Okay, so we're going to invite our panelists up here now, and Dan Horne is going to lead a discussion here, so if you guys are going to be on the panel, if you could start making your way up. Shepherding the flock of God is such important and wonderful work. I love the words to this song that we just sang, you know, Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, that we fail not man nor thee, armored with all Christlike graces in the fight to set men free. God has set the church and the world for the preaching of the gospel and for the sanctification of the saints and they're they're just marvelous ways that God has given the church to function in terms of its shepherding And so I've asked my fellow shepherd, Dan Horne, we're elders together at Hope Baptist Church in Wake Forest, North Carolina. And Dan and I have been really talking a lot about Ezekiel 34 probably for about the last year or something like that it's bounced in and out of our consciousness and we've tried to understand the will of the Lord expressed there.
So what Dan is going to do is he's going to give some opening remarks and then we're just going to throw it open. And questions can be asked from the floor. Dan will probably ask some questions and we'll see that perhaps we can be built up in the faith and in all of our shepherding. So it's a blessing to have experienced shepherds here on this panel. All of them are.
I regard them as dear friends and men that I so highly respect have learned a lot from over the years I love these men and I'm so grateful that they've dedicated their lives to the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ so Dan over to you you okay let me I want to actually start by reading Ezekiel 34, the passage that Scott was talking about. I find Ezekiel 34 as a shepherd, I find it one of the most fearful passages in Scripture because it puts in context what a shepherd does and how God judges shepherds more strictly than he judges other people because he holds us accountable for what happens in our flock he holds us accountable for how we treat our flock it's very easy when you have a flock to to see the strong sheep and say you know this man he's so gifted in evangelism this man is a gifted expositor so I want to work on his gifts and increase his gifts and strengthen his gifts but that's not what God says in Ezekiel 34 as to why he judges shepherds as being faithless it's not what they do for the week for the strong but what they do for the weak.
So as we read this, I want to read this just to put it into context, the context of what a shepherd's duty is and then I'm expecting to have a very good conversation about how we should think about these things. So Ezekiel 34 starting in verse 2, Son of man prophesy against the shepherds of Israel prophesy and say to them thus says the Lord God to the shepherds, woe to the shepherds of Israel who feed themselves. Should not the shepherds feed the flocks you eat the fat and clothe yourselves with the wool you slaughter the fatlings but you do not feed the flock the weak you have not strengthened nor have you healed those who are sick Nor bound up the broken nor brought back what was driven away nor sought what was lost but with force and cruelty you have ruled them. So they were scattered because there was no shepherd and they became food for all the beasts of the field when they were scattered. My sheep wandered through all the mountains on every high hill.
Yes, my flock was scattered over the whole face of the earth and no one was seeking or searching for them. Therefore you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord. As I live, says the Lord God, surely because my flock became a prey and my flock became food for every beast of the field because there was no shepherd nor did my shepherd search for my flock but the shepherds fed themselves and did not feed my flock therefore Oh shepherds hear the word of the Lord thus says the Lord God behold I am against the shepherds and I will require my flock at their hand I will cause them to cease feeding the sheep and the shepherd shall feed themselves no more for I will deliver my flock from their mouths that they may no longer be food for them before we consider what a shepherd does Let's go to the chief shepherd in prayer. Oh, Lord God, we thank you. We thank you that you are the chief shepherd and we are just under shepherds.
We thank you and praise you for the responsibility that you have given us, the ability that you have given us to serve in your kingdom the place that you've given us Lord and we thank you for it we thank you for the opportunity to minister in the word to pray Lord the things that you call us for for these people that you put in our flocks that are really your flocks Lord let us be faithful teach us what faithfulness is let us not be the shepherds that will be judged let us not be the shepherds that are about themselves let us be a shepherds that truly love you and truly lead the people that we lead to you and not to us. Lord, we thank you that you are a God who will judge the shepherds. You will remove false shepherds. You will remove those shepherds who destroy rather than build up, who feed themselves rather than feeding the flock. For let us not be the shepherds that are judged, but the ones that hear the words of our Savior.
