Category: Ministry

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Canada Church Clint Gospel Ministry Pastors Spiritual Growth

6 Questions to Ask New People At Your Church

At the beginning of the fall semester, we always resume our Sunday School for all ages. One of the classes that we have added is an introduction to our church. It is not a membership class which outlines privileges and expectations of a potential church member. Instead, it’s a class for visitors and newcomers who we want to get to know better.

In what follows, I’ll lay out some of the questions that I ask the new folks at our church. Below each question, I’ll explain what I’m hoping to learn. Here are the six questions:

1. How did you hear about the church?

This is a question to gauge interest. If a person has researched your church and looked through the doctrinal statement in detail, you know that they have a doctrinal interest in the church. For someone else, their interest might solely be based on the warm invitation of a co-worker or friend. They don’t know about the doctrinal statement, they only know that their friend is nice and they hope the church is the same.

There is a big difference between the person who has come to the church because of the aesthetic appeal of your building’s architecture, and someone who has come because they were broken, and a church member reached out in care for them.

So asking this question helps to reveal the type of interest a person has in Jesus Christ and his church.

2. What is Your Religious Background?

This is a question to discover a framework. If we are all shaped by our backgrounds, then it is helpful to clarify what is the frame that sits around that background. This is a general question that is looking for simple, broad answers like:

  • I grew up Buddhist
  • My family went to a Catholic church
  • My parents were both atheists, we didn’t go to church.
  • I went to a Christian campus group in university.
  • I was a member of a confessional Presbyterian church.

When you ask the background question, you are discerning where people are coming from in terms of the belief systems they’ve been around. You’re not finding out if they had a good or bad experience in those contexts yet, because that’s the next question.

What you will discover is the difference between the background of a Pharisee or a Gentile or a Samaritan. And you will start to see (and help them to see) how they are affected positively or negatively by their framework. Which leads to the next question.

3. What has been your experience in churches (if you have any)?

This question is more specific, and reveals a person’s perspective on ‘church’. This question differs from the previous one because many people have gone to a doctrinally sound church, but for whatever reason, their experience was negative. Or for others, their religious background may not have been Christian, but it was generally positive in their eyes. As a result, they might have a different perspective that will not assume that the gospel and the church is better than what they’ve had.

Experiences with religious groups can make or mar us. Consider the experience of the woman who was entrapped by the Pharisees and charged with adultery in John 8? Her background was Judaism like the Pharisees, but her experience of it was wholly negative. Jesus deftly confronted the Pharisees, offered her hope, and called her to repentant, believing obedience.

This is also a question to discover is someone may have been disciplined out of a church or at least created problems somewhere else. How people interpret their experiences with the church will reveal a lot about their spiritual state.

4. Why Join a Church?

Asking people what they want is always helpful. And the same goes for asking them why they want to join the church. This question reveals their aspirations.

When people outline their reasons for joining a church, they will admit what they are really after. Maybe they want to serve in a ministry but will go wherever there is a need. Others may want the church to be a platform for them to find self-expression. Others may not have thought about why they would join the church, except that they like the people there and want to have those people as their new social circle.

I remember in the early days of our church plant a woman visited who showed me the bible she had revieved from a famous preacher. She listed all of her qualifications and then inquired about our worship services. After all of this, she informed me that she was looking for a church where she could “use her gifts”. It was clear that she wanted to use the church for her own self-expression.

You will also find the good motives people have for joining a church, like wanting to grow, disciple others, and fulfill their roles in accord with lists of gifts from Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4.

In an introductory way, many aspirations will start to come to light.

5. What Barriers Prevent Someone from Joining a Church?

This is a question that solicits an admission. In a class, people may not reveal too much personally, but at least people can admit that being a confessing, covenanted member of a church requires faith in Jesus Christ, and not walking in blatant, known sin that would immediately be cause for church discipline.

You might get an admission about the church discipline question. Or you might get further clarity about how people think about the ‘inside/outside’ aspects of the gathered church.

If someone thinks that the only barrier to joining a church is growing up in a different religious family, then you will know that there is a lot of teaching to do to correct that admission.

What is the Gospel?

Is there a confession of gospel among the newcomers? This is the most important question. It is both simple, yet surprisingly intimidating: What is the gospel? Many people are so confused about religion that they can have masses of theological data to share, but lack clarity about what are the essential pieces of the gospel.

Keep the answers to a short elevator pitch. Some theology stars might wish to present a lecture. You don’t want that (and nobody else will). The goal is to see if people are clear enough about the gospel that they can give a concise, orderly confession of it. The main categories will be God, Man, Christ, and Response. Each of these can be filled out, but your question will reveal how much work you have to do in teaching the gospel to new people.

What you will find is that people with extensive church backgrounds may lack clarity about what the gospel is, and what it isn’t.

The hope of these introductory questions is to begin an ongoing evangelistic and discipleship connection with these newcomers. The hope is that they would become gospel-believing, Jesus-following, covenanted members of your church.

