1069. Removing Obstacles from Ministry

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Today on The Daily Platform, we're continuing a study series called Ministry According to 2 Corinthians. Today's speaker is the Dean of the Seminary, Dr. Neal Cushman. The title of his message is Removing Obstacles from Ministry from 2 Corinthians 6, 1-13. Today, I would like to talk about removing obstacles from the ministry, as this is what Paul's point is in 2 Corinthians, in particular in Chapter 6.

And my key verse in this passage would be 2 Corinthians 6, 3 through 4a, giving no offense in anything that the ministry be not blamed, but in all things approving ourselves as ministers of God. The church has taken a big hit in the last year. For the first time in modern history, maybe you saw this on the news, church attendance has fallen below into the minority status. More people stay at home than go to church. Many churches report a decrease in church attendance of 25%, even after the stay at home order has been lifted. I've been told, and perhaps you have been too, that a more significant trend caused by COVID is the move towards fewer weekly services.

What's happened? People have become accustomed to the one service that they watch online, and so going back to a full schedule has met some resistance. So will church members put pressure on pastors to keep a more relaxed schedule? I cannot think of any event in my life that's had a bigger impact on the church of Jesus Christ.

So are we at the point where we have a new normal? But what about pastors? When we think about the impact of COVID-19 and cancel culture, has anybody thought about how this has all affected pastors? I've got a blog here by Tom Rainer. He's probably the foremost statistician researcher on what's going on in the church, and he talks in this blog about how everything has changed.

He says this, please hear me clearly. The vast majority of pastors with whom our team communicates, which are thousands of pastors, are saying they're considering quitting their churches. It's a trend I have not seen in my lifetime. Some are just weeks away from making an announcement. They're looking for work in the secular world. Some will move to bivocational ministry. Some will move to some type of marketplace ministry, but many will move. Why has this period of great discouragement ensued? Of course, it's connected to COVID-19, but the pandemic really just increases trends that were already in place.

We would have likely gotten to this point in the next three to five years. I also want you to know that these pastors do not think they will be leaving ministry permanently. They just believe the current state of negativity and apathy in many local churches is not the most effective way that they can be doing ministry. And so he's got some points that he lays out about what pastors are discouraged about. You can go online and read that.

It won't be hard for you to find that. But the most interesting thing about this blog are the responses to hear these pastors talk about what they're going through. And let me just read one of these.

It's a prayer. And this pastor says, I'm sorry, Lord. I just don't want to do this anymore. I can no longer find the energy, inspiration, or compassion to keep going.

Pastors should be able to retire after 30 years. They just run empty. It seems too much and I'm tired out by dealing with people. I've lost the ability to bounce back each week. I combat exhaustion, I guess. Too little reward, too much taken for granted.

What can I do? I can't retire yet. I realize COVID is part of my weariness, weary of the restrictions, the divide, the bickering, sad for the people, the families I haven't seen in almost a year. There was a lady who stopped in the office this morning for a task and told me, pastor, we love the live stream. We almost feel a little guilty, but it's so nice to sit in the living room all comfy with our coffee and just watch church.

They both had their vaccines. They used to be almost every Sunday worshipers, they have no clue what that does to me, more exhaustion. I know I'm supposed to be preparing for the new normal. What in the world that is?

I just need to get back to the old normal, but I know it's not coming back. So there's a lot there. That's probably enough for this message, but there are obstacles that people are facing, in particular our pastors. This has been a really, really tough time for pastors. I just had the pastor who's preaching in Big Chapel today, we were visiting, he used to be my pastor, and he told me that in his little orbit where he lives, there are 12 vacant pulpits in his little world of independent Baptist churches. He said in neighboring Michigan, there are about 20 vacant pulpits there. And he used to have a list of names, because people would call him, because he's at a big church and they would say, do you have any names? And he would say, yeah, I've got these 15 names, these 20 names. He always had this like ongoing list.

Now his list has got one name on it. There are no replacements for many of these pulpits. I don't mean to draw a dire picture of what's going on. I'm trying to place the need in front of us today, and to think about, and to pray about, and to seek the Lord about more pastors for the work of the ministry. Well, the Apostle Paul knows something about tough times serving in ministry. The church at Corinth was responsible for a good bit of that.

Paul founded this church in AD 50, I think, spent 18 months there, establishing the church, doing evangelism, discipleship, intensive teaching of God's word. And as was normal, wherever Paul served, persecution from unbelievers occurred. But opposition from unbelievers is normal and expected. And we're feeling that today, right, with the cancel culture.

And it's going to get worse. At Corinth, Paul felt the pain of being rejected by first-generation believers. Not long after Paul had left to establish other churches, false teachers infiltrated the church, bringing with them another Jesus, another gospel, and a better way of doing ministry. In order to win the Corinthians over entirely, there was one thing they had to do. They had to destroy and discredit Paul as an apostle of Jesus Christ. So they set out on a campaign to attack his personal life, to attack his motives, and to attack his effectiveness in ministry. The commentator, Philip Hughes, says these people were unscrupulous parasites, sucking the spiritual life out of Corinthian believers, charging money for their teachings, and deriding Paul. They never really founded anything.

