Pleasing God Podcast
Pleasing God Podcast
Navigating 23 Years of Ministry: Lessons from a Father-Pastor Part 2
What if the church’s health could be seen in the air—balanced, steady, and lifting—because evangelism and discipleship finally fly on two wings? That image frames a rich conversation with Pastor Jim about a calling forged in the Navy, nineteen years of waiting that taught presence over programs, and a pastoral philosophy where outreach grows from love of souls and discipleship is built on clear, human-scale spaces.
We walk through stories that make theology tactile: remembering a visitor’s name that changed her posture, and why names matter from Genesis to the book of life. We sketch a practical discipleship pathway patterned after Jesus and extended by Paul—corporate worship for the whole church, community groups for belonging, D-groups for depth, and an institute for leaders. Along the way, we distinguish teaching centers from community centers so people arrive with the right expectations and leave with real formation. For pastors and volunteers who feel stretched thin, we tackle the input–output problem, the difference between eloquence and unction, and the hard-won wisdom to never hit send on a Monday resignation. Endurance, we argue, springs from closeness to Christ, living for the unseen “Well done,” and resting in grace even in weeks stacked with sermons and funerals.
If your heart longs for a church that loves the lost and feeds the sheep, that says names with care and opens homes with joy, this conversation offers a map and the motivation to walk it. We also introduce New Day Mercies, a daily encouragement stream of Scripture, short devotionals, and video reflections designed to flood tired feeds with good news. Subscribe, share with a friend who leads, and tell us: which space in your discipleship pathway needs attention this season?
Stock Music provided by wolfgangwoehrle, from Pond5
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Hi, and welcome back to the Pleasing God Podcast, a show focused on helping Christians to think biblically, engage practically, and live faithfully for the glory of God. I'm your host, Jonathan Sowell, and I'm joined once again with my dad, Pastor Jim. Good to have you back. Thank you, Jonathan. We the last time we were having a kind of a conversation about uh reflecting on pastoral ministry and your life lessons, pastoral lessons over uh the last 23 years of faithfully serving in one church, uh to say, which is amazing as well. Um, you shared with us, uh brother, just about the circumstances surrounding your call to ministry. Um, and I just want to recap on that briefly. You became a follower of Jesus when you were 21 years old. By about 23 or so, you were starting to have that stirring of a call, but you didn't enter officially vocational pastoral ministry until you were 40. 42. 42. So you had 19 years of let's say being in the school of Christ, of of the training grounds.
SPEAKER_01:That's a very good way to uh to approach it because what what it allowed me to do is because I was immersed in an unsaved culture in the military, and as a Christian, there's no place to hide. See, in in modern Christendom, uh, and I think one of the uh one of the great challenges we face is this privatization of the Christian life, is that we can see some of our people only on Sunday. And so what we've got going on here with community groups and D groups and trying to get more life on life, uh, I had that in the Navy. I was immersed in that. So um it gave me opportunity to engage as being a friend of sinners. And and I learned a lot of people skills and a lot of the applications of even Jesus' ministry in the gospels in the context of being on on ships and things.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I wonder if that's contributed a lot to even it has to have, um, your philosophy of ministry, and you've had a commitment to outreach for uh really your time in the pastorate. And that has seen, I think, the culture of a church kind of flows downstream from its leadership. That's right. And so uh if you you're not gonna have an outreach-driven church if you don't have an outreach-driven pastor or outreach-driven elders. Uh, you're not gonna have a church of deep discipleship if that's not being practiced and preached in a church. And so I wonder how much that 19 years of having to kind of like live out your faith in the midst of darkness in a in a radically unchurched context on the ship. I wonder how much that kind of carried into your desire for outreach in the local church.
SPEAKER_01:I I think it it fostered a real love for people outside of Christ. You see the misery uh because I was miserable outside of Christ, and I was led to the Lord by a man who loved my soul, as I told you in in the uh first episode. Uh and I think as pastors and as Christians in general, uh Spurgeon once said, He that would be a winner of souls must be a lover of souls. And I believe that when we have the love of Christ controlling us, it's inevitable that you have the balance of a love for the loss plus a love for his sheep to grow. Uh those two are are not in opposition. If anything, they provide the holistic of the Christian.
