Dan Olinger

"If the Bible is true, then none of our fears are legitimate, none of our frustrations are permanent, and none of our opposition is significant."

Dan Olinger

 

Retired Bible Professor,

Bob Jones University

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Archives for June 2020

On Being Like Jesus, Part 3: Aligning Your Values

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Part 1: Why It’s Important | Part 2: Why It’s OK to Moralize, This Time

In beginning this series I said that we should pattern ourselves after Christ, because it is into his image that the Father is transforming us during the lifelong process of sanctification (2Co 3.18). Of many biblical passages in which we can find information about Christ’s character and attributes, I’ve chosen to look at just one, the well-known, lyrical description in Philippians 2:

3 Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; 4 do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. 5 Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. 8 Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Before this passage gets to a description of Christ’s thinking and consequent actions, it begins with a couple of direct imperatives for Paul’s readers. Verse 3 addresses the mindset that should underlie our decisions, while verse 4 speaks of where our thinking should be focused. I’d like to take a post to deal with each of these imperatives. I’d suggest that verses 5 to 8, the description of Christ’s thinking and action, serve simply as an example of these two imperatives in practice—and so the imperatives are the underlying principles that more or less define Christ-likeness.

The first underlying principle—the first characteristic of Christ’s thinking and decision-making—is to “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves.”

The principle is straightforward and uncomplicated: we’re to consider others as more important than ourselves.

Are they? Actually, the passage doesn’t say that. The Scripture is clear that we’re all—equally—in the image of God (Gen 1.26-27). the Creator has made each of us to be remarkable examples of living design, and we all have a place in his plan. You really are special—that statement isn’t just pandering psychobabble—and you know what? I’m just as special as you are.

But no human being has enough mass to be the center of the universe. God is the Center, and we as his creatures are designed to fulfill his purposes for this life and the life to come. Life goes badly when we consider ourselves the center of it. We are designed—and, here, instructed—to consider others as more valuable than ourselves.

In fact, Paul goes so far as to say that self-centeredness—the Greek word rendered “conceit” here means “glory”—is “empty”; there’s just nothing to it, like a cheese curl, or a soap bubble floating in a light summer breeze. All of our effort to bring glory to ourselves will simply come to nothing; in fact, it will likely encourage people to admire us less rather than more.

So instead of puffing ourselves up, ordering our affairs around our own advantage and interests, what does Paul call us to do?

Choose humility.

We’re funny about this; we admire humility in everyone except ourselves. We genuinely admire people who are genuinely humble, but we seem to think that those we admire will admire us more if we call attention to ourselves, grab the spotlight, make a big impression.

Nope.

I’ve taken several teams of students to Africa, involving all different kinds of kids. I’ve found things to admire about all of them.

But you know who made the biggest impression on me?

It was the one on the trip to Tanzania where we were out of running water for 5 weeks, and we had to cart 5-gallon buckets of water to two different houses for cooking and bathing. And whenever there was a moment, I’d see Jack (not his real name), without being told, carting 2 5-gallon buckets at a time over to the girls’ house to refill their water supply. Jack was a lot bigger and younger and stronger than I was, and he was using his gift to make a difference.

Be like Jack.

 Part 4: Aligning Your Focus | Part 5: Letting Go | Part 6: Getting Low | Part 7: Sacrificing Yourself | Part 8: Closing Thoughts

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

On Being Like Jesus, Part 2: Why It’s OK to Moralize, This Time

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Part 1: Why It’s Important

Like many of my colleagues and fellow travelers, I’m leery of moralizing on deep theological passages. Gideon’s story is not about being watchful when you drink from a river, and the death of Goliath is not about “only a boy named David” and those “five little stones he took.”

Those passages are about the might of Israel’s God, and his faithful, loving covenant loyalty (hesed). In the main, the Scripture is about God, not us, and we do a disservice to its Author when we turn it into a self-help book.

