Q&A Loving Your Pastor

Everyone thanks again for listening to Q&A with the pastor this week It's going to be a different form of Q&A one because he didn't actually preach the sermon this last Sunday in two I'm not going to be interviewing Keith. My name is Asher Griffin. I'm the pastoral administrator here at Jefferson Park. I'm actually sitting with Steve Johnson and Steve became a member of Jefferson Park. I believe it was a February or March somewhere somewhere somewhere in the spring of this year And Steve is actually a former pastor of Mars Hill Baptist Church in Maryland So Steve as you were listening to this sermon you you have such a unique perspective Being a former pastor now you're sitting there like the rest of us just hearing it and taking it in Certainly you're taking it in with a different attitude, though. This sermon last Sunday was How to Love Your Pastor by Pastor Jeremy Rennie of Boston, Massachusetts. He's a friend of some of our friends here at Jefferson Park, and he came down and preached a sermon that he said Keith could not preach because he wanted to make sure that he could come in as a guest and tell us how to love our pastor, and we certainly want to do that. So I'm sitting down with Steve this time and we're going to talk about, Steve, kind of how you have learned how to love your pastor. Not so much because you wanted to love yourself in your former occupation, but how you want to love other pastors in the process. So as you were listening to this sermon, what were some of the things that you took away from it personally? And then were there any other things that you want to add in? Well, I think Jeremy did an excellent job with the text and with the idea, and he's absolutely right. It is a difficult thing for you to preach yourself. I actually looked, and I'll have us look at that in a little while. There's another passage in 1 Thessalonians 5, verses 12-13, that is an excellent text, talking about the same idea. And I was looking at how some other pastors dealt with that passage. And it was interesting to me to look at some different pastors, and John Piper, when he was preaching through that section of First Thessalonians 5, actually just kind of skipped right over it. He didn't even mention that. Listening to some others, Mark Dever mentioned it briefly, but didn't make a big deal out of it, went on to some other things. And so, it's just interesting. It can be done, and I think it needs to be done, but it's a little more awkward if you're the one pointing those things out. So, it was definitely, I think, Keith and the church was well served to have someone else pointing those things out from the text. Yeah, I know. I actually had a friend in town who was with us at the worship, and he said it was a good housecleaning sermon, something that you don't want to normally hear, but it is good to regularly hear it so that it shepherds your own heart. Just practically, I think a lot of us, we think about caring for our pastor in the way of paying him, and then if we don't like him, we fire him. And I think Jeremy did a great job of kind of twisting that a little bit to make sure that we're caring for him not only for his lifestyle, but also taking an oversight of his heart and caring for his family. So, as you of someone with a wife and child, what were some of the things that kind of sparked your interest when he was talking about caring for the family of the pastor? And this could take I mean, we can think of, you know, obviously paying him. We don't want Keith to starve. But then things that we can pray for Keith for, or things that we can be good stewards to Keith and his family about. What were some of the things that you kind of thought of in that atmosphere? Well, one of the things that he talked about was the idea, he said, the most important thing was to understand your pastor. And then he explained what he meant was to understand a pastor's job description. And, you know, there's different places you can go to look at that. Titus chapter 1, 1 Timothy 3, he alluded to that. You look at 1 Peter 5. Those are the basic passages that deal with the pastor's job description, if you will. I'm very familiar with those passages because as I was training for the ministry, as I was at seminary, it was something that I was thinking about a lot. And as I began, actually just before I graduated from Southwestern Seminary, I started as a pastor for a couple of years in Texas before moving to Maryland. And so I'm well acquainted with those things, but at the same time, if it's not something that you personally have to deal with, it's nice to be reminded of those. And I think it's good for us to continue to go back to that and say, oh yeah, that's what a pastor does. So I think there's a real benefit from looking at those passages. But the passage I mentioned before, 1 Thessalonians 5, verses 12 to 13, It says, We request of you, brethren, that you appreciate those who diligently labor among you and have charge over you in the Lord, and give you instruction, and that you esteem them very highly in love because of their work. And that word there, it's translated in the New American Standard as appreciate. It's translated in the ESV and the NIV as respect. It's recognized in the New King James Version. It's give recognition to in the Holman Christian Standard. It's the word, it's a Greek word, agene, it's a word that means know. But it's the idea of knowing by reflection based on intuition. And so yes, I think Jeremy was spot on the idea that we need to know him, we need to understand him. But it's the idea of giving him honor and respect, recognizing what he does. If you go back and look at, he had us in 1 Timothy chapter 5, but he also brought