I don’t need to rehearse the weighty reasons why many of us pastors are feeling depleted, disheartened, fed up. We might still be smiling on the outside. But inside, it’s often a different story. Obviously, one article can’t fix it all. But maybe I can say something here that, by God’s grace, will strengthen a brother’s weary hands. Three thoughts are flooding my mind for you, in ascending order of priority.

1. Gut It Out

My first point is not the most important one. But still, as a pastor who himself has been beaten up along the way, I have to say this. Brother, gut it out! We must. In this world, which is going to stay broken until Jesus comes back, we must get up tomorrow morning and make life happen, and do our jobs, and advance the ministry — and then get up the next morning, and do it all over again.

What’s the alternative? Quitting? No way! We are not going to surrender our calling to Satan just because we’re suffering. He’s suffering too. Satan can read. He knows what the Bible says. He knows his doom is sure. And he sees his doom in you: “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet” (Romans 16:20). Yes, under your feet. But that wretched loser, in his malice and rage, wants to bring you down while he’s going down. That’s why he wants you to feel defeated — so that you’ll quit, so that he can gloat.

“We’re weary and weak and winning, by the unbeatable power of the risen Christ in us.”

Don’t you see how we’re winning? We’re weary and weak and winning, by the unbeatable power of the risen Christ in us. So, no way are we going to budge even one inch from our God-given advantage as faithful ministers of the gospel. Like football players, we play hurt. Pain is just part of the game. We even like it that way. When it’s late in the fourth quarter, and we’re all bloody and bruised and sweaty and exhausted, but we keep running the plays, we know we’re real football players. And in these longest years, we pastors know we’re real soldiers of the cross. We’re not sitting on the bench. We’re in the game.

Serving Jesus faithfully, pushing through the pain, feels good. Giving Satan a really bad day feels good. My brother pastor, when I think about you ruggedly putting one foot in front of the other and moving forward day after day, as the strength of Christ is made perfect in your weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9), I almost feel sorry for the devil! Almost.

So, let’s gut it out.

2. Dig Deeper, Risk Honesty

John 1:16 is one of my favorite verses in the Bible: “From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” There is nothing small about Jesus. He has fullness of grace upon grace for our need upon need. Our risen Lord above, at this very moment, is not tired, and he’s not tired of you. You can dig deeper into his grace, deeper than you’ve ever dug before, and you will never touch bottom.

You will never ask too much of him. You will never ask too often. He will never respond to you with an eye roll and say, “Really? You again? This is the nineteenth time just today you’ve come back asking for more strength. What is your problem?” No, that’s what we’re like. Let’s never project onto him our own pettiness. He has fullness of grace for you, moment by moment. Go to him. Go back to him. Never stop going back to him. He is always happy to welcome you and help you — the real you.

Which raises another point. As you are going deeper into his endless grace, why not share that adventure with your people? Their lives are no carnival thrill ride, either. They are suffering too. So maybe there’s a Sunday coming up soon when you can risk transparency and vulnerability with your people at church. Maybe there’s an appropriate moment when you can go before them and say something like this:

Friends, I think this church needs a new pastor. And I’d like to be that new pastor. I want to change. I want to go deeper with Jesus. Please pray for me. And maybe you’d like to go there with me. I can’t right now foresee how it will all play out. But my status quo sure isn’t working for me. How about you? Can we together walk in newness of life, one step at a time? How about joining me here at the front of the church right after this service? Let’s give our need to the Lord in prayer. He will be glad to bless us!

A pastor who digs deeper into the grace of Jesus and risks honesty with his people — you can be that pastor. Go for it!

3. Watch God Flip Your Low Moment

One of the surprising themes in the Bible is “redemptive reversals,” to quote my friend Greg Beale. The point is, God moves in counterintuitive ways. Our grandiosity flops, and his “failures” save the world. Our wisdom flunks, and his “foolishness” outsmarts the experts. Our ministries hit the wall, and his “weakness” breaks through. In the Bible, it’s obvious. But in our lives, we often have to experience it before we really believe it.