Asking these questions can be a starting point along that journey.

unsplash-logoArtem Maltsev

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Canada Church Clint Ministry Pastors Spiritual Growth

Planters Must Be Pastors First

Recently I spoke with a guy who worked for a denomination to promote church planting. The term “planting” is Christian jargon for establishing new congregations in new regions. The guy made an interesting observation which I completely agreed with: Planters must be pastors first.

As a denominational worker, this friend had seen many guys who became church planters, but who failed to be shepherds of people’s souls. I have seen the same thing also. When church planters are merely franchise operators, they tend to imitate the world. Since they are starting something, namely a new congregation, they tend to copy the world’s start-up culture.

Worldly Start-Up Culture

This summer I read a memoir about the inner workings of a technology company in its early “start-up” days. It was an expose of Silicon Valley and the start-up culture found in many of the tech companies in that industry.

The most prominent features in these companies were a combination of ‘bro-culture’, forced adolescence, and passive-aggressive conflict management.

  • ‘Bro-culture’ is an intentionally exclusive world where male programmers use insider language to mask frat-house crudeness.
  • The forced adolescence of these companies shows up in their kindergarten decor and nap rooms.
  • Conflict is not handled openly and honestly but is ignored under fake happy veneers. Then when the threshold is reached, the aggressive scorched earth approach takes over with no possibility of forgiveness.

Companies mature and change. But all you have to do is make a Google search for “Bro culture” and you will see articles relating to these features of the tech start-ups. Many church planters have tended to copy this worldly (that is unspiritual) world of start-ups.

Christian Start-Up Culture

The church planting culture in North America can be sort of like a Christianized version of this tech start-up world. The planters are the ‘bros’. The plants have an infatuation with adolescent style. And the conflict management tends to be to ignore minor issues and then blow up, quit, or burn others when everyone is not on board with the vision.

Of course, there are challenges to every church plant. And many people can look on a pastor in his twenties or thirties as inexperienced, belonging to the pastors’ fraternity, and not very good at handling conflict. Almost every pastor who has started young and had a long tenure will admit to failure when it comes to the commissions and omissions of sin in his early pastorate, myself included.

But there is still this other kind of start-up style that bakes in the features of worldly start-up culture into church plants. I think these features are still influenced by Mark Driscoll and the bro culture he promoted in his church. His 2006 book Confessions of a Reformission Rev offered the memoir for how bro culture looks for a plant. Driscoll’s template resulted in scores of church planters trying to copy him. Thankfully these planters have been satirized enough that we might see an end to the cussing, middle-aged pastor with a soul patch and skinny jeans.

Planters Must Be Pastors First

Church planting is very hard. Establishing a new congregation requires both wisdom and faith. Much effort needs to be expended by a planter to get the right structures in place for this new entity to be organized and functioning well. But he must have faith so that his identity resides in union with Christ, rather than being a frat boy visionary or guru-like wunderkind.

The planter must be a pastor first. He must preach the word (2 Tim 4:2), pastor the people (1Pet 5:2), confronting sin (Titus 1:13), and comforting sufferers (2 Cor 1:3-7). All of this must be done while still promoting the advance of the gospel into unwilling and hostile environments.

Let us pray for planters that they would be pastors first.

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Canada Church Clint Gospel Ministry Spiritual Growth

3 Remedies for the Listener’s Itch

If there is any biblical phrase which illustrates the modern age, it has to be Paul’s description of “itching ears” in his second letter to Timothy. Our world is infected with the impulsive demand to receive stimuli. All of us are scratching our itching ears.

Warning the Church

Paul warned about this infection. He counselled Timothy to be aware of the effects of itching ears in the churches. Paul wrote:

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

2 Tim 4:3-4

Our churches all tend to be infected with this listener’s itch. It is easy to curate your own narrow slice of itch-scratching teaching. Teachers are easily accumulated, and you can look no further than Youtube.

3 Remedies for Listener’s Itch

In the church, there are some practical things which Christians can do to resist the listener’s itch. Here are three remedies.

