The church (regenerate persons) is, in the new covenant, the people of God. One biblical image or metaphor for the church, or the people of God, is that we are the “temple”—the “temple of the holy spirit” (1 Cor. 6:19). Would not then pastoral ministry—whether in Toone, Tennessee, or in Willow, Alaska, or in Manhattan, be equally concerned—as a part of the ministry, in taking care of the temple? The location is not particularly important—in terms of worth or value. Pastoral ministry at least includes the task of shepherding a flock, of helping the temple be all that it can be, of engaging in that kind of ministry that will prepare the bride to be “holy and without blemish,” one day to be presented back to the bridegroom (Ephesians 5:25ff).

Editor’s note: This message was originally given to the Cornerstone Network Conference on October 7, 2023 in Jackson, TN.
I have long had an interest in Francis Schaeffer. I am 58, which means I was a college freshman in Monroe, Louisiana, in the fall of 1983. I have distinct memories of going to the Christian bookstores (there was more than one) in Monroe and seeing various books by Schaeffer. He was one of InterVarsity Press’s key authors during those years—especially when it came to books on social issues and worldview and the pro-life movement.
Schaeffer was born in the Philadelphia area on January 30, 1912, and died in Rochester, Minnesota, on May 15, 1984. Many of us may have become aware of Schaeffer as a sporty looking older man with a goatee, wearing lederhosen, and lecturing in the Swiss Alps at L’Abri (“L’Abri” is French for “shelter”). But Schaeffer was quite American. He attended Westminster Theological Seminary for a year (founded in 1929), where he studied with Cornelius Van Til. He transferred after a year to Faith Theological Seminary (founded in 1937), a newly formed seminary closely aligned with, but not controlled by, the Bible Presbyterian Church. Schaeffer was the first graduate of Faith Theological Seminary. I will not go into further detail on that era of Schaeffer’s life except to note one interesting item: Schaeffer himself was a kind of “presuppositionalist,” though Van Til offered significant criticisms of Schaeffer’s method. One time Van Til and Schaeffer were brought together to try and discuss their differences. In the midst of that meeting, Van Til was asked to summarize his own approach to apologetics. Van Til apparently gave a particularly insightful and short summary of his own position. After he was done, Schaeffer commented that he wished it had been recorded, for what Van Til had said was in fact Schaeffer’s own position exactly, and Schaeffer said he would not disagree with a single thing Van Til had said.
But though Schaeffer was a very American man, he is known to many of us through his work at L’Abri in southwestern Switzerland, about 55 miles east of Geneva. He and his wife Edith moved to Switzerland in 1947 or 1948 (I have seen both dates) to start L’Abri, something of a Christian community, study center, or place of respite. Schaeffer and others at L’Abri would lecture, and there was plenty of time for discussion. Through word of mouth, many persons heard of L’Abri and found their way to this Swiss outpost. At one point, the Schaeffers were receiving around 31 visitors a week. Luminaries such as Os Guinness and Hans Rookmaaker would make their way to L’Abri and would be influenced by Schaeffer.
Many of us who came of age in the 1980s came to know of Schaeffer through a number of key works dealing with fundamental questions of apologetics:

The God Who is There
Escape from Reason
He is There and He is Not Silent

Or perhaps we came to know of Schaeffer through certain works dealing with general challenges in Evangelicalism. For example:

The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century
The Church Before the Watching World
The Great Evangelical Disaster

Or perhaps we came to know Schaeffer through his interest in certain culture issues, especially the moral question of abortion and the question of the role of civil government:

Pollution and the Death of Man
How Should We Then Live?
Whatever Happened to the Human Race?
A Christian Manifesto

But Schaeffer was also intensely interested in what we often call “spirituality.” Thus, he wrote such works as:

Two Contents, Two Realities
The New Super-Spirituality
True Spirituality
The Mark of the Christian
No Little People

I want to draw a few insights from that last book: No Little People, first published in 1974. This book is a collection of sixteen sermons. The first chapter is “No Little People, No Little Places”—the title of this talk.
No Little People
The initial theme of this chapter is Moses’s “rod.” In Exodus, Moses was called to go to Egypt and tell Pharaoh to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. You know this story. Moses engages in a conversation with the LORD concerning what he is to say when the Israelites doubt that the LORD has really spoken to Moses.
Exodus 4:2 reads: “The LORD said to him, ‘What is that in your hand?’ He said, ‘A [rod] staff.’” You know the story:

(4:2–4) The LORD tells Moses to throw his rod on the ground. He does, and it turns into a serpent. The LORD commands Moses to put out his hand and catch the serpent by the tail. He does so, and it turns back into a rod.
(4:5–7) The LORD then tells Moses to put his hand insides his cloak. He puts his hand inside his cloak, takes it out, and it has turned leprous “like snow.” God commands Moses to put his hand back in his cloak. He does, then takes it out, and it has returned to normal.
(4:8–9) For the third sign, the LORD tells Moses that he (Moses) will take some water from the Nile and pour it on the ground. It will turn to blood on dry ground.

