Leaders As Hosts

By / Feb 19

Editor’s note: This article is part two of a four-part series. Access the full series here.

In the first post in this series, I noted that God is hospitable. The Lord’s hospitality to Moses and Israel’s leaders in Exodus 24 stops careful readers in their tracks. What a God! He is holy but personal. And Jesus’s hospitality to Peter and the disciples on the shore of Galilee humbles us. So kind is the resurrected Son. God reveals Himself as a host in these two scenes and many other places in Scripture.

Hospitality is also a human activity in Scripture, especially for leaders. Here, I want to draw attention to one quality that surfaces consistently in scenes where leaders show hospitality in Scripture: urgency. I will trace this theme in three instances.

Abraham’s Hasty Hospitality Toward His Three Guests (Gen. 18)

Abraham’s hospitality to the three men who visited him in Genesis 18 contributes more broadly to the storyline of Genesis and Scripture. First, these visitors confirm God’s covenant promise to Abraham. What God promised Abraham in Genesis 12:1–3 and 15:1–6 (cf. Rom. 4:18–21) had not yet been realized. Abraham and Sarah were aged. As Abraham hosted these men, the Lord spoke to Abraham and announced that the time for him and Sarah to have a son had now arrived. Within one year, Sarah would give birth to a son (18:10). This was beyond belief for Sarah. She laughed. She wondered if she could have the delight of a child when Abraham, her lord, was old. Furthermore, in Sarah’s statement, Peter saw a title that all Christian women should apply to their husbands (1 Pet. 3:6).

These two pillars of biblical theology are rooted in Abraham’s prompt hospitality to the three visitors. When Abraham first saw them, he hastened to greet them and offer food and drink to refresh them after their travels (18:1–5). When they agreed to stay, “Abraham hurried into the tent and said to Sarah, ‘Quick! Knead three measures of fine flour and make bread’” (v. 6, CSB).

David’s Determined Hospitality Toward Mephibosheth (2 Sam. 9)

The Lord’s covenant with David in 2 Samuel 7 casts a long shadow over redemptive history. The promise that an heir of David will sit on David’s throne and rule over Israel is realized once and for all in Jesus, God’s eternal Son (Luke 1:32–33; Heb. 1:5). Even in the near context of 2 Samuel 8–10, scene after scene demonstrates that the Lord has indeed established David as ruling king over His people.

In 2 Samuel 8–10, David is victorious in all directions. David’s military successes immediately confirm God’s covenant with him. Sandwiched between these chapters is the account of David’s hospitality to Mephibosheth. David’s hospitality fulfills his covenant obligation to Jonathan, Saul’s son. In 1 Samuel 20:11–17, David entered a covenant with Jonathan to watch over Jonathan’s household should David outlive him. Jonathan knew that David was the Lord’s anointed. Now that David was established as king over Israel and Judah, he was determined to fulfill his covenant with Jonathan.

He was so determined that he expanded that covenant to include not only Jonathan but any of Saul’s household (2 Sam. 9:1). When Saul’s servant Ziba reported that there was a son of Jonathan yet living, David was immediately determined to bring him to Jerusalem (v. 5). David restored land to Mephibosheth and appointed Saul’s servant Ziba to manage it for him. “So Mephibosheth ate at David’s table just like one of the king’s sons” (v. 11).

Publius of Malta’s Public Hospitality Toward Paul and the Shipwrecked Prisoners (Acts 28:1–10)

Acts 27 is one of the longest chapters in Acts. And it is entirely about a sea voyage and a shipwreck. The boat carrying Paul and his fellow prisoners to Rome ran aground at Malta, breaking into pieces. The crew and prisoners made it to shore, and the people of Malta welcomed them. Paul gathered wood, and when he placed it on the fire, a viper came out and bit his hand. The people of Malta knew Paul was a prisoner and surmised that the god of Justice was paying Paul back for his crimes. When Paul shook the viper off and it was consumed in the fire, they thought Paul was a god (Acts 28:1–6).

