Dangers and Delights of Pastoral Ministry

The following message by Alister Beg is made available by Truth for Life. For more information, visit us online at truthforlife.org. A brief prayer. Father, what a privilege it is to be gathered in this way, to be able to open your word, and to pay attention to its truth.

And in this rather strange uh set up and being asked to do stuff that is uh biographical in many ways, I pray that uh our eyes might be fastened on Christ. I pray that uh what we don't know, you'll teach us. That what you what we don't have, you'll give us.

And what we are not, uh you will make us. For your son's sake. Amen. All right. Well, what I want to do is mention um one or [clears throat] two of what we might refer to as the did the delights of uh pastoral ministry. I retired from the church that I've been serving for the last 42 years on the 8th of June, and I'm now in a uh in a strange uh transitional period in uncharted waters.

Prior to that, as you perhaps know, I was uh 8 years in Scotland, which is uh where I'm from. And I am grateful to God for uh every evidence of his kindness to me. Let me just make some general statements. I'm not going to expand on them, but I want to uh make sure that this is the platform from which I uh mention these other things.

First of all, uh the conviction that there is no ideal place to serve God except the place he set you down. Now, there is no ideal place to serve God. And in pastoral ministry, uh it's not uncommon, I've discovered over these 42 years, especially being called of all places to Cleveland, Ohio, to discover that there are a number of people in fairer parts of the United States who have actually come to the conviction that there is an ideal place to serve God.

It has to do with how much sunshine there is, access to local golf courses, and basically anywhere other than Cleveland, Ohio. I arrived in Cleveland, Ohio in '83, shortly after the then mayor had bankrupted the city, and after the city had become known for, amongst other things, having the Cuyahoga River able to be set on fire.

Where else is the the the the dreadful materials in the river of such substance that you can actually set the river on fire? And it was to this wonderful place that God brought me. So that I would be able to say to you, there is no ideal place to serve God except the place he set you down.

Second thing to say is that it is our calling to preach to the congregation that God has given us, not to preach to the congregation that we wish God had given us. Uh we preach to the one that God has called us to. Uh William Barclay, whose theology should always be uh tempered significantly, in his little books on the plain man's guide to the Gospels, William Barclay was a very successful Presbyterian minister, a Greek scholar, a teacher at Glasgow University, and in his first charge, he had uh down the the river in uh uh towards Greenock, I think it was, outside of Glasgow, he had uh launched into his local congregation uh as someone who was erudite as a scholar and who was uh very capable of the languages and articulate in relationship to the background and history of the material that he was dealing with.

And he was just a young man. And one day, as he walked down the street, he encountered a lady uh who had been in the congregation for some time. And she noticed it was her new minister, Dr. William Barclay. And she said to him, "Dr. Barclay, we all like you, and you're a fine man, but we can't even understand a word you're saying.

We don't [clears throat] know what you're talking about." Because he went from the academy to a very basic congregation, and he started to preach to the congregation that he wished he had. And it was then that he began to write The Plain Man's Guide to the Gospels and so on.

So that he notched it down and did what, of course, we need to do. The third thing I want to say by way of uh basic premise is that I am of the opinion that length of service in any one place is clearly not necessarily tied to any significant usefulness.

As if somehow and other that we would say, if you stay there for a long time, it must be because of this or this. I said to somebody recently, in fact, I think I said it at Canon this morning, after 42 years in Cleveland, I don't know whether I should have been criticized for a lack of initiative or commended for sticking with it for as long as I did.

But the fact is that many men have exercised effective and powerful ministries in much shorter periods of time than what I've had the privilege of enjoying. And I don't want to create that impression at all. Um many years ago, it was Jim Boyce uh who said to me, "You know, uh young men um tend to overestimate what they can accomplish in 1 year and underestimate what they're able to accomplish in 5 years."

And there is something about youthfulness that wants constantly to be chasing on and getting on, and it's part of the privilege of youth, but it needs to be tempered uh by wisdom as well. In mentioning that, and I'm not big on uh research, I mean, the people who tell me that this is what is happening because we researched it.

But they the researchers, whoever these people are, have determined that the greatest period of usefulness for a person in pastoral ministry is between year 5 and year 14. So you can do your own homework in relationship to that time frame. But the same researchers have also discovered that the average length of a pastorate in the United States of America is 4 years.

