Loving Jesus and Loving His Disciples

A Call to Finish Well

Well, brothers, you have made it to the final session. I know the final session, the one tasked to me, is about being faithful to finish, so I know you're really looking forward to me finishing!

If you would turn your Bibles to 2 Timothy chapter 4. Just looking at verses 6 through 8, this is known as the valediction of Paul, and it is the final words of that great Apostle. I don't need to tell you that 2 Timothy is the final epistle written by the Apostle Paul. Chapter 4 is the last chapter written by him, and verses 6 through 8, in particular, speak of his own testimony of how he finished—of how he would summarize his faithful ministry. If we're going to talk about finishing well, I thought this would be a great place for us to begin.

Let me read that passage to you. I'll read it from verse 1 all the way through verse 8, even though we're focusing on 6 through 8, just to give us that general context. I'll say a quick prayer, and then we'll dive in.

2 Timothy chapter 4, starting in verse 1:

I solemnly charge you before God and Christ Jesus, who is going to judge the living and the dead, and because of his appearing and his kingdom: Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; correct, rebuke, and encourage with great patience and teaching. For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, will multiply teachers for themselves because they have an itch to hear what they want to hear. They will turn away from hearing the truth and will turn aside to myths. But as for you, exercise self-control in everything, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time for my departure is close. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. There is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on that day, and not only to me, but to all those who have loved his appearing.

— 2 Timothy 4:1-8 (CSB)

Let's pray.

Our Heavenly Father, I thank you for these brothers who have endured through our entire long conference day. I pray that it has been a blessing to them and that it would bear much fruit in their ministry, in their souls, and in their lives. Would you bless this final message, this final talk, that it would be an encouragement to them to press on to the end? May we together, as a brotherhood of those who are seeking to shepherd our people for the glory of Jesus Christ, have a perspective of finishing well. Thank you for all that you have blessed us with and how you care for us. Guide us, direct us, and implant your word deep within us that we might bear fruit. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.

A Personal Confrontation with Mortality

This passage holds a special place in my heart because about fifteen years ago, around this time—maybe it was a little bit later, like August, because it was early in the school year—I was invited to preach at my seminary chapel. Unfortunately, about three weeks before I was scheduled to preach, I was diagnosed with liver cancer.

Now listen, there are a lot of different things that go on with that in terms of why I would have liver cancer. I wasn't an excessive alcoholic, I didn't do drugs, and there wasn't any of those other reasons. But I was born in a time where there was no Hepatitis B vaccination, and I was born in an area in South Korea where Hepatitis B was not just prevalent, but about 80% of the population in my generation was exposed. Of that, 90-something percent would build up antibodies and they'd be fine, but some small percentage of us were blessed to have this particular virus infect our livers.

I was forty years old, early in our ministry. My oldest daughter, Becca, was twelve; Chloe was nine; my son Noah was only three; and Michael was not even one year old yet. That's how it's easy for me to track how far back this diagnosis was—it is as old as my youngest son, who is now fifteen years old.

At the time, we were shocked. I was scared, and we cried a lot. I remember my wife Kathy and I during that time couldn't look at each other, because if we made eye contact, we would just both start crying. My oldest, Becca, remembers those times well because she was twelve. Chloe kind of remembers. The boys don't recall any of it, and what a grace it was that they were so normal. They didn't know what cancer was, they didn't care; they just wanted Dad to throw them in the air and do all the stuff we normally do. That was a tremendous blessing to us.

It was a difficult time for us, but not because I was afraid to die. It was because I wasn't prepared to be finished.

See, I knew that I believed what I preached in terms of the gospel. I knew that I was a sinner who deserved death, but that because I had placed my faith in Jesus Christ, I would be with him. I had no questions about that. I had no questions about what eternity future held for me. But I looked at my not-even-one-year-old baby and I thought, "What would his life be like without his dad? What would my kids' lives be like without me? What would Kathy's life look like without her husband, or my church's life look like without us?"

I shared my diagnosis with our church later that week. I let them know so they could ask for prayer, and explained that we weren't sure what the prognosis was or what we were going to do. I just shared it with them generally and said, "We're going to keep doing ministry until I have to get surgery, chemo, or whatever we have to do."

That Sunday was one of the most difficult Sundays to preach because it was so emotional. The elder presiding over the service would just keep crying while trying to pray over me. I preached a normal message; I was already prepared to preach out of whatever text that was, so I did. But I couldn't make eye contact with anyone. If I just looked at them, they would start crying and I would start crying. So I'm preaching like this, staring out at some distant place, not making eye contact because of how heavy this all was.

Again, it was not because I was afraid to die. The Lord has me. I just wasn't ready to be done. I wasn't prepared to be finished.

So, going back to that seminary chapel, I chose this passage to preach for the first time in my life because I thought it spoke well of what I was trying to accomplish—of the attitudes that I wanted to develop in my life so that when all was said and done, I would hope to be like Paul. I would hope to say, "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith."

Brothers, it is helpful to us, and great wisdom, to number our days so that we might have a heart of wisdom (Psalm 90:12), so that we might have a perspective of how to finish well. I would encourage that for us, and that's my task in this passage today.

Poured Out as a Drink Offering

If you're there in 2 Timothy, we pick it up in verse 6. Paul had just declared to Timothy that he is to preach the word. In our opening session, Mark walked us through reading that verse in verse 2 over and over again. After saying that, he reminded Timothy that there's going to be a lot of difficulties, that people are going to abandon sound teaching, and that they're not going to want to hear it. For ourselves, we need to be careful not to wander off from sound teaching into mythologies and other things that can distract us, but instead to do our work and to fulfill our ministry.

Having said that and given Timothy that charge to finish well, Paul gives us his testimony—his last words about how he feels he has done. He begins in verse 6: "For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come."

What we are to borrow from the Apostle is a perspective of our ministry lives, and our lives in service to the Lord, that is about spending our lives well. Look at his illustration: "I am already being poured out as a drink offering." There are a couple of things that we ought to pick up from that: sacrificial worship and the finality of what is being poured out.

He says he's an offering being poured out, and he uses the imagery of the old libation offering from the Old Testament Scriptures. If you're not sure about what that is, that's okay; neither was I when I first looked at this passage. But the drink offering was usually some precious wine that accompanied the burnt offering, or was sometimes joined with the other flesh offerings. It was presented regularly and poured out on the side of the altar. It was like the side-dish offering to accentuate the sacrifice and to make sure that we gave not just what was required of us, but gave abundantly more in thankfulness.

Paul says, "That's me." And he uses the passive to say, "I am being poured out as a drink offering."

Can I say this? Paul doesn't look at his life and think to himself, "Okay, I'm pouring myself out, I'm pouring myself out." He sees this, and everything that he has encountered, as what God has declared for his pastoral ministry and service. He is poured out in sacrifice as a statement of worship and thanksgiving.