All of this precipitated a local official, Publius, to promptly extend hospitality to Paul and company. For three days, Publius entertained the shipwrecked mates. Publius may have been curious about this crew of prisoners and soldiers or Paul and the viper. Or, Publius could have been just doing what civic leaders should do in offering hospitality to Roman guards while they were transporting prisoners. But God had plans to glorify Himself by blessing Publius in his hospitality. During these three days, “Publius’s father was in bed suffering from fever and dysentery. Paul went to him, and praying and laying his hands on him, he healed him” (v. 8). Then many who were ill on the island, under Publius’s jurisdiction, came to Paul and were healed (v. 9). The people of the isle heaped honors on Paul and crew, sending them off with supplies for the journey to Rome (v. 10).

Hospitality and the Supremacy of God

I have chosen to note three scenes of urgent hospitality in Scripture. More are on offer but these give a sense of the general tenor of hospitality that leaders extend to those around them. And they do so with a sense of gusto.

Good leaders know that they are no more effective than the relationships and partnerships they maintain at any moment during the tenure of their position. Hospitality provides leaders the opportunity to evaluate, gain, and maintain relationships to secure and strengthen their positions. Godly leaders see the Lord as the arbiter of their office, and they host to express His character and participate in His redemptive purposes.

One subgroup of leaders, elders in the local church, must be hospitable, as Paul writes in 1 Timothy 3:3 and Titus 1:8. In the next post, I will describe how pastoral hospitality makes sense as a qualification for men called to lead a local church.



Episode 303: Endurance

By / Feb 19

The author of Hebrews says endurance produces proven character. How so? What is endurance? How do we get it? In this episode of the podcast, Jared and Ross talk about the relevance of endurance to ministry and the Christian life in general.

From January to March, you’ll have the opportunity to hear from Midwestern Seminary professors about their areas of expertise, and ask them any questions you want! Completely online and FREE, you can sign up for any and all FTC Talks below to reserve your spot. We hope these conversations will spur you on in your service to the local church and help you connect with even more ministry leaders and friends across the country. We’ll see you soon!



How does a Pastor’s leadership change as his Church grows? – Clint Pressley

By / Feb 18

Ftc asks pastor Clint Presley ‘How does a Pastor’s leadership change as his Church grows?’.



God’s Covenantal Hospitality

By / Feb 18

Editor’s note: This article is part one of a four-part series. Access the full series here.

From Genesis to Revelation, God reveals Himself to be a host. The Garden of Eden can be viewed as God’s creative activity to host Adam and Eve as His vice-regents who manage the banquet hall of creation. God hosts Israel for 40 years, providing food for the duration of their wilderness wandering (Exod. 16). Isaiah prophesies that the mountain of God will be an end-times banquet hall where the Lord of hosts will prepare a feast to celebrate death’s defeat (Isa. 25:6­–8). The final scenes of John’s vision in Revelation include the Marriage Feast of the Lamb (Rev. 19:6–10).

In most instances, the Lord’s hospitality in the Old Testament had Israel in view. One such occasion is reported as part of the covenant ceremony Moses enacted for Israel in Exodus 24.

In the first entry in this series, I want to note how the Lord’s hospitality to Israel’s leaders in Exodus 24 contributes to Moses’s covenant ceremony. I will then note points of contact with Jesus’s hospitality to the eleven after His resurrection, suggesting ways that Jesus’s seaside hospitality contributes to His dialogue with Peter and new covenant ministry.

After establishing the covenantal framework of divine hospitality, in successive entries, I will observe how hospitality is a task leaders in Scripture undertake with great haste and how it qualifies men for pastoral ministry in the local church. I will conclude with a fourth post demonstrating how hospitality contributes to church health.

The Lord’s Hospitality to Israel’s Leaders

Among the Lord’s personal manifestations in the Old Testament, His invitation to Israel’s leaders in Exodus 24 casts a long shadow. This scene serves as a pivot point in a unit that begins with the Lord’s appearance on Sinai in Exodus 19 and culminates with Moses descending the mountain with the stone tablets at the end of Exodus 31. In Exodus 19, the Lord commanded Moses to have the people stand at a distance as He descended upon the mountain and covered it with smoke, fire, lightning, and thunder. These visible manifestations confirm Moses’s words to the people. The Lord was with them and had instructed them through His servant Moses.

The frightening appearance of the Lord on Sinai in Exodus 19 establishes two features of the Mosaic covenant. First, the Lord is holy, and His people must revere Him. In the immediate context, this included keeping themselves at a safe physical distance (Exod. 19:9–13, 19–25). Second, the Lord chose Moses as His spokesman, and the people must heed Moses’s instructions (Exod. 19:7–10; 20:18–21).