So, just when you were about to start your period of usefulness, you go off to find the ideal church somewhere else. Foundationally, too, >> [clears throat] >> I start from the conviction that the tiller that moves the ship of the church through the water is the word of God itself.

That John Owen pointed us in the right direction when he wrote his little piece on the effective performance of our primary pastoral duty, namely, the faithful exposition and application of the word of God itself. And in that context, we believe ourselves, I take it, uh to be where we are as a result of the call and initiative of God.

And it is by his enabling that we are able, in any sense, to be diligent. With all that said, a word or two concerning delights. And this is so straightforward, and many of you have been around long as me or longer than me, um so I'm not here to surprise you with anything, but perhaps just to jog a thought or encourage one another in some way.

The first delight is the delight of being made a minister of the gospel. You remember Martin Lloyd Jones when he begins his ministry, uh Lloyd Jones, who was the assistant to Lord Horder, who was the physician to the royal family out of St. Thomas's in London. And when he was called to uh the place in Sandfields, into his native Wales, he had only ever given a talk maybe 12 times.

He was not trained in theology except he had, by his own reading. >> [clears throat] >> And his wife said to him, "How do you know that you can preach?" He said, "I can preach to myself. And if I preach to myself, then out of that which I preach to myself, I can preach to others."

And he then, on that occasion, affirmed the fact, from his perspective, that the task of preaching is the highest and greatest and most glorious calling to which anyone can be called in all the world. Now, this was not because he flunked out of school at the age of 15 and he was working on a building site.

He was eminent >> [clears throat] >> as a doctor and his future lay beautiful before him. And out of that, God grabs a hold of him and puts him in the position that was not from any sense regarded as ideal. The church secretary who wrote to him confirming the call told him that you will be coming to a place where prostitution and drunkenness and vile strife of all kinds pervades the community.

And into that he goes and does what God called him to do. So, that's the delight. It's the privilege the the privilege of uh getting up in the morning and being able to read your Bible, not because you have to, but because you want to. Uh to be able to pause and have a coffee and say to yourself, "Can you believe this? >> [laughter] >> People give you this support you.

They don't pay you for reading your Bible." And they don't pay us for preaching. They could never pay us enough and they can never pay us too little. They give support to us so that we can fulfill a high and holy calling in being the servants of the word.

And with that privilege comes the delight of seeing God do what only God does. That is open blind eyes and soften hard hearts. The delight, the peculiar delight. It may come soon. It may be like uh uh uh uh uh the missionary who's your rope guy. What Who His name is gone from me at the moment.

Carey, yeah, Carey. 7 years. 7 years before he is aware of the fact that God through his faithfulness has opened the eyes of some who were blind. Seeing them come to faith in Jesus and then seeing them beginning to grasp the nature of the gospel, the delight of understanding that somehow or another God has turned the lights on.

I don't know how it is here because I haven't been here much. But back in our place the hardest thing is to get men to sing. To sing. And it it which is very different from uh the north of Ireland or Scotland or we actually the British Isles.

And part of that is because the culture of the British Isles for men is a singing culture. If you are uh wise enough to get the Premier League soccer on your television then you will have been quite struck amongst other things, some of you say, by the dreadful boring unfolding of the game.

I know you feel that. But but you will be struck with the fact of the singing. What are these fellows singing about? And who started the singing? Well, somebody started it, but nobody's knows who started it. Where did it come from? It came from inside. They sing at a football.

They sing in the pub. And so when they're converted, they sing in the church. But American men don't sing at basketball games. I've never heard them singing. In the baseball either there's somebody, an unknown person, who's playing an organ somewhere. I've I've never seen the organist. And this guy this guy who goes dee dee dee dee dee and then there's a big sign comes up and it says, "Charge!"

And everybody's supposed to put their hot dog down and shout, "Charge!" So if a person has been nurtured in that way and he comes into the congregation he doesn't come in as a singer. No, he comes in as a change jingler. He has change in his pocket. And only God knows that he's actually excited as he does a little jingle.

And he jingles along. I have in mind one particular individual. He was uh an Ivy League guy presently a retired lawyer a military man from the military school. And he told me on a number of occasions, "I hate the music here." I said, "Well, thank you for sharing.

That's uh that's that's always good to know." He said, "I I I I I I don't like it at all." Well, of course, God hadn't opened his eyes or softened his heart. And even when he did he was he was clearly a a jingler. He was a jingler.