Brothers, what we take from that—and I think Paul is intentional, careful, and thoughtful about this illustration—is that your ministry life should feel a little bit like, "Man, I sacrificed a lot." That is what the drink offering is; in fact, that's what every offering is. If it cost you little, why would you offer it?

You know how there will be young kids in your church, and if the offering plate comes around, you see Mom slipping him a dollar, and then he throws that dollar in the plate? He offered nothing—not even that dollar, because that is meaningless. He is just putting it in the plate for his mom. It wasn't his. But if it's his, and he understands that it's costly, that is a sacrifice of worship. That's what that drink offering was. That's what Paul is saying his life is. He is being poured out.

Then there is the finality part. You can almost see it: if you're pouring out the libation offering along the edges of the altar as the burnt offering is being burned away, it is drawing to its end. The final dregs drop out, the final drops flow, and then that's it. Paul is saying, "I know that I am at the end." In case it's not explicit enough for Timothy, he says, "I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come."

Paul used similar language in Philippians 2:17, which might have happened about a year earlier. There, Paul writes:

But even if I am poured out as a drink offering on the sacrificial service of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you.

— Philippians 2:17 (CSB)

There was the "even if." But here, there is absolute certainty: "I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come."

Drink in this illustration a little bit further. If it is sacrificial worship, then whatever else Paul's ministry meant, Paul is convinced that his life has been sacrificial, and it is necessarily so if it's an offering to the Lord.

Brothers, I know we talk about important things like boundaries and protecting our time and our family time, and we do need to do those things. But lest you wander too far in that direction and think to yourself that ministry should feel like a privilege where you should be respected, have honors, and the congregation should just leave you alone—if you start to wander into that self-centeredness, it can lead to lazy ministry. Just so you know, Paul, in his estimation of what his life had been in service to Christ, saw it as a sacrificial act of worship.

And remember, we said it was not just final, but that it's the side garnish. It is additional to the main sacrifice. I don't know if Paul meant it that way intentionally, but what a wonderful way for him to choose, of all the offerings, of all the ways that he could say "I am a living offering" or "being a poured-out offering." He chooses the libation offering, and it suggests that he is never at the center of this thing at all.

Brothers, if there is a time in your ministry where you are so concerned about how you come off as the minister—how your ministry, your preaching, or anything you do seems to suggest that it is about you—if you become not just human-centric but self-centered about the ministry you have for the things of the Lord, you are serving the wrong person. He was a drink offering because, sacrificially, he was being poured out as an act of worship for God because of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

There is a finality to what is taking place. He is going to be with his Lord, and he is going to die.

When we looked into liver cancer at the time, I wrote down some statistics. We caught mine early; I had surgery, I'm still alive, and I'm doing well, praise the Lord. But here are some stats. My wife is a nurse practitioner, so she's a health worker, and these are the stats you're not supposed to look up. If you get diagnosed with something, the one thing you should not do is Google the statistics of how long people live, but everyone does! Here are the statistics: for someone who has liver cancer, if it's localized and confined just to the liver, the five-year survival rate is 28%. If the cancer is regional and has spread to nearby organs, the five-year survival rate is 7%. If liver cancer has spread to distant organs or tissues—stage 4—they don't even talk about a five-year survival rate; they say the survival time is as low as two years.

As Kathy and I were looking at these statistics, we thought, "This is the end." We leaned in and said, "Lord, it just feels like this is so soon. I'm only forty, there is so much to be done." We needed a reset.

Spending time in prayer, walking through what ministry life is and what our lives were meant to be, and what it means that we are trying to serve the Lord, we came away—as we often do—with the doctrine of the sovereignty of God ministering to our souls. I like what George Whitefield once said: "We are immortal until our work on Earth is done."

Kathy and I held on to that. We just huddled, went to the Lord, and realized: "Listen, cancer is not going to take my life; the Lord is going to take my life. If he takes my life today, then that's up to him. If he extends my life until I'm eighty-something, that's up to him. But we can't believe that a disease is the main cause of my end. The disease is just a means to an end."

Our finish will come. Your end will come. The reality that you can't control that can be unnerving, but it is helpful.

Brothers, this is in Scripture so that we might look at it and realize we have an opportunity as ministers of the gospel to spend our lives well, to be poured out well, to serve sacrificially, to worship the Lord, to make him known, and to do that for as long as he allows us to do it—but only as long as he allows us to do it. I was not going to, by any means or by any medical procedure, extend my life even one inch. The Lord has a limit and an allotment for me, and when that limit or allotment is gone, that means the final drop has been poured out and my offering is complete. I love that, because that is something I can cling to. There is a hope in that.

I'm not encouraging you to be morbid. I'm encouraging you to accept the fact that God has pre-planned your limit, your length, however long or short it is. You are exactly where you're supposed to be, and he has you in his hand. We can then be an example to our families and our churches of what it means to be a living sacrifice, a drink offering poured out. We can be like Paul and know that as our imminent end approaches, it's okay.

We will always be disappointed that we didn't accomplish as much as we had hoped the Lord would do in our lives; that's just the reality. I was looking up different pastors in the past and what they said about what if the Lord returned or what if he took your life today. Even guys like Charles Spurgeon made it very clear that he'd be so disappointed in his life—one of the most prolific Christian authors, writers, and preachers of any generation, and he would say, "I feel like I was so sorry in terms of how much effort and energy I put into ministry." Listen, we will always be disappointed, but our goal is not to accomplish much; our goal is to accomplish it for someone as an act of sacrificial worship. Let us be those men who live in such a way that our lifestyle speaks of something greater than the temporal satisfaction of success.

Fighting, Running, and Keeping the Faith

Paul says more than simply "spend your life well." In verse 7, he gives us three illustrations to speak of how to strive to finish faithfully: "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith."

There are three ways to illustrate this. Praise the Lord, Paul is a guy's guy, so he's going to use two athletic images. I love that. He says first of all, "I have fought the good fight." In fact, all of these verbs occur in the perfect tense, meaning he is looking back, and the results of what he has accomplished lead on forward. He has fought that good fight.

I love the fact that he uses that term "fight." In fact, he uses both the verbal form and the noun: "I have fought the good fight." The Greek word is the one from which we get our English word "agony." But don't import that backward; whatever that word meant, it meant some kind of struggle, which is why it became the English word "agony." The word was used often in the Olympic Games for a wrestling match, a hand-to-hand fight.

If you guys have ever been in a wrestling match where you're trying to pin the other guy and he's trying to pin you, or maybe a judo match or some other matchup where it's man-on-man, hand-to-hand—there is something about that that is challenging, struggling, and comes with a lot of difficulty, pressure, and some amount of pain. For Paul to say, "I have fought the good fight," he uses the term for "good" to say that there was something about it that was noble. It's not the idealistic "good"; he is saying, "I did well. I fought well. As difficult as the struggles of ministry were, I fought them well."

