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©  God's Way Home        May 27 & June 3, 2001

A weekly source of encouragement & news from:
Family Bible Church & Biblical Family Soulcare

Sid Galloway, Teaching pastor, N.W.J (Nothing Without Jesus)
church@soulcare.org        www.soulcare.org    

The Need & The Fruit of Your SOULCARE Support:

"Brother Galloway,   I love your ministry!!  I am serving the USAF in . . . Italy . . . .   I believe God's primary mission for bringing me here is not to serve the USAF, but to serve Him. My family and I are covenant members of a body of believers (founded by American missionaries). Our mission is to penetrate the Italian culture by sharing the love of Christ. All this said to give you a brief background about me and my life.

God has called me to share my heart in our [worship] service [soon] . . . . My heart is burdened with the lack of support, ministry, and intimacy in marriages. I came across your messages through a web search and have made your site a favorite. I am requesting the brochure: . . .   How to build a Home or a Church.   Please let me know the cost of printing and shipping as to not burden your ministry."

The "Suicidal-Role" of Shepherding?
Denying Self & Re-forming Pastoral Ministry

I know this is a long newsletter article folks - two weeks worth - since I'll be out of town, 
but the quotes are well worth your prayerful, careful reading and application!

Recently, I received a wonderfully encouraging email from a church member that showed how well he understood the hard reality and joy of pastoral ministry, when it truly attempts to L.E.A.D others toward restoration and maturity in Christ.  In it he said:

" . . . my intent in responding was to say that I think you do a fantastic job,
 in what I would classify as a suicidal role.  Thanks, . . . .  Keep up the good work."   

Why did he call biblical pastoring a "suicidal role"?  All you men who aspire to serve as pastoral elders need to know and understand (1 Ti 3:1).  Read on, and I believe you'll discover that it's a very accurate and insightful description.  Choosing to embrace this role is often analogous to jumping into a lion's den, and as a former zookeeper of lion's, I sometimes wonder which is worse.  Animals can bite, but people can hurt your feelings.  Faithful pastors who refuse to tolerate Christian sin that dishonors our Father, often end up as vocational martyrs, no matter how lovingly they do it.  And to make matters even more tenuous, all of us pastors are fallible sinners, who will fall short of the perfect love of our Good Shepherd, Jesus.  So it's always encouraging to know that our Father is raising up many other brothers to march together in these anti-biblical days, as faithful accountability partners for His glory (2 Tim 2:1-4).

The modern "evangelical" church needs to undergo a major reformational reorganization, in order to rediscover and reapply God's time-tested, practical principles of personal shepherding.  This is the timely message of a brand new book, REFORMING PASTORAL MINISTRY:  Challenges for Ministry in Postmodern Times (2001), edited by John H. Armstrong.  It includes down-to-earth essays by many church leaders calling for a self-sacrificial return to the biblical basics for God's glory.  In fact, the book could have been entitled, Rediscovering the Suicidal-Role of Biblical Pastoring.  Please listen prayerfully to Armstrong's realistic appraisal of God's churches and the inherent difficulties of leading them:

"Because the church militant is never pure, its tendency has always been toward decline.  There are two apparent reasons for this reality.  One is that those who truly believe upon Christ are still sinners, though the life of obedience has definitely begun in them and their faith is living (cf. Rom. 1:5; 16:25-26).  The other is that the very best church is still, at best, a mixed congregation.  Carnal and worldly elements will always be present, even in healthy churches.  (This seems to be implicitly denied by the modern self-confident demeanor of many mega-church leaders.  (p. 22)"

Armstrong is right, that many leaders of super-sized churches fail to comprehend the struggle of real church ministry, and become deceived into believing that busy bigness is proof of success.  Have you ever thought about the fact that while there are lots of mega-churches, most of them have mutually contradictory sets of beliefs and practices.  Yet each is bustling with buildings full of busy bodies.  Even cults and near cults have attracted huge followings.  So how can the simple fact that a church has grown in physical numbers prove that it's a "good" church according to God's standard.  Almost nobody today seems to even care what God's biblical standard is for His churches, and people are apparently even less concerned to know God's standard for the leaders of the church.  

Sadly, modern evangelicalism has drifted from the biblical model and increasingly embraced the cultural, often psychologized model, of ministry.  "Even within some of our most esteemed evangelical seminaries and colleges, the 'psychological captivity' of the Christian ministry seems to have dominated the field of pastoral ministry for several decades now. (p. 24)"

"I wish I had a dollar for every time I have heard pastors tell me why they could not (or would not) seek to reform the practices of their own church by the obvious teachings of Holy Scripture.  I would be a rich man.  The guilt of most of us does not lie in our outright denials of the Scripture.  We still preach biblical sermons . . . .  The problem is not in outright denial; it is in sheer neglect!  We have, whether intentionally or not, neglected the tough issues of pastoral ministry.  But why?"

