Written by Kyle E. Sims |
Friday, May 13, 2022
The process should look like this: after receiving the ministerial data forms, the pulpit committee needs to pray through the names, see which ministers seem to line up best with their congregation, rank them in order, and then start with the first name on the list and pursue it until there is a yes or a no. If it is a no, you go to the next name on the list. My plea to pulpit committees is to pursue one man at a time. Continue with one candidate until there is either a yes or a no. Trust the Lord to guide you to whom He is calling to be your pastor.

The Bachelorette is a reality TV show where one single woman is put in a situation where she interacts with a larger group of potential suitors. She goes on dates, has group activities, and whittles down the group of men to one man. It seems strange to find a potential husband by dating twenty men at one time.
However, this show’s process of finding a significant other is not unlike the way many pulpit committees seek to find a pastor. Often, pulpit committees will talk with several candidates at one time, even interviewing multiple candidates at one time. There is no hard rule against this practice, but there is some wisdom for not doing it this way.
First, by dealing with multiple candidates simultaneously, you run the risk of splitting the pulpit committee between two or more potential pastors. Who wants to go to a new call knowing that some on the pulpit committee did not want you? Often, the division on the pulpit committee will become known in the congregation. This information can cause unnecessary division and conflict.
Second, pulpit committees who treat the calling of their pastor like a company hiring an employee run the risk of using human wisdom over God’s calling. You compare the candidates and look at their skills and abilities. This process can lead a pulpit committee away from the first and primary question, “Who is God calling to be our pastor?”  The question then distorts to become “Who do we want to be our pastor?”
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I want to be part of that impact to my flock. I want to make sure those who come to New Life don’t just hear the good news of Christ, but experience Christ through the good news. I want to shepherd by exhibiting our welcoming Savior, and break down any barriers that jeopardize belief in our welcoming Savior. In his first letter, Peter encourages elders to lead not from the stage but from among God’s people.

Every Sunday at the front entrance of New Life Bible Fellowship on you’ll see my Co-Lead Pastor, Greg Lavine. If you have a child, then you’ll enter through the side gate where I will meet you. Regularly, first time attendees will express surprise after the service, either to myself or another New Lifer, that a pastor greeted them at the gate. Churchgoers often say they’ve never been to a church where a pastor serves as a greeter.
Many perceive greeters to be the bottom rung of ministry: the place you put warm bodies, those who don’t have the ability to teach, play an instrument, or run technical equipment. I disagree. Greeters are the first person a guest connects with. Horst Schulze, co-founder of The Ritz Carlton Hotel Company made a massive impact on the service industry with his leadership principles. He recognized that a guest’s experience is most profoundly shaped by front-line employees. Whether a maid or a door keeper, you are a lady or a gentleman: deployed with real authority to serve the guest. I love how biblical Schulze’s vision is. The most important people aren’t those hidden away in corner offices, they are those on the front line. Those rescued by Christ are his servants, delighted to serve in whatever capacity he has for us, even as a door keeper (Ps. 84:10). When discerning who is called to serve as an elder, Paul tells Timothy and Titus that they must serve with hospitality.
You can say your church is friendly, but if your greeters are talking to one another and ignoring guests, your guests won’t experience its friendliness. You can say your church is welcoming to everyone, but if your greeters deliver non-verbal cues that someone doesn’t belong, your guests won’t feel very welcome. You can hope that families are valued, but if families have a confusing experience when they enter your campus, they will feel like second-class citizens.
At the average evangelical church, a guest will arrive, get out of the car, say hello to a greeter or two, find a seat, say hello to those sitting nearby, listen to the worship leader speak, hear the band play, and listen to the host pray and make announcements all before the pastor preaches.
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God makes himself known in the Bible. Scripture is a lot of things, but mostly it is divine autobiography. Sadly, not everyone sees God in Scripture; some see only an ancient religious text. But “when we truly believe in Christ, we recognize our deep dependence on the Word of God as uncontestable wisdom and truth.” When Jesus speaks in the Bible, “the sheep follow him, for they know his voice” (John 10:4).

Apologetics is often associated with the so-called proofs of God’s existence: ontological, cosmological, teleological—and already my head is spinning. But the quest to prove God has several problems. First, it ignores that all people already know God. Even animals can tell us that God created the world (Job 12:7­–10). Everyone knows God. Not everyone honors “him as God or gives thanks to him” (Rom. 1:21). Second, it risks confusing intellectual assent with faith. Saving knowledge of God is a heart-soul-strength-mind love for him (Luke 10:27). “Our knowledge of God can never be limited to that which is merely grasped cognitively or academically.”[1] Third, it wrongly makes human reason the conclusive factor. But creatures have no right to decide if there is a creator. When Job and his friends were judging God, they put themselves on the wrong side of the bench (Job 38:1–2; 40:1). Fourth, it underestimates humanity’s brokenness. Denying God gives way to futile thinking and darkened, foolish hearts (Rom. 1:21). Is such a person competent to judge God’s existence?
Christian apologetics is not responsible for proving God. Instead, it establishes “the existence of a God who is capable of being known by man and who has made himself known, not only in nature but in the revelations of his grace to lost sinners, documented in the Christian Scriptures.”[2] To do this, Christian apologetics relies on three primary truths that we must believe and make known to others.
God Is
That God exists needs not be proved. It is understood. Humans are hungry for God. We are restless for him. Whether we admit it or not, we were made to seek and find the God who is (Acts 17:27). And we know this. We sense divinity because we proceeded from the divine.  John Calvin taught that “There is within the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, an awareness of divinity. This we take be beyond controversy” since “God himself has implanted in all men a certain understanding of his divine majesty.”[3] J.H. Bavinck concurred: “There is in man an ineradicable intuition that there exists a Higher Being, a God, and that this God is concerned about his life… . Life continues to be… a dialogue with the mysterious Unknown, whose existence we can deny, but whom we can never wholly banish and expel from our thoughts.”[4]
Some people “deny that God exists, yet willy-nilly they from time to time feel an inkling of what they desire not to believe.”[5] Atheists establish God’s reality by venomously opposing the God they claim doesn’t exist. To borrow from Shakespeare, they protest too much. Only a fool denies the existence of God (Ps. 14:1). Only where such fools coercively challenged the corporate sense of divinity do we find any significant population that denies God.
Atheists want theists to bear the burden of proving God. But the existence of the Triune being who has created the world and still governs and preserves it doesn’t have to be proved. The onus rests on those arguing against God’s existence. But given human limitations, critics can never finish their search for the God they say does not exist.
The Bible “presupposes the existence of God in its very opening statement” and declares who he is and what he has done.[6] Paul seized on the Athenians’ sense of God to proclaim to them what they knew only vaguely (Acts 17:23). The confessions and catechisms of the Reformation acknowledge and announce the God who is. “We all believe in our hearts and confess with our mouths that there is a single and simple spiritual being, whom we call God.”[7]
But even if God is, and even if we can sense the existence of a deity, can he be truly known?
God Can Be Known
Knowing God is the most basic of all truths. “And without faith it is impossible to please [God], for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him” (Heb. 11:6). God is. And we can know enough about him to believe that he blesses faith.
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