With the end of the calendar year quickly approaching, soon the season of self-reflection, life assessment, and New Year’s resolutions will be upon us. In addition to commitments to lose weight, spend more time with family, and take control of one’s schedule, many Christians will seek to recommit themselves to their Christian walk. Such recommitment is good, and if done wisely can take one’s Christian life to a new level of vibrancy and faithfulness.

As Christians, we are absolutely responsible for our growth in Christ, yet entirely dependent upon the Holy Spirit to foster such growth. This duality, one of the great paradoxes of the Christian life, is captured in Paul’s exhortation to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who is working in you, enabling you both to desire and to work out His good purpose” (Phil. 2:12–13).

Thankfully, God has made plain how we are to pursue Godliness and how he works in us to this end. In fact, the secret to the Christian life is there is no secret. God has given his children spiritual disciplines like prayer, worship, and especially, Bible intake to nurture our sanctification.

Why Bible Intake?

While all the spiritual disciplines are commended, Bible intake is the most foundational and most urgent. It is the indispensable discipline because it informs, fosters, and enables the other disciplines. For example, the Bible teaches one how to intercede, thus informing the discipline of prayer. The Bible presents the person and work of Christ, thus informing evangelism. The Bible is the Word of God, thus enabling worship through the reading and preaching of it. Likewise, the Bible similarly informs, fosters, and enables each of the spiritual disciplines, giving it a singular status.

The preeminence of Bible intake is rooted in the nature and status of Scripture itself. God chose to reveal himself to his people through his Word. The Bible is self-described as being “like a hammer that pulverizes rock” (Jer. 23:29), and as a word that “will not return to Me empty” (Isa. 55:11). Moreover, it makes binding, theological claims of itself, declaring, “All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16).

Evangelical Christians embrace the verbal, plenary inspiration of Scripture.
“Plenary” emphasizes the totality of Scripture, and “verbal” underscores that the words themselves—not merely the authors’ or their thoughts—are inspired. Since all of Scripture is inspired of God, it is true, trustworthy, and authoritative.

Bible intake, though singular in importance, is practiced through six primary steps. Practice these six simple steps and see your Christian life revolutionized.

Hearing the Bible is the most basic and common form of Scripture intake. It occurs when one sits under the ministry of the Word, whether preached or taught, received in person, or through other mediums. Jesus pronounced blessing upon those who hear the Word of God and obey it (Luke 11:28), and Paul assigned the “public reading” of Scripture as an indispensable part of public worship to ensure God’s people heard God’s Word (1 Tim. 4:13).

Reading the Bible, at the personal level, is perhaps the most essential form of Bible intake. For the Christian, nothing should displace daily Bible reading. This includes both the macro-level of reading through books of the Bible, and the micro-level of reading passages and verses repeatedly for greater familiarization and specific application.

Studying the Bible gives the Christian depth and strengthens his knowledge of God, thus enabling him to more ably teach and defend the faith. Every believer is called to be a Berean, searching the Scriptures and weighing teachers and doctrines by them (Acts 17:10–12). Such is expected of a disciple—or learner—of Christ, and the most faithful disciple will “be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who doesn’t need to be ashamed, correctly teaching the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15).

Memorizing the Bible is another proven method of Scripture intake. In so doing, one hides God’s Word in his heart, so as not to sin against Him (Ps 119:11). Moreover, it follows the pattern of the Bible itself. Whether it is Jesus quoting the Scriptures to Satan or Paul reasoning from the Old Testament to his Jewish interlocutors, the Bible prioritizes “treasur[ing] Your word in my heart so that I may not sin against You” (Ps. 119:11).

Meditating on the Bible sounds like a mystic practice to some, but it is a biblical concept and a distinctly Christian activity. In fact, God links meditating on his Word with obedience and blessing (Josh. 1:8, Ps. 1:1–3). Meditating on God’s Word is as simple as intentionally reflecting on a passage of Scripture, directly applying its truth to your life, and letting it marinate in your heart. Time devoted to lingering over Scripture is time well spent, as it surfaces implications for one’s life and enables the living and active Word of God to convict of sin and inform the conscience (Heb. 4:12).

Praying through the Bible flows naturally from Scripture meditation. Giants of the faith, such as Martin Luther, Charles Spurgeon, and especially George Mueller made a habit of praying through Scripture. The Psalms especially lend themselves to prayer. In the Psalter, one finds the full range of human emotion, gains a panoramic view of God’s Work, and encounters the full pallet of biblical truth. Additionally, praying the Scriptures helps assure one’s prayers are biblically sound and most pleasing to God.

Conclusion

Though the Western world is largely Bible-saturated, many professing Christians in the West ironically live Bible-depleted lives. This is a tragic occurrence, but not perplexing. The answer to the problem is not hidden, neither is it complex. Christians are called to be people of the book—the Bible—and therefore must prioritize the spiritual discipline of Bible intake.

Not everyone can preach a sermon, lead a Bible study, or persuasively advocate for biblical truth, but every believer can and must engage in Bible intake. In as much as the Christian life has a silver bullet, it is Bible intake. Therefore, practice these six simple methods of Bible Intake and see your Christian life revolutionized.

As we would think about the semester before us and that to which Christ has called us, I want to draw our attention to John 15:1–11. I have entitled this sermon, “Abide in Christ: Priority One for Every Gospel Minister.”

I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. You are alreadyclean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples. Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.

{Prayer}

Convocation unmistakably symbolizes a new day for a seminary. There is something special about an event such as this. This is something special for us who are here. The formality of the service, the academic regalia, historic references, and the full institutional attention on this chapel service, on this place and time, reminds us that there is something unique about this day. Academic convocations are rooted in the medieval university. It is a sign of marking the beginning of an academic year or academic event. It is a sign of consecration, of dedication to that which the Lord is calling us. It is to formally ask the Lord’s blessing.

Perhaps more than anything else, convocation is an academic expression. It is an academic reminder that we intend to love the Lord our God with our minds, to renew our minds, to give our best intellectual efforts to glorify God. It is an academic event first and foremost, and this is an academic day. It starts an academic semester, and we know that theological education is first and foremost an academic endeavor. Yet, if you think about it, there is a certain inequality in what we do. There is a certain inequality in the ministry to which this seminary has been called, and a certain inequality in that we invest in you, the students, because the seminary is primarily of the mind, of reading, of learning, of memorizing, of equipping oneself to speak, of preaching and instructing, of counseling, of instilling the word of truth in others. Though this season is primarily of the mind, the ministry seems to be primarily of the heart. You give your life to the people of God and to the lost. Your affections are given to Christ, and you are to serve him with all that you are. The inequity is this: virtually every metric a seminary has to gauge your progress and grade your growth is academic, intellectual; whereas, the primary measurement of ministry faithfulness is the heart, the motive, the life, the affection, the spirit.

Now I do not want to create this great chasm of distinction between the two because that is not true, and we know it not to be. Our growth in Christ begins with the mind and penetrates to the heart, so I do not want to set up this vast dichotomy between the two. I do want to remind us and charge us this morning that we must be careful to tend our hearts day-by-day as we are here, all the while also tending our minds. The world is littered by former pastors, former ministers, former missionaries, former teachers of God’s Word who no longer serve in that capacity. Rarely are they formerly ministers, formerly missionaries, formerly pastors because of doctrinal drift, though that happens too often. Often they leave the ministerial ranks because of some scandalous sin that brings reproach on the name of Christ and harms the church of Christ. But most of those who forsake their call to ministry and find themselves no longer serving the church and the gospel do so not because they have embraced theological liberalism, and not because they have committed some scandalous sin; most do that because they simply wither away. They have failed to tend their own hearts, failed to tender afresh the call of God on their lives, failed to engage in the spiritual disciplines, failed to fill their souls and nourish their spirits, and their hearts grew cold because they failed to abide in Christ.

