May the Lord be with you and bless you.

Spiritual COVID and Losing Your Taste for God
Trevin Wax creates a helpful comparison here. “The loss of taste was the weirdest part of COVID. Mealtimes lost their joy. I ate and felt sustained but didn’t enjoy good food anymore. Every morning, I made myself a cup of tea, but only out of routine since the effort was about as enjoyable as sipping hot water.”
You Need Doctrine and Life to Sail Properly
Mike Leake looks at our emphasis on false doctrine and points out that it is only one of the Bible’s big concerns. “False teaching is something which we are warned about. Doctrine does matter. But what I found is that a majority of warnings aren’t about right belief but about right living.”
A New Study Bible for the Next Generation
Ligonier Ministries has released their Student Edition of the Reformation Study Bible, designed especially with teens and young adults in mind. Its many new features include practical lessons from every book of the Bible, encouraging readers not only to be hearers but also doers of the Word. Today’s your final opportunity to save 5% on the Student Edition when you use code CHALLIES in the Ligonier store. (Sponsored Link)
Why Agree to Use Preferred Names but Not Preferred Pronouns?
I’m interesting to see how different people are adapting to new realities and attempting to face them biblically.
Whose Purpose in Your Suffering Will Prevail?
Randy Alcorn: “Satan intends your suffering for evil; God intends it for good. Whose purpose in your suffering will prevail? Whose purpose are you furthering? Satan attempts to destroy your faith, while God invites you to draw near to Him and draw upon His sovereign grace to sustain you.”
Why Do We Assume Western Theology is Superior?
“The kingdom of God is growing in Africa; are we sufficiently poor in spirit to be inheritors of it, together with our African sisters and brothers?”
Seven Factors for Missionary Homes
“Whenever new personnel come to the field, we end up discussing the pros and cons of the housing that’s been chosen for them.” This is the start to a surprisingly interesting article.
Flashback: The Most Difficult Time to Lead
The most difficult time to lead is when you have forfeited the respect of those who are meant to follow you, when your confidence, and theirs, is shattered. But this is also the most important time to lead. This is where a real man will, and must, lead.

Christ is the true bridegroom of the soul, the true physician of the heart, the real father of all his people. Let us show that we feel this by being unreserved in our communications with him. —J.C. Ryle

The plane reached the terminal in Recife, Brazil and the ground crew opened the door. I have been through more airports than I can count1 and find they all kind of blur together—jetways, corridors, escalators, luggage belts. But for some reason, I remembered this one from my previous visit. After exiting the secure area, I waited a few moments for my host to arrive, and then together we headed into the city and toward my hotel.

We were just minutes from the airport when we came across the scene of an accident. A motorbike was crushed and broken on the ground beside a transport truck. Nearby, a group of people was clustered on the sidewalk, surrounding someone or something. My eyes turned away from them and, in the roadway, spotted a child who was lying still. For reasons I will not describe, it was clear that he had been involved in the accident and clear that he had not survived. He was lying face down, alone, deceased. He could have been 6 or 8 years old, I suppose, but I did not let my eyes linger long enough to tell.

I looked away. I looked away because I could not bear to look at a tragedy as terrible as this one. But I also looked away because I knew the scene wasn’t mine to look at. I was just a stranger, a passerby, a foreigner. There was nothing I could do, nothing I could say, no way I could help. My host and I drove on in stunned silence, sick to our stomachs, and praying for that boy’s brokenhearted family.

This is something I have been training myself to do in life—to look away from what is not mine to look at. There is so much in life that does not concern me, so much that may draw my eyes or engage my curiosity but is not for me to gaze at or fixate on, not for me to ponder or form opinions about.

I consider this an application of modesty. When we talk about modesty we usually speak about the way people present themselves in public with their dress or demeanor, with their words or their actions. We speak about the immodest ways people may draw attention to themselves, whether to their bodies, their wealth, their power, or any other attribute. But no sin has just one side. If one side of modesty is refusing to display what should remain private, the other side is refusing to pay attention to what is not our concern. Sometimes that is a garment that is cut too deep or too short or an outfit that is meant to draw undue attention. But sometimes it is an accident or a scandal. Sometimes it is a sin or the devastation of a sin. Sometimes we ought to look away.

There are a few areas in life I am convinced God calls me to gaze at intently and to fix my mind upon. These are the issues of my own soul and sanctification, the issues of my own family, my own local church, my own community and country. These are issues that concern me, issues that are within my sphere of responsibility, issues I can do something about. But there are many issues that concern other people or other situations, that are outside my sphere of responsibility, that I can do nothing about. What I have learned is that these are the issues that threaten to distract or waylay me, that can take my attention away from those few things God has made me responsible for. These are the issues that can appeal to me for the basest and least sanctified of reasons.

I believe that God has called me to give the most of my attention to what actually concerns me and to what I can actually change. He wants me to give my attention to situations I can actually impact and people I can actually help. He wants me to give attention to what is my business and not someone else’s. That requires looking toward a few things and looking away from a great many. It requires discipline that I pray he grants me and helps me express.

