Written by Nicholas T. Batzig |
Monday, April 15, 2024
The ultimate encouragement to help ministers press through the discouragements they experience when they face trials and challenges is that we were created, redeemed and called into ministry in order to bring glory to Christ. The cry of the ministers heart must ever be, “He must increase, I must decrease.” The ministries to which we have been called by God are not for our own glory. So often the discouragements that ministers feel are on account of a wrong view of ministry.

It is the common lot of those God has called into gospel ministry to become discouraged on account of the challenges and trials that come from serving as a pastor. I can almost always sense when a brother is weighed down by the pressures, demands, and discouragements that come with serving as a pastor of a congregation, because I have known them throughout my own pastoral service. The apostle Paul intimated the challenges that pastors face in the church when he added to the external opposition he experienced from the unbelieving world the care that he had for the church. He wrote, “apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches” (2 Cor. 11:28). So what are ministers to do when they feel overwhelmed by the discouragements of ministry? Here are a seven important biblical truths to keep in mind: 

Remember your need to be sanctified. Just as marriage helps us recognize our need for sanctification in areas that we might not otherwise have seen, so too does pastoral ministry. When the hardships and trials come, we must remember that we need to be sanctified in areas of our lives that we might not have otherwise seen were the trials and challenges not there. For instance, pastors might not realize sinful anger that remains in their hearts until some injustice takes place in the church and that anger begins to well up within. Pastors may not recognize their need to listen better or communicate better until some issue arises that helps them see their own sinful deficiencies. God may have placed this trial or challenge in your ministry to sanctify you as a pastor.
Remember your need to grow in wisdom. Just as we need sanctification, pastors need wisdom. A faithful pastor will want to grow as a wise shepherd of the flock. Solomon asked the Lord for wisdom above everything else because he wanted to pastor God’s people with great skill (1 Kings 3:6-9). I have, many times, sought out older and wiser men for counsel as I face trials and challenges in ministry; and, I hope that, to some degree, I am growing in wisdom as I press through one challenge and head into another. The experience gleaned from both successes and failures often brings with it a greater measure of wisdom. We learn this from the book of Ecclesiastes. There were things that Solomon learned from the experiences of life. Often the trials and challenges of ministry serve as the vehicle by which God grows ministers in wisdom.
Remember your insufficiency for ministry. The Apostle Paul repeatedly told the members of the church in Corinth that ministers are insufficient, in and of themselves, for ministry (2 Cor. 2:16; 3:5: 12:9). This was necessary because there were certain “super apostles” who cast aspersions on the Apostle Paul were boasting as if they were sufficient. When trials and challenges come, ministers feel their own insufficiency. In the midst of challenges with congregants, ministers remember that they cannot change the hearts of the people to whom God has sent them to shepherd. In many cases, the only course of action in a particular trial is go to the throne of grace and plead with the Lord to bring whatever we are facing to a felicitous end.

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The problem isn’t that there is too much individualism.  Pure individualism can still result in people seeking God because God is the source of their highest good.  Nor is the problem merely that people want to be happy because a consequence of knowing God is happiness and joy. The gender cult is simply an expression of the failure to know God and to know oneself.

Imagine two adults.  They are having an argument.  The argument is about whether or not one of them is a woman.  Adult #1 says, “I am a woman.”  Adult #2 says, “no, you’re not.”  By what authority is this dispute settled?  One answer is biology, chromosomes, and sex organs.  But for those in what I am calling the John Money cult, this is not a satisfactory answer.  They believe they are being authentic and true to themselves by determining their “gender” based on their sexual desires and how they feel. This is the viewpoint adopted by the vast majority of intellectuals today.  So what is a satisfactory answer?  What will finally settle this madness that has affected the crowd of “academics” in our day?  There is no doubt this is an embarrassing time in which to have lived when future generations are told our intellectuals didn’t know what it is to be a woman.  “Don’t kindergarteners know how to figure that out?” they’ll ask.
