How devastating to neglect this staggering fact: if you are in Christ, you already possess this unconditional love. You are known and fully treasured by God himself. What an imperishable delight: one that cannot be withdrawn. Nor can it be earned. God’s love is a majestic gift. We are his image-bearers, and therein lies our complete worth.

We are a funny people: planning, mapping, strategizing. We purchase gym memberships and anti-wrinkle creams, free-range this and organic that, paralyzed by anxiety of our inevitable aging and death, fearful of missing out on a life-changing blurb awaiting us on social media, and agonizing over insufficient retirement funds. So much preparation for worldly things, while prone to disregarding our soul’s eternal future.
Fellowship with God on streets of gold or scorching flames and torment without him will be our forever. One or the other. There is no middle ground.
We rage against our story.
What beauty might erupt, if this year we chose instead to press into our own narrative, divinely written by God our Maker? Palms held loosely open, (Your will, God, not mine) humbly and graciously accepting his path, trusting him implicitly by way of adoration and bowed obedience?
Our past, present, and future is mysteriously braided together by God himself. His plan unfurls through our unique stories.
Just imagine if we treasured our fleeting lives enough to surrender them fully and generously to the Lord, no strings attached.
Not so long ago, I bumped into a woman whom I had not seen for a bit. One minute into the conversation I slipped away. My feet did not move, and I may have nodded at appropriate moments, but after a short time, she lost me.
Honestly it was not really a conversation at all. It was more of a soliloquy revolving around her children’s accomplishments:
4.0 this, President of that, Honors Society Member and Dean’s List and Straight A’s and Star Athlete and on and on and on it went. It had been awhile since I had seen her, and it pained me afresh to recognize that her children’s worth is so poorly measured by fleeting accomplishments, tangled and jumbled in earthly awards that fade in due time. I could picture her pressured offspring, burdened by weighty backpacks of accumulated winnings, soul-exhausted with their lot in life, and feeling quite powerless to escape.
As she rambled, a familiar feeling floated upward in my mind. Suddenly, I was nine years old and swinging my legs in the shiny wooden pew of my childhood church.
It was a chilly January morning, and the promise of a brand new year glowed brightly as the sunshine danced its way through the sanctuary windows. There was a delicious excitement in the air: a brand new calendar flush with possibilities. That magical sensation in which wrongs may be righted and the sky is the limit and this year, yes this year will be golden! (Of course this feeling crashes and burns as winter unfolds, and the snow turns to dirty mush along with our resolutions and we wail: Where is spring?)
I was holding my own hymnal that day, feeling quite grown up as our minister asked our congregation to please stand and sing: A Mighty Fortress Is Our God. As the organ sounded, and the richness of those words sprung forth, their meaning jolted my soul. Especially verse two:

Did we in our own strength confide,Our striving would be losing;Were not the right man on our side,The man of God’s own choosing:Dost ask who that may be?Christ Jesus, it is He;Lord Sabaoth His Name,From age to age the same,And He must win the battle.

My heart quickened, as my eyes filled. This Christ Jesus was wonderful, and I knew him.
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Written by R. Scott Pace and Jim Shaddix |
Tuesday, January 16, 2024
Leadership is not an end in and of itself; it naturally implies a destination. It’s kind of like application and illustration in a sermon—these elements serve as means to other ends. We don’t just do application in our sermons; we apply something. We use application to demonstrate how the truth is to be lived out. We don’t just put illustrations in our sermons as rhetorical eye (or ear) candy; we put them in to illustrate something. We use them to either help us explain or apply the truth of the text. Neither application nor illustration stands alone in the sermon. We use them to accomplish greater purposes. Christian leadership is often misunderstood in a similar way. It is not a stand-alone quality or characteristic in a pastor’s life and ministry; it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Rather, it always involves a destination—we don’t just lead, we lead somewhere. 

