WLC Question #158

0:00The following podcast is sponsored in part by the Blue Ridge Institute for Theological Education and Birmingham Theological Seminary. For more information about these institutions, please visit their websites at bright-va.org. That's B-R-I-T-E-V-A-D-O-R-G or BTS.education. And now, here is Larger for Life, a podcast on the Westminster Larger Catechism. Welcome back listeners to Gospel Ditties with Coach Matt Adams. We have a ditty for you as we start looking at questions 158. And this is one that is all endearing to our hearts, how firm a foundation.

1:05How firm a foundation he saints of the Lord is laid for your faith in his excellent word. What more can he say than to you? He has said to you who for refuge to Jesus have fled. Sean, hit that applause button for me, buddy. Thank you, thank you. While I was singing that, I thought, you know, that was a that was a Presbyterian hymn. Most of our listeners are used to me singing some of those old Gospel ditties. I grew up singing in the Pentecostal church. Can't really remember one that spoke specifically about the Word of God. But there is an elementary tune, you know, the B-I-B-O-L-E. I could do that one for us, which I think spin.

2:06No, thank you. That's okay. That's okay. Are you sure? The first one was good enough for me. I enjoyed it thoroughly. My ears have fully recovered. Did you have, yes, did you have me muted while singing spin? You muted me before you told me you were going to do this. And I was just at the top of my lungs protesting you doing so. You muted me before the episode began. So just so people know the persecution that I suffer on this podcast at the hands of Matt. Because when he's the moderator, when he hosts the meeting, he is ruthless with that mute button. Well, you know, spin very graciously. I let you back on so that you could enjoy that riveting rendition of our firm. And so I won't sing the B-I-B-O-L-E at spins protest. I guess I have to humble myself before my superior. And I was the crowd applaud like cheering because I'm not going to continue singing.

3:11I thought it would be a boo. Yeah, and I love how you had to ask for the applause. They're booing you, spin. They're booing you. That's not what's happening. They're booing you. Well, anyway, listeners, you don't need to hear a Matt and spin spat. You need to hear all about questions 158, 159. That was a nice little turn of phrase. A spin and Matt, what do you have? What happens? Spat. Yeah, you like that, didn't you? Yeah, very nice. I'm trying to take up a little bit of poetry. So, you know, been thinking in rhymes now here lately. Just trying to sharpen the edges a little bit on my imagination, my moral imagination. Anyway, question 158, 159. We have the entire, you know, the entire cast here, larger for life, Sean, myself, Nick, spin, and Derek.

4:15And we're going to talk about the word of God being preached, who ought to preach it, and how it ought to be preached by those who have been given the duty of preaching. All right, so I'm going to read question 158. And then, Sean, I'll kick it right over to you to get us started. 158 is really short. By whom is the word of God to be preached? The word of God is to be preached only by such who are sufficiently gifted, and also duly approved and called to that office. Take it away, good buddy. Well, the Westminster larger catechism is a churchly document, so it should be no surprise to us that it has a churchly answer. I know that such answers, they likely don't grate against the sensibilities of our listeners, because our listeners are folks who love the standards, or are curious about the standards, or want to learn more about the standards in their theology. But an answer like this certainly grates against modern

5:16Western, certainly American sensibilities, evangelical sensibilities. You know, we all probably know folks or maybe grew up, you know, in those kinds of settings where it's like, hey, anybody who has a passion for the Lord, anybody who loves the Lord Jesus and who has this desire to proclaim his name, they should do it. If you want to preach, if you've got the desire, then do it. Who are we to say no? Who are we to stop you? If you want to do it, then by golly, you should do it. And the Westminster larger catechism with the backing of Holy Scripture would come behind and say, not so fast. This isn't the Wild West. This isn't the lone ranger, an upstart, anybody who wants to can just, you know, Johnny on the spot can be a self-appointed minister or preacher of the gospel. No, the Lord Jesus Christ has given gifts to his church that he's duly ordained to do so through the means

6:18and through the instrumentation of his church. One of the proof texts that came to my mind, and if you'll give me a moment to pull it up, but it's from Ephesians 4, verses 8 through 11, Ephesians 4, talks about the gifts that the ascended Christ pours out upon his church, and that's one of the several proof texts that the larger catechism provides for us here. So I'll start reading verse 7, Ephesians 4 verse 7, but grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore it says, when he, meaning Jesus, when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men. In saying he ascended, what does it mean? But that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth. He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things. And here's the key verses here, verse 11 of Ephesians 4, and he gave, meaning Jesus, he, the ascended Christ,

7:19gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and to the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood. Man, I wish somebody would write a book about mature manhood, oh well, maybe another day, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. That's so forth. That key verse there in verse 11 is where the larger catechism would take us, that Christ Jesus has poured out gifts, namely people, upon his church. And it gives these offices of word ministry, you'll notice, apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers. And we don't necessarily have to get into all that, but folks should know that because of the Greek, and even the punctuation in the syntax, shepherds, and teachers, you could render it that way, but it's probably also just as easily rendered as shepard teachers. Talk about your minister's shepard teachers.

