Church & Ministry

While calendar dates have nothing magical about them, they do serve as convenient points for pausing and remembering. For me, the past twelve months have either brought or reinforced a number of discoveries. In no particular order, here are a few of them.

1. The sufficiency of God’s grace.

Though it is certainly not a new discovery, I have found renewed joy and gratitude in the sufficiency of the grace of God. When I began my ministry years ago, I had two very real impressions. The first was that I was completely unworthy to be called a child of God, let alone to be granted the privilege of ministering the Scriptures. The second was that my gifts, skills, and preparation were entirely inadequate to the task. These two impressions have grown stronger with every year of ministry. They are now more clear and gripping than ever.

This year I was given the opportunity to observe the results of some of my earliest ministry. Those years had been a profoundly discouraging time when I believed that I was accomplishing little of lasting value. In a real sense I was right: many of the things upon which I deliberately concentrated came to very little. Nevertheless, this year I saw convincing evidence that God was indeed at work during that time. Lives were touched and people were changed, not because I was particularly competent or effective, but because God was gracious.

So one of my New Year’s resolutions is, “Yea, I judge not mine own self.” It is not up to me to say whether my ministry has been a success or a failure. To the degree that I am convinced that it is either, I am probably wrong. At the end of the day, success is not at all about what I accomplish (which may well be the wrong thing), but about what God accomplishes. And God is perfectly capable of working around and through my weaknesses, failures, and discouraging moments. His grace is sufficient.

Reprinted with permission from As I See It, which is available free by writing to the editor at dkutilek@juno.com

Some weeks back, on a preachers’ discussion site, I shared an extended quotation from the great Greek scholar A. T. Robertson (1863-1934) on the extreme importance, even necessity, for Bible preachers to study and learn the Greek language, for the sake of their ministry. In part, that quote said—

The physician has to study chemistry and physiology. Other men may or may not. The lawyer has to study his Blackstone. The preacher has to know his Bible or the people suffer the consequences of his ignorance, as in the case of the physician or the lawyer. The extreme in each instance is the quack who plays on the ignorance and prejudice of the public.

It is true that the minister can learn a deal about his Bible from the English versions, many of which are most excellent. There is no excuse for any one to be ignorant of his English Bible, which has laid the foundation of our modern civilization. But the preacher lays claim to a superior knowledge of the New Testament. He undertakes to expound the message of the gospel to people who have access to the English translations, and many of these are his equal in general culture and mental ability. If he is to maintain the interest of such hearers, he must give them what they do not easily get by their own reading. It is not too much to say that, however loyal laymen are to the pulpit, they yet consider it a piece of presumption for the preacher to take up the time of the audience with ill-digested thoughts. The beaten oil is none too good for any audience.

Now the preacher can never get away from the fact that the New Testament was written in the Greek language of the first century A.D. The only way for him to become an expert in this literature of which he is an exponent by profession is to know it in the original. The difficulty of the problem is not to be considered. One will not tolerate such an excuse in a lawyer or in a physician. The only alternative is to take what other scholars say without the power of forming an individual judgment. Some lawyers and physicians have to do this, but they are not the men that one wishes in a crisis.

The preacher lets himself off too easily and asserts that he is too busy to learn his Greek Testament. In a word, he is too busy about other things to do the main thing, to learn his message and to tell it. Fairbairn says: ‘No man can be a theologian who is not a philologian. He who is no grammarian is no divine.’ Melancthon held that grammar was the true theology, and Mathias Pasor argued that grammar was the key to all the sciences. Carlyle, when asked what he thought about the neglect of Hebrew and Greek by ministers, blurted out: ‘What!? Your priests not know their sacred books!?’

(These words are taken from Robertson’s superb little book, The Minister and His Greek New Testament, pp. 80-83; I quoted them at greater length in AISI 2:11).

One Friday night in November found me and my family (along with several dozen other folks) sitting in Miss Kay’s proper parlor singing at the top of our lungs.

We almost missed it. Like the classic “big picture” person that I am, I had mixed up my dates, double-booked house guests, and created the very distinct possibility that we would be absent from a mainstay of the church’s yearly calendar. File this one under “How Not to Be a Good Pastor’s Wife.”

Fortunately we didn’t miss it. A little rearranging and a couple blushing conversations later, we ended up at Miss Kay’s front door promptly at 7:00. (Okay, not promptly… but we did get there.) The evening began like any other social gathering—food and small talk—but then about forty minutes in, something happened. A whisper spread through the house and with the enthusiasm of children, this eclectic group aged 17 months to 77 years assembled themselves in the front parlor (yes, I do mean parlor). Out came the guitars; next a mandolin; and before you knew it, someone was seated at the piano, running gospel scales up and down.

Then it began.