Faith's Vital Role in Pastoral Ministry

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Benjamin Kreps:

Hey everyone and welcome to the Mark Prater podcast where our aim is to connect our global family of Sovereign Grace churches with our executive director. Mark, as you well know, in Sovereign Grace, as pastors in Sovereign Grace, we are not professionals to quote John Piper's classic book on pastoral ministry. We do care about things like productivity and seeing success in our endeavors, of course. But underneath all of our efforts is this vital, irreplaceable, non-negotiable need for pastoral ministry. And that is the role that faith plays when it comes to our role as pastors. And you wanted to talk to us about that today.

Mark Prater:

I do. Faith plays a vital role in pastoral ministry, I believe, and I want to talk about this today because I've had some experiences recently where I'm carrying a couple of groups of men, pastors, on my heart that I just feel like the Lord wanted to devote this episode of the podcast too.

So here's the first group. I've had some anecdotal conversations with wonderful Sovereign Grace pastors recently, men who have been faithful in planting and building and leading their church for many years. And in talking with them, some of them are just weary, they're weary, they're tired, they love what they do, but there's just a weariness that can happen over time. And of course when you get to a weary place, you can ask questions of the Lord and just wonder certain things. Your heart is vulnerable, your mind is vulnerable, vulnerable to go certain directions that you just wrestle with the Lord with. And so I just carry those men in my heart into the podcast, the weary pastor who's been laboring faithfully for years. And I thank God for that group of men.

The second is just church planters. I was just in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, the church you planted a year ago out of your church and interacting with, well, I was there at Redeeming Grace Church doing a seminar on the spiritual gifts and got a few minutes just personally with Jeremy Hetrick, the man you sent out. Ben. He has planted, done a wonderful job of planting Redeeming Grace Church. And he was just talking about some of the challenges of church planting for him. And he's responding to those well, but they're challenging and they're hard. I was just thinking about it and it made me think about our church planters like Jeremy that are in the early years of church planting and facing challenges that church planters face. No permanent meeting location, although we have a number of churches that have that challenge. You're taking, for the planter, a group of people, and you are leading and influencing and molding them into their own church. And certainly you have folks that maybe aren't Christians that haven't had a church experience, or maybe some people are joining you that have a different church experience and it's taking them and building 'em into a gospel centered church. That's not easy to do. And then of course, there's the regular preaching of God's word, which all pastors face that. But then in the church planting, you're also thinking about are we being faithful in our outreach efforts because we want to plant this church to get conversion growth and not transfer growth? And those are some of the challenges that planters face.

And then I'm thinking about the planters who are going to plant in the next two to three years in Sovereign Grace. I'm going to speak more about this at the Pastors Conference, but right now we have about 14 church plants planned for the next two to three years. I'll speak more about it, six in the US and eight outside of the United States. And those men right now are preparing for church planting. They may need to move. So they're looking for housing for them and their family. They're looking for a meeting location and the place that they're going to plant. They're hoping to build a church planting team and even wondering who will join this team if you're being sent from a church who will come with us and not knowing yet whether you've got a team, there can be a little bit of anxiety over those kind of things. These are some of the challenges that church planters face even before they officially start the church. I'm carrying church planters on my heart today, as well. And as I thought about those two groups, it is that vital role of faith and pastoral ministry that I just want to speak into during this episode.

Benjamin Kreps:

When it comes to starting something new like a church plant, a new church, a new role for a church planter, certainly there's a lot of excitement, anticipation, enthusiasm, something new is being created, but a joy. And then a church is planted, or a pastor is pastoring a church for a long, long season, year after year. And enthusiasm and excitement cannot sustain a pastor. There are so many dangerous toils and snares that we must walk through in pastoral ministry. And so what's needed most is that dependent faith being sustained by the Lord as we cast ourselves upon him in faith. But this isn't just a good idea. This is informed by God's word. And so talk to us about that.