I had an experience years ago that drove this idea home to me.

One Christmas my family was visiting my sisters in New England. Not far from one sister’s house was a colonial-era church, which is well known for its architecture. Built in 1719, it has the box pews and the pulpit sounding board that were common design features in those days. As it happens, a painting of the building was included in one of the BJU Press textbooks back in my days with the Press, and when I left the Press to join the BJU faculty, my boss, who knew how much I loved that illustration, gave me the original artwork (by John Roberts—no, not the Chief Justice), and it hangs in our dining room today.

I really wanted to visit that church.

We showed up for the Sunday morning service just before Christmas. The minister presented a homily on Mary’s Magnificat (Lk 1.39-56).

Now, I knew this church was theologically liberal, and I later learned that it had embraced liberal theology not long after it was founded; it was liberal before liberal was cool. But even knowing that, I was floored by the homily.

As students of the Scripture know, the Magnificat presents some really remarkable features—

  • To begin with, it exhibits extensive parallels with Hannah’s prayer of thanks after the birth of Samuel (1Sam 2.1ff), and it is delivered extemporaneously—which indicates that Mary was thoroughly familiar with Hannah’s song, having probably studied and memorized and meditated over it, in a day when most girls were never taught to read. As a literary work alone, it’s worthy of extensive study.
  • Further, it develops significant theological themes involving multiple divine attributes and works, demonstrating both his greatness and his goodness. Again, this is surprising in an age when women were generally not educated or included in theological discussions—all the more so if, as we suspect, Mary was a teenager at the time.

If it’s Christmas-time, and you’re preaching on the Magnificat, there’s no lack of substantive material to present. The hard part is deciding what to include in just one sermon.

So what was the homily about on this Christmas Sunday morning?

Mary said these things after her cousin Elisabeth had greeted her with uplifting words (Lk 1.42-45). So we should say uplifting words to one another, thereby encouraging one another to produce wonderful creative things.*

My friends, I’m all for encouraging people—even poets!—but that is not what the Magnificat is about. When we deal with biblical theology, we need to make it about what it’s about, not our own good feelings about ourselves.

So here in Philippians 2 we have a significant Christological passage, the classic biblical passage on Christ’s humiliation and exaltation. The deity and humanity of Christ are in here, and the divine plan involving the cross, and eventual obeisance of all life—human, both regenerate and unregenerate, and nonhuman as well—and the absolute and eternal lordship of Jesus Christ.

It’s not about us.

But—it is about us. The very reason Paul has (apparently) pulled this ancient hymn into this particular epistle to a particular church in Macedonia is that he wants to moralize on the theology it contains. He wants us to do what Jesus did—to humble ourselves, to serve others. He wants us to break the passage down and live it out—not just by worshiping the Great Lord Jesus, but by imitating him. We are to “let this mind be in [us]” (Php 2.5).

We’ll take a few posts to explore what that means.

* For some reason, I can remember the liberal sermons I’ve heard better than the conservative ones. I guess the horror makes the experience more memorable over the long term.

 Part 3: Aligning Your Values | Part 4: Aligning Your Focus | Part 5: Letting Go | Part 6: Getting Low | Part 7: Sacrificing Yourself | Part 8: Closing Thoughts

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

On Being Like Jesus, Part 1: Why It’s Important

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We don’t know her name, because she was only 15 at the time, and the police won’t tell us. She was a student at Richmond High School just north of San Francisco. It was a Saturday in October, the night of the homecoming dance. 

About 9:30 that night, just after the dance ended, a group of students gathered in the darkness of a courtyard on the school property. Several of the boys turned on the girl, who was drunk, and began to beat her, throw her around, and rape her. There were at least 7 attackers, and the attack went on for more than 2 hours. 

They weren’t alone in the courtyard. They were surrounded by other students, at least two dozen, and someone as old as in his 40s.

No one called the police.

