The Minister’s True Life and Walk

We ask the question, “which came first: the chicken or the egg?” The question implies a puzzle to be solved as one is led to think how one cannot exist without the other. The truth is there is no puzzle. Since there was a beginning to everything, so the chicken must have come before the egg in the miracle of creation. The same kind of question can easily be asked of the minister, “Which comes first, the call or the training?” The answer, on the other hand, is less positive than our chicken--here the answer is “neither”.

Is it possible to begin the ministry without a call? Is it possible to begin the ministry without training? Both are possibilities. For years seminaries have graduated students well trained for the ministry but they lack the call and discover they have interests elsewhere. Men and women have with good intention spend time and money earning ministerial degrees with little or no interest for spiritual development and are searching out ways to increase their earning power or to gain skills that will catapult them high into the marketplace by virtue of the degree. Instead they become marketplace executives who can speak or read dead languages and have Bible knowledge.

There are also many ministers who have a call yet lack the training. In the late 1940’s a man felt a call from the Lord to enter the ministry so he walked out of the college he was attending (he was studying psychology), picked up a Bible and began to preach. In the early 1990’s he was still preaching and was called back to minister in a church where he had pastured almost 40 years previously. For him nothing changed—literally—not even time. He spoke with authority but had no understanding of how to properly handle biblical texts, biblical languages, nor did he ever have organizational and administrative skills to effectively minister in the local church in present time. Everything was to be done as it had been 40 years ago when he was pastor. What is missing?

I had the wonderful opportunity to go to Kenya, Africa to speak at a Pastor’s Conference and at the end of every session I took time to answer questions from the attending pastors. On the second day one pastor stood and asked, “what are we supposed to do if a man who is a total stranger to us comes and teaches doctrine we have never heard before and train us to be pastors when we do not know if he is saved or not?” I had been properly introduced by name, a little professional background and where I was from, but the man got the point. He was not concerned about call or training—he wanted to hear a testimony—asking in effect, “Are you saved?” His concern should be our own for every minister. Are you saved?

Why is it so important that a minister be truly saved? If a man is going to stand as God’s representative, speaking His word and touching people on God’s behalf, that man had better be saved. By saved I mean from his sin through the finished work of Christ Jesus, not just saved from hell. If a man is saved from sin, he has died and his life is hidden with Christ in God (Col. 3). He has, in effect, taken God’s name on himself--and the first commandment certainly warns that one is NOT to take the LORD’s name in vain! To be anything other than saved is to be doomed and misrepresent God. As a truly saved man, the minister must be a new creation in Christ Jesus.

Another reason the minister must be truly saved is that his ministry is God-centered, not self-centered. He must be filled with the Holy Spirit and must function in His power to His end to the praise of His glory. The saved man must act like God. God reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:18). We love God because He first loved us; therefore, we must love one another (1 John 4:7-8). Another way to word this is to love God with all heart, mind and soul and love neighbor (Luke 10:27).

"We are well supplied in the world with excellent scholars who are without that qualification. They are doing useful work in detail, in Biblical philology, in exegesis, in Biblical theology, and in other branches of study. But they are not accomplishing the great task, they are not assimilating modern thought to Christianity, because they are without that experience of God's power in the soul which is of the essence of Christianity. They have only one side for the comparison. Modern thought they know, but Christianity is really foreign to them. It is just that great inward experience which it is the function of the true Christian scholar to bring into some sort of connection with the thought of the world." J. Gresham Machen, "Christianity and Culture."

“We shall, indeed, be but poor witnesses of Christ if we can tell only what Christ has done for the world or for the Church and cannot tell what He has done personally for us. But we shall also be poor witnesses if we recount only the experiences of our own lives.” J. Gresham Machen, “The Importance of Christian Scholarship.”