Ministering Without R.C. Sproul
Chapters
0:00:3 Who is Burk Parsons?
00:00:00.000 | We're joined one more time by Burke Parsons, who is the editor of Table Talk Magazine,
00:00:08.400 | the monthly magazine of Ligonier Ministries, and senior pastor of St. Andrew's Chapel
00:00:13.040 | in Sanford, Florida, a church founded in 1997 by R.C. Sproul himself.
00:00:18.600 | R.C., of course, passed into glory 38 weeks ago now, back on December 14th.
00:00:25.040 | Burke, today I would love for you to share with us the legacy of R.C. on your own ministry,
00:00:32.280 | and what it's like now for you pastoring without your friend alongside you. Maybe you begin
00:00:37.980 | by telling us where you first came in contact with R.C. himself.
00:00:41.960 | I first came across R.C. Sproul and began to sit under his teaching in 1992. I first
00:00:52.120 | met him, if I'm not mistaken, in 1997, and then began working for him in 1999. Now, before
00:01:02.360 | meeting R.C., and it's very important, is in all our lives, we have numerous men and
00:01:07.520 | women that the Lord has raised up to help us and come alongside and encourage us and
00:01:11.960 | mentor us. And I had numerous men from the time I was converted to the time I went on
00:01:18.320 | staff of a Baptist church at the age of 19. I had numerous men, not only from the Baptist
00:01:23.520 | church, but even from some sort of Pentecostal churches, an independent fundamentalist Baptist
00:01:29.560 | church, and then numerous godly men that mentored and shepherded me from the Mennonite church.
00:01:36.480 | And so not growing up in any one tradition and not growing up really in the church at
00:01:40.560 | all, I came in and was immediately surrounded by godly, loving, gracious men that mentored
00:01:49.240 | and taught me. And so when I came to hear R.C. and sit under his ministry, I thought,
00:01:55.000 | you know, this is a guy that I believe. You know, I had begun to listen to a lot of different
00:02:01.680 | pastors and preachers and had begun to study and to read. And of course, there are many
00:02:07.520 | fine men that God had raised up and has raised up. But there was something about R.C. when
00:02:12.800 | I heard him and read him, I thought, I believe this guy. He's the real thing. He doesn't
00:02:18.400 | care at the end of the day. He doesn't care at the end of the day if he offends men so
00:02:24.440 | long as he honors the Lord. He cares about, he cared about what people thought, of course,
00:02:32.040 | but he was less concerned about offending men than he was offending God. And so in 1999,
00:02:38.880 | I went to work under him at Ligonier Ministries. In 2001, went on staff at St. Andrew's Chapel.
00:02:46.880 | 2004, was ordained to the gospel ministry of the pastorate. And really from that point
00:02:54.680 | on, we were preaching together and leading worship together and the church continued
00:02:59.860 | to grow and the Lord continued to add to our number as we just really, honestly, Tony,
00:03:06.080 | as we just strive to be faithful to very ordinary things. And what we say is the ordinary means
00:03:11.680 | of grace, the word and prayer and baptism in the Lord's supper, not being really a program
00:03:17.680 | driven church or an attractional church, really just striving to be faithful to those ordinary
00:03:22.620 | means of grace that the Lord has given us and trusting the sovereignty in their use
00:03:27.160 | in the church. And so as I began to serve under him, then over the years, what became
00:03:34.200 | very strange for me is I began to sort of serve along beside him. And so that was a
00:03:41.120 | very strange thing, especially for such a young man, young in ministry, learning to
00:03:46.360 | preach, learning a whole host of things about life, growing into adulthood, really, in my
00:03:52.080 | twenties of course. And so learning under him, he really became not just a mentor and
00:03:58.920 | then in some ways like a father, and Vesta like a mother to me. He really then in time,
00:04:05.840 | as I got older and as I grew and as we became closer friends, he really became more and
00:04:11.120 | more of just a buddy. And honestly, Tony, it's been a number of months now, over six
00:04:19.640 | months now since RC went to be with the Lord. And I felt that it's just been recently where
00:04:26.400 | I've begun to really talk about him because it's like, I didn't just lose a mentor,
00:04:34.000 | a father, I lost a friend, I lost a buddy. And we would get together throughout the week
00:04:39.440 | and we were of course together on Sundays and we were together for lunch on Mondays.
