Are You Overextended in Ministry? Then Train Your Replacement

It's too common for ministers to become overextended. Too many horror stories of pastor's families going without their father have been repeated over the years by countless family members. There's a reason that the term "Preacher's Kid" has a stigma to it.

Additionally, there's a reason that there is abundant council to ministers who "burn out". Some even suffer various emotional a physical breakdowns. How often do you see your pastor obligatorily attending every event in the church or even feeling the need to lead every event in the church? Do you have events so large at your church that some staff members or other ministers stay up to all hours at the church, even for weeks before the event, in preparation?

This pattern doesn't just go for pastors or other staff members. Most churches can identify perhaps 20% of their congregation who do perhaps 80% of the volunteer work in the church. When someone is identified as an achiever of sorts, they are asked to do the work. It's easy to seek out those who are known to accomplish a lot of work in order to enlist their efforts in the newest endeavors. These people too often burn out as well. The all-too-common counsel for them is that they need to learn to say "no".

Some people have trouble saying "no" because they believe that the work won't get done if they don't do it themselves. The problem with this is that it indicates a deep-seated distrust of other people. Often this trust is not unfounded. That is, there have been times when they enlisted the help of someone else who failed them. So they gave up trusting other people. These super-ministers have all the experience to best accomplish the task because they have learned from their failures and know how it's supposed to be done so that there is no failure. The problem is that they don't see any success beyond anyone else's failure.

If you do the ministry of ten people, then you have taken the responsibility to minister away from nine other Christians. Is it not a better ministry to disciple others to do the excess minstry you have on your plate?

And in order to do this, you have to allow others the opportunity to fail so that they learn the same way you did.

Discipling Your Children

Dr. Voddie Baucham, jr, is the pastor of Grace Family Baptist Church in Houston, Texas. Outside of pasturing a church, his emphasis is cultural apologetics and the development of the Christian family in general. On his blog, he’s been answering select questions from readers. This recent article of his addresses the matter of family discipleship. He offers his own personal development in this area as encouragement that it can be done even with older children.

Are you a Christian with children? Are you discipling them yourself? Feel inadequate to the task? Then you must learn – and you must take your children along on your journey to grow in the knowledge of God and his wisdom.

And where children have started late, they may begin to realize their own sin. I’ve written about “cookie-jar Christians” before. My kids are cookie-jar Christians. John Piper wrote a recent article about the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son.

With regard to discipling children who obey at a younger age, I offered a two-pronged approach in the comments:

First, when we read the Bible at home and discuss what it means, we have a method where we use simple hermeneutical principles to look for 1) what we learn about God, 2) what we can be thankful to God for, 3) what we must confess to God, and 4) what we need to pray for (and do). The confession is designed to help make them more sensitive to their own sin so that they have a sense of their own depravity before God despite a relative lack of obvious sins of commission.

The second thing is to involve them in ministry, typically evangelistic, to others who are deep in sin, not so that they can develop a sense of superiority, but because godly ministry requires love. I want my kids to learn to love people who are otherwise looked down upon by much of Christian society. In this way, they can identify through the object of love with the bearing of the sins of others in love and ministry after the pattern of Christ who bore our sins on the cross.

May you herewith be encouraged to disciple your children.

Cookie Jar Christians and Broken Christians

One of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee's house and took his place at the table. And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.” And Jesus answering said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” And he answered, “Say it, Teacher.”

“A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both. Now which of them will love him more?” Simon answered, “The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt.” And he said to him, “You have judged rightly.” Then turning toward the woman he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.” And he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” Then those who were at table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this, who even forgives sins?” And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” (Luke 7:36-50)

I love my brothers and sisters in Christ. I'm amazed at the righteousness many have had throughout their lives. Many of them are leaders in churches, missions and other various ministries of extraordinary impact. They accepted Christ at a young age and recognized God's call to a particular mission in their life at which they may serve for most of their lives to great distinction. They are surrounded by people of great spiritual means and thoroughly networked. God has indeed raised them up to accomplish great things for his kingdom.

There are also people who have achieved great feats of righteousness and serve locally without distinction.

Sometimes I wish I was one. So far, my kids look to be these kind of Christians. Their worst sins amount to stealing cookies from a cookie jar. I call them "cookie jar Christians".