We know the difficulties that Paul had suffered and some of the struggles that he had gone through because they're laid out for us in passages like 2 Corinthians 11, where he details the struggles, difficulties, and pains that he had endured. Probably no follower of Christ bore as many physical scars of following Jesus Christ as the Apostle Paul. Along with all of that, there was the constant anxiety of worrying about the health of all the churches. When he examines ministry and sees it all, he says, "I am thankful that I fought well, because it felt like a fight."

And you might feel like your ministry sometimes feels like that—like a struggle, an ache, a pain, like you're getting pushed back and it is so hard. Paul is with you. That's what ministry feels like sometimes. It feels like this struggle where you're not sure you're going to win.

Can I say this? Paul says, "I fought nobly, I fought well." He doesn't say, "I won." He leaves the impression that the fight to minister well is an ongoing struggle and pain, and it's going to end now. He doesn't give the impression of, "And then I pinned that dude, and we won, and now I'm celebrating!" He says, "I fought, and I fought, and I fought well, but it's almost all done." That's the way he examines it.

The second illustration is similarly athletic: "I have finished the race." Paul spoke in Acts 20 to the Ephesian elders in verse 24:

But I consider my life of no value to myself; my purpose is to finish my course and the ministry I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of God’s grace.

— Acts 20:24 (CSB)

He uses almost the exact same terminology: "that I may finish my course." He says, "I had a racecourse set before me, and I finished." I love that because if you think about a race, this is not a sprint. This is probably more akin to the steeplechase.

If you guys watch the Olympics—it's the only time I watch all the track and field stuff—one of the craziest things I've ever seen is the steeplechase. Do you know what that is? It's a race around a track where there is a pool of water you have to run through, and you have to climb logs and do all kinds of things. It's like a human being going through an obstacle course, and you are trying to win that race. It is something like that, but it's probably more geared toward the idea of a difficult course that has an endurance factor to it, because he says, "I have finished the course." In Acts 20, he said, "that I might finish my course."

I would say this, brothers: if you are a pastor and you are concerned that you have not been as successful as that pastor down the street, or you aren't as capable or gifted as other pastors you graduated with in seminary—if you are into that comparison of "Have I done better than others?"—this is not that illustration. This is the illustration of Paul saying, "I ran a course, and I finished my course." He doesn't say, "I ran the course and I won." He doesn't say, "I ran the course and I came in first place." He is simply saying that when he looks at his ministry life, he finished whatever course God had placed before him. That is the illustration and the example of faithfulness.

I have a relatively small church. We're somewhere around 250 members—maybe close to 300, something like that. But for the longest time, our church size was around 100, maybe 150. Sometimes we grew a little, sometimes we shrank a little; that's just what it was. I am content that if that's all my influence is going to be—to about 150 adults, interchanged as people leave and come—what is wrong with that? Faithfulness demands that I complete the task that God has given to me, not the task that God has given to you.

My ministry is going to look different than your ministry. Your work is going to look different than my work. The people, the culture, the circumstances, the numbers—that's going to look different in your context than in my context. Faithfulness means that you have a course, you see the course, and you finish it. It is the finishing in faithfulness that is so much more significant, and is emphasized in these illustrations, rather than the victory or the success. You are not to be measured by how strong or amazing people think your preaching ministry is, or anything else you've done. You're measured by whether or not you've accomplished the things that God has given you to do. Be faithful to your tasks, and they might be different from other pastors' tasks.

The last one is in that same vein, the third illustration in verse 7: "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith." I think this is Paul saying, "Here's a metaphor for you, and this is what I'm trying to get at." What he's trying to get at is that when all is said and done, faithfulness looks like keeping the faith. Paul imagines his life as a stewardship of the faith. I take that definite article, "the faith," to mean that he is talking about everything that he has taught and the manner in which he has applied that in his own life. He has walked it out in doctrine and in life—the things that he has been preaching.

In 1 Timothy 4:16, Paul says:

Pay close attention to your life and your teaching; persevere in these things, for in doing this you will save both yourself and your hearers.

— 1 Timothy 4:16 (CSB)

I think that's what he's talking about when he says here, "I have kept the faith." He's saying, when all is said and done, whether it's by my lifestyle—keeping a close eye on myself—or on my teaching and doctrine, I have kept consistently what I have been preaching. I've been preaching a gospel of salvation by grace, and I've been living by that same grace. I've been preaching that we rely upon God for all things by faith, and I have been exercising that faith. All the things that I have taught, I have lived—not perfectly, but consistently. I have kept the faith against all inducements to find other methods or means. This is what faithfulness looks like.

Again, keeping the faith is a victory in itself, but it's not the same as saying he's been immensely successful.

One of my favorite books that I give to young pastors is Kent Hughes's Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome. It comes with a fantastic story because Kent Hughes, as many of you know, is an excellent preacher who was the senior pastor and preaching pastor at Wheaton College Church for many decades. But his first church plant was here in Southern California—he's a Southern California guy, and on that basis alone we should pay attention to him! He's our brother.

He church-planted with about a hundred people sent out from his sending church, along with a number of leaders. That church grew in size dramatically initially, but within a couple of years, it shrank and shrank, and he closed the doors of that church about two or three years later. In the midst of that, he started to lose faith. He became embittered and thought, "Lord, you have set me up to fail."

The book Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome comes out of him and his wife Barbara confessing that they felt like the Lord had abandoned them and that they were failing, and them deciding to examine what success in ministry actually looks like. It's about faithfulness. Faithfulness to small tasks. Faithfulness to do the things that the Lord would desire us to do. Faithfulness, as Paul commanded Timothy, to keep a close watch on ourselves, our own lives, as well as on our teaching, and to persist in those things.

Paul is saying, "Look, I have fought the good fight. Sometimes it feels like a fight, and I have fought well. I can't say I won everything, but I fought well and nobly for the Lord. I finished a course. God gave me a course; it's different from your course, Timothy. I'm not asking you to do exactly what I have done, but I am saying whatever God gave me to do, I think my mission has been accomplished. Whatever God has tasked me to do, I have done."

He says, "I'm trying to tell you that I have kept the faith, and in the same way, I keep exhorting you to keep the faith—to watch yourself, your own character, your love for the Lord, your own worship, and then to apply all the things that are the truth of the gospel, not just to yourselves but to others. Protect, promote, and speak toward all those great doctrines of faith." He says, "I've kept that, and I'm entrusting that to you." This is literally his valediction, so that Timothy might read this and recognize, "Amen, you have spent your life well, Paul. Amen, you have striven to finish faithfully, Paul. Amen and amen, and I'm following you. I hope to follow in your footsteps, not in the exact same way, but in ways that are helpful and encouraging to us."

The Motivation: A Crown of Righteousness

The final thing is the motivation for it all. As the great Apostle often does in his brilliance, he wants to leave us with more than simply "this is how you do it"; he wants to give us "this is why you do it."