My charge to you this morning is of course an academic charge: that you do your very best in the semester ahead, class-by-class, day-by-day to glorify Christ with your mind and to honor him by working hard. And I pray that you make “A’s” in a lot of them. But my super-abundant prayer is this: if you leave this place and have to choose between an “A” in your head and an “A” in your heart, that any day of the week you choose an “A” in your heart. My prayer is that you leave here more mature in Christ, more committed to following Christ, more committed to serving his gospel from the overflow of your heart, and that you be careful stewards thereof. As we celebrate academic convocation and we mark a new semester, let us give our minds to the academic task of theological education; but let us here, in this time and place, renew our commitments to love the Lord our God with all of our hearts as well as all of our minds.

I want to call us this morning to John 15:1–11. I want to remind us this morning of the stewardship we have over our spirits, over our hearts, and that priority number one of a faithful gospel minister is to abide in Christ. Now you may recall where we are—in the middle of this Upper Room Discourse in the Gospel of John. And those of you who know your New Testament and this gospel well, know that there are seven great “I Am” statements in the Gospel of John. In John 6, Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life.” In John 10, he declared, “I am the good shepherd.” In John 10, he declared, “I am the door of the sheep.” In John 11, Jesus declared, “I am the resurrection and the life.” In John 12, he declared, “I am the light of the world.” In John 14, he declared, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” And now the seventh and final “I Am” statement is John 15: “I am the true vine.” As Jesus utters these statements in the gospel, they are not veiled, subtle references to his deity. Every Jewish girl and every Jewish boy from childhood had been told of the great story of Moses facing the burning bush. And where the Lord spoke to Moses through that burning bush and commanded him to go to Pharaoh and command Pharaoh to let his people go. Moses asks, “Who do I tell Pharaoh that I have been sent by?” And the Lord told him, “You tell him that I Am who I Am sent you.” So Jesus adopts this title for himself in the Gospel of John throughout his earthly ministry, and every time he does so, his Jewish hearers get bug-eyed because they know exactly what he is doing. He is equating himself with the Father, taking the form, taking the title, of deity.

The theme in the passage before us in John 15 is clearly fruit-bearing and abiding in Christ to bear fruit. We see it in verses two, four, five, eight, and 11. All of this culminates in joy: joy for the believer, joy for the disciple. And so the summary of these verses is that as we abide in Christ, we bear much fruit, and as we bear much fruit in Christ our joy is completed. But I want us to think about this not merely as a devotional exercise, but as a ministerial evaluation. See these verses with me.

Notice first in verses 1–3 that the Father’s purpose is for you to bear fruit. This is not reserved for some other person in some other place. It is not reserved for you post-seminary degree when you think you will have more time. You will not. Trust me. It is not reserved for you in some other stage of life after your kids are grown or out of the house, or your baby is our of diapers, or some other position in life. No. Life gets busier. Ministry gets busier, and if you do not root yourself in abiding in Christ during this season, have no assurance that you will in some other season. Note the Father’s purpose is for you to bear fruit. Jesus says, “I am the true vine.” Not the nation of Israel, “I am the true vine and my Father is the vinedresser.” The viticulturist, we might say. “And every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away. And every branch that bears fruit, he prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.” Jesus states so very pointedly his and the Father’s role. There is a collective trinitarian concern and enterprise of seeing disciples of Christ grow and bear fruit—Jesus being the vine, the Father being the vinedresser who actively engages in pruning through the ministry, and the work of the Holy Spirit so that we might bear more fruit. Verse 2 tells us he “takes away,” which I take to mean that he lifts up. He prunes. He disciplines. A part of your season in seminary is to be pruned and is to be disciplined. Please hear me this morning: the point is not that you push to the sidelines of your life your academic commitments. No, the point is that as you give the best of your minds to them, there is enough self-discipline in Christ to push to the very center of your attention and to the center of your concerns that you first and foremost abide in Christ and bear fruit.

How does our Father do this? How does he prune us? Well, you know how. You know your New Testament. In Hebrews 12, we are reminded. The author of Hebrews tells us beginning in verse 5:

And have you forgotten the extortion which addressed to you as sons? My son do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by him. For those whom the Lord loves he disciplines, and he scourges every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you endure. God deals with you as with sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline. But if you are without discipline of which all have become partakers, when you are illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we have earthly fathers to discipline us and we respected them. Shall we not much rather be subjected to the Father of spirits and live? For they discipline us for a short time, as seems best to them. But he disciplines us for our good, so that we may share his holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful. Yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.

What am I saying? I am saying this: the Lord’s preeminent concern for you is not registered on your transcript. It is registered in your character, in your life and in the faithfulness thereof, and in the way you rightly reflect and bring honor and glory to his holiness and his ministry as evidenced through you. The Father’s purpose for you is to bear fruit.

Notice secondly, in verses 4–5 that the Son’s power enables you to bear fruit. Jesus says, “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.” I love the personalization of this call in verse 4. Jesus is saying, “Abide in me and I in you.” When we are converted, the Holy Spirit takes up residence in our lives. We are in Christ, established in him formally, legally in a sense, and before him made right. But also I love the tenor of verse 4, the personability of this, “You abide in me, and I in you.” The metaphor he offers is that the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in me. Get that. Your ministry, your Christian life—the faithfulness of your ministry and the fruitfulness of your ministry—is tethered to your abiding in Christ.

I did not say the success of your ministry. I said the faithfulness of your ministry and the fruitfulness of your ministry because those are the two biblical metrics that ultimately matter. Are we faithful to the Lord and to his word? And are we fruitful in that effort as he so blesses? Jesus says we cannot be unless we abide in him. To abide means to grow in Christ, to practice the spiritual disciplines of prayer, Bible study, devotion, and to find our joy in Christ, our hope in Christ, and our growth in Christ. There is a certain built-in challenge to all of this, we confess, because as those who are in ministry in the year 2013 and the years going forward, you will have a to-do list longer than your day most any day of your life in ministry. You have sermons to prepare; you have counseling sessions to undertake; you have meetings to attend; you have fires to put out; you have things that must be done; you have urgencies imposed on you by others that you have no control over.

There is a sense in which it sounds as though I am speaking out of both sides of my mouth because we want to give ourselves and expend ourselves to the great call, to the needs of the church, to live and labor for the church, but the irony is that that very ministry can preclude us from abiding in Christ. The irony is that there is a troubling barrenness in a life of ministerial busyness. Jesus would speak of this so very clearly, and so very poetically in Luke 10, when we are told of this encounter between Mary and Martha:

Now as they were traveling along, he entered a village and a woman named Martha welcomed them into her home. She had a sister called Mary who was seated at the Lord’s feet, listening to his word. But Martha was distracted with all of her preparations, and she came up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all of the serving alone? Tell her to help me.” But the Lord answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things, but only one thing is necessary. For Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”

If we all were to drink a vile of truth serum, we all would confess to having moments—and perhaps even patterns—of being “Marthas.” The troubling reality is that virtually all of the measures in the contemporary church that evaluate ministerial effectiveness require one to be a Martha to attain it. As you undertake your ministry, now in seminary and as you seek to serve Christ throughout the duration of your life, you will have to combat that day after day after day because not only does the world and our flesh press in on us to be Marthas, but the requirements of the church and the call of the ministry seem to as well. If we are not careful, we could build an institution that cultivates and graduates class after class after class of ministerial Marthas preparing for class after class after class, preparing for Bible study after Bible study after Bible study, sermon after sermon, attending ministerial event after event, facilitating, fostering, cultivating, creating a whole generation of ministerial Marthas. I am a man of activity. I will certainly confess that. I love productivity. I love doing things where I can see progress. That is how I’m wired. So I know this temptation as well as any of us. The point is not to become irresponsible or negligent or to excuse laziness under the auspices of the Bible. No, the point is to press to the very front of our life’s to-do list and our life concerns to be first and foremost rooted and growing in Christ; to first and foremost engage in those disciplines that produce eternal fruit—that bring about growth in Christ and that whatever we do—we do not let our studies nor our ministries keep us from the one we are ostensibly serving—Jesus Christ.