8:20So there's a whole debate in there about, is there a separate office of teachers or not? We don't have to get into that today unless we want to, but there you have it. Shepherds and teachers, he gave this office for the purpose of equipping the saints for the work of ministry, building up the body of Christ. Now, there's other verses we want to unpack as well and talk about today, but that's just for starters, that it's not just any old person, it's not just any old Johnny Jim or Bob, it's specific people whom the ascended Christ has poured out upon his church, who is given to his church for the purpose of edifying his people with the ministry of the word. If I could put it another way, the ministry of the word has been entrusted to particular people and not to everybody indiscriminately. So that's part of how the larger catechism is answered in that force. The word of God is to be preached by only by such as are sufficiently gifted and also duly approved and called to that office. So we're going to get into more of those particularities

9:20as we go along, but it's not just anybody. It's those whom Christ has gifted and whom the church has recognized that gifting and has approved that gifting and that they've been appropriately set apart to the work in a church way through church-ly machinations. So sorry to the modern 21st century American mindset of if I want to do it, then I'm going to point myself to do it. That's not how the New Testament sees these things. That's not how the Apostle Paul sees these things. And that's not how a larger catechism sees these things. It is interesting that question 158 that it does put gifting such as are sufficiently gifted and also duly approved and called to that office. I don't think that this is in an order of priority because there are some men with greater gifts in preaching ministry than others. Actually, a number of the people whose writings have been passed down to us throughout church history. It's interesting to hear that a number of them maybe had a stutter or they had something of a shrivel voice or they were not a very good orator, but clearly the Lord used them

10:22and used their ministries even beyond their own lifetime. So the emphasis here shouldn't be on, we need gifted people in ministry. God will give gifts. But I think the most important thing is that a person is called to that office. And I think this is a good time for us to kind of hit on that presbyterian distinction between internal call and external call. There are some people who are externally called and ordinarily because people that church recognize that this person has gifts. They have a very charismatic personality. None of which are things sins in and of themselves, but they really are insufficient to be a preacher of the Word. A person has to be called by the Holy Spirit in their heart of hearts to engage in preaching ministry. So you have to have an internal call. You yourself need to feel called. You can't become an elder or teaching elder under compulsion

11:24as first Peter 5 talks about. But nor should you dismiss the external call and say, well, because I have this internal urge to preach, doesn't matter what anybody says to me, I'm going to go and be a preacher. This question in the cataclysm says, no, you need to be duly approved as well. And I think that is also kind of echoing the idea of being called to that office that you need to be approved by the leadership of the local church. You need to come into care of a presbyteria. Again, I'm speaking in sort of presbyterian terms. But even if you're not presbyterian, there should be men who are already ordained that recognize in you gifts for ministry. And they see that you are bearing fruit and keeping with repentance that you have a lifestyle. No, you're not a perfect person. But you are not living hypocritically with the faith that you profess as a Christian. You're living in a manner that is above reproach. And last thing I'll say on this sort of play

12:25between the internal and the external call, those who should go into preaching ministry, some of us, and I don't know maybe this is the case with any of you guys, some people struggle with internal call. They are genuinely called by the spirit and the Lord has gifted them with abilities that will be useful in ministry. But they struggle to feel that inward call. It feels very, very faint. But that's what the external call is for. Because it confirms to us if we're prone to doubt and if we think that, man, maybe I've made a mistake, maybe I'm not cut out for this. I don't have the intellectual gifts. I'm not a silver-tongued order, like Sean Morris or Derek Bright. I can't do this. But if you have that external call, that doesn't count for nothing. That is a means of reassuring you that we see these gifts. And we see your godliness.