Verse 8: "There is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on that day, and not only to me, but to all those who have loved his appearing." Paul basically says in verse 8, "Look toward your reward, because I'm looking forward to mine."

What would that reward be? Don't you ever think of that? "Man, I can't wait till I'm in heaven." I don't know if you think, "Well, I would just love to hang out, to have all those wonderful things, to no longer struggle with disease or illness or sickness."

Paul highlights two particular things, I think. He says first of all, it's the finality of righteousness: "There is reserved for me the crown of righteousness." Now, listen, I take that appositionally. I don't think there's an actual crown that says "righteous" on it—maybe some of yours will say it in bold, mine in lowercase, different size fonts! I don't think it's an actual crown. I think the idea is that when all is said and done, we will have received not just the status of righteousness because we're covered in the righteousness of Christ, but we'll actually be fully redeemed, fully righteous.

I thought that was so interesting. Of all the things that Paul is looking forward to, one of them is that he will lay down all struggle with sin. In fact, it will be the Lord, the righteous Judge—the Judge who knows righteousness more than anyone else—who will award him that crown, who will award him full and absolute righteousness and freedom from sin on that day. What I think that tells you is that Paul, to the very end, still struggled and fought with sin.

Of all the great things that he is looking forward to as he's in the Mamertine Prison—probably cold, wet, having physical difficulties, and knowing that he is being poured out at the end—as he's thinking about all those things, one of the prizes he is looking forward to when he is in the presence of his Savior is that he will no longer struggle with sin.

Brothers, if there is a time in our ministry where we stop thinking about our struggles with sin, we are losing track of what this faithful life looks like. I'm still a sinner. We talk about raising our kids, and if there's one thing I've done often with the kids, I've had to seek their forgiveness for a bad temper, for saying this, or for doing that. I think that's helpful to them because I think that's an illustration of the gospel in a man, in their father, who is a sinner.

Brothers, you are not holier than anybody, because we are all in our own sinfulness apart from Christ, dead in our trespasses and sins. That self-righteous attitude we might have because "I'm the pastor of the church," or that sensibility we might build up like "I'm not as bad as most of the people in my congregation"—all of that is nonsense. If you asked the Apostle Paul in the last moments of his life, in the last days of his life, "Paul, what are you looking forward to in heaven?" he would say, "Dude, being free from this body of sinfulness. Breaking free from all this. I'm so looking forward to whatever it feels like to be perfectly righteous in every motivation."

I imagine in the new heavens and the new earth, we're going to play games, maybe even play sports. It's got to be football, right? The Lord invented football for a good purpose, I don't know. But what would it be like for you to compete as hard as you possibly can, even if you know you're not as physically capable as the next guy—to compete hard, fully, completely, and passionately engage—and to do all of that without sin or self-centeredness? I'll be honest with you, brother, I don't know.

I stopped watching some of my sports teams because, afterward, if they lose, I have a bad attitude for about two hours. Especially when my kids were young, if the Lakers lost to the Celtics in the finals, they would want to say, "Hey, Dad, is your game over? Can we go do something now?" And I'd be like, "No, we can't do anything, Dad's having a hard day!" All of that mess is the normal part of our sin.

What would it be like for us to fully engage in things that are competitive or demand attention, to give our all, and if we don't win, to have no sense of selfishness or demand that "I should get privilege here"? I don't know. Paul was so looking forward to what that is like—to have absolute freedom of pure motive in anything and everything he will ever do.

Brothers, we don't long for our sanctification enough. We often long for sanctification for the purpose of looking better, or for the sake of claiming we've overcome certain things. Paul is saying, "No, I'm just looking forward to being absolutely free from sin. That crown of righteousness—I've been striving for that, and I'm convinced we're not getting it in this life, but it is present in the life to come."

The second thing he mentions in verse 8 in terms of the reward to be motivated by, besides that crown of righteousness, is in the last part of verse 8: "and not only to me, but to all those who have loved his appearing." He says it in a sideways manner, but he's implying that it's not just this desire to be fully saved, to be fully righteous, to have every motive, every thought, everything devoted to the Lord and free of contamination—to be absolutely pure—but also this is the driving motive of faithfulness for all those who have "loved his appearing."

In a sideways manner, he says that what is characteristic of those who are motivated by that crown of righteousness is that they also are motivated by love. He characterizes those who would be faithful, including in his own life, and includes all of us to say: "Brothers, a faithful life and a faithful finish require that you love his appearing." It means by that that every one of us who wants to finish well is just longing to see Christ. His appearing, just to see the Lord. It is our affections that motivate and drive us.

Paul says he is driven by this desire for full and absolute sanctification, and he is driven that way because he wants to be in the presence of his Savior. How often we are caught up in our duties and responsibilities, in the things that have to be done, and we neglect at the very core of our being the why of what we're doing. We do it so that we might love his appearing, we might desire his presence, and we might communicate to others that they similarly can pursue the things of the Lord, desire his presence, and will one day appear before him. They will be worthy of being there because he has overcome sin and death on our behalf, and now, having passed from this life, we are looking forward to an eternity where we are fully righteous and fully present in the presence of the one who has saved our souls.

Brothers, if we are to live a life of ministry and faithfulness to the very end, we need to have the sobriety of knowing that our end is not determined by how well we eat, how much we exercise, or how we do what we do. Our end is determined exclusively by our Savior and our Sovereign Lord. Our task is to be faithful. Spend your life well in sacrificial worship. Strive to finish so that when you are finished, you can say, not "I have won" or "I have succeeded" in that sense, but "I did whatever the Lord placed before me to the best that I could." And then look forward to his appearing, to being right with him for all eternity. That's what it means to be faithful to the end, to finish well.

Let me pray for us.

Lord, we thank you again for these brothers who have made it to the end, for our time around the Scriptures, our time learning from these talks, as well as our discussions and illustrations from life. May they have an impact on us in a way that causes us to draw together in unity as brothers and causes us to draw toward the things of Christ, so we might serve you well and make your name known. Thank you for your love for us. May we spread that to the world. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.

Panel Discussion: Reflections on Pastoral Ministry

John: Well, brothers, we come to the end of the conference. We are going to have a time for open Q&A in just a few minutes, so in the meantime, I just want to ask these three brothers some questions. If you have anything that you've been dying to ask, just make note of that, and we'll have people come up in just a second.

Nam, thank you for bringing the word, brother, and encouraging us to think about finishing faithfully. Before we open up questions to everyone else, I want to quickly go over different sections of your guys' pastoral lives and ask for any reflections or comments. It's intentionally broad, so you can really talk about anything you'd like. Any reflections on the first five years of pastoral ministry that would be helpful for these brothers?

Nam Park: I think for me, if I could go back and wish for one thing in the first five years, it's that I had a better connection and network of older pastors. I had no one feeding into us. A lot of the stuff that we are as a church now took us a long time to get to, and a lot of it was because no one was teaching me. We're an independent Bible church, which kind of meant we were suspicious of everybody else anyway! On top of that, if you don't have older guys that you can lean into, I think you're just teaching the best you can and meeting, and there wasn't a lot of intentionality in the first five years.

