The Pulpit Ministry of the Pastor-Theologian

In this episode, Johnathan Arnold and David Fry continue discussing the pastor as theologian.

Quotes from Fry:

• I want to challenge all of us to recommit ourselves to pulpit ministry—the preaching ministry of the shepherd. We are to feed our congregation with the truth of God.
• We are not going to grow personally, spiritually, or theologically by putting in the minimum study time—giving attention to everything else and just squeezing out the time we ought to be growing.
• Pastors, we must be growing ourselves if we expect our church to be maturing in Christ.
• The maturation we are after is opposed to get-big-quick schemes and methods. It requires long, slow, steady growth. It doesn't guarantee that we're going to go from a church of 50 to 500 in three to five years. But it does guarantee that we are going to shepherd people who are growing and in turn will shepherd others.
• We need to allow Christ to build his church his way rather than our own way. There are a lot of innovative ways to increase numbers, and it doesn't take a lot of skill to do those things, but it does take dedication and study to help people grow spiritually and mature in their Christian faith. As pastors, we cannot get sucked into this mentality of being a CEO who is tasked by our shareholders to grow as quickly as we can.
• Theologizing isn't just bringing up old dead people and reciting what they said. It is, this is why it matters to us who are alive today—this is what it means in what we actually face day in and day out.
• We need to be preaching about modesty because it is an opportunity to address a very important cultural issue from a deeply biblical and theological framework.
• The teenagers at our church really latch on to the theological rationale. They're convinced that immodesty is a serious issue. They cannot allow themselves to be immodest lest they live cross-way to what they believe about Christ, sin, and atonement.
• We need to know why we're doing what we're doing. Doing and believing is a connection that pastor-theologians must help people to make.

Quotes from Arnold:

• Pastors probably need to read the Bible more than they do. I know your practice is to read the entire Bible every 100 days. But we also need better reading habits. If we're not equipped with how to read the Bible, we'll have a tendency to skim until we find the verse that we're already familiar with or that "stands out to us." We must invest in our exegetical abilities, read the best commentaries, and take advantage of historical theology—read the Bible with the communion of the saints.
• If someone sits under our pulpit ministry for 15 years, what are they going to know? I think that answer is pretty embarrassing sometimes. In Bible college, I heard things like, "Bible college is a place where you can learn why you believe what you believe." I thought that was the church. What is a pastor even doing?
• Pastors ought to be modeling how to think through challenging questions.
• Someone recently asked me why it's important to dress modestly. What am I going to do in this moment? I'm going to give him a biblical theology of modesty. And when I was theologizing in that moment, I was pastoring.
• I want people to walk away from a conversation about an issue like modesty—not thinking about the standards of a particular faith tradition, or about me, or about John Wesley, or about what we've always done, or even about our culture and how bad it is—but first and foremost about Jesus. I want them to think, clothing is about Christ. Because it is. If we start there, that's a very healthy context for discussing the particulars.
• We have incredible opportunities to bridge from the cultural issues that people are facing to Jesus and the gospel—to give a theologically robust, Christ-centered, beautiful response that can bring great health to the church.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I am going to spend at least as much time praying for my sermon ahead of time as what I believe it will take me to preach that sermon.

SPEAKER_01 0:13

You're listening to the Holy Joys Podcast, a discussion of theology and ministry practice, all for a holy, happy church.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

I hear so many preachers make jokes about something that comes up and uh like a little maxim or a little clever saying, and they say, Oh, that'll preach, you know, that'll preach. And it's this idea that we're kind of always, look, we're we're kind of scrounging for the next thing because we got to preach these sermons all the time. Uh, and if and if we don't prioritize study, and Matt, Matthew Wilcoxon says, and especially if you don't either make time for it or especially make it the first thing in your day, it's very likely you're gonna be running on empty. Your preaching is not gonna be fresh. You are gonna stop learning. And so it's it's just gonna get old and uh and and people are gonna lose uh a heart for the word. You know, I I really do think that that a pastor who's immersed in study and always learning something fresh and exciting to share because the knowledge of God is exciting. It can create a culture of expectation in the church because they know that when their pastor gets up there, he's prepared and he's gonna share something with them. And there's studies that show that the number one reason people go to church overwhelmingly, I think it's like 70% of people, I forget what study that was put out by uh maybe it was a pew research, but they're coming to learn more about the Bible. And so um, you know, whatever else we think about John MacArthur. So it does come to mind as someone who, when he came, went to his church, he told them, if I'm gonna pastor here, I need 30 hours a week to study. And he mentions how the board said they didn't understand that, but they really wanted him to come. And so they they let him do that. And years later, the response is, we're so glad that we we let you do that because we've seen the benefits for the church. And if you think about the pastors that have, you know, big churches, not that that's the goal, but you think about the pastors that have these big churches that are well known, they're building it on their pulpit ministry. Great sermons, great preaching. Not every pastor is going to be a great preacher like that, but there is this idea that to build a church, it's not gonna be the preaching, it's gonna be the programs, it's gonna be all this other stuff that we get caught up in. And I actually think, no, maybe because we failed to provide people, you know, to make to shape a learning community, to spend the time and study that's necessary, to have something substantive and rich and people want to learn the Bible and actually continuing to teach and really instruct, we've created, we've created this void that we're now trying to fill with other things. And sometimes maybe it works, but does it really lead to health in the Christian community?

