The Bride of Christ: Future Church Leadership, Part 2
“And the things which you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.”
In the last session we began to look at this key text, with respect to training ministers of the gospel in the Church. We considered the instruction itself that Paul envisions in this directive, and then we began to consider the recipients of this instruction, that they must be faithful men and they must be men who have some real ability to communicate the truth in an edifying manner to others.
This raises the question of where do we find men like this? How do we get them? How do we cultivate them? We can’t make them; God does, but ordinarily God works through means. So, this brings us to where we left off, still under this heading of the recipients of this instruction.
We take up now this question: what are some things we can do or you might consider doing in seeking to produce and cultivate such men? I offer these as practical suggestions, seeking to make this very practical, not in any way setting myself up as some kind of expert on this matter, but as someone who is seeking, as a pastor, to think of ways to do this, attempting to do this on my own context. Hopefully these things will be helpful to all of us as we all seek to help and to encourage one another.
The first thing is we need to pray about this.
1. We need to pray.
Jesus said in Matthew 9:37-38, “The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.” This is what our Lord says that we must do. This is the way Jesus says to obtain what is needed: we must pray for such laborers. We must really pray. Pray persistently and earnestly and perseveringly for this.
In fact, I would argue that this ought to be a regular matter of prayer in our churches, in our prayer meetings. You see, this is one of those petitions that the Lord Jesus Himself has put into our mouths. Now, there are some things we pray for. We end the prayer, perhaps, by saying “according to Your will.” There are certain things that are in the realm of God’s secret will, things which are not revealed to us, but when we are praying for those things that are poured into the contours of the teaching of Scripture itself, with reference to a promise that is given to us or something that God Himself has told us to pray for, we could know, when we pray for this, that we are praying according to His will; for Jesus has told us to pray, and the Lord will raise up and thrust out laborers into His harvest. So, this ought to be a constant, regular matter of prayer for us personally, as pastors, and in the context of the life of our church in our prayer meetings.
Secondly, we need to be looking out for men like this.
2. We need be looking out.
We need to have our eyes open, watching for them. As we keep praying we also need to be like the prophet Habakkuk who said, “I will set myself on the rampart and I will watch to see what the Lord will say to me.” Praying must be joined to watching.
One of the things about instant messaging today is that it brings with it the tyranny of the expectation of an instant response. When someone sends you something you know they’re expecting you to respond very quickly, because you can do so; but let’s think about email. When you send an important email to someone what do you do? Well, if you believe that getting an answer to that email is important, and you’re really expecting an answer, you keep going back to your phone or going back to your computer, checking your email until you do get a response.
The prayer that expects no answer will probably never receive an answer. So, we must be watching for signs. I’m looking out for that little cloud the size of a man’s hand, indications that here’s a guy who could be one day an elder in the Church, a preacher, or a missionary. We have to be looking out for them, and we have to be evaluating the men that we have.
It’s a good thing, I think, I’m probably not telling you anything new, but we need to take out our church directories and we need to perhaps look over them. Write out a list of all of the men in the church, or something of that nature, and go over them, pray over them. Give careful thought to each one of them. “What about this guy? Or what about that guy? Where is he at right now, spiritually? Is he a faithful man? How does he line up at this point in his life with those qualifications that are laid out for us in 1 Timothy 3 or Titus 1? Is there a potential there?”
If you see potential with someone, start specifically praying for that person in that regard, with reference to that very thing, and keep your eye him. Every time you have a new man join the Church or get converted, keep your eye on him.
Also, keep your eye on the teenagers, the young men in the Church. “What about this young man?” There are some of us here who started preaching when we were pretty young. It probably wasn’t the wisest thing, but I was 18 years old when I started preaching. We don’t tend to think that men that age ought to be thinking about serious things like that. It’s inconceivable that a man of that age would be thinking seriously about going into the Christian ministry, but why not? Certainly, we should keep our eyes on the young people, the teenagers, the young men in the Church. “What about this young man? He’s professed conversion; he’s a member of the Church now. What about him?” I don’t know about you men, but I do this all the time. I have my eyes on some guys in our church right now. Some of them know; some of them don’t know
3. We need to encourage.
Thirdly, as you identify men who have potential, encourage them. Start paying more attention to them. Perhaps spending more time with them, as you’re able. There are a number of ways we can do that. Again, these are simple things.