And I don't know what Sunday night it was when I looked out. I said, "Oh." Oh, look at this. He sings. [clears throat] He sings. And when I think that God his son not [clears throat] sparing then sings my soul. It's one of the delights. A singing congregation. Let me just put in a word for those who think they're worship leaders.

You're not a worship leader. You can be a choir leader. You can be a song leader. But you don't lead the worship. Jesus is the light to our gods. Jesus is the worship leader. Jesus is the one who stands in the assembly of the congregation and leads his people in praise.

And of course, as we know, Jesus is the preacher. What else do I have down here? Oh, one of the delights as well is being able to stay long enough to outlive the detractors. You know, the people who for whatever reasons uh multiple reasons have decided that it is time for them to take their proverbial baseball bat and go and find another diamond uh uh somewhere else that they can play.

I can count on this fairly early on in the 42 years. And I figured something out. I realized that this might be the reason why pastors stay about 4 years before they start getting useful. And so I told the congregation kindly as I could, I hope. I told them, "I'm go I've got a new plan.

I'm not leaving. If you want to leave you leave. But I'm staying. Okay, just so you know." They looked at me like I had a horn growing out of my head. They "What are you talking about?" Well, it had to be the occasion when something happened and then the people left.

And my wife said, "You should be very worried about this." I said, "No, no, no, no. I said, leave them alone. And they will come home dragging their tails behind them. And one of the delights of 42 years in ministry is to I can actually bring people up here and they can give their testimony.

So, why did you leave in '86, the youth ministry? Why did you leave? I didn't like the choir person. When did you go? '91. How come you're back? How come you're back? Because the word of God does the work of God by the spirit of God in the people of God.

That's why I read Nehemiah. We had a lady in the church called Anne. She's gone on to glory now. She must be singing the song of the redeemed, but she did not like the music in our church, either. And so she would write these amazing notes to me.

And I would write back to her Dear Anne you're a wild woman. So, she would write these things. And on one occasion she actually got under my skin a little bit. And so I employed uh the Nehemiah 6:8 response. Which I offer it to you as as something just to keep as a possibility, but not to use with regularity.

So, it goes like this. Dear Anne Nehemiah 6:8 your pastor and friend Alistair. Then she has to go and look up Nehemiah 6:8, which reads, "Nothing like what you say is happening. You are just making it up out of your head." So, I I I don't know how you've managed to last as long as you say.

But it's in that context that the delight of a long-term ministry is in part because our people get to know us. They know if it was one of your good ones or your average ones or your lousy ones or whatever it was. But because we're all in this together looking in the same direction and searching in the scriptures, then we can we can handle this together.

Because the church family in my experience, and I'm >> [clears throat] >> Um it's not made up of a a bunch of people that I want to go on vacation with. You say, "Oh, you don't like your congregation?" I love my congregation. But I don't want to go on vacation with them.

And I've heard a number of them say the feeling is absolutely mutual. Because we're all, you know, building the the building the church is like building with bananas. You know, they're all we're all funny shapes. Some are you know, green, and some are all And that's that's the whole thing.

And thinking of I was singing, you know, we long ago gave up the Bill Gaither song uh um I'm so glad that you're part of the family of God, you know. Yes, we we never sung that. We changed it to I'm surprised that you're part of the family of the family of God.

And and we all are to be surprised that we're part of the family of God. You know, in saying this, um it raises the question that is not a question once solved. It's a recurring question. Do you want to be liked or do you want to lead? Now, that doesn't mean that if you lead, you will be immediately unliked.

But it's asking the motivating question. What is it that I'm looking for here? Do I want simply affirmation or do I want to do the harder task of leading the people of God? Uh Margaret Thatcher, who's long in the distance now, on one occasion in addressing um her colleagues, especially in relationship to the European Union, she said, "If you just set out to be liked, you'd be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing."

That then means that we have the delight of not simply sharing the word, but sharing ourselves with them. That our children, and our children were 10 months, 2 years, and 4 when we began the adventure. Well, do the math. Add 42. My son is 47, and so on.

We have lived our very selves with these people, with the congregation. They know the struggles. They know the challenges. We haven't tried to pretend to be what we're not, or gild the lily in any way at all. And in that open vulnerability, and I'm not talking about naked preaching.