us back to 1 Timothy chapter 3. And right at the beginning it says, here's a trustworthy saying, if anyone sets his heart on being an overseer, he desires a noble task. It is a noble task. But it also, in both 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, verses 12 and 13, as well as the passage that Jeremy preached on, it talks about how it is hard work. And the Greek word there that's translated as hard work, it's hard manual labor. Paul's comparing it to hard manual labor. And it is difficult. And Jeremy even talked about that in his sermon. He said it is difficult work. And I think people who aren't used to preaching or putting a sermon together, preparing one, they maybe can't appreciate what hard work it is. It's not just a matter of getting up there. And I often think of some people don't really appreciate how difficult it is to be a pastor and to preach a sermon. And I often think about how Johnny Carson used to say that his mom would say, I don't know why you're complaining so much. You only work for five hours a week. And people get that idea about the pastor. They think maybe, well, you really only have to work for about an hour a week. Well, obviously that's not the case. And there's a lot more to it than preaching, but preaching is essential part of the task I think of being a pastor and I think the scriptures make that very clear. Yeah, I thought that was a good it was a good thing to center kind of the rest of the sermon on is that if the word is what we're to be driven by in worship and it brings us to Christ and we should expect our overseers to focus on that. I also thought it was a great way that he kind of set up not only how we should care for our pastor, but also how the pastor should care for himself. And I would assume that there's a lot of pressure on you. I know that Jeremy said you got to be a jack-of-all-trades, and I'm sure there's a lot of pressure on the pastor to do everything, because if anything happens, it's kind of the pastor's fault. I know, you know, like I make the bulletins and I knew if I mess up on the bulletins to a visitor or even a member, it kind of reflects poorly on the pastor. And while that's not fair, you kind of understand the stress that could bring on and so therefore the pastor almost wants to take ownership of everything because he wants to drive the plow if he's going to be responsible for how the field turns out. So tell me kind of Did you deal with that stress, you know, well? How did you think through that? Did you have a staff that took on stuff? Did you have a lot of deacons that dealt with a lot of the issues that you could easily get caught up in when you were a pastor? The short answer is no. And I think I was like, there are times in my ministry where I worked with staff and there are other times where we were without staff or maybe waiting to staff the next position and sometimes that can take years in a small church because you perhaps can't pay as much as that person's worth and or pay someone for a full-time position and the part-time positions are even more difficult to staff. So know when you don't have that support around you it's even more so where you feel like you're you know, everything belongs to you and you don't have, you may not have good lay leaders that you can delegate work to. And so, yeah, I really, that resonated with me a lot when Jeremy talked about the idea that a pastor can have certain inclinations that sort of pull him, say, well, I need to focus on this ministry or this aspect over here. But he also pointed out the fact that churches can do the same thing to the pastor. They can direct him away from the Word and say, you need to fix this right now. And because you do feel like, well, you know, I'm I am hired here. I am working for the church. If they ask you to do something and you feel like you can do it to some extent, you know, maybe you go ahead and do that. Yeah. Yeah. And it seems like a double sword or double-sided sword because the pastor is certainly called to be pious. And he's a man of the word, you know, stay in the closet until you have something to say. I remember Al Mohler saying, like, don't come out of your study until you're ready to bring the word. But in another realm, he's a public figure. He's a leader of men. He's a developer of discipleship. And so he's called to be so many things, not just practically, but also emotionally. So he's called to be quiet and humble and, you know, resonating himself in the word, but then also public and a force to be dealt with. I think the second point of Jeremy's sermon, where we're called to provide for our pastor, you know, certainly the tension comes in when we talk about money, because I think if everyone could provide as much as they could, not only for themselves, but everyone, they would. But also, I almost, I mess up, and I wrote down point three as, you know, provide for your pastor in prayer. So I kind of want to talk with you about that, and it was included in provide for your pastor, not only financially, but also in prayer. We kind of want to boast a little bit, and well, Keith doesn't need prayer because, you know, he's a good man, focused in the Word, or this guy doesn't need prayer, he's doing okay. How important was it for you to get little notes or get little reminders of, hey brother, I was praying for you on this, or hey, I was reading the text and I know it's going to be a hard sermon to preach. I've been praying that you will seek full wisdom in the Lord. How important was people not only reminding you that they were praying for you, but really being prayer warriors for your ministry to their hearts? That is really encouraging. I mean, I don't think I can overstate that. And I still