I don’t have all the answers, but I can just tell you some things that I’ve done lately and in the past. Not long after I came to Emmanuel I began to meet with a group of guys. I had already noticed them. I got to know them. I saw good things there, and was kind of ‘checking them out’ you might say. I invited them to get together with me once a month. On a Saturday morning we would get together. One month we would discuss a book we were reading together, or discuss some predetermined topic; the next month we’d go out to the sidewalks down at the beach, near the beach, and pass out tracts together and witness to people. So, we did this and spend time doing that on Saturday mornings. We did that for a long time, and a couple of those guys had begun to emerge in our church as men with great potential as leaders. One we hope pretty soon to put forward as a deacon in the church; another has been given opportunity to teach the adult Sunday school class from time to time, and also to lead prayer meeting. In fact, he led the prayer meeting this week. I was just talking to my wife and she was just going on about how well he did leading the prayer meeting. He’s doing a great job at it. He’s getting better and better and better, and he’s gaining the respect of the people. We hope he’ll eventually become an elder in the church.
So as we look out for guys, if we see men who are humble men—that’s crucial, humble men—and they’re faithful men and have potential, if we see men like this we need to find ways to encourage them. You try to bring out that potential that you see there. I don’t have a problem with actually asking men, especially younger men who seem to have potential, asking them point blank, “Have you ever thought about the ministry?”
Not long ago we were on our church camping trip and I was talking to three teenage guys, in particular, that I’ve been watching. They have all professed faith, two of them are members of the church now, and I’ve started asking them what they’ve planned to major in college and what they hope to do, and so on. I just asked them point blank, right on the spot and put them on the spot, “What about the gospel ministry? Have you ever thought about that? Have you ever thought about being a pastor? Have you ever thought about being a missionary?” These are three sharp guys, and I want them to think about it. I urged them to think about it, and at least pray about it! In fact, from that conversation one of those sweet, humble young men I found out that he had been thinking about it and had been thinking about it a lot. He signed up for the men’s leadership class that we started. Now, I may have never known that if I had never asked.
Now, I know that we have to be careful. Believe me, I came out of the kind of context that we tend to want to react against, and we want to be careful. I’ve been talking about pressuring young men as though you’re not really a sold-out Christian if you don’t become a pastor, or you don’t become a missionary. One extreme we all know about is trying to make a preacher out of everybody, or the extreme of just accepting any guy who decides for himself that he’s called to preach, he’s called to missions, and we send him out to seminary. I’m not talking about that, but in reacting against that, let’s be careful that we don’t swing to the opposite extreme of being afraid to even mention it to a young man. Shouldn’t every Christian young man at least be willing to think about it and pray about it?
I alluded a moment ago to something else was started in our church: a men’s leadership class. It’s a curriculum of about nine classes made up with a nice-looking little form of what we’re going to be doing and so forth. It’s nine classes, and it’s for any of the men in the church who are willing to come. We meet for an hour and a half on Tuesday nights. We have fifteen to twenty men who consistently attend this. We have a fall term; we have a winter term. We have breaks here and there, and if you attend a certain required number of the meetings and you do the required reading you get a certificate at the end. It’s a very prestigious, Emmanuel Baptist Church certificate.
Now, I teach a few of the courses myself. We utilize online courses for others, and we have a wonderful time together, a wonderful time of discussing these things and talking and listening. There’s all kinds of good resources out there that you can use, from IBS or midwest, which is now CBTS, or other sources out there for something like that.
We studied that for several reasons. One, there’s an interest in some of the men to receive more in depth teaching. Two, there’s the hope it will strengthen all of the men who come. Another reason is to see what God might do. There’s the concern to see God raise up leaders, and so on.
I just mention these things. Some of you may have some things you’re doing, and I’d like to hear them. Some of you may not like the things that we’re doing, and that’s okay, but my point is in addition to praying about it, looking out for men who have potential, we need to make efforts to flush them out and encourage the men that do. I think we need to be intentional about this, deliberate about it.
4. We need to give opportunities to test their gifts.
Fourthly, as we begin to identify men like that and seek to encourage them we also need to give them opportunities to test their gifts. Paul tells Timothy to commit these things to faithful men who will be able to teach others, but how do you know if this or that faithful man will be able to teach others? You just look at them and say, “I think he would be a good teacher. He’s got good teeth”? Or “He wears his tie well; he dresses nice”? How do we know?
Of course it’s not that way. The only way I can figure out, that you can know if a guy has any teaching gift, is to provide him with some opportunities somehow, somewhere. I think usually if a guy is full of the spirit and has a burden for the souls of people he’ll find opportunities. He’ll make opportunities in school, a home Bible study, or in the jail ministry, but sometimes we need to provide some opportunities.
When I was at Easley I used to meet with a bunch of guys, and they were dying to preach and trying to learn how to preach. I let them preach to each other, and I’d send them a text ahead of time. Each time we met we’d have two guys get up and preach. They were given twenty minutes. The first guy would preach and then the others would give constructive criticism. Then I’d get up and I’d give some, and then the next guy would go. We would do it again. That was also a way of leading some guys out, but one of the goals was to test the gifts of these men to see if any of them were able to teach, and graciously to help those who weren’t too see that and to face reality. One of those guys, many of you know him, he’s one of the pastors now in Grace Emmanuel Reformed Baptist Church in Grand Rapids.
