Four Ways You Should Pray for Your Pastors

One of the greatest joys in my life is serving as pastor of the Summit. But ministry can be both messy and exhausting. That’s why I am so thankful for the prayer warriors in our congregation. I truly believe that one of the main reasons the Summit has grown is simply that God has answered the bold prayers of those in our congregation. The most important ministry anyone in our church can be involved in is that of prayer.

We believe the church is God’s Plan A and the hope for the world. As a leader of a church, that is humbling, so I always appreciate when people ask me, “How can we pray for you?” In fact, I get the question often enough that I thought I’d answer it publicly. Here are four very practical ways (inspired by James MacDonald) that you can be praying for your pastors:

1.     Pray that we will make God’s Word fully known. 

Colossians 1:25, “I became a minister [of the church] according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known.” 

Before we are your leaders and pastors, we are your servants. The call to pastor is the call to wash the feet of those you serve. My preaching is meant to be for your service and for God’s glory, not for my platform. There is no greater way that we as pastors can serve you than to give you God’s Word, which Jesus calls our daily sustenance.

 

Pray that as we serve, preach, teach, and counsel in our community, that God’s Word would be made fully known in the hearts and minds of those who hear.

2.     Pray that we will reprove, rebuke and exhort people with great patience.
2 Timothy 4:2, “Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.” 

Exhorting people is fun and energizing, especially when they are on board with your vision. Reproving and rebuking? Not so much. But another word for pastor is “shepherd,” and a good shepherd would never stand by and watch wolves take out his sheep. In the same way, you can pray that we are able to reprove those who are straying, rebuke those who are divisive, and exhort those who are in need of encouragement – all in a way that is winsome and reflective of the patience that God has with us.

3.     Pray for sound doctrine.
Titus 1:9, “Hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it.” 

There is nothing more dangerous in the church than false doctrine. Part of the danger comes from the fact that a lot of false doctrine can be really popular. If I preached “10 Steps to Your Best Life Now!” we could draw some great crowds, but sound doctrine comes from Scripture, not from pragmatism. There is a great temptation to preach and
tell people what we think will make them feel better – but God’s Word alone is what changes lives.

Pray that we do not succumb to the temptation to grow a crowd, but that we teach sound doctrine from the “Word [that] is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”

4.     Pray that we will openly and unapologetically share the truth.
2 Corinthians 4:2 “By setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.” 

If you have never been offended by the gospel, you have never truly heard the gospel. The gospel, by its very nature, is offensive. It strips away everything we think we need, leaving us feeling completely helpless and exposed. But it then clothes us in the love and acceptance of Christ, giving us comfort, purpose, and strength that we could never have dreamed of. If we refuse to let the gospel expose our wounds, we’ll never feel the healing that Christ offers. 

Pray that we share the gospel message boldly and unashamedly in our community. The gospel of grace does what nothing else can—it transforms us from the inside out. May we never move beyond it. 

J.D. Greear is the lead pastor of The Summit Church, in Raleigh-Durham, NC and author of Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary (2011) and Stop Asking Jesus into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved (2013). 

The Dangers of Moralistic Men’s Ministries

The following article by Dr. David Prince, "What God Has Joined Together: Indicatives and Imperatives", while not directly about ministry to men, is applicable to its most troubling problem. And that is its proclivity to focus not on the gospel but on moralism i.e. rule keeping, working harder, being better, doing good, learning principles, and emulating certain biblical characters. None of which is the gospel. Moralism leaves men discouraged, exhausted, more guilty than before and often with a false sense of security. Many ministries major in biblical imperatives (what you have to do to get saved or to stay in "God's good graces" or to have your best life now). Likewise many shortchange (or even ignore) the triumphant biblical indicatives (what God has done for us through the power of the gospel). Christ's words from the Cross "It is finished!" are either missed or misunderstood. The contemporary Christian men's movement often appeals to a man’s will and performance, rather than to continual proclamation of the gospel and living in the light of the gracious acts of God. The Bible doesn't offer us a toolkit of tips, techniques, methods or therapeutic bromides but it infallibly reveals the person and finished work of the God-man Jesus Christ who came to save sinners (both their justification and sanctification). Read Dr. Prince’s helpful article then check out the center of your message to men (and to yourself).

