Written by J. V. Fesko |
Thursday, February 29, 2024
The pastor reports to his elders—they alone have the authority to oversee the pastor and his conduct. Recognize the difference between matters of morality and Christian liberty. And don’t always assume that the pastor’s salary pays for everything that you see. It could very well be a gift or some other form of income that has provided him and his family with a needed amenity. Assume the best, not the worst, about your pastor and his family. And do what you can to make life in the bubble more bearable for them.

One of the challenges that pastors and their families face is life in the goldfish bowl. In many other vocations a person can go to work, do his job, come home, and his home life and family stay out of view. My father worked for a tech giant for 37 years and I can count on my fingers the number of times that I interacted with my father’s co-workers. The same cannot be said about the pastor and his family.
When a church hires a pastor there is the expectation that he will bring his family to church with him. This means, like it or not, everyone in the church observes the pastor’s family on a regular basis. For better or worse, people in the church see most everything that the pastor’s family does: they take note of the clothes they wear, the books they read, the car that brings them to church, the movies they talk about, and their behavior. For example, I once rented a car to drive to presbytery and the rental agency was closed on Saturday when I returned. I decided to drive the car to church on Sunday morning and then return it first thing Monday morning. Other factors in this scenario were: I received a free upgrade because the “fancy” car was all they had in the lot; my gas and the cost of the rental were covered by my presbytery, which reimbursed ministers for the mileage they drove. So, everything was above-board in this situation. Nevertheless, when I drove up to church that Sunday morning my wife overheard someone say, “Well, I guess we must be paying the pastor too much money if he’s driving a new car!” Rightly or wrongly, I gently informed this person of the situation and they seemed to be relieved.
In another scenario I was walking out of church after a Sunday morning worship service. It seemed like an ordinary Sunday—in particular, there were a number of small children and infants making their usual noises during the worship service. But whose child was singled out as making a lot of noise that morning? Yes, my one-year-old son. The reality of the situation was that my son wasn’t in the worship service that morning—
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For believers, over time, our belief systems and thought patterns are conformed more and more to God’s Word. Triggers will lose their power to tempt us towards sin and self as God’s Word becomes more real to us.

“What are you thinking?” We ask this of each other often, don’t we? When our minds are troubled, and our thoughts seem filled with unholy and disturbing ideas or images, we need outside help. Christ does not leave us to fend for ourselves but rescues us out of our distress to produce peace in our thought lives.
God’s Word makes a startling statement about a believer’s thought life. 1 Corinthians 2:16 tells us that, through our union with Jesus, we now have the mind of Christ. This gives us the ability to distinguish good from evil and truth from lies. Believers can think as Christ thinks. Throughout this lifetime, we will battle to keep our thoughts set on him and the truths of Scripture, but, no matter what you have been through, it is possible to have your mind renewed so that you experience thought patterns that line up with the gospel and an increasingly Christ-centered emotional life.
Women who have pursued pornography, sexual fantasy, sinful sexual experiences, and other expressions of sexual sin increase their likelihood of experiencing troubled thought lives. Sadly, women who have been sinned against with sexual trauma can have troubled thought lives, through no fault of their own. Some say that an image or memory can pop into their minds in an instant, even though they have not looked at porn or been involved sexually with someone for years. Others’ patterns of thought are entangled with troubling emotions that seem deeply engrained in their responses; prayer, Bible reading, and listening to Christian music push away these thoughts for a time, but they still return. Distressing, scary, shame-provoking memories about themselves, their bodies, men, women, relationships, and more flood their minds like an incoming wave or an unexpected hurricane that threatens to undo them.
The Bible teaches that all things are the servants of God (Psalm 119:91) and that all things are in subjection to and under the authority of Jesus (Ephesians 1:22–23). Yet many of us struggle to come anywhere close to clean and holy thought lives that serve Jesus. Present and past experiences have formed pathways in our minds that produce dark thoughts—and usually result in sinful behaviors too. Maybe we have absorbed sexual images through pornography, movies that normalize and celebrate sin, or books that feed sensual ideas and fantasies. Maybe the memories that currently trouble you aren’t primarily sexual in focus, but they are connected to messy relational dynamics in which you were ensnared, like codependency and emotional enmeshment. Perhaps fear triggers a moving sidewalk in your thoughts that carries you from distraction to distress to destructive patterns of thinking.
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Written by Ben C. Dunson |
Thursday, September 12, 2024
One of the greatest benefits of explicitly stated creeds is that they protect the church from unwritten and unstated creeds. Everyone has beliefs about what the Bible teaches. But beliefs that are not publicly accessible in simple, clear, written form are not subject to public scrutiny. Furthermore, they are not open to correction because there is a denial that they even exist. “I just believe the Bible,” say some. Yes, all fine and good. But the point at issue is always: “What does the Bible mean?” Creeds provide a publicly accessible standard and safeguard in articulating a church’s official teaching. As such, they can be amended as needed. No such safeguards exist for unstated creeds that exist only in one’s mind.

