My name is Cole. We haven't met.
I'm the lead pastor at Frontier and I get to preach most
Sundays. We are in Week 5 in our really
long sermon series through the book of Titus.
And so if you've got a Bible, you can go and get that open.
If you don't have a Bible, don't feel bad without all the
relevant words on the screen for you.
But this morning we spent like four straight weeks just digging
through Paul's introductory notes in the letter that he's
writing to Titus. I had fun.
I don't know about you. It was a blast for me.
We got really nerdy and we dug into a lot of the original text
and I hope it feels a little bit more familiar.
Strangely enough, as we pivot, so Paul, he's done with his
introductory notes. As we pivot from his
introductory notes to the main letter or the main body of the
letter, has an interesting first thing that he wants to talk
about to these Christians and these churches that are in on
Crete. Crete, this island that's filled
with pirates and filled with crooks and filled with crazy
people. These churches have sprung up on
this little island. And now that Paul has said hi,
grace and peace, what he wants to talk about is actually
pastors or elders or overseers. They're kind of synonymous
terms. And so for those of you who are
members at at this church, we're going to talk about pastors this
morning. And for the majority of us, I
think this morning is probably not going to be the most
exciting sermon that you've ever heard as a part of your biblical
diet at this church. It probably won't hit like a
coffee that makes you feel like you want to run through a wall
for Jesus. It's not going to feel like a
coffee. It's not going to be super
energizing. I think it's probably going to
hit more like a multi vitamin, or so I've heard.
For those of you who take multivitamins, right, it's not
going to energize you right off the bat.
What it's going to do is it's going to feel more like a
multivitamin that that works quietly in the background to
help create a much healthier and more joyful body.
So yes, sweetheart. Huh.
Yeah. Yeah.
You can go kids in the room. If you're a kid, can you raise
your hand really quickly? Casey, I am glad that you guys
are in here. You guys are not an obstacle to
what we're doing in this church. You guys might be one of the
most important things in this church.
Here's what I'm going to do today.
Kids, you did great. You can put the hand down.
You did awesome. I'm going to talk this morning a
lot about pastors. And as I talk about pastors, I
might say a lot of things that you don't understand.
And you know what? That's OK.
Because even though you might not understand everything I say
about pastors this morning, what I do say is going to create a
healthier church that is more fun for you guys to grow up in.
And so even if it goes over your head, this sermon is for you.
But if you're a kid, the most, if you're an adult too, but
specifically if you're a kid, the most important thing you
need to hear from me this morning is the gospel.
So you need to know that Jesus loves you so much that he died
for you on a cross. And if you believe in him, he
will take away all your sins and he will cover you in his
righteousness and he will give you heaven forever.
And if that sounds crazy, if if your heart leaps for joy at that
news, I want you to poke your mom or dad after church and say,
dad, mom, can you tell me the gospel?
That's the single most important thing for you to hear this
morning. So if you're able, would you
stand for the reading of God's Word?
Paul has said, hi, hello. Here's what I'm trying to do in
this letter, Grace and peace from Jesus.
And then he pivots in verse 5 to this, This is why I left you in
Crete. And by the way, I love that like
the way that Paul phrases, that is perfect.
Like it kind of gives you the impression that Crete was just
this absolute dumpster fire that Paul bailed on and was like, OK,
Titus, you stay back here. So he left.
He left Titus and Crete. Why?
This is why I left you in Crete so that you might put what
remained into order. How?
By appointing elders in every town on the island, as I
directed you, if anyone is above approach the husband of one wife
and his children are believers and not open to the charge of
debauchery or insubordination for an overseer.
See how he's using that term synonymously.
Synonymously with with a elder as an overseer, as God's
steward. What's a pastor?
What's an elder? What's an overseer?
God steward for an overseer as God steward must be above
reproach. She must not be arrogant or
quick tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy for gain, but
hospitable, a lover of good self controlled, upright, holy and
certainly disciplined. Heavenly Father, I pray that as
we work through this text, you would bring to mind the names
and faces of our elders. These are not just hypothetical
people in Crete. You have brought about elders,
pastors and overseers in this church and phenomenal ones.
Steven Kerr. Who gets Steven Kerr as an
elder? Amazing.
Jaron Moore, the fellas that we're going to have gone through
two years of training that we're going to install as elders over
the next couple weeks. Jay Frichty.