D. A. Carson’s concern that conservative evangelicals may displace the gospel without disowning it, as stated in his book The Cross and Christian Ministry, is particularly applicable to expository preaching. If a preacher exposits, verse-by-verse, books of the Bible focusing on moral, ethical, behavioral and attitudinal change, without mediating the meaning and application of the text through Jesus, he teaches a dangerous lesson -- even if he slaps a gospel presentation on the end. His message is that, while the gospel is necessary as the entry point, it is not at the center of daily Christian living.

Such moralistic preaching communicates that after believers walk through the gospel door, their focus should be keeping God’s rules, learning timeless principles, and noting which biblical characters to emulate and which to spurn. None of these concerns are the center of the biblical message.

Graeme Goldsworthy suggests in his book Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture, that the reason this approach to preaching is prevalent and popular is because “we are all legalists at heart.”

No truths of Scripture are to be understood in isolation. It is possible to preach only true assertions from the Scripture and yet be misleading. When ethical and moral imperatives are proclaimed as sufficient, even abstracted from Jesus, the result is a crossless Christianity in which the central message becomes an exhortation to live according to God’s rules.

Hearers with a seared conscience may develop an attitude of self-righteousness, judging themselves as adequately living by God’s standards. Genuine believers with tender consciences may despair because they know they constantly fall short of God’s commands. In other words, preaching bare moral truths -- moralisms -- can drive people away from Christ. Such sermons are anti-Christian, even if the bare moral and ethical assertions are true.

In Preaching Christ in All of Scripture, Edmund Clowney makes a helpful distinction between what he describes as “truth to the first power” and truth realized in Christ, “truth to the nth power.” The difference between preaching the moral and ethical truths of the Bible and preaching bare moralism is found in whether the meaning of the biblical truth is contextualized by the gospel of the Kingdom. When preachers simply assume the gospel while preaching the imperatives of Christian living, the result is ever-increasing self-righteousness or despair in the hearers.

Jesus and his apostles confronted liberal Sadducees and conservative, legalistic Pharisees who had the same problem, albeit stemming from opposing directions. Both were pursuing religious justification and satisfaction centered on a moralistic grid rather than Christ.

In his 1923 book Christianity and Liberalism, J. Gresham Machen warned, “Here is found the most fundamental difference between liberalism and Christianity -- liberalism is altogether in the imperative (what you do) mood, while Christianity begins with a triumphant indicative (what God has done); liberalism appeals to a man’s will, while Christianity announces, first, a gracious act of God.”

Machen’s critique is true of many today who gladly sign theologically conservative doctrinal statements and intellectually affirm the inerrancy of the Bible. Moralistic preaching abandons a central focus on the gospel and is unfaithful, whether the message affirms liberal or conservative morality.

Some have wrongly responded to the problem of moralistic preaching by asserting that preaching should focus altogether on the gospel indicative. One pastor told me, “We must preach the gospel indicative to transform lives and not the imperatives." I have also heard some pastors who regard accusations of antinomianism against their preaching as confirmation of their fidelity to the gospel, and reject the idea that biblical imperatives are given to encourage sanctified living.

The proper relationship between the gospel indicative and imperative is not to pit one against the other. Rather, it is to understand that their relationship is irreversible. The imperative rests on the foundational indicative and is consequential.

In his book By Faith, Not by Sight: Paul and the Order of Salvation, Richard Gaffin explains, “If it needs saying, Paul’s gospel, as gospel, stands or falls with the irreversibility .... But this irreversible relationship is an inseparable relationship. Paul, we may also generalize, never writes in the indicative without having the imperative in view, at least implicitly.” Faithful proclamation of the gospel indicative includes proclamation of the consequential imperatives. In Paul: An Outline of His Theology, Herman Ridderbos rightly asserted, “Indicative and imperative are both the object of faith, on the one hand in its receptivity, on the other in its activity. For this reason the connection between the two is so close and indissoluble.”

Gaffin also warns in the same volume, however, of the consequences of sermons that ignore either the indicative or imperative. “On balance, the imperative without the indicative leads into a soteriological legalism, to using the imperative either to achieve or secure one’s salvation; it makes Paul a moralist,” Gaffin wrote. “On the other hand, the indicative without the imperative tends to an antinomianism; it leaves us with Paul the mystic.”

