The Key to Ministry Longevity
00:00:00.000 | (soft music)
00:00:02.420 | - Hello, this is Pastor John.
00:00:05.080 | I get to start this episode by talking
00:00:07.440 | about another Pastor John, John Newton.
00:00:10.440 | Newton was a key leader in England in the 18th century,
00:00:15.260 | as you know, the author of the incredibly popular hymn,
00:00:19.640 | "Amazing Grace."
00:00:21.220 | Newton was a former captain of a slave trading ship
00:00:25.120 | and was dramatically converted from this life of sin
00:00:29.080 | and eventually helped William Wilberforce
00:00:31.880 | in the British slave trade.
00:00:33.760 | So I wanted to take a moment to introduce you
00:00:36.760 | to a new book about a part of Newton's life
00:00:39.580 | that goes overlooked.
00:00:40.980 | His 40 plus years in pastoral ministry
00:00:45.720 | and the amazing ministry of writing letters
00:00:49.080 | to people in need.
00:00:50.880 | The book is written by Tony Reinke,
00:00:52.600 | the host of this podcast.
00:00:54.720 | Tony calls his book "Pastoral Synthesis."
00:00:58.400 | He wants you to be pastored by John Newton.
00:01:01.080 | And so he gathered up all of Newton's many published letters
00:01:05.480 | about a thousand of them in various collections,
00:01:09.120 | many of them preserved in old, rare, fragile volumes
00:01:13.140 | in libraries around the world.
00:01:14.800 | He found them, studied them,
00:01:17.240 | and then identified Newton's key answers
00:01:20.800 | to the perennial questions of the Christian life.
00:01:24.360 | And then Tony wrote all his findings
00:01:27.040 | into a guided tour of Newton's thought.
00:01:30.660 | It's a kind of "Ask Pastor John Newton."
00:01:34.840 | The book releases this week.
00:01:36.720 | It's titled "Newton on the Christian Life
00:01:39.560 | to Live as Christ."
00:01:41.640 | I commend it very highly.
00:01:44.000 | (upbeat music)
00:01:52.960 | What is the key to ministry longevity?
00:01:56.240 | There is a key, and John Piper finds it
00:01:58.320 | in the ministry legacy of John Newton.
00:02:00.920 | Here's how Pastor John Piper explained it
00:02:03.000 | in his 2001 biographical message.
00:02:05.680 | - Newton's realism about the limits of this life.
00:02:09.740 | Oh, how helpful it is to hear his realism.
00:02:13.200 | Only so much is possible in a fallen world.
00:02:15.600 | We groan waiting for the redemption of our bodies.
00:02:18.920 | And if we don't realize the limits of our ministry,
00:02:21.120 | we will absolutely go crazy trying to fix the world
00:02:23.840 | and fix everybody.
00:02:25.320 | He said, "My course of study, like that of a surgeon,
00:02:29.240 | has been principally in walking the hospital."
00:02:33.160 | He did not, however, become cynical
00:02:38.240 | as he walked the hospital
00:02:40.660 | and saw the irremedial diseases of bedlam.
00:02:44.880 | The word bedlam comes from
00:02:46.080 | insane asylum hospital in his day.
00:02:48.760 | He said, "I endeavor to walk through the world
00:02:51.160 | as a physician goes through bedlam.
00:02:53.560 | The patients make noise, pester him with impertinence,
00:02:58.880 | hinder him in his business,
00:03:01.520 | but he does the best he can and gets through."
00:03:06.520 | I read that last November or somewhere,
00:03:08.640 | and I just said, "Thank you, thank you.
00:03:11.000 | That's all I do.
00:03:11.840 | I just do the best I can, get through,
00:03:15.140 | get through this mess, get through that mess,
00:03:17.340 | get through this mess. Thank you, Newton.
00:03:19.400 | Thank you for telling me that's the way
00:03:20.460 | you did your ministry."
00:03:21.840 | You just walk through an insane asylum,
00:03:23.740 | and you're pestered by this person
00:03:28.360 | and grabbed by that person,
00:03:29.800 | and you reach out, you touch, you pray, you bless,
00:03:33.240 | you call, you get criticism,
00:03:35.280 | you didn't call soon enough, you didn't say this,
00:03:37.440 | and you just look up and say,
00:03:38.940 | "Sinner, though I am, I did the best I could.
00:03:43.220 | I'm gonna keep going."
00:03:44.360 | And that's the key.
00:03:45.540 | Realism keeps you going.
00:03:47.940 | Perfectionism wipes you out.
00:03:50.720 | So have Newton's realism.
00:03:52.940 | Here's the picture.
00:03:54.180 | He had to put it in a picture, right?
00:03:55.980 | It's so beautiful.
00:03:57.100 | He's standing at his window,
00:03:58.420 | looking out on the sun about to come up.