Several of them allegedly recorded the attack on their cell phones. Eventually a young woman nearby heard what was going on and called 911. Police rescued the girl, and she was rushed to the hospital in critical condition. 

What would you have done?

Would you have called the police? Would you have stepped in and tried to help? Would you have risked your own safety to defend a helpless victim?

Would you have thought of her, or of yourself? 

What would you have done?

How do you know? 

You can’t know what you’ll do in a crisis. What you’ll do is react—you’ll go with your most primal instincts. You’ll act out what you are deep inside, in your core. 

And what is that? Your core is the sum of a thousand decisions you make every day, in the course of ordinary life. Today—and every other day—you’re turning into who you are. 

So. You and I ought to spend our days, and our decisions, becoming what matters—the most important things. 

And what are they? 

The Bible answers that question for us: 

  • God is taking the entire span of our lives to turn us into imitators of Christ:
    • But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit (2Cor 3.18). 
  • When Christ was asked what really matters, He said it very simply: love God, and love your neighbor (Mk 12.29-31). 

So my decisions today, and your decisions, should be about placing more value on others than on ourselves. We need to decide every moment, in important decisions and in little tiny ones, to think as though it’s not about us.

This—thinking “otherly” in the tiny decisions—is the only way to be reasonably sure that when the really big decisions come, when there’s no time to evaluate or to do anything other than just react, we’ll do the right thing.

Why do I say that? Because doing the right thing—especially when it’s costly—is unnatural for us. We need a lot of practice, a lot of repetition, a lot of imprinting.

What does thinking “otherly” look like? If God’s lifelong work in us is conforming us to the likeness of Christ, then of course Jesus himself is our example.

There are many places in Scripture where we can get information on how Jesus thought and acted. Of course we could start with the Gospels, which we could call primary sources in the historical sense. And then there are numerous Christological passages in the epistles that would be informative—Romans, Ephesians, and Colossians come immediately to mind.

But I’d like to spend a few posts delving into Philippians 2, where Paul lays out a classic passage on Christ’s humiliation and exaltation—a passage some scholars think was an early hymn of the church. (It does appear to have the structure and lyricism one would expect in a hymn.)

Now that we have a text to study, I’ll spend a post justifying using a text that’s talking about Jesus to direct our own personal decisions—and then we’ll get to the text itself.

 Part 2: Why It’s OK to Moralize, This Time | Part 3: Aligning Your Values | Part 4: Aligning Your Focus | Part 5: Letting Go | Part 6: Getting Low | Part 7: Sacrificing Yourself | Part 8: Closing Thoughts

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Memories of Merciful Teachers

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The COVID upheaval has made teaching really interesting. For most teachers in the US, there was a “pivot to online” around mid-March, as the students began “learning from home.” Teachers had to rethink their course presentation and assessment, and they had to do it in a hurry. For me it was fairly simple—I credit previous experience teaching online (a gracious providence), the nature of my subject area, and the fact that I’ve already largely done away with unit tests in favor of other assessment methods (another gracious providence). I know that for my colleagues in activity-based subjects (e.g. fine arts, lab sciences), the pivot required a lot more adjustment and creativity, and my hat’s off to them.

Part of that change of situation included considering the various stresses on student performance. For my students the most obvious stressors were reduced access to library resources, lack of a place to concentrate, and in some cases reduced internet access. Some had family or other housing situations that greatly interfered with their studies.

And all of that calls for flexibility and other types of mercy. I didn’t tell my students this ahead of time, but I essentially did away with late penalties, and I let them try again when they really botched an assignment. And there were other considerations.

My thinking in this area has been influenced by past teachers who showed me mercy. I’d like to recount a couple of those instances.

For second-semester Greek—my undergrad minor—I had Dr. Richard Taylor, who is now a professor of OT at Dallas Theological Seminary. Going into the final, I had a high A and calculated that I could get a D on the final and still keep the A. No sweat.