SPEAKER_00:I would say that it's like the wings on an airplane. That's right. Um, and if you want to be a healthy church, if your church is the airplane, you need outreach and you need discipleship. Uh because you do not want to fly in a plane with one wing.
SPEAKER_01:You don't, and I think that is.
SPEAKER_00:That's gonna crash, right?
SPEAKER_01:You said you said uh uh a wonderful statement because we want to have uh our leaders to have a passion for discipleship, a passion for growing disciples, and a passion for reaching and uh and beginning the process of making disciples.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I don't think it necessarily means that okay, so I think about myself. Like I know outreach is important, and I support outreach. I'm for outreach. I want to help train people in outreach. I'm not an evangelist. Like, I know people that can strike up a conversation with somebody, get so friendly, and in five minutes be talking to them about Jesus, and it's not awkward. I I for me to even just initiate conversation, I I I can get tongue-tied in my own brain. I but I do like that Paul tells Timothy to do the work of an evangelist. Whether he is or he isn't, and Timothy's not. That's right. He's still required as a pastor to be about the preaching and sharing of the gospel. I'm much more comfortable in like a discipleship setting, really training, training leaders, but I also know m brothers and pastors that are so gifted and and their passion in that outreach. I want to lean into them and just like.
SPEAKER_01:I think so. I think when you look at outreach, I'm I am not a big fan of these the structured outreach programs or structured outreach events. I think that that with me, I mean, I happen to be I'm I'm a people person. I I I can I can strike up a conversation with with and make people feel comfortable in my presence in a matter of just a couple seconds. I mean, I'm laying in a hospital, you know, and talking to nurses and doctors like it's no big deal. And so, uh, and I know God has given me that heart for people, and I can conversationally enter into those type of things and make people kind of let down their defenses and talk to me and be and so it doesn't make me an evangelist, but it does make me an approachable person that opens the venues to do that. But I think the average Christian, whether we're introverted or extroverted, when there's a love of people, then those different personalities can be used to create an environment of outreach. I had one example was uh a lady who came to our church, and it's it's it's not a long story, but she um she came by herself and she sat there, and and I have a tendency, uh, you know, on Sunday mornings, I'll walk around and uh and like the mayor of Quinness, and I'll talk to everybody and anybody. And so I walked over to her and she That exhausts me, by the way. Yeah, and it energizes me. And so I see I see her. I walked over there and uh her head was down and she raised up and just locked the eyes, and I said, Hi. I said, uh my name's Jim. I'm I'm really glad you're here, and what's your name? And she was kind of like shocked, and she says, My name is Rita. And so I went about then. Well, next week she came back and she sat in the same place, no one around her. It's like no flight zone around her. And uh so I walked by her and I stop and I used her name. I said, Rita, I'm really glad to see you again. And her eyes got as big as saucers because I remembered her name.
SPEAKER_00:That's a fantastic lesson to for any and all pastors, uh, church leaders, elders. Remember people's names. It's huge. It is it is a challenge for me. I try, I I try to uh attach their name to to something that I can tr just to trigger a memory. Um I met a lady this last week and she introduced herself and gave me her name. And uh I quick I quickly attached that name, and if people wouldn't have noticed, but after I was done talking to her, I was kind of walking up and down the aisles just saying her name over and over again and uh trying to cement that so that the next time I see her, I don't have to now remind me of your name again.
SPEAKER_01:You know, though it's a there's an intentionality with that that uh that is just it it just has to be whether we're gifted in that, it's just it's an intentionality that everybody has a name. It's important to try to remember names.
SPEAKER_00:So another side note on this, we were just doing our class, uh Bible institute class. We ran a summer uh intensive um on Bible overview, and we did the the story of redemption, um, Graham Goldsworthy, Von Roberts, um beginning in Genesis, ending in Revelation, and one of the final assignments or the final assignment for those that were taking the institute class for credits was that they had to trace a biblical theme from Genesis to Revelation, finding its ultimate or penultimate fulfillment in Christ's first coming or second coming. And one of the students picked the theme of names. And at first I was kind of like scratching my head, what do you mean names? I mean, that that could be like really, really broad, like genealogies, and and uh she presented her paper on on how God gave us a name and uh marked us as individuals. One of the big things Adam named Eve, God named Adam, but then as you as you trace it all the way through, you start to see that the name someone's name matters to the high point where God has bestowed on his son the name that is above every name. At the end of days, it's our names that are written in the book of life as kind of like the role of heaven. And so remembering someone's name is more than just a personal touch, it's meaningful to the even the storyline of the Bible.