00:04:00.860 | The day is now breaking.
00:04:02.300 | How beautiful its appearance.
00:04:05.380 | How welcome the expectation of the approaching sun.
00:04:09.240 | It is this thought makes the dawn agreeable
00:04:14.420 | that it is the presage of a brighter light.
00:04:17.420 | Otherwise, if we expect no more day than in this minute,
00:04:22.280 | we should rather complain of darkness
00:04:24.360 | than rejoice in the early beauties of the morning.
00:04:27.660 | Thus the life of grace is the dawn of immortality,
00:04:32.660 | beautiful beyond expression,
00:04:35.540 | if compared with the night of thick darkness,
00:04:39.140 | which formerly covered us,
00:04:40.540 | yet faint and indistinct and unsatisfying
00:04:45.320 | in comparison to the glory that will be revealed.
00:04:48.900 | Compared with the present condition only,
00:04:53.520 | there's a lot of darkness left,
00:04:55.640 | but the sun's rising in your life.
00:04:58.880 | It's rising in your life.
00:05:02.100 | And the glory is gonna be beautiful.
00:05:04.600 | So be realistic, folks.
00:05:06.240 | We groan inwardly, waiting our adoption of sons,
00:05:11.240 | the redemption of our bodies.
00:05:12.940 | Our groaning in this life will never end.
00:05:15.160 | There will be mental illness.
00:05:16.960 | There will be physical illness.
00:05:18.580 | There will be church disputes.
00:05:20.580 | There will be marital stresses.
00:05:23.040 | There will be wayward children till Jesus comes.
00:05:26.060 | And if we can't model our way
00:05:27.960 | through the insane asylum of this world, we will quit.
00:05:31.620 | Let's help each other, not quit.
00:05:34.620 | Newton has helped me.
00:05:36.020 | I wanna help you.
00:05:37.180 | That's one route.
00:05:38.180 | The next route is his humility and gratitude.
00:05:41.420 | He was overwhelmed by amazing grace.
00:05:44.340 | How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.
00:05:47.380 | I once was lost, but now I'm found.
00:05:49.840 | With lying, but now I see.
00:05:51.020 | Till the day he died, he never ceased to be blown away
00:05:53.260 | by the fact that he had been saved
00:05:55.240 | and made a preacher of the gospel
00:05:56.700 | that he once labored to destroy and mock.
00:06:00.220 | He wrote his own epitaph.
00:06:01.740 | Read it on his grave, which is now in Olden.
00:06:04.700 | They used to be in London.
00:06:05.880 | They moved it so a subway could go through
00:06:08.140 | underneath the church.
00:06:09.980 | John Newton, clerk, once an infidel and libertine,
00:06:14.580 | a servant of slaves in Africa,
00:06:16.380 | was by the rich mercy of our Lord and Savior,
00:06:18.580 | Jesus Christ, preserved, restored, pardoned,
00:06:21.340 | and appointed to preach the faith
00:06:23.020 | he had long labored to destroy.
00:06:25.160 | Near 16 years at Olden in Bucks,
00:06:27.100 | and, and they left the number blank,
00:06:29.060 | years at this church in St. Mary's, Woolnoth.
00:06:33.340 | He was overwhelmed by this,
00:06:35.580 | and he wrote, and he didn't see how anybody
00:06:39.220 | could know how he was saved
00:06:41.000 | and not treat others with kindness.
00:06:43.140 | He said, "A humble under such a sense
00:06:47.460 | of much forgiveness to himself,
00:06:49.140 | he finds it easy to forgive others."
00:06:52.380 | If you're a hard pastor,
00:06:54.120 | you don't properly know what's happened to you.
00:06:58.940 | If you're a hard pastor,
00:07:04.220 | your first reaction is a hard reaction.
00:07:08.180 | You are not duly feeling the wonder that you are saved.
00:07:13.180 | - That was from John Piper's 2001 message to pastors
00:07:18.940 | titled, "John Newton,
00:07:20.820 | The Tough Roots of His Habitual Tenderness."
00:07:23.420 | You can find the full audio recording of this message
00:07:25.820 | at desiringgod.org.
00:07:28.140 | And special thanks to cellist Patricia White
00:07:30.740 | for her beautiful rendition of "Amazing Grace"
00:07:33.340 | off her album, "Bestow My Soul,"
00:07:35.700 | which we are using in this episode.
00:07:37.660 | And a special thank you to Pastor John himself
00:07:40.980 | for promoting my new book here
00:07:42.540 | and for writing the foreword.
00:07:44.180 | You can find the book online
00:07:45.340 | and you can actually read the foreword for free
00:07:47.100 | right now at desiringgod.org/newton.
00:07:52.100 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:07:53.100 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John Podcast.
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