Bobby Jamieson: In the first five years of my ministry, there was no way to know what I didn't know. I was super idealistic. I mean, the church was finally going to have the perfect pastor, the perfect church, with the perfect family and all of that. I was just going to do it the Bible way, the right way, like nobody else had done it. And, yeah, you just learn the hard way that some of your idealism is just that—it's not realistic.

But the practical advice that I would pass on, that I had to learn the hard way, is that you really are a pastor in title only, and you have to earn people's trust to follow you. So be careful how you wield authority. Just go slowly and find an older mentor. I had one; it was great—Dr. Robert Saucy. Those are my two thoughts.

Mark Dever: I've got three different "first five years." I've got the church I planted up in New England in 1985, almost forty years ago. I had my first year and a half there, and there, I would just say, we had expositional sermons and a plurality of elders, and I'm pretty pleased. Now, that church ceased to exist after about ten years, but I was there for the first year and a half. The work is done unto the Lord.

The second "first five years" would be when I was an associate pastor in Cambridge, England, and there, it was just great being part of a team. I did about a third of the preaching, and I was by far the youngest of the elders. That was wonderful—to see these older guys, some of whom had been in World War II, and one of whom was Martyn Lloyd-Jones's son-in-law. These were good elders, and it was great to plow with them.

And then my first five years at Capitol Hill Baptist Church. There, I think I was encouraged about the centrality of the word. I feel that, Nam, some of what you were both saying in your message but also saying you wanted in your own experience, I think by God's grace I was given that in part just through preaching the word. I felt I was greatly affected by the word, so I felt God kind of practically adjusting me through my own sermons, just through working on the word, preparing—not really through the preaching, but through the study of the word. I think I became much more concerned about the church as a pastor that third time, at CHBC, than I had been even before.

John: Any reflections or lessons from year five to year fifteen?

Bobby Jamieson: A lot of stuff happens in between. I was trained in a church and called to ministry in a church that had a plurality of elders. Then the way the Lord led me through college ministry, we had a real plurality of leadership there as well. So that's what I sought, and I was praying when I got to the church in the first five years that God would raise up a plurality of elders. That was really important, and I experienced that through years five through fifteen, and it was wonderful.

For the guys who just started in ministry, the last five or six years have been really hard through COVID, the racial strife, the political divide, and all that stuff. For the solo guys, I can't even imagine. But I've just had such a strong team of leaders around me, and I would just say, look for that. If you can, lead or learn how to be with men—real leaders—and not be intimidated by that but be encouraged by that. Having a plurality of leadership and experiencing that in years five through fifteen was wonderful.

Nam Park: I think it was toward the year fifteen mark, somewhere in the last part of that section, where as a church we kind of grew. We raised up elders, a deacon board, and our ecclesiology started to come together. I thought that was really helpful.

Somewhere in there is when I went to my first Weekender, and I thought it was so helpful to see. CHBC does a thing called the Weekender where you can come. It used to be free—I'm not complaining, I'm just stating a fact! We still send our guys there.

Mark Dever: Could you buy milk for like twenty-five cents back then, too? Did you have to walk through the snow two miles?

Nam Park: But it was eye-opening and refreshing because they were so open about what they do as a church. I think that helped us, even as a leadership, to realize we want to be like that to our congregation as well. There doesn't need to be a "hey, you just need to trust the elders" kind of moment. We can talk about stuff; they're members of the church. I thought that was so helpful and encouraging, and I think that flavor began to develop and simmer then.

It is part of our DNA now. The personality of our church is such that I don't think any member feels like they're not sure what's going on. If they're not sure what's going on, they assume it's because they missed the members' meeting or they've not been in town. That personality of what the church is today really formulated during that second phase.

Mark Dever: I would just underscore what Bobby said. I think for us, the plurality of elders in years five to fifteen really came to the fore and was very helpful.

John: And year fifteen to now?

Bobby Jamieson: Let me just grab one or two things and let the brothers fill in. "To now" for me is like up to thirty years, and the church is becoming totally new. Some of the saints who started off with me—I might get emotional—as they've gone on to be with the Lord, I still have some of their voice messages on my phone. Like Mother Delois; she would just call me after every Sunday: "Pastor, you was preaching this Sunday!" Every Sunday, she would just leave messages on my phone.

But just to say those earthly final goodbyes and to be there for the families—it's such a privilege to see those saints finish well. It's such an honor to be a pastor, to be there. I've seen so many people breathe their last breaths and have wept and mourned with families, but with hope. And now to see God raise up a new generation, new families, the church is becoming totally new, and I'm encouraged by that.

Nam Park: One of our desires at the church I'm at, Immanuel Bible Church—we planted in 1996, so I'm still at that same church—I remember it was just a bunch of peers, good friends, and we started a church. We were all about the same stage in life.

For the first several years, I remember praying and asking the Lord to send us older saints who could shepherd us and lead us. But as you think back on it, they're probably already committed to a church; they're good Christian people! We would pray that, and we jokingly said we'd have to just grow up into that.

There's a core of us that have been together for these last twenty-eight years, who have been in each other's weddings, have been blessed to see the birth of each other's kids, and have watched their kids grow. My oldest daughter I married off a couple of summers ago, and all of these members who have been so close to us were crying. I'm like, "Man, this is what a church family should feel like." That has been such a tremendous and wonderful blessing.

Even as Bobby is sharing that, we're getting to that point where we have older members who have joined us since, and we know we're going to start saying goodbye to some. The heaviness of that, the emotional heaviness, is a good thing. I'm so thankful I've watched these little kids be born, make a profession of faith in college, get baptized, go off to school, and still come back as solid believers, become leaders, and help guide some of our youth group kids to the things of faith as well. I don't know if you can ask for more than that.

This isn't me trying to make a commercial for staying as long as you can in one place, but if you have the privilege of staying long in one place, this is what you reap from that: these relationships that will probably endure into eternity that you could never be more thankful for.

Mark Dever: Our experience is probably a little bit different. We've been there a long time, but we began with a whole bunch of funerals. "Funerals 'R' Us" was me in the 1990s, because all my members had been born in the 1890s and 1900s. It was amazing! That was who I had in 1994—several funerals for people over a hundred years old, and then a lot of them in their nineties.

I remember one time in '98 or '99, just realizing every man greeting people at the front door, the back door, and the other side door—they were all in their nineties! It was an elderly congregation. I think you had a little bit younger, from what I've heard.

Nam Park: Seventy-five average age.

Mark Dever: Yeah, that's like a youth group compared to what I had! But then we started to get the younger ones in. By that time, I very quickly, from 2000 to 2010, went from preaching to a congregation the age of my grandparents, literally, to preaching to a congregation the age of my children. It switched kind of three generations in about ten years.

