The audio for last week’s Shepherds’ Conference is now available. All sessions can be downloaded for free — a great gift from Grace Church!
As I have done the past couple of years, I’ve scanned through my notes and pulled some of the statements from each session/preacher that were significant, helpful, encouraging and beneficial to me (remember that these were written “live,” so they undoubtedly are not exact, word-for-word transcriptions). Here goes…
Phil Johnson —
Preach the Word. Yet this is not merely a prescription for expository preaching. It is not exclusively about the pulpit; it is about all of [Timothy’s] ministry and all his life. Paul is telling him how to live.
Keep preaching the Word no matter what others think of it; no matter how much resistance you encounter and make it the heart and soul of your ministry.
People today want imagineers and story-tellers and clowns, and that is what church planting gurus are telling us to model our ministries after. And that attitude is fatal to authentic faith. It is a deadly evil, especially when it is married to an orthodox, lip-service kind of faith.…don’t be a clown or trifler in the pulpit, especially when people are expecting to have their ears tickled.
Tom Pennington —
What do you believe is the greatest danger to your ministry? Perhaps a family problem. Or divisive church member. Or a disgruntled elder or a staff member living in a sinful life of shame. Those are very real dangers. But the greatest danger to our souls and our ministries is our own pride.
Pride is in fact the soul’s greatest enemy. It isolates us from the grace of God and the God of grace.
To humble the proud is part of what it means to be God.…Pride is at its heart antithetical to who we have become in Christ. God opposes pride in His children just as much as He does in unbelievers.
If we defend our pride, we distance ourselves from God’s grace.…Grace is the reality in God that causes Him to delight to do good to those who do not deserve it and to those who deserve the exact opposite of goodness. This is what God constantly does and how He acts.…But He only bestows grace where there is true humility.
The only way to carry out your ministry is to be strong in grace. We can do nothing apart from grace. This is one of the inviolable laws of God’s moral universe. God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
True humility is always looking for ways to serve others ahead of ourselves.
Embrace God’s providence in your life. It’s not forever. We humble ourselves by accepting what He does as true.…Humility begins with seeing the character and purpose of God and thus seeing our own condition (Is. 6; Job 42). When we struggle with pride, we have not come to see God in His glory and majesty.
Prayerlessness is the believer’s declaration of independence.…We are supposed to be devoted to the ministry of the Word and the ministry of prayer. There is something desperately wrong when our preaching is longer than our praying.
Pride is a danger that puts us on a collision course with God.
John MacArthur —
Look at the church like the Lord of the church looks at it. This is the most serious work you will ever be engaged in — this is nothing to trifle with. If you want to be creative with change, go into business. Do not trifle with the church of God.
The only authority we have is when we speak that which God has spoken.
Preaching that has authority is preaching that puts the Bible on display. Our authority is not our own; it is delegated and borrowed. By what authority do we say these things? By the authority of the Word of God.
Rick Holland —
Pastoral ministry is not for wimps. It’s not a social alternative to another job in the world. It is the must crushing endeavor a human being can undertake. It is all about exalting the Great Shepherd and diminishing the under-shepherd.
A faithful pastor ought to necessarily attract persecution even in this age.
Our goal as shepherds is to grasp the hand of our Savior and the hands of our people, join them together and watch them go together in joy!
Al Mohler —
Avoiding heresy is not a one-time decision but a lifetime preoccupation.…Heresy fills giant rooms and draws an enormous audience and often sounds sweet to those who do not have an ear to hear. It can sound so slick. It takes work and dedication and theological expertise and commitment to teach accurately.
Everyone is afraid of something. That’s not the problem. An unwillingness to conquer the fear is the problem. Be confident in the One who sent us and is able to save!
Nathan Busenitz —
Discontentment is dissatisfaction with the circumstances in which God has placed us; at its root it is a protest against the sovereign providence of God. Discontentment says to God, “I don’t like the way you have orchestrated some aspect of my life — something you have not seen fit to give me.” It can manifest itself in many ways: grumbling and complaining, protesting circumstances, greed, covetousness and the love of money, comparisons, anxiety and worry, lack of joy and patience, an unwillingness to wait on the Lord, quarrels and contentions. Discontentment is rooted in pride thinking we deserve more and that will produce strife and contention.
Contentment is characterized by thankfulness, peace, steadfast faith. It is accepting God’s sovereign control over all of life’s circumstances. It is the blessed assurance that God does all things well and is doing those for my ultimate good. It recognizes that I can trust the Lord with the outcome of every situation so that my joy and hope never waver in changing circumstances.
When needs are unmet, the proud heart becomes frustrated and discontent. The humble Christian realizes that the only thing he deserves is hell and anything else he receives is grace.…If we are to kill discontentment, we too must clothe ourselves in humility.
Godly living starts with godly thinking. Discontentment begins in the mind.…Sometimes people say, “I just can’t help how I feel.” If we want to change what we want to feel, we have to change how we think.
Steve Lawson —
God is sovereign over the conditions of every land and nation and prophets. It is God who controls His prophets and preachers and where they go; there is no greater judgment than to be in a land where God withholds His preachers.
“The greatest curse that God can send on a people is to give them over to blind, unregenerate, carnal. lukewarm, unskilled guides.” [Whitfield.]…The greatest curse is to come to the house of God and not hear the Word of God and to hear the vain imaginations of ungodly men and to hear secular ideologies and to hear only the religious babblings of the blind leaders of the blind. The greatest curse is to be subjected to a famine in the land.
We must be ourselves saturated with the Word of God. We must have a voracious appetite for the Word of God — for we are eating for those who are in famine conditions. We must feed ourselves to feed the languishing souls of others. We must be walking Bibles in this day of famine in the land. We must speak words of truth.
Carey Hardy —
Leadership is not optional. It is essential. Take away leadership and vision wanes and people will drift away.
Leadership is influence that leads others to follow Christ.
Until we are moved by compassion and concern for the ones God has given us, we are not ready to lead and minister.
A leader has to love people. He can’t be controlling and domineering, preaching constantly about his authority. That man doesn’t understand the difference between a shepherd and a cowboy — a cowboy drives cattle, a shepherd leads sheep.
Are you consistent in your character no matter where you are and what you are doing? Can you say, “ask my wife…ask my children?” Do your family members have a respect for you about your habits? Can children emulate your life through your example?…Consistency will breed trust in you as a leader. Trust is the result of making right decisions and choices daily and then doing that over a long period of time. Truth and time go together. It takes a long time to build trust and only a moment to lose it.
Godly leaders don’t run from problems and they don’t quit in the middle of the problems.
Paul majored in Trials 101 — and that was how he learned contentment. We learn contentment through trials and difficulty.…Paul was willing to allow his own purposes, plans, and duty to be superseded by the providence of God. He trusted God at all times, which allowed him to be content at all times. Trust and submission are connected.
People need a leader that revels in the sovereign leadership of God. People need leaders like that in the world we live in right now. Don’t succumb to all that is said on the political talk programs. Model confidence and trust in God that is not affected by life and circumstances. Whatever the Lord wants, that’s what we want.
Jesse Johnson —
Evangelism is given to the church as our mission — what we are supposed to do. The main way that we glorify God is in evangelism (cf. MacArthur on Mt. 28). Consider 2 Cor. 4:15 — there is divine mathematics: the more people that are saved, the more glory is given to God.
The church has been given a mission: evangelism; and this is unique in the history of the world. A soup kitchen without the gospel is ineffectual and misses the point of the mission of the church. The church’s goal is not to eliminate hunger and poverty.
Words of Grace 