These two themes place in bold the Lord’s invitation for Moses and Israel’s leaders to join Him on the mountain for a meal in Exodus 24. The covenant ceremony Moses led in Exodus 24 began with his instruction to the people and their pledge of obedience (v. 3). After writing the Lord’s instructions for the people (v. 4), Moses sent young men to sacrifice bulls for burnt offerings and fellowship offerings (v. 5). Moses took the scroll he had written and read it to the people, sprinkling them with the blood of the bulls that had been sacrificed (vv. 7–8). Moses’s leadership in Exodus 24 directly fulfills the Lord’s intentions for Moses described in Exodus 19 and 20. Moses was the Lord’s authoritative spokesman.

And the Lord wanted to host Moses and Israel’s leaders on the mountain. In obedience to the Lord’s invitation in Exodus 24:1–2, Moses led Aaron, Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu, and Israel’s 70 elders up the mountain (v. 9). They saw the Lord but were not consumed, eating in the presence of the Lord (vv. 10–11)! From the moment the Lord descended on the mountain in Exodus 19 to this point in the narrative, the Lord had demanded that Israel stay away from Him lest His holy presence consume them. But now, in Exodus 24, He hosted Moses and Israel’s leaders in near proximity, disclosing Himself to them as they ate. Moses and Joshua then proceeded up the mountain, and Moses stayed in the Lord’s presence for 40 days and nights. (vv. 13–18).

The Lord hosted Moses on Mount Sinai to establish Moses as His authoritative spokesman, the one He chose to mediate His instruction to Israel. Having hosted Moses to prepare him for leadership, the Lord sent Moses down the mountain with the stone tablets (Exod. 31:18).

Jesus’s Hospitality to the Eleven after His Resurrection

The Gospel of John is not short on drama, and the final chapter does not disappoint. It all begins with Peter leading the disciples on a fishing expedition (John 21:3). But they caught nothing. In the morning, Jesus called to them from the shore. Two of Jesus’s statements informed the eleven about who was calling to them. First, Jesus was aware that they had caught nothing. Second, He told them to try the other side of the boat, and they would have a full catch (vv. 5–6). After the eleven did so and saw many fish in the net, Peter recognized that the resurrected Lord Jesus was speaking to them from the shore! In high drama, Peter disrobed and swam to Jesus as the other disciples followed in the boat (vv. 7–8).

Jesus was prepared to host Peter and the other disciples. Already, He had fish cooking over the fire (v. 9). Peter dragged the full net to the shore, and they added some of the day’s catch to what Jesus had on the fire. The eleven were in the presence of the risen Lord Jesus. He was hosting them for brunch, and John writes, “This was now the third time Jesus appeared to the disciples after he was raised from the dead” (v. 14, CSB).

Jesus’s hospitality to the eleven, framed by Peter’s robust pursuit of the Lord, becomes the setting where Jesus restored Peter to ministry. In vv. 15–19, Jesus asked Peter three times if he loved Him, challenging Peter to embrace his leadership role despite the suffering that would come with it.

Though Jesus’s hospitality to the eleven in John 21 lacks the formal language of the covenant ceremony Moses enacted in Exodus 24, points of contact remain. In both scenes, divine hospitality is extended to human leaders to equip them for their ministries in God’s redemptive program.

This conclusion will frame my third post, where I will look at the pastoral qualification that elders must be hospitable (1 Tim. 3:2; Titus 1:8). In my next post, however, I will highlight a key characteristic of biblical hospitality: urgency.

Responding in Worship and Work

But before wrapping up here, let’s consider: How should we respond to the thought of God hosting us? This is a gospel fact that compels our response in two ways.

First, let us worship God for His kindness in inviting us into His presence and serving us. How do you picture Jesus’s face as He, the eternal Son, taking up human flesh, showed Peter and the eleven the fish He already had cooking over the fire? See that smile? Worship Him!

Second, let us get to work. God has gifted His people with abilities, and if you are reading this blog, He has likely given you abilities to lead the church. Do you love Jesus? Feed His sheep.



The One Gift Every Pastor Must Have

By / Feb 16

In the midst of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, Warren Buffet famously observed, “It’s when the tide goes out that you see who’s skinny dipping.” Buffet was reflecting on the banks and investment firms that had insufficient capital to meet their financial obligations during the great recession.

