A Tale of Three Kings

I was tired, weary, and defeated just to sum up a few of the massive dark feelings of the soul that night. To that point in my life, I am not sure that I had ever faced the dilemma quite like the one I was now staring down. My heart was dark and my feelings were very spiritually unhealthy to say the least. It would have been very easy to give in to defeat, pack up the tent and go in another direction with my life.

Looking back it was almost thirteen years ago on a late Wednesday night in October 1996. I had come from home from mid-week prayer and Bible study and it seemed as if the world of darkness was doing everything possible to choke the life out of me. What was so strange is that in January 1996, a very distinct directive from the Lord had told me that I would be on the current assignment for four more years. I expected a lot of great things but instead I was grappling with a storm that threatened to overpower me. A blinding and quite unforeseen trial had broadsided me and what little Christian character I had was being eroded by a lot of very carnal emotions to say the least.

I can still remember almost the exact time on that memorable Wednesday night as sometime around 10:35 or so. The house was finally quiet as Teresa and I had gotten the kids down for the night and she was in the back of the house and I was in my study in the front. I leaned back in my chair and propped my feet up on my desk and begin to encourage a dark and brooding stream of emotions. In retrospect and hopefully with an eye toward a little more spiritual maturity, I can see now that it was a shaping process of the soul that God was using to my own benefit. Spiritual growth is very necessary in all of our lives but most of the time it is very painful because it involves a pruning of the soul. But how that pruning is so conducive to greater fruitfulness!

Somehow my eyes flitted to the top of the bookshelf. Tucked in between all of the other inspirational books written by Gordon MacDonald, Charles Swindoll, Max Lucado, and a few others, I spied a little paperback that I had owned for at least 3 years. Numerous preachers had told me that I had to read Gene Edwards’ A Tale of Three Kings. I took half of their advice and bought it but never read it. In fact, as I think about it now, I can think of at least ten good men who told me that I needed to read this book. I didn’t ignore their advice it just wasn’t in God’s timing for me to read the book just yet. No doubt when I purchased the book, God knew there would come a time that I would need to read this book. I am of the opinion that this was one of the types of books that Paul encouraged Timothy to bring to him before winter (2 Tim. 4:13).

So at 10:35, I picked up that book and it mesmerized me until shortly after midnight. The impact of this little book (a little over 80 pages) has remained with me to this day. For those of you who have not read it, I won’t give you any details that will spoil it. For those who have read it before, you might want to pick it back up again! It is a tale for the ages because it exposes the fact that within every one of us is either a mad king who worships himself or there is a broken king who worships God. . . . . . and only the pain of trials can reveal what kind of man that we are. . . .

Encouragement = O2 for the Soul

A Treasure Trove You Might’ve Missed

The last two days has left me incredibly pressed for time, however I have made a personal commitment to try and blog at least four times a week until the horse falls over so here we go at almost midnight.

For those of you who have been diligently following the “Discipline of Study” posts, I will get back to those probably next week. I have had to go fishing and have some good men out on the line but it will be next week before I can sit down with them. I want to tell you that I am greatly appreciative of all the comments and e-mails that you are sending in regards to this particular series of blogs.

I am going to encourage you to look carefully at a book that is a treasure trove that you might have overlooked. I am speaking of John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress.” Currently this book runs secondly only to the Bible as the most published piece of Christian literature. If you have never read it, you are really in for a good treat. I recommend that you get the updated edition by L. Edward Hazelbaker.

I read this book years ago, but it was not until Brother Harrell in Bridge City, Texas urged me to really dig into this classic piece by Bunyan. It was said that Charles Spurgeon read “Pilgrim’s Progress” more than 100 times in his lifetime. If you have read any of Spurgeon’s sermons then you will have at least ran across one or two times that he has mentioned either scenes or characters from the story.

Last night for our mid-week Bible study series, I am patiently working through 1st John and came to the passage in 4:1 where John demands that we do not believe every spirit but rather that we test them. That is to assay or weigh them out through the strong element of spiritual discernment. As I worked through the passage, an illustration that fit extremely well was when Christian and Faithful make their way through Vanity Fair and have to decipher through all of the voices that are clamoring for their attention. It is amazing how well the illustration worked when you read the part where the Bunyan paints up all of his characters in the allegory.

