Pastoral Encouragement
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Benjamin Kreps:
Hey everyone. And welcome back to the Mark Prater podcast where our aim is to connect our global family of churches with our Executive Director, Mark. As we continue to navigate through this pandemic, as pastors carrying various burdens hearing a diverse collection of voices and perspectives from our church. What thoughts, what suggestions would you have to encourage us to prepare our hearts and our minds as we communicate to our churches?
Mark Prater:
Yeah, it's a good question. I've been thinking about this because I think our pastors are feeling the need to communicate effectively and consistently to their church knowing that their members have different comfort levels and different perspectives regarding the pandemic and how reopening should even occur. I think a pastor has to kind of do work in his own heart first so that it affects the tone of his communication and do some thoughtful theological work that informs what he does communicate.
Benjamin Kreps:
So what kinds of ways might you suggest some approaches to think about preparing our hearts in that way to be theologically informed and ready to communicate in that way?
Mark Prater:
Well, here's what I would recommend is as you sort of just listen to all of the noise out there. Well, one of the things that I've had just a growing concern about is more of a cavalier attitude that people bring towards this. And I don't think that should mark God's under shepherds.
I think the place to start for us as pastors is for 1 Peter 5 where Peter is writing to elders and he says there, “Clothe yourselves.” Then he adds that phrase, “… all of you with humility toward one another because God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble.” So we should wear humility in that sense. And I'm not talking about weakness when I say humility, right? I'm talking about humility that also includes a Christlike strength. And I think our humility must begin vertical so that we are men who fear God in this. And that's a part of Romans 13 actually, that we're called to follow civil authorities because there is a judgment seat that awaits us that we have to give an account for. Just that fear of the Lord should engender and should stir humility enough.
Benjamin Kreps:
Yeah, I mean I'm working through that text right now and it just is clear that even if we agree or disagree about the application of what it means to submit to the government, because there's certainly situations where we won't. And where that is, people might have different perspectives on that whole respect and honor must be present in the middle of all of that I think speaks to exactly what you're talking about.
Mark Prater:
Yeah, that's exactly right. And it's the tone of a pastor's communication is one of humility, clarity, theological clarity, in particular, the sermon and yet strength. And so I think take time to just to wrestle with your own hearts and make sure that you're pursuing Christlike humility. That's the place to start.
Benjamin Kreps:
That's great counsel preparing the heart when it comes to preparing the mind. Any resources that you might recommend to aid are thinking.
Mark Prater:
Yeah. And as I recommend resources, let me just say this, that I want to keep saying this over and over again. Because these are my thoughts. I'm on the Leadership Team and so yeah, guys interpret them as leadership team thoughts, which is understandable.
Every situation is going to be different locally. That's because different governors in the States, anyway, are making different decisions and even within States, different County Commissioners are making different decisions. So it really depends on what's happening locally. And it also depends on your church. You know, your church best, so make decisions that are best for your church. So these are just thoughts. These are not mandates.
Benjamin Kreps
Everyone, hopefully we all understand, hopefully everyone watching understands this is a podcast to help us understand what's going on in Mark's mind and heart and encouragement. These are suggestions.
Mark Prater:
Right, exactly.
Benjamin Kreps:
And you may differ in your perspective.
Mark Prater:
Yeah, I think one of the most I think, well first of all I would do what you’re doing. Study Romans 13. I think that's a good place to start. Make sure you've got a good theological baseline on what Scripture says there. A helpful resource I found was Jonathan Lehman's article where he wrote, I forget the title, but you know, when should churches ignore guidelines and engage in civil disobedience.
Benjamin Kreps:
It’s on the IX Marks website. So you can find it.
Mark Prater:
You know, he sets it up there. There's the government responsibility basically to protect life. That's one of the God given mandates. You see that throughout Scripture, which is in play right now during a pandemic. And that comes in meets with the church’s freedom and obligation to gather together, certainly here in the States. And so how does a church think about that? He gave a couple of really good thoughts, which I'll give to you. Is the government presenting a reasonable argument to protect life and if they're presenting a reasonable argument to protect life, I think you've really to consider that and follow that.
However, if they begin being unreasonable, then you've got to ask the question, do we have to follow those guidelines? The other one that he said, which I thought was really good is, is the government at all singling out churches and preventing them from meeting. So if they're opening up all different other kinds of venues, like big concerts and certainly obviously malls and shopping malls and that kind of thing, and there's still restricting churches. That would be another occasion where you've got to wrestle through, do we meet anyway?
But I think what we're finding overall is there's no, at least in the States, I'm not aware of any mandate that's keeping a church from preaching the gospel right now. You can do that live stream, you can do that through video, through other means. They are giving guidelines for gathering depending on the state. You and I were talking earlier here in Pennsylvania, churches could gather. They're just recommending that they don't. So again, it's a local issue,
Benjamin Kreps
Great thoughts. And I think there's, in the middle of all of this, there's a lot of gray for us to navigate through as pastors. There's wisdom calls and your expectation to be thinking theologically and also be processing this humbly is a helpful one. So thank you Mark, and thank you everyone for watching the podcast and we'll see you again right here soon.