  1. Listen local first. 
    1. Prioritize what your church, your circle of fellowship, your pastors are telling you. You won’t always agree with each individual point. But when the people closest to you care enough to speak into your life you need to prioritize it. 
    2. The bad alternative is to “listen local later“. The result is that your podcast, or your facebook buddy or your twitter pastor becomes the priority. And you can switch them in and out when you get itchy. But they don’t know you or care for you the way that your local church family does.
  2. Exercise Endurance in Listening. 
    1. If you need to take notes. Take them. If it helps you just to listen, do it. But whatever you’re doing, you should be trying to exercise endurance in listening. 
    2. As pastors, we don’t want to make a virtue out of being verbose. But there is also the need to encourage each other as church members to endure in listening to sound teaching. Remember, your flesh doesn’t want to hear it. So if you come into church with a sort of vague neutrality, your flesh will resist good teaching at every point. You’ll fuss about your coat, or your phone or your watch— and the classic— goto the bathroom in the middle of the sermon to break it up a bit. (But please if you’ve gotta go— go!)
    3. Our world inundates us with attention-demanding media constantly. If you don’t ask for a spiritual appetite, you won’t have any taste for listening to sound teaching. Endurance requires exercise.
  3. Don’t Scratch Your Itches
    1. I got a lot of mosquito bites this summer. Just like a little kid. And you know what you aren’t supposed to do with a mosquito bite? Scratch it.  What did I do? Scratched em. And once you do, you can’t stop until their bleeding. 
    2. We have to be very careful about our itches, our preferences, our opinions. If we get fixated on them, they will draw us away making us distracted from the gospel, from sound teaching, and from soundness in the faith. 
      1. We see this in the world. Our society is fixated on making everyone and everything interchangeable. Men women boys girls. Society keeps scratching the itch until it’s bleeding. 
      2. Church members can do this too. But thankfully we have other people to speak into our lives: pastors, teachers, fellow church members, friends. And they can slap some apple cider vinegar on our itches and remind us to leave them alone. 
      3. And if we listen, we will gradually be healed. If we don’t we’ll give in to the listener’s itch and wander off into falsehood and myth. 

Ask yourself what is the itch that you are wanting to be scratched? And ask God to heal you by his hygienic, health-giving word— his sound teaching according to the gospel.

unsplash-logoChristin Hume

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Church Clint Global Gospel Ministry Pastors Spiritual Growth

Are You Willing to Share Your Pastor?

If you are a Christian believer who has benefitted from the explosion of good resources in the last thirty years, someone else has shared their pastor with you.

Maybe that pastor didn’t come to your home or your church, but he came into your hearing and reading because someone else shared him. I’ve benefitted from the people of Grace Community Church sharing John MacArthur with others. He even came and spoke in Calgary a long time ago. If his church hadn’t shared him, he wouldn’t have come and the believers in Calgary would not have been blessed.

The Church Universal

When churches share their pastors, they show that they care about the mission of the church universal as well as their local church. Consider the generosity of Westminster Chapel in London sharing Martyn Lloyd-Jones in the sixties and seventies. Think how Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis sacrificed in sharing John Piper to take time to write books and speak at conferences. In each of these cases and many others you could name, the local churches paid the salary of men who were fruitful beyond their own local congregation. Their generosity by their sacrifice lead many others to be blessed.

Now it might seem obvious that Christians in these churches that I mentioned would want to be generous with their pastors and bless others with their time. But the fact is that many church members do not want to share. A friend told me his perception of what a congregation thinks about sharing their pastor. He said everyone thinks, “What’s in it for me?”

So pastors often have to persuade and promote the good work that they have opportunity to do outside of their church. Many times pastors are simply asked to help, asked to speak, or asked to equip. The pastor views it as a chance to do extended ministry. The church can view it as being cheated.

Painting the Neighbour’s Fence

Church members can feel this way when they don’t find that the pastoral care is sufficient, or that the organization of the church is to their liking. I have had people question why I would go to equip pastors in a difficult East Asian country for two weeks. They thought that there was more than enough ministry at home to do. Why go there? For many people, any service outside the church is like painting someone else’s fence when your own could use some touch-ups or even a second coat.

Neglect

Now there can certainly be a case when a local church pastor neglects his congregation in order to give his best time and effort to others. If that is the case then the church’s elder board ought to discuss the frequency of his speaking engagements and set limits on them. Or maybe that pastor needs to request a reshuffling of responsibilities so that his ministry in the local church is more effective, while he carries out important ministry outside the church.

Suspicion

Some people in the church are simply suspicious that opportunities their pastor has for wider ministry necessarily make him prone to pride, seeking a name, and the praise of men. Of course, these temptations exist when a pastor speaks, teaches or writes beyond his congregation. But they are not unconnected with the temptations in his local church ministry. If the church members and their elders see a consistent humility in a pastor while he leads the local church, they can at least know that he has a starting point for faithfulness in outside work.

Celebrity Pastors

Many of the “celebrity pastors” who have fallen have been marked by characteristics in their local church that got amplified in a larger area of influence. If they were bossy, or flirtatious, or attention-seeking while they are in their own church, the larger stage only amplifies those sins and works of the flesh. When I hear stories about the ‘behind closed door’ talk of some pastors who later had moral failures, often the wrecks could have been predicted.

Publicly Shared, But No Celebrity

Most pastors that I know are not celebrities–even ones that speak at conferences or have written a few books. They are not in the category of ‘celebrity’. But their churches have shared them, sacrificing generously to do so. The pastor who has been publicly shared by his church can then speak to others or create resources for them knowing he is accountable to his local church and supported by them. Church members truly are partners in that ministry. Paul showed his appreciation for publicly sharing him when he said to the Philippian Church:

I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now

Phil 1:4-5

If you read a blog post, read a book, listen to a podcast, hear a sermon, or read a book which comes from the labours of a pastor not your own, then you’ve benefitted from someone’s sacrifice. If you live outside of Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC, and yet you benefit from the ministry of pastors there, you have received the sacrifice of others. Another church has generously shared their pastor with you. If all of us took the attitude of giving and receiving with sacrificial generosity, then maybe our pastors would be more accountable because their churches would be more involved in the outside work. Maybe there would be more unity and fruitfulness among churches together as they share the gifts God has given them, including their pastors.

unsplash-logoDaniel Chekalov

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Church Clint Ministry Pastors Reformers Spiritual Growth

The Necessity of Church Members for Soul Care

Returning from vacation, pastors might be jolted with the reminder that they can’t do their job. Or at least they will see that they can’t do all that their job demands of them. The needs of people are so many and so deep that only God’s supply can meet the demand. 