The Pastor’s Motive Is the Master
The reason many pastors fail at being leaders is that they want to be leaders. While that may sound strange, we must understand that leadership is not the ultimate goal or standard of success when it comes to gospel ministry. The plethora of books, conferences, seminars, and courses on the subject of leadership feeds a misguided passion in many pastors simply because the world has touted it as a quality and skill of the highest order that’s worthy of our greatest effort. Gospel leadership, however, is quite different. The Bible is clear that the way to be a good leader is not by developing skills to influence people and command organizations. Rather, the way to be a good leader is to be a good servant (Matt. 20:25–28; Mark 9:35).
Living according to this curious economy of leadership doesn’t start with a focus on serving others—it begins with serving the Master who established that economy, the Lord Jesus Christ. The apostle Paul expects that his young protégé desires to be such a servant: “If you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 4:6). Here, being a servant isn’t described with the term that emphasizes submission and subjection as a slave (doulos), but the one used more generally for someone who serves another in some useful way (diakonos; see 1 Cor. 4:1–2; 2 Cor. 3:6; 6:4). Paul assumes that Timothy aspires to such a role in his relationship with Jesus. Thus, it must be the motive of every pastor not first to be a leader of people, but to be a useful servant of the Master. Leading people well will follow serving Jesus well.
But how does a pastor offer such useful service to our Lord? Though there are numerous ways this work plays out in gospel ministry, Paul lays out specific qualifications for being a “good servant” of the Master. And this is where pastoral leadership and biblical exposition begin to intersect in this passage. He first says that such servanthood will be realized “if you put these things before the brothers” (1 Tim. 4:6). Paul uses the term “these things” eight times in this letter to summarize the practical and doctrinal issues he’s been addressing, things like prayer, modesty, authority and submission, qualifications of pastors and deacons, and destructive legalism.
Like Timothy, every pastor must lead his people to believe rightly and live obediently when it comes to all the aforementioned issues and more. That begins with “put[ting them] before” the congregation through preaching and teaching. The language Paul uses here conveys the idea of gentle persuasion through humble reminders—the pastor lovingly explains and applies God’s word to his people so that they think rightly and live accordingly. Like a waiter, we serve our people nourishing meals; like a jeweler, we display before them treasured gems.1 We are good servants of our Master if we lead well by preaching well.
Not only is the pastor a good servant when he preaches well but he preaches well because he learns well. Paul says Timothy’s service for Christ and leadership of God’s people intersect in his preaching ministry because he’s been “trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that [he has] followed” (1 Tim. 4:6). The idea of being trained is a metaphor for nurturing and tutoring children. Paul’s use of the present participle suggests that his concern is for Timothy to continue feeding himself spiritually so that he can be a good servant of Jesus by training his congregation in the faith.2
So often we hear of pastors who neglect the study of God’s word because of the many other pastoral responsibilities that demand their leadership.
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First, winsomeness is not a political strategy. We do not seek to be kind and gentle merely as a strategy for winning over our neighbors to our point of view. We seek these characteristics because our Lord commands and exemplifies them. Kindness is a fruit of the spirit. Secondly, in different seasons of cultural change, the church can and should shift its public posture.

Something has changed in the air of evangelicalism in recent years. Once-aspirational words like “winsome” and “thoughtful” or descriptors like “nuanced” and “kind” now trigger an attitude of dismissiveness and sneering from many on the right.
For some, these words describe a mindset too focused on currying favor with the world. It’s too accommodating to engage in this way with the “cultural elites” whose leftward politics wreak havoc in society. The “winsome” may have good intentions, according to this view, but their attitude and actions demonstrate an extraordinary naïveté in relation to politics and cultural change.
How did we get to the point where some Christians spurn civility? In my previous column, I offered a brief look at the rise of a “neo–Religious Right” and explained why some younger evangelicals thirst for a more confrontational approach to engaging the culture. Today, I want to dig a little deeper into the reasons why some have repudiated a more evangelistically front-facing, pastoral posture to culture change and now call for a more combative, political approach.
Winsomeness Doesn’t Win
Why do words like “nuance” and “winsome” receive sneers from some on the right today? Because the strategies these descriptors represent are seen by many as having failed. Society is changing quickly, and not favorably toward Christianity.
Christians have experienced a rapid shift in which traditional Christianity has been downgraded from respectable to reprehensible. For example, in 2008, Rick Warren prayed at President Obama’s inauguration. Just four years later, Louie Giglio—who shares roughly the same theological framework and approach—was deemed too controversial to do the same. When prominent, well-regarded pastors, such as Max Lucado and Tim Keller, are seen as hateful and bigoted (with Keller even having an award rescinded), how can anyone be so naive to think that “thoughtfulness” or “winsomeness” can earn the right to a hearing?
Younger evangelicals recognize instinctively that no amount of goodwill or winsomeness will create warm feelings among those who claim Christian moral teaching is repressive and harmful. Christians don’t win a hearing by “playing nice.” And so, we’re told, the need of the hour is to be forthright, bold, and confrontational. The culture war is upon us, and we need to stand up and fight.
2 Approaches to Life in Babylon
Although we can spot similarities, we shouldn’t assume younger evangelicals are picking up the same playbook as the old religious right. Unlike our parents and grandparents, most of us agree that we’re in Babylon, not Israel. The difference is in how best to live as exiles in Babylon.
For a generation now, many evangelicals have assumed we’re a moral minority living in a world that is, if not hostile, at least barely tolerant of our views. Over the years, the prophet Jeremiah’s letter to the Babylonian exiles (Jer. 29) has been the go-to text for helping us live faithfully in these times.

“Build houses and live in them. Plant gardens and eat their produce. Find wives for yourselves, and have sons and daughters. . . . Pursue the well-being of the city I have deported you to. Pray to the LORD on its behalf, for when it thrives, you will thrive.” (vv. 5–7, CSB)

In other words, remember, Christian, that you are not “at home.”
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