The Highway to Strength in Ministry

By way of Ray Ortlund's blog comes these words from the Prince of Preachers, Charles Haddon Spurgeon:

“And do we not often feel weak in the sense of utter unfitness for being ministers at all by reason of our own sinfulness? Paul said of his calling to the ministry, ‘Woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel!’ We can say that too; yet sometimes we feel as if we would speak no more for Christ, and we should sink into silence were it not that His Word is as a fire in our bones, and we cannot refrain. Then we think we will go away into the far west, and in some log cabin teach a few children the way of salvation, for we do not feel fit for anything higher. Our shortcomings and our failures stare us out of countenance, and then are we painfully weak. But this also is the highway to strength: ‘When I am weak, then am I strong.’”

C. H. Spurgeon, An All Round Ministry (Edinburgh, 1978), page 216.

(The photo is of Spurgeon's personal library at Westwood, his family home, containing 12,000 volumes)

Repository Preaching

Some Good Old-Timey Preaching

Church of the Week: Sainte Madeleine, St.-Marie-Aux-Mines, France

In the late seventeenth century, my great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather, Jakob Hochstetler, a close associate of Jacob Amman--for whom the Amish are named--lived (like Amman) in the small Volges Mountain village of St.-Marie-Aux-Mines, a village that can claim distinction as the birthplace of the Amish.

The lovely Robin and I visited this village in the Alsace region of France in November 2010. There we found the Sainte Marie Madeleine Catholic Church, named for the same saint (Mary Magdalene) that gives the village its name.

The church's large front doors were locked. But it looked welcoming enough, so I circumnavigated the structure, and finally found a side entrance to the sanctuary that was unlocked.

The church's interior was pretty dark, but I managed a photo of the altar. It is clearly an active church.

Built in 1747 (according to the plaque at the front entrance), the church would not have been seen by Amman and my ancestor Jakob, which is just as well, as they had to leave the area by order of Louis XIV in 1712. Which is okay, too, because in 1738, my ancestor emigrated to North America, and became one of the first Amish to settle in what is now Pennsylvania.

What's the Count, Ump?

Todd Rhoades at Monday Morning Insight blogged recently about an Oklahoma City television station that tracked a pastor, undercover, for six weeks as he spent hours and hours, and hundreds of dollars, at a strip club. The news report is one of the most disgusting and disheartening things you can imagine. Rhoades says:

I think this is a great example of what I'm calling a 'three strike pastor':

Strike one:

This guy had absolutely no accountability, it seems. He took off for hours from the church; and when the reporters called the church, no one seemed to know where he was at, other than at 'an appointment'.

Pastor... it is important for someone to ALWAYS know where you are at. ALWAYS. That might seem like a violation of personal freedom; and maybe it is. But it's absolutely necessary.

Your assistant and your wife need to know where you are at all times. We live in the day of smart phones. A quick phone call or text can confirm your location very quickly. Heck, even a geo-coded twitter message will do the trick.

Strike two:

This pastor is totally duplicitous. He is totally living a double life. On Sunday, he preaches about having righteousness; on Monday, he's 'horny as hell'. And he's able to live both lives openly and freely, as long as they don't meet.

Strike three:

Lying... This pastor was in sin WAY over his head. His excuse initially: he had gone to help counsel someone in their Celebrate Recovery program, and that was a mistake. (Somehow, I knew this was all Rick Warren's fault!) After all, if that was true, the hug and kiss in the parking lot, the locking himself in the bathroom for hours; and the attempt at a covert, speedy getaway would all confirm that, right?

It didn't.

Let me throw out a suggestion today. Do this three strike test:

1. Do you have accountability? If not get some today; this minute. If not, consider it strike one.

2. Are you living duplicitously? Are you preaching one thing on Sunday and living a totally different lifestyle the rest of the week? I'm not talking little stuff here. Don't get bogged down in that. I'm talking specific sins that you preach about; that the Bible is very clear on; that you have made your secret lifestyle. You know what classifies as this. If you have to ask or justify; consider this confirmation. If you are currently living a double life that only you and God (and maybe another person other than your spouse know about): strike two.