Buffet’s observation applies to the ministry as well. When you stand before God’s people with Bible in hand, the tide goes out. It is in those moments, when you attempt to speak on behalf of God, that all will see the veracity of your calling.

For pastors, preaching and teaching God’s Word has a way of stripping us all bare; it exposes us and puts our gifting on public display. You can’t finesse your way through a sermon with polished appearance, warm people skills, or seminary credentials alone. In the moment of truth, your ability—or lack thereof—to teach and preach God’s Word reveals much about your calling.

This is the way it should be because the one called to the ministry is called to a ministry of the Word. God sets him apart to teach and preach His Word. This clarifying stipulation both challenges and reassures us. Those whom God has truly called; he has truly gifted for the task. Every pastor must be gifted to teach the Word; and every qualified pastor is.

“Able to Teach”

In I Timothy 3:1-7, the ability to teach is the distinguishing mark between the elder and the deacon. Both are expected to be godly, but only the office of elder requires an ability to teach. There are a thousand ways a minister can serve the church, but he has one indispensable and nonnegotiable responsibility—to preach and teach the Word of God.

Since the pastor’s primary duty is to preach and teach God’s word, he who would hold the office must be equal to the task. Literally, lives are at stake. The health of the church rises or falls with the pulpit.

Preaching includes teaching, but teaching may or may not include preaching. Both convey biblical truth, but the latter includes public proclamation—heralding the truth of Scripture to the gathered congregation.

Preaching and teaching are not distinct categories, but rather distinct venues or distinct outlets. As a wise professor once told me, “Preaching should never be anything less than teaching the Bible, but it should always be more than a Bible study.”

It is interesting that the “ability to teach” is the only qualification related to the pastor’s gifting or ability. I’m struck by what God left out of this list. In addition to sterling character, the would-be pastor isn’t required to be a gifted leader, a competent manager, a creative genius, or possess a magnetic personality—all of which come in handy in ministry. There is one gift, and only one gift, the pastor must possess. He must be able to teach.

Why Preaching?

Preaching is God’s divinely ordained means of communicating his Word, of nourishing his church, and of redeeming a people for himself. Other ministerial activities may compliment preaching, but no ministerial activity should displace preaching.

As Spurgeon warned:

“I do not look for any other means of converting men beyond the simple preaching of the gospel and the opening of men’s ears to hear it. The moment the church of God shall despise the pulpit, God will despise her. It has been through the ministry that the Lord has always been pleased to revive and bless his churches.”[1]

God only had one Son, and he made him a preacher. Scripture tells us, “Jesus came preaching,” and then he sent his disciples out to preach.[2] From the prophets of old, to Pentecost, to the end of the age, preaching is God’s appointed means to convey his message.

“Preach the Word,” a Simple Command

Every preacher can readily identify with the Apostle Paul’s binding charge to Timothy, “Preach the Word.” This charge is situated at the end of Paul’s final letter to his son in the faith, Timothy, and it encapsulates the broader biblical expectation that ministers faithfully discharge their responsibilities of faithfully preaching and teaching the Word.

As Paul is writing II Timothy, he knows his death is near. Christians are being persecuted. False prophets are plaguing the church. Many who named Christ as Savior have fallen away. Timothy himself is vacillating in the faith and questioning his call. Paul is writing his final letter, as the dying words of a dying man, to a distressed church and a discouraged son.

In this salutary charge, he tells Timothy, “Preach the Word.” This exhortation occurs—explicitly and implicitly—throughout Scripture, but nowhere more conspicuously than here.  And it appears with added momentum, because of its context in this book, and in the lives of Paul, Timothy, and the church. There is a degree of narrowing earnestness, of focused deliberateness from Paul to Timothy, to us.

In II Timothy 3, Paul documents the catastrophic affects of man’s sinfulness, and presents the ministerial antidote—preaching God’s Word—which is inspired, inerrant, authoritative, and sufficient. We are called to “Preach the Word” because the days are evil, and the Scriptures are powerful. For preachers, II Timothy 4:2 has a certain romance to it—a magnetic pull, calling us back again and again and again to our central responsibility.