When we start our ministry journey, we love Jesus, of course. But understanding him more deeply might go something like this: You answer his call, go to seminary, pastor a church, preach the gospel in a biblical, positive way, and people start lighting up! Well, most people light up. Others start freaking out. As the Lord puts his hand of blessing on your church, moving in and taking over — that is not what some people bargained for when they called you. And their unhappiness is your fault, of course. You are the new factor in “their church.” So you are the problem, even the enemy. And you’re thinking, “Wait, what?” But that’s just for starters.

Then a presidential election gets people riled up. Add to that, racist violence and tribal hatred and online rancor. Then pile on the pandemic and lockdowns and masks and vaccines and Zoom meetings and livestream preaching and more political craziness — and your pastoral capacities are beyond maxed out. All of which leads you, not to a dead end, but to a threshold: redemptive reversal.

“These hard years you’ve struggled through are not the end of your ministry. They can be the beginning of your real ministry.”

These hard years you’ve struggled through are not the end of your ministry. They can be the beginning of your real ministry. Your disaster is not the defeat of God’s purpose for you. It can be the fulfillment of God’s purpose for you. Your best days in ministry may still lie ahead. I know. The Lord did this for me. And I’m nobody special, just another pastor like you, like so many. But all of us serve a very surprising Savior.

If you will dare to believe it, defying every reason to give up, you will find yourself closer to the heart of God than you’ve ever been before. And for the rest of your life, you will have something to offer suffering people that is deep, profound, life-giving. You will offer them a hope that is convincing, durable, undefeatable — by God’s grace, for his glory alone.

God be with you, brothers, as you take your next step forward.

Jesus did not come into this world to save isolated individuals scattered here and there. He came to gather to himself a new community — a new kind of community, a beautiful community, set apart by God’s grace, here in a world driven by idolatry and seething with rage.

Of course, Christianity is more than communal. It’s also personal. For example, in Psalm 23, David uses the first-person singular pronouns I, me, and my seventeen times in six verses. And Psalm 23 never uses we, us, and our. But who would accuse David of having written a narcissistic psalm? The gospel rightly leads us into a personal relationship with Jesus, for his glory, our salvation, and the good of others. If our Christianity is not deeply personal, then it is nominal, which is unreal and no good to anyone.

“Jesus is enough to pull people closer together than we would ever be without him.”

But what I’m emphasizing in this article is this: original, apostolic, authentic Christianity is, in the wisdom of God, richly communal. Our relational solidarity together is not an optional frill for extroverts. How dare we trivialize what Christ values? “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25). It’s our overt love for one another that makes him more visible in the world today (John 13:34–35). Jesus is enough to pull us closer together than we would ever be without him.

The Communion of Saints

The New Testament repeats and deepens this emphasis. We are “joined together” as “a holy temple” in the Lord, “being built together into a dwelling place for God” (Ephesians 2:21–22). Together we embody his kingdom counterculture, a radiant “city set on a hill” (Matthew 5:3–14). We are like the parts of a human body, vitally interconnected (1 Corinthians 12:12–13). I could go on and on.

No wonder, then, that the Apostles’ Creed teaches us to declare, as essential to Christian orthodoxy, “I believe in the holy catholic church, the communion of saints.” If we are not pressing more deeply into this sacred reality together, then our Christianity is not just deficient; it is defective.

Sometimes I wonder about us. What keeps our generation of serious-minded, Reformed Christians from a more life-giving experience of community? Does our wonder stop at the familiar doctrines we keep returning to? Maybe it’s just me, but the relational vitality of real Christianity seems underdeveloped among us. Where are the Calvinists who are known for prizing and nurturing and guarding and enjoying and spreading the relational glories of our shared life in Christ?

Are lasting, deep, and honest friendships included in what we really, really care about? Good preaching, yes. But beautiful community? I don’t know a single Christian anywhere opposed to it. But then I wonder why we often seem to be busier with other concerns.