SPEAKER_00 2:52

Yeah. So let me go back to a comment that you made about John MacArthur uh requesting, or not requesting, but uh saying to his new congregation that he wanted 30 hours a week of study. And and right now, all the pastors out there uh listening are thinking, yeah, what world are you from? Uh that that would happen. And because we don't think of our pulpit ministry the way John MacArthur thought about thinks about his uh pulpit ministry. Um and and there are a lot of reasons why. And you know, one of the reasons I think is because we do live in a church culture in America that is very much given to get big quick schemes. That is, start programs, be performance uh focused. Um, Pastor, you're the CEO that's trying to grow a congregation numerically, you're trying to grow your ego, you're trying to grow your leadership skills, you know, all of these things are thrown at us, and that's what we feel. We feel a lot of pressure to do that. Well, first of all, we're always gonna fail at those things. If that's our aim, uh you will never be big enough, you will never uh have enough programs, you'll always and we'll view each other as competition, really. Uh, we'll view other churches who are doing marketing better than we are, or graphic design better than we are, or are growing more quickly than we are as our competition. And so I think that's a recipe for disaster. And so for the pastor who's thinking, uh, you know, is out there saying, you know, I don't know what world you're living on, what planet you're from, to think that I can have 30 hours of of study time. Uh I want to challenge uh all of us to begin rethinking in our own mind, recommitting ourselves to uh, first of all, to pulpit ministry, to the preaching ministry of the shepherd, uh, because Jesus gave Peter this task to feed my sheep. And then it was Peter then who wrote to us that we are to shepherd the flock. We are to feed and to water our congregation with with the truth of God. And if we fail to do that as pastors, again, primarily through our pulpit ministry, uh, we're gonna have congregations who are gonna wither and die uh spiritually because they're not uh feeding on the the meat of God's word. And so I think I think a discussion at this point on pulpit ministry is so important for understanding the pastor theologian.

SPEAKER_02 5:40

Yeah, and I think of Ephesians 4, you know, what does growth look like? What kind of growth are we after? And uh and and we're told that God has given shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes. So we can have a congregation of 500 people, but are they mature? Uh, or are they getting on Facebook and social media and because they haven't been taught solid food, solid doctrine, they don't have their powers of discernment trained. And so they're they're easily influenced. And the next pastor that comes in and teaches them maybe something totally different, they're just gonna go wherever they led. And, you know, they'll amen anyone at camp meeting if they're loud enough and charismatic enough. Um, or are we actually focused on really making mature, Christ-like disciples who are doctrinally grounded, grounded in the knowledge of who God is, and that they're living life out of that theological identity. Um, and so we see how important the speaking, you know, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Christ. Um, there's really the ministry of the word is is what brings the maturity to the people of God.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

