Beginning well in the ministry – how do we do that? My primary purpose this evening is really to have one final chat with these three young men who are about to receive degrees and go off into the ministry. I do that, though, in the awareness that you are here too and you might just learn a thing or two about ministry from the things I want to say to them. My secondary purpose is re­ally to spark some kind of discussion among the church­es about how we can be church more effectively precisely by ensuring that men starting out and men presently in ministry like them can do their work more effectively.

What I really want to do, in other words, is answer the question: how would I do it if I were doing it all over again? What would I do if it was 1979 again for me? Or: if a professor would have sat me down as a young man thirty-four years ago, what do I wish he would have told me? It's the kind of reflection a man who has entered his seventh decade has once in a while – only tonight I will do this publicly.

The point is that I suspect most young men are not particularly intentional and reflective about what they are setting out to do. They aren't thinking long-term. There is no strategic plan. It's just: well, there are two sermons for next Sunday, there's Council on Monday, Catechism on Tuesdays - let's get to it. For many, that's just how it goes for thirty-five to forty years.

CSO⤒🔗

Let me begin then with some reflection on the nature and purpose of pastoral ministry – how really should you see yourself as you go off into ministry? It seems to me that despite all the expectations of members and office bearers, pastors ought not to see themselves as ad­ministrators. Running a church will inevitably involve a great deal of paperwork as committees and ecclesiastic­al assemblies attempt to make progress, as policies are shaped, as growth and development happens, as budgets are discussed. But ministers are called to an office that is much, much more than pushing paper. We should not see ourselves as the Chief Administrative Officer – not even the CEO, the Chief Executive Officer - of the church. We are probably not trained or gifted in these areas. Nor do we need to be. We are not even the Chief Academic Of­ficers, as our task goes beyond academics as well. If we want an acronym for our task, perhaps it should be CSO, Chief Spiritual Officer. In a nutshell, your task as Minis­ter of the Word is to oversee and direct the spiritual lives, direction, and purposes, of the people of God. Along with the elders and deacons, who do this on a part-time basis, your calling is to be on the lookout for all that encour­ages and all that discourages the people of God with a view to their lives in the face of a holy and gracious God.

The word "spiritual" does however need some degree of commentary, as it is a bit of a waxed nose to which everyone – even those in other religions – gives a different meaning. I believe that Andreas Kostenberger gives us one of the best discussions of the nature of "spirituality" in his delightful book Excellence: the Character of God and the Pursuit of Scholarly Virtue. He suggests there that,

Spirituality, for Christians, is ... grounded objective­ly in the gospel of Jesus Christ and experienced as a reality in the presence of the Holy Spirit with them rather than merely constituting a subjective mystical experience... The New Testament does not define spirituality in terms of solitude or introspection as if a person's spirituality were measured by the amount of time spent in a pursuit of mystical experience of the divine. Times of prayerful solitude must lead to active obedience and service in the world. (p. 70)

Kostenberger distinguishes definitive, positional spirit­uality from progressive spirituality, suggesting that be­lievers are spiritual because they belong to Christ and are indwelt by the Spirit, but they need then to develop that spirituality progressively so that they walk in the Spirit and neither grieve nor quench him. Then "spirit­ual" is not just something you are in your devotional time for fifteen or thirty minutes, but "growth in spirit­uality is evidenced in the form of active obedience, love, mission, and corporate unity and peace." "We ... progress in spirituality as we express love for others in practical and concrete ways, make our day-by-day decisions in obedience to God's commands, involve ourselves in the fulfillment of God's mission in the world, and promote peace and unity within God's church" (p. 74).

Kostenberger then goes on to suggest that the two means that foster the spiritual lives of the people of God stressed in Scripture are: prayer and the study of God's Word. Paul calls us to pray without ceasing (1 Thess 5:17). Scripture is always telling the people of God to be found in the Scriptures. "Solitude and silence become spiritual disciplines only if they foster time to pray and encounter God in the Scriptures" (p. 76).

So this, then, is first, young men. Brothers, know what you are! the Chief Spiritual Officers of God's church.

Priority of Preaching←⤒🔗

If this is your task, then obviously you must give the highest possible priority to the preaching of the Word of God. If we are not in the first place administrators, we are not in the first place counselors and social workers either. Our first place is to lead people in the praise and adoration of the people of God, through prayer and the preaching of his Word. It's about the primacy of preach­ing. There will be many situations of stress and distress that will pull on the heart strings of the minister of the Word, but week after week, in scheduling and planning, he must retain adequate time and attention to the prep­aration that preaching demands. The time to feed the people of God is when they come together at the feeding trough that we call worship services; if we fail here the sheep will scatter for food here, there, and everywhere, and bringing them back to where they belong will take a whole lot more effort and time.