Notice with me thirdly verses 6–11. Your passion should be to bear fruit, and we are given here several references as to why. First, notice that verse 6 evidences our eternal security: “If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned.” Now, to be quite frank, verse 6 is something of an unclear verse, and many people have many interpretations. One of the basic rules you will learn in your hermeneutics courses here is that when you come to a knotty verse that is difficult to interpret, interpret the less clear verses in the Bible by the clearest verses. We know from other places like John 10, Romans 8, and 100 other places that one cannot lose his or her salvation. At the same time, though, we know that as we grow in Christ, and as we evidence the marks of conversion, as we see the fruit of the Spirit exude from us, we gain further confidence in our eternal security. We do not earn it, but we demonstrate it. So I say to you this morning, if you truck through life and through ministry as one would define it without seeing the fruit of the Spirit and the fruit of Christ in your life, do not think because you have a seminary degree that you know for certain that you are going to heaven when your time on this earth is done.

Notice also in verse 7 that our passion should be to bear fruit because of a vibrant prayer life: “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” Of course this is not some promissory note, but it is a realization that as our hearts are Christ’s and Christ’s heart is ours, then our minds are tuned to Scripture; our minds are tuned to Christ. As we think like Christ, we desire like Christ, and our ambitions are like Christ, then there is a harmony of our will and a harmony of our desires.

But notice verse 8. This is a big verse to me. I have thought about this much as we would think about our time together this morning as we abide in Christ and we bear fruit: “My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples.” Each one of us in the room today is a steward of the glory of God. The president of this seminary is. Everything I do and do not do, say and do not say, preach and do not preach, and live and do not live reflects to a greater or lesser degree, and to a more or less helpful degree, the glory of God. But take no refuge in my bearing that burden because you bear it, too. Everything you do or do not do, teach or do not teach, instruct or do not instruct, learn or do not learn, live or do not live, bear by way of fruit, or do not bear, you are a steward of the glory of God, and you best glorify God in your life and in your ministry as you abide in him and reflect that fruitfulness. Do you realize that your ministry is first and foremost dependent upon your character? First Timothy 3:1–7 lists the qualification of the office of an elder or pastor. It is a rundown in character traits up to which your life should measure. It is not a one-time threshold to be passed. It is an ongoing accountability to be maintained with Scripture. Not only that, though. As you glorify God and as you bear the fruit of abiding in Christ, and as you draw near to him, you will have the personal capital and credibility to lead others spiritually. Your life will radiate the joy of Christ and the love of Christ, and so others will want to follow your spiritual leadership. Not only that, I dare say that the success of your ministry will be dependent upon, first and foremost, the character that you have cultivated through abiding in Christ.

Robert Murray McCheyne would famously say, “The greatest need of my people is my personal holiness.” As God has a minister who is holy and entirely set apart to him, it is an awful weapon in the eyes of Satan. Most urgently, the glory of God is at stake, as verse 8 reminds us. Your ministry, your time here, your life in Jesus is a little repository of the glory of God. The church is plagued by hypocrites who rob God of his glory and slip in the little things like forsaking John 15 and the call therein. Slippage in the little things often leads to calamitous falls. The glory of God is at stake. Moreover, as you abide in Christ, you will be able to avoid what the New Testament presents to us a Pharisaism. Jesus would rebuke the Pharisees as being whitewashed tombs, being appropriately clean on the outside, but dead and rotten and stenchy on the inside. The ministry is well populated with such people. Let us not add to their number in this place.

I would say, finally, as we think about the glory of Christ in these things, there is a stewardship that rests on you—not only in the lofty ways of the glory of Christ, and not only in the personal ways, as pastors and missionaries have invested in you and to you—but I would say currently, as you are here, you are seated in seats that others could be seated in. There are 16 million Southern Baptists around this country and around this world who have paid the bulk of your expenses to be here. Not only this day, but have been doing so for decades and have been building an infrastructure and a system and all that we have here. They have invested so that people like yourselves could learn and graduate as quickly as possible to go take the gospel to the nations and go and minister for the church. So in a very real way I bear, and you bear, a stewardship to all of these many millions of Southern Baptists from times past and times present who have made all of this possible. So honor them through your testimony being represented in Christ. Jesus says in verse 8, “My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples.”

Notice also though, as we abide in him and as our passion is to bear fruit, we also will enjoy the love of the Father and the Son. Notice verses 9 and 10: “Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.” The point is not one of legalism, that to the degree that we abide in him we are moving in and out of the domain of his love. No. I think Martyn Lloyd-Jones helps us to understand this. He would talk of the analogy of a father walking on the beach with his child, or walking down a road with his child. There is always proximity there. He is holding the child’s hand and expressing affection to the child, but there are particular seasons of sweetness where the father may lift up the child and carry him. The father may lift up the child and love on him as they walked. I think that is what we are getting at in verses 9 and 10. Not that one moves in some formal way in or out of the love of the Father. No, we are protected and loved by him for all of eternity if we are in him. But the sweetness and the rightness and the full sense of that love we know as we draw close to him. So much so, that in verse 11 Jesus tells us that as we abide, our joy may be made full: “These things I have spoken to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be made full.” Be a happy minister. Let the joy of Christ overflow from your life. We are too privileged a people not to be. As we reflect upon what we have through Christ—what we gain through him, the double call upon our lives—we have been too richly blessed not to be a happy people. We need happy warriors who are happy combatants. As you serve the cause of Christ and fight the forces of darkness—as you do so with courage, with bravery, and with conviction and as you are willing speak prophetic words that are unwelcome to a culture declining into further darkness—be able to do it with the joy of Christ in your heart. As you abide in Christ, you absolutely can.

My great concern this morning is not so much that we graduate students who do not have it right theologically. Of course, that can always happen. Some people can pass through here and study for years but still leave crooked theologically. But by-and-large, we can control that because we have a confessional conviction. I know what our faculty signs and what they teach. So, my great concern is not that you would graduate from here not being rightly trained in sound doctrine. I am concerned that some of you will flame out in a scandalous way in ministry and bring reproach on the name of Christ, and on your church, and to some extent, this school. But my most pressing concern this morning, and the one that has been dogging me in recent weeks as I think of you and think of the school is this: that just as you are here, you will learn a little and do a little, and serve a little, and do a whole lot of little things, but you would leave here less like Christ than when you came; and that instead of flaming out in ministry, you would just sort of fizzle out of ministry, and you would wake up one day so far removed from what initially drew you to ministry that you do not hardly recognize yourself.