I have preached a few sermons using “Pilgrim’s Progress” scenes as a leaping off point. “The Fight of Your Life” was a message I preached about Christian battling Apollyon in the Valley of Humiliation. Another message I preached was “Giants Under Junipers” which took into consideration the story of Christian when he was locked up in Doubting Castle and had to escape the dungeon. He had wandered off the right path and it almost led to a terrible ending for him. Another one is “The Magnetism of the Finish Line.”

The whole allegory is concerned with Christian getting to the Celestial City (Heaven) and the battles and characters that he encounters along the way. Mr. Facing Both Ways, Worldly Wiseman, Hopeful, Faithful, and the Man in the Iron Cage are just a small few of worthy characters that will work for very good “sermon spice” as my friend Ben Weeks calls it. Also another very valuable resource to look for in conjunction with Bunyan’s book is Alexander Whyte’s “Characters of Pilgrim’s Progress.” There are three volumes of Whyte’s musings but there are absolutely essential for one who wants to look a little deeper.

Pilgrim’s Progress On-line for free.

Encouragement = O2 for the Soul

Book Recommendation — Blaine Allen — When People Throw Stones

Blaine Allen has managed to do it again. Allen is one of those authors that I “accidentally” found a few years ago when I was trolling our local Lifeway Christian book store. He has previously written a book entitled “Before You Quit: When Ministry Is Not What You Thought.” That book was a good one and it comes from the heart of one who obviously knows what it is like in the trenches.

His second book “When People Throw Stones” is also a very worthy follow-up to his first book. Again, you don’t have to read two pages into the book before you realize that man has worked through some acreage to be able to write as he does. Pastoral ministry is challenging at best but it can be even more of a cross when the words of critics pour out toward the man who is attempting to guide a church.

Recently I was on the other end of a pastor(s) conversation who shared with me the dilemmas they are facing in having to endure some very sharp, unwarranted, and malicious criticism from the churches they are attempting to serve. This is probably what prompted me to buy this book last week because I am well aware that at some point criticism will come the way of anyone who is diligently trying to serve God.

Why are we at this point in our society where criticism can put a pastor’s soul into wreckage? Especially in the setting of the Church, a place where it shouldn’t be. Allen gives an answer to this:

We live and minister at a time when the Western evangelical church is making a historic paradigm shift. Less and less, Scripture is our sole authority. More and more, a culture that mirrors an antibiblical value system has the final say. In the name of relevance, demographic research determines our music and the shape of our message so that we reinvent ourselves to appeal to the greatest number. Though perhaps done from positive motives, the results are staggering. The audience is not just the customer, it has been crowned sovereign kind. “Do it this way. . . We don’t like it done that way. . . Don’t forget, we can vote with our pocketbook and our feet.” Sovereign king. (p. 86)

Allen gives some insight into what happens with a pastor’s soul in the midst of having to field criticism:

It goes on day after day. Then into weeks and months. And before you know it, years pass—life with it—and you still knead the pain (of the critic and their criticism). Like a mallet you pound away. You beat it hard, sometimes harder than at other times, but always hard. First thing in the morning. Anytime a conversation shows the slightest drift in that direction you grab hold and set its course: do you know what he did to me. . . ??? Pound, pound, pound, pound.

But, do you know what you are pounding? Your own heart. With each blow, it gets harder and harder. Packed like steamrolled dirt. The air cannot get to it. The seeds of new truth won’t germinate in it. What good growth remains won’t be there much longer. The roots can’t spread. The moisture of the Spirit does not reach it. The tender shoots of truth get clobbered one by one. That’s the danger for a servant who ignores God’s roles behind the scenes (pp. 61-62).

However, Allen also goes into the other aspects of pastoral criticism. He spends a chapter on “When to Blow It Off.” In another he transparently writes “When Your Critic Speaks the Truth.” A couple of others are also worthy of mentioning: “When God Doesn’t Defend” and “When You Don’t Want to Forgive.”

He also gives a checklist of sorts to help determine some crucial things about criticism and how to field it:

· Truthfulness: Is your critic trustworthy?

· Empathy: Is your critic concerned?

· Competence: Is your critic knowledgeable?

· Factualness: Is the criticism accurate?

· Restraint: Was the delivery of the criticism restrained?

· Pain: Does the criticism hurt?

I realize the economy is shifting daily but this book might be a worthy investment of your time especially if you are on the receiving end of criticism right now. Otherwise, it might be a good book to get to read to prepare you for the future, because I have discovered that no man is immune from this kind of activity.

