Category: Church

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Agrarian Pastor Church Clint Ministry Pastors

Do You Know Where Your Pastor Comes From?

farmer pastor in field
Photo by Bec Ritchie on Unsplash

You call him, “Pastor”, but do you know what it means? In our urbanized modern world, the knot between pastors in churches and their rustic origins has been cut. Today many people are asking, “Where does our food come from?” Christians ought to ask, “Where does our pastor come from?” You likely know his birthplace, but you might not know where his job came from. Without knowing that, both pastors and people will have a tendency to distort what a pastor does and what he is for. 

Just as many people are looking to rediscover where their food comes from, it’s also helpful for pastors and their churches to take an agrarian turn.  Does food come from the grocery store? Do pastors come from the seminary? For some people, the one question is as elusive as the other. 

Pre-Processed Pastors

Is it too cynical to characterize some pastoral careers today as the equivalent of processed food? Many pastors are the product of a systematically funnelled career path which introduces them from youth ministry, through seminary, onto senior leadership, and then a repeating tenure of stops in an ascending scale of congregations. Those careers look like they were made in a factory. 

Inside the church, the processed programs which pastors can bring may be useful for producing results, but they get stale quickly. Then new processes are needed. More efficient programs need to be discovered and implemented as a new way to do church. Like pre-processed food, those store-bought programs only require you to add water and stir. 

Agrarian Losers and Gainers

An agrarian turn in pastoral ministry would aim to reconnect to the Scriptures’ own priorities set in agricultural and biblical soil. 

The trouble with using a term like ‘agrarian’ today is that it already conjures up images of middle-class westerners with good jobs to support their farmers market dreams. 

When it comes to farming it has always meant losing. Losing sweat, crops, herds, flocks, not to mention years. In that losing, the gains can only come from the heavens. Rain and favourable providences of God provide the only hope for the farmer. 

The agrarian pastor is a loser too. Paul could describe himself this way saying, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ” (Phil 3:8). Most pastors don’t know how much they must lose, but Jesus is worth it all. 

The pastor has to live on hope. As Paul put it, “the plowman should plow in hope and the thresher thresh in hope of sharing in the crop” (1 Cor 9:10).  A pastor hopes in God because whether he sows or irrigates or threshes, it is God who gives the growth (1 Cor 3:7). Only Jesus, the chief Shepherd can claim to have lost none of the sheep (John 6:39, 17:12, 18:8). 

Prone to Quit and Hope

I’ve seen how a brief hailstorm could devastate fields and families. One moment, showers of rain fell on ripening heads of grain and a few moments later the crop was flatter than a tabletop. Hope and despair passed within minutes.  No wonder so many farmers quit. 

Pastors are prone to quit too. But like the hardworking farmer, he will have the first share in the crop (2 Tim 2:6), and his hope renews constantly, not from his own skill, but from the prospect of the next season and what God might provide. Pastors have setbacks. Churches blow up. Members leave. The baptized get excommunicated. Satan roars. In all of these the pastor still has hope, like a crazy farmer. For pastors, like farmers, can keep on pastoring their churches and say  with Paul, “that I might have a harvest among you, just as I have had among the other Gentiles.” (Rom 1:13). 

To hope in the face of regular perplexity is the way that pastors imitate farmers. But the pastor, as a Christian believer is “always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies” (2 Cor 4:10).

Where to Find A Pastor

The idea of an agrarian pastor stands out in comparison to many of the pastoral models promoted today. The metaphor is quite different than the pastor as comedian, talk-show host, marketer, or CEO. Instead of those outstanding celebrities, the agrarian pastor is like the simple farmer. He may never be outstanding but will be literally out standing in his field. That’s where you need to go to discover where the idea of a pastor comes from. The agrarian pastor hopes in the Lord puts his hand to the plough and doesn’t turn back (Luk 9:62).

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Christel Church Marriage Ministry Pastors

What’s Your Role as a Church Planter’s Wife?

I remember the first time someone called me the “first lady” of my church. Thirteen years ago, I was a brand-new church planter’s wife on vacation in California, and coming from a Canadian context, I had never heard a pastor’s wife referred to in this way before. I didn’t know whether it was an honor bestowed or a burden to bear, but it made me uncomfortable.