Mark Prater:

Yeah, God's word speaks into it and all pastors know that. And I just want to reference one verse that I've been thinking a lot about and meditating on and reading again, again as it relates to faith. And of course it's in Hebrews 11 and it's verse six in particular that says, and without faith it is impossible to please him. Meaning to please God, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

And so for the weary pastor, for the church planter, we are in those moments when we are just thinking about anxieties or we have fears or we're weary, we're to seek God. And that actually pleases him when we do because our seeking of Him is an expression of faith. It's an expression of we believe that he exists and that he will help us. And it's that kind of faith even in your weariness and even in your anxieties, that God is pleased with, it actually pleases him, which I think is the ultimate aim in pastoral ministry. We do all that we do to please him, which is one of the reasons I think faith is so important in pastoral ministry. And I've just not only been studying that verse, there's just certain things I've been reading that I want to strengthen my own faith.

So I want to read some quotes that I hope will strengthen you as it relates to continue to grow in faith because it's vital for pastoral ministry. The first is from Charles Bridge's book, the Classic, the Christian Ministry. And if you're weak, if you're feeling weary, if your church planting team isn't put together yet, if you don't know where you're going to meet, when you form this church plant, if there's just some unknowns for you, those are wonderful places of weakness that God intends to use. And this is what Charles Bridges says. Faith links our weaknesses in immediate connection with the promises of almighty aid and enables us to say to the mountain of difficulty, who are thou? Oh, great mountain. Thus discouragements, properly sustained and carefully improved, become our most fruitful sources of eventual encouragement. While love to our work bears us on above all our difficulties.

And that is just so well said. There's a love for your work that a pastor has. It's one of the reasons I believe we're happy pastors in Sovereign Grace and that carries us above our difficulties. But in those moments of weaknesses, we can have faith that those discouragements actually that the Lord is going to use to be some of our greatest encouragement when we look back someday. That's a wonderful expression of faith.

The other thing I wanted to read is from one of Spurgeon's lectures to his students, and this particular lecture is entitled The Holy Spirit in Connection to Our Ministry. And the reason I'm mentioning this is because all that we do in ministry we can't do in man's own strength. It takes divine strength and divine power and we are in a work ultimately that we can't do. It's got to be God's work and God's doing, I mean conversion of souls, reaching the lost, for example, discipling people to grow in Christ. We don't have the kind of strength and power to do that, but God does. So an expression of faith is reliance upon the work and the ministry of the Holy Spirit. And so this is what Spurgeon says to his students. "Miracles of grace must be the seals of our ministry; who can bestow them but the Spirit of God? Convert a soul without the Spirit of God! Why, you cannot even make a fly, much less create a new heart and a right spirit lead the children of God to a higher, I believe what he means by that, Holy, life. "Without the Holy Ghost, you are an expressively more likely to conduct them in carnal security if you attempt their elevation by any method of your own ends. Our end, brothers, can never be gained if we miss the cooperation of the Spirit of the Lord." Isn't that well said?

Benjamin Kreps:

Yes.

Mark Prater:

We can't even make a fly. That's a good reminder. But the Holy Spirit does wonderful heart changing work either in conversion or growing someone in Christ. And then I just want to end with this, what I'm saying, with one more quote, this comes from a minister's fainting fits, one that I would highly recommend that lecture to weary pastors. And this is what he says between this and heaven. "There may be rougher weather yet, but it is all provided by our covenant HEAD," capital HEAD, "In nothing, let us be turned aside from the path which the divine call has urged us to pursue, come fair or foul. The pulpit is our watchtower and the ministry, our warfare, be it ours when we cannot see the face of our God to trust, yes trust, under the shadow of his wings." That's comforting. Yes, it's that's faith building and that causes us to seek the Lord in faith and that pleases him.

Benjamin Kreps:

Amen. That is rich encouragement. Mark. Thank you. And I'm sure there's some weary pastors that are checking us out that are grateful for your care as well. That verse in Hebrews, that is a verse worth taking unhurried time to meditate on and to draw the riches of the truth it contains because there's going to be so many times in pastoral ministry where you're going to feel perhaps appropriately or not, I feel alone, to feel like there's all sorts of forces arrayed against me. I'm doing my best. And to know that by our dependent faith in God in those challenging seasons and those moments of weakness, that we can please him. And so what is more sustaining for us than to know, even in the hardest moments, I can please him and to know he has promised he is pleased with me. I don't know what to do. I'm not sure how to proceed, but I can please him. And to know that through that dependent faith God has promised, be pleased and to meet us as we work through all of the challenges of pastoral ministry.

So thank you, Mark, for your encouragement. Thank you everyone for checking out the podcast. We'll see you here next week. Lord willing. Bye for now.