God Is More Glorified in Us

The central theme of Christian Hedonism is wonderfully stated with words many of us know and respect: “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.” So many of us embrace that vision, and we rejoice deeply in it.

“Christian Hedonism shines most brightly when it not only fills one heart but a whole room.”

But at a practical level, how does that bold conviction work best? We gain an insight when we focus on two words in there: us and we. Obviously, we wouldn’t be wrong to say, “God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in him.” But there is wisdom in articulating Christian Hedonism in terms of us and we. Consistent with the whole of authentic Christianity, Christian Hedonism shines most brightly when it fills not just one heart but a whole room.

Yes, delight in the Lord can be seen in me or in you as individuals. But it is seen more captivatingly in us together. When Christ is visible not only in you, and not only in me, but also in the relational dynamics between you and me, then we are more prophetic. Then we might compel the attention of our generation.

Where Weakness Belongs

Personally, I can’t imagine trying to walk this earthly path to glory except shoulder to shoulder with other fainthearted, weak-kneed stumblers like me. Here’s why. Sooner or later, we all discover that our hearts can go insane with impulses opposite to the gospel we revere.

And it isn’t preaching and books and articles alone that get us back on track. We need those helps, for sure. But a big part of our own theology is pointing us, over and over, toward the life and walk we can share together. How wonderful! It is so great not to be alone in our weakness and failures. God has mercifully located us in among his people, where aspiring Christian Hedonists who are sometimes lousy at Christian Hedonism still belong. Christian Hedonism doesn’t exist to keep the weak out; it exists to draw more sinners in — and keep them in, and keep them growing, by keeping them encouraged.

Here then is how all of us can grow. We come together, thanks to our God-given, grace-sustained belonging. We take it on faith, and we come on in. Then, again thanks to God’s grace, we dare to face our weakness. We dare to walk together in courageous honesty. Abstract ideals cannot help us, no matter how admirable they might be. But consistent honesty about our actual shortcomings does help.

Who Hears Your Confessions?

How do we start moving into that kind of community? James 5:16 leaps off the biblical page as a realistic path forward: “Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed.” That simple command raises a personal, practical question: To whom do I confess my sins?

Of course, if you and I are always fully glorifying God by being fully satisfied in him, then we don’t need James 5:16. But we do need it. We love Jesus, we delight in him, we long for him. He has won our hearts, way down deep. But sadly, we get complicated. Sometimes we get bored and “blah” with him, or restless to run from him, or proudly resentful toward him, and so forth. So much foolishness, so many contradictions, within! We are serious sinners. We are deeply flawed. We are pervasively weak. Aren’t we?

That is a big part of the reason Jesus put us in his church, where we’re all serious sinners, deeply flawed, pervasively weak. Let’s get real about it together, with concrete specifics, among the people we belong to in our own churches.

That We May Be Healed

I respect the realism of Martin Luther:

May a merciful God preserve me from a Christian Church in which everyone is a saint! I want to be and remain in the church and little flock of the fainthearted, the feeble and the ailing, who feel and recognize the wretchedness of their sins, who sigh and cry to God incessantly for comfort and help, who believe in the forgiveness of sins. (Luther’s Works, 22:55)

With Luther, we long for saintliness. But he understood that true saintliness gets traction in the fellowship of sinners who come out of hiding and start confessing. They live in James 5:16. It isn’t rocket science. It’s basically simple. We confess, we pray, and we start healing.
What chance does the holiness of Christian Hedonism have, then, if we hide our private failings while waving a public banner of theological correctness? Our own private willpower fails us. We need to get together, in our churches and small groups, and, with no coercion or shaming, come clean about how we aren’t living faithfully.

Then we can bow together. We can pray for one another. And the promise of Scripture is that we will experience healing, renewal, and joy, all to the glory of God.

As he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct. (1 Peter 1:15)

My hunch is that you are not a glib and shallow person. You are not the kind of person who would “pervert the grace of God into sensuality” (Jude 4). You are in earnest with the Lord, and you long to be holy. So do I. Indeed, what we deeply desire is nothing less than — may I come right out and say it? — sainthood.

