Peter Witkowski Ecclesiology

Why This Pastor Goes to Church

While preaching remains the undisputed foundation of congregational worship, the pulpiteer is not the church. In other words, I as the pastor of a local church do not head to church to hear myself preach on Sunday mornings. I study, wrestle with, apply, and come to terms with the text during the week so that I arrive in the pulpit intent upon sharing my Scriptural convictions rather than forming them. I do not come for the academic insights.

I attend church every morning because my local church serves as a rallying point for God people through whom God edifies my soul. I find encouragement in the corporate singing of doctrinal hymns that encourage my soul , the prayers of my fellow believers that infuse my heart with hope, and the discussions that arise from the congregation after a sermon which guide me to great biblical clarity. I pastor as well as I do (whatever level that is) because I do so within the loving bounds of the local church. In other words, I go to church because the people of God convey me afresh to the throne room of Jesus. Or as David says in Psalm 26:8, “O Lord, I love the habitation of your house and the place where you glory dwells.”

With this conviction in mind, I refused to exclusively “live-stream” my church’s Sunday morning service when the COVID-19 pandemic sent us scurrying to our homes. I believed then as I do now that church is more than a pulpiteer and skilled pianist or music team. Church is the old lady who gives the best hugs, the child who wiggles and occasionally cries, the young couple who faithfully serves in the nursery, the sweet greeters who never meet a stranger, the faithful single wrestling through the idea of marriage, and the aged saint who stands ready to stop and pray with you the minute you open up about your latest struggle. While the sermon serves as one of the foundational pillars of the congregation, it is not the totality of worship nor of the congregation. The church is the body of Christ, the hands and feet of Jesus (1 Cor 12:14).

For this reason, I also require all of my counselees to attend a local church for the duration of their counseling. Just as I need the whole church, the wounded and smarting heart also needs the whole church. Yes, the counselee needs the intensity of the biblical counseling office and the reinforcement that comes through practical homework assignments. But she also needs those encouraging hugs, the hope found in a rich hymn, the loving prayers of the couple in the next pew over, and those moments of reassurance that come as she realizes through a lunchtime conversation about the sermon that she is not alone in her battle against temptation. The soul twisting in the wind needs the church just as much as the soul grounded upon the gospel.

The church fathers of old used to speak of the church as being a nurturing mother. Just as a baby dies without milk, so the believer will die if he or she neglects the food of the church. Stated positively, confessional corporate worship will as Hebrews 10:25 says, “stir up one another to love and good works.” The faithful local church feeds the soul.

The couple that can skip church for months to pursue their highschooler’s softball career no more understand the gospel of Jesus than a surgeon who thinks it’s fine to amputate a foot and then leave it on ice for a month or two understands medicine. We would undoubtedly question the skills of the surgeon. Understandably, the authors of the Bible question the spiritual life of those who willfully neglect the gathering of the church, the life-giving food of the Lord.

Christians need the local church, the whole body. Those who delight in God will forever delight in church: the old ladies, the wiggly kids, the awkward teenager, the tired mom, and the host of other personalities who make our local churches the household of God. As David said in Psalm 16:3, “As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.” This pastor needs the saints. You need the saints.

So why do I go church? I go to church because it consists of the people of God who facilitate the worship of God. If you claim Christ and can make it to church this Sunday, I encourage you to go too. Will you?

Peter Witkowski Ecclesiology

Churches Don’t Make Pastors, Deacons, or Teachers; They Find Them

Churches often crumble into ruin because their members engage in king-making. Though some evangelicals show up at the polls every 4 years, their greatest power rests not in the public square but underneath the steeple spire. Here with the help of Jesus, church members elevate men and women to positions of authority, granting them the power to determine church policy, remove members, and allocate funds. With fifteen minutes, a clerk, and a few votes by acclamation, churches can turn just about anyone into an evangelical power broker. Churches appoint elders, deacons, and ministry leaders. They make evangelical kings, if you will.

Why Things Go Wrong

Though common, such thinking runs counter to teaching of Scripture. The Church is the Lord’s; it is not the congregation’s nor the denomination’s property. In Mathew 18:16b, Jesus proclaims, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Jesus, the head of the church, builds the church. Faithful church leaders acknowledge his authority, teaching and following the commands of Jesus as found in the Scriptures. Most churches nominally agree with this description.

But when deciding who to elect or who to appoint to the church office, the churches often attempt to transform ordinary members into extraordinary leaders. When the church family needs a willing or somewhat willing candidate, it sends the guy through a 6-week elder class or it lays hands on the soul, hoping that the wisdom of the other deacons will rub off on him. In so doing, the congregation often places men into leadership whose greatest qualifications consist of popularity, money, or a lengthy tenure on the church role. Sunday school classes also fall victim to such thinking. Such appointments prove dangerous as they give men and women the keys to the church who lack the character to exercise that authority responsibly.

God has a much better plan.  

God’s Work

In Micah 6:4, the prophet reminds the Israelites that God had appointed, “Moses, Aron, and Miriam,” to lead his people. The God who created the church provides each local church with the leaders it needs. Ephesians 4:11-12 declares

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.

No congregation should create elders and deacons or Sunday School teachers. Rather it should find them.