There's one drawback to cookie jar Christians.

For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. (Hebrews 2:18)

And we see that even Christ was able to help those who fell into sin.

Cookie jar Christians must know they are pretty righteous. How can they not? When confronted by a tender soul who has been crushed by a life of sin and pain, cookie jar Christians typically must condescend in order to minister at all. They often treat such people with an air of spiritual superiority and you know they can't help but to know how much better they are than them.

Now, I don't want you to misunderstand me. I don't intend to disparage cookie jar Christians. It's wonderful that they are good enough that their focus is on helping others in the name of Christ, but there's a point at which they have to recognize that they simply can't relate to the struggle of someone who has been deep in sin.

However, some cookie jar Christians become a bit legalistic and refuse to help without some sign of repentance up front lest they become sullied in some way by associating with the sinner.

Most cookie jar Christians will be bold against the sins of the sinner, but not let up until repentance is gained. Thinking then that the job is done, they go about their business without taking the time to disciple the sinner. Busy Christians don't have that kind of time to invest in someone, especially when the sinner is not one of their inner circle of cookie jar Christian friends.

When a cookie jar Christian commits to discipling a sinner, however, the difficulty lies in not being able to address the struggles of the flesh that a sinner can undergo. The cookie jar Christian just hasn't had that experience. For example, a cookie jar Christian may tell a sinner to "just run to God!" (I've actually heard this advice given.) What does that even mean?

Then there are sinners who have been forgiven. I call these "broken Christians". God uses people who have come from bad family situations, deep-seated patterns of sin, abuse, racial prejudice, difficult illnesses, war, or any of a multitude of things that break a soul. Christians who come from these situations may, over time, become no better than cookie jar Christians. They forget their past. In a way, a broken Christian can give thanks for healing. In another way, such scars allow a broken Christian to meet a sinner who has not come to Christ and see the hope of salvation for the sinner as a person not unlike the broken Christian once was.

God uses broken Christians to work the difficult parts of the field in the harvest. They may not reap the apparently best stuff like the cookie jar Christians. However, their toil is of great value for they do it at the Master's behest and with his tender care for the harvest.

I write this to encourage my fellow broken Christians to use this gift to reach those like you once were.

But if you are a cookie jar Christian, I know it is difficult for you because you are superior in holiness to your brothers and sisters in Christ who are broken Christians, but I urge you to support and encourage them in their ministerial endeavors. Do not marginalize them or relegate them to the lower places in the church leadership, but learn from them what it is to love a sinner like Christ did.

Knowledge and Morality: What is True Discipleship?

I realized my relationship in Christ when I was 11 and submitted to baptism. The church my family belonged to met in a building that had not been finished. As such, the temporary baptistery was a concrete hole in the basement that contained a pump at one end for drawing water unfiltered and unheated from a nearby branch. The presence of the pump underwater was frightening enough for me. The fact that it was February in Ohio was another matter – the water was literally near freezing. Yet I was pleased to demonstrate the realization of my faith in God in a tangible way.

However, the circumstances of my life changed quickly and dramatically, and I have spelled those circumstances out before. In summary, between the loss of my mother and a change to a new location, a new denomination and a new church family resulted in a lack of adequate discipleship. Discipleship in that denomination amounted to teaching on the Ten Commandments, The Apostle’s Creed, The Lord’s Prayer, The Sacraments, and Confession. Know these things and the church can ostensibly be certain that you are a Christian. All these things are built into the service of the liturgical church in some form or fashion and are typically presented that way. In other words, the hope is that the liturgy and a good understanding of it will provide one’s weekly dose of good medicine to make someone a better Christian.

The small problem is that worship is not about what we get out of it. It’s what we put into it. Worship is not about what we get from God. We have already received our salvation. Out of a response of joy, we give ourselves over to glorifying God in any way we can. That’s true worship. The large problem is that this does nothing to inform our attitudes in our daily life.

Likewise, people have disciplined younger generations to do what is right. We look at what children read and what they watch and are perhaps pleased when a story has a good moral to it.

We approach civil law the same way. We want the laws of the land to reflect good morals. We want people who do not share our morals to act the way we know is right. That way, we think, God will like us better and bless us with an easier life. It is a good thing to seek a society that honors God in its public quarters.