Well done, my good and faithful servant. Amen. So we have that list of things that God judges. So what's important for us to do in terms of strengthening the weak? I'm Marcus Servin by the way from St.
Louis, Missouri And let me just direct you to verse 15 in this passage, because I think that answers the question very well. It's the Lord who is the true shepherd. I myself will shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed and I will bind up the injured and I will strengthen the weak And the fat and the strong I will destroy I will feed them injustice These words right here were really key in a lot of different people's lives over the years in understanding pastoral ministry. They have to understand that God is the one who brings healing.
God is the one who ministers to the afflicted. And those who serve him as shepherds here on the earth. We are his under-shepherds. We have to keep that perspective. I was first introduced to this passage really by Martin Busser and thankfully a very fine copy of his work called Concerning the True Care of the Soul is now back in print by Banner of Truth.
And I would really recommend you get a copy of that book. It's probably on the bookshelves here somewhere. But it's worth reading. It's good to keep in mind too that Calvin was influenced in his view of shepherding by Martin Bucer, so here at the Reformation time you see two men, humble shepherds, that committed themselves to this kind of a ministry and that made a profound difference in the Church of Jesus Christ over the centuries and of course it comes down to us now as a great example of what the true shepherd is to be like. So I just encourage you to think about that passage and build your ministry around those principles that flow out of those words in Ezekiel 34 15.
I think that a beautiful thing in the scripture about God's call for shepherds is the pictures that are given. Preaching and heralding the word as we heard Dr. Moorcraft challenge us, is a powerful thing and I believe all these men are preachers. And they're not just conference speakers, they're pastors, they're preachers of the Word, Lord's Day by Lord's Day. But one of the things I think gives power to the work of a preacher of the word is the influence of his shepherding on the Monday through Saturday basis in the caring for the flock.
So that when he stands to preach the authoritative word of God, they know he also cares. And when it speaks of the Lord Jesus, it says all that Jesus began both to do and to speak, to do and to preach. And I think that there is that real practical hands-on care for those who are in need that has to be a part of the shepherding's role. In Isaiah chapter 61 it says, The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek. He hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and to the opening of the prison to them that are bound." Now obviously this is a ministry that happens spiritually but I think the pictures there demonstrate something that happens physically.
If you've ever bound up the wound of somebody who is bleeding, somebody who is hurting, you cannot properly bind up wounds without touching people's lives, without getting your hands into the midst of those who are in need of care. I think that's something as shepherds we need to always be mindful of the necessity of knowing the sheep, of caring for the hurting, and being there in times of need and brokenness. Love, patience, and kindness. These are the hallmarks of Jesus' ministry, and these have got to be the hallmarks of our ministry. I think in ministry, an inordinate amount of our time ought to be spent with the hurting, with the weak, with the feeble.
Every time you think of what would Jesus do as an under shepherd, you know he'd make one more phone call, he'd go one more visit, he'd reach out to those people that are rejected and are marginalized by most other people in the church. And my wife has been a big help to me in this area. She's always reaching out for those people that are marginalized, looking for people that are strained, looking for the weak, the broken, and reaching out to them. And so she's influenced me a lot as well in that area, always talking to me about the kindness of Jesus. And I think that should motivate us in the ministry.
One time I had a theological student who came into my room every single day. He just barged into my room and asked me questions. It was wonderful to talk to him, but after a while, I said, I've got to do something. I've got to do something about this. So, but, so finally I said, okay, today when he comes in, I'm going to say to him, would you write all your questions out for one week and come and see me once a week, Once a week you can come and see me." Well, that day he barges in, and I'm about ready to say this to him, and he goes, I just want to thank you for something.
And he gets tears in his eyes. He goes, I never had a dad, and you're a father to me. And I come barging in here every day And you never say a word to me you never object about anything And you just always have time for me, and I'm thinking oh wow I'm so glad I didn't say so good You know a lot of the people that are mainstreaming your church that are walking with the Lord, solid, strong, it's wonderful to be with them, but they don't need your time as much as these poor weak people do, so reach out to the weak and minister like Jesus. I'd say three things. First of all I think a pastor is a shepherd should do for his people whatever a shepherd in Israel Old Testament did for his sheep.