Because, like you're saying, the people who were my peers, by then thirty-five or forty, were already stuck into a church and weren't moving. Now, we'd see some who got converted, and that was awesome. But generally, we were just seeing people who were coming into Capitol Hill to work at the Capitol, and then they would get married, have kids, find it too expensive to live here, and move off.

Connie and I have had thirty years of just sort of running a school. It's slightly longer-term now; there are some families who have stayed—the Boyers, the Walls, the Lams—there are some of those. But on the whole, our calling has been to hug a parade, and we're happy to hug a parade. It's a privilege.

As Connie and I watch younger ministry couples, we see serried ranks of staff. We have the exalted senior pastor (which is me), and then we have the near-peaks of the associate pastors who are so well cared for they should never leave, and yet still they leave! Andy Johnson goes and starts a church in Turkey, and Deepak Reju goes and pastors a church in Wilmington, Delaware.

Bobby Jamieson, Michael Lawrence, Brad Wheeler—they were meant to do that. And then we have the assistant pastors, who are people who have been on a pastoral staff elsewhere, changed their theology, want to try out our kind of church, and so we bring them on staff for two to five years, but they are made to go back out to be a senior pastor. We have six of those right now.

So we watch those guys, usually in their late thirties or early forties, and they are often desiring stability: "Can we please stop moving around?" because by that point they will have had two or three moves in their ministry. Like Garrett Kell, who had pastored a church for over ten years in Texas, and then was on our staff, and now he's been leading a staff for ten years or more of his own. We see that all the time.

Right now, we've got one couple on our staff where the wife is really wanting to go and settle someplace, and man, we get it. We understand. But Connie and I were talking about it the other day, and we realized that when they move off and finally stop this moving around they've done for the last twenty years and settle as a senior pastor, all of a sudden what they're going to notice is all the moves that everybody else does. In this world, there's just no final stability. Even if you go to a demographically stable place in rural Nebraska or Montana, you're going to find the people age, they die, new ones are born, and they come along. This world is not our home.

So we're just going to have to be more than resigned; we're going to have to accept the fact that the Lord has a purpose in our experiencing time as we do—both as we ourselves age, as we become independent in some ways, then more dependent again in other ways, and as we watch that happen in other people's lives. It becomes clear how brief our stewardship is of dear older saints who leave encouraging emails.

I think this when I watch R.C. Sproul on tape sometimes—or not on tape, listen to me, online! VHS, that's right, that was the new stuff! Will it be Sony or Betamax, I don't know, or VHS. I just think, what a gift R.C. was. It was a comparatively brief gift. We had R.C. really blowing and growing in public teaching from like the mid-seventies through the mid-teens—thirty, forty years. Well, it's great, but it's kind of short in the scope of things, and that's just the way it is. People's gifts come together, the Lord gives them to the church for a little bit of time, and then he takes them away. And the church is fine, because the church depends on the Lord Jesus, amen? We just get to come along and be whatever part of it he wants us to be, and what a privilege, what a joy. We don't have to worry about being more than we are. We're just what we are, just plowing with whatever we can.

Audience Q&A

John: All right, brothers, we are going to take the next twenty minutes. If you have a question, please raise your hand up high, say your name and your church, and ask your question.

Sam: My name is Sam. I'm from Valley Baptist Church in Bakersfield, California. I had a question for Bobby. When you were giving the talk about being a shepherd for your family, reflecting Christ as in Psalm 23, as a young guy looking up to that—I'm not married, I'm single—it seems like a noble goal, but really insurmountable to get there. It's really tough. I feel like I'm looking from the foot of a mountain all the way up to the top, and so it's kind of scary. How would myself and the younger guys get there? How can we do that?

Bobby Jamieson: Thanks, that's a great question. One thing that the Lord led me to do in my ministry is to pass on what I experienced. What I've done with the young guys is I just keep my doors open, and they come into my house. When they come into my house, I'll stick a baby in their arms. Some of these guys are like, "Wow, what do you do?" They just watch me raise my kids. Some of them would say, "I've just never seen a husband and wife relationship up close, and I've never seen a father-child relationship."

So I would say, find some older saints in your church and just see if you can come over for lunch, hang out with them, and just be around them and their family. See what I wanted to apply from Psalm 23: providing, protecting, and initiating as a husband. Say, "I'm going to feel the onus of saying, 'If there's a problem, let's try to do this and let's do that.'" I don't want to make those things spectacularly out of reach. I just want to say what faithful shepherding looks like, and let's just strive forward. It's helpful to see it, so I would say get around some older men in the church whom you respect in how they lead their families, and watch them very closely.

I was the last of my friends to get married, and that helped me tremendously. I watched their marriages, I watched them start their families, and so it really gave me a template: "Okay, Bobby, this is what it looks like." By God's grace, let's pray and ask God for grace to do that. Does that help, Sam?

Nam Park: And I will say, we were one of the first ones to get married. We were about twenty-one when we got married, and that was hard. I can imagine. An advantage you have is if you have friends who are already married; that's a huge advantage.

Drew: Hey guys, my name is Drew Hunsley, pastor at The Rock Community Church in the Anaheim Hills area. I've been at the church for about five years. I came into a church that was about fifteen years established with a fairly consumer-focused Southern California culture: "We'll come here because we like the music," or "We'll come here because we think the guy is funny." There was a celebrity pastor who started the church who was a former baseball player for the Dodgers.

I've been here about five years at this point and have tried to establish some of the foundational things, like saying, "We belong to one another," and talking with my elders about membership and things that help establish a culture that is more serious than the come-and-go we've seen up to this point. What advice would you have as we walk that path of teaching our people that belonging to a church is something that's weighty, and that membership is serious? I believe I've got my elders on board with it, but we need to roll that out to the church and introduce that concept to them. What advice would you have as men who are leading churches on how to lead our church to do that well?

Nam Park: I would say you're doing the right thing in terms of trying to shepherd them toward meaningful membership. That has got to be one of the most significant things you can give to a church, because your membership has to mean something. Why can you come into membership, or why can you not? What is your responsibility as a member? Those things help to shape the culture of the church in a way that is so significant. You're on the right path. Read all the 9Marks books, that's what I say. I just finished Jonathan Leeman's book yesterday.

Bobby Jamieson: Mark has a book, Why Join a Church?, right? He wrote the book on it, so I'll let him answer. Do you want to tell them what you would say if you were ever speaking in front of a college group?

Mark Dever: Are you looking for that one line?

Bobby Jamieson: Yeah.

Mark Dever: "If you're not a member of a church you regularly attend, you may well be going to hell!" [Laughter]

I first came up with that line when I was speaking at a campus ministry group at the University of Maryland back in the 1990s, just to bless their socks! But you understand what I mean by that. I'm not in any way suggesting that if you're not a member of a local church you are automatically going to hell. I'm just saying the church is there to make sure you're not the dude in 1 Corinthians 5 lost in your own mind—claiming to be a believer, but no one else around you can see that, meaning there's no assurance.

