accountability

Texts That Terrify

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Some passages of Scripture terrify (or at least they should) believers across the board.

For example, Matthew 12:36 warns, On the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak. If that doesn’t flat out scare you given the difficulties attached to taming the tongue (see James 3), I don’t know what will.

Other verses raise the hair on special interest heads only, like Hebrews 13:17.

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.

The church elder/pastor whose knees don’t knock at the prospect of giving an account to the Chief Shepherd (1 Pet. 4:1-4) at the last judgment for the quality of his watch care over the souls allotted to his charge best resign his office to trifle with lesser responsibilities.

Reading Timothy Witmer’s excellent book The Shepherd Leader: Achieving Effective Shepherding in Your Church recently reminded me of this sanctified terror shared by me and my fellow elders at Orlando Grace.

For this reason and others our elders and deacons opted to tackle this theologically sound and ecclesiologically practical resource in preparation for our annual leadership team retreat next weekend. Lord willing we will gather for a Friday night and Saturday morning to discuss Witmer’s book and evaluate our ministry of shepherding at OGC in light of it.

Witmer reveals his thesis early on in the introduction:

The simple thesis of this book is, “The fundamental responsibility of church leaders is to shepherd God’s flock.” After all, the word “pastor” comes from the Latin word meaning “shepherd.” However . . . shepherding is not merely the responsibility of those who are called to be pastors but also of those who are called to be elders or its equivalent in our churches. In fact . . . “shepherding” is at the very heart of the biblical picture of leadership. Unfortunately, this emphasis is missing in many churches (p. 2).

Thankfully, it’s not missing in our church. But could we do it better? Absolutely. Hence our desire to invest significant hours together next weekend to evaluate ourselves in light of biblical standards.

Will you pray for us that we hear God’s voice as to the action steps He desires for us to take to shepherd better the flock for which Jesus died at Orlando Grace?

After all, getting better at shepherding not only will make things go better for us at the judgment, if I read the rest of Hebrews 13:17 correctly.

It will result in great advantage to you, the sheep, as well.

Why I Took Notes at Ligonier

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I took my laptop with me to the Ligonier National Conference this weekend. That additional folder in my system now has eleven new files, each one named for the various talks on tough questions Christians face.

Lately I’ve grown a little lax about note taking for sermons. I’ve gotten lazy, to be perfectly honest.

But then on the airplane coming back from Idaho recently I read Ken Ramey’s no nonsense little book called Expository Listening. The author pastors a Bible Church in Texas. He observed some time ago the plethora of resources written about expository preaching as compared to the paucity of books for the help of those on the receiving end. He decided to do something about it. The result is a book worth every serious Christian’s reading.

Two quotes in the book smacked me right between my eyes. The first comes from the Puritan Thomas Watson about the accountability that accrues to our account whenever we hear a sermon:

You must give an account for every sermon you hear. . . . The judge to whom we must give an account is God. . . how should we observe every word preached, remembering the account! Let all this make us shake off distraction and drowsiness in hearing, and have our ears chained to the word (p. 102).

I shudder to think how many sermons I’ve heard over the course of my Christian life, let alone the ones I’ve preached! This weekend I just heard another eleven! Every time we sit under the preaching of the word the light of God’s truth gets brighter in our lives. Those charged with being doers of the word and not hearers only (James 1:22) can ill afford to get distracted and drowsy in the matter of attending to the preaching of God’s word.

How grateful I was for this practical and timely reminder from Ramey about note taking under the heading of worshiping with your whole heart on the Lord’s Day:

Take notes: This is one of the simplest ways to increase the impact of a sermon on your life. It helps you stay focused, and it is more likely that you will remember the key points. Don’t try to transcribe the entire sermon. Just write down the main points and the principles you most want to remember. This will serve as something tangible to take home and reflect on and discuss with others the truths taught in the sermon and how you plan to put them into practice in your life (p. 46).

I can’t tell you how much more I think I got out of this year’s Ligonier Conference as a result of that counsel. It helped keep my ears chained to the word. I trust my eternal judgment will go substantially better as a result.

Anybody for taking notes on Prov. 23:12-28 tomorrow?