Wrong Reasons for Seeking Pastoral Office, Part 2

0:01 The following lecture is part of the pastoral theology course given at the Trinity Ministerial Academy in Montville, New Jersey.

Unmet Psychological Need for Personal Identity

0:10 Well, brethren, we pick up precisely where we left off in the previous hour as we continue to deal with what we are calling false reasons for men aspiring to or assuming themselves called to the pastoral office. And we now take up the fifth, and for want of better terminology, and I stand to be helped or corrected when we come to our discussion time, if you can help me with the language of any of these things, I'm calling it an unmet psychological need for personal identity. An unmet psychological need for personal identity.

0:57 Now, ultimately, the reason why a kid becomes a bully is because he's a sinner. But sin...

1:05 Sin may cut a channel through the psyche of a kid who really is very insecure about who he is. But he's got an unusually big body, and unusually strong arms, and quick fists. And he finds that by becoming the bully, he gets an identity.

1:26 And his being a bully is not so much a calculated expression of his depravity as it is an accidental expression of that depravity, as it is an attempt to cut that channel through that insecure psyche. Same reason some people become oddballs, and they dress in a funky way. It's that they're really not sure of their identity. This is why kids in that period, when they don't know who they are, you know, I've got a face full of zits, I'm not in diapers anymore, but I'm not a full-grown adult.

2:01 My parents, when I want to be treated like a kid and protected, turn me loose. And when I want to be turned loose, they treat me like a baby. And they're going through all the trauma of coming out of the cocoon of infancy into adulthood, and they don't know who and what they are. They've got a face full of zits, and all kinds of insecurities.

2:20 So sometimes it helps their psyche if they can identify and get lost in a peer identity element. And so, bizarre haircuts, or baggy sweaters that come down to the ankles, or the in thing. So they find...

2:38 They find their identity. All right, so you know what I'm talking about. They have yet to come to grips with the fact that their true identity is found in the biblical doctrine of man in the image of God. Even though the image has been defaced and horribly marred by sin and only partially restored in grace.

3:00 That is their true identity. Now, a Christian man who has not come to grips with what he is as a son of God, as one in whom there is restored, image-bearing reality in Jesus Christ, is a man who may be a candidate for a mistaken notion about a call to the ministry. For one reason or another, they feel their own personal identity could be discovered if they could have a position and office which would secure for them both acceptance and recognition, not based upon what they are as new men in Christ, but the position and influence they hold as ministers. And to them, the pastoral office becomes, as it were, the pool of resolving this matter of identity. Now, I'm not saying that they think it through that way. But I'm saying that's what reality is.

4:13 Unmet psychological need for personal identity, and they seek in the ministry a resolution of that unmet psychological need. Or it may be that it focuses more not so much upon the office and the name and the title and the recognition, but the fact that they would have a forum in which to speak for, to speak forth their own views and therefore find identity in being known as one who knows something or can help others to know something that otherwise they would not know. And then it's not so much the ministry as such, but it's the opportunity of influencing the thinking of others. And this can find all kinds of various expressions. Well, I say to this that the pastorate is no place in which to seek what can only be found in coming to grips with some great fundamental issues bound up in the biblical doctrine of man and salvation. I put it in the early hours of the morning as I prepared the latter part of these materials was this way.

The Answer to Identity is Anthropology and Soteriology

5:39 The answer to unmet psychological need for personal identity is not to be found in ecclesiology, but in anthropology and soteriology. The answer to an unmet psychological need for personal identity is not to be found in ecclesiology, but in anthropology and soteriology. And I stated it that way so that you men would be reminded afresh of how eminently practical and pastoral every discipline in the corpus of systematic theology really is. You will find yourself again and again reaching back into the things you've been taught in your doctrine of anthropology in some of the most delicate pastoral situations. And likewise, with reference to the doctrine of God's salvation in Christ, a person who is struggling with unmet need for personal identity needs to come to grips with some of the things we heard even in the previous hour. God set his love upon me in eternity.

6:59 In time he sent his Son to die for me. And in due course in my own life history he effectually, powerfully, irresistibly called me into union with his Son. He's given me a standing in the court of heaven. As glorious as the standing of the Apostle Paul, even greater, as glorious and perfect as the standing of his own Son.

7:26 Nothing less is what I am as a justified sinner. That's why I love to go to Jordan periodically and hear the Lord say of his Son, This is my Son, my Beloved, in whom I am well pleased. And I say, Lord, if I'm in him, that's what you say of me. Well pleased for Jesus Christ.