Many years ago when I was wresting with a call to ministry in college, I had several friends—about seven or eight of us—who were similarly wresting with and seeking that call. And all of us disembarked at the same time, going to different schools and different seminaries—some Southern Baptist, and some not Southern Baptist—and then some not going at all, thinking, “I’ll go next year” or “I’ll go the next year.” And even thinking back to that group of nine or ten guys, now some fifteen or so years removed, three or four of us—depending on how you define ministry—are still in ministry, but about half are not. None of those guys have left their wives. None of those guys have committed some scandalous act that brought obvious reproach on the name of Christ. They just sort of drifted away. What once was a burning passion to serve Christ became incrementally displaced by other concerns, other cares, other things, until they just woke up one day from being in ministry, to sort of being in ministry, to kind of not being in ministry, to now being so far from it that they do not even think of themselves in their self-identification as a minister. Let that not be true of us. Let us hold a standard high of ministry and hold a standard high of preparing for ministry. And as we train our minds and give them to the glory of Christ, let us know we lead this with our hearts—hearts warmed by Christ, moved by his word, filled by his Spirit, submitted to his Lordship, overflowing with joy because of his salvation and his call.

{Prayer}

“Continue in prayer”  (Charles H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening, January 2, Morning)

Colossians 4:2: Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.

It is interesting to remark how large a portion of Sacred Writ is occupied with the subject of prayer, either in furnishing examples, enforcing precepts, or pronouncing promises. We scarcely open the Bible before we read, “Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord;” and just as we are about to close the volume, the “Amen” of an earnest supplication meets our ear. Instances are plentiful. Here we find a wrestling Jacob—there a Daniel who prayed three times a day—and a David who with all his heart called upon his God. On the mountain we see Elias; in the dungeon Paul and Silas. We have multitudes of commands, and myriads of promises. What does this teach us, but the sacred importance and necessity of prayer? We may be certain that whatever God has made prominent in his Word, he intended to be conspicuous in our lives. If he has said much about prayer, it is because he knows we have much need of it. So deep are our necessities, that until we are in heaven we must not cease to pray. Dost thou want nothing? Then, I fear thou dost not know thy poverty. Hast thou no mercy to ask of God? Then, may the Lord’s mercy show thee thy misery! A prayerless soul is a Christless soul. Prayer is the lisping of the believing infant, the shout of the fighting believer, the requiem of the dying saint falling asleep in Jesus. It is the breath, the watchword, the comfort, the strength, the honour of a Christian. If thou be a child of God, thou wilt seek thy Father’s face, and live in thy Father’s love. Pray that this year thou mayst be holy, humble, zealous, and patient; have closer communion with Christ, and enter oftener into the banqueting-house of his love. Pray that thou mayst be an example and a blessing unto others, and that thou mayst live more to the glory of thy Master. The motto for this year must be, “Continue in prayer.”

On eight occasions Southern Baptists have convened their annual meeting in Houston, with none of these gatherings more consequential than 1979’s SBC. In that year messengers elected Adrian Rogers president, demonstrated the Pressler-Patterson coalition was a force with which to be reckoned, and birthed what would come to be known as the Conservative Resurgence. Though no Houston convention is likely ever to rival 1979 in significance, I am praying this year’s gathering will prove significant in its own right, as the dawning of a cooperative ministry resurgence. I know I am not alone in this prayer, and, thankfully, there seems to be a growing denominational desire for such a cooperative ministry resurgence.

To borrow a phrase from George Eldon Ladd, we may describe the cooperative ministry resurgence we need as already, but not yet. We are already seeing indicators of a growing desire among Southern Baptists for greater ministry cooperation, but a fuller, more comprehensive cooperative ministry resurgence is not yet upon us. If the Lord should so grant it, what might a cooperative ministry resurgence look like?

BF&M 2000 Contentedness

First, a cooperative ministry resurgence will likely occur in concert with a doctrinal contentedness rooted in the BF&M 2000. This does not negate the importance of other supplemental and clarifying positional statements, such as the Abstract of Principles, the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, or the Danvers Statement on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. These statements each play significant and useful roles, but our singular convention-wide confessional statement, the BF&M 2000, is regulative and should be a unifying document.

True ministry cooperation is founded upon doctrinal unity, and the BF&M 2000 enables Southern Baptists to experience doctrinal integrity and theological harmony unknown to almost every other protestant denomination. Southern Baptists can have heated theological discussions, but our tension-points remain pedestrian—even parochial—compared to the doctrinal decline and schisms of other protestant denominations. As we focus not on theological sub-points on which we may disagree and find contentment in the unity we possess through the BF&M 2000, we will best position ourselves for a cooperative ministry resurgence.

Denominational Dialogue & the Ethic of Christ

Second, a cooperative ministry resurgence will parallel a cooperative spirit resurgence, most especially as it relates to our denominational dialogue. A Christ-like ethic must govern our words—words spoken and words written. This principle most specifically applies to the blogosphere, which has facilitated digital drone attacks where unforeseen missiles of suspicion and criticism are hurled to and fro.

As Bible-believing Christians we are called to hope all things, believe all things, and bear all things with one another. Scripture calls us to put aside envy, strife, jealousies, and to let no unwholesome word come out of our mouths—or our blogs. It is hard to cooperate with those you criticize, and a cooperative ministry resurgence will be fully realized in so much as we guard our discourse from cynicism and suspicion, and guard our fellowship from pugilism and rancor.

Societal Marginalization & our Southern Baptist Home

Third, a cooperative ministry resurgence will transpire as we more acutely sense our commonality of convictions and perceive our own societal marginalization. If cultural trajectories continue, as Bible-believing Christians we will find ourselves further shunned, and perhaps even socially ostracized. Regretfully, we may soon come to know what it means to be pilgrims, sojourners in our own land. To the extent this trend intensifies, we will find some measure of strength, joy, and reassurance within our own denominational home.

In Houston I was once again reminded of this reality. Southern Baptists are my people; we share a similar worldview, doctrinal convictions, cultural desires, and Great Commission aspirations. This is why, for me, the annual gathering of the SBC is the one week a year when everything seems right in the world. This is neither a statement of nostalgia nor of sentimentality. Rather it is a reminder that we are spiritual kindred, and as we become increasingly uneasy in Babylon, we might find our Southern Baptist family to be our only place of respite.

Great Commission Urgency

Fourth, a cooperative ministry resurgence will be presaged by a renewed Great Commission urgency. Our collective Great Commission ambition is the single most congealing element in the history of our denomination, and the forerunner of a cooperative ministry resurgence will be a renewed evangelistic fervor.

Again, promising signs seem to be before us. In recent years Southern Baptists have adopted the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force recommendations. Additionally, the convention’s imagination is seized with the possibility of taking the gospel to the remaining 3,500 unreached people groups. Moreover, God is calling out a new generation of church planters, with the church planting movement itself gaining steam. If these Great Commission opportunities hold steady before us, they will help facilitate greater denominational cohesion and ministerial cooperation.

Cooperative Program Renewal

Lastly, a cooperative ministry resurgence will evidence itself in Cooperative Program renewal. The Southern Baptist Convention’s lifecycle seems to be coming to term once more. The SBC reached its operational zenith in the post-war era, while it still possessed the vestiges of theological consensus and still enjoyed the momentum of a common Great Commission ambition. Theological consensus provided the denomination’s framework and a desire to reach the world for Christ produced its energy. Coupled together, theological consensus and Great Commission determination necessitated and conceived the Cooperative Program in the early twentieth century and ballooned it in the post-war era.

