ChosenRebel's Blog

Once upon a time, I was a full-time instructor at a seminary in California. I am very thankful for that period, but I was way over my head. I happened to be at the right place and time to fill a need, and God gave me an opportunity beyond my age and training. I was a graduate teaching assistant when one faculty member stepped away to finish his doctorate. He recommended me to the seminary and four years later I was still teaching a total of 18 credits and holding down an administrative position while also working to finish two master’s degrees over an 11 year period. (I get tired just thinking about it now.)

At this stage, I am downsizing all of the accumulated paper (5 file cabinets) and books (over 4,300). [Turns out that the blank sides of some of the paper will serve well as draft paper for some of the books I am writing.] Today, I came across a page I gave to my students for one of the last classes I taught at the California seminary. It was a page of instructions about a field trip to Fullerton Evangelical Free Church, where Chuck Swindoll was the pastor.

When I started this post I was going to share some of those instructions, but I have changed my mind. No one is probably interested in them now.

But I hope you are interested in substantive,
soul-gripping, solid expository preaching
exalting the living Christ.

And if you are, I hope you will stop for just a moment and pray that preachers of the Word of God would work hard on three things:

1. Honesty in their relationship with Christ.

2. Integrity and love in their family relationships.

3. Hard work in the study of God’s Word.

If those three things are happening, the American Church will thrive.

When I was a full time working pastor, we would invite new people on to our staff and I would give them a two part job description. The description was broken down into Primary and Secondary Responsibilities. The Secondary Responsibilities were the tasks that we were assigning them in youth, or worship, or children, or discipleship, or adult ministries. The Primary responsibilities were the same on every job description.

• Maintain a vital, visible and easily discernible love for Jesus and His people.

• Maintain a vital, visible and easily discernible love for your spouse and children.

In the first week of their service at the church, I would take each of them out to lunch to have “the talk.” “The Talk” went basically like this. 

“We hired you because we believed that you had the character, talent, training, personality, education and experience to do this job. We believe in you and think you are going to have a great ministry here for the Lord’s glory. But you will fail here if you let what is secondary (the job) take you off track from what should always be primary, your relationship with the Lord and your relationship with your spouse and family.”

Pray that pastors would always remember what is primary.