John Money the Cult Leader
For those who have studied the LGBTQ+ sexual philosophy, John Money is a well known pervert, or rather, a well-known name.  Although raised in a Christian home, he set out to make his life’s work overthrowing Christian sexual morality. He was a researcher at Johns Hopkins University working in the field of human sexual behavior.  Like Alfred Kinsey, his research was plagued with falsification, gross ethical violations, and more than the usual nonsense for a secular intellectual.  He is perhaps best known for having destroyed the Reimer family with no consequences from his peers. He went before the Lord for judgment in 2006. 
What is important about him for our question is that he made it so that kindergarteners can no longer answer, “who is a boy and who is a girl?”  How?  By inventing the terms “sexual orientation,” “sexual preference,” and “gender roles.”  These are now terms around which entire university departments are built.  At my university (Arizona State), and in my school, we have a “gender studies” program that promises to help the student do the following, “Gender, women and sexuality studies is an interdisciplinary field that involves analyzing societal issues through the lens of feminist theory. Through coursework and scholarly research, you’ll gain critical knowledge and a deep understanding of feminist theory and practice. You’ll also have the opportunity to challenge conventional wisdom about gender and explore many new perspectives.”  All of that for only 15K a year.  What will the student do with that degree? The first job recommendation is “advocate.”  
The Gender Cult
What are these “new perspectives?”  Money, like Kinsey, taught that human sexual development begins identity formation in each person from the time of birth.  Both did unethical sexual research on children and neither faced discipline, in fact, they are praised as heroes.  Their new project is that there is this thing called “gender.”  Here is where the kindergartner’s expertise is called into question.  The kindergartener knows how to determine sex.  It is biological.  But does the kindergartener know how to identify gender?
No.  But here’s the secret.  Nor does anybody else.  This is why Jordan Peterson told Matt Walsh, in “What is a Woman?” that gender is a completely unhelpful term in research.  It cannot be measured and it is imprecise.  Instead, Peterson recommends “temperament” which can be measured.  A woman can have a temperament like some men, and a man can have a temperament like some women.  The biological facts aren’t in question, and the word “gender” is useless.  The solution to a man with a temperament like some women is not to cut him up, it is to help him understand how to use that temperament in pursuit of the highest good.
The Cult’s Failed Solution
The failed solution of “gender” remains with us because it has the features of a cult.  What is different about this cult is that it is State funded and taught in all secular and many Christian universities.  The United States has had its share of cults.  This is the first time that they are given unquestionable status in the university and almost limitless resources.  In other essays, I have written about the Marxist cult and its hold on the intellectuals of our days.  This gender cult is a close second.  They go hand-in-hand so that future scholars will undoubtedly link them.
But why?  They share a common problem and common parameters of acceptable answers.  The problem is the unfairness of life and the unhappiness this causes.  The acceptable parameters are that any solutions must affirm the basic goodness of the individual.  The explanation is that the good individual only becomes corrupt due to human society.  For the Marxist, this starts with the invention of private property.  For the gender cultist, this begins with rules about different roles in life.  These rules cause the suppression of the individual’s desires.  Suppression leads to inhibition and potentially to neurosis and psychosis.  
The solution to the dangers of suppression is to just stop it.  Be yourself.  Be brave, have pride, and tell the rule-makers of your society to go pound sand.  This message resonates with a culture that is already enamored with the individual and the search for happiness.  Recently, Carl Trueman wrote about this, however, he was repeating the insights of Allan Bloom’s “The Closing of the American Mind.”  Bloom traced the conflict between the Lockean and the Rousseauean streams of thought in America.  The Rousseau branch teaches that the individual is good and corruption is due to society. 
We know this has had many implications in American thought and life.  For instance, criminals are no longer immoral but are forced into crime by need and environmental factors.  Our pop culture praises the villain (pirate, vampire, adulterer, thief) and portrays pastors as setting out to ruin everyone’s fun (Footloose).  Enter the drag queens reading to children at the public library.  Why do you care if a man wants to dress in drag and read to children?  Let him live his dream.
Why Do We Care?