The call to preach—in light of so many problems in the society and the church—appears simplistic, but those are God’s instructions. To preach means “to herald, to lift up one’s voice, to proclaim.” It is to speak boldly, even loudly, without fear, and to make truth known.

Again, there is simplicity in Paul’s charge, “Preach the Word” There is a beautiful simplicity, an unmistakable clarity to this instruction. There is no need to clarify which word, or whose word.  Rather, we are called to preach the Word—God’s Word. In fact, the premise of preaching the Word is built upon the entire canon of Scripture, and it roars throughout this book.

If you are not convinced of Scripture—its truthfulness, authority, relevance, and power—then you will be disinclined to preach the Word. You may look to it for sermon points because that is what evangelical preachers are to do, but you’ll never let the Word be the point and points of your sermon.

Essential Ingredients of Preaching and Teaching

While a quick wit, booming voice, and strong self-presentation are helpful elements, the key ingredients of faithful preaching should be preset. Faithful preaching has two essential ingredients, and he that is called to preach should cultivate both.

These two components are study of the Word and proclamation of the Word. To emphasize either to the de-emphasis of the other is error. Here we must maintain intentional balance.

Some more naturally enjoy the process of preparing sermons. They enjoy digging into the text of Scripture, rightly interpreting it, constructing an exegetical outline and stitching together a sermon. This is good, and no one should enter ministry without intending to delve into the text.

Others more naturally enjoy presentation. The act of preaching itself animates them. They enjoy delivering the goods to God’s people. Great preachers excel at both, and you should cultivate both strengths in your own ministry.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones famously observed that preaching is “the highest, the greatest, and the most glorious calling to which one can ever be called.”[3] In fact, it is too high and too glorious of a calling for just anyone to preach just anything for just any reason in just any way.

Like any other ability, teaching and preaching God’s Word is an acquired skill. Gifted by the Spirit of God, yes. But practice makes perfect, and it might take quite some time to clarify your gifting to preach. Don’t expect to sound like a veteran preacher your first time in the pulpit. In fact, you may not ever become an accomplished preacher.

Seminaries can grant a degree and churches can hire a pastor, but only God can make a preacher. Preaching is to be done by a man, called of God, who is compelled to herald the Bible with full conviction and faithful interpretation. The Bible details many character expectations of the pastor, but there is only one gift he must have—he must be able to preach and teach the Word of God.

—

[1] C. H. Spurgeon, Autobiography, Volume 1: The Early Years (London: Banner of Truth, 1962), v.

[2] Mark 1:14; Matthew 28:16-20.

[3] Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1972), 9.

Originally published at JasonKAllen.com



The Pastor’s Calling

By / Feb 13

1 Timothy 3:1 “The saying is trustworthy: if anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task.”

God has used few men more in my life than “The Doctor,” Martyn Lloyd-Jones. If you’re not familiar with MLJ let me encourage you to familiarize yourself with him. He was a pastor who loved the Bible and believed in preaching. I have been shaped by him in countless ways. But, as anyone who is familiar with the Doctor knows, Lloyd-Jones could be quite opinionated. Some would say he was too opinionated. However, because of his love for the Word and his grit, his rare disagreements don’t bother me much. It does not distract me because I am driven to the Word to find answers. Let me explain.

Recently, as I was re-reading his book Preaching and Preachers, I came across one of his famous quotes on the call of preaching. He says “The work of preaching is the highest and greatest and more glorious calling with which anyone can ever be called.”  The first time I read that quote I loved it! In a world that devalues preaching, here was a prophetic voice calling us back to the Biblical priority. As I reread that sentence, I started to disagree with him a bit. The calling to preach is a great calling. For a man to be qualified to preach it requires that he be a certain kind of man. The preacher has a few prerequisite callings. As best as I can tell, God calls the pastor to great and noble callings that are higher and greater and more glorious than the work of preaching.

I have four callings that come before my calling to preach. God clearly says that the task of pastoring is noble. It would be right, then, for us to assign greater nobility to the tasks that are prerequisites for that great calling. What are these greater and more noble callings?

1. God has called me to sonship. God saved me when I was a little boy and I have been walking with him ever since. He has been so gracious to me. I never want to lose my first love. Paul calls Timothy a man of God in 1 Tim 6:11 and that is what every pastor must be. Before I am anything else, I am a man who has been saved and sustained by the God of the gospel. My identity must be rooted deep in the truth that I belong to God. Too many pastors have “pastor faith” and not childlike faith. A pastor is a Christian growing in Christlike humility. This is my first and greatest calling!

