Alistair Begg LIVE on Preaching, Marriage, and Long-Term Ministry - Pastor Well | Ep 12

hello and welcome to the pasture well podcast this is Herschel York the Dean of the school of theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville Kentucky I'm also pastor of the buck Run Baptist Church in Frankfort the pastor well podcast is dedicated to helping those who serve the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ be faithful in their ministry and this is a special LIVE edition coming to you from alumni chapel on southern campus it's great to have you and it is a great delight to have one of my absolute favorite preachers one of my favorite people Alex Trebek pastor parks at church in Cleveland Ohio radio Bible teacher on truth for life welcome thank you welcome thank you thank you very much well you've got a funny accent so do you tell us where you're from well I was born in Glasgow Scotland and lived there for the greater part of my life until I came to America and then I've lived longer and higher in America then I lived back in the UK he came to us in 1983 83 as pastor parks yeah I came at the invitation of that church they had I think exhausted invitations to people in America that knew where Cleveland was and they thought well maybe we'll try somebody who doesn't know where it is maybe he'll come and so how many people were there then six no we got the same six there they're probably on a on a Sunday they're probably about 400 people there yeah and it's grown quite a bit since ya know in meteoric Li but it's it's been consistent steady and so now probably on Sundays congregation is 10 times what that was yeah yeah one service three services in the morning and then I have an evening service as well which is different from the morning services so how many times a week do you prepare a sermon well if Justin just it'll do Park site yeah I would have those two unless I'm doing something like coming coming here yeah when you go somewhere and preach do you typically preach something you've preached before yeah well often I do I sometimes I have necessity and sometimes because I've been asked to do that and and sometimes because it's just what's uppermost in my thinking this evening I haven't preached that before her but you've reached the night you know I haven't preached that before and which is which was probably pretty obvious she needs a little more practice I thought it was fantastic your sermon on 1st Thessalonians 4 really outstanding I I don't mean to just flatter you but I will tell you when people ask me who's your favorite preacher most often it's your name that I say yeah I love to hear you preach well you know what's interesting people ask me they say you know who's your favorite you know professor at the seminary it's usually your name I say you asked that a lot thanks yeah oh wow when in your 36 years of Parkside what's the take away what have you learned about pastoring specifically there or in general anything you share how well you know the idea that the it it just I think it's some of their like T Leakey or something like that who says you know that the pulpit draws the preacher the way the sea draws the Sailor that sense of being a sense of call that creates its own pool its own origins really and that every every time you you have completed it you know on a Sunday evening you just breathe for a brief time and then you've got a clean sheet of paper and another series of verses which is both a demand of it and also the wonder of it I think I would say that you know at this point after 36 years I'm not in any sense jaded I don't feel like I have got a handle on it to the extent that you know this is what I do it still presses me to my knees it still reveals to me you know just how desperately the preacher is in need of divine enablement you know people hear our voices but we want for them to hear God's voice you are you an advocate of long term pastors you think that's the ideal house what you've done do you think what you do well you know I think you know if somebody had said to me in 83 that in 2019 you you'll still be there I think I would probably have disavowed that and I probably would have recoiled from it at this vantage point I would never have changed anything because there are peculiar benefits to being in a place over a long haul in in some senses you know marrying the the children of the children that you married seeing the the ebb and flow of life staying somewhere over the long haul with that being said though not everybody has had the privilege of a congregation such as mine nor does everybody have the same aspirations and and I don't think the the secret lies in longevity or in brevity but you know just being in the place of God's appointing some people I think are very very good at starting things up and launching them and and moving on they might not have the same dogged capacity to stay with it that's a good observation but what was there a year which you'd say man things turned like I would say it for me it was after about your seven I think it took seven years was there a year like that for you well you know when I came in 83 I assumed that the things that they had told me they understood and believed they understood them and believed that was foolish that was yeah that was a big mistake and I so I decided that I wouldn't go home to the UK for at least three years because I was frightened that if I went home I might