For the last year I have not been "the pastor" in the pulpit but rather a former pastor sitting in a pew. After a couple decades of pulpit ministry preaching to and shepherding congregations of various sizes and make-ups as well as a decade overseas training pastors in some significantly challenging places, the past several months have been a sort of wilderness experience. It hasn't been a wilderness experience because of a lack of preaching because, the fact is, I still do preach from time-to-time around the country. No, the wilderness I've experienced this year has not been due to a lack of preaching as much as to a lack of having a church family to consistently, Sunday after Sunday, week in and week out--preach to, shepherd, pray for, love, and live life with.
Wilderness or desert experiences are good for us and mine is no exception. Trading the pulpit for a pew has been a good thing for me. Its enabled me to gain a renewed perspective on pastoral ministry that I really don't think I could or would have gained any other way. The pew has given me a vantage point that Bible college, seminary, and my 30 plus years in ministry weren't able to. Being a parishioner rather than the pastor has aroused within me insights about pastoral work that I think have been well-worth sitting out a couple rounds.
So, what have I learned? What's been so good about being the pastor in the pew this past year? Well, I'm so glad you asked, so let me tell you just some of the things I have learned from the personal experience of sitting in the pew. Let me share three things I found I needed and received listening to sermon after sermon each week at our church--Grace Baptist Church in Somerset, Kentucky. As I do I hope it can help us who are pastors, whether preaching this Sunday or not, understand what the people in the pews need from us, their pastors in the pulpits, if their hearts are to be warmed, their minds instructed, their wills challenged, their sinfulness exposed, their spirits revived, and their doubts assured by our preaching.
1. They need to hear God when we preach. We must spare them the jokes, cute stories, pithy cliches and give our people a word from the Lord. They desperately need to hear God when we preach. As the writer of Hebrews puts it in Hebrews 13:7, pastors are those men who speak the Word of God to you. Peter makes the same exact point in 1 Peter 4:11 when making the point that those who are gifted and tasked to preach and teach the Bible must do so as those who are speaking the very words of God. There's simply no wiggle room here. As a pastor our job each and every time we open the Book is to give our people a word from the Lord. Of course, that takes some really hard work of poring over the Scriptures and pouring out our heart in prayer to God before ever getting to the point where we have a word from the Lord for anyone.
2. They need to see Jesus when we preach. More than needing to see all the powerful points in our sermons, our people need to see Jesus. Preaching that does not see and connect all of Scripture to Christ cannot be considered true New Testament preaching. Jesus, Himself, made the point on several occasions that the Scriptures are about Him. He and His gospel are their subject matter when correctly understood and thus, preached. On his 7 mile walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus, Jesus used the whole Old Testament to teach two unnamed disciples everything they needed to know about Himself and His work of redemption (Luke 24:27, 32, 44-47). On another occasion, Jesus makes the point that people who were searching the Scriptures because they thought they would find eternal life in them were missing the whole point. The Scriptures weren't the source of eternal life--Jesus was! As Jesus says about the Scriptures, "it is these that testify about me" (John 5:39). So, pastors, please we must show our people Jesus and His gospel work of redemption in our preaching. Show them what Jesus has done for them, Who He is for them, and what He promises them. Don't let them settle for less by preaching that is empty of Christ.
3. They need the Holy Spirit to work when we preach. Preaching is much more than the transmission of knowledge. It is the creation of spiritual perseverance, patience, power, praise, joy, worship, repentance, obedience, humility, fruit, and productivity in a believer by the Holy Spirit of God when that believer is under the consistent and continual preaching of the Word of God. The Holy Spirit of God must empower our preaching as He enlightens and empowers our hearers if there is to be God-glorifying results. According to passages such as 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 and 1 Thessalonians 1:5, the Spirit of God is necessary to our preaching if it is to become an event where the God of the gospel and His life-transforming grace are encountered by the people of God.
Wilderness or desert experiences are good for us and mine is no exception. Trading the pulpit for a pew has been a good thing for me. Its enabled me to gain a renewed perspective on pastoral ministry that I really don't think I could or would have gained any other way. The pew has given me a vantage point that Bible college, seminary, and my 30 plus years in ministry weren't able to. Being a parishioner rather than the pastor has aroused within me insights about pastoral work that I think have been well-worth sitting out a couple rounds.
