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rom Miletus, Paul sent to Ephesus for the elders of the F church. 18When they arrived, he said to them: “You know how I lived the whole time I was with you, from the first day I came into the province of Asia. 19I served the Lord with great humility and with tears and in the midst of severe testing by the plots of my Jewish opponents. 20You know that I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you but have taught you publicly and from house to house. 21I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus. 22“And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jeru- salem, not knowing what will happen to me there. 23I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me. 24However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace. Acts 20:17-24 (NIV)
Milestones In our society, for reasons unknown to me, we have tended to settle on the number 50 as representing a really significant number of years. Married couples who reach the 50-year milestone typically have huge celebrations of their “Golden Anniversary”; British Queen Elizabeth’s 50th year of her reign was celebrated throughout the Unit- ed Kingdom as their monarch’s “Golden Jubilee.” Next month we will mark the 50th anniversary of “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Fifty years seems to us to be a dramatic and rec- ognizable long tenure of something.
But in the Bible we find repeatedly a different milestone number: 40. The devastating flood that Noah and his family escaped in the God- engineered Ark lasted for “forty days and forty nights”—biblical code for a really long time. Moses and the people he led from slavery in Egypt spent 40 years living and wandering through the Sinai De- sert before they could enter the Promised Land. Jesus, replicating the 40-year preparation of the Old Testament, spent 40 days in fasting (and satanic temptation) before beginning His ministry. It seems that 40 is the biblical equivalent of our 50.
This month I have reached a personal milestone: It was exactly 40 years ago that I was ordained to be a pastor. It came just a week after my graduation from seminary, as Billy Graham, chairman of the Board of Trustees at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, and its President Harold Ockenga, handed me my diploma. Reaching this biblical mark of 40 has caused me to be reflective and introspective, grateful for where I’ve been and humbled by what He has done. This morn- ing I’m going to share some personal reflections with you, as I look back on 11 years as a pastor in Wichita, Kansas; 14 years as a pastor in suburban Pittsburgh, and now 15 years here in Bonita Springs.
Why do human beings feel this need to remember and celebrate milestone dates and achievements? I believe the value of these re- membrances is not to dwell in the past, but to renew ourselves for the continuing journey and keep us strong in our values and convic- tions. That is what Americans should do in less than two weeks, on the nation’s birthday of July 4—though we often neglect the serious work of remembering what our nation is all about and substitute more frivolous entertainments.
Words of a Role Model The scripture I’ve chosen for today includes the words of the great Apostle Paul. He is one of my all-time heroes and role models,
2 perhaps the mere mortal in the pages of scripture I admire the most and wish the most to emulate.
I don’t consider Jesus to be just a role model, because He is so much more: my Lord and Master. He alone is alive forever, conquering death and reigning in triumph, and He alone is the Head of His church. But Paul, an ordinary and flawed sinner like me, who never- theless relentlessly applied the gifts God had given Him to serve our Lord, is a person I can relate to. And our text in Acts 20 describes Paul having a meeting with the leaders of one of the churches he had served, in the city of Ephesus. He spends time talking about the past and about the future, but what I love most is verse 24: I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace. This is going to be my life verse for the final years of my ministry, however long that may be.
The verse that was my anchor when I came here 15 years ago and undertook the challenge of leading this great church was Philippians 4:13—“I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.” That verse didn’t mean that I would be a Superman, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound and stop a speeding bullet. It meant that whatever God called me to do here as your pastor, no matter how impossible or intimidating the task seemed to be, He would give me the strength or the resources to accomplish it. And He has been faith- ful to that. We have together accomplished a great deal in the past 15 years. We have done it all through Jesus and His strength and pres- ence within us. But now I will focus on Acts 20:24, and make it my “aim to finish the race and complete the task” that has been given to me, before handing the baton to the next pastor.
Measuring Success There are many ways in the secular world to measure success. Things are not exactly the same in an enterprise like the church,
3 where the tangible is less important than the intangible and invisible. In sports, an athlete or coach is judged by their won-loss record and their individual statistics; when the legendary coach John Wooden retired from UCLA, all the focus was on his national championships. When Jack Welch—the famous CEO of General Electric—retired, all the accolades focused on the financials of the company and its boom- ing stock price; when his less-successful successor retired two years ago, again the focus was on his numbers. But pastoral ministry is different. We can measure certain things, like church membership and church attendance, financial giving, building projects, mission support and professional staff. But those are transient. The real work of the church is to impact the lives and souls of individual people. And there is no way we can put a definitive number on that process. Only God knows.
My 40 years of service as a pastor have only increased my love for what God has called me to do. Sadly, I have met a number of people through the years who left the ministry in discouragement or burn- out or cynicism. I realize that some have found themselves in tough situations. And some have made mistakes, consciously or uncon- sciously, that have torpedoed their effectiveness in ministry. But I can honestly say I love being a pastor; I think it is the greatest and most wonderful privilege in the world, and wholeheartedly com- mend it to the students and young people I have the opportunity to meet and mentor. In what other job could I have been stretched so broadly, getting to wear the “hats” of leader, scholar, writer, counse- lor, coach, orator, fund-raiser, teacher, missionary, comforter, guide and friend? I love the honor given to me to come alongside people in their life’s journeys and struggles. And I speak for all of your pas- tors; we all love what we do. Every member of my team shares with me the commitment that we are not specialists in some limited area of ministry, but rather see ourselves primarily as generalists who care holistically for our church family. In the biblical metaphor, we are shepherds—following the footsteps of the Good Shepherd.