I got careless in my preparation and completely overlooked what turned out to be a major emphasis on the exam (for you Greek bodies, it was the -μι verbs).

I flunked it. Ran the numbers, and my semester average was now 89.4. Juuuuust barely lost the A.

I went to Dr. Taylor’s office ready to plead my case. I’ve done solid A work all semester. I’ve demonstrated that I can master this stuff. I knocked and heard “Come in!”

“I’d like to talk about my grade,” I said. “About the B+.”

He pulled out the little green gradebook (remember those?) and looked it over, and then he looked up with just a hint of a smile.

“I don’t see any B+,” he said.

I’m told that an adage among lawyers is “When you’ve won, shut up.” So I did. And today my transcript shows an A- for Greek 102. (I just checked.)

Another example.

I took a course on the Pauline Epistles taught by Dr. George Dollar. Dr. Dollar was an old-time, fire-and-brimstone fundamentalist, perhaps the prototype for the stereotype. As I recall, he taught at BJU for only a few years, and he never shied away from a fight.

The biggest assignment for that course was that we had to write a commentary on 1Corinthians. We had all semester, and I went right to work. I read and read and wrote and wrote. The day before it was due, Dr. Dollar reminded the class that our commentary on 2Corinthians was due tomorrow.

Second Corinthians?! I wrote on First Corinthians!

Yikes.

After class I stumbled down to the front of the lecture room and admitted my stupidity. To my astonishment, Dr. Dollar smiled and said, “That’ll be fine.”

“That’ll be fine.” And indeed it was.

Now, these are (or were, in the case of Dr. Dollar) two very different men, with very different personalities, approaches, and teaching styles. But in my formative years in academia they both showed me mercy, and nearly 50 years later I still remember. When a student comes to me needing mercy, even if he kinda deserves justice, I think of those two experiences—sometimes I even take the time to tell one of the stories—and I say, “I’m going to show you mercy. Someday you’re going to have an opportunity to show somebody else mercy, and on that day I want you to remember this one.”

To show mercy is to reflect the image of God. We will never show anyone as much mercy as God has shown us. These days, mercy is more needed than ever.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

How to Care for Your Pastor, Part 7: Praying for More

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Remembering | Part 3: Respecting | Part 4: Hearing | Part 5: Obeying | Part 6: Rewarding

We’ve looked at several New Testament passages that speak directly of leaders in the church, and how the members of the church should behave toward them. I think there’s material there for all of us to attend to.

I’d like to close the series by going to a passage that doesn’t mention pastors at all, but that points us to a significant step we can take for the days ahead.

35 Jesus was going through all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. 36 Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd. 37 Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. 38 Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest” (Mt 9.35-38; see also Lk 10.2).

As was typical for him, Jesus was ministering to the crowds that constantly accompanied him, seeing and addressing their needs, both physical and spiritual. He was ministering. Pastoring.

Why?

Well, he tells us elsewhere that ministering is his mission (Mt 20.28; Mk 10.45), but this passage gives us a more proximate reason—he was moved with compassion for the needs of the people who surrounded him.

This was something that happened often as Jesus walked among us (Mt 14.14; 15.32; 20.34). It’s part of who he is (Ex 34.5-6). And in that moment of agitation, he used the situation as a teaching moment for his disciples.

There are so many, he said. We need more workers, people to care, to minister, to shepherd. Pray for more.

Note the motivation. We need more pastors, not so the theological schools will have more business, or because really godly people become “full-time Christian workers,” or because other work isn’t important, or because you should feel guilty if you don’t.

We should care because the Son of God, walking among us, had his stomach tied up in knots because of the sight of countless images of God who were in perilous need. And he felt this way not because he was helpless to do anything about it, but simply because he cared. It mattered a lot to him.