Many of us feel pressure to fulfill this nebulous role of “pastor’s wife.” For church-planting wives, the lines between “wife” and “support staff” can be blurry. What does it mean for us to be our husband’s “helper” (Gen. 2:18) and intimate “companion” (Mal. 2:14), and yet not be a “co-pastor” with him? Do we need to be a ministry asset in order to be a good pastor’s wife? And how do we discern when we cross the line from helping to meddling?

In church planting, it can be hard to discern where our husbands’ personal concerns end and the church’s business begins. Sometimes my husband’s burdens necessarily become mine, but I’ve learned to hesitate before jumping in. I am not called to pastoral ministry like he is, and I am not supernaturally equipped for the role in the same way that he is. God has made me fit for a different role in His kingdom, and knowing the difference between my and my husband’s responsibilities is essential for my personal sanity, the health of the church, and the harmony of our marriage.

Not My Responsibility

In my early years as pastor’s wife, I was confused about the nature of wifely support. Church planting can be lonely work, and I felt that if I was not constantly “in the know” and bearing every burden with my husband, I was neglecting my God-given role to help him. This was a mistake.

When God made Eve a helper fit for Adam, there was an implied unity. They had a common goal to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28), but Eve was not Adam’s clone. She had her own unique role to fulfill in God’s kingdom. This unity and diversity is also true of the Church. It is one Body but has many members. We each have different gifts, “according to the grace given us” (Rom. 12:4–6). A pastor’s wife has different gifts (and a different role!) from her husband.

Many of us struggle in a church planting scenario because we are running too much in our husbands’ lane. Even if no one puts pressure on us, it’s easy to take on too much responsibility. We may imagine that if we do A, B, and C correctly, we can make our husband’s ministry a success, but that is not a burden that God means for us to bear.

Biblically speaking, there are only two offices in the Church, and “pastor’s wife” is not one of them. Because of this, I’m wary of any special expectations being put on a pastor’s wife. We are called to be our husbands’ helpers, lovers, and companions (Titus 2:4), and at the same time, we are free to fulfill our unique roles in the Body. Keeping this distinction in mind is helpful because it protects us from false guilt on the one hand and overstepping on the other.

When His Burden Becomes Mine

Pastoral ministry is not a 9 to 5 job, and it’s not the kind of job you can leave at work. Emergencies, staff management, and difficult counseling situations can drain a man of his spiritual, emotional, and physical resiliency. Every so often, the job affects my husband deeply, and when that happens, his burdens necessarily become mine.

During difficult seasons especially, your husband likely needs his wife more than he needs a body to fill ministry gaps. Because you are uniquely called to be your husband’s wife, your ministry to him is invaluable. Someone else can do the bulletins or kids’ crafts at church, but only you can be his wife.

For my husband and I, knowing when he should share with me is often more important than how much he should share. For example, 10 p.m. is not a good time! He will sleep like a baby after unloading all his burdens on me, and I will be up all night stewing on his pain and discouragement.

When he does share his burdens with me, I’ve found it’s almost always better to say less and pray more, especially when I am initially hearing about difficult church dynamics. My initial gut reaction to want my husband vindicated is rarely helpful to voice, but thankfully, the gospel puts everything in perspective. It’s only in light of God’s love for us that I am able to diffuse my martyr mentality and say something that’s actually helpful.

The apostle Peter holds Sarah up as an example of mature femininity precisely because she was “a holy woman who hoped in God,” and he says we are her children if we “do good and do not fear anything that is frightening” (1 Peter 3:5–6). When we respond to difficult church dynamics with bold-faced hope in God’s promises, it helps our husbands. This doesn’t mean we are unable to empathize or grieve ministry losses with them, but it does mean that we don’t give in to the temptation to bitterness and suspicion. We don’t fume, rant, or speculate about people, and we don’t stir up sinful responses in our husbands. Instead, we let our speech and demeanor testify to the hope we have in Christ.

Our ministry will inevitably overlap with our husbands’ ministry because of the oneness of our union (Mark 10:8), but it’s important to understand the distinction between our role and theirs. Some pastors’ wives take on a more public ministry role in the church and others are quiet, behind-the-scenes prayer warriors. Whatever your gifts and disposition are, none of us should attempt to bear the weight of pastoral ministry. Instead we are free to love our husbands and serve the Church in whatever ways God has gifted us to serve.