13:25We see that you're a man who cares for the souls of those to whom he communicates, to whom he preaches the gospel. We think that you can do this. So don't think, oh, I am internally called, because if you are, there will be an external call as well. Every person who is internally called to the gospel ministry should expect an external call. And if you have no external call and you're not being approved by the leadership of a church, then you need to ask yourself some hard questions that maybe you're not internally called. Maybe you just really want to do ministry, but the Lord doesn't want you to. So I'd say if you have an internal call, you will have an external call. But if you have an external call, you need to also consider, okay, people see the gifts. Do I have the reggae's a godliness? And if you struggle with internal call, and you're getting these external call things, you know, pray about it.

14:27Be in prayer and look to the Lord that he would internally, through that external confirmation, internally assure you that you're doing the right thing in entering into ministry. Yeah, I would add to this, a personal anecdote maybe that I experienced in college, and then also a word of advice perhaps to pastors. So the first, by way of anecdote, is I remember having a speech class with a young man in Bible College who said that he wanted to be a pastor. He wanted to be a preacher. When it came time to present our speeches, and they were not expositions or anything like that, it was just a generic speech class that both men and women took, and you know, there was nothing.

15:28It wasn't meant to be a preaching class. It was just speech communication 101, and we were supposed to give, you know, five or six minute speeches on, I don't know, something like our favorite movie or we could use a favorite Bible passage or something. I mean, there was some kind of level of freedom with it. And it was his turn to go, and he stood up, and he could not even get out his name or an introduction. And the entire room felt terrible for him. It was not a large crowd. It was five or six students. I went to a small fundamentalist Baptist Bible College. He could not do anything. He was just trembling with fear, and he was pouring sweat and stuttering, and he ended up having really to just sit down. He couldn't deliver his speech. And the teacher, she was so conned, she said, you know, I don't know that you're gifted for public speaking. You know, you may have a ministry elsewhere, but you're not gifted for public speaking.

16:30And he ended up, you know, he ended up not going into ministry, he did something else, and God bless him for that. So I'll say that, by the way, I've ended up in the sense that or if I'm Candice Owens and a Nickdote, have you seen that? Okay. Anyways, basically by just saying that it does happen that there are men who are internally convinced that they're supposed to go into ministry, but they just simply don't have it. That God has not gifted them for that, and they need to recognize that. And that's why it's so important to have an external call. So you don't end up with like this guy, who put kind of all of his eggs in one basket and didn't really consider anything else, and all of a sudden now he's, you know, he's kind of in a mess. So, secondly, my word of maybe advised the pastors would be,

17:36you need to, you need to create opportunities for young men who believe they're gifted, or who believe they're called to ministry. So often, we depend upon the seminary to do that, but that's not totally the seminary's job. The seminary's to train men, but it is to work in conjunction with the local church. And what I have found is the seminary often times presupposes that the church is affirming the gifts in some kind of external calling way of that seminary student and now they're being sent off to train. And then this church sometimes will presuppose that the seminary will determine whether or not they have the requisite gifts and will tell them. And that's not the right way to go. I was at a church, not a PCH church,

18:39where there was not an opportunity for me. I had an internal call, but there was no Sunday evening service, there was no Wednesday night service. You know, there was really no, and they weren't going to give up the pulpit on a Sunday morning. And so there was no opportunity for me to grow in my gifts. And it took me a long time to eventually find a church that I had some opportunities, whether it was teaching Sunday school, then preaching on a Sunday night, or leading a small group, or whatever the case is, to begin to build those gifts. And so by the time I actually got into seminary in preaching classes, I was already testing those gifts out and had some kind of familiarity with how to handle the text. So I just want to encourage pastors, you know, if you've got a young man in your congregation who has a zeal and who has fire in his bones, don't pour cold water on that. You don't have to fully affirm right off the bat

19:39and say, oh, you should just go to seminary, like so many do, and pawn it off on the school. No, why don't you meet with that guy and maybe let him sit in on your sermon prep sometimes or, you know, give him some opportunities on a Sunday night service or something so where he can build and grow into that. And test the waters before he spends $60,000 on a seminary education, only to find out he's actually not really gifted for that. And we've all seen that, and it's really painful. It's really painful to watch, and I'm sure it's even more painful to go through because there are people who have upended their lives, maybe they've sold their homes, they've moved cross country to go to seminary. And no one had the heart to tell them, this isn't for you, right, neither the church nor the seminary. Yeah, I mean, you know, but also we've probably, we've also probably got a lot of guys who maybe could be in Christian ministry,