Wow. Noah Holthouse, even Joseph
Donifrell, what amazing men the Lord has brought to Frontier
Church in order to lead us. I pray that we would be an
encouragement and a blessing to them.
Do all these things in the precious name of Jesus.
All God's people prayed. Amen.
You gonna have to see if if you know Paul's other letters in the
Bible, then you probably could already guessed what the first
thing that Paul is going to say after his introduction.
Almost always whenever you read a Pauline letter, he introduces
himself and then he jumps right into the gospel.
And so you would guess at the first thing that Paul would jump
into after his introduction would be the gospel, and you
would be right in almost every other Pauline letter he writes.
But if you guessed that about his letter to Titus, I'm sorry
sweetheart, you would actually be wrong.
What's the first thing Paul says in his letter to Titus after he
gets through the introductions? Essentially those 3 verses are
go build pastors. It things are a mess here, go
find, train, and install these guys as leaders.
Why? Well, if you've heard the other
4 sermons on Titus so far, you probably already know the
answer. Because the island of Crete,
which is where Titus is, is an absolute trash fire.
It's filled with mercenary soldiers who are dishonest and
pirates who are thieves and wolves who want to destroy the
church. And because of this, this young,
these young fledgling churches in Crete, they do not yet have
pastors or this, that's exactly what this would lead us to
believe. They are a football team without
a coach. They, they are a, they're a film
cast without a director, right? They're, they don't have healthy
leadership apart from Titus. And so much hangs in the balance
of finding these people and appointing them.
If Titus gets the pastors wrong, the churches are going to
perish. If Titus gets the pastors right,
the churches will probably thrive.
And so the main point of my sermon today, which I'm going to
try to keep shorter than usual, is this.
God establishes healthy churches through healthy leaders whose
lives imperfectly, but whose lives embody the gospel.
Let me show you where I'm getting this from.
Look at verse 5. If you look at verse 5, the
exact leader he's talking about are elders, or as he calls them
synonymously in verse 7, overseers.
Let me explain. In the Bible, the titles elder
and overseer and pastor, they, they're all the same position.
They're synonymous terms that are just used in different
locations. But the of all these titles, we
tend to as a church, use the term pastor most.
And so pastors or elders or overseers, they're the leaders
that God gives to the church to lead through three big
categories. Pastors lead through three big
categories. You see this all throughout the
Old Testament and New Testament direction, doctrine and
doctoring souls. Don't you guys love
alliteration? Don't roll your eyes at me.
It's great doctrine, direction, doctoring souls.
They're the chief leaders under Jesus in a local church, and
they're charged with the direction of the church or the
important decisions and taking responsibility for them.
They're charged with upholding the doctrine of the church, what
gets taught and what doesn't get taught from the front.
And they're charged with the doctoring of souls or providing
ongoing prayer and care and counseling with people.
And again, Paul says, Titus, Titus before you do, it's such a
strange way to plant a church because I so we planted this
church nine years ago and the modern world, we tend to be
like, OK, here's how you plant a church.
You got to launch the church Instagram and then try to get as
many people to follow it as possible and get the word spread
around town, right? You want to find, you got to
find the right camera so that you can take videos of the
sermon and put it on Spotify so to show people your sermons.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
It's just not the strategy that Paul has.
Paul's strategy for planting these churches in Crete is go
find elders. Before you do anything else.
Get these leaders right. Two things in the evaluation and
finding of these people that we see in the text.
The first thing we see is as you're looking for elders,
training them and installing them, make sure that the pastor
is like Jesus personally, or say it a little bit different way,
make sure he's like Jesus, not perfect, but like Jesus in his
home. That's verse six.
I'm not making this up. Look at verse 6, If anyone is
above reproach, the husband of one wife or to say that in a
different way in a culture where polygamy is normal and he can't
be an elder, he, this dude can't be an elder if he has more than
one wife or if he's unfaithful to his wife sexually or
emotionally in any way. I don't care how talented he is,
he fails that qualification. Keep reading.
And if his children are believers and not open to the
charge of debauchery or insubordination.
And so he's got to be a good, not perfect, but a good dad who
is present with his kids and training them up in the way of
Jesus to the best of his capacity In in other words,
verse 6 is, hey, make sure that these guys are like Jesus
privately. And that's not that's not
enough. He keeps on, he keeps on going.