never come back I've seen some of my friends do that and excuse me and so as an act of discipline you know I stayed that out but when I went home I realized that the connection was not actually there between the pulpit and the pew not in the way that I had envisaged you know I was pulling the rope pretty strong but the Bell wasn't ringing and during that summer at home that's because the Bell is not attached to the rope in terms of what I said about a theological understanding that was that was verbalized but not understood and so in year four then I realized I've got to start at a at a more fundamental level with an understanding of what this is and what the church is and what it's not and so on and then that went for probably another four years and then I would say right around here seven as well then it was actually here seven I reached the point where I thought I've probably done about as much as I can do here I I've run out of all my ideas and that was a real turning point as well they're good stuff started happening then well I what I did was I said to the people I think I've shot my wad III and one of my elders said no I don't think you have you said I think you're lazy and and I said well okay yes sir but I don't think I'm lazy I think I'm incompetent but and so he says whether you gonna have to prove that you're incompetent and so I did and at that point we looked for somebody in the congregation who could staff my in capacities quite honestly instead of moving me on to some other place or allowing me to continue with my own level of incompetency and that was when a fellow who was an elder in our church felt God moving him in that direction and he came to become the director of ministry in the church and brought all the gifts and graces that I don't have to the equation which allowed him to thrive the pastoral team to develop and deepen and for me to be able to do what what I was able to do yeah I think if I have any genius at all and I probably don't but the closest thing to it is that I know how to put people around here you know staff to my weaknesses yeah people whom I trust and who do those things so that I can do what I do angry it makes all the difference in the world and and it's the difference between swimming upstream and you know going with being in the current where it carries you yeah and also technologies in a in a realistic way the fact that all of us are better together than any one of us is on our own what year did truth for life begin I may be 1919 or something like that yeah and tell us a little bit about that minister what it does well now it goes all over the place especially you know with the development of this kind of thing and the Internet initially initially we were invited to go on the radio I I wouldn't cross the street here myself preach I mean I I I leave I leave pastor ministry on Sunday evenings regularly but so the idea that was alien to me and that came about as a result of actually Moody Bible Institute initially and they put us on three radio stations on a on a weekly basis I didn't we call about one letter in two years proving that somebody was listening and it didn't seem to do anything at all and then then a man asked the question why is this not on a daily basis an answer for that was this similar to the initial answer well why would we do that when we did that then it began to build some traction and as a result of that is just developed from there and it's given us an amazing reach throughout the country I mean we're on every major in every major market in the country and then you know on Sirius and and all those other things and then the internet it's it's it's just an extension of the pulpit though that's all it is I mean I don't do anything as long as as long as I stayed true to my calling then other people made that happen and if they if they stopped making it happen tomorrow then there would be a few people disappointed but but it wouldn't make one iota of difference to my life as the pastor of a local church than a my wife and I like James Taylor mm-hmm so we've heard him in concert like at least 30 times first time I heard him I was 15 I know outside of Detroit yeah I saw the Carpenters there oh yeah these guys didn't know the Karpin there's not I've gone like there may be none who James Taylor he's now 71 years old still selling out stadiums you have a James Taylor story yeah tell us about the time you met James Taylor how it happened what you said to it well I was yeah I'm a huge fan of James Taylor and and Paul Simon probably in terms of lyrics and style but um as Sue and I were we're heading to Hawaii and we were in the airport in Los Angeles and we were in the United Club and a man and a woman walked into the club and as they walked past me I realized that's James Taylor and he didn't come back but the lady that he was with came by turns out she was his manager in the on the west coast and so I said to her today's my wife's 50th birthday and and if you get James to sign a card for her I won't tell everyone in the club that he's here because he was he was incognito he had a hat on and he was he he was not interested again not so she she said okay and she went away and she came back and James came beside her and ignored me entirely and said to sue so I guess you must be the birthday girl and she said yes and he took a chair and he turned it round and he stood half sat on the on the back of the chair and engaged her