20:41but churches are not actively putting their arms around those guys and giving them opportunities for the exercise of their gifts and to test and say, do you even like doing this? You might be capable and good in a pinch, but do you want to help, you know, teach Sunday school class? Do you want to preach once a year? You know, here at our church we have two young men, one of whom is entering into college, but thereafter he plans to go to my alma mater, a Greenville seminary, and we've got another guy who's looking to go into Greenville seminary. And you know, we've given them opportunities, whether it's exhorting at the nursing home or teaching you Sunday school, we use Louis Berkhoff's Systematic Theology right now for our middle school and high school students. So it's as one does. As one does. Yeah, yeah, our kids are just, they're just built different, you know, you watch the Princess bride, our youth watch the Lord of the Rings extended directors cut, you know.

21:46We are not the same. But I'm curious, and this is maybe a little bit of a divergence. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this. I think we're seeing some demographic shifts among ministers. We're seeing a lot of the baby boomers aging out. We're seeing growth in the PCA, relative to other Protestant denominations in the United States. We are, I believe, the only reformed and Presbyterian denomination that is growing, or certainly growing at the clip that we are. So there's, I think, signs to be encouraged by. But in 10 to 15 years, there's going to be more pulpits than there will be men to fill them. But we've also got, and maybe this has always been the case, or it's just that the internet is highlighting these things. Or maybe we just have kind of a declension in personal godliness. We see a lot of moral failure among ministers.

22:47And it's really hard to watch. So do you guys think, I mean, maybe Derek, you kind of already tipped your hand at this one. Do you think that there are, let's not just talk about the reform world, like broadly speaking. Do you think that we have too many people going into ministry, or maybe ministry going into seminary, it's just kind of been extended. Well, everybody should go to seminary. Or do you think we don't have enough people, and we need to do a better job? Or is it some combination of the two? Derek, I'm curious to hear your thoughts based on what you said. Well, and I'm also a seminary professor, right? So there's, I do have opinions on this. I think that we don't have enough of the rock kind of person going. So I think that we need to do a better job of filtering applicants.

23:48I mean, some people want to go to seminary because they want the education. Some people go because they want to eventually go on to get a PhD to do, you know, church history or systematic theology or whatever the case is. And they're not really interested in pastoral ministry. So I get, we need to understand that that's a reality, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. But it seems to me that, and this is really part of a larger conversation about, especially the PCA and how we have ministries and how we do pastoral ministering the PCA. But so many guys I've encountered will want, when I was in seminary, we'll go to seminary to be a pastor and I have zero desire to preach. They just want to be on staff at a church, never preach, but do some kind of counseling or whatever the case is. And I just find that we have very little men who just have a fire in their bones

24:50to go and preach the gospel. They want to just be staff pastors somewhere and run meetings, but not actually preach and teach. I think we have a lot of that. And I just do not understand that's the case. If you believe you're called to pastoral ministry, that is in some case a call to preach the gospel that's inseparably taught to that. So I think we have, it's fair to say that we do not have enough men in seminary. And we have too much men in seminary, right? Like both things are true because we don't have the right kind of men in there at the majority, right? We need more men who want to preach the word and who will go into churches because we have such a, especially in the PCA, we have far too many pulpit open with not enough men to fill them because we have, in part of that is because we have

25:52so many men who don't want to preach. They cancel Sunday night services, they cancel Wednesday night services. Any opportunity to not preach the gospel and they want to preach 25 times a year. I mean, it just blows my mind. So we need more men who want to preach the gospel and who are willing to labor and they and we need to raise up young men who want to do the same and put them in seminary and if you don't want to preach, don't go. All right. Come on. Come on. Here because, even the applause do the thing. Let dare cook. A part of this approval process that the catechisms get into here. And I want to, I want to piggyback on something that Derek said, but I'm going to let you go first because I'm humble. You talking to me? Good. No, I'm talking to spin. Nobody even knew you were here. I'm trying to speak, guys. I've got something I've got to say. Okay. I'm going to say my thing,

26:56and then we'll kick it to Nick. Well, because what Derek said, we don't have enough of the right people in seminary and the marriage. Do you guys remember we kind of passed this around into a group chat? Maybe it was the pod chat or one of our other 30 group chats. But do you remember somebody's dissertation where they talked about how the business world infiltrated the church? And how it actually, like business practices, there used to be no office. The pastor's study was in his home. It used to be traditionally, right? You didn't have church offices. You didn't have kind of this business and this corporation kind of context mirried with the church. And so to Derek's point, it doesn't surprise me that we have, I think, high performing professional types of ministry who don't feel called to preach because I think there's been a professionalization of Christian ministry in the last 50 to 100 years with sort of this rise in industrialism and stuff.