So what is the pastor to do? Does he simply pray that God will enable him with supernatural capacity to meet every need in the church? Prayer for God-given empowerment is good, but if we seek it to meet every need, we will shift from being a servant to being a messiah. 

People Are Gifts

What pastors and congregations need to realize is that God has already answered such prayers by providing gifts, supernatural gifts to the church. I’m not talking about the extra-ordinary apostolic gifts of miracles and prophecy which God sent to vindicate the foundation-laying apostolic message. I’m talking about God giving blood-won sinners who have been Spirit-empowered to serve God and one another. God has given people as supernatural gifts to the church. 

In the gift lists of Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4, we see that God has given a diversity of gifts to the church by setting individuals in vital union with Jesus Christ and each other. 

The marvel of this miraculous union shows God’s practical provision. Each believing person does not merely have a gift but is a gift. That means that no matter who they are, what their background is, or what their personality type might be, a sinner saved by grace is themselves a grace-gift to the church. They have a role to play. As they play it, everyone else will benefit. As Paul told the Ephesians: 

“When each part is working properly [Christ]makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love

Eph 4:16

In the modern church, this has come to be known as every member ministry. The description attempts to clarify that church members, all of them, have a role to play in the ministry, not just the clerical class. 

Caring For Souls

One area where every member ministry is critical, but often overlooked is in soul care. Today many people in Protestant churches still think that the only person who can help them is the pastor. It is as if they think that the pastor has a special direct line to God. Or they think that the pastor is the leading expert who alone has the professional expertise. Or they think that the pastor is paid to be on-call for their spiritual needs, so they want to get their money’s worth. 

Unfortunately, a lot of bad thinking sounds more like the unbiblical priestly models of Roman Catholicism, or the consumeristic therapy models of modern secular counselling. The two results that such an approach will achieve is either pushing pastors to become more like ‘professionals’ or it will push them to burn out. 


The Reformer Martin Bucer addressed this point: 

The care of souls makes so many demands that even in  small congregation it cannot be properly exercised by just one or a few…there is so much involved in the true care of souls that even those who are the most skilled in this ministry; if they are alone or few in number, will not achieve very much; because all skill and ability comes from God, who desires to carry out this his work in his church by means of many and not by means of few. 

Martin Bucer, Concerning the True Care of Souls, 58

To get ‘the many’ involved in ministry, pastors will have to do a number of things which will take effort, but the result will be better soul care for the congregation. 

Equip

Pastors must start by obeying Ephesians 4:12 and aim to “equip the saints for the work of the ministry for building up the body of Christ.” This means teaching the saints the content of the faith, but also equipping them in such a way that they know the work of the ministry they are to do, and that they have the chance to do it. To equip the saints, they need both direction and teaching. 

Direction

I think pastors can be good at teaching the content of the Christian faith but can assume that people in the church will automatically know how to minister to each other from that doctrinal foundation. I know for myself that I’ve had to be more explicit in helping people make connections between their role in the body of Christ and their responsibilities in the work of the ministry. 

Teaching

To equip people well requires all of the best elements of teaching. People need the content, examples, illustrations, analogies, steps and opportunities to practice. This kind of teaching takes a lot of work on the part of pastors. It is the part of my own experience that I find the most difficult. Teaching doctrine is easier, but it can be harder to help a member become a needs-aware role player in the body of Christ. 

Unity

If pastors work at equipping the saints for the work of the ministry, the result as Paul argues through the fourth chapter of Ephesians will be unity. A church that “builds itself up in love” will be supernaturally unified through the relationships of its visible members.  As Bucer put it:

In this work of building [God] wishes to have and make use of many tools, so that he may raise many of his own to honoour and hold them all the more firmly together…None of his members must be idle, and there must be the highest degree of unity and order among them, each one must depend on and be depended on by the other; thus everything must be one and in common, beginning and continuing by means of common activity. 

Martin Bucer, Concerning the True Care of Souls, 58

Don’t Just Do It Yourself

As pastors (and church members) return from summer vacation, they can be tempted to slip into the thinking that says if you want a job done right, you have to do it yourself. But if we give in to that, we will burn out. Silo ministry will only expose how dysfunctional we are. Yet when we live according to God’s design, we will rejoice that he has gifted the church with many hands. Many hands make light work. 

unsplash-logoShane Rounce

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Anxiety Canada Christel Ministry Pastors Spiritual Growth Suffering & Trials

Living in a Glass House Doesn’t Have to Be Scary

Transparency

As a twenty-something newlywed, I climbed the steps of the Royal Conservatory on Bloor Street in Toronto, eager to meet my petite French vocal coach for my regular lesson. I had no idea that a mere four years later I would become a pastor’s wife. My artsy, hipster existence would be forever changed.