We must reject simplistic abstract moralizing of the biblical text, but we must also approach the text knowing that faithfully preaching the gospel indicative requires proclamation of the consequential ethical imperatives.

The ethical imperatives of Scripture presented as a way of salvation are a corruption of the biblical witness. But, the person who has trusted in the gospel of Jesus Christ for salvation necessarily looks to biblical imperatives as the gracious guidance of their Savior and King.

Jesus did not simply come to usher in the salvation of isolated individuals, but to establish his Messianic Kingdom. In his person, the Kingdom of God was “already” at hand and yet it was “not yet” consummated. The redemptive historical reality of the already but not yet of the Kingdom of Christ means that he has already fully accomplished the salvation of his people, but his people in this fallen world have not yet completely learned how to conduct their lives “in step with the truth of the gospel” (Gal. 2:14).

The gospel indicative makes genuine obedience to the ethical imperatives possible and ultimately inevitable (Rom. 8:29, Eph. 2:10). The one who is “in Christ” has been delivered from the vain attempt to obey the imperatives as a means of justification and now hears them as the guidance and direction of a perfectly loving Father (Gal. 4:6).

Delivered from the courtroom of God’s justice, the one who is “in Christ” now is adopted and takes his place in the household of God (Rom. 8:15, Gal. 4:5, Eph. 1:5, 2:19, 1 Tim. 3:15). For the believer, obedience is now a matter of becoming who you already are in Christ. A pastor who avoids preaching on ethical matters is preaching a truncated gospel.

As an outpost of the Kingdom of Christ, the church proclaims the gospel and demonstrates the reign of Christ through living out the ethics of the gospel of the Kingdom. The submission of the church to the Lordship of Christ is to be a constant reminder that the Kingdom has come and that the Kingdom is coming.

Without Christ-centered eschatology there are no ethics, just special interest groups. The gospel indicative tells us God will sum up all things in Christ (Eph. 1:10) and the consequential imperatives call the church to do so right now. When the cruciform community confesses, “Jesus is Lord,” it makes its most vital theological, political and ethical statement and creates a context in which, the gospel that reveals “the righteousness of God” (Rom. 1:17) becomes intelligible.

David E. Prince is the pastor of preaching and vision at Ashland Avenue Baptist Church and a professor of Christian preaching at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Quote from the Movie Open Range

Mack: Shame what this town's come to.

Charley Waite: You could do something about it.

Mack: What? We're freighters. Ralph here's a shopkeeper.

Charley Waite: You're men, ain't you?

Mack: I didn't raise my boys just to see 'em killed.

Charley Waite: Well you may not know this, but there's things that gnaw at a man worse than dying

The Dude’s Guide to Manhood by Darrin Patrick

I’m a biblical manhood skeptic. Weighing in at 135 pounds, never having been in a real fight, and preferring literature to sports—on top of being converted at 20, from a gender-minimalist intellectual background—I approach most books on biblical masculinity with suspicion. Many authors get overexcited about the subject, pulling proof texts to support subcultural masculine values. Others preach a testosterone-fueled gospel where sanctification seems to be the fruit of bared teeth and white knuckles. And while I haven’t yet seen a Christian book baptizing the Art of Manliness ironic-gentleman brand of masculinity, the title and cover of this book made me wonder if I were to review the first.

Darrin Patrick calls The Dude’s Guide to Manhood: Finding True Manliness in a World of Counterfeits a “guidebook” because, he writes, “Most of us feel as though we are setting out on a difficult journey without any direction or help” (xii). “Dudes”—young men struggling with various stages of prolonged adolescence—are without a map laying out the journey of manhood and without a navigator to lead them along it. “We are on our own, and we don’t know where we’re going,” Patrick writes. “And it’s killing us” (xii). The lead pastor of The Journey in St. Louis wants his work to be “a guidebook to true manhood” for struggling dudes who desire to learn but don’t know where to go (xvi).