28:02So yeah, if you take away half of the church's preaching opportunities, ain't nobody going to be able to preach. Aside from the preacher, the weekly preacher, no one's going to have the opportunity to get their reps in. So yeah, Derek, you can cook. That was, that was fantastic. Um, do I cut Nick a mat off? No, no, it's like letting somebody out in a line, you know, if they're, you know, a traffic jam in a parking lot, I'm going to only obligate it to let one person out. And I let spin out. This is bad. This is terrible. I can't hold it in. I'm going to say it. Okay, go ahead. Okay, thank you. Because I'm kind. Thank you. You are, indeed, in a gentleman. One of the things that I think is that evangelistically, the church over the past 100 years has wanted to redefine ministry to make everything ministry to the point where ministry is so relativized that it's distanced from the regular basic ministry of warden sacrament.

29:04And so people can think that they're doing ministry in a coffee shop. They can think they're doing ministry while they kick a soccer ball. They can think all of life is ministry on and on and on. They're doing piano ministry on and on. That's a wild dilution of what the Bible understands ministry to be. And it's not really helped the church at all because what it's done is said, you can actually be a legitimate Christian minister apart from the means of grace. You can conduct ministry with other means that are going to do people good without them being God's actual means. And the churches bought this. They bought it on the mission field and they bought it in a local congregation. And a local congregation has invested tons of money in sending people to go to get theological educations that then they don't turn around and actually use for public ministry or for any sort of means of grace ministry in the true. And by that, I mean quite frankly, you may share the gospel with somebody on the soccer pitch. However, it is not as effectual as the ministry of the pulpit. And that's a significant

30:05issue to the point where even when we look at the mission field, we say, well, why are we not having this sort of effect that we'd like to have on the mission field? And I would simply say, it's because not enough missionaries or preachers. The word of God, how can they believe if they have not heard? How can they hear if someone is not preaching to them? You know, that's the testimony of the Bible. Preaching is indispensable and we've made it ultimately dispensable in the church. So that's an issue. We've redefined ministry wrongly and until the reformed take this back and actually really insist upon a sober, biblical definition of what ministry is, I think we're just going to continue to see more of the same. What I would say is a waste of money. An average Christian who plays soccer who shares the gospel with their teammate, is that ministry? Whatever you want to call it, I wouldn't call it ministry. I call it the basic attribute of living the Christian life. You know, it sounds like just living as a Christian. Yeah, I shouldn't have to pay you to do that. Okay, I shouldn't have to employ you for that.

31:08Go get paid as a coach. Go get paid as a professional athlete. Go get paid as a person that loafs around. Wait, you can't do that. You can get paid to loaf around at a coffee shop. Sorry, Span, if they're doing that, they shouldn't be doing that with you. Lister, he was off screen for just a moment and then as soon as Nick said that, he popped up like a prairie dog back on camera just to defend his good name. Chad Vegas has said, you know, going overseas to dig wells in Africa is loving your neighbor, but it's not missions. Right. You know, and I think that's what we're getting to here, you know, and actually, I think that what Span and Nick said, because it helps my argument, so be so much better. Not done, Matt. So you guys kindness, kindness rewards. I'm going, Nick, because you can better, you can better hold this. You better hold it. Diminaries have bought into this that you're talking about. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, so you've got, you know, you've got so and good

32:14seminaries, guys, I'm not, you know, we're not ranting about seminaries per se, but, but we, you know, we've seen the rise in seminaries because it has become a part of the managerial revolution where they are offering, you know, 20 degrees and they're they're counseling students and they're MA students and and they significantly outweigh men who are enrolled in MDiv degrees learning how to preach. I think there is something about submitting yourself to proper training so that you might rightly handle and divide the word of truth. But as as one great seminary says, we train pastors and and that should be the duty of of seminaries. That should be their primary duty. We, you know, not everything is is ministry. And so Nick, yeah, finish up. That was what I was