These factors seem to be aligning once more. The widely-held BF&M 2000 provides a strong and sufficient theological framework, authentically supported by the vast majority of contemporary Southern Baptists. Our collective ambition to reach the world for Christ appears ripened as well. If this is true, it will evidence itself in renewed financial sacrifice among God’s people and a renewed commitment among the churches to equip the next generation of pastors, teachers, and evangelists while supporting the current generation of church planters and missionaries. To be sure, the Cooperative Program is not God’s only conduit of ministry funding, but it may well be his best. In practice, the Cooperative Program is both an indicator and an enabler of a more robust cooperative ministry effort.

Conclusion

One can view the various theological and programmatic flavors within our convention and ask, “How can we work together?” Yet, when one weighs the accelerating cultural secularism before us, the urgent needs of our churches, and the beckoning mission fields abroad, the more urgent question is, “How can we not work together?”

I am neither pollyannish nor programmatic enough to make a cooperative ministry resurgence tantamount to a reviving work of God’s Spirit. Rather, I’ll take the latter any day. But, while we pray, seek, and wait for God to do what only he can do—revive his church—I pray as Southern Baptists we will be found doing that which we can do: cultivating a new era of gospel and ministerial cooperation.

Is the dawn of a cooperative ministry resurgence upon us? The answer remains to be seen, but I see hopeful signs on the horizon and I am praying towards this end. Just as Houston once ushered in the Conservative Resurgence, may it prove to be the dawn of a new, cooperative ministry resurgence as well.

Transcript: Brothers and sisters, it is a joy to be here this morning at this first chapel service of the new semester—what we call Spring Convocation—and to gather on a day that means so much to the institution and a great deal to me personally. Every convocation is meaningful because it signals the dawn of a new semester and all that that new semester entails, and it is a day of unmistakable pageantry; academic regalia—dresses as my kids call them—medallions, processionals and recessionals, high hymns, standing and sitting, and of course, the signing of our Articles of Faith. Even for us common folk, it is a day of pomp and circumstance. But our pageantry is beyond empty things. We are not the British Monarch that celebrates all form and no function, all style and no substance. Rather, the pageantry communicates something. It reasserts our fundamental beliefs. It restates our core values and convictions, and reminds us that this is a day of consecration to dedicate ourselves to God’s task and ask for God’s blessing on students, staff, faculty, and studies, and a reminder of all that we hold true and hold dear.

It is a day of personal joy for me; my first convocation as president. It is an occasion I will no doubt cherish in memory for many years to come, and a day that I have the opportunity to speak to the seminary community a sermon entitled, “For the Church: Theological Education and the Future of Midwestern Seminary.” Now I want to draw our attention this morning to Matthew chapter 16 and read verses 13–20:

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, He was asking His disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; but still others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.” Then He warned the disciples that they should tell no one that He was the Christ.1

[PRAYER]

This indeed is a day to consider and celebrate the seminary and the local church. And to consider one, one must out of necessity consider the other. It is impossible in any Biblical or rightly logical sense to think of the seminary apart from thinking of the local church. To be sure, the church can exist apart from the seminary, but a seminary could not and should not exist apart from the local church. For the church, theological education and the future of Midwestern Seminary is a comingled title because it is a comingled subject. It is impossible to conceptualize in any right way theological education without the church. So any conversation on theological education must begin with the church. Any healthy understanding of a seminary must first and foremost be rooted in the local church — what the church is to be and to do. There should be an indivisible union, interconnectedness between the seminary and the church. For a seminary to know its mission it must first look to the church and the churches charter in Matthew 16.

Matthew 16 is a paradigmatic passage for the Christian life, and for the church, and of ministry. Therefore, it is for us as well as those who would understand the task of theological education and ministry preparation. And as we look at Matthew 16, it is as though as we hear of the church, we overhear of theological education. As we hear of the church, we overhear what the seminary is to be and to do. As we gaze at the church in this passage, we see at our periphery what a seminary is to be. And so I want us to consider this morning this classic passage on the church, but also consider what it has to say to us who are about the business of training ministers of the gospel.

Even as we consider this passage and this topic, we realize that we do not do so in tranquil times. In many ways higher education and specifically theological education is in a state of crisis. To borrow a phrase from Arthur Schlesinger we might say there is a “crisis of the old order.”2 And we acknowledge—I acknowledge—that crisis is a tired word. We hear of economic crises and geopolitical crises and political crises and cultural crises, so much so that “crises” is a tired word. But it is an appropriate word because any objective assessment of theological education in America today has to conclude that theological education is in a state of crisis. A crisis of resources, not enough funds: even this past week there was another news report about a seminary selling its campus. It is a crisis of commitment to whom it is accountable: the churches of their denomination, accreditors, the Department of Education, a donor base, the loudest complainer? Whom do we serve? More fundamentally, it is a crisis of identity: what is a seminary to be? A crisis of mission: what is a seminary to do after all? These questions and a thousand more are echoing in administrative buildings around the country and beyond as schools like ours seek to figure out who they are, what they are to do, and how they should go about doing it.

Rightly nuanced, we also understand that we gather this morning when the church is in a state of crisis as well. We look around our nation, and we see stagnant churches with little or no growth. We often see weak pulpits, little exposition, shallow sermons void of condemnations of sin. We see a dearth of young men aspiring to the pastorate. Consider even this morning that as we gather in our state of Missouri, there are roughly 2,000 Southern Baptist Churches of which only about 250 are pastored by men aged 40 or younger. That is a crisis! Worldliness in the church, apathy toward the lost, meaningless church membership, subtle undermining of the exclusivity of the gospel—all of this and so much more we see, and it must cause alarm in our soul.

But we also acknowledge this morning that the church has always existed in a state of crisis. This is nothing new. Whether it was the first-century church, under the persecution of Nero when all of the assault and the evil forces were brought against it; the church in the Middle Ages with the Scriptures removed far from the pulpit; or the church in the modern era with secularism at home and oppressive regimes abroad, the church has always existed in a state of crisis. But we will not fear for God hath willed his truth to triumph through us. Moreover, we are not despondent because standing before us in Matthew 16 is one of those Mount Everest texts: this promise of our Lord to build his church. Too many churches read this passage and then use it to facilitate their own denial. This is not a passage stating that every church everywhere need not fear about their own survival because Christ will build them. Rather, this is a passage that states Christ’s general assessment that his church will indeed be built, his global, universal church will persist. His people will never be without a remnant.

The passage this morning comes to us in a most interesting context. Jesus encounters the Pharisees and the Sadducees in verse one as they came up to him to test him. They asked him to show them a sign from heaven. They want another sign. Jesus responds in verse two: “When it is evening you say it will be fair weather for the sky is red, and in the morning there will be a storm today for the sky is red and threatening. Do you know how to discern the appearance of the sky, but cannot discern the signs of the times? An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign and a sign will not be given and except the sign of Jonah. Then he left them and went away.” It is an interesting passage, and we find that it is situated in an interesting place within the Gospel of Matthew. The crowd wants a sign. People are speculating about who Jesus is, what he was about. He performed this miracle in the verses immediately preceding verse 13, and then he retreats with his disciples to the region of Cesarea Philippi up to the north as a place of rest and reflection. And he begins to probe his disciples and shift the conversation, shift the discussion from matters of signs and miracles to matters of his identity and what he shall do in the cosmos. Notice as we pick up in verse 13 and we are introduced to the first major movement of this passage:

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, He was asking His disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; but still others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bajona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church.”