Unexpected Direction

Patrick’s direction is unexpected. The first nine chapters discuss different characteristics of true manhood: discipline, work ethic, family devotion, and so forth. Patrick approaches these mainly from a common grace perspective, drawing on sociological research (32), biographies (129-30), and even film references (144) with only a smattering of biblical references throughout. Someone with no belief in Christianity whatsoever could acknowledge his cases for each characteristic and even assent to them. But by chapter 10—if not before­—the reader who wants to put these things into practice will begin feeling frustrated and fatigued. How on earth could I start becoming properly disciplined, coachable, emotionally connected, and able to love a family well?

That’s where Patrick makes the big turn. These things are impossible, he says; there’s no way we can overcome our sinful motivations and change our lives on our own. Rather than encouraging us to suck it up and make heroic efforts toward masculinity, Patrick leads us to the only “true and perfect hero” (149) who is both our example and also our Savior. We find true masculinity not in our own perfection but in “trusting in Christ’s perfection for us” (159) and committing our lives to walking in obedient faith in him. The final chapter, which is one of the book’s strongest, discusses how manhood must be lived in light of the forgiveness we have through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.

Patrick’s law-then-gospel approach would work best with young men who may or may not be in the church but aren’t living a consistent life of obedience to God. The format makes it strongest as an evangelistic book: chapter 11 even ends with how to pray a prayer of repentance and trust in Christ. That’s the ideal audience for this work; I imagine a Christian leading a friend or a group of guys through each chapter, discussing their difficulties and (ideally) letting the book, by the power of the Holy Spirit, lead the struggling dudes through conviction to the cross. I think that’s what Patrick has in mind for this work, and it’s largely a successful effort.

Well-Rounded Vision

One major strength of The Dude’s Guide to Manhood is the well-roundedness of Patrick’s vision for masculinity. I half-expected his idea of a “real man” to be a poster Acts 29 church planter: independent, strong-willed, action-oriented. Conan the Barbarian, but, you know, a Christian. But the “masculine shape” presented wasn’t that at all. Determination is part of it, yes; so are discipline, work, and the fighting spirit, rightly understood and channeled. But Patrick also adds things like being coachable as well as having proper contentment, family, friends, and emotional expression. He delves into these attributes and others in a balanced manner, highlighting merits and pitfalls in each.

One section that deserves particular mention is his chapter on contentment. We pay lip service to the idea of contentment, Patrick believes, but we don’t really seem to want it. We end up cultivating boredom by constantly seeking new possessions and new experiences (61); we get caught up in the past or the future such that we’re perpetually dissatisfied with the present (65). To fight this temptation, Patrick advises us to adopt rhythm and ritual into our lives: to mark our work weeks with punctuated periods of rest, celebration, and enjoyment. This struck me as wise counsel, given our remarkable ability to live submerged under a constant stream of stimulation with little time to come up for air and reflect on our lives.

Patrick’s chapter on friendship was also particularly insightful. He contrasts true friendship with common counterfeits: acquaintances, drinking buddies, fans, and cliques. He also offers simple but clear advice on cultivating friendships with men that involve special, “intentional” time in addition to doing common, routine things together. Friendship requires perseverance, he acknowledges, but a true man needs friendships as well as mentors in his life.

Late Shift                 

As much as I liked this book and learned from it, I struggled with its “law then gospel” format. The first nine-and-a-half chapters are designed to convict the reader of his inability to live as a godly man. I appreciate that design, but someone who tries to process the book chapter by chapter will finish each with more of a sense he needs to get to work than an understanding of God’s grace and how he transforms our living out manhood. Chapters 10 through 12 are so gospel-saturated and biblically wise that after I finished the book I wished every chapter had read like those. In short, the shift from “Do this as a man!” to “Find your masculine identity in Jesus!” comes a little later and more abruptly than I think is helpful.

That said, The Dude’s Guide to Manhood is convicting, wise, and definitely worth the read. Patrick’s tone throughout is winsome rather than condemning, and even when he offers drills or exhorts his readers we feel he’s right there with us rather than ahead yelling at us to catch up. And I’m thankful his book presents a biblical vision of masculinity and leads us to see how it’s finally found only in the true man, Jesus Christ.

Reviewed by: Joseph Rhea is a pastoral resident at College Park Church in Indianapolis. He is married to Allison, and they are expecting their first child at the end of May 2014.