Moses proceeds (4:10–12.) to express concern about his own speaking abilities. The LORD’s promise is straightforward: “Go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.”
Moses still doubts (4:13), the LORD’s anger is kindled, and the LORD says that Aaron, Moses’s brother, will accompany Moses. The LORD promises to speak through them both, and Aaron—at least at this point of the story—will be the one to speak to the people on behalf of Moses (4:14–16).
4:17: Moses is reminded to take his rod.
Moses will depart from Jethro, his father-in-law (4:18), and when he departs he takes with him what is now called “the rod of God.” As Schaeffer sees it, the “rod of Moses” has become the “rod of God” (p. 6).
This rod shows up again in Exodus 7:15–17 where the LORD again gives Moses a certain command. Moses has gone to Pharoah more than once since his original call in Exodus 3. At this point in the story, the LORD says:
“15 Go to Pharaoh in the morning, as he is going out to the water. Stand on the bank of the Nile to meet him, and take in your hand the [rod] staff that turned into a serpent. 16 And you shall say to him, ‘The LORD, the God of the Hebrews, sent me to you, saying, “Let my people go, that they may serve me in the wilderness.” But so far, you have not obeyed. 17 Thus says the LORD, “By this you shall know that I am the LORD: behold, with the staff that is in my hand I will strike the water that is in the Nile, and it shall turn into blood.’”
A couple verses later (4:17), we read:
“Thus says the LORD, “By this you shall know that I am the LORD: behold, with the [rod] staff that is in my hand I will strike the water that is in the Nile, and it shall turn into blood.”
The LORD says to Moses (4:19):
“Say to Aaron, ‘Take your [rod] staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt, over their rivers, their canals, and their ponds, and all their pools of water, so that they may become blood, and there shall be blood throughout all the land of Egypt, even in vessels of wood and in vessels of stone.’”
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Your pastor’s job comes with great responsibility — a responsibility and authority given by the Lord for “building up and not for tearing down” (2 Cor 10:8, 13:10). And it is taxing work, especially emotionally. It can regularly make him groan. These reasons are a real factor in why many pastors burn out. But when we obey our pastors and submit to their teaching — even when it causes us grief at first—we make their role a joy.

Have you heard the old joke about a pastor who has a terrifying dream that he’s in the middle of preaching to his congregation? When he wakes up, he is.
If you’re not a pastor leading a church,1 I’m going to ask you to engage in what you might also regard as a nightmare scenario: imagine for a moment that you’re the senior pastor of your own church. How do you feel about taking on that role? What do you think you might enjoy about it? What would you find hard? And what is just too horrifying to even contemplate? Take a moment. I’ll wait.
Have you ever put yourself in your pastor’s shoes like this before?
In 2 Corinthians 2 and 7, Paul gives us an insight into the emotional life of a church pastor. As he does, we learn some very helpful lessons about the qualities that make someone a good and godly pastor, as well as how we can encourage our pastor — perhaps in a richer way than with a quick throwaway line like “I enjoyed your sermon today”.
Back in chapter 2, Paul explained why he had discontinued his fruitful evangelistic ministry in Troas (which I have reflected upon in a previous article). At the time his “spirit was not at rest” because he was waiting to hear from Titus about how the Corinthian church had responded to the challenging letter Paul had sent them (2:13). He wrote that letter so that when he visited them in person he would not “suffer pain” (v 3). He had written “out of much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to cause you pain but to let you know the abundant love that I have for you” (v 4).
You can see in these words the deep concern Paul has for his Corinthian children in the faith, as well as the deep emotional turmoil he goes through as he waits to see whether they respond well to his letter or whether they instead double down on their withdrawal from him as their apostolic father in the faith. Paul is clearly very heavily invested emotionally in the members of this church. He says later in this letter, “You are in our hearts, to die together and to live together” (7:3) and “Apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to fall, and I am not indignant?” (11:28-29). That sounds like emotional investment to me!
But then he explains in chapter 7 why his disposition has changed and his anxiety has been relieved. He has been comforted by “the coming of Titus” (v 6), who has brought good news from Corinth. Titus conveys the positive response Paul’s letter has received there and the rewarming of their affection for Paul as their apostle (v 7).
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I realize his book relates to what he calls, “the church’s failed attempt to cure homosexuality.”  Really!  Let’s face it, none of us are “cured from” sin or any sinful propensity or proclivity.  We are “covered” by Christ’s blood, but not necessarily “cured.”  I’m sure there are many heterosexual men and women who would confess confidentially that their sinful propensities and desires remain strong and are a continual struggle, but they are able to resist due … by the enablement of the Holy Spirit. 