A Reading List for Pastors/Ministers Concerning Daily Devotionals

For those who frequent the BarnabasBlog, you have discovered that I have taken a little over a month off from posting anything here. I am now officially back in the saddle and will continue on.

 

From some previous posts, I have written about books that pastors could use the assist them with their pulpit ministry, you can check those links here and here and here. I have gathered from the Word that the most important thing that a pastor can do is to preach the Word. Good preaching is hard work especially in a society that wants 20-25 minute sermonettes. Good Biblical preaching is going to take more than just 20-25 minutes and it is going to have to be more than just volume.

 

Sometimes a minister’s inspiration runs a little low and at other times he may be banging one drum without a lot of variation in his thoughts. Both Kelsey Griffin and A. B. Keating, two of my Bible College instructors, cautioned us against getting on a “hobby-horse” and riding it to great lengths with your preaching and teaching.

 

Sometime back I started putting my notes on SermonCentral and it was a worthy experience for me to get involved in. I am not certain if my notes were what they really wanted but I did discover something during this exercise. Contributors have to take the sermon and apply one word to it, sort of a thesis or central thought of the sermon, and use it to define the sermon. I found that much of my preaching fell into three categories: Perseverance, Encouragement, and Revival. While all three of those are needed concepts in the church, I was neglecting prayer, worship, stewardship (which is far more than just money), eternal judgment/reward, and a whole host of other things.

 

One thing that I found to be helpful was to go into areas of Scripture that I did not frequently read. Two specific sections of Scripture really begin to challenge my thinking and it played over into my preaching and teaching. The book of Ezekiel is full of very rich bible imagery and paints numerous pictures of some very colorful character-types. Also, I started hanging out in 1^st John and I have started the preliminary process of putting some material together to work through 1^st John in 2007.

 

Therefore, I believe that one thing that can help a minister with the “dry” spots along the way is to make some forays into segments of Scripture that he may not have visited in quite some time.

 

The second thing that has provided nuggets of thought to develop over the years is to take indexes of commentaries and just scout through them.

 

Consider a few of these thoughts from the index of The Pulpit Commentary:

 

• Are You on The Margin of the Kingdom?
• Similitudes of the Kingdom
• The Silent Starting of the Kingdom
• Pain: An Offering to Christ
• Hidden Forces of Pain
• Peace Deeper Than Pain
• Pierced Armor
• Purifying Power of Divine Love

 

Here are a few more from the index of Spurgeon’s Sermons:

 

• Prisoners of Hope
• Pride the Destroyer
• The Rough Hewer
• Royal Emblems for Loyal Subjects
• Runaway Jonah and the Convenient Ship

 

There are times when my thoughts are not flowing as I would like for them to and I look to the indexes and it is not long before there is a seed that begins to grow in my weak little mind. I have just to a message from one of my favorite preachers and there was the relating as to how that sometimes learning can be a drudgery and study can be very tedious but when one will push on through those times, the harvest will come.

 

The third area that I have gained much inspiration from over the years has been from single volume devotionals. Perhaps the classic of all time is “My Utmost for His Highest” by Oswald Chambers. If you are going to purchase this devotional, I recommend the updated version that is edited by James Reimann. Some of the daily chapters:

 

• All or Nothing
• Readiness
• The Habit of Rising to the Occasion
• Pouring Out the Water of Satisfaction
• The Far Reaching Waters of the Rivers of Life
• The Distraction of Contempt

 

Another devotional that is an old classic is “Streams In the Desert” by L. B. Cowman. Again, I recommend the updated version by James Reimann. Some of the chapters which are included:

 

• He Withdrew To A Solitary Place
• Allurement
• Certain Songs
• My Hope

 

Another devotional is Spurgeon’s “Morning and Evening.” I confess that I have taken some of these short chapters and developed them into full-blown sermons. Some of the chapters:

 

• Wolves At Dusk (I have developed a message from this thought.)
• Fortified Things, Reserved Things
• Close to His Heart
• Without Fault
• Water In A Thirsty Land

 

Another fine devotional is one I found in my Texas Bible College Days. Our president, J. R. Ensey, preached an incredible message in chapel one day entitled “The Ghost of Ephraim.” For days afterwards, a lot of buzz was around the campus about how powerful the message was. The gist of it was about how that Ephraim had turned back in the battle and had lost out. Bro. Ensey preached about quitting too soon and giving up and then made a challenge to persevere and not to quit. To this day, I haven’t forgotten it. I also must add that Swindoll’s other devotional, “The Finishing Touch” is a very good devotional with a lot of similar seeds that can really send your mind into some valuable and resourceful sermon thoughts.