It’s easy to focus on the evil we all do because we do so much of it all the time. To say otherwise is a false pretense. It is many times as instructive to honestly and earnestly examine conscience and demonstrate how we deal with sin practically through repentance, confession and forgiveness.

The question arose recently, what of the Law of Moses are we responsible for upholding, or what part of the Law did Christ fulfill? The easy answer is to break the Law into categories that are Biblically arbitrary, but make some cognitive sense to us. We can say that some of the law is civil in nature, some of it regards the sacrificial system and other of it is moral. For Peter and the Apostles, Acts says that there is no requirement for Gentiles except that we “abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality,” as recorded in Acts 15. What? Nothing about murder? Does this comport with the Law summed up by Christ in the gospels where He said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” But what does love for God and His people amount to? “This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome.” (1 John 5:2,3) So we’re back to square one.

Now it’s good to desire to honor and glorify God by following His law. It’s hard to get real dogmatic about what we are supposed to do and what we are not supposed to do. We have some basic admonitions. The thing is, we can’t even keep the simple ones.

True Christian discipleship is more than the mere dispensation of knowledge or the modification of behavior to do good things. It is instruction in wisdom. It’s one thing to recite the golden rule. It’s quite another to see someone in need and think, “If I were that person I’d want someone like me to help, and I think I will,” rather than, “That person looks like a fool; I bet I could make a joke about them and make myself look like a winner.” This is not to say that discipleship shouldn't include the teaching of knowledge or the admonition to do good. But knowledge makes arrogant where love edifies and extensive lists of dos and don’ts takes the focus from grace and makes us seek to appear to be what we are not. Therefore, knowledge and morality should not be imparted without teaching understanding in light of God's sovereign providence.

That said, disciplers can only impart knowledge and can only present stimuli to someone else. This stimuli can be rather persuasive and we can study this for our use, but ultimately it is the activity of the Holy Spirit that enlightens the disciple to the Truth of God. That's sanctification.

Discipleship in Venezuela

The Iglasia Bautista Salvacion and her mission churches have a well-developed system of discipleship. There are things they can teach us about how to go about doing church. However, while they are firmly grounded in the gospel, we also bring a wealth of deeper understanding that they lack. On a side note, I'll mention that many churches in the US not only lack a deeper understanding of the scriptures, but also lack an understanding of the gospel as well as an idea of what the Kingdom of Heaven and the Great Commission is all about. Here with our brothers and sisters in Cabimas we offer them teaching to help them grow spiritually as a church even as we learn from their zeal.



This is Hank Dahl teaching the youth of the church.


This is me teaching the adults.

The children were well atended by adults and were quite an active group. One photo doesn't quite do it and this video almost gives an idea.

Over the next few posts I plan to offer the lessons I taught. I will begin with a teaching of the ordinances and develop their meaning into an understanding of the commandments in the fellowship of believers and a special application in marriage.

Rough Outline for Discipleship Training

I've been gathering a few materials and considering a structure within which to place these materials for training Christian mentors. This is why I haven't had much spiritual insight to convey lately. I now have a rough outline and will start to fill in the blanks in the coming weeks.

There are some considerations for developing a course for training more mature Christians to disciple Christians who are younger in their faith. First, the training must address the spiritual maturity of the mentors. Second, the key information overlaps at all levels and any outline is merely a contrivance for imposing linear organization for the purposes of instruction. Because mentors and disciples are individuals with any combination of styles and needs, there is no singe technique that works in every circumstance. Therefore, it is more fruitful to give a set of principles for the mentor to keep in mind rather than hold him or her to a particular methodology. That stated, this is my rough outline. I question its comprehensiveness. If there is anything I have missed, please feel free to point this out (note equivalent terms).

Introduction

Accountability

The Great Commission

Goal: Spiritual Maturity and the Use of God’s Gifts

Reliance on God (Piety)

Baptism

Communion

Prayer

Family

The Struggle for Understanding

Hermeneutics

Devotional Study (personal situation)

Theological Study (grounded in truth)

Studying With Others

Ministry

Bearing the Burdens of Others

Fulfilling the Great Commission

Key: Relationships, Godly Wisdom

Considering Others First

Loving Enough to Correct

In the World, Not Of the World

Purpose: Glorifying God Alone

Worship

Proclamation