One of the things I’ve been doing at Emmanuel is that I met with some of the men I had reason to believe from information which I had received from Pastor Hughes and the other pastors. They had some teaching ability, and we set up a rotation where we would plug them into the adult Sunday School class from time to time. Now, I sat down with these guys. We sat in a room and I said this with a smile on my face, they knew I loved them and everything, but I said this to them: “If you can’t take constructive criticism don’t do this. Don’t get involved in this rotation.” Then I grinned, you know, I smiled and they laughed. They knew that I meant it, though, and they knew what I was talking about, not that I assumed that they would do that, but I wanted to lay down certain perimeters, make it very clear: you’re going to get this one shot. Don’t get up and say, “Pastor, can I do a three or four part series?” or something of that nature. You’ve got to keep it within the time frame, and so forth. We started this rotation.
Now, I don’t have one of these guys teach every week. Obviously, our great concern is that our people are being edified, that they’re getting a regular, edified diet, but I worked them in from time to time. In addition to that we made up a preaching and teaching evaluation form that all the officers are to fill out about each of these men, and pass it on to the elders. So, when we sit down to give them constructive criticism, it’s not just us, but anonymously all of the officers, deacons, they fill out this form and we can sit down and say, “Okay, here’s the feedback that we’re getting in this area or that area.” We go over that with them.
That’s what we did. There were only a few guys, but there were several men who have done really well and they’re getting better and better. We have a couple of other guys who are planning to work into this. Will they become elders in the church or a church? I don’t know yet, but some I really think they will. They’re certainly manifesting gifts of teaching. A couple of them especially have risen to the top, in terms of the gifts that they demonstrate. They’re using those gifts for the edification of everyone. It’s just part of the process of trying to cultivate leaders.
I know there’s things we have to be careful about, and that’s why I underscore the most important thing of all is that the men are humble men. They have to be humble men. If they think they’re God’s gift to the Church and to the ministry and that kind of thing—stay away from guys like that.
Again, I’m not telling you these things to say you should do the same things we’re trying to do. You may have better ideas, or you may hear some of the things we’re doing and say, “That’s stupid. I would never do that.” That’s fine, but what are you doing? What are you doing? I’m all ears to hear. Any ideas? I’m just trying to be as practical as I can, and give some possible suggestions.
We must pray about it; watch out for men of potential; encourage such men; give them some opportunities.
5. We need to give additional training.
Fifthly, as we’re doing this and men are identified who are godly and humble and faithful and gifted and available and have a heart to serve, these men should be given additional and more intensive training. The kind of specialized training, focused teaching and training, that Paul envisions in our text over and above the general instruction given to all of God’s people in the Church. Such men, I believe, are to be recognized and set aside for such training.
Now, there are a number of ways to do that.
We have three men in our church right now who, with the elders approval and our mentoring, are taking courses online through one of the distance learning RB schools. So, you do that, keeping them in your church, training them there, utilizing modules and online courses and other tools, or giving some or much of the instruction yourself. You could send them to another place or maybe a kind of seminary where they move there to take classes on campus. There’s a lot of ways to do it. I think all the ways can be used, or a combination of them. It depends on the situation. It depends on the men. Now, I have some very strong opinions about what I believe is the best way. Probably each one of you have opinions about that. I’m not really wishing to get into that. There’s a variety of ways to do this.
I will say this, perhaps here’s a good place to mention one way that we might help each other as churches in this: that’s by providing internships for men preparing for the ministry. We just started an internship program at Emmanuel. I know that there’s others of you too. I know that Jim, for example, has several interns, I believe, in his church there that he’s working with. We just started an internship program. Our first intern is here with me at the conference this year, Dan Wakefield, and as you know he’s the son of our brother John Wakefield. He’s been a faithful Reformed Baptist minister for many years, and Dan will be with us at least until October of next year. We have a structured reading program which we set up for him in which he writes reflection papers and we sit down and discuss the things that he’s reading, regular meetings to discuss what he’s learning, to discuss other matters of Church life. He’s given opportunities to teach and to preach, and he’s also enrolled in one of the RB seminaries, pursuing a degree. This is not only, I trust, been a help to him in his training, but it’s been a great blessing to our whole church. Perhaps more of our churches ought to consider establishing an internship program of some kind; some of the larger churches with more resources, or even smaller churches.
Maybe you’re a sole elder and you could use some help, but your church can’t afford to pay, for example, a second full-time elder, but maybe there’s enough in the budget to pay a stipend to a ministerial aspirant and put him up for three to four months as an intern. It could be a help to you; it could be a help for your church; and at the same time you’re contributing to this great work of committing these things to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.
Back to the point, when it comes to setting aside men for ministerial training, there’s a number of ways to do it. Let me just say two things.