One reason to care is that psychology tells us a healthy mind is one that is integrated with reality.  If our friend tells us he is surgically removing four inches from his shins because he is the Emperor Napoleon, it is our duty as friends to help him reintegrate back into reality. He isn’t Napoleon.  Loving your friend means telling him he isn’t Napoleon and should never carve up his body to try and look like Napoleon. So why do we play this game with gender?  Why is thinking you are something enough to make everyone else be forced to agree you are?  
There have been many useful answers.  An overemphasis on individual happiness.  A short-sighted consumerism culture that values immediate gratification.  An over-sexed society that is always looking for new ways to be perverse.  However, I’m a philosopher and a pastor so I will give a different answer. 
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All is not well in the way worship is conducted in the PCA. Even as observance of the Lord’s Supper becomes more frequent in our churches, it seems that errors in its conduct multiply. These include the bizarre and biblically-unfounded practice of intinction (where the bread is dipped in wine and the two actions of the supper become confused), distribution of elements by unordained persons and even children, and so-called “young child communion” where some churches regularly admit children as young as four years old to the table. 
The state of worship in the Presbyterian Church in America is arguably better than it has ever been, at least as far as liturgy goes. More churches now use recognizably Reformed liturgies than at any point in the denomination’s history. These are liturgies that include the biblical elements of worship—they are not just the standard evangelical format of  “30 minutes of singing/30 minutes of preaching.” What may be lacking though are the hard-to-define (but essential) qualities of reverence and awe. What may be trending is leadership of worship that does not comport with or support presbyterian polity. And what may be chipping away at the foundations of proper worship are errant and novel practices, mostly regarding the Lord’s Supper.
Granted, most PCA churches employ liturgies that have more in common with those of the Continent rather than those of the holy presbyterian isle, Scotland. A standard PCA liturgy looks something like this, with minor variations in order and terminology:
Call to worshipHymn or psalmInvocationLord’s PrayerConfession of sinDeclaration/assurance of pardonConfession of faithSinging of the doxologyPrayer and offeringPastoral prayerScripture readingHymn or psalmScripture readingSermon (with prayer before and after)Lord’s Supper (weekly or monthly, bookended by additional prayers)Closing hymn or psalmBenediction
This is scripturally-regulated worship made up of biblical elements. The dialogical pattern of God speaking by his Word and his people responding in prayer, praise, and confession is obvious. There are many prayers and lots of scripture. Rearrange the order, change a term or two, and you have a liturgy that is common not only to most PCA churches, but also to most of the confessional churches affiliated with the North American Presbyterian and Reformed Council (NAPARC) and, indeed, to most conservative Reformed churches the world over for the last five centuries. But otherwise-solid liturgies may be undermined by things done, left undone, or done improperly—additions, omissions, and errors.
What are some examples of tangible and intangible things which have been added to liturgies, to the detriment of simple, biblical, Spirit-and-truth Reformed worship? We would propose the following:
First, an overly horizontal, man-centered ethos may be reflected in informal or casual approaches to the service, which could include announcements or presentations that break up the dialogical-biblical flow and tone of the service. These might focus on service opportunities or might amount to promotional pitches complete with video presentations or distribution of materials. Fellowship times in the middle of the service (sometimes called “passing of the peace” or even “halftime.”) might succeed in establishing a familiar or homey feel even as they distract from the holy purpose of worship. Children’s activities or the departure of children from the service at some point may also prove disruptive. Other unwelcome additions include showy musical performances, loud or complex musical accompaniment or leadership (which may also dominate visually as a central focus),  or other inappropriate visual elements. Too often, we also find whole seasons imported to the simple, ordinary,  and biblical Reformed tradition, like Lent and Holy Week. Somewhat related are the eclectic additions of the Anglican-attracted, which includes complicated and variable clerical garb and vestments, crossings, bowing at prescribed times, or turning to face a cross, bible, or procession. Finally (and possibly most destructive) we may bring “the warfare of the world…into the house of God,” as J. Gresham Machen lamented in the 1920s. In his day the imported social and political issues included “things that divide nation from nation and race from race…human pride…the passions of war.” Little has changed in the last 100 years since Machen published Christianity and Liberalism. The battle for spiritual worship continues.
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