The process of creating church officers more closely remembers a search for Waldo than political election campaign or pickup game of kickball. Churches need to find the elders, deacons, and ministry leaders that God has divinely placed in the middle of the church family. As Richard Baxter noted in 1658 “God gives the qualifications which he requires…all that the church has to do…is discern and determine which are the men God has…qualified.” God gives us a divine description of who to look for. Paul tells Titus to appoint men who are “above reproach (Titus 1:6).” Those called to be elders should be above the charges of drunkenness, poor stewardship, greed, violence, exemplifying hospitality goodness, self-control, holiness, uprightness, and discipline (7-8). The elder qualified man must also be able to teach well. Similar qualifications are given for deacons in 1 Timothy 3:8-13. God also blesses the church with godly older women who are gifted to “teach what is good (Titus 2:3-4).”

The church does not make men and women above reproach or gift them the Holy Spirit. Instead, the local church vets and examines men to see to see if they are qualified to be deacons and elders. It also looks at the character of women to discern if they should serve the church teaching the younger women in their midst. Then when the church finds a man or women who has been serving faithfully, they recognize the service that exists and appoint that person to the appropriate leadership role. In short, the church does not make a man an elder. It bestows the title and privileges of eldership upon the man who is already serving as an elder, counseling, teaching, and serving the churcn. When the men circle the stage to lay hands on their brother, they are not transferring the Holy Spirit to him. They are recognizing that the Holy Spirit is in him and has prepared him to serve the church.

The church does not make kings. It discovers servants who have already been appointed by God to serve.

Peter Witkowski Discipleship

Location, Location, Location: 3 Words Churches Should Avoid

location“Location, Location, Location!” The phrase has morphed from a real-estate maxim to a local church maxim. Increasingly churches believe that the pastoral candidate’s location and social-economical upbringing determine his ability to lead their church. Those potential pastors that share the southern congregation’s affinity for Alabama football are placed in the keep pile. Those who grew up eating clam chowder on the New England coast are stuck in the do not call pile. And if the outsider pastor some how sneaks into the church office and manages to place his name on the desk,  church members reserve the right to disagree with and to discount the Pastor’s leadership because he is not “really one of us.”

On the flip side of things, Pastors are quick to pursue churches that are located close to their old stomping grounds. I recently heard one pastor jokingly note that most men will boldly follow the Lord’s call, provided God keeps them within a 200 mile radius of their mother-in-law. Sadly, the joke is not too far from the truth.

3 Considerations:

First, I definitely applaud men for wanting to maintain extended-family relationships. The man who ministers close to home is inherently just as godly as the man cutting his way through the amazon jungles. There is no coloration between risk, hard conditions, distance and godliness.

Second, I affirm that Scripture’s emphasis on raising up local leaders. Paul tells Titus to appoint elders in the churches in Crete. Paul too regularly raised up men to led local churches (Ti 1:5; Acts 14:23). I applauded my former church, The Bible Church of Little Rock for modeling these Scriptures. The Senior Pastor BCLR , Tim Senn served as my youth pastor a few decades ago. And the current Youth Pastor of BCLR is one of my fellow youth group alums. Churches should be in the leadership development business.

Third, I understand that moving a family of 8 from California to Maine or from Colorado to Mississippi can be cost prohibitive for many small churches. Some churches will have to limit their search range geographically because God has providentially limited their resources.

Back to the Question:

But the overarching question still remains: Is location and the pastor’s  familiarity with a churches culture a right and meaningful measure of one’s pastoral ability? Does a pastor have to live, breathe, and know his people’s cultural idiosyncrasies to be an effective minister of the Word?

The answer is a resounding, “No!” To be an effective pastor, a man must be a godly expositor, a man devoted to both obeying and teaching the Word. A quick examination of the Titus 1:5-9 and 1 Timothy 3:1-7 reveals that the effective pastor is the one who is above reproach, sober-minded, self-controlled, hospitable, gentle, upright, holy, disciplined, the husband of one wife, able to teach, and manage his family well. He is not a drunkard, quarrelsome, a lover of money, violent, arrogant, quick-tempered, or a recent convert to Christianity. Notice Paul mentions nothing about the man’s origin or cultural identity.

Paul cares little about where the elder comes from because effective ministry does not depend on cultural awareness but upon gospel awareness. Paul tells Timothy in 1 Timothy 4:16

Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.

To know people and to know how to minister to people, Pastors need to be overly familiar not with the culture but with the Word. The Scriptures contains all that the pastor needs to reach, encourage, and admonish others. The Bible address every heart attitude in every location. D.Martyn Lloyd-Jones smashes the assumption that time and place matter when he writes:

But man himself has not changed…look at the major social problems confronting us today, and you will find all of them in the Bible; theft, robbery, violence, jealousy, envy, infidelity, divorce, separation, perversions, all these things, are in the Bible.

The problems facing small town America in 2018 are the same problems that New York City faces in 2018, and that Abraham faced thousands of years ago. To understand people and how to minister to them and to know how to bring truth to bear on their lives effectively comes, one needs to learn the Scriptures. The most qualified pastor is not the one who grew up within earshot of the church, but the one who loves God, obeys God, and teaches others about God.

Because God is sufficient for all our problems, men raised in Boston can faithfully lead churches in Alabama. Georgians can lead churches in California. Nevadans can pastor churches in France. And Koreans can effectively pastor churches in Mexico. Because the Gospel is the power of salvation, men no longer have to fear and should never limit their ministry to cultural boundaries. Location means little. God means everything.

Location, Location, Location should never be the cry of the gospel-centered church. Her cry should be HOLY, HOLY, HOLY! Do you agree?