One, we need to make certain that whatever means we use, our goals and theological ministerial training are shaped by Scripture and not by the world. Paul’s concern here is committing these things to faithful men with a purpose, and what is that purpose? It’s not that they might have academic notoriety with the apostate religious world, but that they might be able to teach others also. There’s nothing wrong with high academic standards. There’s nothing wrong with degrees, and if you can get them without compromising what is most important, that’s great. Get them. It can be very useful, but let’s never forget that when all is said and done the credibility that we seek is not the world’s approval; it’s God’s approval. Our goal is not just to produce guys who can impress with all their degrees. It’s to produce men who love the truth and have a firm grasp upon sound doctrine; who have a heart for God’s people and know how to preach and to teach God’s Word to the common person in the pew.
Well, that’s the first thing. Whatever means we use, our goals must be shaped by those concerns and not by the world, and we need to be urgent about it!
This is war time. When America was preparing for World War II the nature of basic training and the system to get men ready was different than what you see at a peacetime situation, because they needed to get men out there, right on the battlefield. This is war time! This is war time, brothers. I don’t think that Paul has in mind here a leisurely kind of eight-year course of study in preparing these men.
It was striking to me, in reading this recent book by a man that I can’t remember his last name, but he’s one of the teachers of Church history at Trinity Evangelical. He studied all of the minutes of the elder’s meetings in Geneva and all the background. It’s a book called Calvin’s Company of Pastors. It’s about the history of the church in Geneva, from Calvin all the way through to I think the first decade of the 1600s. It was interesting to me to learn in that book that most of the men who trained at Calvin’s Academy, first of all, unlike the universities of that time, Calvin’s Academy did not give a degree, and most of the men who trained there where actually only there for about a year before they were back out into whatever ministry they were in. Now, granted, their education leading up to that point was better than the education that most of us have. It was just an interesting fact. It wasn’t some eight-year training program that men engaged in, because it was war time. There was a need to get preachers and pastors who were sound theologically, who had been exposed to a well-ordered church like the Church of Geneva. Then to go out and to so that work in the various regions in Europe where they had come from.
So we need to be urgent about it.
Secondly I’ll say this: whatever means we use, we must remember that the apostolic method of training men was not merely a matter of theological instruction. It also involved mentoring and teaching by men who were actually doing and modeling before them what they were trying to teach them. That leads me now to the third heading from our text.
Paul speaks of the instruction itself, and the men to whom the instruction is to be given.
3) The provider or facilitator of this instruction.
Thirdly, he also speaks about the provider or facilitator of this instruction. Now we come to the question: who’s the instructor in this text? Well, it’s Timothy. Now, who was Timothy? What was his function? On the one hand, I think we have to acknowledge, contrary to popular opinion, that it’s unlikely Timothy was one of the pastors of the church at Ephesus, in the sense of the term. We see from the Book of Acts and from other epistles that Timothy was one of those men we might call “an apostolic deputy.” He traveled with Paul as an assistant in his mission in apostolic labors. He was one of those men, like Titus, Paul at times sent to certain places temporarily to establish apostolic polity and doctrine in the churches Paul had planted.
We no longer have apostles today, therefore we no longer have apostolic deputies, but then, having said that, at the same time we might say that Timothy was both an apostolic deputy and a pastor of whatever particular church he was serving at a given time. He certainly functioned as a pastor, and he was functioning in that way in Ephesus when Paul wrote this to him. So, we have no problem, therefore, referring to 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus as “Paul’s Pastoral Epistles,” and we don’t have any problem applying all of the other instructions that are given to Timothy in his epistle to ourselves, as pastors.
Whatever else we might say, one thing is absolutely clear: Timothy was not some kind of full-time academic. He wasn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, the equivalent of a full-time, lifetime, seminary professor who specialized solely and exclusively in teaching theology students and doing research. No. He was a man who was actively engaged in the responsibilities of pastoral ministry. All you have to do is read these two epistles Paul wrote to Timothy to see that.
We read 1 Timothy 1:3, that Paul left Timothy behind in Ephesus to set the church in order. He gave him instructions, “That men might know how to conduct themselves in the house of God,” and Timothy was engaged in implementing those instructions in the church. He was involved in setting in order the prayer meetings in the church; the roles of men and women in the church; looking out for qualified men in the church to ordain as elders and deacons. He was involved in actually ordaining officers in the church; setting up the role of widows to be cared for by the church; ministering to the various classes of real people, common, ordinary sheep in the church with all their personality quirks and all their rough edges and their real problems and their real needs in treating the older men as fathers, the younger men as brothers, the elders women as mothers, and the young women as sisters with all purity. Preaching the Word; being in season and out of season, reproving, rebuking, exhorting with all longsuffering and doctrine. We could go on and on.