in conversation for the longest time and was immensely humble and phenomenally kind so much so that we got a call from the front desk that said if there is a bag or Taylor party in the room you better get out of here because you're both going to miss you but that was the level of engagement with a guy that he was he was and I talked to him about how he went to an Anglican boarding school I talked to him about the influence of hymns in the in the structure of his songwriting and we talked about Scottish folk music and what I mean it was an events we went in his pocket and he wrote his telephone number on his card and he gave it to me he says you know my wife plays with the Boston Symphony and she'll come to Cleveland sometime and then maybe we can get together again and we we met him one more time when he came into play at Cleveland but I I didn't want to bug and beyond that so that's an incredible incredible story it was the humility of a guy that was most striking yeah he definitely seems that way yeah yeah I could talk about his lyrics and all that all night long that's one of my favorite things the other thing a lot of people especially these guys young guys don't know about you were in a movie come on oh I see it on the golf channel all the time the Bobby Jones movie yeah now how did it happen they shouldn't have if anyone's seen it they know I mean the long and the short of it is you know I met a guy who was a producer on at this movie this golf movie and they ran into a problem with a Scottish actor who had shot one of the scenes in sin Andrews and he couldn't contractually get into the States on the daily needed and this fella phoned me up and said listen begging on you I mean could you could you do this I said I've never been in a school play how could I do this just don't worry it's easy you can do it I know you can do it and so I when I came here to Atlanta and and the rest you know as they say is history it is don't go looking for it fellas it's it you'll find it in like home depot in the next of the disused hammer section or or the Golf Channel plays in all the time like the royalties are rolling in yeah did you enjoy it I was great I scared the bejeebers out of me initially but it introduced me into took me into a you know an unreached people's group I mean the guys that were doing with all the continuity and stuff most of them were homosexual and and I have never been in in that kind of situation where I have to you know engage and and and everything and I said to sue in the course of two weeks on the movie set I said you know if the average Church extended that kind of welcome to total strangers that this group of people have extended to you and me man we would set a place on fire I mean that was this that was that thing the most striking thing to me how genuinely decent everybody was oh well I think you did great in in it you and Susan married in nineteen seventy five seventy five yeah how many children have we have three children a son who's as yet unmarried to married daughters to son in laws seven grandchildren seven grandchildren how's that it's fantastic it's just so good I I could weep thinking about my grandchildren yeah well I do yeah and and you know what I do I find the hardest I don't about you sometimes I lie in my bed at night project and then I realize I won't be here for that and it just it's the pain of it's the pain of the earthly pilgrimage that and even the prospect of eternity actually is insufficient for me to act as an anodyne in that moment I'm not that dark yeah my daughters-in-law and my sons will send us pictures you know yeah especially like a bit at night we're yeah pull them up yeah and the only each have their heard we have five yeah they each have their personnel what ages are they the oldest is nine same from and the youngest one is like nineteen months nothing and you know two boys and three girls and man I'm just we raised sons my two sons are both in ministry and so the boys can't get away with anything with me but the girls can do anything they want they totally wrapped me around their fingers and yeah you know what did they call you papa yeah me too that's what dr. Mohler gets called too you know it's a magical sound yeah papa yeah I'm done yeah yeah it's horrible I drove to school yesterday morning and well maybe it was this morning I can't remember now he's at one of the last two days nothing was this morning but you know they had to go yeah yeah probably need to leave early why you gotta go to the gas station and by Mentos you know buz Mentos cost a buck 89 in a bag you know do you know how hard that is for Scotsman but can you share no oh come on we'll talk about your you and Susan how has she been supportive well you know I think I don't say it enough to her and I and I don't make a fuss about it in public but you know in your own life for sure there is no me without her I mean there is no there is no pastoral ministry apartment I I lose count in a day of how many times she says have you been in touch with so-and-so did you do this have you done that what about her that kind of thing so she acts almost as a as a second conscience to me in one sense and you know just that prayerful sense of companionship of the genuine friendship that is that is built into it I mean I stole from Abigail Adams the phrase my dearest friend you know which he wrote to John Adams so he just wrote mdf and that when I watched that I said well