SPEAKER_01:Maybe God gave us a command not to take his name in vain, and he tells us in Psalm 138, I've exalted above all things my name and my word. So we learn the attributes of God through his name.
SPEAKER_00:That's right, that's right. Who shall I say sent me?
SPEAKER_01:That's exactly right.
SPEAKER_00:Tell him I am who I am. That's right. Or the the the reverence for Yahweh, where the Jews would not even speak the name.
SPEAKER_01:And I'll tell you, Jonathan, people love to hear their names. Yeah, people love to hear their names. They'd say, Hey you, or hey Jim. I mean, it's there's a big difference. It means you care.
SPEAKER_00:Well, when I would hear Jonathan Edward uh growing up, I didn't love to hear that one.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I mean, it's sometimes it needed to be uh it needed to be said.
SPEAKER_00:So when you get called by your your first full name and middle name, you know you've done messed up.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I got that from my mother, so you're in good company.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Um okay, so let's talk a little bit about discipleship in the local church. And what are some ways in which you have seen uh discipleship flourish uh within church context, whether it be through preaching through or discipleship through preaching or personal relationships, uh mentoring young believers one-on-one, D groups, whatever it might be, what are some things that you've observed to be effective and helpful?
SPEAKER_01:I think that I think that we have got a good uh a good model unfolding. Um when I first got here, and because there was really not a lot of that going on, it was only in the in the structure of a Sunday school and the ABF. So there was nothing really going on outside of that. And so there'd be this really kind of just a monologue. It was just kind of an an instruction period only, and and most of the time that just doesn't take. There isn't that you know, that application, this life on life with other people. And and so we had that, and there's nothing wrong with that. There is there is merit for that. But I think that where uh it started to shift was we started to place an emphasis on um uh on getting involved in each other's lives. Um you know, what you've done with uh with your doctrinal uh project and what you you've done with uh stressing now we're into these community groups. I I think that the homes are such a wonderful thing. And one thing that I, when I first got here, uh even as the assistant, um, and little did I realize it, but there was a discipleship component with that, is I visited people in their homes. And I would sit in their homes and talk about, you know, the things of the Lord and and talk, but it was almost in kind of an informal catechizing of the kid of the of the families. I think that there's much to be said about getting outside the walls. The walls are important in classrooms, which we're doing with the institute and Sunday schools and ABS, those are important. Uh however, getting outside the walls and getting into the realm of hospitality, which hospitality is huge for discipleship. And I think that's that that's a very important part.
SPEAKER_00:I was really influenced by J.T. English's book, Deep Discipleship, uh, where he he really kind of teases out. He actually had a that was a lot of influence on my doctoral work, um, where he's arguing kind of for like a for a pendulum swing back to learning centers, but he distinguishes between uh teaching, I think he calls them teaching centers and community centers. And identifying the purpose of a of a gathering, is this for building community or is this for teaching or learning? And what he says is is that one will take the primary over the other. You can't primarily do both. You will do both in those settings, but is this a community-focused thing, or is this and so having kind of okay, so if you're in the if you're in the Bible institute and you're coming for community, you're you you don't have the right expectation. If you're coming to a community group and you're wanting to go through systematic theology, you you don't you'll have the right expectation. And so clearly identifying what this group, what this gathering is primarily focused on, I think it's helpful because you need community and teaching for discipleship. I mean, when Jesus gives the discipleship mandate, he tells them to go and make disciples of all nations by what? Teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And I am with you always. There's fellowship and community there until the end of the age, baptizing the name of Father, Son, the Holy Spirit. And so I think it's what's helpful is is helping to distinguish which spaces, the purpose of space is by having both. We in the previous we talked about uh episode, I think we talked about the arms in the airplane with evangelism being one side and discipleship being the other. Well, if we were flying the discipleship plane, I think we have learning centers and community centers where that balances it out, but you still are centered around the word about uh fostering uh uh friendships, faith formation, fellowship.