00:04:43.860 | And that was such an encouraging time because as any pastors listening to this podcast,
00:04:49.280 | as any pastors know, Mondays are very difficult. The emotional roller coasters that we're on,
00:04:54.800 | what the devil is trying to do to us and getting us to doubt and getting us to feel the shame
00:05:01.080 | and the weight and the burden of everything. Meeting with RC and Vesta on Mondays was really
00:05:05.840 | such a great encouragement to me over the many, many years that we did that. And so
00:05:10.920 | to your question regarding RC's sort of impact on my ministry and life, I mean, it's so hard
00:05:17.940 | to even put into a few words because the truth of the matter is, is that I've been so impacted
00:05:23.360 | and influenced by him. And of course, by many others, many other preachers and many other
00:05:28.000 | teachers and many other pastors. Sinclair Ferguson has been a long time friend and mentor
00:05:32.960 | of mine. And at the end of the day, if I could sort of sum it up and boil it down into just
00:05:39.080 | a few words, RC's life and his example gave me the picture of a man striving to be faithful
00:05:51.260 | with the stewardship that God has entrusted to him, doing what he was gifted to do and
00:05:56.220 | called to do by the Holy Spirit, striving to help people and to point people, not to
00:06:03.100 | himself, but to Jesus Christ, to get eyes off of him and to get eyes on Jesus, to help
00:06:10.900 | those that we're serving, those that we're teaching, to get their eyes on the Lord, our
00:06:16.900 | holy, gracious, loving and sovereign Lord, to know him and to love him more and more
00:06:24.580 | with all their heart, souls, mind and strength, and to love their neighbor as themselves so
00:06:29.540 | that people would really feel free, assured as they're resting in the finished work of
00:06:35.420 | Jesus Christ. You know, it's really very simple. And RC lived that very simple life of a pastor,
00:06:43.380 | churchman, theologian, striving to work with any that he could at the same time, being
00:06:49.980 | willing to draw the line and do what needed to be done to say what needed to be said at
00:06:55.200 | times where I believe, and I believe rightly, things needed to be said, where lines needed
00:07:01.240 | to be drawn in the sand to say, "This is right. This is biblical." Or even the antithesis,
00:07:08.940 | which is much harder to do, to say, "This is not right. This is not biblical. This is
00:07:13.660 | not in accord with our confessional standards and with the faith once delivered to the saints."
00:07:19.980 | But that tension that RC had, or if you will, that balance that RC had of striving to be
00:07:27.500 | at peace with others, striving to have a unity of spirit and a bond of peace while at the
00:07:36.180 | same time contending earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints. That example,
00:07:43.100 | that legacy of RC's, I think is going to be passed down by the work of the Lord and by
00:07:49.120 | the power of the Holy Spirit, not just to me, hopefully, but to thousands and hundreds
00:07:54.980 | of thousands of men and women throughout the world.
00:07:57.580 | One of the chief aims of RC in his life, in his ministry, in his preaching and teaching
00:08:05.820 | was to give God the glory. That God would be the one glorified and not the man, not
00:08:14.140 | the messenger. That in preaching the word of God and the whole counsel of God in season
00:08:20.500 | and out of season and not wavering, but remaining steadfast and on course, that the Lord would
00:08:27.460 | use RC and that the Lord would use all faithful ministers to draw the attention to the Lord.
00:08:36.600 | And so, RC detested this idea, as do I, all this language and all these notions of the
00:08:45.040 | celebrity pastor. No good pastor, no faithful pastor likes that or idealizes that. Every
00:08:52.280 | faithful pastor wants to get the eyes of all people upon Jesus Christ and not upon himself.
00:08:58.480 | Amen. RC did that and he was a gift and his legacy carries on in men like yourself. Brooke
00:09:06.080 | Parsons, thank you so much for your time today.
00:09:09.120 | Thank you, Tony. It's great to be with you, brother.
00:09:11.120 | Amen. That was Brooke Parsons, senior pastor of St. Andrew's Chapel in Sanford, Florida,
00:09:15.920 | editor of Table Talk Monthly Magazine of Ligonier Ministries. And he's on Twitter and he's
00:09:19.680 | really good at Twitter too. You should check him out on social media if you haven't. I
00:09:24.120 | really appreciate Brooke and am grateful for his time.
00:09:27.000 | Next week, John Piper is back in the studio with us. And on Monday, he'll talk with us
00:09:30.760 | about the five types of biblical promises we can hold onto when depression hits our
00:09:36.200 | lives. I'm your host, Tony Reinke, and we'll see you on Monday. Have a great weekend.
00:09:40.800 | [END]
00:09:41.300 | 1
00:09:42.300 | 1. What is the most important thing that God has given you? For those who have not yet