The local church has that job, and we can't do that for the people who just attend our church; we don't know them. They have to make themselves members. They have to come and join, we have to hear their testimony, ask them questions, and they have to let us know the truth about their lives. That's the only way we can be of any help to them.

The thing I was going to say, brother, is from 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy. If you just read through these letters, it's so clear by how frequently the word "patient" and "patiently" appears that you just have to teach, and you have to keep teaching. Drew, just pick what those things are that you're scared they don't understand and just teach them, but then realize that your church members are a lot like your kids, who are a lot like you. You didn't learn something the first time you were taught it, right? Neither did your kids, and neither will your members.

You might think, "Oh, it's clear, here it is, Matthew 18, so we're going to take it to the church. Done, check." No, Drew, you have to teach that for years repeatedly until it just seeps into all the nooks and crannies and they all believe that's the case. But then they're beginning to wonder, "Why are we doing that?" That is when it's a good time to make a change.

I always tell young guys: "Slow is fast, and fast is slow." If you try to do it too fast, the thing is going to blow up. If you'll just be very slow and deliberate, you'll reach the goal. It's the same way with pastors. If you try to do it all real fast, it's going to blow up and take forever. But if you will be very slow, deliberate, and wait on your congregation, in five years, it's like you've got a different church. At our church, the membership stuff took us about ten years, and we're still working on it.

John: And Alex, did you want to add anything as an encouragement to Drew?

Alex: I meant that as an encouragement to Drew.

John: An encouragement to Drew, in case you couldn't tell! Alex was encouraging, amen. We all feel built up. Play the long game, that's right. By the way, Mark, you wrote a book explaining that. I wanted to recommend that.

I had a question on Puritan application. How were the Puritans so effective in their application? I know William Perkins has the seven categories of listeners, and you have a sermon application grid. Do you have any wisdom on their effectiveness in application?

Mark: I think their lack of media presented an opportunity to meditate and reflect that is harder for us, given our circumstances. Many of us are minded to look at emails, the newspaper, TV, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, whatever. But the more you can get your mind concentrating on Scripture, reflecting on it carefully and in a sustained fashion, staring at it—that is key.

That's why I think Scripture memory can be so helpful. Scripture memory is one means to meditate on Scripture, and I think we have to meditate on Scripture; that's part of hearing it as we should. I would encourage you to find whatever way works best for you to meditate.

If you want to write your wife a thoughtful anniversary card, you probably can't do that in two minutes unless you're unusually gifted, or you've only been married like two years! By the time you've been married forty-two years, you have to keep thinking, "What can I write here that's going to be really encouraging and meaningful?" You need to put some time and thought into your application.

Now, I cheat—I use other people's brains. I get them to look at the text, we have a meal together, and I pump them with questions to get them to ask me about the text. I try to look at the world through their eyes for a minute to see if I can see things that I'm not seeing through my own eyes. Just do whatever you can to find ways that help you meditate. That's the element in the Puritan sermons that typifies all of them, which I think is generally missing from our thinner Evangelical sermons these days.

Derek: My name is Derek Barry, planting Gospel of Christ Church, currently a member of South Side Baptist Church. I appreciate you brothers and your insight. Anyone can answer, but it's based on Bobby's talk. Often times, I have difficulty distinguishing between being firm in a good way with my children and being too heavy-handed or too harsh. Do you have any insight on that?

Mark Dever: We're staring at you, Bobby.

Bobby Jamieson: Depending on your wife's giftedness, listen well to your wife. My wife would sometimes tell me things like, "Bobby, you're too angry," or "You don't discipline them now."

Recently, she told me—and you have to know my wife, she's just so gentle, so kind, she can't say a harsh word to anybody about anything—but something came up with my younger daughter who is at UCLA. It was one of my pet peeve, convictional issues. I won't tell you how the conversation went, but UCLA was really protesting for Palestine, and my daughter was there, so I had a really deep, vested interest in how she responded. I was being really, to use your word, "firm." When the conversation ended, my wife just said, "You've got to read the room better." I was like, "Oh."

Sometimes you have to play the long game. You've got to teach and teach, but I just wasn't reading her body language, and I almost pushed her away from any future conversation. So let your wife help you. Say, "Honey, I need help. If you think I'm being too firm with the kids, just let me know." Give her a free card to critique how you're dealing with the kids.

And, of course, if you're concerned about that, make it a matter of prayer. The book on parenting is the Bible, and Proverbs says so much about it because it's a wisdom issue. Wisdom comes from the Lord, so I would just really pray, "God, am I being too firm?" Ask him for wisdom constantly in prayer.

Bobby Jamieson: Just another question that nobody's asked yet that I'll just ask: Mark, any wisdom you have about thinking about how you listen to your wife?

Mark Dever: Thank you for that, Bobby. A stupid thing I often hear young pastors say is they will, in confidence to me, complain about their wife and make it sound like their wife is in the way of their ministry. I just try to lovingly, without being too obviously condescending, help them understand: actually, their wife is the way of their ministry.

Not only should they not be resentful toward some limitations that their wife puts on their ministry, they should trust that Almighty God has given them that wife, and that how she is best going to prosper spiritually is precisely how the Lord is most clearly guiding you in what you should be doing and desiring to do in your ministry.

So, if you are trying to come up with a kind of ministry abstractly in your mind that your wife is standing in the way of, you're ignoring one of the clearest signposts—probably the clearest signpost outside the Bible—the Lord has given you about the shape of your ministry by ignoring what brings your wife spiritual prosperity.

I'm not by that saying—nor would your godly wife want you to hear me saying—that you should count out all of her problems, sins, or sinful concerns. No, I'm not saying that at all. But she wouldn't want you to hear that. What I am saying is that you are going to be the clearest picture of God's love she ever gets, and you should assume that there is normally a continuity between the Lord's calling on your life and what you should do, and the prosperity of your wife and your kids in pursuing that.

Now, that may not be a financial prosperity. I love the way, Bobby, you talked about finances as opposed to other kinds of goodness, and praise God for what you promised and what you've delivered to your wife and your kids. That's what we as husbands and fathers want to do: we want to trust the Lord's providence in bringing us the wives that we have, and trust that he means them in his goodness to us to shape our ministries. Amen.

John: Amen. Good.

Bian: My name is Bian Cedro, currently a member at Grace Community Church. My question is for anyone. What cultivated the desire to partner with other churches, and how did you help your respective congregations think through partnering with other churches in terms of cooperation?

Nam Park: That's a really good question for the Master's Seminary guys, because, like I said, we come from a background that is a lot more independent, which comes with a lot more suspicion.