4 Lessons Learned As my 40th anniversary of ordination approaches, my mind has wan- dered frequently, during my free time and my devotional time, to the lessons I’ve learned over four decades. I’ve been blessed with high quality professors at great Christian academic institutions, blessed with several outstanding professional mentors, and blessed by peer relationships with many effective and dedicated pastors. I can’t identify the exact sources of the principles I want to share with you; they probably came to me from many directions. But here are some values I have sought to live by in the churches I’ve been called to serve.
1. Focus not on Church Growth but on Church Health. Lots of books and seminars and speakers have tried over the past 40 years to give congregations the “magic bullets” to increase their attendance and membership. And during this time, sadly, many churches across America have declined. I am convinced that the problem is not that churches aren’t using the right techniques of nu- merical growth. The problem is that they’re focusing on the wrong things. What is most important is not church growth but church health. If a church is healthy, it will naturally grow. And a healthy church consists of people who are making progress towards knowing God better and living as disciples of Jesus. When we put our primary emphasis on leading people to know the Savior and become mature in their faith, the measurable numbers will take care of themselves.
2. Pursue excellence and continual improvement. I want to be the pastor of a church that is never content with “this is good enough” or “that’s how we’ve always done things.” We honor God, and also show greater respect to the people God has called us to reach and serve, when we seek nothing less than the best we can do. We may not have the talent or resources to be the best in the world at anything, but there is no excuse for not pushing ourselves to be the best we can possibly be.
5 A young American engineer and management consultant named Ed Deming, in the early 1950s, found little interest in his theories of effi- ciency and quality improvement among post-war American indus- tries. He was invited to Japan, which was just recovering from the war’s devastation. The Japanese auto manufacturers and others seized on what he offered and adopted the commitment to continual improvement. Two decades later America woke up to the fact that the Japanese had blown by us in quality. Deming was hastily hired by Ford, and he helped them improve their internal process and grow dramatically in quality and in profitability. I believe a God- honoring congregation must be willing to continually improve in all areas, and be willing to change what needs to be changed.
3. There is no substitute for the Truth … or for Humility. I have lived through 40 years in which the formerly-great “mainline” churches of the historic denominational traditions of America have declined dramatically. And the core reason for their decline is that those churches tried to change what must never be changed. The fun- damental truths of scripture and traditional Christian theology have been abandoned by theological “liberals” or “progressives” who have sacrificed our historic faith in order to fit in with the latest scholarly and cultural trends and preferences. No wonder their churches are dying. A faith without a resurrection, without an authoritative Bible, and without a miracle-working Savior can never produce mature be- lievers. When we pridefully elevate ourselves and our intellects over Scripture, and presume to decide what parts of the Bible we will be- lieve and which we won’t, we are in danger. The only approach is to bow humbly before God’s Word and let it teach us. As a pastor, that also means that I humbly recognize I don’t have all the answers to all the great questions. My job is not to defend God. He hasn’t granted to me to understand all the mysteries. But I have chosen to believe in Him, to trust Him for what I can’t explain, to place my mind and my reason at His feet, and to humbly seek to obey Him.
6 4. You cannot out-give God. I have seen it repeatedly: the churches that flourish, experience spir- itual growth and make a difference in the world are the ones that freely and generously give to support God’s work outside their walls. A church with a heart for the mission of Christ to the world is one that will find their own needs met in abundance.
I am convinced that the same principle is true in our personal lives. We can choose to tightly cling to what we have been given, or we can open our hands in love and give back a generous portion. Those who give are more blessed than those who try to hoard. After all, none of it is really ours. It’s all loaned to us by God for a short time. We don’t own anything; we’re just stewards or managers. The only things we take with us out of this world are our souls and the souls of those whom we have touched. When we acknowledge God as Lord by participating in His work, amazing fulfillment and joy comes back to us in return.
5. Greatness is proven by servanthood. For reasons known only to Him, God has called me to serve in large congregations for my entire 40 years of ministry. Each of the three churches I have pastored has had significant resources available to it, and each has been in a prominent position in its community and net- work of nearby churches. God’s Word tells us that if we have been given much we will have greater expectations. I am committed to making a “flagship” or prominent church be a “servant” church. Hu- man pride and ego are so subtle and dangerous. Those sins must be regularly nailed to the cross. I want to be part of a congregation that takes seriously its calling to serve its community. One of the ways we serve when we are blessed with resources is by taking the leader- ship role—as we have tried to do in Bonita Springs with local minis- tries, and in our regional Presbytery. In leading we seek to treat even the small and struggling churches near us as equals in Christ, and seek to work together with no spirit of competition or rivalry. A community needs all of its churches, and each one is precious in God’s eyes.
7 Years of Blessing Thank you for letting me reflect to you some of the things God has been teaching me through these years. I do not know why I have been so favored to be part of such wonderful congregations. Many faithful servants of their Lord through the centuries have been called to labor in hard places or in difficult circumstances, with little out- ward success. Many have had to go through the spiritual equivalent of 40 years of desert wanderings.
But for me, the past four decades have been anything but a desert— they’ve been years of abundant blessing and joy. My greatest joy in ministry, and what I hope will be my enduring legacy, has been to serve as part of this amazing group of people the Lord has sover- eignly brought together in Southwest Florida for this unique time, to His glory.
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