It will mean that just as a good manager is only busy with the things that no one else on his staff can do, so we pass on as many tasks as we possibly can to others so that we can concentrate on that which God has unique­ly called and trained us to do. And a good council will ensure that their pastor can do exactly that, and will attempt to find for him whatever volunteer or paid staff they can to ensure that he is just dedicated to his unique and challenging task.

I was intrigued by a section in Eugene Peterson's book The Contemplative Pastor, where Peterson is think­ing about how the life of a congregation that doesn't have a pastor still carries on quite fine. He says:

A congregation would go for months, sometimes as long as a year or two, without a regular pastor. 'And I thought, All these things I am so busy doing – they aren't being done in that pastor less congregation, and nobody seems to mind. I asked myself, what if I, without leaving, quit doing them right now? Would anybody mind? I did, and they don't' (p. 34).

In other words, I did quit, and they didn't mind or even notice. Sometimes we need that kind of attitude.

Very concretely, there are two reasons why it is crit­ically important to give priority to preaching.

1. Else they might not be there – physically. I suspect there has never been an age that is less committed to the concept of church, to a body of doctrine than this one. Sheep are prone to scatter quicker today than ever before. The fact is, if you don't preach effectively, there's always some preacher down the road who, in their estimation, does it better, and there they go.
    
2. Else they might not "be" there – mentally. Ours is a culture that is becoming increasingly able to create its own context. The electronic gadgetry and social media allows everyone to let in people and things that matter and shut out that which doesn't. It is a reality of post-modernity that people shape their own reality, by mak­ing decisions moment by moment to turn off and to turn on, to let in and block out. It means that every time you preach you have about two minutes to convince today's generation that what you are about to say is relevant to them and needs to be heard.

A passage of Scripture that comes to mind in that regard is Acts 6:2. The point in Acts 6 is not that the widows need to be taken care of, or that deacons need to be installed, but it is the priority of the Word of God and the very real possibility that then as well as today other things might crowd out the most significant task of preaching the Word. "It would not be right," the Twelve said, "for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables." It's not that the apostles were too good for the task of serving. Ministry is serving. But the Twelve decide: "We will turn this responsibility to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the Word" (6:3, 4).

Such is the nature of our age and the urgency of good preaching today that I think there is not a single council that would not be helped by a vigorous discus­sion on this point.

There is a whole lot of work that the councils (or con­sistory with the deacons) do which needs to be re-evalu­ated with respect to the degree that ministers and even they as elders are involved. Council members of large churches especially need to be constantly assessing: is the ministry of the Word being short-changed because the minister is so busy with things that others can do (just as in Acts 6)? Do ministers really need to be en­gaged in issues that have to do with buildings, borders, budgets, and the like? Is that a wise use of their time and expertise? The fact is: these things tend also to be quite contentious issues, and the minister is usually thought to be kind of an outsider with respect to half these matters anyway. We need to ask the question: what is lost if he "doesn't" here? And don't we actually gain if those ener­gies are used elsewhere? And the rationale for doing so is not because these things are not sufficiently "spiritual;" they certainly are, according to the definitions above. But it is because they clutter up the life of the minister (and the elders) and detract from what is central about those offices. I don't mind admitting that some of the most difficult moments in my ministry years were mo­ments when we were busy with contentious council mat­ters – matters that I would have been wise to stay out of or at least only minimally involved. Consistory is a dif­ferent matter; there the elders of the flock are busy and much more unified as they wrestle with the questions at the core of the ministry of the Word – how to encour­age members and families to just live God's way, and be directed to God's praise.

So that's second. Once you know who you are to be, you need to attempt to stay focused on the things that you and you alone are gifted and trained to do. Realize that there are others in the congregation who are better equipped and positioned to take care of the business side of running a church, and some things just work better if you don't get involved in them. And insofar as you might need to be involved, your task is really to keep an eye on the impact such decisions might have on the bigger question of how these things impact people's spiritual lives before God.

Nature of Preaching←⤒🔗

Seeing the preaching task within the context of Chris­tian spirituality also helps us, I believe, to see preaching properly. The people of God need a whole lot more than more "information." They need to do much more than download a whole body of "information" and have their thinking rearranged. If that is enough, then the Enlight­enment philosophy is correct and everyone living in our information age should be just fine. In another excellent book, Paul Tripp says, "The ultimate purpose of the Word of God is not theological information but heart and life transformation" (A Dangerous Calling: Confronting the Unique Challenges of Pastoral Ministry, p. 51). "Biblical maturity is never just about what you know; it's always about how grace has employed what you have come to know to transform the way you live." Or, as Greg Dutcher puts it: "If knowing the Bible and understanding theology were reliable measures of discipleship, Satan would be the greatest disciple ever. After all, his knowledge of Scripture is exceptional and he's been observing the spiritual realm for quite a long time" (Killing Calvinism: How to Destroy a Perfectly Good Theology from the Inside, p. 25).