33:19going to say that that seminaries have bought into this too. So this past weekend, I was blessed to have reformed seminary in Jackson. May I say the reformed seminary reformed the electrical seminary. The president, Dr. David Irving with us, he was our keynote for a theology conference that Muncher toasted. One of the things we like terrible preacher really doesn't like to pray. He doesn't like to pray. Nick, he's been feeling and announced before you preach the new Brown Fools just so you know. Okay. I knew you were your little humble brag. It did not work. I went to the true reformed seminary. Bam. All right. Anyhow, he came and we were having a conversation about this specific topic that we're going over right now. And he says there aren't enough men. And it's not a 10 year thing that it's often the distance that this is coming. It's really upon us churches are already hemorrhaging ministers to the point where the whole generation has been talking about

34:23that boomer generation is retiring in the next three to five years to the point where churches aren't able to actually fill their pulpit. So it's upon us now. So in a sense, it's high time if you're a guy who wants to get training feels called to actually be able to receive a call. Whenever most of us came out of seminary finding a call that was open was not the easiest thing in the world. And they were getting lots of candidates. It's just not the same anymore. But how does the church meet that? I'm going to propose to you guys and to our listeners to think differently about how candidates for ministry are produced. So at present, I think a lot of churches either don't have an attitude to even pursue it at all. Or they think that it is a miraculous occasion that men just sort of pop up out of the ground with their own desire. Oh, that's really nice. Out of nowhere, you decide you would like to do ministry. You feel some internal call. Well, I want to propose that historically that's never been what it has been in the church. That the church's production of ministers has been the long product of a catechetical ministry

35:29in the church to the point where little boys are raised up from the time they're able to engage and converse with parents to think highly of the ministry and to pray that the Lord would call them to ministry. The church itself as well has engaged young men in the church consistently, historically, to pursue the ministry from an early age to the point where you can say that kid, he went to seminary already knowing his English Bible really well and his catechism and his confession. And when he got a seminary, he was ready to then go and do the work of theological study. At present, the state of the classroom and the seminary is a very different place. You've got many classmates that won't know the Bible sufficiently. They certainly don't know confessional theology very well. And so, in a very real sense, it's a lot of primary work to go back and then produce men. And so the seminary's handicap because the church hasn't been focusing on

36:30the cultivation of a healthy Christian ministry for the future. And we have to be doing that. And, you know, if you've never heard anybody talk like that, let me just encourage you. Can front the young men, the young boys of your church and put in front of them that they should desire to be ministers. They should desire to serve Christ so that the Lord, if he would call them, will have been working in their hearts and lives from the day that they were born. There's a spectrum on this. So there are two views. Well, in men's perspective, there's always a spectrum. There's always a spectrum when it comes to reform people. Always. There's two views. There's the Spurgeon view and the Dabney view. And Spurgeon's view, and you have all have probably heard this before, was if there's anything else that you could possibly do besides ministry, go and do that thing. Now, I agree insofar as ministry is not the easiest job in the world.

37:33It can be if you're lazy and you phone it in and you get AI to write your sermons like Matt does. So, you know, the Kush, like, oh, he was going to turn his mic on, but he actually is not even protesting. That's an omission of guilt. Silence is a mission. So I need not to defend myself against someone who hates how firm a foundation. Thank you. Okay. But there's this idea that, oh, you know, with ministry, when it gets hard, it could be easy to pull the eject button. But if there's nothing else that you'd rather do, even on your worst days, you say, I still have the best job in the world. There's nothing else I'd rather do. That's really where you should be, I think, as a Christian minister. So I agree. But also, you know, I think that it's okay to be competent and to envision yourself being happy, doing other things as well. So if you are a very talented engineer, maybe that was your first career. And, you know, I hope that you weren't,

38:36you know, if you're a second career pastor, I hope that for, you know, 10 to 15 years, you weren't sort of hanging your head and just being like, oh, life is miserable and pointless. I can't be a minister. This is dumb. No, you should be content if the Lord has you to be a minister or not. But then dab these view kind of goes with Nick's perspective. We need to inspire in our young people and into our little boys, right? That we need to pray that they would be ministers. And we need to tell them, you know, it'd be great if you, we have to be careful, you know, being pastors ourselves and not trying to like shoehorn our kids into the same vocational calling that dad has. But, you know, hey, you should pray that your sons, one of them becomes a minister. That would be great. And if every family in the church prayed that, I mean, statistically speaking, one of them's got to rise up, you know? So it's a thing to be trained up in. And you