Being married to a man with a shepherd’s heart is a wonderful blessing, but it also comes with unique challenges. When my husband transitioned from a Toronto Professor to a Calgary Pastor, the biggest change for me was that my house suddenly became transparent.

It’s no secret that pastor’s families live in glass houses. If you are married to a pastor, you’ve likely had to reckon with what it means to live your life in this highly visible role. Pride would have us try to live up to everyone’s standards, but as the wizened among us will tell you, perfectionism only results in unfulfilled expectations.

The irony of pride is that it makes us fearful, anxious and insecure. We constantly have to prove we are as good as we think we are.

Fortunately for pastor’s wives (and every other human on the planet), the bible nowhere praises people for their perfection and self-sufficiency. Instead we are encouraged to live every day in view of God’s grace.

An Example in Sarah

The Apostle Peter held Sarah up as woman “who hoped in God” precisely because she placed her hope in Someone better than herself (1 Pet. 3:5).

Sarah wasn’t called a “holy” woman because she was sinless. She was called a holy woman because, when she sinned, she repented and her life shows a pattern of obedience and hope in God.

In hope, she looked to God when He called her husband, Abram, to leave Ur of the Chaldeans, with no idea where they were going (Heb.11:8). In hope, she looked to God through the inherent dangers in travel, even when Abraham lied about who she was on two separate occasions, and foreign kings took her as what we can only assume to be a concubine (Gen. 12, 20).

After waiting until the twilight of her life to conceive, Sarah’s faith came to the ultimate test when God told Abraham to sacrifice their precious son on an altar. Her faith was tried and tested, and as Peter said earlier in his letter, faith tested by fire is more precious than gold.

What Sarah exemplifies for us is not perfection, but a persevering faith. Sarah’s trials taught her to reject the false security of people and circumstances, and instead hope in something better. This is why Peter, inspired by the Holy Spirit holds her up as an example of a “holy woman who hopes in God.”

Secure in God’s Grace

It’s a mistake to tread lightly at the throne of grace. When trials or criticism make us feel unstable and vulnerable, that is precisely when we need to lean in more. Because of Christ, we can “with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Heb. 4:14- 16)

When I was vacationing in Arizona with my family recently, we went for a beautiful hike through the desert. The landscape was full of cacti, mesquite trees, and desert shrubs that were completely foreign to our Canadian terrain. And as we reached the summit of a hill, I saw on the horizon, not one, but two eagles gliding through the air.

I have to admit, I’ve never noticed how an eagle flew before that moment, but on this day, I sat there and observed. I noticed the ease with which these large birds seemed to glide through the sky. Their wings were not flapping, they were literally gliding on the wind. There was nothing frantic about it. They were not tiring themselves out. In fact it looked restful and invigorating at the same time.

Isaiah 40:31 came to mind. “But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.”

And as the truth of these words penetrated my heart, I wondered how often I unnecessarily flap my wings, tiring myself out with my self-reliance.

The Lord is the one who forgives our sins and strengthens us for ministry. The Lord makes us soar like an eagle, gliding on the wind, empowering us by the Holy Spirit.

Our perfectionist dreams for ourselves may be more flattering, but they will never amount to anything more than unfulfilled expectations and a ginormous amount of wing-flapping. Whereas God is able to do “far more abundantly” than we even know to ask or think (Ephes. 3:20).

Our glass houses are a blessing in disguise because they remind us that there was only one perfect man in the history of the world, and we are not him! Jesus was perfect for us. He took on our sin and gave us his righteousness (2 Cor. 5:21). This alone is the reason a holy God accepts us.

Pastor’s wives are not perfect, but when we put our hope in God’s grace and sufficiency for us, we are no longer slaves to the next wave of public opinion or even our own changing emotions. Sarah’s life showed a pattern of obedience and hope in God and that is why Peter said that we are her daughters if we “do good and do not fear anything that is frightening.” (1 Pet. 3:6)

Glass houses become less scary when we’re secure in God’s grace.

A version of this article titled, Grace for the Pastor’s Wife was originally posted at The Gospel Coalition Canada

unsplash-logoArno Smit

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Canada Church Gospel Ministry Spiritual Growth Theology

4 Ways To Be More Precise

Are you finding it hard to sift through what’s true, what’s half-true and what is totally #fakenews? It can be challenging. Maybe our discernment muscles are starting to fatigue. We’re inundated with digital content that requires careful sifting and we’re being crushed by the weight of info. Yet for Christians, we are called to discern and to pursue precision. Pursuing precision is expressed in the Scriptures repeatedly as a warning not to move away from God’s precise commands, not to “swerve” or “turn aside to the right or to the left” (Deut 5:32, 28:14; Josh 1:7; Prov 4:27).