It should matter a lot to us. It should matter that every community is filled with people in the image of God who are far from him, adrift in a cesspool of existentialism, unable to understand why a universe with them at the center simply doesn’t work and doesn’t satisfy; people who know him but not well enough to function, because they don’t know his Word and don’t know how to learn it; people who are walking through the valley of the shadow of death and need someone to just sit with them and comfort them; people whose marriages aren’t working and they don’t know how to fix them; people who could face the trials of life if they just had a body of believers to provide fellowship and exhortation and encouragement.

We should be moved—the Greek word means essentially to be punched in the gut—by the needs all around us, and, desperate for help, we should pray that God would send forth more laborers into his harvest.

Pray. The word Jesus uses is “beseech”—beg, or plead. It what the leper did when he fell on his face before Jesus and said, “Lord if you are willing, you can make me clean” (Lk 5.12). It’s what the father did when he shouted from the crowd, “Rabbi, I beg you to look at my son, for he is my only boy” (Lk 9.38). The son, by the way, was demon possessed.

How desperate was that father? How desperate was that outcast leper?

Pray. Pray for more pastors like yours. Thousands of them, until there are so many that there are some with nothing at all to do.

When we honor our undershepherd, we honor the Great Shepherd. And by doing that, we strengthen the church and our own connection to that Great Shepherd.

Win. Win.

Photo by Francesco Ungaro on Unsplash

How to Care for Your Pastor, Part 6: Rewarding

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Remembering | Part 3: Respecting | Part 4: Hearing | Part 5: Obeying

The fifth biblical command for us in caring for our pastor leads me, as they say, to go from preachin’ to meddlin’.

The elders who rule well are to be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching (1Ti 5.17).

The word translated “honor” here is translated with the sense of “honor” in 30 of its 44 appearances in the New Testament. The other 4 nuances are “compensation” (5x), “price” (5), “value” in the sense of quality (3), and (economic) “value” (1). The verb form is usually translated in the sense of “respect” (17/21), but it also speaks of placing a price on something (Mt 27.9, quoting Zec 11.13).

Anybody see a trend here?

It speaks of honoring someone specifically because you see him as of significant value. And one of the most common ways society does that is by paying him well.

So.

Pay the preacher.

Paul speaks of this concept more explicitly in Corinthians 9, where he’s discussing his ministry in the church at Corinth. He notes that he’s ministered among them at no charge—in fact, supporting himself by making tents (Ac 18.1-4)—even though he has a right, as a minister, to expect them to pay his expenses (1Co 9.4-6). He argues from social custom; soldiers, farmers, and shepherds all have their needs met by their work (1Co 9.7). Even the Law of Moses commands that the ox not be prevented from eating some of the grain that his labor is grinding (1Co 9.8-9)—and, he notes, the Law is not primarily about oxen; this command is intended to teach us something about how God cares for his creatures, and how we consequently should care for those who labor for our benefit (1Co 9.10-12). He observes further that under the Mosaic system the priests were paid for their work (1Co 9.13). Consequently, he deduces, “The Lord directed those who proclaim the gospel to get their living from the gospel” (1Co 9.14).

Pay the preacher.

Back in our original passage, Paul notes that the pastor “work[s] hard at preaching and teaching.” The verb here is usually translated with the sense of “toil” (21/25x) and occasionally with the sense of “tire.” It’s the verb used to describe Jesus’ exhaustion on the long, hot walk from Jerusalem through Samaria toward home, when at midday he collapsed onto a seat by a well and, so tired that he couldn’t draw water for himself, he asked the Samaritan woman to give him a drink (Jn 4.6).

Pastoring is hard work. There’s the part you see, or at least see the results of on Sunday—the sermon preparation, including study, research, meditation, mental analysis; the really hard work of capturing everything the day’s passage says in a single, easily understood sentence; the mental labor of coming up with analogies, comparisons, that capture the difficult ideas involved—often when there is nothing that is really analogous (we’re talking about God, after all); evaluating the specific needs of the congregation to determine how precisely they can best apply these principles; and doing it all in a way that they will find attractive and encouraging rather than demeaning or disheartening.