39:43need to be training them before it. So Catechesis is definitely like step one. I just last story from me, but getting to seminary, I was not very well prepared. And it showed early when I was in a systematic class. And I didn't know what impassibility was. I didn't want to know what immutability was. I didn't grow up in a reformed church. And so, um, you know, at one level, shame on me for not doing better and taking my faith more seriously and thinking I could, you know, just cruise on personality or that go into seminary was going to be like a extended group Bible study. But once I started memorizing the Catechism, it just opened up a whole new world. And you don't have to wait till your early 20s like I did. You can start Catechizing your kids now. And we do in our house. And, you know, my boys, if the Lord blesses our family and we get

40:47another minister, another generation of gospel ministers, um, out of our two boys, then they're going to go in and be much better prepared than their dad was. So hats off to Nick's comment on trying to steer and to just make this a, a positive outcome and a good calling early in a boys life. You know, one thing I want to do is briefly brag a little bit on our boys. When we had our conferences past weekend, one of the things we were careful to do was to have a him sing, some sing, that was conjoined to a prayer meeting. And one of the things that if you visit our church, you'll notice, because we do, we him sing quite a lot and we pray every Lord's day in prayer meetings is that the young boys participate, they participate in a lot of ways, much more than grown men do. And we were in a setting that was a public setting in a sanctuary

41:49with visitors. And whenever free prayer was open to the floor, it was the young boys who immediately jumped in right after me. And that's because those little boys are being catacas to pray in family worship. They're also being encouraged to pray to open their Sunday school classes. They're being invited to pray as ushers in the church. And it's, I'll just say this, one of the things that I wish that Christian parents and that church members would really get off the fence about is this. Don't think that because society says you can't encourage or direct or even put your children onto particular paths professionally, that that's a right and a holy thing. You absolutely should feel freedom to raise up your children in the way in which they should go. That is your responsibility before God. And so I won't for a second think that because

42:51of the democratic world we live in that I've got to back off of actually fostering my children into a faithful life before God. Maybe the Lord hasn't called them to ministry. That's a thing for the Lord to do. But if I prepare them for the work of ministry and he doesn't call them, wow, what what a what an architect or an engineer or a businessman or whatever use car salesman for that matter. Will the Lord have in the world? He'll be a man prepared to walk before the Lord and righteousness wherever he is. And so I don't know, I just I feel strongly about it quite obviously. But yeah, I put that before you man. Absolutely. And let me add a further on man to both what's been and Nick have already said in that this is something we want to set before our families. This is something we want to set before our churches. One of our ruling elders here covenant a little while ago raised the point. He goes, you know, at a church like ours, which you know, we love our church. We don't we hardly think we're perfect, but we love our church.

43:55And that's normal and healthy. People should love their local church. He goes at a church like ours, which is a good and healthy and wonderful place to be. It's been quite a while since we've had a son of the church since a call to ministry and go off into the ministry and that's that's odd. So we need to start praying about that. And we heard that ruling elder suggestion and said, Amen. And so that's a standing item in our weekly prayer sheet that we have here at our congregation. Now do we pray that exact item every single pulpit pastoral prayer every single Wednesday night? Well, no, but more often than not, we do. It's it's I'm reading or it says our young men. It says to serve his church as ministers, elders and deacons here in abroad. So that's a standing prayer item that we pray before the congregation morning and evening and Wednesday nights on the regular and it's on the prayer sheet every week. So to remind folks to keep praying for that. So obviously we pray for our own local elders and deacons when we are nominating officers and wanting the Lord to raise up future officers for the church. But we're also pointedly praying that the Lord would raise up future ministers of the gospel from among us. And I would commend that that same

45:00notion to all of our listeners in your churches. Pray about that. Even if it's not, you know, imprinted in your bulletin per se, you can be praying about that. It's not arrogant to say, Lord, would you be pleased to raise up even from among our local congregation young men for gospel ministry? Pray about that. See how the Lord will answer it. Along those lines, we were mentioning the shortage earlier. And I just wanted to highlight some numbers for our listeners. Dave Veldcamp of Reformed Theological Seminary. Last year, I think at the RTS luncheon at the PCA General Assembly highlighted some statistics based on research he had done. And these are published and they're out there. I'm looking at the article right now on the RTS website. This is sobering. And I think folks and our listeners will be, we'll want to know this. Not because it's encouraging, but because it's a real need. And we need to pray to the Lord of the Harvest to raise up laborers for that harvest. He says, Dave writes, consider the following from a handful of churches that are in the broader Reformed world. 10% of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 10% of the OPC's

46:05roughly 300 congregations are seeking pastors. So there's pulpit vacancies. 25 congregations in the United Reformed Churches, the URCNA have vacant pulpits. I believe that's around 15 to 17 percent in that denomination or Federation. There's a joke there for those who are in the know, half pulpit vacancies. The EPC, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, a denomination of 600 churches has learned that half 50% of its ministers plan to retire in the next five years. And the Presbyterian Church in America, the PCA has estimated a need for 220 new ministers annually to meet existing needs and reach goals for church planting for in missions and so forth. So do we want the right kind of men? Absolutely, we do. We want the right kind of men, and there is a need for men to heed the call. So we need to pray. We need to pray that the Lord of the Harvest would indeed raise up those ministers because there's a shortage in Nape Park.

