On Ministry
January 29th, 2008
(Posted by Nathan Busenitz)
While looking through some old files on my computer, I found a list of quotes that I compiled a couple years ago pertaining to ministry. I am reproducing several of those quotes here, in the hope that they will be as encouraging to you as they were to me.
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John Chrysostom (to his congregation): To me it is nothing when I am applauded and well spoken of. There is only one thing I ask of you — to prove your approval of me through your works. That is how you can speak well of me, and that is what is going to do you good. This, to me, is the greatest honor. I prefer it to a material crown. I do not desire applause and being well spoken of. I have one request to make — for you to listen to me in quiet attentiveness and to put my advice into practice. This is not a theater. You don’t sit here in order to admire actors and to applaud them. This is a place where you must learn the things of God.
Matthew Henry: Those who teach by their doctrine must teach by their life, or else they pull down with one hand what they build up with the other.
A.W. Tozer: I do not preach any new truth. I do not have any new doctrine. . . . We must have a revival that will mean purity of heart as a normal standard for everybody. We must be clean people, and not only clean outside.
John Owen: A minister may fill his pews, his communion roll, the mouths of the public, but what that minister is on his knees in secret before God Almighty, that he is and no more.
John Wesley: Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin, and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen; such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven on earth.
Arthur W. Pink: From every pulpit in the land it needs to be thundered forth that God still lives, that God still observes, . . . [and] still reigns. Faith is now in the crucible, it is being tested by fire, and there is no fixed . . . resting place for the heart and mind but in the Throne of God. What is needed now, as never before, is a full, positive, constructive setting forth of the Godhood of God.
Robert Murray M’Cheyne: Remember you are God’s sword — His instrument — I trust a chosen vessel unto Him to bear His name. In great measure, according to the purity and perfections of the instrument will be the success. It is not great talents God blesses so much as great likeness to Jesus. A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God.
Encouraging and convicting words.
Great quotes… I like John Wesley’s! However, I say, give God just one preacher and the gates of hell will be shook just the same!
Excellent and right on time!
Thank you!!!
Good stuff.
Nathan,
These are the responses that I recieved as I shared this with my friends.
Sometimes we don’t know the lives we are touching when we do the good work of Christ.
Thanks Nathan.
Title of Post: “On Ministry”
Since I believe that there is significance and meaning to the doctrine of “The priesthood of all believers”, then I believe all these quotes have applicability to all, albeit more so to those in professional ministry.
Thanks for posting!
thanks for the post, great quotes!
Thank you for these quotes. May others in future generations be so encouraged by our words today.
Please pray for the Emaus Mennonite Church in Whitewater Kansas. The whole church (building) burnt to the ground yesterday morning. I believe that church has been at that spot for 135 years and the building since the 1920’s.
These men were men filled and empowered by the Holy Spirit. I am sure when they spoke people in the pews did not yawn or fall asleep. They had some emotion and passion and a spiritual fervor that can only be produced by letting every part of your being be invaded by the Holy Spirit. The power was not in their perfect and profound articulation of the truth, it was not because they were counting on the historical and grammatical and expository method of preaching to penetrated and grab and invade the hearts, minds and spirits of their listeners. You know, we love these men, we quote;but the truth is, that if we were to sit at there feet, we may think them, too emotional, to passionate, not quite balanced, and maybe a little off on their theology, we would pick them apart simply because of their passion and genuine emotional response to their own preaching. Why? Because these men had been with Him and he had invaded their personalies and He had empowered them to speak His words.
How can a man stand and preach the Word of God and not be pierced in his own soul. These men were broken and pierced in their own souls and that is why today, we read them and sense something special, they were humbled and broken men, that is why they are special, and rare. People want that today, men who cry, and implore and share from their souls what the Lord has done for them. The deep things of God, taught and shared by a man who has deeply drunk and let the Lord saturate his entire being will captivate and draw people to the the Lord. It is rare these days to hear a man speak like these, but I have heard some, and I think, that man is speaking from God, he is convicted and touched and humbled by his own preaching, he knows he is being empowered and endowed by something outside himself, he is not leaning on his careful study the week before and his outline. Just some thoughts. Oh, for more men like these to just let Christ take all their knowledge and study and set it aflame with passion and humility.