And then there are the countless things you don’t see:

  • the private counseling of weak, or discouraged, or angry and uncooperative people, where his mind is confronted with the worst of human behavior, and where he carefully lays out a biblical path and the counselee simply ignores what he says, to his own destruction;
  • the calls in the middle of the night to minister by presence with those facing unimaginable grief, with the knowledge that there is nothing just or fair about what they are experiencing;
  • the concern for the sheep that plays as perpetual background to every moment of his waking hours, and some of the sleeping ones as well;
  • the ongoing, perpetual weariness.

Imagine that this is your life.

And now imagine the relief that would come if you didn’t have to wonder how you were going to afford 4 new tires this week, or a new water heater, or a plane ticket to visit your mother in a nursing home—if those things were simply taken care of by the people you lie awake thinking about.

Pay the preacher.

Part 7: Praying for More

Photo by Francesco Ungaro on Unsplash

How to Care for Your Pastor, Part 5: Obeying

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Remembering | Part 3: Respecting | Part 4: Hearing

We began this series in Hebrews 13, and we return there for this next step. Hebrews 13.17 reads,

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with grief, for this would be unprofitable for you.

I didn’t start off with this one, because I think there are necessary prerequisites to this step. We needed first to think about how we value our pastor and the work he does. Now it’s time for the difficult part.

The writer says we’re to “obey” and to “submit to” our pastors. Before I deal with that, I want to talk about the rest of the verse, because it lays out reasons to do this hard thing, and all of us benefit from knowing the reasons why we’re asked to do a hard thing.

He says that one day our pastors will give an account (to God, obviously, as we all will [2Co 5.10]), and specifically for how they have “kept watch over our souls.”

That’s a tough job. Souls are complicated—and broken by sin, at that—and they’re invisible, which makes them harder to work on than, say, an automobile engine. Diagnosing a problem is difficult enough, but fixing it, when you can’t take a soul apart, replace the defective part, and put it back together again, is unimaginably difficult. Add to that the fact that with souls, you can’t impose a solution, even if you’re demonstrably right; in the end, you have to depend on the individual—who, as we’ve noted, is already broken—to implement the solution to his own problem.

While the job is difficult, it’s not impossible, for God provides solutions in his Word, through his Spirit, and his power to convict and illuminate and empower is never limited. It’s remarkable that even as he holds the pastor accountable for his “keeping watch,” he promises to supply all that is needed for the successful “repair” of the soul. The pastor’s job is not to fix things, but to “keep watch”—to pay attention, to notice when there’s a problem, and to handle the Scripture accurately and appropriately in pointing the “patient” to the cure.

We help our pastors with that job by obeying them and submitting to them. As I’ve noted before, the Scripture doesn’t call for blind obedience to any man; like the Bereans (Ac 17.11), we test what our leaders say against the touchstone of the Scripture. But having done that, when they’re right, we’re told here to submit. This is the idea of surrendering to a superior power.

Back in college, I studied judo. The sport comprises 5 subdisciplines; I studied 3 of them, one of which was shimewaza, or choking. It involves, not cutting off the windpipe (that takes too long), but cutting off the blood supply to the brain, which can render the opponent unconscious in just a few seconds. As you can imagine, that’s a very dangerous technique, and we were taught to take it seriously. In a match, you surrender by tapping out—which you can’t do if you’re unconscious. Our sensei told us very sternly that if we felt the technique applied correctly, we had just seconds to tap out and avoid death. Don’t be a hero, he said. When he’s got you, surrender.

When your pastor is speaking biblical truth, and you know he’s got you, you’d be a fool to try to outlast him—not because he’s such a tough guy, but because if you’re dealing with the Scripture, you’re dealing with God himself, and as the founder of my school said, “Your arm’s too short to box with God.” When he’s got you, surrender.