Yeah, so you you mentioned you use the word mature, are the are we uh ministering to a congregation? I I think I want to put it this way, are they maturing? Are they growing? Right. And if we as pastors are not growing, and by the way, you you don't we're not gonna grow personally, spiritually, theologically by putting the minimum study time that we can and giving attention to everything else to to squeeze out the time that we ought to be uh growing. So, you know, if I do um as my uh physical therapist tells me, I was supposed to be doing you know a certain number of push-ups. Well, you know, if I if I decide, well, I think I'll do 10 push-ups a day, well, guess what? I'm not gonna be, that's really not gonna do much for me, right? Um, I mean, I I actually can do 10 push-ups, uh, but I should be doing a lot more than that. And it's the same way, you know, mentally, spiritually, as pastors, uh, we have to be growing ourselves if we're going to expect our church people to be maturing in in Christ. And uh it's not the pastor's uh role to be personally discipling everyone in their congregation. Uh we we we have to be training people within our congregation to be taking up those roles as under-shepherds, uh, we being also an under-shepherd under Christ, uh, but we have to train up some other elders to come alongside and to, and some deacons to uh fulfill those uh particular roles within the church uh to free us up to dedicate ourselves, uh, as Acts 6 says, to to prayer and to the ministry of God's word. And so I think this begins with pastors uh rethinking what we actually how we actually spend our time and doing so uh with an eye on what are we going to be doing in the pulpit this Sunday and in Sundays to come. Uh so our pulpit ministry preaching is is so important. And and I want to mention this too, that uh this kind of this kind of maturation and growth is quite opposed to that that get get uh uh big quick uh scheme or or methods that are out there because this requires long, slow, steady growth. Right. And it doesn't guarantee us that we're gonna go from a church of 50 to 500, you know, in in three or four three to five years. It doesn't guarantee us that. But what it does guarantee is that we're gonna be shepherding people who are growing, and as they grow, they in turn will also shepherd others. Yeah, and and isn't that what we're longing for?

SPEAKER_02 10:11

I mean, it's certainly what I'm longing for. I I want people who are hungry for the word, who who come together as a community that, you know, as Acts 2 says, is devoted to the apostles' doctrine. I'd rather have a smaller community that's really devoted. And then out of that life of devotion, you know, people are added to our number rather than a lot of immaturity and trying to just add to our number. And you you've used the illustration of if you have like a nursery full of babies in your church, the last thing you want to do is go out and try to get more babies. Let's start raising up some spiritual parents. And I think about how Paul says to Timothy, you're supposed to commit these things that I've deposited to you to others that they may may be able to teach others. Commit these to faithful men. So are we are we really investing in um in a conversation we had before? You you use this idea of inreach versus outreach. And are we really focused in investing on equipping? We're we're doing job training in a sense. Um, we're equipping the saints for the work of the ministry, building them up, maturing them, or is our focus more on just building numerically?

SPEAKER_00 11:18

Hmm. Right, right. Yes, because we we live in a world where success is based on numbers, right? Uh dollars or, you know, people in the in the pews, or some other way of measuring things numerically, quantitatively rather than qualitatively. And it's not that the numbers don't matter. So I don't want to be misunderstood. We don't want to be misunderstood on this point, but it is that uh it doesn't have to be an either-or. And it's a different way of allowing uh really uh Christ to build his church through the Spirit and through his people, uh, his way rather than our own way. There are a lot of innovative ways to you know increase numbers, and and really it doesn't take a lot of skill to do those sorts of things, but it does take dedication and study to uh to help people grow spiritually and to mature in their Christian faith. So uh again, uh you know, as pastors, we cannot get sucked into uh these this mentality of being a CEO who is tasked by our shareholders to to grow um as quickly as we can in order to soothe our pride or to you know massage our ego. And and that's not what this is about. In fact, uh as a pastor, the truth that we speak and preach ought to be so powerful that people miss us, that they don't see us. Uh they're impacted by the truth, not by uh the power or the persuasion necessarily of our ability, but by the truth itself. And and yes, we care about you know methodology, we care about being able to speak well. No, we care about being uh persuasive in our preaching, uh, but it is the truth itself that the spirit will use to uh to convict and to guide and to uh to do what God's word is meant to do in the hearts and lives of people. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:33

And I don't know if my experience is common to everyone, but as I think about the kind of pulpit ministry that we're describing, the training that I received on preaching, um, you know, the first I had two classes, and the first was really on preaching methodologies, the second one was on like basically including or improving your rhetorical skills. Um, but as I look at what that's produced and I look at how it contributed to my own life and my preaching, I don't know how helpful it actually was because when I get up there to preach, what I say has to be theologically grounded. And I think a lot of people don't even know how to study the Bible, aren't, aren't really spending the time necessary to study and really don't understand their theology very well. And so that's a recipe for disaster if you have a people who don't know how to study, a pastor that doesn't know how to week by week fill fill up and then and then go into the pulpit to deliver what he's learning, but but yet you've taught him about a method and you've taught him um you know rhetorical skills, he's gonna naturally fall back on charisma. He's gonna fall back on, you know, shouting louder or drawing harder and not really focused on substance. And it's so easy to make up for substance with shouting or to make up for nuance with noise, you know, and just keep and attract an audience. And you will draw people that way. There are some people who love that, and you'll draw a certain crowd, but is it actually a mature group of people that you're developing and building?