The second thing he says is make sure that the pastors or the
pastoral candidates, they must be like Jesus publicly, or to
say it in a different way, make sure he's like Jesus, not
perfect, but like Jesus in the world.
That's verses 7 and eight. He says for an overseer as God's
steward must be above reproach. And then he lists 5 things a guy
cannot be to qualify as an elder.
He must not be arrogant or quick tempered or a drunkard or
violent or greedy for gain. But it's not just about not
being the wrong thing, right? It's also about being the right
thing. And so after five things he must
not be, he lists 6 things he must be.
Instead. He must be hospitable, a lover
of good, self controlled, upright, holy and discipline.
Look, we don't have time to go through all of those
qualifications individually. Frankly, they're all pretty
self-explanatory. So what I want to do is I want
to lace all of these qualifications together with a
critical through line. OK, I need your guys's eyes for
this one. This is so important when it
comes to qualification, when it comes to all of these
qualifications, to meet the qualifications to be a pastor, a
man must be these things consistently.
Not perfectly, consistently not perfectly.
Say it this way. To be qualified means that he's
known for these things. Not perfect at these things.
Workshop really quickly with me. I'm going to do a quick workshop
with you because this is so unfathomable that everybody will
know it's not true. OK, super hypothetical
situation. Suppose so, Jaron.
Where's Jaron at? Jaron.
So Jaron's one of our pastors, one of our elders, one of our
overseers. Suppose.
Suppose you're at Barn Town Brewery on a Friday night,
right? Cook.
What's your favorite restaurant in Des Moines?
You got one in Des Moines? What?
OK, suppose you're at the sushi house.
Wow, dude, that's bougie, bro. Sushi.
You think you know a guy? So suppose you're at the sushi
house. And suppose Jaron is at the
sushi house too, right? So Jaron's with his family.
You see him across the room. You know Jaron's one of the
pastors here. And suddenly, surprisingly,
since Jaron is not like this, you see Jaron snap and he gets
visibly angry at his kids. And you see it.
And then you open up first, Titus verse 7, and it says an
elder cannot be quick tempered. Does this mean that Jaron is
disqualified as a pastor? Not necessarily.
Now, you should probably have a
conversation with them. Hey, bro, I just, I noticed that
this thing, I saw this. Can you tell me more about this?
You should probably poke at his heart a little bit to see if
it's tender and repentant. Maybe he had a bad night and he
went home and he repented to his kids and he asked for
forgiveness, right? If this is if this is the case,
then it can still be that Jaron can consistently be not quick
tempered and still have some bad nights.
The dude's not disqualified for that, but if he's known for it,
there's this growing mountain of people in the church who've been
wounded by his anger. If his kids are always walking
on egg shells because the temper is an ever present threat to
them, is he disqualified? Yeah, he's disqualified.
Unfit to be an elder. What if he's really good at
public speaking? I don't care.
Disqualified.
No matter how gosh darn talented the person is.
The key phrase here, this is there's a single phrase that's
repeated twice in this section. Did you notice that?
It's critical. It was repeated before the
private qualifications and before the public
qualifications. The repeat, the repeated phrase
that's repeated twice is above reproach verse 6.
If anyone's above reproach, verse 7, an overseer must be
above reproach. So what's it mean to be above
reproach? The phrase above reproach.
What it is, is it is a summary phrase for all of those
qualifications that Paul lays out for elders and Titus.
It's summarizing there's like 15 or 15 ish qualifications in here
for Titus. It's a summary phrase for all of
those exact qualification. What it is not is a catch all
for all the things that you wish were different about your
pastors. Does that make sense?
This, this is actually really important.
This is really important. So I, I actually want you to
follow me closely, tailgate my bumper as I drive through this
argument. OK, come in close here.
OK. The, the thing about the phrase
above reproach is that it's beautiful and it's also one of
the most weaponized phrases against pastors in the entire
New Testament. Some people, what they'll do is
they'll weaponize the phrase got to be above reproach in order to
leverage their desire to have all of their stylistic
preferences met. Have you ever seen this?
I've I you guys are awesome church to pastor.
So I don't feel like it's been leveraged against me.
But here I, I have a lot of relationships with other pastors
and I have heard of pastors being criticized by church
people for not being above reproach for the craziest
things. OK, listen to this list of the
following things. I sat down.