I'm not talking about standing up and trying to explain to people that you know you're really not this, or you're not that. That's got too much Uriah Heep to it than to have any any value at all. But they know they know what it is like when we are concerned about these things, when we deal with the loss of loved ones, that the very reality of the fact that we are followers of Jesus, that we are learning from the one who knows the answers.

The delight then of marrying the children of the parents that you married. Of seeing a young man in one of the church plants as the pastor, and realizing that I held that baby in my arms on the occasion of his dedication. The peculiar delight uh of 1 John, or maybe 2 John, actually.

Um of seeing our children walking in the truth. The only way that we see them walking in the truth is if we're walking in the truth with them. And the companionship of family life in a church is fabulous. People have asked me since June the 8th, "How is it going?"

I said, "I'm sad." "Why are you sad?" "Because I miss my congregation. I miss them. I know where they sit. I know if they're jinglers. I know when they become singers. It's a peculiar privilege. Let me just go to uh a couple of dangers, if you don't mind.

Are we okay time-wise, Canon? I don't I I've gone on a long time here, I think. Um What about the danger of just despondency? I was asked last night if I had if I'd been um through an arid period of spiritual life, and I don't think I gave a very good answer to it, but I thought about it during the night, and I thought, "Well, my wife grew very accustomed to me coming home after the Sunday evening service.

I always come in through the garage. I take my shoes off because my father told me to put shoe trees in them, not these miserable things, but normal shoes. And um I put my shoe trees in them, put them in the cupboard, and say with uh horrible regularity, "Honey, tomorrow morning, first thing, I'm going to go and see if I can get a proper job."

And she used to say, "Oh, come on. It wasn't that bad of a Sunday." But as time went by, she would just say something Christian-like, "Oh, shut up." >> [laughter] >> Because the further the longer I got into it, the possibility of getting another job is is impossible. On one occasion, I came back to the airport, and I saw there was an opportunity to become a security guard at the airport, and I said, "Well, I could do that.

I mean, that's at least a step up from Home Depot, for crying out loud." And then then I looked at it and said, "No, threshold is you know, uh anybody under the age of 50." I can't even get a job doing that. I guess I'm stuck. Wonderfully stuck, but aware of our own finitude, aware of our own perplexities, aware of our own sins, aware of our own pride, aware of our own proneness to self-pity, which is as useless an emotion as is homesickness.

Despondency, laziness, laziness. I know there's a lot of books out there about poor souls who've burned out in the ministry. Uh I haven't seen any smoking souls anywhere for a long time. But there are a number of guys who are going to rust out in the ministry if they're not careful.

And I don't want to be unkind to you younger fellows who are here, but as far as I'm concerned, sitting around in Starbucks with a laptop at 11:00 in the morning is not actually what I call an investment in pastoral ministry. And many of these younger men have succumbed to the notion that they might be able by one big step to get to where some of us have as older men have come by bypassing all the other bits and pieces that we had to go through.

Laziness, physical laziness, intellectual laziness, not reading widely, not broadening the panorama out of which we come to the text of scripture, spiritually lazy is a danger. Because who monitors you? Who does? God does. Ah. Misplaced affections. The danger of misplaced affections. If you're doing McShane, you know that you read in part this morning Genesis 39.

And it's there right in front of our face, isn't it? Speaking to men just for a moment, I guess, although the issue is the same both sides of the gender gender equation. She said to him, "Hey, you're in charge of everything here, Joseph. Why don't you just come and lie with me?" "How could I do such a thing?" he said.

Sin sin against God. I would I know I I'll just say this this way. I would rather the women in my church thought that I was a hard-hearted rascal than that I was Mr. Hugger 2026. Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. But I would rather you thought I was cold and indifferent than you thought that I held your gaze for that moment longer, which is the province only of a lover.

The danger of misplaced affection as it relates to sexuality, as it relates to finance, as it relates to the whole thing. What am I living for? Two room apartment on the second floor. That's an old line from the song. What am I living for? Living for Christ, I take it.

A widening gap between life and doctrine. That's what Paul says. Watch your life and your doctrine. Cuz the gap, if it gets greater, the danger is before us. And when that gaps gets greater, there's the accompanying danger of prayerlessness. Prayerlessness. Not that we don't pray, but prayerlessness. And the accompanying reality that will follow from it, which would be a form of um spiritual what do you call it?