They just come in like parasites and take over that which has already been established. They accused Paul of being fickle, of lining his pockets with the money that he was collecting for the poor, delivering that money to Jerusalem, as Paul was apt to do. They said that Paul's word couldn't be trusted since he said one thing and he did another. I think you remember in this book, this letter, that Paul said, you know, I'm going to come and visit you, and then he changed his mind, it appears. They said he's fickle.

He's unreliable. They went after his personal life. They went after his motives and his effectiveness in ministry. And I think if I were Paul, and I think if you were Paul, you'd probably do this, right? And maybe say, well, you know, I've got a lot of other work to do.

I need to spend my time in better ways. But Paul was not ready to walk away from this ministry. There were three things at stake for Paul. And the first one was his own personal integrity and all of these accusations about his personal life and his motives and his covetousness and all the things that they were accusing him which were absolutely not true. And I suppose if that was the only thing, then maybe Paul would have just walked away from that.

But he felt it was necessary to defend himself. More importantly, his calling as an apostle, as the master builder, as the first epistle of Corinthians tells us, and then the loss of this crucial ministry at Corinth. I believe that Paul viewed their response as being a turning point that if they were not rescued at this point, then they would be lost to false doctrine, to these false teachers who had infiltrated the work. So one of the things that Paul talks about in the context of these very pointed discussions, he always brings up the Bema Seat, the day of the Lord. And he wants the Corinthians to be able to stand before the Lord someday with good works and righteous living in respect to their Christian lives.

And so he works hard at dealing with this. Well, Paul had lost a great deal of ground with this church. We see this in the first chapter where he says, For we write none other things unto you than what ye read or acknowledge, and I trust ye shall acknowledge even to the end, as also ye have acknowledged us in part that we are your rejoicing, even as ye also are ours in the day of the Lord Jesus.

That's a reference to the Bema Seat. And in this confidence, I was minded to come unto you before that you might have a second benefit. And I guess we could maybe say a second work of grace. Charis is in that passage, although I'm not espousing that view of sanctification. But what Paul is saying here that he's got some teaching that needs to take place that's going to help them. And as they respond to that teaching, God will work in their lives. He'll do a work of grace as they grow in him.

And notice it says there in yellow, ye have acknowledged us in part. They're not acknowledging him on the whole. They just, they're kind of, they've got reservations now about Paul and his ministry.

They're holding him at arm's length. And that's, he's lost some ground here with these people. We see this at the end of the book as well, where Paul says, All this time you have been thinking we are defending ourselves to you. Actually, it is in the sight of God that we have been speaking in Christ and all for your upbuilding, beloved. And he talks in chapter 13 about, you know, please respond because I don't want to have to come to you and say the kind of things that I'm going to have to say to you if you don't respond.

He lost a lot of ground. But then moving to our particular text today, at the end of the text, notice this. We have spoken freely to you Corinthians. Our heart is wide open. You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections.

In return, widen your hearts also. He's saying, we are just, we love you with all of our hearts. And the Corinthians are like, well, not so sure about Paul. You know, he started the church.

But, you know, there's some things about him that we've learned from these special teachers who have come our way. And Paul is saying here, you are, because of this, because of your stance, you have really messed up your own spiritual life. That's what that's talking about.

You're restricted in your own affections. This is really, really upending your spiritual life and keeping you from growing. So I think this is a really big deal for Paul. And blameless ministry is really the kind of the thing that he puts in front of them to help them to realize the error of their ways in rejecting his ministry. His ministry to them.

So we asked the question, what is blameless ministry? And in this passage, we've got a long list of things. You know, Paul is really good at making lists. He's also really good at long sentences, right? And so we're inside of a long sentence here, actually.

But he's got, I think that this list breaks down into three parts. And the first part has to do with ministry is tough. It requires endurance.

It requires thick skin, right? If you're going into ministry, you're going to be a pastor of a church. You're going to be a pastor's wife. You're going to be a missionary. You know, lots of different ministries.

You're going to have to be tough, you know, especially in the day and age in which we live. But also, he talks about the transformative aspects of his ministry and the kinds of things that he actually focused on in his life. And then his blameless ministry is true reality. And that'll require a little bit of explanation as we look at verses nine and 10. So blameless ministry is tough.

It's difficult. And this is divided up by the prepositions that Paul uses. All you Greek scholars out there, you can take a look at that. But he's laying out these eight things here that have to do with everyday life for Paul.

Each of these ideas here, each of these nouns are plural. And so these are the kinds of things you just take a snapshot of practically every time in Paul's ministry and you find out these kind of things are going on. He's experiencing afflictions and hardships and beatings and he's going to prison and he finds himself in the middle of riots, which happened in Corinth, right?