In short, Timothy was immersed in the life of the Church! He was in the context in which he was ministering to real people with real needs, in real churches. Overseeing the church, setting in order the church, teaching in the church—Timothy was not an ivory tower theologian isolated somewhere off in a completely church detached context teaching theology students, or just writing treatises for fellow academics!
Timothy was a man with extensive pastoral experience. He had experience doing what he was teaching these men to do, and had done it faithfully for many years. Again, we need to remember: training men for the ministry is not only theological training, it’s vocational training. It involves learning how to do the work of the ministry.
No one is better qualified to teach people to do that than men like you who are doing it.
I think I’ve heard Pastor Martin use this illustration years ago; I don’t remember the context. Where’s the man who learned the vocation of being a carpenter? Well, you don’t just make them read books about being a carpenter, and memorize all the names of the different tools and the particular functions. You put them in a context where you can see those tools being used, and where he can actually watch his instructors perform the skills that make a man a good carpenter and where, under his mentors direction, he can then begin to use those tools under the eye of his instructor, and begin to use those tools for himself. You give a man that special training.
We have a young man in our church who is in his residency training to be a heart surgeon. I mean, the world knows this! The Church doesn’t seem to get it today, at least in our generation. But the world understands this! When a man is trained to be a heart surgeon you don’t just put him in the classroom and you don’t take him out of the hospital! No, along with his classwork you put him in that very place he’s being trained to work in! There, in a hospital, where he can watch actual surgeries being done, where he can gradually begin to assist the already-established surgeons and be guided by them, not just in theory but in practice. If a man’s being trained to be a heart surgeon—like brother Nathan is—if he’s being trained to be a heart surgeon you don’t want all of his teachers to be men who couldn’t make it as heart surgeons themselves. Or to be a man, as I once heard, who lost his license because he left a scalpel in somebody’s head.
So, what’s the point I’m trying to make?
My point is: the primary instructors in the training of faithful men who will be able to teach others also ought to be men who are themselves proven and faithful pastors. Now, let me hasten to say and underscore what I am not saying.
I am not saying that every single pastor is responsible, all by himself, to give a full course of theological instruction and training to any and every legitimate ministerial aspirant God raises up in his church. There are very few pastors who alone could do that, and very few elderships who alone could do that without help from others. Furthermore, I am not saying that every pastor is equally competent and capable of giving special, ministerial training. Some pastors are better equipped for this aspect of pastoral ministry than others are, and a pastor may decide to delegate some or much or maybe even all the special training of the ministerial aspirants in his church to other pastors, another pastor in his church or other pastors in another church who are better able to give it than he is for various reasons.
Furthermore, I am not saying that the gifts of men who may not presently be serving as elders in the church, I’m not saying those gifts cannot be utilized by pastors to help in this task.
So, if I’m not saying those things, what am I saying?
Well, I’m simply arguing that ministerial training is a part of the overall responsibility that has been assigned to the community of pastors. When I read the New Testament I find that pastors, not professors, are assigned the theological leadership of the Church. Pastors, not professors. I am saying that those who are giving the bulk of the training and who are exercising hands-on overside of the training of men to be pastors, should be men who are proven pastors themselves.
2 Timothy 2:2 certainly, at the very least, points us in that direction, but I want to press this a little further with some additional arguments.
1. Those who were giving the training were experienced in the work.
First of all it’s interesting, but in all the examples that I can find that might be referred to as ministerial training in the Scriptures those who are giving the training were themselves involved in and experienced in the work they were training others to do. They weren’t just ivory tower theologians sitting in a cloistered study somewhere writing books for their academic peers and briefly stepping out into public eye to teach a class from time to time. They were men who themselves were actively engaged in the ministry, engaged in what they’re training others to do.
Now let me qualify this again.
I’m not arguing that there’s no place for the academic theologian, or the research theologian. I think there is a place for that and men like that have a very important contribution to make. I thank God for scholars who write some of the technical commentaries that I have, who produce lexicons in Hebrew and Greek grammars, and men who can interact on a scholarly level with fellow scholars in defence of the christian faith. But right now I’m simply stating a fact. It’s simply a fact that in the Bible anything that might be referred to as ministerial training—at least that I can find, you can correct me if I missed it somewhere—those who are giving the training were themselves experienced and involved in the work they were training others to do. That is a fact.
For example, we have in the Old Testament these men referred to as “the company of the prophets,” or “the sons of the prophets.” Now, we read about them in the days of Samuel, also in connection with the ministries of Elijah and Elisha. Now if one argues, and some do, that these were actually schools in the sense that these were groups of men who were being trained by Samuel and Elisha to be prophets, one thing seems very clear: they were being trained to be prophets by prophets.
What about the way Jesus trained the apostles? How did He train them?