The first major movement we see in this passage is the fact that the church will be built on truth. Jesus brings this question to bear on his disciples, his associates, his intimates by asking them, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” Now mind you, there is a sense in which that is a loaded question. Jesus is tipping his hand right there. He does not say, “Who do people say that I am?” But, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” We know from the book of Daniel that that very phrase was an assessment of deity, so Jesus is tipping his hand to his disciples as he asks them this question. And his disciples have been taught since boyhood to expect and to anticipate the Messiah. There was a messianic yearning throughout the Jewish people, and Jewish children were taught from the earliest of ages to look for, to expect, to anticipate, one who would come to liberate their people.

Well you know what happens here, of course. You are familiar with this passage. In verse 14 we get a catalog of answers. Some are saying John the Baptist, others Elijah, evidentially derived from Malachi 4 and 5. Some others say Jeremiah, the weeping prophet. After all, Jesus was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Or he was one of the prophets in general. Although the crowd was confused, Jesus is not confused about who he is. Let us remind ourselves this morning why Jesus was put to death. The Jewish people sought to kill him we are told multiple times again and again and again in the Scriptures and especially in the gospel of John. They sought to put him to death because of his claiming to be the son of God. He made himself equal with God. So the crowd is confused, but Jesus is not, and Jesus insists upon clarity from his disciples.

So he sharpens the question now in verse 15, and he personalizes it: “But who do you say that I am?” And this is perhaps the most pointed question in all of the Bible, and it is the most pointed question that we have to deal with as people who would be followers of Christ. Because no one is saved, has ever been saved, or will ever be saved without a right understanding of the person and work of Christ. “Who do you say that I am?” It is beyond a personal statement of belief though, we are about to get a confessional and foundational statement for the church. A shift takes place in this answer where Jesus takes the personalized question, “Who do you say that I am?” and then shifts gears to take it to a public, corporate, ecclesial level: “For upon this I will build my church.” The answer has enormous implications for a person, but also for a church, and this shift from the personal to the ecclesial must not be missed.

So the answer comes in verse 16: “Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. You are the long expected, the anointed one, the Christ, the one we have been taught to look for,” Peter declares. And again, the Bible—and the New Testament especially—is replete with references to Jesus as the Son of God. This is a central statement, a central confession that if any church neglects, God will neglect them. Of course Jesus has made numerous claims about himself throughout the New Testament—who he is, what he would do. By his works, by his teachings, by all of this and more, he has identified himself as the Son of God. In this statement, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” comes a whole package of confessional conviction: Sonship, Lordship, exclusivity, all of these things.

Notice in verse 17. And here we begin to get into the meat of our passage this morning. Jesus said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church.” Peter gains his spiritual insight like we all do: illumination of the Holy Spirit: “Blessed are you Simon Bajona, you did not come up with this. This is not of your flesh or your blood or of any human’s. My father has chosen to reveal this to you.”

And then we get in verse 18 this knotty phrase that has puzzled theologians for centuries: “Upon this rock, I will build my church.” What is “this rock?” Our Roman Catholic friends, of course, understand this to be a reference to Peter as the first Pope establishing papal authority in the papacy and a divinely ordained apostolic succession through the papacy. I think that is not at all what is going on. Moreover, if it were, in places like Matthew 18:1–4 and Matthew 20:20–21, Jesus would have clarified and given them such authority.

Some think—and it is a legitimate assessment—and perhaps many, if not most, in the room this morning understand this to be the antecedent to rock meaning “this confession:” this statement that Christ is the Son of the living God. This confessional statement is what the church shall be built upon. I think perhaps the best understanding is that the reference here is to the foundation of the apostles and their teaching in seed form here in this confession, but fleshed out in apostolic teaching and New Testament revelation. Not Peter mind you, but the apostles and what they would teach is the rock. We are told that the early church devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching. We are told in Ephesians 2 that we are being built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.

So the point is this: the foundation of the church is God-given revelation. Jesus is the cornerstone of the church, indeed the church’s one foundation in Jesus Christ her Lord. But notice what is going on here, this comingling of concerns. The identity of Jesus to this confession related to the church, to then Christ’s assurance that he will so build his church on this Rock. It is a dramatic, and at first glance puzzling turn, going from the personal to the ecclesial, from the specific to the ecclesial, from the specific statement to this broader work that Christ shall do. It is a reminder to us that as we would seek to serve the church, the first way we serve the church is by making sure we stand in that great stead of apostolic teaching, teaching the truth of Scripture.

If you think about it, it is a staggering reality, a great irony, an eternal irony that most seminaries in America today, institutions and entities that undertake the training of ministers, not only do they not enhance and strengthen the doctrinal strength and theological faithfulness of their students, they ultimately undermine it; and therefore, the churches these students will serve. That is like going to the doctor for medicine but leaving the office with a jar of strychnine. That is like taking your automobile to the mechanic but leaving with it being more broken than when you arrived. It is a strange and perverse irony. And you see there are so many ways to look at seminaries today and to assess seminaries today, or divinity schools today, and you can categorize them in all sorts of ways: the size of their endowment, the size of their enrollment, the type of campus they have, their geographical reach, all these different things. But really there are only two criteria that ultimately matter: those that are theologically faithful and those that are not.

I was reminded in recent weeks of the horror and the stakes of institutions and seminaries that are not theologically faithful. Of course, we who know our own denomination’s history know that we have lived the tragedies of this with our seminaries, including the one I now am president, of drifting into liberalism in the context of the 20th century. And so a denominational controversy, a donnybrook, erupted in the late 1970s and played out over about 15 years or so. Jerry Sutton, our academic dean, has written a great book documenting that.3 If you have not read it, shame on you. You should. He would say go buy it today.

In the midst of the controversy in the 1980s in the denomination, a book was written by a man named Clayton Sullivan called, Called to Preach, Condemned to Survive.4 I read that book about 10 or 12 years ago. As I read it I had a sickening feeling page-by-page because the book is about Sullivan losing his faith and losing his call to ministry. In Called to Preach, Condemned to Survive—the name should tell you enough—Sullivan talks about showing up at Southern Seminary in Louisville, Ky., in the 1950s and walking into a scenario where he was assaulted by theological liberalism. He talks about when he left that day in the 1950s in his car, and his daddy was in the driveway; and he says, “I remember the last words my father said to me that morning standing by the driveway waving goodbye as I was pulling away from the house into the morning light. ‘Son, whatever happens, don’t let ‘em change you.’”5

He grew up in a conservative Mississippi church whose preacher believed the Bible and preached to the lost. But change him they would, and change him they did. He would write about the effects of liberalism on his own belief. He says, “As a seminarian still in my mid-twenties, I found myself baffled. I was more certain of what I did not believe than I was of what I did believe. Southern Seminary had destroyed my biblical fundamentalism, but it had not given me anything viable to take its place. That is the weakness of the historical-critical method. Its power to destroy exceeds its power to construct.”6 He would go on to say of his studies, “By this time, the cart was before the horse. The means have become the end. When I first enrolled in seminary, I looked upon studies as a means by which to prepare to be a preacher. I viewed Southern Seminary as a temporary dwelling place on my way to the pastorate, but to me, an overcooked graduate student, study by now had become and end within itself.”7 Speaking to the condescension the professors had for the local church and the pastorate, he would write this, “My seminary professors tended to look upon preachers as hucksters, denominational drum beaters or dummies. That is why one of my seminary professors remarked, ‘The most brilliant Southern Baptist ministers become seminary professors and college teachers, the rest have to go into the pastorate.’” 8

Brothers and sisters, that will happen in this place over my cold, dead body because we are a people committed to our confessional accountability to this denomination. We are a people committed to the local church. We are a people committed to the pastorate. And we are a people committed to training and to encouraging and to nurturing that call within our students, not to denigrate it, not to devalue it.