SPEAKER_01:Those are all I think those those those I like the illustration of the of the airplane. One thing that I have done personally in the last ten years is that I have intentionally formed uh small groups of men, uh anywhere from two to four, and we have studied books, uh thematic books um uh concerning discipleship, concerning uh you know the life of Christ and things like that. And and getting men together to work through uh biblical based books that focus on you know growing in in the faith. I I found that to be so rewarding uh because one they were committed to a certain time, uh secondly, there was directed material, uh, and and thirdly, they had to prepare before they came. And and I I have benefited so much from just investing in men in those small group settings.
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think informal but formal.
SPEAKER_00:So uh I do not believe there is something that we would say is the model of discipleship. People, when we talk about discipleship in the local church, they want to run to Titus chapter two. Yeah. And here's the model: older women to younger men women, older men to younger men. I would say, no, that is a model. Uh, and that is a helpful model. And so you can have the one-on-one mentoring type of model, you can have a community group model. I mean, think about something that we're working on implementing called what we call the discipleship pathway, where we're looking how do we move people from the big gathering, corporate worship, to community groups, to discipleship groups, to the institute, and then ultimately from the institute back into leading in corporate worship. And I think about Jesus' model of discipleship. That's kind of what gee a little bit of mostly Jesus and then some Paul, kind of formed out discipleship pathway. But you see Jesus in his large form discipleship, a great crowd gathered around him. And we have our corporate discipleship being the Sunday morning gathering, singing, preaching, praying, seeing, reading the word. It all centers around that big thing, and the preaching moment being the pinnacle. And so, and that's that's to the crowds. But then Jesus had his community group. He had the twelve, and he was much more intentional there, investing in them, teaching them at a more intimate level. He would give parables to the large crowds, and then they'd come and say, Can you explain the meaning of this?
SPEAKER_01:And then even take it smaller, take three guys to the mountains figuration.
SPEAKER_00:Alright, so now Jesus goes from the the the corporate to the community, then his D group uh is that he had Peter, James, and John. That's right. So he had the inner circle of guys, uh and that was even the most intimate in training those men at a deeper level than the twelve. But Jesus never started an institute.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Paul did, I think, and we would I think it's in Acts 19 at the Hall or 20 at the Hall of Tyrannus.
SPEAKER_01:That's right.
SPEAKER_00:Where he was this is a place where Paul was standing up and declaring and instructing about gospel truths. And so when I think about how an institute works in the church for discipleship, each group, right, corporate's the largest, and uh, you know, you've got a couple hundred there, D groups, those are gonna be multiple groups, 12 or so, and it keeps getting a little bit smaller. It's right. And to the point where, you know, when you start doing like an institute, these are the people that are going, this is deep discipleship. That's right. This is this is very much you're doing work, and not everyone has that capacity. Not everyone's called to that either.
SPEAKER_01:That's right.
SPEAKER_00:And so understanding on the discipleship pathway, it's not about completing the whole thing, but it's being involved in something. And I think that's what we're trying to do and do well for local church.
SPEAKER_01:I think you got a vision, and it's a good vision, is that we want to raise churchmen, we want to raise leaders, we want to raise deacons and elders, we want to raise you know vocational pastors, we want to plant churches. Um, one thing I would tell young uh uh ascribing guys, because I've done this myself, is make sure that you're in environments where it's not all output. You need input, you need to be receiving too. I'm in an environment where I have I have men that speak into my life. I I'm in a Sunday school structure where I don't teach every week. I set under teaching. There are men that are gifted, and that I am helping them exercise their gift, and I'm receiving. I think that we need to be receivers. Uh, we need to be able to have our own souls nurtured and and and to grow because we are pastors, but we're we're followers in Christians first.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And so we need that grow. We need that. If you're always I've I've I've seen Christians through the years that all they did was output, output, output. And that's just that's an easy recipe to dying on the vine, so to speak.
SPEAKER_00:See, that's that's burnout, that's gonna run the well dry.