He trained them in a context which He Himself was actively modelling before them the work He was training them to do. The same is true in the interaction of Barnabas, the training we might say that Barnabas gave to Paul, that Barnabas and Paul gave to John Mark and that Paul gave to Timothy. When Timothy was directed to commit these things to faithful men who will be able to teach others also he as well was actively engaged in the work he was training men to do, and I think there is a good reason for that. This would be the second argument. You know these arguments, but we need to be stirred up about this.
This leads to the second argument, and it’s this: in the process of learning and effective training often just as much is caught by observation and imitation as is taught by verbal instruction.
2. Training is also learned by observation and imitation.
Now I’m pretty sure I heard Pastor Martin put it this way in some context. I don’t think it was with reference to ministerial training, but I think he was talking about in general in the Christian life fathers in the relationship with their children and so forth. I think he said something like this, and you can correct me so I might botch it and you might say, “I never would have said anything like that,” but here’s the way I remember it and I had written it down. “It’s a repeated principle of Scripture that in the process of learning we naturally tend to take in or to imbibe our teachers’ principals as we see them modeled before us in our teacher’s life.” He’s thinking. “Did I say that? I don’t remember ever saying that.” Do you remember ever saying that? [Yeah I said that lot’s of times.] Lot’s of times. Okay.
We tend to take in our teachers principals as we see them modeled before us in our teacher’s life.
Well, in my Southern way of putting it: just as much is caught as is taught. Right? Often just as much is caught as is taught.
God has created man as an imitating creature. There is within us what has been called “an imitating instinct.” This is a very important aspect of the process by which we learn in every realm, and that includes in the moral and the spiritual realm and that certainly would include in this whole area of leadership training. The Lord Jesus, you know the text, the Lord Jesus speaks of this in Matthew 10:24-25.
“The disciple is not above his master nor the servant above his lord, it is enough for the disciple that he be [not just think but be] as his teacher.”
In Luke 6:40 Jesus says this: “A pupil is not above his teacher, but everyone after he has been fully trained will be [not merely fake not merely no but will be] like his teacher.”
Now think again about Timothy. When it came to the kind of training that Timothy himself received from Paul for the gospel ministry Paul could say to him, “Not only have you known my doctrinal convictions and heard my instructions,” but he could say in 2 Timothy 3:10:
“You have fully known my manner of life, my purpose, my faith, my longsuffering, my love, perseverance, persecutions, afflictions” and so on.
Timothy was mentored by a faithful minister of the gospel who showed him by example how to be a godly man and how to deal with all of the stresses and the pressures of the ministry, how to be a faithful minister of the gospel. So whatever mechanisms are put in place and whatever means any of us may chose to utilize it is very, very important that we never sacrifice or ignore this important principle of learning. A man can be taught exegetical theology and historical theology and systematic theology and pastoral theology in the classroom, and that should be done, but that’s no substitute for showing and modeling before him the use of those disciplines and the application of those disciplines fleshed out in real-life ministry, in a real-life church, to real-life common people, by the very men who are teaching him.
So there needs to be this mentoring component in the training. Listen, it needs to have not just a minor token part as is so often the case, but a major role in the training.
3. We need to learn from history.
Thirdly we also need to learn from history when it comes to this. Let me appeal to the lessons of history.
The wise man says, “That which is has already been, and what is to be has already been.” (Ecclesiastes 3:15.)
History often repeats itself, and when it comes to what is bad in history this is especially true if we fail to learn the lessons history should have taught us. We need to learn from history in this matter of ministerial training and at this point let me hide behind some of the great voices from the past. I quote to you again from Charles Spurgeon.
Spurgeon argued that men being trained for the gospel ministry need to learn how to do the gospel ministry and he argued that this could never be done if their instructors were not men who evidenced that they had learned this themselves. He said:
“Tutors should be what they wish their students to be, and what manner of man should ministers be? They should thunder in preaching and lighten in conversation; they should be flaming in prayer, shining in life, and burning in spirit. If they be not so what can they affect?”
Another quote, many of you will be familiar with this quote from Gardener Springs—a great quote, one of the many great preachers and pastors during the second great awakening in America. He was also a very learned and educated man. He graduated from Yale. He studied law and he became a lawyer. Then he attended the Andover Theological Seminary before being called to Brick Presbyterian church in New York City in 1810, and he labored in that same church for sixty-two years. So he’s earned some credibility to hear. I’m just a young neophyte in many ways, but this man has earned the credibility to hear what he has to say about this. He says—and this is from his book Power in the Pulpit:
“If the deacons must first be proved much more the ministers, and if ministers much more the instructors of ministers. The more deliberately and impartially the subject is considered, the more it will be found to be one of the absurdists things in the world, to invest a man with the office of a teacher of the sons of the prophets who himself is no prophet. No matter what the talents of a theological instructor may be it is not possible for him rightly to exhibit the truth of God and teach others to exhibit it if he himself has not been in the habit of exhibiting it to the popular mind.”