1 Actually, that’s just stating it for effect. I keep meticulous records so know that I have been through precisely 126 airports.

Over the past few years, there has been a lot of attention given to the ways that pastors may abuse their parishioners. Such attention is appropriate and every pastor ought to prayerfully guard himself against such abusive behaviors. Every church leadership structure ought to build rigorous systems of accountability and follow biblical guidelines in the event they observe abuse among themselves or are accused of it by others.
My interest in this article, however, is related more to the misuse of the office than to the outright abuse of it. Having considered churches I have been part of through the years, having observed many pastors locally and at a distance, and having gazed into the sometimes ugly depths of my own heart, I’d like to offer three ways in which pastors may be tempted to sin against the people they are called to serve. We might consider these “respectable sins,” to borrow Jerry Bridges’ term—sins we can easily dress up as virtues.
(Note: I am a firm believer in a plurality of elders who have equal authority, and though I write this in the singular, it applies equally to a board or team of elders. That said, one of the benefits of a plurality of elders is that it ought to mitigate some of these concerns by placing a church under the leadership of several men rather than one.)
Three Sins
Pastor, you may be tempted to use your congregants as raw material for enacting your dreams or pursuing your passions. As a pastor, you are called to lead your church and this often involves casting vision and setting direction. We like and need visionary leaders! Yet you must be wary of the temptation to cast a vision that reflects your desires more than God’s or that leads in a direction that massages your ego more than it serves God’s purpose. If you are not wary, you may put your parishioners to work at fulfilling your mission rather than God’s. When this happens, the church members may think they are serving the cause of the Lord when really they are serving the cause of their pastor. Hence, you must carefully separate your personal passion projects from what matters to God or those objectives that make you feel successful from those that make God look great.
In the world of business, it may be appropriate for a founder or leader to call employees to rally around his vision or to serve his mission. But not so within the church, for the church already has a founder and it already has a mission. The members of the church are to be loved, valued, and cared for and then tenderly and patiently directed to serve in ways that foster God’s purposes. A church is not a collection of willing workers called to serve your cause, but precious children of God called to be devoted to his. Your mission must fit within God’s mission and your vision of success be consistent with God’s vision of success.
Pastor, you can use the church’s budget to serve your own purposes rather than God’s. You may be far too upright to enrich yourself from the church’s accounts, but just as you can misuse people to fulfill your own vision instead of God’s, you can misuse funds in much the same way. As the one who directs the church’s spending, you can insist it go toward expenditures that shore up your ego more than they build up the people of God or to expenditures that make you feel good more than they make God look great.
There may be good reason, for example, to purchase excellent audio-video equipment to record or broadcast your sermons. But it may also be that your vision of success is to look great on YouTube, and you may have directed church funds in a way that makes you feel successful. You aren’t exactly stealing, but you are still misusing the church’s funds. There is nothing easier than spending other people’s money, and it’s possible that all of those expenses do a lot for you but little for the church and less still for the Lord. Another example might be spending a lot of money to bring in a very famous preacher one Sunday, not because the church will benefit all that much, but because it makes you feel good to be associated with him—to have friends in high places. There are many expenditures that may be respectable, yet still be sinful.
Pastor, you can communicate standards of righteousness that reflect your ego more than biblical commands. You can make the church feel like they have honored God by doing—or dishonored God by failing to do—things that are more important to you than to the Lord. In other words, when circumstances threaten to make you feel like a fool or a failure, you may cajole the church members to do things that are beyond your rightful jurisdiction.
Perhaps a fundraising drive can serve as an example. You may be a bit embarrassed by how old or how small the church building is, so you press the members to give beyond what they usually do—even though those members are already giving willingly and cheerfully, each as the Lord has directed them. Yet based on your admonitions, they begin to feel good about giving more and guilty about failing to give more. But that standard is yours, not the Lord’s. You have no right to push them to give more than God has directed, especially when the cause is more important to you than to the God who cares so much more for the sanctuary of the heart than the sanctuary of any building.
Be careful what you tell people they “ought” to do and honestly assess why you feel it so strongly.Share
Or perhaps there is a ministry in the life of the church that means a lot to you but is not clearly prescribed in Scripture. Yet you feel like a failure if people do not show up in droves. For that reason you may press people to participate, using words like “should” or “ought” when you speak about it. Yet because the Bible offers no “should” for such a ministry, you are creating a standard of righteousness that flows from the idolatry of your heart rather than the purity of God’s. Be careful what you tell people they “ought” to do and honestly assess why you feel it so strongly.
What Matters To God
In light of such misuse of the office, it strikes me how little the Bible says to pastors about the ways they are to direct the people to serve within the church. That’s certainly true when compared to how much it says about the ways pastors are to tend to them and care for them. What matters to God is his people—the people he called, created, and redeemed. It is of the utmost importance to him that they are faithfully shepherded by pastors who are willing to deny themselves—to deny their own egos, their own desires, their own visions of success—for the sake of caring for what he values most.