to this day, you know, though I'm no longer in the pastoral ministry, I still have people who, I mean, I have sisters that are both Christians that tell me they still pray for me on a regular basis. And they think of me as a pastor because I was a pastor for so long. And that's encouraging to me. Yeah, I had people in my church who I knew were praying for me while I was preaching, even. And yes, it's good to have that regular prayer support, and we need that. We need to have people praying for us. And I think Keith's done a good job of cultivating that here at Jefferson Park, the idea of having people reading through and praying through the passage that he's going to be preaching next, praying for him as he's preparing that sermon on that particular text, I think that's particularly helpful. And just the way that he's helped to incorporate that in all that we do in terms of discipleship, too, We're able to follow sort of application questions, things that we can do in our own discipleship with each other, individually with our families. But hopefully we're doing that with him as well. We're encouraging him to, you know, I think anyone that preaches the Word knows that you have to, I think if you're sincere, You have to deal with the text first before you preach it to them. So as you're praying through it, as you're reading through it, as you're preparing your sermon, God will use it to connect your own heart of sin and things that need to change in your own life before you're there. And a lot of people get this idea, they think that the preacher's there and you were preaching to me and you never deal with it yourself. You're always preaching at us. Well, the reality is, He's preaching to everyone and God's the one who is providing voice, if you will, to his word. And so it's definitely, you know, it's like it says in Hebrews 4.12 where it's living and active and it definitely cuts both ways. Now this may be a little bit difficult because I didn't prompt you on this. What are some of the ways that you can practically pray for the pastors and leaders in the church? So obviously you want to pray that they'll be healthy so that you'll see them on Sunday. But then what are some of the other things that you either appreciated prayer for that you you notice that you needed prayer for whether it be you know wisdom about the text or you know Dealing with reconciliation with others. So what what are some of the things that we should be prompted to pray specifically for pastors? honestly, I think that if you look at first Timothy 3 or you look at Titus 1 when you look at those and It can be turned into a prayer list. Pray for these things. Pray that Keith would be above reproach. Pray that he would be faithful, loving, and committed to his wife, and that he would cultivate a good marriage with Lisa. Pray that he would be temperate. Pray that he would be self-controlled. Pray that he would be respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. that he manages his family well, so that he's a good father to Lillian. These types of things really, I mean, that's how we pray biblically. If those are his qualifications, if that's what Keith is supposed to be, then we should specifically be praying that he will be able to fulfill those duties and those character traits. Somewhere Don Whitney is so excited that you just talked about praying through scripture as a discipline, and we can use this as Not only do we pray through scripture, I think I haven't ever done that. That was a great teaching moment for me. We pray through scripture through the Psalms a lot, through Proverbs, where we try to teach the gospel to ourselves through the written word. But then there was a great example of in Titus, how you can pray for your pastor. What were some of the other things that you may have been struck by from the sermon that you had never thought about before or something that you think needs to be drummed more and more as we think about caring for our pastor? Well, one of the things that I think is very practical that Jeremy touched on that I appreciated too was the idea of the pastor making sure he gets adequate rest, that he takes vacation, that he uses all of his days off that the church gives him. And when he talked about how some pastors would just almost kind of brag about, you know, oh, I was given, you know, 21 days and I only used 14 this year. I actually got, I think I got poked in the ribs by my wife at that point because I was notorious for doing that. I often did not use all my vacation days. But he's absolutely right. You're not a hero if you don't use all of your days. And they don't roll over, typically, anyway. Most churches just say, well, this is what you get each year. And I think that's really critical. And it's interesting because I think somehow, you know, I don't know how John Piper feels about this specifically, but I know he's sort of very anti-retirement. So I'm wondering whether he vacations or what his view is on that. Mark Devere has an excellent sermon about that and he points out that even Jesus would would take time away to rest and I think that's something we all need to do, but especially the pastor. I mean he has He's someone who has to give account for the souls of the people in his church and so you think about that's what Hebrews says Hebrews 13 7 I believe and so in light of that Especially, I think the pastor. I want to kind of dig into that. Why is it so important for a pastor to take rest or time to rest? Would you say he should do that more importantly than a common laborer like a machinist or a teacher or a businessman? Is there so much more going on emotionally and spiritually that he really needs time either by himself or with his family