I was like, what have I heard pastors accused for as above
reproach? I've heard pastors accused for
being not being above reproach because they preached in
T-shirts rather than collared shirts, or because they preached
in collared shirts rather than suits, or because they preached
in suits rather than robes. You got to be above approach,
bro. Or for listening to secular
music, got to be above approach. Or for responsibly enjoying
cigars, Or for responsibly enjoying alcohol, or for
watching rated R movies, or for watching PG13 movies, or for
making barely above a livable wage.
You got to be above approach, bro.
Or for being at a brewery on a Friday night or for being at a
sushi house on a Friday night, got to be above approach.
And often times what Christians don't have is the maturity to
say, you know, that that's just a, a preference of mine or I
wish he was a little bit different in the way that he
dressed when he was behind the pulpit.
And because Christians don't have that maturity, what they'll
do is they'll lurch onto the phrase be above reproach and try
to give their preferences biblical weight.
And it's unhelpful. So let me tie.
Let me tie a boat at the same point in time.
The phrase above approach doesn't mean nothing, right?
So let me tie a bow on everything I've been saying here
for the last couple minutes. If if you are a doodling in your
Bible, circle the phrase above reproach in verses 6 or 7.
Underline it or just tattoo it on your forehead.
Don't tattoo it on your forehead.
You know what I'm saying? If the criticism points to a
matter of sin and the listed qualifications in the Bible, you
need to take it seriously and your pastor may not be above
reproach and it would be helpful for him to hear that from you.
If the criticism points to a matter of style or liberty, or
he's casual and you wish he was more formal in his personality,
or he's more formal and you wish he was just more casual in his
personality. If you wish your pastors were
just a little bit different, that is not what Paul means by
being above reproach. And I'm making sense.
So here's this is so important. Did you notice how of all the
qualifications listed, only one is a skill?
And Titus actually didn't read it this morning, but as we look
at it next week, the only qualification in the Scriptures
for an elder that's a skill is that he's able to give
instruction and sound doctrine. He's got to be able to teach.
But the rest of them are not skills.
It's all character. It like Titus does not read the
qualifications for an elder, does not read like like an
interview for Aceo or an executive, right?
It's almost all what's he like in the home?
What's his heart like? What's his relationship with
alcohol like does? Is he self-control?
It's almost all character stuff. Why?
Because of Paul's definition of a pastor.
Verse 7-2 words For Paul, a pastor is God's steward.
That's verse 7 for an overseer as.
So an overseer is for an overseer as God's steward.
That's what a pastor is, God's steward.
Why only one competency and 15 character qualifications answer?
Because pastors are not stewards of their own gifts.
They are stewards of God's gifts.
They're God's stewards. That means Paul is being very
clear. He's saying the church does not
belong to the pastors, belongs to Jesus.
It's not Cole's church. It, I mean, it is in the sense
that I belong to it, but it is not in the sense that it belongs
to me. And so pastors are not stewards
of their own gifts. They're stewards of the gifts of
Jesus to the people of Jesus. Here's when our elder team gets
together on a weekly basis. A lot of the times when we get
together, we have these five reminders that we read before we
do any business. And one of the reminders that we
say whenever we read these reminders, which we need to read
more often now is, is is this? The church is not ours.
We say it out loud. The church is not ours, but
Jesus's. We are just Jesus's errand boys.
That's what pastoral ministry is.
Jesus, what do you have for errands for us to run for your
church? This OK?
Yep, we'll do that. We'll care for that person.
We'll preach that. OK, got it.
That's it. Like here.
Here's another way of saying it. The pastors, what pastors are is
they're, I like this image. They're like groomsmen, right?
So if Jesus is the groom and the church is the bride, a good
pastor functions like a a groomsman.
What's a groomsman do? If, if the if the bride and the
groom are doing like a traditional wedding and they
don't want to see each other before the service, what what a
groomsman does is he stewards the gifts of the groom to the
bride, right? They're trying to remain hidden
until the service. And so if, if, if the groom
wants to say something to the bride to be, what's he got to
do? He gives the message to the
groomsman and the groomsman. Hey, yeah, your boy wants to say
this to you and he delivers the message, right?
Or like if, if, if the groom has a love letter that he wrote for
his bride to be on the wedding day, he'll give that to the
groomsman and the groomsmen will take that to the bride to be and
say, Hey, your, your man wrote this for you.
And he'll deliver the message, right?