But Christians like us — who care so sincerely about holiness and are reaching so diligently for its high standards — we face our own temptation. Let’s come right out and say that too. If others pervert the grace of God, we can “nullify the grace of God” (Galatians 2:21). We can have “a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge” (Romans 10:2). We can “go beyond what is written . . . being puffed up in favor of one against another” (1 Corinthians 4:6). How could it be otherwise? There is always, in this life, more than one way to lose our way!

Our very earnestness can become an opening to corruption, rot, and death. The great pastor and saint Robert Murray McCheyne warned his congregation, “Study sanctification to the utmost, but do not make a Christ of it. God hates this idol more than all others.” We should be serious about that too. So, let’s think about one way we can go so wrong, even while feeling we are so right.

Two Kinds of Holiness

Here is what we must understand. There are two kinds of holiness. One kind is Jesus’s holiness, and the other is our own self-invented holiness. Or to put it in other ways: There is the holiness of the Spirit, and there is the holiness of the flesh. There is the holiness from above, and the holiness from below. There is real holiness, and false holiness.

“Real holiness from Jesus is, of course, like Jesus.”

The difference is profound, even stark. But for us, it isn’t always easy to see the difference. Both kinds of holiness quote the Bible. Both talk about Jesus. Both go to church. Both are strict and firm and resolute. How then do these two holinesses differ?

Real holiness from Jesus is, of course, like Jesus. Look carefully at what our key verse actually says: “As he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct” (1 Peter 1:15). His kind of holiness does not simply insist on a high moral standard. Any sinner can turn over a new leaf, and with enough willpower align externally with biblical norms. But real holiness reflects Jesus, it thinks like Jesus, its instincts resonate with Jesus. Real holiness embodies Jesus.

Beauty of True Holiness

When our Lord said, “Follow me” (Mark 1:17), he wasn’t recruiting our moral strengths to advance his cause. His call was and is, “I will teach you a new way of perceiving everything, including morality. I myself am how you avoid sin and become holy.”

Jesus is why the Bible speaks of “the beauty of holiness” (Psalm 96:9, KJV). His holiness is humane, life-giving, and desirable in every worthy way. His holiness is both serious enough to warn and light enough to laugh (1 Peter 5:8; Zechariah 8:5); it’s firm and yet also freeing (Deuteronomy 5:32; Malachi 4:2). When we encounter our Lord’s real holiness in someone today, it’s both dignifying and delightful.

But false holiness from us is, well, just us. It’s us at our worst, because it’s us exalting our smug superiority, us reinforcing our divisive preferences, us absolutizing our narrow rigidity, and so forth. It’s us asserting ourselves, in the name of the Lord, so that we become more demanding, more grim, more shaming of others.

Great Divide

I’ll make it still worse. Because false holiness comes so naturally to us, it feels good. Our moral fervor feels moral. But it isn’t. Our moral fervor is immoral. In those moments when we have enough self-awareness to see our carnal holiness for what it is, we are peering into a pit of hell. In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis teaches us,

The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins. All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual: the pleasure of putting other people in the wrong, of bossing and patronizing and spoiling sport and back-biting; the pleasures of power, of hatred. For there are two things inside me, competing with the human self which I must try to become. They are the Animal self, and the Diabolical self. The Diabolical self is the worse of the two. That is why a cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But, of course, it is better to be neither. (102–103)

If this is so, and it is, then our pursuit of holiness is complicated. We might have expected a choice between two simple categories: sin versus holiness. But in reality, we are facing three categories: (1) sin, (2) our kind of holiness, and, (3) Jesus’s kind of holiness. And the great divide is not between (1) and (2). The great divide is between (2) and (3).

Heart of His Holiness

If our holiness is no more than that — our wretched rightness — then our holiness is a polished form of evil. The Pharisees proved that. They were morally earnest people and the archvillains of the Gospels.