to just wind down, disconnect and take a day or take a week to reflect and relax? I would say yes, absolutely. And Jeremy hit on this a little bit in his sermon as well, is the idea that he's never really off. And so, you know, you can have office hours and some pastors maintain those in churches. They show up at 9 o'clock or whatever and they leave at 5. But you're on call all the time. And that, in many ways, there are certain times where that can be extremely draining to be on call all the time and you know just the idea of if you've got your I mean this specifically I can't tell you how many times this happened in the last 13 years where I'd be at home and our previous church we had a parsonage that they provided that was right next to the church and I've got my pajamas on and literally, I mean, I'm like heading to the bed and the phone rings and someone's in the hospital and I need to go out, you know, so it's just things like that where literally you never, in some ways, you never really truly get to relax or unwind after a while because you're this mentality of thinking, well, Is this the night that the phone's going to ring again? Yeah. And so, yes, it's absolutely critical to spend that time away to get that rest. And kind of to segue into one of Jeremy's surprising points, none of us probably figured he was going to address this within a sermon when we saw what the sermon was going to be. He said one of the ways to provide for your pastor is to provide them with men who are co-laborers and are shepherding the flock with them, whether they be other pastors or recognized as elders. It made a lot of sense the way he was putting it, because you want to provide rest, but you're also not leaving the sheep to wander. That symbol kind of tears away at the celebrity culture that we have as pastors. We're like it's one guy's church, whereas God is bestowing wisdom and biblical nurturement for men to shepherd his flock. you know i don't know much about your your former church or other trips you've been a part of whether other men actively involved in shepherding within those churches or reunion church where that wasn't case in now you recognize the need for that more and more uh... so what's your take on that uh... well the answer is no i didn't really ever have not to the extent that keith does here i mean i think he would agree that that is one of the huge blessings of this church and i think it's one of the things quite frankly that probably drew him to jefferson park initially was the number of godly, godly men especially, because they can co-labor with him in kind of an elder-like role, and I think that'll come in the future of the church and the life of the church, but just the lay leaders and the men, but also the godly women as well that have been very supportive of him in terms of their prayers and helping with Lisa and helping to care for his family. I think that's enabled him to do as much as he's able to do. And I know that he's also blessed to have you and the work that you do. I'm sure that gives him a peace of mind for him to go away and to know that you're here looking after things as well as the deacons and other lay leaders that do such a great job. Yeah, I think one of the great things about the other sermon as well is This sermon really was emphasized, I think, in the nature of the sermon, it was emphasized in the third point, which was protect your pastor. So you love your pastor by protecting your pastor. Not only do you hold him accountable in certain ways, in loving him, in praying for him, in wanting him to be a man of the word, but also you're protecting him and providing him rest. making sure that he's not lured by temptation of worldly desires or things that can creep up on so many pastors. I'm sure you being in the pastoral field you've seen other pastors who have broken down either morally or spiritually or just emotionally because they weren't probably properly protected by other men around them who were nurturing them and carrying for them, whether it be for prayer or physical needs or spiritual support. Can you go into that a little bit of how important that is to protect your pastor in all those areas? Yeah, and I think if you don't have You need to have accountability somewhere. So if you don't have that within your church, if you don't have that kind of support either from a staff or from lay leaders, you need to find some men that you can be accountable to. So in my case, I had really good a fellow Reformed Southern Baptist pastors in the area that I fellowshiped on a regular basis, some that I would meet with one-on-one for lunch or for coffee, and to be able to just, it's great to have someone else that's going through some of the same kind of struggles you are and having some of the same challenges in life to be able to share, this is going well, this isn't going well, I need prayer for this. You know, sort of, you can celebrate sort of the small victories as well as some of the struggles that you need prayer for. So that was really helpful to me. But I think it's really a dangerous thing when a pastor gets really isolated. And I may be getting ahead of where you want to take this conversation, but one of the things that Jeremy pointed out, I guess, towards the end of the sermon was he talked about This passage deals with 1 Timothy 5, picking up with verse 19, do not entertain an accusation against an elder unless it is brought by two or three witnesses. Those who sin are to be rebuked publicly so that others may take warning and You know hearing that in the way that he addressed it. I appreciated that you know talk about an awkward passage it's not only awkward for a pastor to get up and To say you need to take care of me