I suspect that there is a tendency among young preachers to aim at issues. Cover all the issues, teach them about all those points, and improvement will be evident. To be sure, that may be helpful to a limited ex­tent. But preaching has to do with the ministry of the Holy Spirit who is in the business of transforming hearts and lives. Preaching is not just issue oriented or topic directed. It really is heart to heart proclamation under the power of the Holy Spirit. Aim for the heart and many more issues will correct themselves than you can ad­dress. And the way to connect with the heart of your audience, I suspect, is to make it apparent that you are speaking from the heart under the conviction of the Holy Spirit. Tripp speaks about his many discussions with pas­tors, and how many of them suffer from bitterness, are "socially uncomfortable," have "messy or dysfunctional relationships at home," or struggle with "secret, uncon­fessed sin" (p. 21). Clearly, the transformation needs to begin with the heart of the preacher himself. Dutcher would say that perhaps he has spent too much time and effort attempting to be a theologian, and not enough energy to simply being a disciple. And the only way to pastor then is to build this outer wall around yourself and disclose nothing of your own weakness and vulner­ability. Marble statues don't do well with heart to heart communication, do they?

Tripp says at one point:

I think we would be shocked if we knew how many pastors have lost their joy – how many of us get up at the beginning of each week and grind it out, if for no other reason than we don't know what else to do. For how many of us is ministry no longer an act of worship? How many of us are building a kingdom in our ministries other than the kingdom of God? How many of us are carrying a burden of hurt and bitterness into each ministry moment? How many of us want to escape and just don't know how? (p. 37)

The pulpit is not left unaffected by the personal struggles of the pastor. At another point, Tripp says the opposite:

 I am more and more convinced that what gives a ministry its motivations, perseverance, humility, joy, tenderness, passion, and grace is the devotional life of the one doing ministry... It is my worship that enables me to lead others to worship. It is my sense of need that leads me to tenderly pastor those in need of grace. It is my joy in my identity in Christ that leads me to want to help others live in the middle of what it means to be "in Christ." In fact, one of the things that makes a sermon compelling is that the preacher is worshiping his way through his own sermon (p. 34).¹

While preaching necessarily involves a great deal of self-control, pastors should not be afraid to reveal something of themselves and of their own lives before God. In another delightful book, John Piper says he discovered why the writings of the noted scholar, F. F. Bruce, are unnecessarily dry; in his biography, Bruce says "I do not care to speak much – especially in public – about the things that mean most to me." Piper rightly says that he prefers the opposite – he doesn't care to speak about things that don't mean the most to him ("Brothers, we are NOT professionals" p. 145-6). That also causes the pastor to speak with passion on the matters he preaches about; and those around him should know – when the passion is gone, something else is wrong...

When you think about it – this intertwining of the personal and the public life of the pastor is something Paul is frequently busy with when he writes to young Timothy. He does not hold back on notes about his own life (1 Tim 1:12-16) as he urges Timothy about both his public and his private life – "train yourself to be godly" (1 Tim 4:7), "watch your life and doctrine closely" (1 Tim 4:16), "But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteous­ness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness" (1 Tim 6:11). I have only taken some quotes from 1 Timothy. There are many more in 2 Timothy and Titus.

So this then is third, and maybe fourth. Give great priority to the Preaching of the Word. And also for the sake of doing it in an authentic and genuine manner, watch all aspects of your own life and walk before the face of God, in your family, and in the company of the people of God. The CSO of the church must know what it is to be spiritual in the true and deep sense of that word.

Setting Margins←⤒🔗

But how, concretely, do we manage to do all this and more?

Well, one thing to learn right from the outset of a life of ministry is how to set margins in your life. The point here is that ministry, despite its divine ori­gins and delightful purposes, can be somewhat of a mon­ster, and if you let it go it can consume you, your wife, your family, your everything. So you need some ways to keep the monster at bay.

It has to do first of all with time management. This is so utterly crucial because in order to preach well, and to reflect adequately on the direction of the lives of the people in your charge, you need time. Ministry can't be done in a hurry. You can't be flitting about from place to place, from crisis to crisis throughout the week and then be expected to deliver two wonderful, life-engaging ser­mons on Sunday. One needs time to be drenched in the Scriptures, to consider prayerfully its message and its impact, and to determine how best to deliver it. The kind of preaching needed today requires quietness and soli­tude, concentration and intensity. The truth is: it's really not hard to spend forty hours on two sermons. Just be­cause these men tonight receive a M.Div. degree doesn't meant that sermons are just going to pop out of them at the appropriate time on a weekly basis. It doesn't mean they don't have to study. Sorry, brothers: your studies have just begun. All we've really done is teach you how to do it. That's why if the pastor and teacher of the congregation manages to preach and teach well, anything else he does really must be considered bonus. And a con­gregation that hungers for great preaching must allow ministers the time and space that this requires.