2. God has called me to the noble task of husbandry. It’s true that not every pastor is married. Most, however, are. Two becoming one flesh is in fact a profound mystery. As Eph. 5:32 says, “And I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” Marriage is a prerequisite calling because it is a demonstration of sort, of the message the qualified pastor preaches. If a pastor cannot love his bride well he will not love Christ’s bride well.

3. God has called me to fatherhood. Being a good father requires that I learn fatherhood from God. It is a great privilege to have God not only as the sovereign God of the universe but as our sovereign Father. The pastor doesn’t learn about God from looking to his own love for his kids. Rather, the pastor learns what good fatherhood is by looking to God the Father. 1 Tim. 3:4 makes it clear, the pastor who fails at home does not get to preach. The fatherhood of God and the fatherhood of our own children are the training ground for becoming a father to the flock.

4. God has called me to friendship. Anyone who aspires to the calling of Christian friendship aspires a noble task. Jesus was a good friend. It was he who said in John 15:13 “Greater loves has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” Almost everyone has met the professional “pastor.” You know the type. He is always around but no one seems to know him. He is really good at helping people build structures but really bad at making friends. It is impossible to “shepherd the flock of God that is among you” (1 Peter 5:2) without being friends with the flock. It is impossible to be held accountable at the heart level by surface-level business associates and elders. Failure at Christian friendship is the failure of pastoral ministry.

After these callings of greater nobility comes the calling of pastor. The pastor must fight the urge to confuse the first calling and the fifth calling. The title “pastor” can easily become the primary calling in which the called man finds his identity. That is a recipe for disaster. What would happen if something were to happen to your vocal chords and you never get to preach again? If your identity is in the right place, you would be fine. Oh yes, being a pastor and preaching the Bible is a high, great, and glorious call. But, it is not the highest, greatest, and glorious call of all.



Episode 302: Megachurch vs. Microchurch

By / Feb 12

Sometimes small church folks are overly critical of big churches. Sometimes big church folks are uncharitable towards smaller churches. We’re here to settle the scores! Well, kind of. In this ep of the FTC Podcast, Jared and Ross discuss the pros and cons of big churches versus smaller churches and discuss ways we can encourage and think the best of each other.

From January to March, you’ll have the opportunity to hear from Midwestern Seminary professors about their areas of expertise, and ask them any questions you want! Completely online and FREE, you can sign up for any and all FTC Talks below to reserve your spot. We hope these conversations will spur you on in your service to the local church and help you connect with even more ministry leaders and friends across the country. We’ll see you soon!



What about ministry gives you joy? – Greg Belser

By / Feb 10

FTC.co asks Greg Belser, “What about ministry gives you joy?”.



Is Your Calling Causing an Identity Crisis?

By / Feb 8

When getting to know someone, it’s common to ask: So what do you do? We’ve all been asked this question when being introduced to someone at a social gathering or when sitting next to a stranger on an airplane. Most often, it’s an implicit inquiry about your career or lifestyle. In response, you’re expected to say something like: “I’m a stay-at-home mom” or “I’m a marketing consultant.”

More than simple curiosity, though, this familiar question reveals that, for most of us, what we do tends to define our sense of who we are. To get to know a person, you must learn about what they do. Our career, lifestyle, ambitions, or relationships are our way of saying to the world, “I matter! I’m significant! I’m consequential!” And that’s not entirely wrongheaded; after all, it’s not a bad thing to derive an appropriate level of meaning and fulfillment from the things we do.

But without a strong sense of our true identity we are setting ourselves up for discouragement. For instance, the stay-at-home mom becomes disheartened when one of her kids enters a difficult stage. As her parenting attempts fall short, she begins to wonder, “Am I a total failure?” Her identity hangs in the balance of that question. Or what about when the marketing consultant is asked to resign because his firm is “taking things in a different direction?” What then becomes of his identity?