Read Psalm 23 and think in terms of the life of a shepherd. He fed his sheep, he led them, didn't try to drive them anywhere. He would put medicine on them with any scratches. He would carry a rod and a staff, staff you know with the crook, so that if they fell in the briars or fell over the hill he could rescue them and a rod, a ball bat, so that if any wolves tried to mess with his flock he would chase the wolves away to put it politely. The other thing is touch.
Somebody mentioned touch as so vitally important in a shepherd's life and I don't mean it's not a figure of speech. Touching your people is very important. After church one of the most important things I do in my shepherding of our church is shaking hands with people after church. That's not just a little thing. I mean it's a big thing.
People want to talk to you. They want you to put your arm around them. They want to shake your hand. They want to see a smile. They want you to see their touch, their babies.
I mean touch. You know In the Old Testament you look in Genesis and whenever a father would bless his sons there would always be some element of touch. There is nothing sacramental about that But the point is I love to be touched and you love to be touched. Everybody else does. So be sure you touch your people.
Because I promise you that will be worth far more than you could imagine. We have lunch every Sunday after church and I sit at one particular table and different people come up every Sunday after lunch just to talk about nothings, just to be counseled on some particular issue, things like that. I talk to a lot of Calvinist preachers in quotes and theologians in quotes and They only want to talk about theology and ethics and things like that not the little nothings the little nothings are some of the most important things you ever say to your people because when you just talk to them how's your family. Your last name is so and so I knew somebody but then when I was growing up you have it again in Boone County in West Virginia. They love for you to talk about their family.
And little nothing is what you're saying to the person. You're not talking about anything important. You're not talking about the doctrines you'd like to talk about but you are saying to them you're important. I'm going to say something to you simply to let you know you're important to me and I recognize your presence and That is such a very important part of the Christian life, of the shepherding work. The other is one of my favorite passages is 1 Corinthians where it says, Not many mighty, not many noble, God has chosen the weak and the base to confound the high and the mighty.
If you spend your time just with the people in the church that can give or that you can benefit from or your church can benefit from, they're noble, they're mighty, they're wealthy, they're educated, You enjoy talking to them because they are hopefully the same intellectual level that you are on. You are not going to accomplish much in this world. It's not the high and the mighty that is going to conquer the world. It's the low and the base, the people. This world does not count as important.
The little people that are the people that you want to draw into your church, not the people that the world recognizes as powerful. Praise the Lord. Wealthy people are always great. It costs money to conquer the world for Christ. It costs millions of dollars.
Hopefully there is one or two noble but not many that's not what the church is supposed to look like. It's spelled with broken people. Jesus Christ didn't come to those who were not being positioned in the temple. He's praying that God's will be in the temple, that God's will be. He gives us what the gospel does.
It shows the power of God in people's lives. If all we're looking for is a nice clean homeschool and families, we're looking for the wrong thing. That's not what Christ came for. So we need to make sure that we're considering what our churches should actually be like. Does anybody have any questions?
On a practical level, how do you balance the personal shepherding with studying? All of you are very solid in your teaching and preaching, and you cannot be solid in your teaching and preaching if you yourself aren't looking to the chief shepherd and being fed by him. So can you explain Maybe some of you take your mornings to be with the Lord and do your devotion and study for sermons in the afternoon, maybe on a practical level, for pastors and preachers, and how you balance the ministry of being with the sheep but then also being fed by the sheep's efforts. I'll just speak to that personally. God wired me a certain way and I get great delight with my books and Some of my best friends are books.
So I have to keep pushing myself, and my wife is a good exhortation in that area to get me out of the study. So what I've tried to do is commit myself to being with two families a week, which we don't have a huge church. I can go through that and get with each family a couple times a year and trying to either be at their home or to be meeting with the father in particular to have a meal and just talk about life and how things are going in his world and what I find is that actually enlivens me and it encourages me because we're talking about the things of God and I'm starting to see that God is working in this guy's life and and in this family or there's a problem that comes up and I'm able to specifically minister and so it encourages me to to do that but I have to keep pushing myself to do it because as I said my nature is that I'm drawn to just quiet, steady, and all of that. So you need to know yourself, and some ministers are a lot more what I would call people person than I am, but you have to know yourself and what your areas of weakness are and then work through it.