47:06There's a shortage in the Reformed world of qualified men going into the ministry. It seems like we have roughly, we have equilibrium for the moment in the PCA for which we're thankful, but we can't just presume upon God and can't just presume arrogantly that that's going to continue indefinitely. So we need to pray that the God would plant that sense of internal call into a young man's heart. Any man's heart, that's not just young men, and that that would be recognized by the church in that external call. I'll say more about that in a minute once the conversation verges that way. Is verging Sean? All right. I'll just keep going, buddy. I'll just keep going. So all I want to do is to come back to an earlier point that I was going on about the churchliness that the Westminster, the Westminster larger catechism envisions. And so one of the verses that came to mind was from 1 Timothy 4, when Paul's speaking about Timothy's ordination. Again, we don't believe in this self-appointment idea. I've decided I'm going to be a preacher or a gospel minister,

48:10so I've appointed myself so off I'm going to go. No, it is, there's an appropriation, a confirmation, an evaluation, an ordination by the church of Jesus Christ. You don't just send yourself out, Willie Nilly, the church creates ministers, the church recognizes ministers, the church appoints and ordains and sends out ministers of the gospel. So Paul writing to Timothy, 1 Timothy 4 verses 13, 14, and 15, Paul writes, until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. So keep on cultivating those gifts, keep on developing those gifts. Do not neglect the gift you have, and then he refers here to Timothy's ordination, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders, or as it has it in the King James version, the Presbyterie, when the Presbyterie laid their hands on you, practice these things, immerse yourself in them so that all may see your progress. The Presbyterie, the council of elders laid hands on Timothy, ordained him to the task of gospel ministry.

49:13So there was an internal calling, an internal cultivation of those gifts, but in a real sense, there was a, there was an imparting of gifts that Paul seems to suggest here that when given you by prophecy when the Presbyterie laid their hands on you, certainly a recognition of those gifts and imparting of the office from elders to a new elder, Timothy didn't just appoint himself. There was the elder, there were the elders coming along to do this, to recognize this, to structure the church. God works through means, friends. We talk about that all the time about ordinary means of grace. He works through word sacrament and prayer. We'll write in the middle of that section of the catechism through word sacrament and prayer, the Lord channels. He communicates his grace unto his people. The Lord works through means and structures. He works through channels, and he does so the same when it comes to gospel ministry. He works through his church, the Lord, the risen and ascended Christ, pours out those gifts. He's given structure to his church. Jesus runs his church to use Guy Waters' title in a way, in a manner such that there's an orderliness

50:13and an intentionality by which these officers are raised up, recognized, called, ordained, and sent forth. So, churchliness is a good thing. Let's not imbibed the spirit of our age and and some sort of weird mystic postmodernism. Churchliness is a good thing. Westminster affirms that and commends that and you should too. Well, guys, looking at the time, I mean, we're about 51 minutes in at this point, and I think I told our listeners that we were going to tackle 158 and 159. Thanks for making me a lot. You know, I just did not, you know, I did not believe that we would get an hour episode on essentially one sentence. You know, my mind is, you know, my mind goes to my congregation when I tell them that I'm about to preach a sermon on a singular verse and they go, I just don't think you can do it. And then I do it. And, you know, they're just so impressed.

51:17I'm impressed with our work today, fellas. And I think that Sean in his, you know, his drawing out the churchliness of the confession and the standards and the catechisms is a good place to end. And so, listeners, I'm sorry that I got your hopes up at the beginning of this episode saying that we're going to tackle two questions. We're not. We're going to in this episode on 158. And then Lord willing, we'll be back to talk about how the Word of God ought to be preached by those men who have been gifted and trained and approved and called to the office of Minister of Word and Sacrament. So until next time listeners, we hope that you have a blessed week, a great day. And in the words of our fellow co-host, Nick Bullock, bye-bye.

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