Jesus was concerned with this precision when he said that the smallest palaeographical bits of the Law would be accomplished (Matt 5:17-18). Even threats on Jesus’ life came down to his use of two words saying, “truly, truly before Abraham was born, I am” (John 8:58). He wasn’t saying he’s a divinized superhero, but saying in a precise way that any Jew would understand, that he was Yahweh, the true God of Israel (Exodus 3:14).

The history of the church has been marked by a pursuit of precision. Precision has been refined in the historic debates about the doctrine of Christ, or the Trinity, or justification by faith alone, or the nature of conversion.

More recently the 20th century saw the hard work of discerning the inerrancy of the Scriptures (Chicago Statement) and the relationship between men and women as equal, yet distinct and complementary in roles (Danvers).How can we pursue precision today? Let me make four suggestions:

Commit to staying on the line.

That’s the phrase that I picked up from the recent Simeon Trust workshop in Calgary. By “staying on the line” the idea is that you shouldn’t go above the line of Scripture by adding to it or making it say what it doesn’t. And you shouldn’t go below the line of the text, failing to say what the text does, emphasizing what Scripture emphasizes.

Commit to discerning between ideas and people.

Often we associate ideas with people to such an extent that the noble person with a wrong idea must be a villain, and the immoral person with ideas that succeed is treated like a hero.

This is not to say that there is no connection between what someone believes and their character. Character and conviction ought to be closely connected (cf. James 2:18). But we must also recognize that the deceitfulness of sin can make even a nice guy like Barnabas play the hypocrite and undermine the gospel (Gal. 2:13). Or on the flip side, even Judas was an apostle; Demas was on Paul’s team and then bailed on him.

Commit to discerning between ideas and styles of argument.

In Canada this is especially needed.  In our stereotypical niceness, we can accept ideas that may be weak or false, simply because they are presented in a magnanimous way. Likewise, we can be prone to reject ideas if they are presented in a harsh way. This goes for Canadian Christians too.

A possible case study for this can be seen in the movement by some evangelical churches to have women as pastors, elders and overseers (for the TGCC position see section #3 of the Confessional Statement). For those churches, the limitations of 1 Timothy 3, Titus 1 and the prohibitions of 1 Timothy 2:12 are minimized (see #1). But they are minimized, not because they are exegetically deficient, but because they are viewed as somehow expressing a harsh argument. Now certainly some have argued in favour of biblical positions in harsh ways, but it doesn’t change the biblical position. Like getting a package in the mail, we have to get into the ideas apart from all the wrapping.

Still, for those who wish to make a case from the text of Scripture, they can feel like they’ve been pre-judged. They’re already wearing the villain’s hat in the B-Western before they start.  When I talk with pastor friends who are thinking through these issues, one of the frustrations they have with their denominational leaders is that there is no willingness to discuss ideas.

The denominations aren’t wanting to do exegetical work in the Scriptures. Instead, the leaders have concluded that certain positions have a perception of having a negative style of argument, so their ideas are not worth discussing.  The better way forward is to welcome open discourse with sound exegetical work. That way we can pursue precision as best as we can, while developing our discernment muscles and our godly conversation skills.

Resist the ‘Who Knows?’ Response.

When thorny issues and complex characters appear in our lives, we need to engage faithfully and truthfully. What we don’t want is to resign ourselves to know-nothing-ism and conclude that because things are less clear, they are utterly unknown. All of life is “seeing through a glass darkly” (1 Cor 13:12 KJV), but the Scriptures have been given to the church as without error and fully sufficient for what we need to know and the degrees of clarity we require to live in the world (See 2 Timothy 3:16-17).

If Christians give in to laziness and don’t aim at precision in spiritual discernment, then they will be like that anchor-less boat that Paul talked about, “tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.” (Eph 4:14). When we pursue precision we are not ignoring the waves, but are aiming to “hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful” (Heb 10:23).

The Hour of Precision

If we can practice being precise, using our discernment muscles and doing the hard work of drawing careful lines, we will stay faithful to our Lord. And we will do so as we walk in obedience to the truth that Jesus prayed for: “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:17).

A version of this article was first posted at The Gospel Coalition Canada

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Clint Gospel Ministry Spiritual Growth

Who Are You Tied To?

I’m going to speak to the VBS chapel and I wondered what I would say. At the start of the week it made sense to talk about sin. Later in the week the gospel would be shared in the other chapels. Since It’s rural Alberta I’m bringing a rope, a lariat in fact. So  I’m going to ask the kids who are they tied to? 

Tied to Sin


It’s a simple thing to consider who you’re tied to. If you work in an office, you feel tied to your screen and inbox. If you’re a mother of young child you feel tied to a diaper bag and a detachable baby bucket car seat. 
But all people are tied to sin. Paul said in Romans 5:12 that, ” sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all sinned”.  Every human being from Adam on down is tied to sin. Sin makes them slaves (Ro 6:16,20). They are tied to sin and have to do what sin tells them.