This passage ends with good news. In the martial arts, nobody likes to surrender; Asian cultures place great importance on not losing face. But in this case, surrender is delightful; all kinds of good ensues from it. The pastor’s faithful work is successful; that encouragement empowers him for the next round; the entire body, the church, is more healthy; and you are set up for more success down the road. To paraphrase our passage, obeying your pastor turns out to be profitable for you.

How about that. The way down is the way up.

Part 6: Rewarding | Part 7: Praying for More

Photo by Francesco Ungaro on Unsplash

How to Care for Your Pastor, Part 4: Hearing

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Remembering | Part 3: Respecting

Earlier in the same epistle that tells us to respect our pastor, Paul writes,

For this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe (1Th 2.13).

It’s worth noting, in the interest of precise hermeneutics, that this is not a command; it’s a description of a historical practice. But since Paul is clearly commending it, we as readers ought to take it as exemplary. Scholars would say that it’s “an indicative with imperative force.”

We ought to listen to what the pastor brings us from the Word, and we ought to hear it. We ought to recognize it as biblical truth, and because it is, we ought to receive it, accept it, and we ought to open ourselves up to let it do its work in us by the power of the Spirit.

Let me throw a little personal word in here. As a teacher, I face groups of “hearers” pretty much every workday. Every experienced speaker learns to read his audience—to recognize and respond to visual feedback. Every time I speak, I find my eyes moving from face to face and quickly identifying those who are telling me something by their expressions—eye contact, nodding, raising an eyebrow, all kinds of expressions. In every session I find myself going back to the half-dozen or so faces that are telling me things, ensuring that my message is getting across, that I’m not missing something. In that moment those people are my greatest asset.

When your pastor is speaking, talk back to him with your face. Look up from your phone, and look him in the eye. Sure, he won’t stare at you every minute, but his eyes will come back to you repeatedly. Let him know if you understand, or agree, or wonder what on earth he’s talking about. Communicate with him. He’ll be grateful.

And when you are informed, challenged, moved by what he says, show him that. Show him that he’s making a connection, a difference.

Another thought.

Pastors aren’t apostles. Their preaching isn’t inerrant, and it’s not authoritative. Think about what your pastor says; compare it with Scripture, as the Bereans did (Ac 17.11). If it doesn’t seem right, talk to him about it. Maybe you’re wrong; maybe he is; maybe you both are. But he’ll be invigorated by genuine, humble conversation.

This is thinking, not blind obedience. Thinking students make good teachers happy.

Some years ago my family and I were driving from Dallas to El Paso. West Texas is pretty boring, even with Van Horn out there in the middle. All was quiet, and to break the boredom, I said to my older daughter, who was about 6, I guess, “Well, how do you like the prairie? Does it remind you of Little House on the Prairie?”

She thought for a moment and asked, “Dad, was Little House in the Prairie in Texas?”

“I don’t think so, babe,” I said. “Maybe Kansas.”

“Well, it couldn’t have been in Kansas.”

I thought she sounded pretty sure of herself for a 6-year-old. “Why, babe?”

“Because it’s in color.”

That, my friends, is what Bloom’s taxonomy calls “synthesis”—taking unrelated pieces of information and putting them together in a new way. From Little House in the Prairie—the TV show—she knew it was in color, and from The Wizard of Oz—the movie—she knew that Kansas was in black and white. Ergo, QED.

In this case, her conclusion was factually correct, and her logic was completely valid. Those don’t necessarily coincide. Syllogisms will do that to you.

Boy, was I delighted that she was thinking. So delighted, in fact, that I almost drove right off the road.

Which, in West Texas, would have made no difference at all.

What do you think it does to the heart of your pastor, your teaching elder, when he sees you hearing, and thinking, and drawing conclusions? How do you think it affects his motivation when he knows that you’ll do that?

Do that.

Part 5: Obeying | Part 6: Rewarding | Part 7: Praying for More

Photo by Francesco Ungaro on Unsplash