“If our holiness is no more than our wretched rightness, then our holiness is a polished form of evil.”

The Pharisees hated Jesus, even while many sinners gravitated to him. Why? Because his kind of holiness has no pride at all. He isn’t pushy and strident and harsh. He really is “gentle and lowly” (Matthew 11:29). And that part of him isn’t a concession, moderating his holiness. It’s at the very heart of his holiness, because it is the very heart of Jesus himself. His kind of holiness melts in the mouths of all who humble themselves before him.

This distinction explains something that perplexed me for years. The most repulsive people I’ve encountered along the way are not the worldly party boys on their weekend binges; they are harsh “church people” with their high standards — and no forgiveness. But the loveliest people I’ve ever known have been sinners of many kinds who are turning from both their coarsened evil and their refined evil, and they are humbly opening up to Jesus and his grace for the undeserving.

When I hang out with them, Jesus is present. Sometimes I am moved to tears. But among genuinely holy people, I do not feel cornered, pressured, or shamed by their negative scrutiny. The real saints are too holy for that arrogant foolishness. And I hope you have a ton of friends like that!

Not Righteousness of My Own

It isn’t just our blatant sins that need correction. Our counterfeit holiness needs correction too. It doesn’t need intensification. A. W. Tozer wrote of his generation, “A widespread revival of the kind of Christianity we know today in America might prove to be a moral tragedy from which we would not recover in a hundred years” (Keys to the Deeper Life, 18). I believe that applies even more today.

What self-righteous holiness needs is not success, power, and prominence, but failure, collapse, and devastation. Then we can humbly receive Jesus, with the empty hands of faith, and enter into the profound experience Philippians 3:8–9 describes:

For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.

There are two opposite ways to change the world: our way versus the Jesus way. Our way is to get pushy, even violent. The Jesus way is to get humble, even overlooked. Both the extreme political left and the extreme political right in our nation today too often choose the foolish way. And any politics, without the beautiful humanity of the Jesus way, ends up making life worse for everyone.

Advent is a good time for all of us, whatever our politics, to slow down and stare at Jesus for a while. Doing so can only make life better for us and for everyone.

Change Through Swagger

The prophet Isaiah foresaw the only one who can change the world for the better — permanently. One of Isaiah’s favorite ways of describing Jesus was as “the servant of the Lord.” But right before Isaiah introduces him in chapter 42, he shows us another world leader in chapter 41. In the words of God himself:

I stirred up one from the north, and he has come. . . . He shall trample on rulers as on mortar, as the potter treads clay. (Isaiah 41:25)

“Advent is a good time for all of us, whatever our politics, to slow down and stare at Jesus for a while.”

God is claiming sovereignty over Cyrus the Great, the Persian warlord whose armies swept victoriously over the ancient world five centuries before Christ. Cyrus was one of this world’s typically successful tough guys. He stepped on people to get ahead (Isaiah 41:2).

And brutality is one way to change the world, I suppose. But does it work, really? One political overreach only sets in motion a pendulum swing in sharp reaction, back and forth, on and on. That’s our way.

Change Through Humility

Thanks be to God, the bullying and brutality all across the sad length of human history — our defunct strategies — are not our only hope. There is also the Jesus way of changing the world. Isaiah introduces this humble servant with words from God himself:

Behold my servant, whom I uphold,     my chosen, in whom my soul delights;I have put my Spirit upon him;     he will bring forth justice to the nations.He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice,     or make it heard in the street;a bruised reed he will not break,     and a faintly burning wick he will not quench;     he will faithfully bring forth justice.He will not grow faint or be discouraged     till he has established justice in the earth;     and the coastlands wait for his law. (Isaiah 42:1–4)

The key word is justice. We see it three times. Isaiah’s Hebrew is not easy to translate. The English word justice is accurate, but the Hebrew suggests more than legal correctness.