 

But there came a day. . . (sort of sounds like Scripture). . . that I was musing through the shelves at the TBC library and pulled down a little volume by Charles (Chuck) R. Swindoll called “Come Before Winter.” It was a devotional and the titles were exceptional. So as I scanned down through there. . . . what do you think I saw. . . yes! There it was. . . “The Ghost of Ephraim.” I promptly turned to the page and read through Swindoll’s devotion and had discovered something. Swindoll’s devotional had been Bro. Ensey’s seed thought. Needless to say, I bought this little volume years ago and it has served it’s purpose very well to me. Some of the chapters:

 

• Hidden Heroes
• The Tailor’s Name Is Change
• Writing With Thorns
• The Fine Art of Blowing It

 

Another devotional that has prompted some good sermon thoughts for me has been a little volume by Rod Parsely. It is entitled “Daily Breakthrough.” Some of the titles:

 

• Sowing in Famine (I developed “Farming In A Famine” from this one.)
• The Devil’s Hit List (I developed “Sifted But Saved” from this one.)
• The Price of Glory
• Raise the Standard

 

Another volume that is not so much a devotional as it is a journal is “The Journals of Jim Elliott.” It has been edited by his widow, Elizabeth Elliott. Since the book is divided up into dates, it is difficult to give the chapter titles. However, this book has multiple pages that are dog-eared and I have written all in the margins, front-cover, and underlined all through the book with exceptional seed thoughts to work on.

 

Another devotional that packs a wallop is J. Sidlow Baxter’s “Awake My Heart.” Some of the chapter titles:

 

• Transfiguration through Prayer
• Servant and Conqueror
• The Fragments
• Caution and Reason
• How Trials Become Triumphs

 

Lastly, I mention two books by John Piper, “The Godward Life, Part 1” and “The Godward Life, Part 2.” These two books are now “Taste and See” which is a compilation and has a few added chapters. Some of the titles are:

 

• God Was Up All Night
• You Shall Take Up Your Tambourines
• The Ripple Effect of the Word
• Talk To Your Tears (Jerry Dean prompted me to this chapter and I developed a message from this one. Bro. Dean did also but his message took a different turn than mine.)
• Take Heed How You Hear

 

Maybe some of these suggestions can provide some inertia to your life. One other thing that I have done in the past is to take a hymnal and read through some of the song titles or to take a song and read through the stanzas. Some very powerful sermon titles are found in those old songs. May your life be overflowing and your messages be marked with weighty words, challenging thoughts, and the anointing of the Spirit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Encouragement = O2 for the Soul

Book Review — Preaching, The Art of Narrative Exposition — Calvin Miller

 

From the previous post, you are probably aware that I am encouraging some summer reading among our church youth group who call themselves “Power Supply.” My son, Justin, has already finished, In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick. It was such a page turner that he could hardly put it down until he had finished it. I am in hopes that a lot of others are reading too!

 

I also am reading some good stuff too. I have recently finished Lance Armstrong’s Private War which traces his 2004 Tour de France victory and it was quite interesting. Some of the book spent time describing his teammates and what they specifically were responsible for when they were riding in the peleton with Lance.

 

The reason that I read about LA was it fit into the category of what I call “mindless” reading. The reason that I read “mindless” books is that they really help me to disconnect with a lot of the day to day pressures that we are faced with. When I say that a book is “mindless,” I do not mean that it does not have value, I mean that it is a book that does not require me to think and weigh out certain issues and nuances that the book may present. I do a whole lot of reading that requires much thought and consideration. These sorts of books are generally those that are ministry related and are pressing for either personal spiritual growth or spiritual growth within the Church.

 

A book that I am currently reading through and marking up with a red pen is entitled Preaching by Calvin Miller. I stumbled across Miller’s writings at Because of the Times ’95 with a book entitled The Table of Inwardness and deals with personal prayer and times alone with God. It is a very good book and I am almost certain that it is still in print.

 

Miller’s work on preaching was inspirational, insightful, and also very challenging. The value of this book is noted in how much writing that I accomplished in the margins and in the front flaps and will certainly end up writing in the back flaps also.

 

The following are some of my own personal thoughts that I wrote while reading this book. I will also give the page numbers that prompted my comments.