I appreciate the Ascension Presbytery’s report inasmuch as is made available in this article.  Most books dealing with such controversial issues such as homosexuality or any sexual sin may not be totally flawed.  Yet their aim and emphases have serious influence and ramifications in diluting biblical truth by either softening the exceeding sinfulness of sexual sins or ignoring the universality of total depravity that affects all people, not only those with homosexual desires. The latter relates to the tendency of homosexuals and lesbians considering themselves exceptional or unique.  No, immoral sexual desires afflict heterosexuals, pedophiles, and more.  Universal depravity in the area of sexuality implies in Scripture that regardless of the direction such desires, temptations, or urges take, God’s Word and the work of the Holy Spirit would be the same for all.
Nonetheless, when it comes to the issue of same-sex sexual desires or actions, we cannot escape the fact there is nothing in Scripture that even hints at sympathy for either. The same can be said for heterosexual adultery, fornication, or addiction to pornography.  Throughout God’s divine revelation and Church history, sin—and particularly sexual sin—is/was treated as egregious.  Perhaps we are dealing with what Carl Trueman refers to as The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self.
Additionally, nowhere in God’s divine revelation do we find any positive reference to identifying ourselves or our personhood with sin, sexual or otherwise, especially not as Christians, disciples of Jesus Christ.  We cannot escape the fact that God hates sin or that Jesus clarified that even the mental or emotional lust is sin.  I realize this requires boldness on my part to say, but I believe Greg Johnson desperately needs to be encouraged to repent.  Whether he realizes it or not, he is normalizing and promoting an identity that God has clearly communicated to be serious, to be unnatural, to be abhorrent, and to be renounced.  Both sadly and unfortunately, he is wrongly influencing others.  Any and all sexual sins must be fled.
I realize his book relates to what he calls, “the church’s failed attempt to cure homosexuality.”  Really!  Let’s face it, none of us are “cured from” sin or any sinful propensity or proclivity.  We are “covered” by Christ’s blood, but not necessarily “cured.”  I’m sure there are many heterosexual men and women who would confess confidentially that their sinful propensities and desires remain strong and are a continual struggle, but they are able to resist due to their knowledge of God’s will for holiness and purity, determination, and by the enablement of the Holy Spirit.  Joseph fled Potiphar’s wife; Paul warned Timothy to flee youthful lusts. It’s the same with many other sins unrelated to human sexuality.
So, Greg Johnson probably relates to some who admit they are unable to abandon or stop their particular struggles, but that ignores they are not alone or unique.  All Christians struggle with some besetting sin in their lives.  He would do more spiritual good by counseling them to abandon their mental and emotional sense of uniqueness and aloneness to join the rest of Christianity.  And a vital first step is to stop identifying one’s Christian identity with sins and sinful lusts.
One thought about the issue of orientation might be helpful.  The majority of people are orientated to opposite-sex relationships.  That doesn’t preclude or dismiss their sinful propensities, temptations, or urges to sexual immorality.  And they don’t identify themselves as “straight” or “heterosexual” Christians.  They are also in the same boat as to desires and actions.
Greg Johnson ends his book with this statement: “I’ve been walking with Jesus in celibacy as a Christian adult for more than thirty years.  I’m here to say it’s worth it.  Jesus is worth it.  And the best is yet to come.” That is definitely laudable, but . . .  But it’s based also on identifying himself and his walk with Jesus with a sin Jesus died for and for which He cleansed and covered him with His blood.  Many of us are life-long single men and women living chaste lives (I prefer that definition, as it puts us in the same company with chaste married people), but . . . But we are not choosing any of our many sins or sinful temptations to identify ourselves for which Jesus paid such a high price and penalty to atone for and our natural propensity to sin.
Dr. Johnson definitely means well, but he is called to be a shepherd to a large diversity of people struggling with the diversity of the fall’s consequences. He certainly wouldn’t ask everyone to publicly identify with some prominent sin or temptation in their life, would he?  Neither should he.  No biblical shepherd, apostle, bishop, elder, pastor, teacher identified with sin.  Nothing could be clearer to us as Christians: we are redeemed not only from the penalty for our sin; we are also redeemed from identification by or with our sin.  And it’s because we really do care both in truth and love that we are compelled to resist a false approach to sin, and a trend never before allowed or imagined in the Church of Jesus Christ and to humbly and graciously warn against.
Helen Louise Herndon is a member of Central Presbyterian Church (EPC) in St. Louis, Missouri. She is freelance writer and served as a missionary to the Arab/Muslim world in France and North Africa.
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