Category: Pastoral

Temple Cleansing and Leadership Failure

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn Leadership, PastoralLeave a comment

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In Mathew 21, Jesus enters Jerusalem, sees the temple is being defiled by money changers, animal salesmen and their customers, and He drives them out. He cleanses the temple. While He explicitly confronted these three groups, He is also confronting a fourth group – The religious leaders in Jerusalem.

The Leaders Failure

You see, the money changers and animal salesmen were only in the temple because the leaders allowed it. So through His actions, Jesus is both revealing and confronting the leaders failure to lead the people properly.

Instead of shepherding the Israelites, they let them do whatever they desire. Instead of leading them to honor and glorify God, they allowed them to dishonor Him and seek their own glory.

What Does This Have To Do With Us?

While their actions are negative, they reveal to us what godly leaders should do, and that is lead those in their care to honor and glorify God.

This goes for any form of leadership. From Pastors, to Husbands and Fathers, to Mothers, we are all to lead those under our care.

PASTORS

It’s the Pastors responsibility to lead His people to honor God, just as it is the husbands responsibility to lead their wives to do the same.

HUSBANDS

As husbands, we have been given this role by God. We are to wash and sanctify our wives, so that they honor and glorify God. This involves ministering to them in times of need. As well as encouraging and counsel them from God’s Word. If you don’t know God’s Word well enough to accomplish your God given task, then you better get started learning it.

PARENTS

Parents, just like Pastors and Husbands are to do the same. They are to lead their kids to honor and glorify God.

Challenge

So through the negative example of the Jerusalem leaders, we learn how we are to function as leaders. May we take our role seriously and do what God calls us to do. May we lead those whom God has placed under our care to honor and glorify Him.

Questions for Reflection

  1. Godly leaders are supposed to lead their church, family, and children to honor, glorify, and obey God. How can each group practically do that?
  2. How are you doing at leading the flock God has put you over?

Resources

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On Pastoral Ministry

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn Books, Pastoral, QuotesLeave a comment

Pursue the pastoral metaphor a little further: Israel’s sheep were reared, fed, tended, retrieved, healed and restored – for sacrifice on the altar of God. This end of all pastoral work must never be forgotten – that its ultimate aim is to lead God’s people to offer themselves up to Him in total devotion of worship and service.

Many who are called pastors, having lost the end in view, or never having seen it, become pedlars of various sorts of wares, gulling the people and leading them into their own power. And when they fail to gather a clientele for their own brand of merchandise they uptail and away, for they are not really interested in the flock of God; they were using them only as a means of their own aggrandisement, to boost their ego and indulge their desire for power…

Whereas the Good Shepherd careth for the sheep – even unto death; and, therefore, seeks so to care for them that He may at last present them without blemish unto God.

Questions for Reflection

  1. How should a pastor care for his flock?

Resources

William Still, The Work of the Pastor, 17-18.

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On Sermon Application

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn Pastoral, Preaching, QuotesLeave a comment

“Without the ‘so what?’ we preach to a ‘who cares?’ No passage relates neutral commentary on our fallenness. No text communicates facts for information alone. The Bible itself tells us that its message is intended to instruct, reprove, and correct.”

Questions for Reflection

  1. Preachers, how do you include application in your sermon?
  2. Congregants, how do you prefer application to be delivered? In one chunk at the end, after each section’s main point, or mixed in with the explanation?

Resources

Brian Chapell, Christ-Centered Preaching, 52-53.

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What the Statistics Reveal About Evangelicals

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn Pastoral10 Comments

White Church

I recently read a Pew Research study reporting on the beliefs and practices of the religious. The results were shocking.

Pew Research Study

Narrowing the results to Evangelical Christians – Not liberals or Catholics or anyone else. Here is what they report:

  • 90% of Evangelicals say they believe God exists.
  • 79% of Evangelicals say religion in one’s life is very important.
  • 78% of Evangelicals say they pray daily.
  • 58% of Evangelicals say they attend services once a week.
  • But only 36% of Evangelicals believe their religion is the one true faith leading to eternal life.

What Does This Mean?

It means we believe there is a God. We believe religion, prayer, and church matters, but we don’t know why Jesus matters. That’s a problem! If we don’t know why Jesus matters, we don’t really have True Faith. We aren’t really Christians.

What Does Salvation Require?

Salvation requires we recognize Jesus as the only Savior. Faith defined as complete trust and confidence in Jesus as our Savior based on certain fundamental truths found in God’s Word, means we can’t believe there are other ways to God. We either have complete confidence and trust Jesus is the Savior of the world, or we don’t. We can’t have it both ways.

Questions for Reflection

  1. Do you believe there are multiple ways to God?
  2. Do you believe Jesus is the only Savior of the world?

Resources

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Post adapted from my sermon What is True Faith?

Pew Research Study

On Church Discipline

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn Church Life, Leadership, Pastoral, Practical, QuotesLeave a comment

Discipline is not the “final straw” where judgment is pronounced.

Biblical church discipline is a culture of accountability, growth, forgiveness, and grace that should permeate our churches.

Each member of the church has a responsibility to help others as they struggle with sin – not through judgment and criticism, but rather with gentleness and an eye toward restoration, knowing that he too is subject to temptation (Gal. 6:1).

Matthew 18 does not describe some kind of alternative to litigation; it is a primer on how we lovingly engage one another, patiently exhausting lesser steps (for example, going in person) before moving to greater ones (for example, taking it to the church).

Questions for Reflection

  1. How do you think of Church Discipline? Does it have a negative connotation to you?
  2. Do you have a culture of accountability, growth, forgiveness, and grace in your church?

Resources

Table Talk Magazine, August 2013, pg 25.

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A Prayer for Boldness

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn Pastoral3 Comments

The Prayer

After Peter and John were picked up, examined, and threatened by the authorities for preaching and healing in Jesus’ name, they gathered with their friends to report what happened. Not only did they relay the events, but they also prayed together.

Their Prayer

When they were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said to them. And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said,

“Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit,

“‘Why did the Gentiles rage,
and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers were gathered together,
against the Lord and against his Anointed’—

for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”

And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness. (Acts 4:23-31, ESV)

Boldness

Their prayer is astounding. It is unlike most prayers heard in the American church. It is deeply theological, and it is asking for something most churches aren’t – boldness.

Boldness is a term lost in today’s church. Social and political pressures, along with the radical secularization our country is undergoing, weighs heavily on today’s church. Instead of pushing back, the church is caving under the pressure. The gospel is changed to accommodate current thought when it should be the other way around.

Increasingly, the boldness to stand on biblical principles is fading in the church.

Instead of taking a stand, we are attempting to do what can’t be done – accommodate to the culture.

Accommodating to society and remaining faithful to the gospel is impossible.

The early church knew accommodation wasn’t possible. As well as they knew opposition was inevitable. It was apart of God’s plan. Rather than avoid it by catering to the rulers and elites, they asked the Lord to strengthen them to be bold witnesses. May that be our prayer today.

Questions for Reflection

  1. Do you pray for boldness?
  2. Are you catering to societal pressures or are you standing strong?

Resource

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