SPEAKER_00 15:05

Right, right. So there are a lot of a lot of ways in which uh preaching, especially uh you know, celebrity preaching, and honestly, uh you know, a lot of a lot of camp meeting preaching back through the you know 19th century, early 20th century, was was uh really centered around uh an entertainment element, right? Let's draw people in. Yes. Now and again, it's it's not that we don't want to draw people in at all, that we should be dry and and you know starchy in our presentation, uh but uh but again the the truth of God's word uh is powerful in itself. And uh so so as pastors, uh one of the things that we uh we we need to do uh aside from you know uh trying to refine our uh preaching skills, but we will be better pastor theologians when we persevere in the place of prayer and when we are um also persevering in our personal study of God's word. So I think a lot of those classes or those discussions of how to be a better presenter, um I I I hopefully they're just assuming that the pastor is being uh diligent in their uh daily study of God's word and they're reading God's word through uh from front to back on a regular basis, that they're studying it, that they are uh learning and growing in it. But that's not an assumption that I I think is actually safe to make because uh many pastors do not read uh the uh scripture uh through very often. And uh and I think that's first of all, so I would tell a pastor uh who's listening to this, wondering, okay, what's the takeaway? What do I need to be doing? Uh I would say, first of all, in your uh personal life, make sure that you are reading God's word. And if if you're doing it daily, you can get through scripture actually quite quickly. Um but read God's word. That that is your primary um uh means for uh for knowing God and making him known to your people is is knowing God through his word. That's number one, and then number two is uh spending time in prayer uh specifically for your pulpit ministry. Uh I I read a book a few years ago, recommended by uh Mark Cravens, I believe, who uh I read this and and and my my takeaway was this, and I've tried to practice this, but my takeaway was I am going to spend at least as much time praying for my sermon ahead of time as what I believe it will take me to preach that sermon. So if I preach a you know 30, 40 minute sermon, then I'm gonna spend my my goal is to spend 40, 45 minutes in prayer for that sermon. Wow. Everyone doesn't have to do that, but that's that's one of the takeaways of uh this book. I don't remember the name of it, but it had to do with you know the spiritual preparedness of the pastor and and the preacher. And uh and so I I set that as a goal uh because that's an important part of my own theological preparation for the pulpit ministry.

SPEAKER_02 18:43

Yeah, I think of uh Gregory Nazianzis says that the first step or one of the first steps of theology is shaping or smoothing the theologian within. And so, you know, we see how keeping a close watch on your teaching goes hand in hand with keeping a close watch on yourself uh and your prayer life and so forth. One comment I might make is uh it is certainly important for pastors to probably be reading the Bible more than what they do. I know your practice is to read it about every hundred days, and and I think that's an excellent practice, just some getting the big picture. But but better reading habits, you know, if we're not equipped how to read the Bible, um, we're we're gonna have a tendency to skim until we find the verse that we're already familiar with or that sticks out to us. And and uh we have to know how to read the Bible. So investing in um in your hermeneutics, investing in your exegetical abilities, reading um, you know, good commentaries, making use of good commentaries, um, and then making use of history, historical theology to read the Bible with the communion of the saints and other pastors. And and one of the things that I think could be helpful for a pastor is, you know, take take some sermon manuscripts from the past, look at sermon manuscripts from John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, look at how they're handling scripture and dealing with scripture, look at this theological uh um breadth, but also the depth that that is involved in their preaching, and can you know compare that to the sermon manuscripts that we hear now. If I took uh if I took a uh an average camp meeting sermon or even just an average sermon from from one of the pulpits, uh in an average evangelical pulpit, and I compared them side by side, I think what we'd find is just there's not always a lot of substance. So I think we we have to, yes, be in the word more, but we're really gonna have to learn how to even read the Bible because that that I think even isn't a given that reading the Bible well. And so that's not necessarily gonna automatically transfer into better preaching. Um, so having an idea of what where we want to be and and what a really what a good goal is is for for what a help, what a strong, robust sermon looks like, and then what is it gonna take in our in our study and in our personal development to get there?