Books and treatises, reviews, and single discourses written by these distinguished authors speak for themselves. They have great excellencies, but they have this one deficiency: they have no savor of the pastoral office. They are wanting, or I’ll use the word lacking, they are lacking in knowledge of the human heart. They are lacking in that which men need to know and feel. They are lacking in that impressive, impulsive, practical exhibition of truth which the popular mind demands. They savor of the cloister but not on the pulpit, they savor of scholarship and intellect while they ought to be imbued with a richer fragrance. Even as mere biblical commentators, preachers have the preeminence. He goes on:
“We have sought to ascertain if the Scriptures anywhere contemplate a class of theological teachers who have not themselves been the acknowledged and honored teachers of the people, unless we have overlooked some important fact, the history of the jewish and christian church speaks the same from the days of Samuel to the days of Paul. What is the voice of common sense and of all the better feelings of our hearts on this very plain question: if it be not that the man whose professed employment is to teach others to preach the gospel should themselves be preachers of the gospel?”
I was reading something recently that illustrates the very kinds of things that Spring is talking about here, and this is Alister Mcgrath. He’s telling about a personal experience he once had. He writes, and I quote:
“I recall on occasion back in 1970 when a leading British theologian gave an address to a group of us who were preparing for the ministry in the church of England. He related how he regularly had to visit little old ladies in his parish, and was obliged to converse with them over cups of lukewarm over-brewed tea. We all politely tittered. [Which I guess in the foreign language of Great Britain means giggled or something like that.] We all politely tittered as we were clearly meant to at the thought of such an immensely distinguished theologian having to suffer the indignity of talking with little old ladies who’s subject of conversation was grandchildren, the price of groceries, and the pains of old age. However, after his lecture we wished he had spent rather more time with these people. The bulk of his lecture was unintelligible; it made no connections to real life; it was academic in the worst possible sense of the word.
Well whatever you may think in general about Alister Mcgrath, he wrote that in the context of making this argument, and I quote. “That much recent theology seems to focus on issues which appear to be an utter irrelevance to the life, worship, and mission of the church.”
Now brothers I want to make it clear that I in no way wish to diminish the importance of learning, just the opposite, one of the great needs we have today is for pastor theologians.
There was a time when most of the great cutting edge, if we want to use that word, the ‘cutting edge theologians’ of the church where pastors: Calvin, Agustin, Owen. The list goes on, but in recent history Evangelicalism has embraced the vision between these two things. Serious theological reflection and formation has been left to the professors, while pastors are expected to be nothing more than motivational life coaches and church growth experts or at best brokers of the theology that is done by the professors and handed down to us. I want to recommend the book to you. It’s just recently been published. It’s an excellent book by Greg Hysten and Todd Wilson. It’s entitled The Pastor Theologian Resurrecting an Ancient Vision, and they’re saying some of these things that some have been saying for a long time. It’s very, very well-studied book. You won’t agree with everything, but you’ll be blessed and helped by it. It will provoke lot of thought. They argue that we have too many theologians who are detached from the church, and too many pastors who are detached from theology.
Ecclesially animec theologians and theologically anemic pastors. We have both an insufficient amount of ecclesial substance to our theology and of theological substance to our churches. Well, that’s a problem I believe needs to be radically overhauled.
So I’m not advocating any attention to careful theology. What I’m arguing is that the best kind of theologian to train men for the Christian ministry is the pastor theologian. Read the writings of some of the great theologians in Church history, men who were also pastors: Augustin, Calvin, Owen. Read Martin Luther. These were men who wrote and taught theology with fire, and unction, as men who carried upon their hearts a burden for the souls of men to whom they ministered. There’s a huge gigantic difference when you read those men and when you read what is called “the pastorally, the disinterested, measured, detached, careful-to-never-be-dogmatic posture” that’s become the common fare in academic theology today. The huge difference between that and the pastorally-engaged and theologically earnest tone of these older men from days gone by.
This time let me point now to the words of Robert Dabney. He was warning about this a long time ago in an article entitled “The Influence of the German University System” on theological literature. He warns about the inherent dangers of the methods of theological study popular in Germany in his day, and already then even that far back beginning to have an influence in America. These methods have had a profound influence upon the traditional seminary approach in our country today, and there are two dangers he mentioned that especially caught my attention.
One was the danger of what he called “specialism.” Specialism, and he means by that the danger attached to the theological scholar who devotes his whole life to the study of one small, little segment of theology. That’s where he focuses and to teaching that one small specialized segment in a seminary. The tendency, he argues, is to produce a serious lack of balance in that teaching, a disconnection from the proper relationship of that segment of theology to the whole of biblical truth. And you see that today in much of the biblical theology that’s written. You read these men and you think, “Well, have you ever read the Old Testament? How did you come up with that? Or have you ever read historical theology?”