Which is it that makes God’s word more effective: a thundrous delivery, or a quite exposition? Or is God’s word effective on it’s own, simply and clearly delivered, as the Holy Spirit carries it deep into the heart of it’s (the Holy Spirit’s) target?
What role does passion play in any of this? Is passion actually needed to make God’s word more attractive and/or effective?
Be wary of worshiping men and their delivery rather than focusing on what all are called to do - to share the word of God with all people.
To me Wesley, Whitfield, Tozer, and more recently MacArthur, Piper and others are passionate preachers. I don’t worship men. I am not saying passion makes preaching more attractive. Jesus Christ is the attraction, and men who have drunk deep of him in study and prayer, how can they be anything but passionate about the lovely, beautiful, awesome, great, wonderful, powerful person of the Lord Jesus. Every Pastor has his own unique style, but even the quiet, less animated ones need to have their carefully crafted expository notes and outlines and historical and grammatical facts come alive and dispensed by the power of the Holy Spirit, you just can’t rely on your careful study. My pastor is loud and thundrous and animated and sometimes emotional, he is pierced and feels the weight of what he is preaching, on the other hand, my associate pastor is more reserved in his delivery and mannerisms and is never emotionally attatched to his sermons, he is attached to sticking to the outline and not deviating or going down rabbit trails, that is his style. And, on the subject of worshipping men, this topic was on quotes by “great saints.” Didn’t people faint and fall over at the preaching of Edwards although he did not thunder, that was a man whom the Lord took his words and set them aflame and pierced the hearts of the hearers. God has to use the quite and the thunderous, he has to anoint them both,if you will. Again, the broken servant is the one whom the Lord uses, he can have all the training and knowledge in the world, that does not make him an affective preacher. My husband Alan and I are writing this, and he reminds me that Whitfield was greatly passionate and animated, a man trained in the dramatic arts, yet he was disconnected from his hearers and lacked any continues discipleship training. Some of these great saints openly weeped over their congregations, they were moved and touched. And if memory serves me right, Jesus became passionate at times too in his sermons. What about Spurgeon a cigar smoking man who was brilliant in delivering a kind of holy sarcasm, not restricted to academic facts. Moody was passionate. John Piper is a very passionate preacher. Read those quotes again above, and the quotes of others, I think you will find men and women that you want to know, you want what they have or had, and what is that, perfect theology, careful outlines, historical accuracy, perfect expositions,(all of those things needed)no they had let the Lord fill them and baptise all those things in their own lives and change them, and transform them and break them until they were reduced to their utter reliance on Him. I am still not ashamed to want to see more fiery, passionate preaching in this generation. Not sure, but I don’t think a seminary degree alone is going to shake the gates of hell…
I should have just responded to Richard with this quote:
Today’s Expositor’s Quote is another from John Piper:
Pray that the Lord would make you real. Pray that you would really feel the way one ought to feel about hell, and about heaven and about death and sin and forgiveness and resurrection and eternal life. This is THE GREAT battle: do we really feel and think in accord with the measure of the reality that we are speaking of. It will be very hard not to express authentic emotion if we HAVE authentic emotion. Fight the battle mainly at this point. Lord, sober me. Lord, delight me. Lord, satisfy me. Lord, frighten me. Lord, break me. Lord, make me tender. Lord, give me passion for the perishing. Lord, fill me with exultation over your gospel. This is THE battle. And it has more to do with real tone and gesture and posture than anything else.
John Piper, “Random Thoughts on Posture, Gesture, Action and Tone,” unpublished class handout, 3/21/99.
[Is God making you real? Are you exulting over these truths, and crying over the lost and self-deceived? Or are you going through the motions, imitating the tone and gestures and posture of conviction but preaching from an unmoved heart? Lord! Make us real! — Coty]
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