I’m going to use my lariat and have a camper volunteer to put the loop over my two wrists. Then they get to pull tight and drag me around!  This is the image of sin which I want the campers to understand. It is the the way that Scripture depicts our situation. We are tied to sin and are jerked and pulled and tugged toward sin in every thought word and deed. 


The Sharp Edge of the Cross


Central to Paul’s idea of the cross, is the belief that the death of Jesus has benefits. It benefits the person who is tied to sin by delivering them from sin’s dominion by tying them to Jesus by faith. It is as if the death of Jesus on the cross is the knife that cuts the knot of sin. 
The cross has a sharp edge to it. 
Now after the knot of sin is cut, it is still possible for a person to follow sin around, like a horse follows a little girl with a carrot. But when the knot of sin is cut, we don’t have to follow sin any more. 

Tied Until Death; Tied For Life


When people get married, if they still use the traditional vows, they say “til death do us part” which means they commit to stay tied to each other until they die. And that’s the way it is with anything you’re tied to. Once your tied to it, you can’t take the rope off. It has to be cut off. And it’s only cut off in death. 
Sin will lead the tied up person to death (Ro 6:21). But if a person believes in Jesus Christ, and by faith they embrace being tied to him, then they get lead to death in a different way. 
They are tied with Jesus in his death. Paul says, “We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin” (Ro 6:6). 
When you believe in Jesus, you are tied to him. And you die with him in his crucifixion. The only way you can be freed, is if you are tied to someone else. 
When we are united or tied to Jesus in his death, then we also get the benefit of being tied to him in his life raised up from the dead. “Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him” (Ro 6:8). 

Tied to a New Master

Jesus came to save people who were tied to a cruel master, sin. He took the punishment for their sin. He even died for their sin. 
But Jesus didn’t intend for us to be kicked free out in the wild with nobody to care for us. Instead, Jesus ties us to himself when we believe in him. And he makes us lie down in green pastures and he leads us peaceful waters. (Ps 23:2). We get all the benefits of life and we are freed from sin. But it is only because we are tied to a good, gracious and loving master, our Lord Jesus Christ.  

unsplash-logoAzfan Nugi

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Canada Church Clint Global Gospel Ministry Society Spiritual Growth

Being Expectant About the Coming Harvest

Summer is a gift of God to a people who live in a cold country. Our summers are short and so there is always a certain urgency. We have to take advantage of the warm (hot!) weather. 

The same is true for the Christian life. All people need to take advantage of the gospel offer in this season before the last Day. Paul reminds the Corinthians that “now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor 6:2). 

A Sense of Urgency

It is also a season for calling people to believe in the gospel. This is not just your own personal belief in Christ, but the importance of bearing witness to this news of salvation. The season for this is brief too. And that is all the more reason why we need to have a sense of urgency, even as we are basking in the sunlight of the Son. 

Jesus knew this tendency to forget how brief the window is. He said to the disciples:

Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. (John 4:35)

The harvest was urgently upon them. And they needed to admit the facts. They couldn’t let themselves think that they still had lots of time before the urgency kicks in. 

The Unexpectant

In 1866, Charles Spurgeon preached on this passage and he noted how unexpectant Christians had become. He said: 

You know that this is the general feeling at present in the Christian church, not to expect any great things now, but to be waiting and watching for something or other which may one of these days, in the order of providence, “turn up.” 

We can be quite unexpectant. That is why we are fearful in evangelism, or we are apathetic in it. We just don’t expect that we can do it, or it will do any good. We almost completely take God out of the equation. All we end up seeing is the indifference or hostility of people toward the gospel. 

But could it be that the indifferent person is simply being ripened by God, so that their apathy will be arrested by the drama of God’s wrath that rests upon them? (cf. Rom 1:18). Maybe they’ll be shaken by the profound condescension and love of God in Christ Jesus? If you speak the gospel to them, they might be ready to burst in relief at finding a refuge to flee from the wrath to come.

You don’t know this for sure. But you can be expectant of God. 

As William Carey said, “Expect great things; attempt great things— for God”.

Enter the Harvest

Summer is a wonderful time. Let’s also remember that it is the precursor to the harvest.  Will you pray with expectancy for ways to enter into God’s harvest?

“The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest.” (Luke 10.2). 

Pray this way and God will make you an answer to your own prayer.

3 Ways You Can Expectantly Enter the Harvest:

  1. Prayerfully reflect on God’s undeserved favour to you, and start praying in concentric circles for the salvation of those closest to you, and progressively further out.
  2. Pray for the Word heard together, in your Sunday gatherings and as people apply it in small groups and one-to-one discipling. Pray that new people would be witnessed to and invited to come and hear the message of the gospel too.  
  3. Go and share the gospel with someone and invite them to your church.  

Let us pray to be more expectant of what God can do.

unsplash-logoVladimir Kudinov

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Clint Ministry Pastors Spiritual Growth

Six Things Pastors Write (Other Than Sermons).