that's good I like em dear and so that's it and I hear people say that and and and I used to think sounds a little cliched but no no she's crucial I understand what what what do you do to keep your relationship connected that well-regulated domestic affection there's one yeah oh wow yeah you know we we read together we pray together we go places together I mean the people say so what do you do and I say nothing you know they say well you can't be nothing but so yeah we will create it nothing because you know where you're in it isn't it great when you when you're with somebody and you don't have to say anything and you're just there and and so that sense of like to quote phil collins 2hearts later than just one life yeah alright but wow this one just died that you quoted Phil Collins II oh really okay yeah so what kind of I was gonna be a little more biblical just say that's one flesh there you go I mean it is just one flesh yes it is ah a personal question do you go to bed together at the same time at night try to yeah but last night I had to go out because my daughter was staying I think I went out three times and said honey could you please come to bed because you wake me up after I get into my cruise zone and that really ticks me off and and I have to go to Louisville tomorrow please you know and they act the fact is I'm a really I'm a big morning guy she's a nighttime person so we have to affect compromises right are there things you do for her and regular basis like anything that you do to serve her minister her or is it pretty much one-sided the other way no well if you asked her that she might say I don't know I think one of her people asked another question and she said he writes me notes and I am a note writer you know and I have a philosophy that if I have something bad that I need to convey to you I'm not gonna write it down and give it to you I'm gonna say it so that we can deal with it in a sort of existential moment and be done with it but if I've got something good I want to say to you I'm gonna write it down so I think you me so well you can keep it or at least I I have I've expanded myself in that way yeah I mean I get I I get her coffee in the morning before she does me I goodness I'd say the bins down for crying out life so yeah like you mentioned go know why when you go to vacation you guys just do nothing yeah yeah so we try to go please I was speaking at a conference that was why we're actually that Hawaii thing I was again speaking in a church called the Hawaii Kai Church in Honolulu Oahu oh yes that was that was where we were yeah we we go to the big yeah we were there one thing you got to MIT the missile warning came read it on her phone take cover inbound missile not a drill never can't believe her there no we were there I said darling just to the point of waiting regulated yeah he said where's my charles bridges book yeah so what if reaching right now what are you preaching through First Samuel I preached Reformation Sunday as a good presbyterian people don't notice that joke or no but anyway they they know yeah I deliberately did that because I've actually been I've been out of the pulpit for I think a month of a month of Sundays and since it was Reformation Sunday it give me a chance to speak speak about grace and faith and Jesus and every so often idea is timely for our congregations have a very sort of overtly evangelistic address and calling people to to faith in Christ now this Sunday I'll go back to first and chapter 16 when when you preach like it evangelistic sermon like that how do you invite people to come to Christ well what what method do you use in your church to get them a way to respond yeah I I the answer is not the same every time I will sometimes as sometimes say that you may find yourself at this point saying well I don't know what I do here and and perhaps you think there is a certain thing or way that you have to do what you have to do I said I I'm just gonna pray now a prayer that would allow you to pray along with me in your heart and so I would use that routinely Sunday by Sunday I would say that we have here copies of the Gospel of John and this and that many say we also have through the doors to your left and my right a prayer room where we would love to have you come and talk and pray and follow through if you find yourself saying either something I need to do about this and so that would be largely the way we do we we have only very seldom have I done a sort of standard Southern Baptist altar call and I've anytime I've done it I haven't done it in the moment but I've done it out of a sense of obedience because against the run of play it's being pressed upon me you know like on a Tuesday when it's raining like out of the blue and on each occasion that that is having a significant number of people actually profess faith in Christ and that maybe that would argue for doing that every Sunday I don't know but I don't what's uh what's been your favorite sermons who do you have when you look back through is it man I loved preaching that well you know interestingly some who's just speaking to me now about Joseph and the series that we did on Joseph which give as the book the hand of God I think I think I've enjoyed those I think I've enjoyed Old Testament narrative as much as anything because it's it's pressed me I don't find it necessarily easy to handle and so in order to do it's been demanding and then it's been a discovery