3. Is there anything in your life or lifestyle that will cause you to lie if you're asked about it out of the blue? Is there anything that will cause you to lie to cover your butt, save your job, save your marriage, or keep you from public humiliation? If you're not willing to tell the truth about anything and everything... strike three.

Here's the reality: while most pastors and church leaders are obedient and faithful to their calling; there are also many 'three-strike' pastors out there.

If you're a three-strike pastor: get out.

Quit your job today and move at least a thousand miles away.

Then, get some help.

Work at McDonalds if you have to; but stop defiling the office that God has called you to.

Get out; and find something honorable to do with your time.

DISCLAIMER: Please don't misunderstand me. There are MANY instances where pastors should stay on, get accountability, and work through their situations. In fact, this should happen in most situations. None of us are perfect, by any means. What I'm talking about is someone who has slid into the traps of sin to the level that this man did. He didn't slip one day and spend hundreds of dollars and hours and hours in a strip club instantly. This was most likely the result of years of sin; that probably started out almost innocently but grew into a stage four cancer.

My word of encouragement for all of us today. Maybe you have one strike. Maybe two. But take action today... right now... to get a new at bat.

Don't get the third strike.

Because when you get the third strike, you're truly out.

This is great counsel. It happens too often, and it happens too easily. So take Todd's counsel, and take some time to step out of the batter's box, so to speak, and find out for sure what the count is. Before it's too late.

My 2011 Reading Plan

It's time again for me to plan my reading for the year. As I've posted about here and here, I devise a reading plan every January, to help guide my reading throughout the year (it usually turns out that half or more of my reading is spontaneous, so my plan is plenty flexible). So here's some of the books I hope to get to in the course of 2011:

Biography:
Martin Luther King Jr. (Frady)
Empire of the Summer Moon (Gwynn)

Memoir:
The Bread of Angels (Saldana)
A Rope and a Prayer (Rohde/Mulvihill)

Classics:
Madame Bovary (Flaubert)
Bleak House (Dickens)
The Swiss Family Robinson (Wyss)
A Journal of the Plague Year (Defoe)
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (Wiggin)

Writing:
A Dangerous Profession (Busch)

History:
No Ordinary Time (Goodwin)
The Fall of Rome (Lafferty)
Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer (Swanson)

New authors:
A Soldier of the Great War (Helprin)
I, Elizabeth (Miles)
Libra (DeLillo)
A History of the World in 10½ Chapters (Barnes)
Flaubert’s Parrot (Barnes)
Arthur & George (Barnes)
Penrod (Booth Tarkington)

Poetry:
Nox (Carson)

Favorites:
The Heritage of the Desert (Grey)
Code of the West (Grey)
Chancy (L’Amour)
The Cherokee Trail (L’Amour)
Soulprint (Batterson)
The Broker (Grisham)
The Last Juror (Grisham)

Christian:
The Power of a Whisper (Hybels)
The End of Religion (Cavey)
The Challenge of Jesus (Wright)
Hanging out the Wash (Lara)

Ministry/Leadership:
The Training of the Twelve (Bruce)
The Principle of the Path (Stanley)

Related books; (read in order):
Flaubert’s Parrot (Barnes)
Madame Bovary (Flaubert)

Martin Luther King Jr. (Frady)
Hellhound on his Trail (Sides)

Something Rotten (Fforde)
Gertrude & Claudius (Updike)

Arthur & George (Barnes)
The Sherlockian (Moore)

Books About Books:
My Reading Life (Conroy)

Children’s:
None

Re-read:
Leap Over a Wall (Peterson)

International and inter-cultural:
The Bread of Angels (Saldana)

Contemplative/Devotional:
Chanting the Psalms (Bourgealt)
Devotional Classics (Foster)

Friends:
Living in the Overlap (Schaefer)

Other:
The Wager (Myers)
Just Think (Nordenson)
Contested Will: Who Wrote Shaikespeare? (Shapiro)
The Great Typo Hunt (Deck)