This article was first published at Revive Our Hearts Leader Connection: What’s Your Role as a Church Planter’s Wife.

Categories
Church Clint Spiritual Growth

The Secret Many Christians Don’t Want To Admit: They’re Fatigued

tired-man
Photo by Ben Hershey on Unsplash

Christians are a busy bunch. And they get physically tired. Tired of work, schedules, commitments, and expectations (Or maybe that’s just me!). But there is a surprising secret that Christians don’t like to admit. They’re tired in another way. They’re spiritually fatigued.

Spiritual Fatigue Illustrated

I’ve seen this now for a while in my church and others. There can be a sense of fatigue in a believer’s heart. It’s a fatigue about preaching, about holiness, about the power of God’s grace and more.

Recently this fatigue was illustrated to me when I read an interview with Josh Harris. Harris is the former Sovereign Grace pastor who influenced many people through his books. The recurring theme that I got from the interview was that Harris had become spiritually exhausted. The Word of God seemed all but meaningless to him now. In fact, he expressed doubt that any meaning could be concluded from the bible. He wasn’t even able to position himself into the non-evangelical, ‘progressive Christian’ camp which the interviewer wanted. Clearly, Josh Harris was tired of it all.

The Threat of Spiritual Fatigue

That kind of fatigue is the greatest threat to your walk with God. It is the fatigue that prevents you from growing when there is a bit of testing. It is like the parable of the soils, when someone is rootless, even initial joy can be reversed. Then a person will ‘fall away’ (Luke 8:13). The problem reveals itself in that scenario, that the soil wasn’t good to start with.

When this fatigue sets into a person’s life, it will start to justify itself by multiplying preferences. They might begin preferring different music, happier sermon themes or an inclusive style of ministry. Yet this spiritual fatigue can also start to despair that anything can change. That fatigue will have low views of God. It won’t see God’s goodness, his power to change things, and his free desire to do his people good. The result is that the spiritually fatigued person will be tempted to give up. They will quit on God, the church, friends and spouses.

Pain and Fatigue

Of course, we normally get spiritually sleepy when we are comfortable. A bit of conflict, some job reversals, or a medical diagnosis can suddenly wake us up to our need. As CS Lewis said in The Problem of Pain:

“We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

CS Lewis, The Problem of Pain

Pain will come and it will stir us from our fatigue. Yet long before that God’s Word can do the rousing and can make us better prepared for the painful days. We can be awake to them, self-aware and alert to God, even when we feel physically worn out. As David said, “I am weary with my crying out; my throat is parched. My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God.” (Psalm 69:3). Physical fatigue is part of our outer self “wasting away” (2 Cor 4:16). But our inner self is “being renewed day by day” as we receive God’s good, correcting and awakening Word.

Fatigued by Jesus’ Demands?

Still, the great danger is that comfortable fatigue. How scary is it to get too tired to listen to God, the Scriptures, or his people. If Jesus is Lord, then our claims to follow him require that we do what he says. His demands are completely within his rights over us. But when people give in to spiritual fatigue, they start to view Jesus’s demands as onerous.

Fatigued and Disillusioned

In a column for The Gospel Coalition Canada, I wrote about how disillusionment and deconversion are connected. This comes out in the Josh Harris interview too. One of the saddest descriptions he made was how he talked about his church. He said that his church and those like it were “high demand religious environments”. He spoke of “a culture that places high demand on the execution of [biblical ethics] and creates structures of accountability, reward for those that do it well, a sense of shame for those that don’t do it well”.

Now certainly there could be legalistic, graceless, unloving applications of the biblical ethic. All faithful churches seek to shun legalism, and live by God’s forgiving grace in Christ. Yet Jesus is Lord. He is the one who creates a “high demand religious environment”. When he summoned the first disciples, it was with the all-encompassing demand “Follow me”. John Piper wrote a whole book summarizing Jesus’ high demands which was logically titled, What Jesus Demands From the World. So churches that seek to follow Jesus will heed the instructions which Paul gave to Titus:

The saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things, so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. These things are excellent and profitable for people.