SPEAKER_00 21:00

Sure. And John John Wesley, I think, is a great example of someone who uh incorporates current events, cultural uh trends, uh, even in his sermons, uh, he he will he doesn't give a lot of detail, so we don't know you know everything that he's speaking of, but obviously his audience did. But he would make reference and he was constantly bouncing back and forth between the text of scripture and the and the and the context of culture. Uh and I think he's a good example. And there are many others, even some today, uh who do that. You know, John Piper is another example of someone who uh frequently uh addresses you know his own congregation based on uh you know what's happening in our world. We we've already talked about John MacArthur. Uh both of them are, of course, are reformed uh theologians. Wesleyan's have you know I kind of I don't know if we've Shied away from that or or what we've done with with preaching. But for some reason, when you today, when you think of the strong pulpit ministries in America, um you know it is, and I don't want to say sadly because I'm glad they have strong pulpit ministries and they are our brothers, but sadly for Wesleyan, uh they're not Wesleyan. And we need that. And you know, I think as you were talking there, I think, you know, how many times have I walked away from a sermon and um quickly forgot you know what really the the the core content was? And and I think that happens frequently with people, but when we uh but if if we are purposeful about giving uh our our congregations, our local congregations uh something that is clearly biblical but connects to their daily lives, uh that's what we are supposed to be doing as pastoral theologians. And they may not remember the specifics of what you said, but their life will be will be uh changed, it will be affected uh when they're able to hear the truths of God and then make those connections uh under your ministry of of how that works out in their particular life. Uh that that is effective pulpit ministry.

SPEAKER_02 23:27

Yeah, and and to just pick up on the thought about John Piper, why is he so popular? I mean, he is extremely, extremely popular, and really he's built his whole ministry around his his pulpit ministry, and people love it. And so, again, just to come back to this previous point, I think it's a huge miscon misconception that people don't want theology. Uh, I think I just think we're do we're doing it poorly.

SPEAKER_00 23:52

I do too, and and impatiently. You know, John Piper he didn't get to where he is, you know, in the last 10 years. Um, you know, he his popularity, of course, has grown. But he his and and I don't know his whole story, I know a little bit about his background, but you know, you think of people uh who are known for their pulpit ministry, it doesn't happen overnight. And and we have to give ourselves permission to just stick to it and be faithful to to scripture, be faithful in our place of study, be faithful in our delivery, be intentional as pastors to to allow uh the truths of scripture to uh flow through us to shape us first. Uh, I think the way Van Hooser puts it is we are to be people who who um seek, speak, and show the truth of God. And and that's what uh the of of all of the people within the local congregation, we are the ones who are supposed to be to exemplify as the shepherds. We're to exemplify the truth of God. And uh that that's part of what it means to be a pastor theologian.

SPEAKER_02 25:08

So scripture never allows us to separate doctrine and instruction from godliness. You know, uh Van you mentioned Van Hooser. He talks about deploying doctrine for godliness. And we we read about doctrine that accords with godliness. So, you know, here's a practical question. If someone sits under our pulpit ministry for 15 years, what are they going to know? And I think that answer is is pretty embarrassing sometimes. So, you know, in in Bible college, I heard dozens of times people saying things like, you know, Bible college is a place where you can learn why you believe what you believe. And I'm thinking, I thought that was the church. I mean, what is a what is a pastor even doing? And so it could come back to Wesley, um, because because even though we don't see a lot of great examples, I think, in contemporary Wesleyanism, there are plenty, there are plenty of examples in our history, and Wesley, Wesley uh, of course, is a great one to start with. He gives plenty of arguments. He's very systematic. He uh if you sat under Wesley's preaching for 15 years, you're gonna you're gonna know the whole council of God. You're you're gonna get the major doctrines. And so again, we if we don't learn and expand our knowledge and and uh illuminate areas of our understanding that maybe aren't aren't very aren't very well illumined, it's very likely that our people are gonna have massive holes in in their theology. And what they do know, they're they're mostly going to know because you told them that's what they believe, but not necessarily why. So a pastor ought to be modeling how to do theology. They ought to be modeling how to think through questions. And Dr. Cooley uh is one of my mentors, and he he said something like, you know, if someone sits under under your pulpit, they not only not, they they not excuse me, they should not only know what to think, but they should actually know how to think. And and sometimes good thinking is better caught than taught. And so we are supposed to be a model of thoughtful, systematic, careful thinking about God. And if you think that's dry, again, we got to go back to guys like Wesley in the past and today, people whose pulpit ministries are thriving, that are that are everything but dry. It is theology on fire, uh, as right, right, right.