 

p. 13 – Passionate and real Biblical preaching will always be driven by a strong and unyielding devotional life. If the prayer life and the private devotional life of the preacher are taken care of then the preaching will take care of itself also. This is why that we need deep wells within our souls. These deep wells are dug out with prayer, fasting, time with the Word, and with soul-satisfying fellowship with other men of God. Nothing can substitute for time alone with God.

 

p. 16 – Preachers who have no God hunger may have some good things to say but they lack the passion and that is essential to create the Kingdom of God and transform the world. There has to be a visceral hunger in the life of the preacher that mere scholarship can never attain to.

 

p. 17 – On “Bible-Lite”, user friendly Christians. Have I lost my salt and has my light gone out? Weak living puts out the taste and the light. Never be afraid to call for commitment. When I am more concerned with “feelings” than with a loving confrontation with truth. . . I need to take down my shingle, back my bags, and go sell shoes.

 

p. 26 – We make a mistake in always trying to come up with some new nifty little thought. Pay attention to the great pursuit of virtue in your life.

 

p. 36 – bosko the Sheep!!!! They are dying for a Word. When my messages are more “story-time” than “transformation” time they fall way short. It doesn’t matter that “stories” may be more interesting this is nothing more than junk food. Give them the meat of the Word because long after you are dead, that Word is going to live on.

 

p. 202 – Every sermon is a trip—a movement from where we are to where we ought to be.

 

There are a lot of very good sections in between p. 36 and 202. Beyond this there is an excellent Bibliography at the end that any diligent student who wants to improve his preaching and the disciplines required to do so can run down. This bibliography by Miller is somewhat annotated and he gives some classic observations about these books.

 

I wish I fell into the category of a great preacher! I wish that I had the brilliance of mind of some preachers that I have met and heard (Treece, Pugh). I wish that I had the power of persuasion of some of the preachers that I have heard in the past (A. Mangun, Kilgore). I certainly wish that I ability to take something obscure in the Word and set it up in such a way that it gripped the very soul (Osborne, Gurley). I wish I had the oratorical ability of some men that I have heard in the past (Fuller). But I certainly feel very inadequate in trying to put the “volume of the Book” into the lives of those who hear me preach.

 

However, that prevailing sense of inadequacy drives me to such an extent that it robs me of sleep, it can even get me up early, it drives me to read about preaching, it creates much conversation with some of my closest friends about preaching, it causes me to listen to preaching, but what it most often does is drive me to the presence of God. I attend that to that presence sometimes with the frustrating question of “what shall I say?” I find myself in that presence wondering how in the world that a man can really speak the Words of God. That is the great challenge of preaching.

 

I hope that I never “learn” how to preach for on the day that I do. . . the presence of God will depart and I will be like Samson and will not even be aware that the presence and the anointing of God have left.

A Summer Reading Challenge for Power Supply

Summer is here! School is out and today actually officially begins summer. However, the hot weather has already arrived and it has been here for a month or so. Now begin those so-called “lazy days of summer.”

One of the big deals when I was growing up was always getting involved in the summer reading program at our local library. I read through the “Black Stallion” series, through the “old” Hardy Boys series (not the Case-files), and I read numerous biographies and sports stories. Reading stretched my mind and allowed me to go to far places with simply the turn of the page. It is sad to see that this generation is becoming so very increasingly separated from books.

Another major event for the summer was going over to my Granny and Papa’s house in Andalusia, Alabama. They lived quite a ways out in the country and without any sort of central cooling or air conditioner. I can remember at night trying to sleep with the windows up and hearing hundreds of bugs making all sorts of strange noises. As the day would cool down, we would slowly drift off into a sleep that would be interrupted the next morning to the sounds of a full country breakfast being engineered in the kitchen. We had hot biscuits, grits and eggs, sausage, and a host of choices of canned fig preserves, blue-berry and black-berry jellies, and apple tarts.

We would work in the garden (which was quite large), feed the chickens, and gather eggs among a host of other things. As the day would wind down, I would always manage to find a book to read at my Granny’s. She had a lot of old textbooks that were always interesting to me (probably because I was not taking the class) and a host of old Reader’s Digests and Grit Papers. I would read through these and then read some of the other books that she had in a small bookcase that sat behind the door.

I can remember one book that I found one summer and subsequently from then on I read it every summer when I came back. It was a fictional book about World War ll and the story the French Resistance who were fighting against Hitler’s armies. Although as the years have passed I have forgotten much of the details of the book, I still remember it as being an exciting book that told the story of a young teenage boy who was carrying messages as a spy for the French Resistance and his near escapes from German patrols that were prowling throughout his hometown.