7:47 For Jesus Christ's sake. Well, when a man begins to feed his soul upon those realities, that he has the same gift of the Spirit that Paul and Peter and Knox and Luther had, that he has the same identity as a new creation in Christ, how can he feed upon that and be crippled psychologically? There is tremendous, tremendous psychological liberation in coming to grips with Biblical anthropology and soteriology and we may have to deal with people whose aspirations to the ministry at the end of the day must really be resolved into this category, unmet psychological need for personal identity. And one of the clues you'll often have is that such a person who doesn't know who he is is usually very awkward around his fellow creatures. He doesn't know how to relate to them. And few things are more pathetic to me, and I mean pathetic in the right sense. They draw forth pathos, not disgust, but pathos, than to sit and talk with a man who obviously would be a total misfit in the ministry because he's all tied up with these unmet psychological needs and yet he's convinced he ought to go into the ministry when all he will do, unless God liberates him,

9:12 is draw forth the pity of people, not their confidence, their proper admiration. And an ability to lead. All right, then we come to what is our sixth false reason for aspiring to or assuming a call to the pastoral office. And this is very straightforward.

Inaccurate View of Biblical Qualifications for Pastoral Office

9:38 An inaccurate and inadequate view, an inaccurate and inadequate view of the breadth of the biblical qualifications for the pastoral office. An inaccurate and inadequate view of the breadth of the biblical qualifications for the pastoral office. I need not tell you men, perhaps you've had this done to you, that the scenario in many, many churches is if the new convert happens to be a young man with some measure of an extrovert temperament and in his new foundness, his new found love for Christ, he has a zeal to witness, study the Bible, help others, then immediately it is assumed that God's hand must be on this man for the ministry because no ordinary Christian young man loves the Lord, loves his word, and loves souls like this man does. When in reality, what they're viewing is probably the only young man among all the professing Christians in the church who's really been converted. And so the ordinary faith, fruits of God's regenerating work leading to true repentance in faith,

11:04 overlaid upon a rather well-adjusted, extrovertish personality, is assumed to be the precursor of a call to the ministry. Well, I don't see that taught in my Bible at all. But that's what's assumed. And many of us can think of how we were dealt with and we can think of others dealt with in a similar way.

11:30 And what happens? At a time when a young man ought to be wrestling with the whole matter of the doctrine of calling and sorting out career orientation and ambitions and making steps to become an able, competent provider worthy of a young woman's hand in marriage and worthy of the respect of children, what's he doing? Running off to Bible school, running off to seminary. And then he comes out, in his mid-early twenties, and he's, quote, looking for a church.

12:06 What a horrible scenario. Now, I'm not talking about the exceptions because you can produce a list of some of the most eminent men in the history of the church and the average age of their ordination. A friend of mine did this for me when someone was trying to make a case that no one should enter the ministry until he's 30 years of age. And he had quite a thesis, going way back to the age of the priesthood and our Lord's age, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

12:37 But he was spinning out a theory that was bizarre and legalistic and lopsided. So this particular individual took the names of some 50 of the most eminent servants of God in the history of the church and put down the time of their ordination. And it came into the mid to late twenties. And some of them were in heaven before they even saw their 30th birthday.

Maturity and the Demands of Ministry

13:05 McShane, Brainerd, and many of them were in their 30s, greatly used. So we're not being legalistic in this. But by and large, boys mature slower than girls do. I've met many young women that I was convinced were prepared for marriage at age 18 or 19.

13:27 I've rarely met a kid ready to take on the role and ready to take on the burden of biblical leadership as a husband and a father at the same age. And I think that's just a fact of common observation. And I think there are a number of reasons for it, not the least of which is the burden of leadership which falls upon a man. It simply takes more time to put the components in the man.

13:53 Woven into the texture of the fabric of a woman's soul and her whole identity as a woman is the disposition to follow. In his martyrdom, I know that, and current society would try to discourage it. But nonetheless, God made a woman to follow, made her feel safe and secure in following, gave her both the physical and psychological and emotional capacity to be sheltered and nourished and cherished and protected and provided for. And many of her most noble tasks she does far more by instinct than we do.

14:31 I mean, what does she need to acquire to be able to put her plucked breast into the mouth of that hungry little child? But for you to nourish and cherish your wife, what skill it takes. One most recently married among us just confessed in between the sessions, he feels how inept he is in trying to exercise that skill. It's one that's acquired over many years.

14:59 I've been at it 33 years, and I'm learning new lessons. All the time. Handling that delicate china called my wife. Now, why am I saying all of that?

15:12 I'm saying all of that to underscore, you see, how unlikely it is that an 18 or 19 year old kid can have any realistic appreciation of the breadth of the Biblical qualifications for the pastoral office. And he can only have, in most cases, a romantic inclination to the ministry, not a Biblically realistic inclination and ambition. Someone else shows an unusual facility with words, natural fluency, but there's no sound judgment whatsoever. He's a blethering airhead. Blether is a Scottish word for one who runs off at the mouth, and you've got a good definition of an airhead. It's helped me during the week several times when I've been in some very tight situations just thinking of Pastor Bob's description of the airhead Sunday has made me laugh at my desk and has released the pressure of the tension that I was under. You didn't miss that, did you?