Such questions, though painful, have a way of leading us back to the knowledge of who we are in Christ. In Him, we find that being a marketing consultant or a stay-at-home mom are actually callings, not identities. A calling is something you fulfill through words and actions for a greater purpose. An identity, on the other hand, is strictly based on God’s words and actions—what He says about you and what Hehas done to make you His beloved child. Your identity therefore is true of you all the way down to the deepest level of your being. If all else were stripped away—your career, your earthly relationships, your plans—your identity as a beloved child of God would still remain. Unlike our callings, which are temporary, our identity in Christ is eternally fixed and irrevocable.

And yet, our identity is nonetheless inextricably linked to our callings. Through our identity in Christ, God sources our callings with His love for the purpose of expressing that love to others. This is why Paul told the Ephesians that in the various areas of their lives they were to imitate God “as beloved children” (Eph. 5:1, quoted above). Notice that believers are not told to imitate God as parents, employees, or whatever calling they may receive. Paul will allow these aspects of life to come to the foreground later (Eph. 6:1-9), but not until he has first hammered home the reality of our identity. Why? Because we cannot fulfill our callings as God desires until our hearts are fully integrated under the reality of who are in Christ.

So let’s be clear: we are to imitate God throughour callings as beloved children. For this to occur, we must develop a functional understanding of what it means to be a “beloved child.” This type of knowledge operates “under the hood” of our life; it is subconscious and reflexive, requiring a “re-wiring” of our inner life. And developing it can take a lifetime.

There is no magic formula or silver bullet to instantaneously transform our self-perception and our knowledge of God. Sure, there are encouraging moments along the way where things really “click” for us, but most of the time God transforms us gradually through the slow, ordinary, patient work of the Christian life: searching the Scriptures, abiding in prayer, silence and solitude, serving and giving, worshiping with our church family, and the like. To be clear, such work does not in any way secure our identity, for life in Christ is a free gift of God (Rom. 6:23). However, how our identity gets worked out in our day-to-day lives is, in many ways, a matter of us devoting ourselves to the right practices. This is critical for how we operate in our callings.

Therapist Edwin Friedman says that, in order for people to thrive as parents or employees, they must “focus first on their own integrity and on the nature of their presence rather than on techniques.”So often we seek to fulfill our callings by focusing almost exclusively on techniques. Parents comb through books to find the best techniques for motivating their children to behave; employees consult with industry experts to find ways to become indispensable in their field. And such things can certainly be useful.

However, the key to thriving in our callings is ultimately found in our identity as beloved children of God, not in whatever life-hacks and techniques happen to be trending. When our hearts are integrated under the reality of who we are in Christ, when God’s love develops in us an “under the hood,” functional understanding of our identity, we won’t live and die by how our callings seem to be going at the moment. Every calling has its ups and downs, and people who have a deficient sense of their identity tend to be energized when things are up and discouraged when things are down. But what the world really needs is for us to be Christians who can remain stable through it all because “we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us”(1 Jn. 4:16).

So, what do you do?

Next time you answer that question, remember that you are dearly loved by your Heavenly Father—not because of what you do, but because of what Christ has done.



“Lest We Drift”

By / Feb 6

Editor’s Note: The following excerpt is taken from Lest We Drift: Five Departure Dangers from the One True Gospel by Jared C. Wilson. Copyright © 2025 by Jared C. Wilson. Used by permission of Zondervan. www.harpercollinschristian.com

Lest We Drift is now available wherever Christian books are sold.

Theological drift is always a danger within evangelicalism. When Reformed evangelicals are not drawing their polemical passion from the rise of Protestantism beginning in the early sixteenth century, they are inspired by the cautionary guidance of more recent historical episodes like the Downgrade Controversy in the late 1800s of Victorian England, the Fundamentalist/Modernist controversy of the 1920s–1930s, the Southern Baptist Convention’s “conservative resurgence” in response to liberalizing influences in the denomination in the late 1970s–1980s, and the concerns in the mid-1990s over Evangelicals and Catholics Together. If the early history of Christianity was fraught with the codification of orthodoxy, late Christianity has been about the enforcing of it.

We are well acquainted with the danger of drift; we seem less acquainted with our own susceptibility to it. And while we are accustomed to noticing the drift of others, we are woefully blind about noticing it among ourselves.

While the bulk of this book is concerned with the kinds of drift threatening our fidelity to the gospel—and our unity around it—it is important to establish first (and reestablish throughout) how such drift occurs. And this is the implicit claim of gospel-centrality as an ideology: that the moment we take our eyes off the center is when we begin to move away from it.