Summers were never wasted when Mark and I were reading books. Books have really shaped my mind and by opening up thoughts, ideas, and even worlds that would have never been available to me without the printed page.

My point in this blog is primarily aimed at our youth group, Power Supply, here in Dothan. I have listed below a number of very good books and almost every one of them I have personally read or at least read works by the author. I am encouraging you to take a look at this list and then go to the library and read one or maybe even a dozen of these books before school starts back in August. I also am encouraging you to post comments (that the whole world will see) at the end of this post about what you read in one or a dozen of these books. You may not find a title that interests you here but I encourage you to familiarize yourself with some of these authors and read after their works.

In the end, the person who reads the most books, will have a mug shot posted on the Barnabas Blog after we have gone to eat at Larry’s (just kidding, I will leave the choice up to you).

 

• All Creatures Great and Small – James Herriott
• Arrowsmith – Sinclair Lewis
• Bob, Son of Battle – Alfred Ollivant
• Call of the Canyon – Zane Grey
• The Call of the Wild – Jack London
• Christy – Catherine Marshall
• The Citadel – A. J. Cronin
• Comstock Lode – Louis L’Amour
• The Cross and the Switchblade – David Wilkerson
• Endurance – Alfred Lansing
• Every Living Thing – James Herriott
• The Hiding Place – Corrie Ten Boom
• In His Steps – Charles Sheldon
• In the Heart of the Sea – Nathaniel Philbrick
• Into Thin Air – John Krakauer
• Isaac’s Storm – Eric Larsen
• Johnny Tremaine – Esther Forbes
• Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson
• The Last of the Breed – Louis L’Amour
• Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
• Life on the Mississippi – Mark Twain
• Night – Elie Weisel
• Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
• Poems – Robert Frost
• Profiles In Courage – John F. Kennedy
• Red Badge of Courage – Stephen Crane
• Ten Fingers for God – Dorothy Clark Wilson
• The Robe – Lloyd Douglas
• The Shepherd of the Hills – Harold Bell Wright
• Sherlock Holmes Stories – Arthur Conan Doyle
• Silas Marner – George Elliott
• The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
• Summer of the Monkeys – Wilson Rawls
• To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee
• Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
• Up From Slavery – Booker T. Washington
• Where the Red Fern Grows – Wilson Rawls
• White Fang – Jack London
• The Yearling – Marjorie Rawlings

 

Don’t forget that there are hundreds of biographies that you also might find interesting.

Book Review — O Shepherd, Where Art Thou?

Periodically, I pick up books and read them simply for the “agitation” factor that I find in them. You ask, “What is the “agitation” factor?” The agitation factor comes into play when you purchase a book that you know is right, correct, and on the mark but the precepts are going to burn you.

Generally, when you read a book that has a high “agitation” factor in it you have to pick the place you read the book. It is best to read the book either at home when no one is literally home except for you, the reader, or to find some secure place like your study when no one else is in the building. The reason for this is that if they hear you mumbling, angrily shouting, or throwing things then no one is there to witness what might be perceived as borderline insanity.

Calvin Miller has written such a book. I should not have bought it much less read it because I knew that I was not going to agree with it. I could tell that from the dust jacket cover and the reviews. It frankly flies right in the face of all of the church growth books, seminars, gimmicks, and shall I say, propaganda of the church growth movement. But my disagreement with it doesn’t make any difference at all, because Mr. Miller is right! I am not a CEO, I am not an organizer, I am not a church growth expert. . . . I am a pastor who loves God, loves his family, loves the Word, loves to preach the Word, and loves the church that I am honored to serve.

Calvin Miller writes the book in such a manner that he hooks you with his story and then nails you to the wall with his published side notes on the opposing page. He writes a story about Sam, who wants to spend more time on the golf course, the pastor of a church that is just that, a church. He has sick folks in the hospital that he doesn’t want to go see. He has members who cannot get along and need some discipleship and shall we dare say a little discipline. But he also has a friend who is a megachurch pastor and the grass at Biff’s joint is much greener.

Biff is described for us: His entrance both inflated and deflated Sam. There he was: Ralph Lauren slacks, one-hundred-dollar Hush Puppies, a Tommy Bahama shirt, three pounds of mousse on his ruthless hair, and he smelled of Chrome Azarro. No wonder his church was growing. He was a perfect blend of John the Baptist and Versace.