Just go forward. Biblically appointed elders are physicians of the soul And the best doctors are the ones that first of all spend their time with the great physician, as you were saying, in prayer, seeking his face, immersing yourself in his word. And then as Pastor Martin, Pastor Albert Martin likes to say you have to get your fingers down into the sheep's wool. You have to spend time getting to know them and It is difficult to try to balance that in our congregation. Mount Zion is a little bit different than others.
We have six worldwide ministries, just two elders, and our constant struggle is keeping the right balance between the time that we give to Christ's people as sheep and in editing and overseeing the ministries that we have. So we've – My fellow elder and I meet once a week. We have talks and discussions about the sheep, things that are happening within the congregation. Sometimes he'll go to visit one of them personally. Sometimes it'll be me.
We'll set up. Really, you just have to know the people. You have to know and understand how best to communicate with them. So it takes a great deal of prayer, discernment, and learning how to talk to various ones. And when we're dealing with the week, We may call them.
We may invite them over for a dinner. We may just text them a few times during the week. And it's amazing how people then will begin to talk and respond. Meeting one-on-one. We take a great deal of time with the Saints after our services.
We're almost always there and again this is no law for anybody, but we're often with our congregation a couple of hours after the services. So we have time. There are certain ones that I know that I'm going to go and talk to and find out how things are going, how's family worship, how are things with your mom, those kinds of things. So it can go from the smallest to the largest big family issues. But with us, it has been a matter of teamwork, prayer, and God-wrought juggling.
With regards to the balance, it seems like that's always a struggle. And for me, as you know, I built a study at my house. So I turned a 600 square foot garage into now a study so that it's there. And I can study in the morning and I can study late at night and I would submit to you that anyone who desires the office of a bishop, desires to fulfill the call of a pastor, needs to recognize he's going to have to labor night and day like Paul said. He's going to have to toil.
And it's not a nine to five occupation. It's something that we've had people that have come to be a part of our church staff, good men, wonderful men, godly men and their families. The dynamic of being almost always needing to be available, was too much for their schedule or the things that they were used to. So I think recognizing that you're going to sometimes be tired, and yet you still have to go do that hospital visit. Not with a, I have to do this hospital visit, I'm here, but because you care.
And where other people would say, oh, I'll do that next time, there's something in you that pushes you to say, I need to go do this because I care for these sheep. And then I have 12 children, And so shepherding my home flock, and one of the things of having my study at the house allows me to be near. And now I have my four eldest boys that are all basically in secondary school and high school. They have desks now in one side of my study. And so if there's needs, things of that nature, then I'm there for them for part of the time.
And then I have an office at the church building that I do my counseling and meet, and I try to schedule those, stack those on one big day, but that doesn't mean there's not other times. And I also think it's very valuable in our church, we have a church of 250, 300ish, And Sunday morning, Sunday evening, both, people are there with each other for a few hours. And I'm usually practicing. I'm the last to leave, typically, unless I have a house full coming on Sunday afternoon. And then I try to get out of there by 1.30 or so to get to the house for the meal.
And then through hospitality, you can care for a lot of people. And usually every Lord's Day afternoon, we have a table filled plus some, and our table's pretty big. And then at least one night a week, typically, there's some form of hospitality. And we try in that, shepherding-wise, to mix people that you may not normally mix. So it's not just people that you know, oh, these are friends, let's have them over together, but people that may be able to connect with somebody who's hurting or in need to give them that brotherly fellowship on other times because now you've helped connect them Relationally or to make sure that a widow is there at the table or something of that nature to work on so oh Yes, that's a big problem for me My problem is I love every part of the ministry so much I love to write I love to preach I love to study.