It is not uncommon to hear someone within a denomination that subscribes to a specific confessional document or binding polity statement complain that their denomination is elevating human teaching above God’s word itself. This sentiment seems to be plausible to a good number of people. I encountered one version of this complaint this year at the Presbyterian Church in America’s General Assembly. It was specifically about whether women can serve in the role of deacons. The argument, presented on the floor of the General Assembly, was that the PCA’s Book of Church Order, especially a proposed clarification being voted on at GA, is more rigid on this point than Scripture itself.
One way to defend the PCA’s confession (the Westminster Confession of Faith) or polity (the Book of Church Order) is jure divino Presbyterianism (divine right Presbyterianism), which contends, as John Lafayette Girardeau (1825–1898) put it, that “that what is not commanded, either explicitly or implicitly in the Scriptures, is prohibited to the church. She can utter no new doctrine, make no new laws, ordain no new forms of government, and invent no new modes of worship.” Assuming, then, that the Westminster Confession and the PCA’s Book of Church Order are truly biblical, Presbyterians are bound to strict adherence to these documents.
There is, however, another approach to defending our church’s constitutional standards. It is in many ways more prosaic and commonsense, but is also to my mind based on irrefutable logic for those who value honesty and who operate in good faith within our denomination. It is an approach that I encountered years ago in a short introductory essay to Robert Shaw’s (1795–1863) exposition of the Westminster Confession of Faith by the Scottish Presbyterian pastor and seminary professor William Maxwell Hetherington (1795­–1863).
Why Creeds and Confessions?
Hetherington’s argument unfolds as follows. Because of sin the human mind is prone to error. Thus, even the simplest of statements can be understood in a large number of ways. Not all of these can be correct. Hetherington does not initially discuss the Bible. He simply notes a reality all people regularly face: a failure to agree on the meaning of some piece of written communication. A large number of people might even affirm that they agree with a given statement, but it would be impossible to know whether they are in actual agreement unless and until they explain that statement in their own words. “This,” Hetherington notes, “would be really his Creed, or Confession of Faith, respecting that truth.” If all agreed on that point in said “creed” or “confession” they would have a common confession about the meaning of the statement in question. This confession (whether actually capturing the meaning of the statement or not), if stated clearly, could then be used as the grounds for admission into a body of people who together hold that truth.
Thus far, Hetherington argues, few people would find such a process problematic. No one would be infringing on the liberty of anyone else or attempting to control their personal convictions about anything:
If any man cannot agree with the joint testimony borne by those who are agreed, this may be a cause of mutual regret; but it could neither confer on them any right to compel him to join them, contrary to his convictions, nor entitle him to complain on account of being excluded from a body of men with those opinions he did no concur. No man in strict integrity, indeed, could even wish to become one of a body of men with whom he did not agree on that peculiar point which formed the basis of their association.[2]
This is a matter of simple and basic honesty. No one forced anyone to join together unwillingly in affirming his “creed.” It was freely subscribed to by all as an agreed upon declaration of the meaning of a given statement or statements. At the same time, no one could fault the body affirming that “creed” for excluding others who do not hold to it. Why would anyone want to be a member of a body the holds to a creed they do not believe is accurate anway?
Hetherington then moves to consider these principles with regard to religious truths. It often happens that even those committed to the inerrancy and absolute authority of Scripture do not agree on what the Scriptures teach. Any number of such people, for example, might say that they affirm Paul’s teaching on deacons in 1 Timothy 3:8–13. It would be impossible to know, however, whether those people were in agreement about the meaning of that passage until they explained it in their own words.
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