This word is used, for example, in the book of Exodus for the plan of the tabernacle (Exodus 26:30). God gave Moses a kind of blueprint for building the tabernacle, and it came out just right. That’s the word Isaiah uses. It tells us that God has a plan, a blueprint, for truly human existence. But we can’t achieve it by fighting to get our own way. “He will bring forth justice” the Jesus way — by serving us, as an egoless nobody.

He Heals the Bruised

He was not Jesus the Great, to outmatch Cyrus the Great. He came to us as the Lord’s servant, with spiritual power not of this world. Two thousand years ago, with no fanfare, no hoopla, Jesus began a change that will not stop until all his people are healed (Matthew 12:15–21).

A world conqueror with no threats, no saber-rattling, no big-deal-ness? Jesus lived so modestly that no one paid him much attention until he started performing miracles. Even then, his miracles were always to help someone else, never himself.

“A bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench” is a roundabout way of saying he will heal that bruised reed and will rekindle that faintly burning wick. Jesus restores broken people. He isn’t recruiting the heavy-hitters. He wants wounded people, exhausted people, people with doubts, people with weaknesses, injured by their own sins and by the sins of others. Those are the people he brings into his kingdom and serves.

Jesus is the only world leader who can say to us, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).

He Never Grows Weary

But can Jesus handle all this human need we bring to him? What about all my need, plus yours? Does he care enough and love enough and forgive enough, to make everything right again for everyone who comes to him? Look again:

He will not grow faint or be discouraged     till he has established justice in the earth,     and the coastlands wait for his law. (Isaiah 42:4)

“Today, the risen Jesus is caring for our needs, and he is not overwhelmed.”

He is gentle, but not weak like us. We start projects with high hopes. Later, we quit. But at his cross, the servant of the Lord took all our failures to himself as if they were his own. Today, the risen Jesus is caring for our needs, and he is not overwhelmed. He doesn’t need to get away from it all for a few days. Right now, as you’re reading this, Jesus is not tired, and he is not tired of you.

The Jesus Way to Change

A new world of perfect justice, created the Jesus way, is not an ideal we must attain. It is a promise of God that he will fulfill.

Even “the coastlands,” Isaiah says, will wait eagerly for his new way of life. And the coastlands were the most remote areas Isaiah could think of. The complete triumph of the gospel is not a hot trend to hit the big cities but leave out the boondocks. There’s just no pride in Jesus at all. His heart is moved for you, wherever you are.

This world will never change by our tribe, whoever that might be, finally winning so big that the victory can’t be reversed. Our tragic world has already begun to change for the better — the Jesus way. Here we find the delight of God, the Holy Spirit, humble modesty, gentle healing, faithful resilience — all of this in Jesus Christ crucified, risen, reigning, and returning.

Advent reminds us not to stake our hopes for the future on worldly strategies. Let’s dare to follow the Jesus way. It’s how his new world appears even now.

The end to which all church order, on the Puritan view, was a means, and for which everything superstitious, misleading, and Spirit-quenching must be rooted out, was the glory of God in and through the salvation of sinners and the building up of lively congregations in which people met God.

I have read sentences I can’t escape — and I don’t want to escape them. They have helped me in deep and lasting ways. I thank the Lord.

For example, in What Is an Evangelical?, Martyn Lloyd-Jones says, “Every institution tends to produce its opposite” (4). Decades later, that sentence still arrests my attention.

What is an institution? An institution is a social mechanism for making a desirable experience easily repeatable. Our church services are an institution. And it’s a good thing. What if we had to reinvent the ministry from scratch every Sunday? But a life-giving institution can drift into life-depleting institutionalization. That happens when the institutional delivery system itself becomes the goal, the end, the idol. Then undesirable experiences become absolutized and perpetuated.

And that horrible betrayal is not a distant hypothetical possibility. Every institution tends to produce its opposite. Haven’t we all seen evidence of this tendency in a church?

“A life-giving institution can drift into life-depleting institutionalization.”