If, if he got, if he got her a nice necklace, he'll give it to
the groomsmen. The groomsmen will take the
necklace to the bride and say, Hey, he got you this right.
If he does that, is he a good groomsman?
Oh, you're, you're unsettled on that.
I think he's a good groomsman that that's at least part of the
groomsman. He's just delivering the gifts
of the groom to the bride. That's a pretty good dude.
Suppose this though. Suppose the groomsman starts
delivering his own gifts to the bride.
Like got a necklace for the bride to be, and the groomsman
delivers his own necklace that he bought for the bride to the
bride. A little shady little creep,
Judy saying no, I'm going to cue off of Judy.
No thumbs down. Suppose the groom's men, not the
groom. Suppose the groom's men delivers
to the bride to be a love letter he wrote for her.
You feel that dude's a creep? Shady traitor.
What's what's happening? What's happening?
He's mistaken himself for the groom, where he's just the
groomsmen. What he's trying to do, it would
appear to me, is entice the bride to be into adultery.
Is this a good groomsmen? No, this is where everything
goes wrong with pastors is when they confuse themselves as the
groom rather than the groomsmen, and they think the church is
theirs rather than Jesus. I mean, the church is about
delivering their gifts to the church rather than pointing
people to Jesus. And when a pastor does this, he
is starting to entice the church into spiritual adultery with him
rather than Jesus. Not a good pastor, right?
This is where everything it hits hits the fan, right?
This is where you get all the stuff you read about in the
headlines right now, right? The moment when pastors become
the type of people who misuse the church's farms to buy a
bunch of their books to get it on the New York Times bestseller
list. It happens when they stop seeing
themselves as God. Stewart when When pastors, when
that root of anger and spiritual abuse takes root in a pastor's
heart, it's usually because they start mistaking themselves as
stewards of themselves and people don't understand how
great of a pastor I am and blah, blah, blah, and they start to
explode on people and hurt people.
The key here it is for pastors to be qualified biblically and
for them to take on the rule of God steward and not stewards of
themselves. Here's the point, the church
does not belong to the pastor as the church belongs to God.
Roughly 15 qualifications in here for elders and Titus only.
One's a skill. If you do the math, that means
that roughly 5% of what makes a good pastor is skill or ability
and competency. And believe me, if you can
choose pastors who are competent and high character, you want
those. But being a pastor is 95%
character and only 5% skill. Why?
Here's an easy layup. Here's why.
Because they sparkly, impressive.
A talented man who would make a great CEO of a company but who
does not love people will destroy a church as a pastor.
What if he's really good at speaking?
This is what Jesus says. What if he's really popular?
He doesn't meet these No, a super talented man who does not
love people well should not be a pastor, right?
It's and the reason why is because it takes an immense
amount of character and discipline to love people in the
church really well. Like I, I heard a quote.
I heard a quote the other day, a couple months ago that made me
rethink my life. It was it was the only man in
your life who wants you to do better than them is your father.
And I, I read that quote and I was like, is that true?
Some of you maybe didn't grow up with good dads and that's not
true for you. Is the only man in your life
that you that wants you to do better than them?
Your dad is that? Is that true?
May there might be some truth to that, right, Sigmund Freud, he
famously made the observation that even in peer and friend
relationships, they were characterized by primarily quote
quiet but competitive hostility. That's what Freud said.
Unfortunately, I think Freud is mostly right.
Do you need water? What do you need?
Yeah, you can do that. Quiet but competitive hostility.
Is that correct? I think it's mostly right.
Like friends are notorious for being envious of your growth and
improvement. Peers are notorious for not
being able to celebrate whenever you grow or get the promotion or
whatever it is. And so like, it's just really
rare for you to have a person in your life who wants you to do
better than you currently already are, right.
I was like, is that it made me? It made me think of my own dad.
Is that true of my dad? Did he want me to do better than
he himself did? And of course, that made me go
down just an absolute rabbit hole.
And you, those of you who are at Frontier, you know where that
led me? It led me to the wrestling room,
you know that. And yeah, I grew up wrestling,
obviously. And I, I grew up pretty
decorated and youth wrestling that nobody cares about.
It doesn't matter, but you stay champ blah, blah, blah, blah
blah, multiple time all American.
I say that all because despite all of those accomplishments,
you know who I couldn't beat in wrestling?