I love to visit people. I love people and so there's just so much to do and thank God I have a wife who lets me work long hours but there's just you're always always feeling guilty always feeling short on every end and So I've just learned to live with that that You know the sermon I prepare for Sunday probably will be about eighty five percent as is good as I wish I could It's not a hundred percent my you know The visits I just can't quite do as many as I should. And so, but what I do try to do is make it very clear with the congregation what's expected of the three different ministers in our church. We have 750 shape to look after. And now I'm a lot in the seminary.
So what I do is they say, OK, if it's just a routine visit to the hospital, those two ministers will look after it. If the person is going to be there three, four days, it's fairly serious, I will go as well. And that's all spelled out so people know what to expect. But what I try to do is I always try to do a little bit above and beyond what's expected. So I'll take every week, I'll look at the list of maybe 14 or 15 sick people we have.
And every Monday, I'll call them. I'll spend the whole evening just calling them. And I'm not expected to do that. It's not my requirement. But they really love that.
I'll just call them, I'll pray with them. And those prayers mean a lot to people and the second thing I'll do that I think is very important in ministry is I pace myself and visits You could go to people and you know what it's like. You could sit and talk for two hours. But actually, you know what? You find out everything you need to know in about 45 minutes and you really do the job in 45 minutes.
You get to know your sheep pretty well. And a longer prayer and scripture reading at the end of the visit or so can actually do more good in the one hour visit than you can do in two hours. So I pace myself. People get to know what to expect from a minister's visit and just try to do as much as I can with the little time I have. And the other important thing that I try to do is pray through the membership list in private as well and the three ministers get together and we we go through one page every time we get together and Just pray earnestly for the families on that page.
And I think the the congregation feels that and they appreciate that so you do the very best you can if you come up against a real objection doesn't happen too much to me but but if I say I just I'm just not prepared for Sunday I made all these visits I can't do it I might call it a couple of the people that I know very well, after 27 years of ministry, and say to them, brother, I'm running up against the brick wall for this Sunday. Do you mind if I postpone a visit to you next Monday, because I've got to feed all these sheep on Sunday? They'll say, yes, it's fine, pastor. And don't shortchange your pulpit preparation, is what I'm saying, because you can't forsake, you know, 750 sheep and not come up prepared on Sunday Because you just had a social visit with one one sheep on Saturday And try to keep your Saturdays free, that's what I try to do. So I can really dedicate myself to sermon preparation that day.
Pastors walk around with guilty consciences all the time. There is no balance in my ministry. I don't even try. Most of what I do is preaching and teaching and planning to preach and teach. And of course also do various kinds of personal involvement.
But all of our elders in our church, each elder has a certain segment of the congregation and he's responsible to make sure that he knows what's happening in his little flock. People in the congregation can go to whatever elder they want to, but each elder is responsible for a certain number of families. He's to be there when there's crisis to pray for them, to know what's going on in their family. And then once a month, all of our elders meet, and at the end of the elders meeting, we have a list of all the members in everybody's group, and we say, now, who are we going to talk about this evening? Who needs talked about?
Who needs to be? I have some information on somebody in your group you don't know about. So we start talking about everybody and who needs visited and who needs encouragement and who needs etc. So that's a very important part of ministry. Another important thing is businessmen don't take people out to lunch for nothing.
That you want to impress somebody, you're trying to make a sale or whatever you take them out to lunch at a nice restaurant. Well ours isn't pragmatic like that but I have found through the years that taking people out to lunch is a powerful tool. We have a special fund in our church just for that. We spend a fortune every year. Another thing is that unfortunately there's a good restaurant right across the street from the church.
And we also have a great big fund for flowers. Now you'd be shocked as to what flowers do. If somebody's sick or somebody dies, right within the next few hours they get a bunch of flowers from the church. That's been a powerful witness. Now who do I take out to eat?
Usually men, sometimes men and women together, never women by themselves, but I take out to eat somebody that needs counseling, somebody who wants to meet me for counseling. I always try to visit everybody that is visiting our church. I want to know who's coming, and I want to know why they're coming, and I want to know whether to encourage them to keep coming or not. And so I usually take out to eat people that are visiting the church or people that ought to be visiting the church. I believe that pastors should be highly visible in the community and not I think they should always people in other churches ought to know them meaning people like us who believe the whole Council of God whether people come to our church or not now they should know who we are and they should know something about us.