After expounding the wonders of Christ’s glory in the gospel (and the prophetic freight with which it culminates), the author of Hebrews warns us, “Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it” (2:1). One primary implication is clear: Drift from the gospel is possible, and it happens when we stop paying ever-closer attention to it.

And since we are people constantly distracted by a million things inside and outside of ourselves, the potential for drift is constant in our lives. Every movement, no matter how faithful, remains vulnerable, and we fool ourselves if we think we’re the first to finally exorcize our institutions and organizations of this temptation. The shifts are subtler than we usually realize, but they have widespread ramifications.

D. A. Carson remarks thusly on the generational impact of drift:

I have heard a Mennonite leader assess his own movement in this way. One generation of Mennonites cherished the gospel and believed that the entailment of the gospel lay in certain social and political commitments. The next generation assumed the gospel and emphasized the social and political commitments. The present generation identifies itself with the social and political commitments, while the gospel is variously confessed or disowned; it no longer lies at the heart of the belief system of some who call themselves Mennonites.

Whether or not this is a fair reading of the Mennonites, it is certainly a salutary warning for evangelicals at large. [1]

It absolutely is.

I have sensed a parallel phenomenon in the generational succession of the gospel-centered movement as well. With the increased speed of information transfer, the full descent of the internet age, and the reality of globalization, what once might have taken generations can now transpire in the span of a few decades. For a great many of us who came of age at the height of the seeker-sensitive church movement—initially influenced by and trained in ministry to emulate pastors like Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, and Andy Stanley—the rediscovery of Reformed theology provided a canvas upon which to work out our growing angst with the attractional ministry paradigm. In the beginning, younger Boomers and older Gen Xers set about cherishing—or at least enjoying the newness of—gospel-centrality, especially in reaction to what we were rebelling against. From this interest arose the young, restless, and Reformed phenomenon, but in just ten short years, what was new to us had become the established norm for the next generation.

Many younger Gen Xers and Millennials effectively grew up with the gospel-centered movement as the wallpaper of their church experience. This was the generation of “assumption,” for which the implications proved more interesting than the gospel itself. It didn’t help that many of the “cherishers” pastoring and influencing them turned out merely to be dabblers.

The watchword of the Reformation was semper reformanda—“always reforming”—which for its originators meant always returning to the gospel of grace, always and ever conforming to the centrality of Christ. In the spirit of Luther’s first thesis, the whole life of the Christian is to be one of constant repenting, which means constantly turning from sin and constantly turning to Christ.

Gospel-centrality, in other words, is not something you can set to autopilot.

This is true even if your doctrinal fidelity is to the true gospel! The true gospel may be de-centered, placed in the lockbox of our theological basement, or simply hung on the wall of the church website. Accordingly, it provides the background for all manner of functional, ministerial, and cultural drift. For instance, nearly every mainline church where Christ and his gospel are not preached biblically or with conviction claims to affirm the historic creeds. And nearly every conservative church where political rants and legalistic tirades dominate the pulpit maintains an orthodox statement of faith in their church documents.

Drift does not usually begin at the places of doctrines and documents but at the places of discourse and disposition.

Tim Keller writes:

Both the Bible and church history show us that it is possible to hold all the correct individual biblical doctrines and yet functionally lose our grasp on the gospel. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones argues that while we obviously lose the gospel if we fall into heterodoxy, we can also operationally stop preaching and using the gospel on ourselves through dead orthodoxy or through doctrinal imbalances of emphasis. Sinclair Ferguson argues that there are many forms of both legalism and antinomianism, some of which are based on overt heresy but more often on matters of emphasis and spirit. It is critical, therefore, in every new generation and setting to find ways to communicate the gospel clearly and strikingly, distinguishing it from its opposites and counterfeits. [2]

We will examine some of these alternate emphases in subsequent chapters, but as the urban legend tells us, the best way to spot counterfeits is to become familiar with the real thing. Since part of our tendency toward gospel drift is in fact a pervasive gospel confusion, it behooves us to establish and constantly refamiliarize ourselves with the true gospel and the substance of what is meant by “gospel-centrality.”

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  1. D. A. Carson, The Cross and Christian Ministry: Leadership Lessons from 1 Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004), 63.
  2. Timothy Keller, Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012), 21.