Before some of the quotes, I will add a disclaimer. I did not agree with everything in this little book and I also realize that if a man is the least bit lazy in ministry this book will fit very well. The reason that it will fit well is because Calvin Miller will load your wagon for all sorts of excuses for you to keep doing what you are doing. On the other hand, if you are an ambitious, Katie-bar-the-door-and-jerk-the-stocks-down sort of fellow, this book could very well be exactly what you need. There is a vast difference in building people and in building churches. Build the people and the church will take care of itself. Build a church and the people will stay for a while, but sometime down the line a bigger, better, and sweeter program will leave that “church” an empty shell.

This book is nothing more than a plea for a commitment to the role of pastoral ministry as we come to understand from the Pastoral Epistles.

Here are some quotes:

The world is full of hurt; it needs a pastor.

I just want to encourage you to remember that the world is full of multitudes of dying people who can only be reached one at a time.

I told Calvin Miller he did not know what he was writing about with this quote and then I had to agree with him: Does God intend for every church to get bigger? And is the only way to get bigger to have more members? I always counsel my students to make sure they are making bigger people and not just bigger congregations. There are many pastors serving in areas where the population density is too small and static to support a growing congregation. Are these servants to live under the pall of inferiority just because their churches are not getting bigger? I think not.

I wrote “Ouch!” out in the margin by this quote: Marva Dawn realizes how futile it is to try to trump up a vital self-image by pasting together the best part of those heroes we might wish to worship. It struck me one day in a Christian bookstore that most of the “church growth” books I picked up in that store were not books on vision but on image. They hadn’t been published to help me see the world in a particular way but to help the world see me—were I a megachurch pastor—in a particular way. They were books that enticed the pastor of limited self-image to be like somebody else the world admired. What a cul-de-sac of emotional poverty this is. These books were published to serve the idolatries of megapastor wannabes.

I did agree with Miller here on this one: Robert Schuller was the first pastor I ever heard claim that he had polled his neighborhood to find out what people wanted in a church with the specific intention of giving them just that. But this has become the market-driven ploy of the contemporary beltway church. The church as too infrequently stopped to ask themselves, “Are we called to give them what they want, or is something more involved in the whole idea of ministry?” Would something have been lost if Jeremiah would have determined to give Zedekiah what he wanted in a national prophet? Would God have smiled down on John the Baptist for saying, “I must try to be more of what Herodias would like in a man of God”? When it is all said and done, the reason we should not attempt to give people what they want in a church is that God wants so much more for them than they can imagine wanting for themselves.

There are numerous other quotes that I could bring about but I think that these quotes can give you a pretty good idea about the thesis of this book.

Book Recommendation — Nobody’s Perfect . . . Dean Shriver

I have just finished reading an excellent book for those who are involved in ministry. Whether it is a pulpit ministry, youth ministry, Sunday School, or anything that falls in between, this book is a very helpful book. Another useful thing about this book is that it is a 2 1/2 to 3 hour book that will not hang you up for days.

Dean Shriver has written Nobody’s Perfect But You Have to Be. The subtitle is “The Power of Personal Integrity in Effective Preaching.” It packs a punch and forces anyone who is in public ministry to really take a look at their personal life.

This excerpt in the introduction is the reason that I purchased this book:

The worship service was about to begin when I saw her. I greeted her with curiosity. I knew that she was a fully committed member of a sister church in our area. During our brief exchange, she quietly said, “I simply cannot listen to that man preach.” That man was her pastor of almost two years. Why, on that morning, did she refuse to hear her own pastor preach? Was he a heretical teacher? Did he deny the truth of God’s Word? Did he habitually twist Scripture to suit his own desires? No, on that Sunday the woman I greeted refused to hear her pastor because of his actions, not his words. It had happened at a recent board meeting. In the midst of debating an issue the younger pastor exploded in anger, slandered the woman’s husband (a well-respected elder thirty years his senior), and even threatened to excommunicate him from the church. In the days that followed, the pastor continued to malign her husband behind his back. Now, at least in this woman’s eyes, the young minister’s credibility as a preacher was destroyed. On that Sunday morning, it wasn’t that she could not hear him–she would not. (From the Introduction)

This story set the hook and it really caused me to take inventory of some of the things in my own personal life. The chapters on Humility, Contentment, and Practicing Spiritual Disciplines are some of the high points.