SPEAKER_01:And you can't give uh living water out of a dry well.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and no matter what level of sermon prep and how life-giving it is, because it is, I mean, uh my the best part about preaching is preparation. It is. Without question, sitting down, Bible open, mining the scriptures, praying, praying through, uh, and just just feasting on God's word to the point where I think good preaching, this is a whole other podcast too, uh that is that is seen and received comes from good preparation. And it's almost like I have feasted on this meal, uh, and I am I am so full, I gotta share it. Also, or like, hey, this sword cut deep this week. Um, and I am just now recovering from my wounds, but I gotta deliver that. And and I've had I've had both where like I'm just like bursting at the seams, not because I love to stand in front of people, because I spoiler alert, I don't. Yeah, uh, but I love I love mining God's word. I I've said many times I could write sermons and never preach them. Yeah, but it does feel incomplete. I gotta get it out. I gotta get it out.
SPEAKER_01:And sometimes you have uh we have so much. Um, but I I would also tell young preachers um is is to understand that the effectiveness of your ministry is only going to be as effective as your close walk to the Lord. You have got to, you've got to minister and even preach out of the fullness of your closeness to Christ. That is the fundamental uh difference between in in anointed preaching, so to speak, and those that are just uh giving giving a bunch of facts or giving a great outline.
SPEAKER_00:I have witnessed and I have sat and listened to some preaching and my some of my thoughts have been that man knows the word, but I'm not sure he knows God.
SPEAKER_01:A preacher who knows God and may know about God.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's right. Or studied a text, but n never got to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01:I heard a man once say that uh uh he listened to uh uh an actor uh quote the Psalm 23 and it was very eloquent. And they had this old veteran preacher get up there and and quoted the psalmist again, and it wasn't as eloquent. And they asked the actor what was the difference between you and him. He says, Here's the difference. I know the psalm, he knows the shepherd.
SPEAKER_00:That's right. Yeah, that's right. It that's powerful. Uh let's pivot here, talking talking about discipleship. We're we're thankful for the initiatives that that we're we're trying to do and why it's important to the church. Um, because that's the mission of the church, is to help people follow Jesus. And that's when and I think I think you have a really we have a really healthy culture of discipleship in a church when we understand that evangelism is a subcategory of that. Evangelism is front lines discipleship, and not it's when it's taken out, evangelism becomes a means and an end. And it's like, no, we now we want to introduce you to Jesus, and then we want to help you get to know Jesus, and we then we want to get to the point where you are introducing people to Jesus and helping them get to know Jesus because that's generational discipleship. That's what we want to do. Um so you've got uh a new initiative going on. Um you're in a state of transition in life, you're coming up to the conclusion of your vocational pastoral ministry. Like you said, we don't ever retire, we just get reassigned.
SPEAKER_01:That's right.
SPEAKER_00:And so you've begun, uh, let me get this right, New Day Mercies.
SPEAKER_01:New Day Mercies. It's a uh social media.
SPEAKER_00:Just briefly about that.
SPEAKER_01:Well, it it started uh really about probably uh maybe 15 years ago when I started writing a daily devotional for the church. It's called the Quinnesset, the QBC Daily Nugget, and I was writing this devotional, and I there's probably four four thousand of them out there now. I've written uh so many of them, and uh it became just a venue for me to to to inject truth into those who would be interested. And and and God has has really taken that, I mean, worldwide, and there's a there's a large distribution, and so but I knew that I was winding down in in a regular uh pulpit ministry, but I also believe that that God has gifted me to to write. Okay, and so I started doing some uh some short video devotionals during COVID just to keep connected with our people. Well, I had some ex-Navy friends and guys that said we continue to do this. So I saw that eventually this would this would uh fade away as a ministry of Quinescent, and rightly so, but I knew that I still wanted to do and inject truth through social media. Okay. So that's what New Day Mercies uh has evolved to. We we post scriptural pictures with uh that we write devotionals, we do video.
SPEAKER_00:So like so like a daily encouragement ministry. That's what it really is.
SPEAKER_01:And if you look on the bio and the Facebook page, it is a uh it is a daily uh encouragement ministry of the word. It has video, it has scripture, it has devotion.
SPEAKER_00:So how could someone find it?
SPEAKER_01:All they do is go on Facebook and just search uh New Day Mercies.
SPEAKER_00:New Day Mercies. New Day Mercies and then just like and follow the page. That's all they have to do.
