Embracing Ministry: Grace, Community, and Truth

Mighty God our heavenly father we come into thy holy presence once more we know that we live and move and have our being in thee but we thank thee that thou has taught us and encouraged us to come like this consciously and of our own free wills oh Lord we thank thee therefore that we know that we are ever accepted in the Beloved and we come to acknowledge this and to thank thee for it and to praise thy name we thank thee for all the way thou H has brought us and for all thy tender dealings with us and for all that thou Hast ever done to us and in us we do realize that we are what we are by thy Grace and therefore we give unto thee all the praise and the honor and the glory oh Lord our desire is that more and more we may come to know of thee that we may live more to thy Glory into thy prayers and Minister increasingly to that end so we thank the once more for all that thou Hast enabled us to grasp and to understand of these great and profound Mysteries. [00:00:36]

I think that if you have a meeting like that every week for the discussion of the sermon you will tend to produce a Congregation of examiners uh you you'll be encouraging them unconsciously I think to to to listen in a wrong way uh in other words I've been trying I think to bring out this point that the most important thing of all is that people come under the power of the word of course the intellect is involved and it must be but I I would I would discourage anything that would tend to uh promote an over intellectual view of it or or a too critical view of it they they they should come there to worship God and to learn more of him and it's only when there is a real difficulty but they should bring it and they can always do this of course in private. [00:03:37]

I not only approve of but which I would encourage very much and that is that the uh the congregation or the church should meet together for Mutual edification uh in in this way that they meet together in in terms of a fellowship of believer and there they can consider together the problems of the Christian Life uh I always had such a meeting uh until I had been in London for some time then for various reasons there the location of the church and so on we had to drop it but indeed the main reason for dropping it even there was that we hadn't got a hall a room that was big enough to contain the people um this kind of meeting is is a very important one in my opinion. [00:04:41]

We would meet together and I'd call upon someone to read the scriptures and to pray then I would ask has anybody here got a problem or a difficulty or some uh remarkable experience to relate which you'd like to share with us or which uh you'd like us to examine because there may be something about it that you don't like in other words I put like that a very Broad and general invitation to people to State anything along this line you see and invariably somebody did have something to say and would put a question now this I think is very important uh I've known men try to do this sort of thing and what they've done is immediately to give the answer themselves the minister I in now I think that's bad the thing to do now is when you've got your question to put it to the members of the church that are present and say now what do you think of this have you ever had this kind of experience or problem or whatever it is and if so how did you deal with it and then they would get up and speak one after another. [00:05:36]

The sermons that affected me most of all are ones about which I can tell you very little in detail it was their total effect upon me that mattered not so much the particular state m in other words we're back again to the distinction which to me is basic between a lecture and a sermon in lectures take notes but not in sermons I would say and for that reason of the Pastoral office as the person who was the main teacher uh of the church do you mean to preclude the idea of Sunday school no no jo me no no no I I I'm I'm a Believer in Sunday schools um you you remind me of a story which I must tell you at this point because you you you'll get this people will draw the most extraordinary deductions from what you say um and you must be prepared for this and it's all right it's good I'm not complaining. [00:13:45]

I belong to such a group and have done since uh uh early 1940 but I even started one myself before that but um I was asked to start one in 1940 there is a group of ministers that meets every month the first Monday of every month actually in Westminster Chapel because it's Central and convenient and so on and uh if we're all there we are about 250 or more but there's an average attendance of about 150 well now you may be interested to know how we conduct that meeting and this is again it cuts across the denominations we have only one stipulation there no men shall join that fellowship or come to it unless he is uh accept accepted as a man who takes the Evangelical position broadly defined we we Define it as broadly as we can because the object of the meeting is to help men in other words if he rejects Revelation or if he's an obvious liberal he's not admitted and for this reason that if he were admitted you would probably find that every meeting would be involved in the discussion of the same preliminary questions you've got no basis for discussion so we felt that you must have some common basis that there were certain things which could be taken for granted then you could build on them. [00:19:37]

The minister can be a very lonely man a very lonely man I don't know the Ador accept this but I've always laid down a rule that a minister should never have a special friendship with any member of his congregation it's the only safe thing to do if you develop a particular friendship with one individual or even two or three in your own congregation you'll hurt others the minister has got to do this I would say then he's got to find his friends elsewhere in somebody else's church or somewhere else wherever it may be but not in your own otherwise there will be Division and people will think that you're being unfair well now the result of this very often is that a minister can be a very very lonely man uh he can of course and should and will share many of his problems with his elders and so on but there's still another level where he feels he can't do that with them and this is where meeting with his Brethren and having the thing brought out and he hears others it's quite remarkable this I could give you endless examples of this a men will get up and state a problem thing that had been almost crushing him then I always put it to the meeting you see for discussion and they get up one after another and they amazed to hear this man putting this question because that's exactly their position and so one always finds that in dealing with one man's difficulty or dealing with the difficulties of a large number it's a most valuable thing that I I I I would Advocate that very strongly. [00:23:22]