And people will come to your church for all kinds of reasons. I really don't care why people come to our church on Sunday morning, visitors. I hope they come because they want to be fed, but they come for all kinds of reasons. One of the biggest reasons is curiosity. They've seen my name in the newspaper somewhere, and so they come out of pure curiosity.
That's okay. One time in the 90s, Hal Lindsey wrote a book called the coming holocaust. It was a best seller. In this book, he said, I am going to give the names and addresses of the anti-Christ who are going to lead America and Israel to global disaster in Armageddon. That's His word, not mine.
So you turn to page 24, and there was my name. And all my friends were on that page. So there was a little fundamentalist Baptist church about five miles up the road, and they believed everything Hal Lindsey ever wrote. So there was this young woman there who said, I never thought I'd get to see an Antichrist. So she literally comes to Chalcedon to see this guy that's going to bring Israel and America to global disaster and stayed for 25 years.
So I wrote a review of Hal Lindsey's book and I said, Thank you Hal Lindsey. If you hadn't identified me the way you had, we never would have gotten Jennifer Clitt. So you really don't care why they come. I want people, we have a lot of ex, not a lot, but several excommunicated people that come every Sunday morning, which is the best place for an excommunicated person to be, is hearing the gospel. And as a result, over the past 40 years of the people, a few people we've excommunicated, a third to a half have been restored.
So I'll tell you one story about that real quick. There was this guy in our church, he had a family, and he'd been in the church a long time with his family and he got him a girlfriend on the side. And he wouldn't repent. So his wife divorced him for adultery and we excommunicated him from the church. And our people take excommunication seriously.
So I got a telephone call from Rick and he said, Pastor Moorcraft, he said, I know I'm excommunicated, I don't blame you, I'm not mad at you, I'm guilty, and I've given my wife the house, she has everything, she deserves it, and I know you're not supposed to eat with me, But I'm getting an apartment, but I can't get in it for five days. And I know you have an apartment in the bottom part of your house. I won't eat with you, but can I stay in that apartment for four or five days? I said sure. So it just happened to be over Thanksgiving.
And we make a big deal over Thanksgiving. And so there we were fixing the turkey and all the trimmings, and there was Becky and me and Judy Rogers and Wayne Rogers and all of our children. And Rick knew us all. So I said, Rick, you can come upstairs and say hello to everybody since you know him. So he comes upstairs right when I was cutting the turkey.
And, you know, Becky Moorcraft and Judy Rogers singing and having a big time. And I think he was hoping I'd forget that he wasn't supposed to eat with us. And in the meanwhile I was fixing this great big plague for him. And so I said, Rick, it's time to go back downstairs. So he goes back downstairs and he said, Joe, God used to have my life to lead me to repentance.
He said, I was sitting down there listening to all the joy, fellowship, light, good times, good food of the people of God, and I was excluded. He said, but what you don't know is, the light was out in your basement. And I was sitting there in sheer darkness. How symbolic can that be? So how did we get to that?
I don't know. One other comment that I'd add to that is, let's be careful not to separate them too far. In Hebrews 5 says, For everyone who partakes only a milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, who by those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. If you think that you can understand the doctrines of God sitting in your study wrong, You actually understand the doctrines of God by going and putting them into practice.
It doesn't mean that there shouldn't be the study, but it's through use that we're able to discern good and evil. I'll tell you what, you will, you don't know that you understand a doctrine until you meet with somebody in your church that disagrees with that doctrine you have to debate it with them. That's when you actually know I understand this doctrine. The rest is in theory. It's when you put it into practice that you become sound.
So study's good. We need to study for the preparation. Our duty is to feed the sheep. But let's not forget, it's not somehow that we are not matured in our understanding, matured in our beliefs, that we grow deeper truth of the doctrine by not meeting with people. It's by meeting with people that we actually, the doctrine gets feet and it's very important for us to be ministering the doctrine and not just learning the doctrine.