Arterio sclerosis. A hardening of the arteries. Suddenly um again, I think this is John Owen. He says a man may preach every day in the week and not have his heart engaged once. It's a sobering statement from Owen, isn't it? Danger. The danger of theological contamination. There's only so many books you can read.

Don't read stupid books. That's what I say. I mean, you can you know, the thesis is on the back that this guy believes that God doesn't know everything. Why do you need to read a book by a fellow who doesn't who doesn't understand the goodness of God? And uh if it's a sort of trendy idea, uncertainty is big now.

Certainty, you got to be careful if people are certain. And uh so uh I I've I I I've determined long ago that somebody else can tell me what it says and I will I'll just move I'll just move on from there cuz I don't want to be contaminated by people whose uh works I may have admired in the past and yet who have deviated from course.

The flip side of that, of course, is the danger of becoming uh like uh those those two old guys on the on the Muppets, Statler and Waldorf. And they and and I mean, as far as I can tell do they ever actually say anything, those fellows? I don't know.

It's it's it's like >> [clears throat] >> So, what was that about? Well, they're just two old guys that sit in the balcony and complain about everything. This is wrong, that's wrong. As if somehow or another we've been called to a ministry of condemnation rather than to be commissioned into the warfare of the gospel itself.

And I don't know what your I don't know what you want to put on your baseball hat, whether you want to put a big R on it, whether you put on it for reformed, do you want to put a big C on it for charismatic, or you want to put whatever you want to put on it, a big B or a big SB or whatever it might be.

And you if you're not careful, you end up in a situation where you have a mentality that goes, us four, no more, shut the door. In other words, look at what's going on down there. Nobody really knows. Nobody understands. It's the Elijah syndrome really in many ways. There's only one person left.

And that's that's me. I can hear my wife saying again, oh, shut up. Right? Actually, we should just have said danger is pride. In 42 years living in the land of the brave and the home of the free, every single pastoral declension that has become public to us may be traced to the same root.

It's the root of pride. It is the mentality that when I've preached it, I have obeyed it. I have lived it. It is the gap that exists. And this again is where if you are just moving around and you you don't have a context of community environment where people know who you are, what you are, where you go, what you do, then you become phenomenally vulnerable.

I even say that to you standing here in Memphis having spent the night in the Hammond's somethings by Hilton uh with two televisions. >> [clears throat] >> Uh both of which one of them said, "Welcome Becca." So, I knew I had a problem immediately. Um apparently some well-meaning lady here booked my hotel room.

And then I started to look under the bed to see if anybody was in there. Where is Becca? Anyway, no, here's the thing. We we have to know our own souls, don't we? We got to get guard against I've got this covered. I got this covered. I was preaching with a fellow, you'll know his name, ex-Campus Crusade guy.

His son's in ministry, too. His name escapes me for the moment. And he said and he was preaching, I was sitting out in the pew. And he said, "Now, I'm going to tell you this. Every one of us in here is just one half step away from stupid."

Half step away from stupid. Joseph was half step away from stupid. So is David. What about us? Right? Because we have to be reminded of the fact and someone will do it for us if we don't do it for ourselves that on our best day on our best day, we're unprofitable servants.

That we all have feet of clay. That we're all sinners saved by grace. That we're all working out our own salvation with fear and trembling. That the evil one, it seems to me, only has a couple of ways to go at us. One is to either inflate our ego.

So, the devil comes and tells you you're really good. Gives you a fat head. Or he comes and tells you you're the worst preacher that ever walked the streets of Tennessee. And gives you a pinhead. And that's why every pastor needs a wife if for no other reason.

To keep him humble. You come back from Memphis. So, how was Memphis? Well, it was a nice group and a thing and everything. Mhm. She just goes for a knitting needle. She goes, As if what are you doing? She said, "I'm just deflating your gargantuan cranium so that you will be able to put your head on our normal size pillow."

Faithful are the wounds of a wife. Isaiah 66:2. This is the one to whom I will look, says the Lord. He or she is humble, contrite in spirit, trembles at my word. The guy who preceded Lloyd Jones at Westminster Chapel uh was once asked, "Uh do you get nervous when you speak?" "Oh, yes," he says, "I have butterflies in my tummy always."

Of course, he said to him, said, "When do you think you will ever stop speaking?" "When I no longer have butterflies stomach." This message was brought to you from Truth For Life, where the learning is for living. To learn more about Truth For Life with Alistair Begg, visit us online at truthforlife.org.