16:23 Some of you may not. A couple of you may have been off somewhere preaching. The airhead is the man you blow in his ear and you get nothing but an echo.

16:34 Well, here this blethering airhead, you see, is then encouraged to believe he's called to the ministry and because he's loquacious and outgoing, lo and behold, he gets elected president of his freshman class. And so he's got a platform now among his peers, and by the time he graduates from Bible school, he's big man on campus, God's gift to the world, and he's got a totally distorted view of himself and of his gifts and what's required for the ministry. What a horrible scenario. Well, this is what we have to deal with constantly.

17:08 People who feel called think they're called, desire to be called, who have an inaccurate and inadequate view of the breadth of the biblical qualifications for the pastoral office. But with 1 Timothy 3 and Titus before us, such an inadequate view is inexcusable. And in this place, after last Sunday night and Dr. Bob's exposition of 1 Timothy 3 on September 9, 1989, such ignorance is culpable in any of us who sat there in the pew and heard that passage so accurately and powerfully expounded. You see, when we come to those passages and make them regulative, then immediately we recognize that in most cases it is impossible to make those character assessments in boys. They are the character assessments of mature Christian manhood. And at what point the boy ceases to be the man, I don't know.

18:21 And I'm sure it differs. But I sure know the difference between a boy and a man. And these are to be manly graces of self-control, of orderliness, et cetera, et cetera. Here I would quote from Bridges, just to remind you that we haven't forgotten old Bridges and much of his sagacious advice.

Bridges on the Comprehensive Nature of Ministry

18:46 It is not to be supposed, he writes on page 30 and then up to the top of 31, that such an office can be easily filled. It demands not merely some, but many, nay, all excellences in happy combination. A person may, in a general way, be said to be qualified for the ministry who has talents for preaching, though not fitted for profitable private intercourse, or the affairs of church government. But this is evidently not a complete adaptation to the work.

19:23 It is, on the contrary, a very imperfect one, and one with which no man should be content. For all the aspects of ministerial labor are, if not equally, yet highly important, every one of them far too important to be trifled with. The right performance of each affords facilities for the rest, and gives additional beauty and efficacy to all. What he is saying is, a man who preaches well will find there is a way paved into the hearts of his people when he goes to sit down with them and deal with them one on one.

19:59 The one who is wise and gracious and sagacious in his pastoral intimate dealings has paved the way for those people to listen to him with greater eagerness when he stands to preach. This is what Bridges observes, you see. Every one of them, if not equally, yet equally, is far too important to be trifled with, and the right performance of each affords facilities for the rest, and gives additional beauty and efficacy to all. To be fit for only one department cannot but greatly impede our activity and diminish our success.

20:31 To fill the ministerial office with a degree of satisfaction and benefit commensurate with its capabilities, or with the desire of a heart awake to its importance, we must be able to see all that it demands. Men of God, perfect, completely furnished unto every good work. Quoting from the authorized 2 Timothy 3.17, This is an elevated standard.

The Non-Negotiable Standard of 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1

20:59 He that aims highest will most approximate to it. And I would say it is a non-negotiable standard for the bishop they must be. And I thought Dr. Bob's emphasis was so balanced.

21:16 It's not must always have been, but must be. Must be. And what that says to you men right now is that it does not mean you are not called. That sitting there Sunday night you saw some gaping holes and some moth-eaten areas of your character.

21:34 But it does mean if the holes aren't being mended and the moths aren't being killed and progress is not being made, at some point along the line you have to face that realistically. And one of the great curses in our day is an inaccurate and an inadequate view of the breadth of the Biblical qualifications for the pastoral office. And if someone says, well, if we take those qualifications seriously we'll have so few ministers. That's to say, you see, that we're more concerned for Christ's sheep than He is.

22:09 He has set the standard. He has measured the door of admission into the office because He loves His sheep. And therefore to adhere to His door in His dimensions, plumbed by His levels, is not to be indifferent to the people of God. It's to show due love for the people of God and not to curse them with men who get through that door measured by their own standard and plumbed with their own instruments.

22:40 So don't ever let people come at you with that specious argument. When I've preached at times on 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 I've had men say, well, if we had took that seriously, we wouldn't have an elder in our church. I said, good. Maybe if all you leaders resigned, taking the Bible seriously, stood before your people on a Sunday morning and told them why you were resigning, and you, Mr. So-and-so, confessed, I don't meet the standard, I don't have my house in order, I'm stepping down from my office, and apart from putting in the time at work that I must, I'm giving all my energies apart from attendance on the Lord's Day at prayer meeting to getting my house in order, I hereby resign. Steps down. Someone else stands up and says, I'm stepping down. 1 Timothy 3 said, not a man who's a striker.