SPEAKER_00 27:26

And and one of the reasons that a pastor needs prolonged time in the study each week is because it's not so difficult. There are a lot of places, a lot of resources today where you can go and you can you can find a good exposition of uh you know, say you want to preach a series, a topical series through, say, the Apostles' Creed. You wanna you want to feed your people doctrinally some rich doctrine. And uh, by the way, that's a good good thing to do, preach through the the Apostles' Creed, a summary of of Christian theology from scripture. And you know, there are a lot of resources you can do. Where our study really has to to focus not only in our understanding of of you know line by line through that, but then we have to persevere in the place of study long enough then to apply that and say, okay, this is why we believe this, you know, or here's what we believe. Now this is why it's so important for our life, as we uh go out from our corporate uh worship gathering, and this is what this looks like out in our daily lives. This is what it looks like to live out that we believe in one God. Uh, this is what it means to live out as a community what our affirmation of the triune Godhead and and so on and so forth. So uh, you know, it takes time to work out in our own minds those applications. But that's again what so a pastoral theologian, you know, a pastor theologian is a practical theologian. We are the ones that make sure that whoever says they're practicing theology uh is doing so grounded in the church, in the community. Uh and so you know, a pastor, I think you mentioned this again off-air uh earlier. You said something about you know theologians or theologizing. That that's what that's a pastoral task. If you're theologizing, uh at least if you're a Christian theologian, then you're you're doing part of what it means to be a pastor. And and I think that's true, uh, that uh we we uh the theologizing isn't just you know bringing up you know old dead people and and reciting what they said. It is this is why it matters to us who are alive today. Yeah. Uh this is what it means in what we actually face day in and day out.

SPEAKER_02 30:00

Yeah, and that brings us kind of back to the beginning when we were giving some some examples of ways in which we do this. I just think of a conversation that I had uh not long ago with somebody at Burger King, and we're sitting there and they're asking me about modesty and about, you know, some some uh the the ladies in their family that they're trying to convince them to dress a little more modestly to go to church because they're kind of embarrassed by the way they're dressing. And they they ask the question like, you know, well, how do I how do I talk to them about this and why does it why is this so important? I kind of know that we ought to dress modestly, but why? So my my response was was very much theological. And so when I say that theologizing is pastoring, it's not like in the study I theologize and then hopefully that kind of bleeds over and helps me do the real work of pastoring. Actually, like right there at Burger King, I am how am I gonna respond to this question? How am I gonna pastor this person in this issue of modesty? Well, I'm gonna give them a biblical theology of modesty. So we started in Genesis with how you know man sins and they try to cover the shame of their sin with fig leaves, and that's not a sufficient covering, and God provides the covering for them. And and this is pointing us to Jesus, the innocent lamb that's slain to cover us, and how clothing is a signpost to the glory of God. And man, he was all fired up. He's like, I want to go home and read my Bible. And it's like this is this is an example where I see, like, I don't think that that these are two different things. I think that when I was theologizing in that moment, I was pastoring. And I've struggled to express and articulate this sometimes, but but I just I hate the dichotomy that's created. And even saying that you are a uh a pastor theologian, it's like, well, like a pastor is a theologian. In some ways that that that's in some ways it's an artificial distinction, and sometimes, in some ways, it's a necessary one. But my my passion is just to help pastors come into that identity where they think that everything I do as a shepherd, guiding, feeding, comforting, is by its very nature theologizing or theological.