SPEAKER_01:Like and follow the page, and uh and we will uh occasionally uh advertise it on our own personal Facebook page. And I eventually I want to uh maybe broaden that uh to what we're gonna do to uh now we include uh book recommendations and those type of things, and maybe uh it come it it evolves into a website with you know a daily blog or whatever. But for now, um we've had your response to it.
SPEAKER_00:And are you primarily through Facebook right now? Yeah, right now. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:All right, so so New Day Mercies, you can search the page, you can you can like, follow, and you'd get daily content that would just and eventually when we do get ready to leave here, we will provide um similar to what you've done with yours, either um you know, the the Sub Slack or um uh Substack, or we'll do a mail chip where people want to sign up to receive their day to receive the daily devotional via email or something. We're gonna do that as well.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, okay, and I'm sure you'll have instruction for that through the page. So all right, so great. Um again, uh New Day Mercies Facebook page. Uh like, follow, subscribe, whatever you do on that, and that way you can uh stay stay abreast with content. And then as you're releasing some new stuff, you'll post to listeners there. We will okay. Great, great. Um, I'm excited about that. Uh, I think I'm a follower too on that, but my Facebook days, I'm I'm very hit and miss on social. I need to get it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. I know there's so much out there that's not good on social media, so my desire was just to flood it with good stuff.
SPEAKER_00:That's right. Yeah, that's good. Uh all right. Let's let's wrap up our conversation here with just encouragement for the next generation. You know, for a while there, I was the next generation, but right now, I feel like I'm just the middle generation. You are. When I get called a young guy, I kind of chuckle. And and and I'm at the point now.
SPEAKER_01:You should probably correct that person.
SPEAKER_00:I I'm just I'm like, well, I'm glad you still feel that way about me. That's right.
SPEAKER_01:That's right. But there is a widening gap occurring between you and the younger. But you're in a position now, and and you're in a very influential position that you know the future uh where we're at and in our culture, I believe that there is a spiritual hunger that's occurring in young people, uh, and even in in not so young people. There is a spiritual hunger that we have an opportunity to really uh do a good work in our generation. And we see some of the older generation, we saw John MacArthur recently, Vody Bachman go to be with the Lord, R.C. Sproul. So it's time, and and you are of that. And it's time for us to uh seize the moment uh that we have. And I believe that you have an opportunity to uh to really impact, and for what we need to do is we need to make sure we encourage Christians that these may seem dark times, but the light gr shines brighter in the darkest.
SPEAKER_00:I have no pessimism about the future of the church. No, I am extremely optimistic, and some people say, Oh, that's you know, that sounds like being post-mill. No, I'm not saying that. What I am saying is that I think that there is a bright future. I do too. I think you see a little bit of like a Charlie Kirk effect, you know, that's that's been happening in recent time. I'm excited, and I look at uh darkness around not as not as opposition, it is, but as opportunity. That we can be a city on a hill, we can be a light in the midst of darkness, and we live in a region of the country in in New England that is uh woefully unchurched, and it's opportunity.
SPEAKER_01:And so I think it extends even into the cultural south, where it's uh it's it's shallow, and uh there may be an easy believism that's masquerading as Christianity. I I also think though that we have the opportunity before us uh to see the weaning of the church. Uh, because you're not gonna be able to be a fringe Christian. You're not gonna be able to be a nominal Christian if there is such a thing. You're gonna have to uh be all in or all out. Because I think the pressure on the church is gonna be such that we're gonna have almost need to become communal. It's almost like full circle the book of Acts again.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you got Acts 2 again.
SPEAKER_01:And that's wonderful for us, is because I believe the joy that we experience, the joy of the Lord, the presence of the Lord, will be so intensified as we come together for the purpose of the gospel. So it's exciting ties, but it's not exciting ties if you just want to be nominal and you want to be on the fringe. I think you'll be a casualty.
SPEAKER_00:We are the pillar and buttress of the truth. And we live in a world that is messy, is confused, and is in a state of chaos. And we are the pillar of truth.
SPEAKER_01:And that's the opportunistic times in which we live. Because I I my burden is to see the church embrace the metaphors that we are. You know, Christ is the head or the body, uh, the husband, the bride, the vine, the branches. I want to see the church. Church really grasp what it means to be in union with Christ and the radical implications that is for culture.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. So let's bring it all full circle. Twenty-three years.