My dad drove me not even like at the peak, even at the peak of my
athletic abilities, like even when I was at high school and he
already had knee surgery, still couldn't beat him.
And it drove me nuts. The guy was in his upper 40s and
he still was just absolutely making mashed potatoes out of
me. I was like, what in the world?
Guy's not in shape, he wears a knee brace.
How was this a thing? So I couldn't take him down
until my senior year of high school.
Did it. I still remember it.
Is it a bit? It was late at night in the
basement of the middle school. I still remember the smell of
the old mats, exhausted, covered in sweat, my dad's knee brace,
right? I still remember the feeling of
taking it down and being like, who's the big dog now?
I still remember that it felt awesome.
I was like, heck yes, I did it. I did it.
And then 18 years later, I read the quote, the only man in your
life who wants you to do better than himself is your dad.
And I was like, hold on a second, does that mean 18 years
ago, my one takedown on him, Dang it, he gave me that
takedown and it took it away from me.
I was like, no, I don't even think I got that takedown
fairly. I think it was an absolute gift.
The only man in your life who wants you to do better than them
is your dad. The reason why there's such a
high calling on character and qualifications in the New
Testament is because the pastors of your local church should be
those men too. You should be able to
confidently look at them and say that guy cares about my Christ
likeness maybe even more than I do.
Like that's how I know my heart is in a pastoral place.
If I can say honestly that I want your joy in the Lord, maybe
even more than I want my own, that is a pastor right there.
And it takes an immense amount of discipline and character to
get to that place. Like you can't see it right now,
right? But in the room right now, if it
were visible, I'm just, I'm just being honest with you.
If it were visible, you would see these opinions over here
about me. You would see that this person
has been criticizing me behind my back for the last six months,
and this person I know disagrees with what I'm about to say.
And that person is Troy. Like if you can see all the
stuff in the room, you would see how easy it would be to let the
pastor member relationship be characterized by relational
bitterness and hostility. And the reason why a pastor has
to have such high character and be so disciplined is because
every Sunday and in every meeting with the individual and
privately, when we lift you up in prayer and pray for you, we
have to be able to see through this stuff in the room and not
see you through the stuff in the room, but see you in the blood
of Christ and love you well still.
And that's really hard. It means that right for for
Jesus. It didn't just mean letting his
people take him down in the sport of wrestling, that's
trivial. That's that's the analogy.
It meant letting his people crucify him and still loving
them. And that is what biblical
leadership is. It's not being ACEO and making
decisions. That's like 1/5 of it.
Or it is suffering well and still through it all, loving the
church, showing up for the church, praying for the church,
right the way that Alexander Strock said it in his massively
beautiful book on biblical eldership is elders in the local
church do not wear the crowns, they wear the aprons.
This is the self emptying leadership of the true lead
pastor of every true church. Who's the truly pastor of every
true church? Jesus, the self emptying,
suffering leader. Jesus emptied himself for the
sake of the church. His throne is the cross, His
crown is made of thorns. His leadership is his loving
suffering for his people. That's the gospel.
Jesus Christ was crucified for you.
That's his leadership. So that in Christ by faith
alone, all of your sins are taken away, all of His
righteousness that is given to you.
The gospel's the good news that despite humanity's endless need
to try to annihilate God, God willingly goes to annihilate
himself on the cross and still shows up and says, I love you.
And what Paul is saying in a different way is he's he's
saying make sure these churches find leaders who reflect that
gospel in their lives. That's what he's saying.
That's why when Paul's writing Titus and there are these new
struggling churches in Crete, the first thing Paul says is go
find these leaders. Go find, build and install
elders. Healthy elders, healthy church,
unhealthy elders, unhealthy church.
Even if the church is deeply unhealthy and emotionally
immature and relational divisive, often times when you
get the right leaders in the right place, the whole
organization slowly grows up into maturity or the immature
people end up leaving because they find the maturity
offensive. That's why so many leadership
gurus make the note, and I think they're right, that an
organization's maturity will rarely exceed the leaders
maturity. And that's why getting the right
elders is such a big deal to Titus in the Book of Titus.
And that's why finding the right elders is such a big deal at
Frontier. But let me end with something
practical. 95% of you won't become pastors, and that's
great, right? You don't want like 50% of your
church to be pastors. Too many cooks in the kitchen,
as I say. So 95% of you aren't going to
become pastors, and that's great.