for ages I couldn't preach the Book of Ruth I could I couldn't get a handle on how you get from from this little story to to Jesus I heard other people do it but when I tried to do I couldn't get there and then one day I finally figured it out the same in terms of Esther the book of Esther that I launched into with some trepidation and before long I was caught up in the whole narrative again I said bit like Isabella when people say what's your favorite book easily the book that I'm just reading right I understand that you know that that's an incredible feeling when that handle does come to you yeah the door opens that's right light comes in yeah oh I see this yeah so are you philosophically as a preacher where like when you're preaching the First Samuel that that every sermon must relate to Christ in every time you preach you're gonna get there well yes and no yes in the sense that since the Bible is a book about salvation and since Jesus came to bring salvation then it would be strange if if the focal point of it doesn't get us there at some point sometimes we get to Jesus because of his absence in the passage and and he he's the part that's missing but in terms of like Saul you know it's crying out the people are gone well who is this guy they're looking for a king is better than this King and there's their story is in chaos apart from a king that will do this and it's not difficult than to move from there to you know ultimately the king to which all of those points or but yeah you don't necessarily say you see that in the text that's a that's a homiletically make yes yes yeah yeah well what what preachers do you listen to nor have you done shaped you I mean going back to your youth yeah well you know the the preacher I had the privilege of hearing lloyd-jones preach you know when I was a younger man and that was an event like nothing else it was peculiar that this man did what he did in the way that he did and with such profound impact in a little little Welshman a John start I loved as well because of the clarity and there were no histrionics in start he's not dependent on any on any style or anything I mean his style is like no style it's like watching paint dry in some ways I mean when he gets excited it's like I'm excited you know oh thanks for letting me know dick Lucas another Anglican Eric Alexander in Scotland's James s Stewart yeah I mean these are all British guys in America John MacArthur especially in the early days I felt golly this guy he's relentless you know I don't know what else but he he's certainly not going to do anything other than say this is what it says and I really respected him for that Tim Keller I've enjoyed listening to but he's beyond me I can do what he does you know so I don't feel jealous of him I'm only jealous of people that I might even be able to make a stab at it you know but when people so I can be jealous or start or like Jones or I am NOT I said earlier that jealous I'm a little jealous of you and that died well yeah I was to having yeah what do you have any books on preaching that you think all preachers should read while preaching and preachers you know Philo Jones yeah Charles Bridge is on the Christian ministry I think starts book on preaching between two worlds as it was in the UK edition at least or I can't remember what they couldn't do do the call it here I did James Stewart stuff with his lectures at the Yale Divinity School in 52 if I any of that stuff by James I Stewart not for the same reasons as these other guys but for somebody who just had capacity in language and was was able to lead you along not only logically but lyrically and and wonderfully enough do you remember the first sermon you preached I remember I at college where you got one shot at doing morning chapel in the three years that you were there what college was at London Bible College or London School of Theology as they call it now Karen taken out of market but I've preached on Habakkuk three though the fig tree will not flourish and there's no fruit on the vine yet I will rejoice in the Lord I will join the God of my salvation they say that was about a six minute sermon I think the first one I preached in America when I was still just twenty or something an evening service in the church I preached from Philippians four yeah uh how do you pray as you prepare their methodology to dance or short I mean that's what I was saying when we after dinner and I went up there stairs I mean that was pretty well it you know I didn't there wasn't a lot going on just Lord you know I got about seven minutes here help preach yeah I mean prayin prayin in prospect of the preparation praying during and the preparation praying you know this is like brother Lauren's practicing the presence of Christ you know I talk out loud in my study I talk out loud in my car Lord I'm going here I don't know whether my motives are good or bad and if I said they were good and you know they're bad then I could fool you anyway so let's just be clear about that Oh the Lord's going while I am clear about that this so so that is really that's that dies it do you discuss your sermons with Susan very little I'm frightened too hey how about afterward do you like on Sunday at lunch yeah do you talk about it no no we don't I mean in the early afraid of what she today yeah yeah she will say that she will say to me routinely honey I don't know how you do this and I'm assuming that that's positive no no