Learning the doctrine doesn't help anybody. I would say one other thing too and that is people are spending a fortune on psychiatrists and psychologists and getting nowhere And you be known as somebody that practices nuthetic counseling, that you know how to counsel from the word of God, you know how to make diagnosis from the word of God, and people will start coming to you because these counselors are bankrupting them. I mean, people have come to me that have spent $250, 000 on counselors and are worse than they were when they started. And so there was this, when people do come to me for counseling, Of course you can't beat the price, you know, zero. But I tell them now two things.
I'll be glad to counsel you, but because I don't charge you, you've got to do what I tell you. And secondly, you've got to come to church, to our church the whole time that I am counseling you because my counseling is just a small part of my ministry of the Word of God to you. I mean it is amazing. I think one of the faults of Calvinists is we are not diligent enough trying to get people into our church from different places, all kinds of people. We pastor our flock, we preach the word of God, but ask yourself how many visitors do you have every month?
Now a lot of visitors, once they hear you, they're never going to come back, but that's nothing unusual about that. We have people walk out while I'm preaching. They think we're a liberal Presbyterian church and they come there expecting something and get something entirely different. And so ask yourself, why are people not visiting our church? We've tried everything.
You could spend a fortune on all kinds of tricks and strategies. None of them work. What works is getting your people to commit that there will not be a week go by when they don't do their dead level best to try to get somebody to church with them. That's one of the reasons we have dinner after church. Sort of a little gaudy bribe on the side.
Come to church, get free lunch. But I think we've got to rededicate ourselves, not only defeating the flock, but enlarging the flock. We are so resistant to that because many of these big churches, that's all they are concerned with is numbers. Well, I'll tell you, I'm concerned with numbers because every number is a human being made in the image of God who is a center in need of salvation. That's the way to think.
And so go out there in the high wages and highways and hedges and compel them to come in, not just get your members to, but you yourself have that in your mind when you go places, that you're always thinking. You go to a restaurant, witness to the waitress. I'm not talking about any kind of fake thing, where you try to get them saved in two minutes. But what I'm saying is, the New England Puritans used to say, when your children come within arms reach, teach them something. Don't let them get within arms reach that you're not teaching them something.
Well, I think that's the same way with everybody we come in contact with as much as is possible. It's not always possible. But just dedicate yourself that whenever you come in contact with somebody you're going to give them a little piece of the truth Just a little piece You know you so somebody else waters. God gives the increase just a little piece of truth far less than you want to give them. I have seen God bless that.
I think that's the way we have to think. Pastoring the flock, enlarging the flock, because after all the Great Commission does say we are to make the world's nations Christ's disciples and I think that Calvinists need to be reminded that the four marks of a true church are not preaching of the word of God, ministration of the sacraments, practice of discipline, and smallness. Our churches are small, most of us. Something's wrong. The book of Acts, go through the book of Acts and see how many times the word many, thousands, hundreds, wherever the church was acting like the church in the book of Acts and the preaching was what it should be, gigantic numbers of people came to saving faith in Jesus Christ.
Gigantic numbers. Our numbers are small. Don't say, well, we live in an evil age. Rome wasn't evil. Apostate Judaism wasn't evil.
People weren't dead in their trespasses and sins in the first century. So I think some Calvinists have a greater faith in depravity than they do grace. How can we expect to accomplish anything and reach people because everybody is totally depraved? Well, where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. One comment that I would make and then I'll turn it over to you, Scott.
We do this all the time. Would God be proud to help? No. When we think about growing our churches, hey, the individual ministry is the big way. Faithful pastors strengthen those who are weak.
They heal those who are sick. They bring back those who are lost. And if what we're saying is that our only ministry is the preaching of the word, don't expect your church to get any bigger. Because then we have no hope. We have no solution that actually applies to people's lives so that their lives are made better because they're walking in more holiness.
And it's personal application to she that caused that to happen. If we're not doing that, we're not a church that is testifying that there's hope in the gospel. And so we shouldn't expect it to grow. Why would it? Sorry, Joe's going to take over.
No, I'll say one thing, Rick. I'm through after this, sort of. I have found, now I've done a great amount of counseling in my life, but I have found that the more faithful and mature and wise my preaching is the less counseling I do.