We see here this relationship between the church and confessional strength. And then, we move here further in verse 18 and we see the second real movement of this passage and that the church labors with confidence. I love verse 18: “I will build my church. The gates of Hades will not overpower it. “I will build my church.” Let those words sink in. “I [Jesus] will”—not maybe, not perhaps. “Will build…” I love the industry, the activity of that word. He is not passively observing it, he is building it. “I will build my [his] church. I will build my church.” Not my seminary. Not my para-church ministry. Not my Christian camp. Not my Christian business. All those things are fine and good and right and fitting inasmuch as they seek to serve and support and undergird the church. You see, we are reminded in this passage of what Christ’s great cosmic concern is right now, and that is building his church, seeing after his church, being faithful to this promise for his church.

If you do not get enough mail in life, all you need to do is become a seminary president. I promise you the volume of mail you receive will go up. I am flooded with mail on a daily basis and I am amazed and amused and often frightened by what I receive. All of these materials about how to train pastors, all this curriculum about what the church is to be, all these different incentives to buy something or to purchase something or subscribe to something or to attend something. And all of this is just thrown at us. And by the way, those of you who are in the ministry and have a mailing address, you know something of what I speak because you receive much of it as well. And I look at that, and I smile because I am reminded that Christ is building his church. That does not mean that we get to be lazy or passive or silly, but it does mean that we ride on the crest of his wave. Remember the words in Ephesians 4, after all, as they were read earlier. I remind us of these again, for Christ is building his church, and in Ephesians 4 we are told something of how he does this: “He [Christ] gave some as apostles, some as prophets, and now some as evangelists and pastors and teachers.” How is Christ fulfilling his vision to build the church? He is doing this by calling our pastors and evangelists and teachers to labor in the building of his church. Why? He is doing this for the equipping of the saints for the building up of the body of Christ.

You see, my job as president is not just to find a bunch of ambitious young people and polish them up a little bit, and then let them get some managerial skills and then let them learn how to manage some Christian endeavor. It is not my job just find people who, given their own ambition, or their own IQ or their other gifts, would be successful probably at anything they set out to do, and so they have chosen ministry like they could have chosen to sell insurance or to be a school teacher or to be a nurse or to be a doctor or anything else, So we just give them a little bit of Christian teaching, and then we just kind of send them off to do this thing. No. Our job, my job, is to assemble a team of faculty, administrators, and staff to create a culture on this campus that starts at the top and trickles down with a deep and abiding love to serve the church how Christ has indicated he would build it. It is to train pastors and teachers and evangelists—the offices of the church—how to teach and preach God’s word, how to share the faith, understand mission fields, and understand the Great Commission. It is to give them the organs of the New Testament as to what a church is to be and to do, and then send them on their way and watch Christ build his church through them and rejoice and relish in his great work.

You see, so many seminaries have no idea what they are doing. You say, “Don’t you sound arrogant for a new, young seminary president?” No, I sound certain because I am not lying in bed at night trying to figure out what a seminary is to do. It is so resoundingly clear in Scripture: Christ is building his church, and we are called to be a part of that. We will do a lot of things and a lot of things well, I trust. But unapologetically our best energies and first fruits must be given to these offices of pastors and teachers and evangelists. And as you think about it that is really what we are called to do in ministry, right? We are called to teach the word, to preach the word, to share the word. It is what we do. The confidence Christ exudes in Matthew 16 further reminds us that it behooves us to be tethered to the church because that is what Christ has elected to build, his church. And our future, our justification, our rationale is only as strong as we are aligned to and tethered to his church. It is not a faithful seminary that builds the church. Rather, Christ builds his church through faithful pastors, missionaries, and ministers whom we trust were made more faithful through our work here.

I love the middle of verse 18 here, and I love this expression, “my church,” because we see here something of what I would just refer to as the centrality of Christ’s church in his kingdom work. What is Jesus doing after all, right now? What else has he promised to build? I love this expression “my church.” It indicates governance, yes. But it indicates so much more than that: possession, love, affection, ownership, interest, concern. After all, Christ died for his church. He purchased it with his blood. He is head of his church. The church is his bride. He shall return for his church. He gave gifts to his followers for service to the church. He calls men and women to minister to his church. He is building his church. He walks among his churches. He holds the pastors of his churches in his hand. As a matter of fact, he is so identified with his church that we see when Saul seeks to persecute that church, Jesus shows up, interrupts his life, and says, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” because to persecute the church is to persecute our Lord himself.

Beloved, I believe it is hard to overstate—perhaps impossible to overstate—the centrality of the church in the New Testament. To be for the gospel is to be for the church, not just creating anonymous Christians to run about, but those who are going to be organically a part of the church, right? For Baptist identity is to be for the local church. The church is dear to Christ, and it best be dear to us because what is dear to Christ best be dear to us.

Notice what takes place here. We get another just almost strange verse here that is tacked onto the end of this passage in verse 19. Jesus states with certainty what he will do for his church: even death itself or the gates of Hades will not overpower it. But now in verse 19 he speaks to the purity of the church. And again, this affects us and shapes our understanding of theological understanding. What is going on here in verse 19? This talk of keys, of binding, loosing, what is going on here? Jesus is referring to the purity of his church. Time does not permit us, but we go to Matthew 18 and see more of this. It strikes me as more than interesting—I say even gripping—that in this explanation of the church, what the church will be built upon, this confession of Christ, that Christ will indeed build his church. Rolled up in this is this understanding that the church is to be pure and the church has the authority to bind and to loose, meaning to declare what has happened and not happened in relation to sin and confession and repentance. It is a reminder that Christ is concerned about the purity of his Church.

And I say to you especially, that as you envision yourselves leading ministries, pastoring churches, there is a trickle-down affect between yourself and those that follow you that ought to keep you up at night. You show me a pastor committed to prayer, and I will show you a church that is probably committed to prayer. You show me a college student committed to evangelism, I will show you a college ministry that is probably evangelistic. You show me a singles pastor that is given to personal holiness, I will show you a singles ministry that is probably marked by holiness. You show me a pastor that is indifferent to evangelism, I will show you a church that is indifferent to evangelism. You show me a pastor that is shallow, trite, unholy, I will show you a church over time that will likely reflect that. We are to be about the purity of Christ’s church, and as President and as a faculty and staff, we have the injunction here to create a culture and environment that trickles down that sense of holiness, that sense of purity of the church. I cannot, we cannot, create a spiritual panacea here, but we can do our best to graduate students that are more holy, not less; more in love with Christ, not less; more circumspect, not less.

I received an interesting hand-written letter just a few days ago in the mail from a lady. Nothing in the letter said that she was little and old, but for some reason in my mind I just have the picture of a little, old lady who wrote this letter. She had read an article about my graduation sermon, and I made the comment at graduation about tossing your résumé to the wind, grabbing a six-pack of Red Bull, drinking it, and preaching the gospel to anything that moves. Well, she wrote me a very sweet letter, but she chastised me for encouraging our students to drink alcohol. Okay? I stand corrected if Red Bull is an alcoholic drink, but insofar as I knew it was only a caffeinated drink. But her letter was really sweet, and she spoke about the influence I have over students. And though she was off in what a Red Bull is, she was right in what we are to be about.