Susu I says more by our silence than she does by her worse how how do you think about sermon delivery I think we might have some differences here yeah tell me what she what do you how do you think about the way sermons should be delivered or not yeah are you are you largely unselfconscious about that yes you say you don't even like all right like I just watched you pretty night and there was a some illustration there you were using you were about you and and a friend on an escalator oh yeah yeah and he yeah and I yeah all right and when you did that right all right it was just perfect I mean it was just spot-on yeah I think it's a function of your personality right but what about the guy who doesn't have that good of a personality or that he's just not he's not effective right by the way that's a large number of preachers I know I've been teaching preaching Shefford almost 23 years should should a guy be free to like practice in front of mirror or how do you think about that what do you think yeah well yeah I think so I mean it terms of just learning communication skills in like being helped by our wife's or what is so sue say to me say hey you're getting that tone again and and and then I say oh I bad she says yeah pretty bad and what she it's like when you get in there yeah it's a bit like stevelawson right and I love Steve but he's got that he's got a hand it's like it's like a it's like a weed eater or something you know and I don't and I want to say Steve you got to drop it down man he got it because he gave me that big yeah yeah he did never give me a pen oh no no but I see that because I see my own sins best in other people right right so so I work on that and so I have I have I have volume and loud quiet pace faster slow right pitch high low tone tone and tone is is its in its intangible but it's crucial because the poor the people are listening calling the first question is this guy for real or is he blowing smoke is he is he more concerned about how he's coming across than whether I understand his message is he want to make people understand that he's actually clever or is he concerned that I would understand who Christ is all of those questions are out there in the mind of the listener we can't be preoccupied with them necessarily in the moment but we do have to think them out in preparation and and so we got to come to it then on our knees and and you know I was i I always say them I when I like to Dan who's here with me I say to Dan hey Dan you go preach be yourself and forget yourself be yourself and forget yourself and it's to forget yourself part that is the thing so that illustration I didn't have that in my notes I I decided in that moment it's just in thinking about it maybe this would be helpful here because it actually it contextualizes the thing in a real world moment and then my own response to I surprised myself by that because yeah because I was great I wasn't gonna do that but here's the thing start even never have done that stuff he wouldn't need to he doesn't need to because see and my guys who preach like I have another done in the church and he was an engineer and he went to Duke and did engineering so his progression of thought is linear it's it's like an engineer coming through there's there's nothing particularly dramatic there's no big highs there's no dreadful loss it's just a steady gradual movement on to you and man I envy that because my approach is is artistic rather than than linear yeah you know I mean you know I'm going running it's a painting not round on round in circles I don't know where I'm going half the time yeah well I'm I can't say it enough I loved hear you preach I love to watch you preach you you just have a genuineness and they a reality about you that I think the Lord uses and I love watching you I appreciate your especially coming from the professor of pastoral theology and preaching well you're I wish I'd been in your class well you don't need to be in my class I'm I sit in yours yeah all right I like to end every pastor well pockets with what I call the twinkling of an eye round I'm gonna ask you okay rapid fire questions just whatever you want to answer alright your favorite vacation spot Italy your favorite secular author Oh at the moment Robert Harris do you own any pets anything I lost the fence pets pets oh oh I think fans know I do all of us offends out at the moment we have one cat one died would you be in another movie yes what's your dream car if you could have any car that as you love to have Aston Martin DBS oh what's the best round of golf you've ever shot 78 in Michigan never broken lower than that okay what do you have you ever been to Glasgow Kentucky I don't think so all right what do you call a citizen of Glasgow Scotland at Glaswegian what do you call a citizen of Glasgow Kentucky I don't know blessed and we have been blessed to have you I just want to say thank you for being on pasture well it's a joy to have hey thanks thanks to all of you for being with us tonight for this live faster well podcast thank you for tuning in I hope that if you've not yet subscribed you'll do so on YouTube or on your favorite podcast app so you don't miss an episode I look forward to seeing you next time hopefully a voice will be back on pasture well

Channel: Southern Seminary

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Length: 42min 10sec (2530 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 01 2019