue to see people being transformed by the good news of Jesus Christ. Help us to treasure this privilege and honor, and we pray that you would guard us in days, weeks, years, decades to come. We ask these things in Christ's