I received a magazine a while back, and time does not permit me to get all into this, but a seminary was promoting one of their students who was, and is, engaged in an active homosexual lifestyle. He was telling his story about how accepted he was at the seminary where he attends, and he said this: “I was pleased to find a seminary that would not judge me based upon my lifestyle or my character, but would simply appreciate me for my call.” Let me be clear, there is no way to disaggregate your character from your call, none whatsoever. What does this mean for us? What does it mean for confessional integrity? What does it mean for us—the certainty of Christ’s church and of his building his church? What does it mean for us regarding the centrality that Christ and his church holds? What does it mean for us, the purity with which Christ is concerned for his church?

In the weeks ahead, I will be releasing a series of essays spelling this out more, but let me just enumerate some things for us this morning quickly. What does this mean for Midwestern Seminary, a seminary that is absolutely committed to the local church? The sermon title did not happen by coincidence. It has festered in my soul for years: “For the Church.” This seminary will exist without question, without apology, for the church. That is a vision I intend to implement over every square inch of this campus and that is a message I intend to carry to every corner of this denomination because that is who we are and that is what we must and should be.

So what does this mean? Let me suggest a few things. As I mentioned, I will enumerate this more thoroughly in some forthcoming essays, but number one it means this: we intentionally nurture a culture on campus that cherishes, loves, values, and esteems the church. It is attitudinal. It is effective. It is intentional.

Number two, it means that every decision at the programmatic, administrative, and personnel levels we must ask how does this decision, this event, this initiative serve the church? How will this help us fulfill our mission to serve the church? We intentionally bend our institutional energy toward this end.

Thirdly, it means at the curricular-level, the classroom, it is a commitment to envision every class and every lecture in light of the question of how it intersects with the church, how it strengthens the church. And I thank God for a faculty behind me that shares this passion. Ethics is taught in bringing the word of God to bear in the milieu of cultural issues that we have and that the church faces. Counseling is first and foremost soul care for those in the church. Church history must be seen through the prism of what God has done in his church. Evangelism is a part of enlarging the family of God, the family of the redeemed, and his church. Missions is toward building globally, in helping to fulfill the Great Commission and building global churches. Leadership and administration concerns how we structure ourselves to lead and administer rightly-ordered churches. Pastoral ministry is to shepherd the church. Theology is to equip the church. Languages and exegesis classes are to divide rightly the word of truth for the church. Apologetics classes are to defend the truth, the church’s foundation. Preaching classes are to bring God’s word to bear, to exposit God’s word, to strengthen the saints in the church, and win the lost for the church. Philosophy is to bring clear thinkers for our church. And on-and-on the list goes, but all of it taught with an eye toward the church.

Fourth and quickly, I believe it means we live with a Romans 10 mandate. Meaning, we—the seminary—do not call out the called. The Spirit calls out the called and the churches affirm that call. But we speak of it. We hold it high. We esteem the office of the pastor. We lift these things up because we understand that without a preacher, how will they hear?

Fifth, in light of Matthew 16 and Ephesians 4 and the Pastoral Epistles, we unapologetically give our best energies to training pastors, teachers, and evangelists. If you think about it, that really is the defining threshold of a call to ministry. Is it not a ministry of teaching and preaching the gospel and the Word? This incorporates classic disciplines and contemporary concerns and all the rest, but that is—students listen—that is why you are here. That is why sometime down the road you packed up your belongings, you left a comfortable environment, and you came here. It was not just to nibble around the edges of ministry, not just to dabble with the idea of ministry, but to immerse yourself in God’s call on your life to ministry for the church.

Sixth, it means we leverage institutional assets and strengths to be the very best seminary we can be in serving the church. Most especially, we think of the Spurgeon Library in this regard. After all, we have the library of the greatest known preacher and the greatest known pastor in the history of the English-speaking peoples perhaps.

Seventh, it means we serve with a self-determined accountability to the church. It is a confessional commitment, a commitment to Baptist churches where we carry a confident and winsome Baptist identity, a denominational accountability in letter and spirit. We are not a government bureaucracy that exists to perpetuate itself, we are a seminary of a denomination that exists to serve the churches, and we have a right to exist insofar as we do that. We have an aspirational accountability knowing our churches needs and desires. I do not intend to guilt our denomination, our supporters, or our churches. I do not intend to try to guilt them into sending us their students or their money. That would be a losing strategy, but it is also an unnecessary one. Rather, I desire to lead and to build and to serve a seminary that so self-evidently serves and strengthens the church that churches will reflexively look to us to serve them.

Eighth, it is a commitment to train the whole person. Mind, heart, and hand—the church gets the whole person.

Ninth, it is a commitment to a prophetic witness in a culture of decadence and depravity where day-after-day-after-day, we get another news report of how our society is walking against biblical truth.

Tenth, it is a robust commitment to the Great Commission because the end to which the church labors, reaching the nations for Christ, is the end to which we labor.

And eleventh, it is a heart for revival in the church. I want the “amen” to sound from his people again. Is there anyone in the room today that thinks that right now the church in America is actually enjoying and abiding under the evident power of God at work? No. We want the “amen” to sound from his people gain.

This is a glorious task to which we have been called. No other place, no other time would we want to be. And everything we will do and aspire to do is predicated upon the local church. For the Church: that is my vision, and I trust it is our vision. I trust it is the vision and time.

This came home to me in a very real way a number of months ago. I had an occasion to visit Harvard University, and you know the story of Harvard. It was the first college chartered in America in the 1630s. It is a school now that boasts the largest endowment in the world—depending upon the market these days, between 30 and 40 billion dollars. It is a university with resources untold with a campus of unspeakable beauty and of unsurpassed history. But you know the story: it was founded to train ministers of the gospel. And when you enter Harvard at the north panel leading into the main campus, there is a gate called the Johnson Gate. And there written in stone is some wording from New England’s First Fruits published by Samuel Elliott Morrison. It is the earliest account of Harvard as it appeared in London in 1643. The document cites the rules and precepts of Harvard: “Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well the main end of his life and studies to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life (John 17:3) and therefore, to lay Christ in the bottom as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning.” As you stand at that gate, and there emblazed on the side of it for every passerby to see is this, the founding statement, first fruits: “After God had carried us safe to New England and had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, reared convenient places for God’s worship, and settled the civil government, one of the next things we longed for and looked after was to advance learning and to perpetuate it to our posterity…” Why? “…Dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches when our present ministers shall lie in the dust.” We have come a long way since then, but what an incredible founding statement.

The room bustles with young people this morning. You, I say, bring me joy. You, I say, bring me confidence because Christ is building his church, and it is not just a theory. He is doing it through people like you, and he is calling a new generation to do it because soon and very soon the present generation will lie in its dust. But we must be ready to serve the church. That is who we are, and that is why we exist: For the Church.

The full audio can be downloaded here. 

Footnotes

¹ All Scripture is cited from the NASB.

² Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Crisis of the Old Order: 1913–1933, The Age of Roosevelt, Volume 1 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1956).

Jerry Sutton, The Baptist Reformation: The Conservative Resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2000).

⁴ Clayton Sullivan, Called to Preach, Condemned to Survive: The Education of Clayton Sullivan (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1985).

⁵ Sullivan, Called to Preach, 68.

⁶ Ibid., 79.

⁷ Ibid., 81.

⁸ Ibid., 85.