Written by C. Fredric Marcinak |
Wednesday, January 24, 2024
Ruling elders, support your ministers, guard your ministers, pray for your ministers. Seek out those who are called to preach and encourage them. And protect God’s people from those who would lead them astray. In so doing, you will ensure that the preaching of the Word of God remains the Word of God.

The confession penned by Sixteenth Century Swiss Reformer Heinrich Bullinger famously proclaims: “The preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God.” For those of us trained on principles of “Sola Scriptura” and the attendant doctrines of inspiration, infallibility, and inerrancy, Bullinger’s statement is striking. But this high view of the preaching of God’s Word was embraced by Luther, Calvin, and the other Reformers. Bryan Chapell makes the point in more modern terms when he writes, “We do not merely speak about Jesus to his people; we speak as Jesus speaks to His people.” The point is clear: the expounding of His Word is the primary means God uses to speak to the hearts of men—to convert the lost, to sanctify believers.
I am thankful for those faithful preachers who week in and week out labor to speak as God’s mouthpiece to His people. Of course, as a ruling elder, I am not called to preach. But all elders—teaching and ruling—are equally responsible for the right preaching of the Word. Indeed, we know that we will one day give account for how we handle this weighty responsibility. So, how can ruling elders ensure that the Word if faithfully preached?
Encouraging the Fruitful Ministry of the Word in the Church
There are at least three ways that ruling elders are to encourage a fruitful ministry of the Word in the church. These are all positive, or explicitly constructive, aspects of a ruling elder’s ministry in relation to the public reading and preaching of the Word.
Search
First, ruling elders are to take the lead whenever a church needs to conduct a search for a new pastor. It is the session that calls the congregational meeting at which a search committee is elected. Frequently, a congregation will appoint its session to serve as the search committee (BCO 20-2), but even if a group of people other than the session is elected to a search committee, ruling elders have a critically important role to play. The session must clearly communicate to the search committee the central place of the ministry of the Word in the local church and the high biblical standards that exist for any prospective candidates to the ministry. At the end of a search process, it is the session that calls the congregational meeting at which the search committee presents its recommended candidate to the congregation.
Pastoral searches should not be frequent occurrences in the normal life of a healthy and stable church. However, there is another sense by which ruling elders should take the lead in searching for future pastors. It is incumbent upon ruling elders to think intentionally and seriously about the ministry potential and prospects of men in the church who show potential for future gospel ministry. More than anyone else in the church, ruling elders should be energized to develop the next generation of gospel ministers.
In shepherding the families of our church over the years, I have noticed a pattern: when a young man loves the Lord and shows some aptitude for serving in the church, people start to say he should be a deacon. Now, deacons are vitally important and I am thankful for those men called to that office. But ruling elders should work with men to help define their sense of call—what is the nature of the call? What is the nature of the spiritual gifts? If the man is more clearly gifted for the ministry of Word and prayer, the elders should explore those gifts and, if warranted, encourage the man to pursue his call to the ministry. We should regularly search for those called to the ministry and encourage them in that direction—with the expectation that God will raise up ministers for his church.
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A Christian is compelled to do good works not so she might earn God’s favor but in response to receiving God’s favor as a divine gift. She puts that love on display by loving God and neighbor. Despite our inability to keep it, God’s law remains a perfect blueprint for loving God and neighbor. When we fall short, as we undoubtedly will, we can run back to Christ (instead of running from him in fear).

In recent years, it’s become commonplace for employers to put underperforming employees on a performance improvement plan (PIP). Though they’re often interpreted by the employee as a sign that termination is inevitable, PIPs crystallize job expectations and highlight the ways a worker is falling short. This covers the employer in the event of termination, and it removes cause for accusation on the employee’s part.
I thought about this modern practice when I read Old Testament scholar Stephen Dempster’s observation about God’s law in his book Dominion and Dynasty: “Israel is treated differently after [receiving the Ten Commandments at] Sinai. Pre-Sinai violations lead to reprimand; post-Sinai trespass[es] lead to death.”
Dempster wouldn’t call the law a PIP, but he observes one sense in which it functions similarly: it clearly reveals where Israel has fallen short of God’s standard. It shows them where they haven’t lived up to the performance God requires. But we’re in trouble if that’s our entire perspective on God’s law. When we look at the text, we find a bigger picture.
Our Poor Performance
God’s law is a perfect blueprint for human flourishing (Ps. 19:7). In this sense, God’s law is an encouragement to greater obedience. But it also reveals a massive problem: we can’t keep it.
Before they received the law, the Israelites grumbled and complained (Ex. 16). After the commandments were given, that attitude didn’t improve. What did change, however, was the severity of God’s response. God punished them with death (Num. 14). 
What’s going on here? Did God suddenly become stricter? God’s people’s performance before the law wasn’t any more stellar than it was after they received it. What changed? Before Sinai, God’s expectations hadn’t yet been written in stone. But after the people received their PIP, after expectations were clear, they tragically believed they possessed the inner strength to obey God’s demands (Ex. 24:3). So when the grumbling and ingratitude returned, some were literally terminated.
In Romans, Paul helps us understand:
If it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. . . . I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. (Rom. 7:7, 9–11)
Like Paul’s, the Israelites’ sin lay dormant. But after the law was given and God’s metric was made clear, it was also clear how abysmal their performance was. The result was death.
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Even as we rejoice in every one of God’s blessings and celebrate every evidence of his grace, still we long to be in that new land, that new home, that new place where we can—where we will—truly thrive, where we will display our fullest potential, where we will be all that God has made us to be.

The young woman entered her parent’s home for what she understood would be the final time. The funeral had been solemn but still sweet, for she knew that her father had at last joined her mother. It had been a good many years since death had parted them, but now they were together in the grave and together in heaven.
The door squeaked just a little as she opened it, but beyond it there was only silence—no familiar voice to greet her and no familiar arms to hug her. The house had already been packed up and most of her parent’s possessions already distributed. There remained just a few family treasures and meaningful knick-knacks that she wished to take as her inheritance and to keep as her own. Among them was a little chest that her father had indicated should go to her. Intrigued, she opened it and saw that it contained just one simple seed.
When she returned home she went straight to her garden and pressed the seed into the soil. She watered it diligently and ensured there was plenty of sun to warm the ground. And then she waited. She waited through the spring rains and summer’s first heat. The day came when she saw just the smallest hint of green breaking through the soil, then a shoot, and then the beginnings of a plant. Before long the seed had produced a lovely little shrub.
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