Acts chapter 18. And, you know, hard labor in the Thessalonians. First Thessalonians, Paul talks about working day and night because he had to work a job making tents.

And then he also had the work of the ministry. I mean, he's not getting a lot of sleep. So you got the sleepless nights there. And also sometimes they didn't have anything to eat.

So they went a period of time without food. So we're talking about the general picture of just difficult times that requires endurance. And when I look at what we have here, we have not experienced that on the whole.

We have not experienced these types of hardships on the whole. But I do believe that these things are around the corner for us. And then blameless ministry is also transformative. This is what Paul focuses on because these particular things, focusing on these things and living in this way is what leads to transformed lives. And this is really what we ought to be thinking about. We ought to be thinking about keeping our lives pure, walking with God, getting to know the Lord in deeper and more significant ways every day and treating people with kindness and gentleness. We don't need to engage in some kind of major political overthrow or major political fight.

Let others do that. That's not our mission. Our mission is to walk with God and to watch the Holy Spirit at work as the word is given, truly genuinely love people and watch the power of God at work there.

So we have these prepositions all guiding this particular segment. And then blameless ministry number three is really true reality. Because here are the things that an unbeliever would think about Paul and his fellow workers that, you know, Paul got accused of being a deceiver. That he was telling people one thing and actually meaning something else or doing something else.

You know, for instance, they taking up the offering for the poor. So he got accused of being a liar. You know, pastors get accused of things like that. And yet Paul knows in his heart that he's a truth teller. And God knows that. That's what really matters, right? So really we have a God's view column and we've got a man's view column here.

And which one are you going to go with? As unknown, you know? Yet really, who do you want to be known by? You know, if God knows who you are, if God's watching your life and that, I mean, that's what really counts. As dying, yet behold we live. And he talks about in the first chapter how they despaired of life and, you know, perhaps were very close to death but God preserved them. As punished, yet not put to death. As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. As poor, yet making many rich.

As having nothing, yet possessing all things. You know, my sister died, a wonderful woman who loved the Lord, who served others, who loved her church. And she died just two weeks ago and I can truly say that she didn't want anything but to serve people. Her husband Jeff went through the house and went wall by wall. He mentioned this in the memorial service program.

I talked to him about this before he wrote that. He went to every wall, every room in the house, he couldn't find one thing that Melody asked for and wanted. All the things that were there were things that Jeff put there.

She didn't want anything. He had to talk her into going and buying things for herself, like buying clothes and things. It really was remarkable where her focus was. Blame ministry is tough, it's transformative and it is true. Several years ago, I was aware of a minister of the Lord who came under attack for his ministry. And this is a wonderful, wonderful man who, you know, he was a visionary person who helped get churches planted.

He didn't care about building his own ministry. He cared about getting people trained and getting them in place and serving the Lord and just helping them and assisting them. And so many different people were affected by his life. I have two mentors in my life and he was one of them. He was the person who really helped me to see that God could use me serving him.

Because I really wasn't convinced of that prior to meeting this man and being under his direction and encouragement along the way. Well, sometimes bad things happen and several young pastors confronted him this one day about his life and accused him of having bad motives and wanting to be in charge. There was a camp that was involved and things like that. And that was such a discouraging time for him. But he just decided, he just kind of withdrew and focused on where he could focus. So if they really didn't want him in that particular vein, in that particular direction, serving in this area, he thought, well, that's just the Lord helping him to realize that that's what he needed to do. He needed to shift to another opportunity that the Lord had for him. And what a discouraging time for this man at kind of at the end of his ministry. He just passed away a couple of years ago and he actually taught here. And the sad part about that story was that I was one of those guys.

I was one of those three guys that confronted him on a sunny day and said things to him that were not altogether balanced and carefully prayed about and thought through. And I say that and I've not said that really to practically anybody. I'm not saying that for a fact.

I'm saying it's easy to fall into that, especially when you're young. I have apologized for that a hundred times. It has never left my consciousness. It is a black mark on my soul. And I know the Lord's forgiven and he forgave me too. We're best of friends.

But I will never forget his look and the damage that I was part of. So my encouragement to you is to find yourself on the side of, you know, somebody's going to attack you along the way. It's going to happen. They're going to attack your wife. Make yourself ready for that.

Because that's more difficult than you being attacked. Ready your soul. Make sure your ministry is not going to be perfect.

You're going to make mistakes. But be careful about what you do so that you maintain a blameless ministry before God and before men. Let's pray. Fathers, I think about this and I think about the responsibility that you've given to us to be good stewards of ministry. I pray for strength for each of the people who are who are here today. The people in our seminary who will be filling pulpits and filling missions positions around the world and serving you in so many different ways.

And many are now. Lord, I pray for wisdom and strength that they might have and practice blameless ministry. We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen. You've been listening to a message preached in Seminary Chapel by Dr. Neil Cushman, dean of the Bob Jones University Seminary. Join us again tomorrow as we conclude this series on The Daily Platform.