Let’s keep our finger on the pulse of our churches, and keep realigning with reformation and revival. And for those of us who are pastors — who gave us the right to preside over dead and deadening religious institutionalization? Authentic Christianity is a revival movement. As long as the book of Acts remains in the Bible, which we ourselves call our final authority, we have every right in Christ to keep reaching for renewal in our churches.

His Work in His Way

Another sentence that is never far from my mind came from Francis Schaeffer in No Little People: “We must do the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way” (74). I believe this is the defining issue in our generation, and in every generation.

If we serve the Lord out of our own strengths, out of our own cool, even out of our own postmodern ironic self-mockery, we are not serving the Lord. We are insulting the Lord, while we flatter ourselves that we are serving the Lord. But if we will turn and humble ourselves, doing the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way, and in his way only, then the Lord himself will enter into our work with his glorious power.

It is wonderful when the Lord blesses the work of our hands. But it is altogether more wonderful when the Lord takes up the work in his own hands. The difference is publicly obvious. The glory of Christ will compel the attention of our world.

First Upheaval, Then Glory

The sentence I want to talk about most, however, follows the trajectory set by those first two sentences. In his book about the Puritan movement, A Quest for Godliness, J.I. Packer writes,

The end to which all church order, on the Puritan view, was a means, and for which everything superstitious, misleading, and Spirit-quenching must be rooted out, was the glory of God in and through the salvation of sinners and the building up of lively congregations in which people met God. (39)

What a compelling vision for ministry priorities and pastoral courage! Packer’s bold sentence reminds me of Isaiah 40:3–5, where we read,

In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,     make straight in the desert a highway for our God.Every valley shall be lifted up,     and every mountain and hill be made low;the uneven ground shall become level,     and the rough places a plain.And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,     and all flesh shall see it together,     for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

The logic of Isaiah’s prophecy can be summed up like this: “First some preparing, some rearranging, even some upheaval, and then the glory of the Lord will be revealed.” This world is not ready for the glory of the Lord. Too many of our churches are not ready for his glory.

The barriers against the historic display of his glory are firmly established in the trendy distractions of the world and in the dull routines of our churches. The only one fully ready for the display of Christ’s glory is Christ himself. Packer understood that. He understood that, for our churches to become filled with the felt presence and power of the risen Lord Jesus Christ, “everything superstitious, misleading, and Spirit-quenching must be rooted out.”

Pastor, have you accepted this prophetic call?

Would We Long for Less?

Yes, there are foolish and reckless ways to pursue this sacred purpose in a church.

It remains true, however, that every mountain of life-depleting institutionalization must be made low. It remains true that every valley of brokenhearted despair must be lifted up. It remains true that the Lord’s work must be done in the Lord’s way — by humble and constant prayer, by honest confession of sin and need, by living power coming down upon us from on high. And then the glory of the Lord will appear, more and more clearly, in this generation and the next. Would we dare settle for less?

“Pastor, God is patient. You can be patient too. Just be graciously unstoppable.”

As we pastors take these convictions to heart and redirect our steps to press forward, some wisdom from my dad can help. Dad used to say about pastoral leadership, “One step ahead of your people, and you’re a leader. Two steps ahead, and you’re a visionary. Three steps ahead, and you’re a martyr!” So the way of wisdom is deliberately to stay only one step, or maybe two, out ahead. After all, God is patient. You can be patient too. Just be graciously unstoppable.

Our Call Is Clear

With winsome persuasion from your open Bible, keep leading and guiding your church forward in this high, holy, joyous direction: the glory of God in and through the salvation of sinners and the building up of a lively congregation in which people meet God. What more could you hope for? It’s worth praying for. It’s worth working toward. It is worthy of your long-haul best. And it sure beats settling for a church that’s comfortably numb, with you picking up a monthly paycheck and holding out until retirement, don’t you think?

Yes, pastor, the obstacles are real. I know that. But I also know that your call is clear. And I know that God’s faithfulness, which has carried me all these years, will carry you too. So let this sentence from our friend J.I. Packer put a new heart in you! The Lord himself will be with you.