SPEAKER_01:It'll be twenty-four and a half when we're going to be.
SPEAKER_00:Twenty-four. So twenty-four years. What would you say to younger pastors, leaders, or Christians who want to remain faithful over the long haul?
SPEAKER_01:Number one, never ever, ever write a resignation letter on a Monday.
SPEAKER_00:Or or just don't hit send.
SPEAKER_01:Or don't sit send. I said I probably have I probably have 50 of them on my hard drive. But uh always realize to be faithful. Number one, you have to be convinced that you didn't choose this. You were chosen for this. And that and that's that's everything.
SPEAKER_00:That's that's being a pastor, it's being a leader, and it's being a Christian.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. That's everything. You better have that sense of of uh even if you want to say it, divine handcuffs upon you where I can't do anything but Jesus looks at Peter.
SPEAKER_00:Where are you guys do you guys want to go now? Jeremiah. To where will we to whom shall we go? Peter says, You have the words of eternal life.
SPEAKER_01:And if you have that, you may want to walk away and you may feel like walking away, and you may take a step, but you won't be able to. So the first thing is have a real sense of divine constraint. The second thing is to live in the unseen world more than the seen, and let the motivation be to hear well done, thou good and faithful servant.
SPEAKER_00:That's right.
SPEAKER_01:And those two things, I think divine constraint, persevering to hear, well done, thou good and faithful servant, those will be the the two pillars, the two structures that will rule the day in your pastoral ministry.
SPEAKER_00:I would add a third one, learn to rest in God's grace.
SPEAKER_01:I have not done that well, and probably that's why I didn't say that. Uh I have probably rolled the instrument hard. Um last three or four years have been pretty pretty significant for me.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And uh and and I think that uh I wish I would have learned to rest. I I think and I part of it was a victimization of what I was. Well, I can spend a boil burn all the midnight oil for the Department of Defense.
SPEAKER_00:I can do the same thing for the uh and I'm saying I'm learning that um as well.
SPEAKER_01:So but there are times that you do have to burn the oil.
SPEAKER_00:Oh yeah. But you know, you like you just know when those things like you do. Like this this you're not wondering, do I have to you just know. And literally, like you just you just go into the next gear. I wouldn't have to go. And sometimes, and and sometimes, you know what, it's that energy drink or that cup of coffee, because this one's gonna be a little bit.
SPEAKER_01:I had those weeks where I had two sermons and two funerals uh in one week, and uh, and and people going in for surgery. So I had those, but you know, God gives grace for those ramped up seasons.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. I there's been times where I got into sermon prep early in the week and like the sermon came together really fast. And because you knew what was gonna happen.
SPEAKER_01:So you didn't know what was gonna happen at the end of the week, and you're glad good thing it did. Exactly, exactly.
SPEAKER_00:So, so now, because I've had a couple of times where like you know, that happened, and I was like, oh, this is great. This might be a fun, and then come to find out, like, nope, God was multiplying the time because boom, you were gonna hit this Thursday Friday. Like, there's been some weeks where like the sermon came together really fast, and I go, uh-oh. That's right. I go, uh-oh, oh no. Um, yeah, I would, I just I think those are great. And um, no, I'm thankful. I'm thankful to have this conversation with you. Uh, just to just a pull from your your multiple years of experience, the highs and the lows.
SPEAKER_01:Um well, I would conclude with this. It's been a real pleasure, and it's been what a journey we've been on to see where God has taken you and where you are, and and to allow us to be together through these years. And uh uh it's just as difficult as it is gonna be to leave. I'm uh I'm confident that that God's got his hand on you and got and on our church.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, uh, I don't think we're gonna let you leave, but you can keep trying. Um but yeah, I will say if anyone's benefited from your pastoral ministry the most, it has to be me.
SPEAKER_01:Well, thank you, Doctor.
SPEAKER_00:I want to thank you for listening to the Pleasing God Podcast. If you have any questions, I'd love to hear from you. You could reach out at questions at pleasing godpodcast.org. And remember, first Thessalonians 4 3, this is the will of God, your sanctification.
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