23:31 And it's a known fact around here that I've got a hair-trigger temper and it's dishonoring to God. It's a reproach. I've been in the office in violation of this specific element of the standard. I'm resigning.

23:43 And I'm going to give myself, if necessary, to prayer and fasting and crying to God until this thing is mortified and I become a self-controlled man. I said, you know what happened? People in the pew, for the first time, might be convinced that maybe they ought to take the Bible seriously too. They see the leaders taking it seriously, maybe they begin to take it seriously.

24:04 You see, you're cutting the throat of true authority in preaching and true grip on the conscience of your people in shepherding if you enter the ministry patently unqualified according to the standard of 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. And I'm afraid that's why there's so little authority in preaching as well. Because men cannot, could not in their regular reading of the Scriptures, they'd almost pray to get a coughing fit if they were systematically reading the Scriptures publicly when they came to Timothy and Titus. Or maybe they'd schedule ahead that they go away in special meetings on that weekend when the passage was read.

24:46 Well, brethren, never, never be in the place where you're embarrassed to come across a passage like that. Can you imagine how we who are elders would have felt Sunday night when that was preached if we knew and our people knew of specific, clear, gross inadequacies and violations of that standard? What a shameful thing it would have been. What a conscience-hardening thing then to have sat through it and go on business as usual.

Unmortified Lust for Authority, Attention, and Influence

25:17 And you will never, never, never be hurting God's people to set out a biblical standard of the ministry that is full-orbed, balanced, but lays out the breadth of the qualifications for the pastoral office. Then, last of all, number seven, and this is the only one that I've said is really rotten. The others, you see, many of them have varying degrees of moral culpability, but this one stinks, all right? But I'm convinced it's one of the major reasons why men aspire to a call, assume themselves called to the gospel of God.

25:54 And that's the reason why we are ourselves called, but it's a false reason. And I'm calling it an unmortified lust for the authority, attention, and general influence connected with the office. An unmortified lust for the authority, attention, and general influence connected with the office. You know, in the light of 1 Peter, it just occurred to me, we ought to add to that, the authority, attention, influence, and financial benefits. Okay? And financial benefits. And I'll explain why I added that just now.

26:56 But now, here we turn to a passage like Matthew 23, and we have the classic example of men who became clerics in their lust for the authority, attention, and influence of the office. And the Lord is exposing the scribes and the Pharisees. One of the things he says of them, verse 5 and following, but all their works they do to be seen of men. They loved the attention that they got in the outworking of their office.

27:34 And they even intensified it to make sure you'd notice them by their religious symbols, their phylacteries, and by their dress they enlarged the borders of their garment. Now notice, and they loved the chief place at feasts and the chief seats in the synagogue and the salutations in the marketplaces to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi, Rob, teacher, great one, Rabbi. That's what they loved. Oh, it made them feel so good when they heard someone calling them.

28:13 Well, you see what they loved was the authority, the attention, influence. And though in this passage I don't think there's any explicit reference to loving the benefits, the 1 Peter 5 passage surely makes this clear. Exercising the oversight not of constraint, not conscripted like an unwilling college student in the 1960s. He didn't want to go to Nam.

28:45 He said, not by constraint but willingly. And then what is called in our old translations not for filthy lucre, in other words not with the ambition for remuneration and financial gain, 1 Peter 5 and verse 3, verse 2 I'm sorry, nor yet for filthy lucre but of a ready mind. Not what I can get to my financial advantage but what I can give to the benefit of the people of God. Now some are willing to forgo money, home, security, under the pressure of this unmortified lust for authority and attention. Now the money can be an ambition with some but some people they ride very easily over money but they don't ride easily over the ambition for influence, the ambition to exercise authority, to sit in Moses' seat. And the Lord said, to the extent that they tell you to do what Moses did, do what they do but don't do after the pattern of their lives for they say but they do not. You see, it wasn't a love for the truth that was causing first of all their own hearts

30:14 to be formed by the truth. It was a love for the platform that teaching the truth gave them to influence others. That's what they loved and I'm convinced that many a man finds his way into the pastoral by lust for authority, attention, influence and perhaps even in some situations financial benefits connected with the office. Whereas, as you men are told in this place, the office is primarily a perpetual diaconal service.

30:45 Christ is our pattern and he said the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto by the praises of men, the adulation of men but to minister and to give, to be taken and to give, to serve and to give. And he is our great pattern of what it means to be true under shepherds. And so again I can only ask you men in the secret place where only you and God can go in the deep, dark, subterranean depths of your own soul ask God to bring the light of his word and if there's any unmortified lust for authority, attention, influence then God will slay it. And God will enable you to take it to a place called Golgotha and there behold the incarnate God immolated, face dripping with blood and spittle and say oh God how can I nurse in my bosom anything so ugly in the light of the cross of the Savior. Well those are the things I wanted to lay before you this morning brethren.