    "I suspect there are at least two reasons.  One is pragmatism.  We know too many stories about ministers who have been faithful, only to see their membership rolls decline.  This is a hard trial for the average pastor.  Unless one's life is deeply rooted in God and His holiness, there is little hope that most ministers can, or will, pay this extremely high price.  The other reason for this neglect is fear.  Pastors, like other mortals, have human fears.  There are legitimate fears about their family, their job security, and their entire future.  They know, by instinct and example, that when a pastor takes a stand for reforming the church, the price will always be steep!  The simple fact is that in many cases it will not be long until the faithful minister is looking for another place to serve.  Only those who have lost members and who have night after night agonized over the flock of God and have been accused of relational insensitivity can adequately understand this very real pressure.  (These attacks are rarely waged over real doctrinal subjects since most church members know very little real doctrine in the first place!  They are usually aimed at the pastor's inability to keep the entire flock happy and positive toward his overall ministry.) (pp. 29-30)"

In the light of this dark reality, why would any man in his right mind want to embrace the seemingly "suicidal-role" of pastoral martyrdom?  Like his master, a Christ-centered pastor accepts this cross ". . . looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Heb 12:2)"  This joy of Jesus is the knowledge that his sacrificial love will save lives and families.  

John 15:11-13 "These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full. "This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.  "Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends."

Armstrong reminds us about "successful" pastoral models of old, such as Richard Baxter, whose sacrificial, long-term influence for God's glory is without question.

"Consideration of pastoral ministry, then, is clearly vital to the health of the entire church.  . . . . One can recall, as an example of this historical tradition, the massive corpus of work that came from the pen of the esteemed Richard Baxter, whose pastoral labors served a generation (1641-1661) powerfully in his ministry at little Kidderminster.  Here the world saw the effect of one pastor upon a very small field of service . . . .  Yet it was here that a careful and God-directed pastoral effort plainly had a disproportionate effect for good far beyond the flock he served in a 17th century small village.  (p.23)"

And what was Baxter's "disproportionate effect for good"?  It was not the physical quantity of people and buildings, but rather the spiritual quality of Christ's holy character in his life, his writings, his small church, its people, and its families.  In his own day, Baxter's emphasis on biblical holiness for God's glory stirred up plenty of conflict both in and outside his church.  Yet the test of time, over 300 years now, has revealed that the small seeds he planted have produced fruit beyond measure.

One of the keys to Baxter's success was his willingness to not only love and equip, but to practice accountability and discipline.  He was willing to L.E.A.D. as the Lord commanded (Mat 18:15-20; 1 Cor 5:1-13).  Joseph Flatt, Jr., pastor of First Baptist Church Carmel, Indiana, in his essay, "How Shall I Respond to Sin in the Church?", found in Armstrong's new book, pleads for the rediscovery and reapplication of these vital dimensions of church success:

"Even a casual reading of these passages  leads to the conclusion that the church is not only authorized to exercise discipline over its members but is mandated to do so.  It is therefore not surprising that many consider discipline a mark of a true church. (p. 221)."

"Because we are so dynamically tied together in the Body of Christ, we are exhorted to intentionally invade each other's space.  In fact, I believe this is a logo of a genuine Christian community.  The sundry 'one another' statements of the New Testament show God's desire for His family.  Christians are to be conspicuous because they love each other, they honor each other, they encourage one another, they accept one another, and they even admonish one another.  And that is just the beginning!  The church is a unique organization indeed. (p. 223)."

So, what is our measure of "success"?  Will it be physical quantity or spiritual quality of character?  Certainly every church should be eagerly evangelistic, winning souls, growing, and then multiplying new churches.  But size is not God's standard of success.  Did you know that the average, normal church in America has only 90 members, and that only 1 % of American churches have more than 1,000 (Boiling Point, by George Barna, p. 236-247)?  Yet the prevailing mindset is to see "super-sized" as successful.  If you belong to an normal church, try a little experiment sometime.  The next time someone asks you how many people belong to your church, first say something like:  "We started with one family and now have over 1,000".  What do you think their response will almost always be?  It'll be:  "Wow, that's great!".  Then you can tell them the true numbers in your normal church and ask them an all important question:  "Why do people today think that a large increase in quantity is always great?". 

Please remember, when unbelievers look up and merely see big and busy groups of Christian families, including pastors' families, that are in just as bad a shape relationally as the rest of the world, they rightly think hypocrisy.  But when they see a small, intimate group of believing families covenanted together in mutual accountability and manifesting the fruit of God's Holy Spirit (Gal 5:22-25), then they see the faces of our Father and His Son, and many will be drawn to become a part of God's family.

"God's Way Home"  

Please See the new Prayer Needs by clicking the prayer box at the top.
Brian & Sheila have volunteered to coordinate the church's prayer ministry, and Brian plans to prepare and teach a series on prayer soon!