I talked to a brother who was in the Central Coast of California, and I asked him, "Are there any churches you would recommend in that area? Some of our kids go up to Santa Barbara for school, and some go further north, so any of those churches along that route, I'd appreciate it." He was like, "No, there are none." I was like, "No, no, I'm not saying they have to be exactly of our flavor. As long as they're preaching the gospel, we'll take it. Let's lower the bar." He said, "There are none." I thought, "Now, that's not possible, brother." But I just left it at that.

I think that's where I came from—with that kind of suspicion, at least earlier in my ministry. I think we have to get ourselves to think about that better by actually participating in fellowship with other brothers in Christ who are doing ministry, especially if those guys are a little different from us. You should have some friends who are not from your seminary only. If that's all you have, I think that is so narrow-minded that, whether you intend to do it or not, you're limiting the scope of what you believe is orthodoxy.

We need to have some Presbyterian friends. Mark keeps making fun of our Presbyterian brothers, but you need some who are your friends!

Mark Dever: I love our Presbyterian brothers. I married a Presbyterian!

Nam Park: See, that sounds weird in a lot of different ways! But I think it's really helpful for you. Connect with regional networks like LASBA; groups like that can be helpful if they are more or less like-minded. I'm not saying just join whatever religious fraternity that's out there, but find some guys who are like-minded, and know that some guys will be different from you convictionally on secondary matters. That's great; that will be helpful and encouraging to you.

To guide your people through that, I think you model it. Who you end up teaching at a conference with, or who you encourage them to read—I think you model that. If it's always the same guys from the exact same group, I think you are unintentionally mentoring them to limit the scope of what they believe is orthodox, and that's probably not very helpful.

Mark Dever: One more answer to that last question, and I'll be very brief. The most important things about your church are the things it shares in common with every other true Christian church since Jesus. All those other things that you could brand your church with that make it distinctive from other true Christian churches are not as important as the gospel message it shares with that Free Methodist church down the street or that Anglican church that is preaching the gospel. That is more important than what stylistic commonalities you may have with that conservative Baptist church.

Bobby Jamieson: And I would add to that, if we are serious about the Great Commission, and if we really believe that's the charge Jesus has given to us, how can you do that as an isolated church? We have to cooperate with each other to reach LA and to reach the nations.

Rich: Hello, Dr. Dever. I understand that you've ministered the gospel for a long time. Forgive me, my name is Rich. I am the English pastor of New Life Baptist Church in Monterey Park, and I'm also classmates with these guys. My question is for you in particular, but we'll see if the other fellas want to add. You've ministered the gospel for a long time in the capital of our country. My question for you is: how do you keep politics from dividing the church, causing conflict within the church, and hurting your Evangelistic impact within the capital of the United States of America?

Mark Dever: I think that has shifted, even in the thirty years that I've been there. I think some of the stuff that's gotten me in trouble with my brothers to my right in the culture wars has been stuff that I said like ten years ago, before Roe fell, when the Democrats and the Republicans were more interchangeably moral and their differences were more financial, economic, and maybe about foreign affairs.

Now that the Democratic Party has hardened into a progressive stance on affirming gay marriage, pro-life Democrats—who were numerous in the nineties when I moved to Capitol Hill—are almost non-existent these days. Biden is getting pressured by people in his own party for not being vocal enough about abortion.

The sort of bipartisan thing I tried to do throughout most of my ministry is almost impossible these days. These days, what I have to do is just not sound like I'm a partisan, because the Republican Party is no more Christian than the Democratic Party, and they're going to show that real fast. As soon as Evangelical Christianity shrinks down to a small enough percentage of the voting public, the Republican Party will very quickly—they've already done it, moving from a sixty-page platform to a sixteen-page platform that got rid of all the traditional family values, so-called.

There is a naivety in the way Evangelicals have assumed that there's a party that likes them. No, every party likes customers. If you have a lot of customers who are going to shop at their store, they'll like you. None of them are going to marry you. And if any Evangelical church marries the spirit of the age, it will become a widow very soon.

We've just got to stay on the gospel. Stay on the gospel. Some young guys on the right are getting really enamored with Doug Wilson in Moscow, Idaho, to which I say: why do you go visit Moscow, Idaho? Tell me the big effect Doug and his postmillennialism have had on Moscow. That would be zero. That doesn't work in a fallen world. Save yourself the time. Preach the gospel, build gospel churches, and do the stuff you were trained to do at your seminary. Keep doing that, Rich. It's going to bear the fruit the Lord means us to bear.

And cooperate, like Nam and Bobby, with other brothers who are out there doing that, even if they aren't from your exact circle. Even the jokes I've told about age—I don't understand those to be partisan, because I'm seeing all kinds of Democratic comedians making the same jokes. There's all kinds of stuff we can agree on across party lines, and the things that we can't, you just be very careful about.

If it's a clear moral issue like marriage or abortion, weigh right in; your people need to be instructed. But if it's "What do you do about Israel and Gaza?"—Bobby, maybe you have a different line than I do on this—I'm extremely careful about how I pray about that, and I do pray about it publicly, but I've got Israeli citizens who are members of my church, and I've got Palestinian Christians who are members of our church. So I've got to pray extremely carefully, biblically, on that.

John: Is there a last question? These brothers are busy preaching tomorrow.

Kevin: My name is Kevin. I'm from True Love Community Church, and my question is in response to Mark's session on discipleship, but any of you guys can answer. You mentioned that expositional preaching, conversion, and evangelism are what create that discipleship culture. How can you pastor in such a way that creates a corporate discipleship culture that is intergenerational—that fosters a community where people in college are not just discipling people in college, and people who are older are not just brushing shoulders with people who are older, but it's reaching down and up?

Mark Dever: Model it, and then bring out examples of it. Have them share testimonies.

Nam Park: That's good. I don't have anything else to add. My brain is fried!

John: Well, brothers, there are three groups I want to thank. First, I want to thank all of you who came. I know Saturday is a valuable day, so thank you for making the most of the time and choosing to be encouraged here. Secondly, I want to thank the volunteers who helped with the conference. Thank you for all the hard work you've done. And lastly—I selfishly created this mainly for myself, and you guys are just a nice little bonus—thank you, Mark, Bobby, and Nam, for deciding to be here. I love and appreciate all three of you. I'm so grateful for the investment and the friendship you guys have had in my life. Thank you for serving us well tonight.

Mark Dever: Brothers, thank you for having us. Thanks, John. Can we thank John for leading and organizing this? I encourage all of you to find brothers as godly as these men and spend as much time with them as possible.

One other way you can mine wisdom from older pastors is by reading dead pastors and their works. We're getting there as soon as we can! [Laughter] John, you don't have to wait till we're all gone to read anything we write!

Whether it's The Work of the Pastor by William Still, or How to Be a Pastor by Theodore Cuyler—one book we're going to give away on your way out, if you're a pastor or seminarian, is a collection of the letters of John Newton. We encourage you to take that and be edified as Newton encourages you in your pastoral ministry.