SPEAKER_00 32:06

Right, right. And I think the example there you gave with uh there in Burger King uh is a great opportunity to give a biblical theology. I think you used that term, a biblical theology of modesty. And wow. And just that issue touches on a really large spectrum of theological issues, right? So it touches on what it means to be made in the image of God. It touches on the effect of sin and guilt. It touches on the atonement that clothing, our our clothing, being properly clothed, is a testament to the atonement. That's right, right? It is God giving us a visible picture of what's gonna be happening in Christ. Uh there, therefore, Adam and Eve, by being clothed, by being covered by a sacrifice, by by death entering into the world and uh through death, then them being covered. There's there's a lot of richness. And here's the thing if we want, if we are really concerned about something like modesty, and by the way, we ought to be. Yes, right. We need we need, as pastors, we need to be concerned in our in our churches, we need to be preaching about modesty because it is an opportunity to really address a very important cultural issue from a deeply biblical and theological uh uh framework. Yes. And and honestly, you know, that's one example. Sabbath would be another example, another topic that is ripe for some deeper theological reflection. Uh there are probably other other uh topics that come to mind as well, but these are issues that need to be addressed from the perspective of Christian doctrine. Right. And and yes, that doctrine takes in consideration uh tradition. That's tradition with a big T, that's long tradition. Uh yes, it should. Uh, but we we can begin with what God Himself reveals as true. And uh that really, really grounds, and by the way, I as I've done that here, uh especially with our high schoolers, our teenagers, our older teenagers, uh, they they really latch on to that theological rationale. Yeah. Uh they really uh you can see it in their eyes, I hear it in their conversation, where they are making the connections and they're realizing that they're convinced, they're convinced that uh immodesty is a serious issue, that they that they cannot allow themselves to be immodest lest they uh lest they live crossway to uh what they believe about Christ and about uh sin and about atonement. That's it.

SPEAKER_02 35:09

That that's it. You know, I want people to walk away from a conversation like that about an issue like modesty, not thinking about the the standards of a particular faith tradition first and foremost, or about me, or about John Wesley, or about what we've always done, or even about our culture and how bad it is, but first and foremost about Jesus, so that they think clothing is about Christ, because it is, you know, and so if we start, if we start there and then that actually creates a very healthy context for discussing the particulars. But when we jump to the particulars, we may be able to get some people to conform, but are they actually modest and are they by you know by biblical standard? Because if if they're they're this is emerging from a heart that isn't isn't um reflective of an understanding of the gospel and a love for what Jesus and Christ, what Christ has done for us, if it's motivated by other concerns, is this really true modesty? So no matter what issue we we come at it, we're gonna need to be theologically equipped to walk people through these things and bring them back to Christ. So Sabbath, just really quickly here, you know, think about this is a great issue because we live in a very restless culture, a very tired culture. And so when people talk to you about how tired they are, uh this is something I'll be I'll be thinking about after we get off this podcast. What an incredible opportunity to say, you know what? You know, we live in a very restless culture, but you know that God has given us a day of rest and given us permission to rest. And do you know that actually this is supposed to shape us as a Sabbath people? Sabbath is a way of life, and all of it points to the Sabbath rest that God has provided for us in Jesus, you know, Hebrews 4. So, so what incredible opportunities to bridge from the cultural issues that people are facing to Jesus and the gospel to give a theologically robust, Christ-centered, beautiful response that is gonna, I think, bring great health to the church.

SPEAKER_00 37:06

Oh, I believe too, and and to make a connection with the Sabbath, uh that that topic with our previous uh podcast on heaven. You know, what a beautiful way to uh encourage and enable people to have that eager anticipation, that happy anticipation of heaven, our eternal rest, right? Right. And uh by by teaching them how to enjoy that now, uh to be purposeful in observing uh you know God's God's gift to us, uh taking that as a gift and enjoying it, and doing so because we are people who live with hope. And again, that's a there's that's a theological reason. There's our there's our that's practical theology right there. We know why we do what we're doing, uh not just why we believe what we're believing, uh, but but doing and believing uh is a connection that pastor theologians uh have to make, uh help people make for their own life.

SPEAKER_02 38:13

Yeah. Yeah, and isn't that that's really what we're we've been trying to do with Holy Joys? It's robust theology for a holy, happy church. Um, you know, Fred Sanders quotes this Lutheran theologian who said, it's not enough to be a church-based theologian. You have to be a church basement theologian, you have to understand what doctrine is for. It's not for theologians, it's for churches. And so we love theology. We are dead serious about theology because we love God and we love the church and we're serious about the church. And uh just believe that uh the fuller and richer and more Christ-centered and gospel-centered our theology can be, uh, the more health and maturity it can potentially bring to God's people.

SPEAKER_01 38:53

Thank you for listening to the Holy Joys Podcast. Email your questions about theology and ministry practice to podcast at holyjoys.org. Our labors for a holy, happy church are supported by generous listeners like you. Please pray about partnering with us at holyjoys.org forward slash donate.