Encouragement for Ordinary Pastors
00:00:00.000 | [music]
00:00:05.000 | In the last podcast, in episode 94, we talked about whether online teachers
00:00:08.820 | threaten the authority of leaders in a local church. Pastor John, in this episode,
00:00:13.160 | speak to average pastors, those who are fully aware that they cannot compete
00:00:17.360 | with you or Tim Keller or Matt Chandler or any number of online preachers when
00:00:21.800 | it comes to preaching gift. What would you say to an ordinary preacher in a
00:00:25.640 | local church? I'd like to devote the rest of my life to encouraging him. I taught a
00:00:34.440 | preaching class yesterday. I've been teaching preaching for years, and most of
00:00:39.200 | these guys are average preachers, I would say. There are a few remarkable ones
00:00:43.280 | among them, and I give myself to trying to encourage them. And here's what I say.
00:00:47.600 | When they're done preaching, I think one of the most important things I can say to
00:00:52.840 | them is, "You know, if you will do what you did there and just get better and
00:00:58.000 | better at that, namely, opening to me a paragraph from the Bible that explains
00:01:05.960 | to me what these phrases mean, applies them simply and earnestly and passionately
00:01:11.920 | with a heartfelt and prayerful attitude towards my life, I will grow under your
00:01:16.280 | ministry." I remember one time years ago, I was called upon to give a teacher
00:01:23.640 | recommendation when I was teaching at Bethel to a young seminary student who
00:01:27.200 | came to Olivet Baptist Church to preach, and he gave me a form. He said, "Would you
00:01:30.760 | fill this out when I'm done preaching? Because I have to do this for my
00:01:33.560 | preaching class." And he preached on Colossians 1. Can you believe that? This
00:01:37.320 | is 35 years ago plus, and I remember the text he preached on,
00:01:41.880 | Colossians 1, and the prayer of Paul. And he simply, in a fairly pedestrian way,
00:01:47.400 | worked his way through every phrase of that prayer, commented on what it meant,
00:01:52.600 | applied it to my life, some illustrations of how he prayed it and how I might pray
00:01:57.560 | it. And the next morning, I'm jogging, and that whole sermon was present to my mind.
00:02:02.960 | And it wasn't present to my mind because he was a flashy communicator. It was
00:02:08.400 | present to my mind because he was a faithful expositor. He had showed me what
00:02:12.960 | the Bible meant. I think people are hungry. "Show me what these words mean.
00:02:18.400 | Explain these sentences to me. How are they explosively wonderful, and how do
00:02:23.760 | they relate to my life? How do they change things?" So I think that the best
00:02:28.800 | encouragement that I can make is this. Being a flashy communicator, being a
00:02:34.600 | great orator doesn't necessarily lead to edification, and it doesn't necessarily
00:02:39.400 | lead to the conversion of sinners. It doesn't necessarily lead to the glory of
00:02:43.440 | Christ. In fact, it can get in the way of glorifying Christ. What builds up
00:02:48.680 | the church is a clear, heartfelt, faithful explanation of what the word means
00:02:57.880 | sentence by sentence, and an exaltation over that word so that you reveal how
00:03:03.640 | precious and valuable it is to you. And I think a man who's anointed with the
00:03:10.040 | Holy Spirit and has a love for the Word of God and a measure of gifted
00:03:14.840 | explanation—that is, a gift of teaching—as pedestrian as he may feel his
00:03:21.360 | communication style is, or even his personality, he can take a people deep
00:03:26.960 | into the Word of God, and that's what the church desperately needs. And frankly,
00:03:31.120 | Tony, I think what's going to happen is this. The Internet is going
00:03:35.640 | to become like the telephone and television, and it won't have the
00:03:42.640 | pizazz it once had, and people will begin to settle into real life again, and they
00:03:48.240 | will desperately need friends, they will need people in their lives with flesh
00:03:52.760 | and bones, and they'll need pastors who show up at the hospital, who show up at
00:03:58.000 | the graveside, and all the flesh is just going to be less fleshy someday, I think.
00:04:03.800 | There will never be a replacement for those person-to-person relationships.
00:04:07.520 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. Please email
00:04:10.680 | your questions to us at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. At
00:04:14.440 | desiringgod.org you'll find thousands of other free resources online from John
00:04:17.560 | Piper. I'm your host Tony Reinke, thanks for listening.
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