I remember when I was studying the lectures for the new perspective. I would read N.T. Wright and I would think to myself: “Did N.T. Wright ever really read Luther?” Some of the things he would say about Luther’s teachings or Calvin’s teaching—. I remember that I picked up John Owen, one of the main things that I read in that time was John Owen’s “Treaty on Justification by Faith,” and I read it and I thought John Owen’s already answered all of these things a long time ago. Then I was reading N.T. Wright in another book by him and he actually made the admission that he had not read a lot in historical theology. That’s not his field, you see, he’s a New Testament scholar. So there’s this area of specialism and the dangers that can come with that.
Then another danger Dabney identifies is the pressure to do new work. Now, there is a place for pursuing a better and better understanding of the truth, for addressing new challenges to the truth in each generation. We are not just to rely on the work of men who have gone before us. Granted, but the constant pressure felt in the modern academic context to come up with something new, to do new work, to be original—if you want to maintain academic respectability that pressure can be very very dangerous. I believe it was Pastor Donnelly I once heard make the comment that no one ever got a PHD by saying John Calvin got it right. Did any of you hear him say that? “No one ever got a PHD by saying John Calvin got it right.”
Well join that pressure to be original when the native pride of the human heart that iches for the praise of men, and you have a recipe for disaster. It’s often left to novel and biblical ideas and harrasees. So I’m trying to encourage you men to understand that we have a responsibility in this area. I believe that in fact that the pastoral community needs to take hold of again our responsibility as the theological leaders and teachers of the Christian Church, and of our people and of men who are being trained for the Christian ministry. That this is part of what God has called us to just as we would apply other portions of 2 Timothy and 1 Timothy. “To ourselves while do we have not to apply.” (2 Timothy 2:2.) “To ourselves.”
There is more that can be said on this subject, but again the main thing I want us to see is that the raising up of future leaders and ministers of the gospel and missionaries in our churches is something, brothers, we as pastors must be deeply, deeply concerned about and involved in. It’s one of the responsibilities of the pastoral ministry not that any individual one of us has to do it all ourselves or that any one church has to do it themselves, but it’s one of the functions of the Church. The bride of Christ. It is the Church that is the pillar and the ground of the truth, and it’s part of the overall responsibilities of the christian ministry that have been given to the community of pastors.
So may God help us to take these things to heart, and brothers let us be encouraged that we are not left to our own resources in this work. Paul keeps emphasising that to Timothy in the first two chapters of this epistle. Back in chapter 1, verse 8 Paul charges him, “Timothy don’t be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord but share with me in the sufferings for the gospel.” “Yes but I’m afraid I can’t do it. When the pressure comes and I face that pressure I’m afraid I’ll chicken out and I’ll compromise. How will I be able to do it?” He says, “Share with me in the sufferings of the gospel.” How? At the end of verse 8: “According to the power of God.”
Verse 13 and 14 of chapter 1 he says, “Timothy hold fast to the pattern of sound words. That good thing which was committed to you keep.” How? The end of verse 14. “By the Holy Spirit who dwells in us.”
We see the same thing here in the first verse of this second chapter the verse right before our text. “You therefore my son be strong.” Actually it’s passive: be strengthened. “But I feel so weak, and inadequate.” Yes, but you my son be strengthened. How? “In the grace that is in Christ Jesus. Timothy remember your resources: the power of God, the grace of God, the Holy Spirit who dwells in us. It’s all just different ways, isn’t it? Of saying the same thing: dear brothers, we have the Spirit of God dwelling within us.
Therefore, as we commit ourselves to these things, to what we’ve heard this morning—and to all of the things that we’ve heard this week and this conference—as we set out to do them, to shape our lives and our ministries by them with the felt and painful sense of our weaknesses our weakness and our inability. Christ by the Spirit will give us the grace we need to do all the things He calls upon us to do as we prayerfully look to Him forward.
I love the quote from John Owen. He said it very well. So well.
“The duties God requires of us are not in proportion to the strength we possess in ourselves, rather they are proportional to the resources available to us in Christ.”
Well may God help us to remember that.
Let’s pray together
Our heavenly Father we thank You this afternoon for the opportunity to learn these things, or to be reminded of these things, and now we pray that You would help us to put them into practice. We pray, Lord of the harvest, we come with the petition that You Yourself has put into our mouths. We might be afraid to even dare to ask it if You had not told us to ask it. Therefore we come humbly and boldly with Your word in our hands, with Your promise in our hearts, with Your command, and we do the very thing You’ve told us to do. We pray and we ask that You would raise up in our churches and thrust out from our churches laborers into the harvest of our Lord. Help us, as pastors, to keep this before us as part of our responsibility, and we pray that You would grant us good success in such endeavors as we seek to identify, to cultivate, prepare future leaders for the Church. We ask it in Christ’s name. Amen.
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