Church and Ministry

The following is part one of a transcribed speech Dr. Davey delivered at the annual Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools (TRACS) Conference in November of 2009. It will appear at SI in three parts.

First, let me congratulate TRACS for 30 years of faithful service to Christ. Thank you for investing in higher educational institutions.

Dr. Beck has been a special encouragement to me in the process, along with all of us at Shepherds as we’ve pursued, and now achieved, full accreditation. We’re glad to be a part of the TRACS Family. When Dr. Beck, on behalf of TRACS, asked me to speak he suggested I address the subject of the relationship between the church and the educational institution.

More specifically, is the relationship between churches and schools a complement and a blessing to one another, or is it a relationship of conflict and struggle? And if so, what does it take to move from a relationship that competes, to a relationship that completes one another?

I want to structure my comments today around three key words that come to mind when I think of potential relationships between schools and churches—relationship that must be marked by the integrity of Christ’s gospel and the sweetness of genuine fellowship.

Reprinted with permission from the Baptist Bulletin, July-August 2009. Read Part 1.

Theological questions—and answers

In preparing for this article, I got my hands on as much multisite literature as I could find. Friends loaned me books—including two multisite church manuals. I Googled…and Googled…and Googled some more! I informally discussed multisite churches with a couple of multisite pastors. Through my reading and research and interviews, my initial concerns with the multisite expansion model remained unresolved. Questions went unanswered. And answers often came attached with, “Well, God is blessing this thing. Our church is growing.” While one cannot argue with God’s apparent blessing, Christians—and especially church leaders—must be certain their philosophy of local church structure squares with Scripture. Before we talk about the multiple sites or campuses, we must understand what the Bible teaches about the church.

Reprinted with permission from the Baptist Bulletin, July-August 2009.

As my family and I took our seats following the final congregational song, a large screen descended from above the pulpit. Within seconds, a pastor appeared on the screen and asked us—and the 1,200 other worshipers—to open our Bibles to Ephesians 4. He would be preaching a sermon titled, “Imitating God in Our Relationships with One Another.”

Knowing that the thriving midwestern church had embraced a multisite church structure, my wife and I had informed our children that they would not hear live preaching that Lord’s Day morning, but their response to a preacher on a screen surprised me. At first I attributed their dismay to the fact that we are from a small church in an even smaller community. But as I dug deeper into their dismay, I discovered that their problem wasn’t with the size of the church or even the use of video technology; their dismay stemmed from the fact that the announcements, prayers, Scripture reading, and congregational singing were live events, while the preaching was not. It seemed the church had unwittingly prescribed a greater importance to the parts of the service that were live. In my children’s young and impressionable minds, the preaching was of lesser value because it wasn’t an incarnational, in-the-flesh, event.

That Sunday morning in 2008 is my only firsthand experience with the multisite church movement, but because I love the church and am enamored with it, I had begun thinking through the theological implications of the multisite structure long before attending my first multisite church service. The purpose of this article is neither to defend nor attack the multisite church structure, but to ask some questions and offer some explanations regarding the important theological and ecclesiastical implications of the multisite church structure. Perhaps what is written here will stimulate some thoughtful discussion among the pastors and laypeople of our association.

What Is a Pastor’s Wife Supposed to Do?

Shepherding the flock of God can prove one of the most exciting, enriching, and satisfying duties a man can undertake on this side of heaven. Yet shepherding the flock of God is not a particularly safe enterprise. It is a life-work that exposes the man of God to a multiplicity of trials, deep disappointments, searing heartaches, and haunting questions from within and without.

The pastor serves God’s people as leader, preacher, teacher, counselor, overseer and chief intercessor. He must perform spiritual surgery and apply healing balm to the souls of his people on a daily basis. And in all of this, the undershepherd bears the unrelenting burden of his accountability to the Lord of the universe for the spiritual watchcare of a flock for whom the Good Shepherd laid down His own life.

Brothers, we are not sufficient for these things, and we know it. A proud pastor is an oxymoron—or a moronic ox, if you will. None of us is either worthy or capable of such an undertaking. But God is rich in mercy. Jesus has sent the Comforter to aid us in our frailty—to counsel, encourage, strengthen and help us in the great cause to which we have been called. And for most pastors, God also graciously provides a human helper—a woman—to walk at her husband’s side as his covenant helper in this grand mission to exercise stewardship of God’s flock.

The pastor’s wife is certainly a rare species with a very peculiar calling. She is one flesh with the pastor. And if he is worthy of the title, this means she is one flesh with a difficult man. If she is worthy of her calling, it also means she has laid down the “normal life” on the altar and slit its throat in sacrifice to God.

Originallly appeared at Whirled Views, June 2009. Read Part 1.

Originallly appeared at Whirled Views, June 2009

In the last week I’ve spent time talking with three pastors who are about ready to throw in the proverbial towel. Each case is different and no two pastors, churches, boards or any other “part” of church leadership is exactly the same, but what is common among them is a sense of deep despair. Sadly, in the last week I’ve also heard of two colleagues in the ministry who ended their ministry with a catastrophic failure—one of them a rising evangelical leader who admitted to an affair. Not in every case, but in some cases, I’ve noticed a correlation to the thought processes between those who burnout in ministry and those who “flame out” due to sin. But whether you burnout, flame out, drop out or rust out—out is still out.

I am now two years beyond my own decision to step away from the senior pastorate, so I hope I can be a bit more objective about a topic like this than I might have been twenty-four short months ago. As for my own situation, I had my own reasons for changing the nature of my ministry and I am not looking back. For the cynical or others, nothing I write in this article should be construed as anything more or less than what it is—an opinion piece from someone who has sat on both sides of the pulpit for the last twenty-five years of ministry and who is still engaged in pastoral ministry—just from a different perspective in recent months.

I don’t pretend to write for every pastor out there, but I spend a lot of time with pastors and former pastors. There are some trends that are impacting pastoral leadership at this time that I think impact churches and their leaders. There are some frailties and vulnerabilities that any man called to be a pastor is naturally going to carry into his responsibilities. Add to that the spiritual warfare that is incumbent upon being a spiritual shepherd (or undershepherd). It is with these realities in mind that I offer some things that I’m guessing your pastor wishes you knew about him.

Reprinted with permission from Dan Miller’s book Spiritual Reflections. The text appears here verbatim.

A Memoir by Pastor Joel Tetreau

New Relationships—The Growing Stage (2005-Present)

Numerical growth has been a blessing. On a few Sundays we’ve been close to 250. For the future we have just recently purchased a 1.5-acre lot to the east of us. That gives us a total of four acres we can develop. We are looking and praying about the future.

Read Part 1.

A Memoir by Pastor Joel Tetreau

Note: Several months ago (Sunday, February 8, 2009), the congregation at Southeast Valley Baptist Church (SVBC) here in Gilbert, Arizon, surprised Toni and me for ten years of pastoral ministry.