and you made me to make sure you provide me with double honor but you also need to hold me accountable and How are you balancing those? But yet, Paul did that very thing in the letter. And of course, as he originally wrote it, there were no chapter or verse divisions. So, it's just right there. And I think that that's really important. One of the things that I did at Marsal Baptist Church was When I got there, they had a history of a couple of the previous pastors had had moral failings and had to either be removed or were fired or some kind of thing. The way that they left or were dismissed was basically under a cloud. It was not great circumstances. So then I looked at our Constitution and bylaws and I realized there was no instrument for disciplining the pastor. There was an instrument for disciplining anyone else. in the church, but not a staff member. And I said, this is wrong. And so I literally, it was by my instigation that we had put in place that the pastor, you know, there's now a way to discipline the pastor or an associate pastor or any other minister that might be on staff. And basically, the procedure before was, if anyone in the church was brought up under discipline, the pastor was the one that chaired the meeting. I said, well, what if the pastor is the one that's being brought up? He can fire anyone but himself. Right, exactly. That's great. Thank you for that insight as well. I think the most moving part for the sermon, at least for me, was was probably not the climax, but it was just a reminder at the end that we don't worship alongside, nor do we commune with perfect shepherds. And that's why we worship the good shepherd. And as we look at Keith and how to care for him, we want to care for him knowing his faults, providing against those faults and protecting them from those faults, but realizing there are faults there. and then realizing that the one that we worship is not just a good guy, nor is he a rabbi or, you know, a descended being somehow that worked miracles, but he's the Lord of everything, perfect and good. So as you were, as not only as you served as a pastor to a church and the churches and as pastor of men, but also as you were just sitting in the pew this last Sunday as a parishioner, how were you struck in just recognizing again of how Exalted God is in his holiness as a good shepherd from even good under shepherds You know that we would classify as good people that we want to love Well, one of the things that I always struggle with, and I talked about the idea of praying through 1 Timothy 3, and this passage that talks about him being above reproach, and you mentioned also in Titus the qualifications, and Titus 1 verse 7, an overseer is entrusted with God's work, he must be blameless. Boy, I really struggled with that. You know, I'm an alright guy. You're kind of admitting a lot here. You're not perfect. No, I do my best and I try and I certainly don't want to do anything to disgrace God or his church or the office of pastor, but blameless? I'm not really sure I'm blameless. And so, I did a word study just in the Bible and I found, I believe it was Noah Job and Jesus were the only people that were referred to as blameless. Oh, oh yeah, and pastor. Yeah. And, and so. Quite a posse of people there. Right. Yeah. I'm like, I just, I'm just not sure that I measure up to that. And I'm not sure I ever measured up to that fully. Yeah, but Jesus certainly is blameless. Yeah. I think we could certainly look at Noah and we could look at a lot of pastors and say, well, they're not really blameless. But yeah, Jesus, the good shepherd, the chief shepherd, he's our leader. And I like the fact that Jeremy pointed out, and a lot of pastors point this out, they say they consider themselves not the shepherd, but the under shepherd. Doing the work of Christ. Well, great. Well, Steve, thank you so much for your time tonight. And as we kind of reflect on this last week's sermon, it kind of makes us more excited for Keith to come back wherever he is in the woods. So, thank you for your insight. Thank you for your encouragement as a former pastor to so many people in this church. I know you're a great asset to Keith. And we know that you and your wife are great prayer warriors, and it's a unique opportunity for like-minded men to worship God together and to love him fully. Keith, why don't you at this point, why don't we pray for Keith and will you lead us in prayer for Keith and his family and that they will be good shepherds of God's Word to us. Heavenly Father, we just want to thank you so much for Keith and for his family, and we pray that you would just watch over him and keep him safe as he travels back. Father, we thank you that he's able to have the opportunity to get this rest, and we pray that you would just help him to care well for his wife and for his daughter. Father, we pray that you would help him as he studies your word, that you would help him to be diligent. And we ask, Father, that you would guide him into all truth, that you'd help him to discern the proper interpretation of your word as he preaches it. And Lord, we pray that you would help him to measure up to all the character of what a pastor is to be, that he would be blameless and above reproach, and that he would be a godly man and a good husband and father, that he would manage his household well. Lord, we just thank you so much for the privilege we have of praying to you, in Jesus' name. Alright, well thank you Steve, and thanks for listening. If you've got a question for this upcoming sermon, feel free to email us at congregation at jpbc.org, and we will love to try to ask Keith all those questions this next week, Lord willing, as he preaches on Genesis 45 this Sunday.