(Titus 3:8)

Words like “insist”, “be careful” and “devote” are not sleepy words. They are words of awakening to the fatigued. Of course if there is no gospel-power, it’s useless. Gospel power is the animation of the Holy Spirit to apply undeserved favour of Christ’s love to the sinner’s heart. Sadly the natural man starts to think it’s all a waste of time. And he or she is too tired to bother with it (cf. 1 Cor 2:14).

The Trumpet and the Yoke

Friends, let us pray that God’s word will trumpet in our ears with his Spirit-empowered Word. Pray that God would do this when we get too sleepy to care what God thinks. Then, when we listen to our Lord Jesus, we realize that the demands of his yoke are easy and his burden is light (Matt 11:30).

Categories
Church Clint Society

From Disillusionment to Deconversion

In a recent post for The Gospel Coalition Canada, I talked about the way that people get disillusioned when their self-expression is thwarted. I finished it off with a prayer request:

Pray for the so-called deconverted. Maybe they’ve never understood who the true Jesus really is? Pray that their illusions would be shattered and they would be humbled in faith before the foot of the cross of Jesus Christ. At the cross, a blessed disillusionment about the self gives way to glad faith in Christ. This is the deconversion the exangelicals need.

Read the rest at TGC Canada.

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Canada Church Clint Ministry

Simeon Trust Workshop Calgary March 27-29

 Simeon Trust Workshop

The Book of Acts
March 27-29, 2019 

Dear Preacher
Do you know about the new Simeon Calgary Workshop the last week of March?

I think it’s the best preaching and exegesis training currently available in Canada.I’m writing to you because I want you there.

We’ll study the Acts of the ApostlesThe leaders will be highly skilled, yet ordinary pastors.
It’s something I like about these workshops.

Chuck Newkirk  Brandon Levering
 Here’s the link to register. 

 The dates are March 27-29 in Calgary

Each attendee will receive a new CSB Thinline Bible. 
 We will also give away a few
Spurgeon Study Bibles, edited by Alastair Begg.
 
Thanks, brother.

I look forward to working in the Word with you in March,Faithfully,
Clint 

Please feel free to respond to me with any questions about the Workshop. If you have questions about hotels, billets or any logistics please email Marilyn Chau events@calvarygrace.ca 

REGISTER HERE

The workshop is located at Calvary Grace Church 204 6A St NE. 

calvarygrace.ca
The Workshops on Biblical Exposition is a 3-day training event aimed to encourage and equip you in the skills needed to read, understand, and proclaim the Word of God. The Workshop includes times set aside for

1) Principles of Exposition (instructional sessions on how to better handle biblical texts),

2) Small Group Practice (when you will share and receive feedback on two passages you prepare in advance), and

3) Expositions (the opportunity to sit under the word). Each of these sessions is carefully designed to be interrelated for the greatest value in improving your work. In other words, this is a Workshop and not a conference. 

Click here to Register. 
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Church Clint Sunday Recap

Sunday Recap: Adoptions, Hogs, Hopes, and Mountains

credit: Kym Unsplash.com

We just finished our conference on Puritan spirituality with Dr. Stephen Yuille on Saturday. As is often the case, we have a Q&A in Sunday School with the visiting speaker. So sticking with the routine, we started our Sunday in the same way.

I asked Stephen, a Canadian who is pastoring in Texas, about life and ministry there. He shared the amazing story of adopting his youngest daughter from China (the story is in his book A Hope Deferred: Adoption and the Fatherhood of God).

The funny moment in the interview was when I asked Stephen about the practice of hunting feral hogs in Texas.

We also discussed the challenges faced by churches in Texas, as well as the prospects for theological education in Canada. Stephen is taking a new position at Heritage Theological Seminary as VP of Academics.

In the main service, Stephen preached from Romans 15:13, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.”. The message was blessed by the Spirit, as we engaged in what Stephen had earlier described as the Puritan practice of “public meditation” on God’s Word.

Afterwards, Christel, myself and our sons took Stephen to the Canadian Rocky Mountains. We were worried that the cold clouds would obscure our view. But as we drove west and the mountains rose up, the fog parted and the brilliant sun shone through the blue sky on the crisp white towers.