So what do you, what's the point?
What do you want? What do you do with this text?
What do you do with this message?
Let me be really practical. I think your job is just as hard
as the job of the elders. So let me tell it to you via
narrative. Eugene Patter, Eugene Peterson,
he's one of my favorite, was one of my favorite writers on the
pastoral life. He wrote this beautiful
biography called a Pastor. And in it he tells us haunting
story about when he was going through seminary.
And as he was going through seminary and was so excited to
be a pastor, he also had this atheist buddy who he was really
good buddies with. And so he's got this atheist
buddy. And his atheist buddy was like,
Eugene, don't do it, bro. It's fine if you want to be a
Christian and, you know, pretend to enjoy this fairy God in the
sky, but don't become a pastor, bro.
And Eugene was like, I'm going to do it.
He's like, no, don't do it. He's like, I'm going to do it.
And so the atheist friend was like, OK, well, is it OK?
He just happened to be a really talented painter too.
And so his atheist buddy said, is it OK if you come for an hour
every week and my studio sit on a stool and I'm going to paint a
portrait of, of you? And Eugene was like, sure,
whatever helps for you to grow as an artist.
So Eugene showed up in his in his studio for a month, sat down
on a stool and allowed the guy to paint him on a on a weekly
basis. And he he kept the painting
hidden from Peterson the entire time.
Yeah, you can go get some. But on, I think on Week 3, the
painter's wife came in and she looked at the portrait of
Eugene, and she went, why you're the worst.
And Eugene was like, what? What was that?
And the next week, when the painter finished the painting,
Peterson saw why his painting buddy took canvas when he was
finished with it. And he turned it around and he
showed Peterson the painting. And what he had done is he had
painted a self-portrait of Eugene Peterson as a zombie with
hollowed out eyes, a dead expression, pale white,
lifeless. And he said to Eugene Peterson,
this is my final warning for you.
Don't become a pastor or this is what will happen to you.
The church will suck out your soul and it will kill you.
And you know what Peterson did? He took the portrait and he hung
it up in his private closet and his pastor's office and looked
on it at a weekly basis to remind himself to stay connected
to Jesus and not let his church kill him.
So what does this mean for you? The Bible's clear about your
role in the relationship with your pastor.
Here's the way that Hebrews 13 says it.
Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch
over your souls as those who will have to give an account.
Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that
would be of no advantage to you. Here's what I'm not saying.
I'm not saying that you've got to give your pastors a special
parking spot in the parking lot. That was the first thing we
ripped out when we bought this building.
I'm not saying that on Pastors Appreciation Month you've got to
write a sappy emotional post about how important your pastor
is to you on Facebook, but I'm not.
I'm not saying you have to do any of that silly stuff.
I am certainly not saying that you can never rebuke or correct
them. They need your rebuke and your
correction. But at the very least, the Bible
is clear that your job is to be a joy to pastor.
Or to use the language of Eugene Peterson's friend, don't kill
your pastors via gossip, via slander, via spirit.
Just don't kill them. And the cool thing about me
preaching the sermon is I'm not doing it reactively.
You guys are like the best church ever to pastor.
You guys are like, really encouraging.
And I'm not like, I'm just saying like, do more of this.
I hang out with other pastors sometimes.
And I'm like, I wish you guys could pastor my church.
You guys are way too good and it's fun to pastor you.
So thanks for being a joy to pastor Heavenly Father.
I pray that you would continue to build into and invest in the
member elder dynamic. It's probably I was praying
about this this week. It's probably the third most
important relational dynamic in the church.
The the most important relational dynamic is the people
to God relational dynamic. That's the most important thing.
The second most important relational dynamic is probably
the pastor and pastor dynamic. When a pastoral team collapses,
often times the church follows. But the third most important
relational dynamic is the pastor and member dynamic.
Would you protect that Lord? Would your Holy Spirit hover
over our pastors and our members and help us endure seasons where
we don't like each other or we would prefer that we were
different and still hold together in the bond of love
that the Gospel of Jesus has purchased for us?
May May our elders take their character seriously and may our
members celebrate their selfless leadership, especially the lay
elders who give their time and energy and don't sing a see a
single dollar in response to that.
May we protect that and just remind us that the church does
not belong to the pastors. Church belongs to Jesus.
So it's in his precious name that all God's people prayed.
Amen. Let's stand and let's worship.