I believe as I've been trying to say that the greatest need of this hour is preaching and preaching to the adults to the fathers and the mothers and I I I I almost resent any of that time being taken in a children's address you need all the time that you can possibly get to preach to the grownup people they can instruct their children you can instruct them in your Sunday school and elsewhere but I at a time like this of all times I I object to this but then I'd go further back even than that I've been talking several times you'll remember about what I called hangovers from the Victorian era from the last century and this is one of them this children's sermon only came in last century it came in with the choirs and all the rest of it and these ornate buildings that have nothing to do with free churchmen and so on but um and of course it was a part of this respectability again of being nice and so on you see before that the children used to sit and listen with everybody else and I think this is a good thing I remember when I was 7 years of age hearing an old old preacher preach on the last judgment and hell and it had a great effect upon me I I still can remember it we underestimate the capacity of children for understanding I'm quite sure of this and on top of all this it's it's a good discipline for them to sit and listen I I believe we need we need to reexamine this whole routine that we've dropped into in the conduct of our church services. [00:28:49]

I think that tends to come into it as well so that uh I would take my stand uh as giving the whole time to the full preaching of the Gospel to the adults and I would Grudge anytime taken out of that uh in your section where you dealt on how the preacher should read the Bible uh how do you keep uh sort of keep watch over yourself to prevent yourself from applying the Bible to your congregation it seems to me this is one of the the hardest things to to do to not let it go through you first how do you keep away from this kind of professionalism you're quite right it is the biggest problem of all in the ministry this danger of professionalism you'll have to fight it from beginning to end and the only thing I can say in addition to what I said before is this is if that you realize this danger that is the main thing realize the danger and then realize the importance of your own spiritual State and condition you just have to go on reminding yourself of that you there's nothing more that I I know that you can do and at the beginning of course one should never read the scriptures without praying and and if you are if you are praying to be made a more able Minister and to serve God better and to know him better well you will then be in in a spiritual State and condition that is most likely to prevent your dropping into that particular trap but it's not easy it's not easy it's extremely difficult. [00:31:15]

I think what one I'd say in general is this that if you are own understanding and interpretation is found to be the one that is agree to by the commentators well you needn't refer to them at all but if you've got a kind if you've arrived at at an interpretation which uh to your surprise you find does not agree with what uh some well-known commentators have said on this verse or passage well then of course you go back and you struggle again and I would say that in such a case it is the right thing to say in passing well now at this point my interpretation does not agree with so and so for instance in working through the epistle to the Romans whenever I found myself in a position where my interpretation did not agree with Dr Charles hjj I invariably said so because the intelligent people present would have haj's commentary and I would them to go and look it up and they'd be in difficulties so in in order to help them I I would State my case it they would then be in a better position to to reason it out so I would even direct them like that but I would tend to confine that to those cases where there is something a bit unusual or exceptional you see what I mean yes I then I think you avoid the danger but in that instance you're doing something helpful and it doesn't obtrude itself too much. [00:34:06]

I think in that sense you've got a unique opportunity but remember we must be certain of the truth that we are preaching and above all we must be certain that we are preaching it in demonstration of the spirit and of power well God bless you to that end let us pray our heavenly father we come to thee together once more and we come to thank thee for the happy time that thou has given us together and of our interest in these things and of our enjoyment of them oh God we would but pray thee once more to look upon us in pity and mercy and compassion and make of us men whom thou will be pleased to bless and to honor look upon these thy servants upon whom thou has laid thy hand and whom thou has called to this high and exalted and responsible position oh God may they ever know that their sufficiency is of thee and of thee alone keep us all humble together so that realizing our own inability we may have a great assurance that with God nothing is impossible give us that faith that can remove the very mountains and turn them into Plains give us oh God that faith that precious Faith which sees the promises and laughs at impossibilities and cries it shall be done bless us oh God to that end and follow us with thy blessing in all our ways and in all our Ministries we ask it in Christ's name and May the grace of the Lord Jesus Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship and communion of the Holy Spirit abide and continue with us now and until we shall stand before God and see our Lord and savior face to face and find ourselves changed into the image of his glory amen. [00:57:37]