I’ve been using a program called Grammarly lately. It tells me that I write more words per week than 99% of its users. Maybe it tells everyone that (which wouldn’t fit the math), but it seemed to verify that I write a lot of words each week. 

Now it might be because I have to prep a sermon every Sunday. And yes, my sermons are longer than some, but not too long I hope. 

There is another reason why I write a lot. It’s because being a pastor means that you have to write in different formats for different audiences. The writing has to be regular and it must be done well. 

So what are some of the other things pastors should be writing? To start with, let’s look at the pastor as a letter-writer. 

1. Letters

There is a long Christian tradition of letter writing that goes back to the New Testament epistles. Many pastors wrote extensively to their congregation, to outsiders and to other pastors. Their collective letter writing can be a devotional gold mine. The letters of Augustine, John Calvin, Samuel Rutherford, John Newton or Martyn Lloyd-Jones all have their own godly character and pastoral wisdom. 

Today the way that most pastors engage in letter writing is through email. Unfortunately, email is often seen as a blight in our lives. Yet for all that, it is still the way that people communicate in long written form. 

Can email be redeemed? Someone will suggest that we go back to writing handwritten letters as a way to escape email. This is a possibility for some of your correspondence. However, in our modern-day, pastors will still be using email and church members will expect it. 

The way to redeem email is to commit to writing well. Thoughtfully crafted letters which are scripturally soaked and prayerfully inspired can be spiritually meaningful for the recipients. 

Pastors can work at writing better quality emails in the spirit of the great letter-writers of the past. 

2. Devotionals

Frequently pastors are asked to share a mini-meditation on Scripture. This might be at a staff meeting, an elders meeting, a home visit, a potluck or small group. It’s not a sermon, but you have to be able to pray, preach or die at a moment’s notice. 

It’s helpful for pastors to write down brief skeleton outlines of biblical passages they are reading devotionally. Maybe there is a single insight they can draw out, whether a principle or other application. You never know when that nut you’ve squirrelled away will be needed!

3. Position Papers

When some pastors leave seminary, their academic muscles get atrophied. But if they are faithful in their calling, they will usually have to employ rigorous study and careful precision to produce position papers on doctrinal issues their church is debating. 

Certainly, some pastors will write often about theological issues beyond their own congregation. But even the pastor focussed only on his own patch will have to draft these careful essays on theology. There are many contentious issues that may require an essay like this, whether it involves the church’s views on alcohol use, views on worship music, or views on the millennium. In any of these cases, a church statement will require some careful writing. 

4. Summaries of Events

In counselling or church discipline situations, there may need to be written communication that expresses more formal language. This requires a lot of care because when there is a conflict between a pastor and someone else, it is important to be able to communicate clearly. This is also the reason why face-to-face meetings are so important during conflict. At the same time, written documentation and clear communication in writing are often necessary. Pastors need to learn how to write these kinds of summaries, statements of church action or other letters during disagreements. The careful pastor will be able to restate issues fairly, concisely and winsomely. But it takes practice. 

5. Discipleship Resources

The pastor will accumulate a lot of bible study material through his years of preaching. It is helpful if he is able to repackage them into training resources for the future. He can create Sunday school classes, small group bible studies, blog posts, booklets, e-books and more. 

By re-cycling these materials, he doesn’t merely retread the same sermons to the same congregation. Instead, he re-purposes them for different uses by editing, collecting and regrouping them. When pastors are re-using good material they are simply being good stewards of the resources God has given them. 

6. Worship Resources

Some pastors will have musical or poetic ability. So they will be able to write hymns for congregational worship. The hymns may not be any good. Or they may end up being suitable for a different generation’s tastes. But good hymnody is a sign of spiritual life in a church. Pastors with songwriting skills can apply themselves to write hymns and help Christian worship. If no one else will sing them, at least the pastor can!

Not every pastor may be good at hymn-writing, but they will all have to work at liturgy crafting. Even if they used a set format a pastor will have to fill in the blanks. He will have to choose which texts to use, and which prayers to pray. Even if the liturgy has unscripted elements, the outline overall will employ basic categories such as a call to worship, a time of repentance and assurance of pardon, a pastoral prayer, prayer for the Word preached and a benediction. This weekly liturgical writing is something that all pastors must do and oversee, even when it is a team effort.

Public pastoral prayers can be a regular piece of spiritual writing for a pastor. He may jot down notes on the back of his bulletin, or he may craft a written prayer beforehand. There are different courses for different horses and every pastor will have his own way of preparing to pray pastorally for his congregation, the nation and the advance of the gospel. Whatever the preparation, likely there is some pre-prayer praying and writing going on.

Writing to Make Disciples

Of course, some of the greatest theological writings have come from pastors. These great men of God have used their pastoral ministry as the seedbed for their other theological writings. In all of it, their aim was to disciple believers in the churches. 

Pastors are writers. But they write more than sermons. Pray for your pastor that he would grow as a preacher, but also as a godly writer in all the channels that are necessary.

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