So, what have I learned? What's been so good about being the pastor in the pew this past year? Well, I'm so glad you asked, so let me tell you just some of the things I have learned from the personal experience of sitting in the pew. Let me share three things I found I needed and received listening to sermon after sermon each week at our church--Grace Baptist Church in Somerset, Kentucky. As I do I hope it can help us who are pastors, whether preaching this Sunday or not, understand what the people in the pews need from us, their pastors in the pulpits, if their hearts are to be warmed, their minds instructed, their wills challenged, their sinfulness exposed, their spirits revived, and their doubts assured by our preaching.
1. They need to hear God when we preach. We must spare them the jokes, cute stories, pithy cliches and give our people a word from the Lord. They desperately need to hear God when we preach. As the writer of Hebrews puts it in Hebrews 13:7, pastors are those men who speak the Word of God to you. Peter makes the same exact point in 1 Peter 4:11 when making the point that those who are gifted and tasked to preach and teach the Bible must do so as those who are speaking the very words of God. There's simply no wiggle room here. As a pastor our job each and every time we open the Book is to give our people a word from the Lord. Of course, that takes some really hard work of poring over the Scriptures and pouring out our heart in prayer to God before ever getting to the point where we have a word from the Lord for anyone.
2. They need to see Jesus when we preach. More than needing to see all the powerful points in our sermons, our people need to see Jesus. Preaching that does not see and connect all of Scripture to Christ cannot be considered true New Testament preaching. Jesus, Himself, made the point on several occasions that the Scriptures are about Him. He and His gospel are their subject matter when correctly understood and thus, preached. On his 7 mile walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus, Jesus used the whole Old Testament to teach two unnamed disciples everything they needed to know about Himself and His work of redemption (Luke 24:27, 32, 44-47). On another occasion, Jesus makes the point that people who were searching the Scriptures because they thought they would find eternal life in them were missing the whole point. The Scriptures weren't the source of eternal life--Jesus was! As Jesus says about the Scriptures, "it is these that testify about me" (John 5:39). So, pastors, please we must show our people Jesus and His gospel work of redemption in our preaching. Show them what Jesus has done for them, Who He is for them, and what He promises them. Don't let them settle for less by preaching that is empty of Christ.
3. They need the Holy Spirit to work when we preach. Preaching is much more than the transmission of knowledge. It is the creation of spiritual perseverance, patience, power, praise, joy, worship, repentance, obedience, humility, fruit, and productivity in a believer by the Holy Spirit of God when that believer is under the consistent and continual preaching of the Word of God. The Holy Spirit of God must empower our preaching as He enlightens and empowers our hearers if there is to be God-glorifying results. According to passages such as 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 and 1 Thessalonians 1:5, the Spirit of God is necessary to our preaching if it is to become an event where the God of the gospel and His life-transforming grace are encountered by the people of God.
The Bible says that the Holy Spirit was given to glorify Christ by revealing Him and His gospel-saving and sanctifying work through His Word (John 16:13-15). In Acts and the Epistles we find that the apostles were filled and empowered by the Spirit to proclaim their Christ-centered sermons. The result of this was that sinners were saved, and the people of God built up in the Faith. Preachers today also need to be filled with the same Holy Spirit to achieve the same results. In this sense, Holy Spirit empowered preaching is the principal means of advancing the kingdom of Jesus Christ. This is God 's ordained way, so that He receives all the glory for the salvation and sanctification of sinners. None of this means that preachers are exempted from the hard work of sermon preparation. But, knowing that the effectiveness of our preaching rests in the empowering presence of the Spirit, should perhaps, cause us to spend as much time on our knees in God-dependent, fervent prayer as we do at our desks studying His Word, preparing our sermons.
(A great resource for preachers is Arturo Azurdia's book, Spirit Empowered Preaching. Here's a link: Spirit Empowered Preaching -- Arturo Azurdia III)
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