We toured Canmore but it was cold in the sunshine (- 20 degrees Celsius). Surely it was a reminder for Stephen about Canadian winters, but we knew he would return for his warm Texas reprieve.

How humbling to see the towering Rockies and know that God is our mighty fortress who will last when they are gone. And so he and he alone is our true hope.

Categories
Church Clint Ministry

What’s Your Threshold?

Over the years I’ve given this article to many people. It’s a perennial question about conscience and church membership.

In our day people can either leave a church for poor reasons or stay too long condoning false teaching. The tough part comes when you try to discern what is less clear in between.

What’s your threshold? Maybe this series of questions can help you think through those issues a little better.

Questions to Help You Consider Your Threshold

1. What can your conscience stand?  

 If you can stay without deadening your discernment or bruising your conscience then that needs to be thought through.  What doctrines are non-negotiable? What practices are non-negotiable? Which doctrines and practices are very important to you, but you can live with other people in the church differing?  What do you consider essential for the leadership to hold to?

2. What do you condone by your presence?

 Since all Christians are sinners, we acknowledge it, yet we don’t condone sin.  However it gets a bit more confusing when things are going on in the church, with the leadership’s sanction, that we consider to be sinful (commission or omission) or erroneous (neglect of truth or contrary to the truth).  We also need to honestly differentiate between what is sin/error versus what is merely unwise or not suited to our preference. Every church will do some foolish things, but that is different than being clearly neglectful, sinful or false.

3. What is the relative need for you to stay?  

Some churches have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to available people for ministry.  Other churches depend greatly on certain individuals for the strength of the whole. Are you in an indispensable role at the church?  Possibly out of compassion for the church’s need you will have a higher threshold of tolerance. But is being ‘indispensable’ necessarily a good thing?  Sometimes it is unhealthy to have too much of a church’s well-being riding on one person’s shoulders whether it’s a pastor or some other Christian worker. A great temptation is that we become people’s messiah by fixing and maintaining everything rather than pointing them to depend on Christ, the Messiah.

4. What is the cost of leaving? To others? To yourself?   

If our threshold is reached we need to calculate the honest cost of leaving a church.  It is notable that when Jesus bore his cross to Calvary, Simon of Cyrene, an innocent bystander was conscripted to carry the cursed cross for a bit (see Mark 15.21).  Jesus did not halt his journey to death because he was worried that Simon might be inconvenienced by Jesus’ obedience. In the same way, our obedience will often cost others something, not just ourselves.  And there is a cost to ourselves. We may be misunderstood, slandered, shunned, etc due to our decision. If we leave we must be aware of such costs.

5. What is the cost of staying?

 If I consider my threshold to be high enough that I can stay at a church, I must ask what does obedience demand of me.  It likely means that I have to take a more active role in teaching, relationships, and overall body-life in order to be an obedient change-agent there.  This means sacrifice and real wrestling with error, sin and foolishness as it is encountered in the church. It also means that your convictions may put you in the constant position of being the ‘contrarian’ voice.  This can be a discouraging, taxing position. Most of the time, unless you are in a position of leadership (i.e. an elder or the pastor) it is very difficult to effect significant change in a church. Even minor changes can be difficult for a pastor to bring to pass.  Many laypersons have expended great energy trying to ‘renew from within’ when they have little real authority and opportunity to change anything. Pastors and elders have both, and it is still a difficult task to ‘reform and renew’ a church.

6. Is your threshold based on a God-ward, biblical perspective or a man-ward, pragmatic one?

 Many issues become clarified when we look at the biblical testimony concerning the function of the church in the world, and the role and responsibility of the overseers of the church.  We need to ask, in what areas is the church faithful to its biblical calling? How about the overseers? Are the weaknesses we see based upon intentional design, or limited vision?

7. If you leave the church, where will you go?

 Sometimes in an age of spiritual declension, our nearby options for churches are less than satisfactory.  Yet if these are our only options it is better to worship with believers than to neglect the assembling of the saints (Heb. 10:25).  But if other options are available, you must weigh out whether having a ‘higher’ threshold is damaging to your conscience and the health of your soul.  Such considerations ought to be weighed clearly since the Church is not merely a collection of individuals, but the very Bride of Christ.