At the same time, it requires margin in other ways as well. Every minister, especially in large churches, will discover there are more meetings than anyone cares to attend, more pains and hurts than you can possibly as­sist with. If the minister is the first go-to man for all the needs of the congregation, he cannot possibly dedicate enough time and attention to the preaching of the Word (Acts 6:3, 4). Therefore, I believe it's also critical that the council and congregation realize that the first ad­dress for all the ministry needs is not that of the minis­ter. We must teach the congregation that the first line of responsibility for the pastoral issues that arise is really with the elders and not with the minister. It's not the elders who need to help the minister in the challenges of pastoral ministry, but it's the minister who helps the elders as the needs arise. The elders are not just the ones who sit in the bleachers supervising the harried schedule of a minister who manages to do twenty hours of visit­ing alongside the forty hours of sermon preparation, and then sit in judgement about that preaching, wondering why it is not better than it is. And I, by the way, am not saying that ministers should leave all pastoral work to the elders; how will their preaching connect with the pew if they do that? But I am saying that the preaching must necessarily come first. I once was taken aback when I learned that it was said of me that I did most of my pastoral work from the pulpit. I was first quite offended because I thought I was quite faithful in that area as well, but when I reflected on it I realized this is as it ought to be – without centering out individuals, we need to preach to the needs of the people of God and actively engage them from the pulpit.

This means time management, and it means you won't be able to be the social butterfly that some want you to be. As Eugene Peterson points out, with much of this, "The trick, of course, is to get to the calendar before anyone else does." He says:

The appointment calendar is the tool with which to get un-busy. It's a gift of the Holy Ghost ... that provides the pastor with the means to get time and acquire lei­sure for praying, preaching, and listening. It is more effective than a protective secretary; it is less expen­sive than a retreat house... When I appeal to my appointment calendar, I am beyond criticism (p. 31).

If you say to someone, "my calendar is full that morning," they will not have the nerve to say "With what?" But if you say, "I was planning to study that morning," they will think and maybe even say, "Well, you can do that another day."

So too when it comes to family time, the real trick of course is to pencil in family time before anyone else lays claim to it. Maybe you need to pass that calendar on to your wife even before you start filling it in and others start demanding their slots. Because the truth is, and I can't state it strongly enough: Don't ever believe that you have to sacrifice your family on the altar of ministry. If elders need to manage their children and households well before they get to become elders (1 Tim. 3:12), ministers must continue to manage their fam­ilies well if they are to continue to be a blessing for the people of God. We won't have strong churches unless we have strong ministries; but we won't have strong minis­tries unless we have strong families.

So this is fifth, guard yourself and your ministry by guarding your time and your energy. And this is sixth ­actually, it's first: guard your family and be an example also in this most fragile area of our world.

I will leave you with two more brief thoughts. What virtues are most important in ministers? My wife would be quick to single out two especially.

First, brothers, be humble. In the words of Tripp:

You are most loving, patient, kind, and gracious when you are aware that there is no truth that you could give to another that you don't desperately need yourself. You are most humble and gentle when you think that the person you are ministering to is more like you than unlike you (p. 23).

As a senior pastor told me in the early years of my min­istry, "When you are about to use a text to step on some­one's toes, make sure you feel the same pressure of that text on your own toes." Humility will also mean, by the way, that you won't go into that new congregation and expect to turn on its head with all the changes you want to make. You are just one office-bearer among many. You need to be a team player. That takes humility and a win­ning of trust.

And second, brothers, be passionate. There is some­thing that's almost as bad as being a heretic. And that is: being boring. When you think about it: isn't it heresy to think that the gospel is less than the most exciting news ever told, the best message ever heard? The truth is: "Both passion and boredom are contagious: they pass from teacher to student" (Kostenberger, p. 117). From pul­pit to pew. I have told our students: "If you're going to preach like a radio announcer, then please go and be­come one. You've come to the wrong address." All over the Scriptures, God is passionate and jealous about the gospel. He gives us a message, a calling, which is worth being passionate about.

It's even our barometer: when I lose my passion, I need to reflect on where my own trouble is, where my own heart is at. Without passion, you are just a talking head, a noisy gong, a clanging cymbal (1 Cor 13).

May the God of all grace bless you in this and cause your years of ministry to be years of joy.