SNP Series - BROTHERS, TRAIN UP THE NEXT GENERATION (11 of 11) Audio Book Podcast - The 3M Podcast - Read by J.N.Wheels

Still Not Professionals
Ten Pleas for Today’s Pastors

Still Not Professionals: Ten Pleas for Today’s Pastors is a celebration and extension of John Piper’s Brothers, We Are Not Professionals. With two brief exhortations from Piper and eight others from veteran pastors, this short ebook aims to strengthen and challenge Christians in general, and pastors in particular, for the labor of everyday life and ministry. The contributors were asked to express their “heart of hearts” for fellow leaders. You’ll find these chapters tap into profound human themes, in both the pastor and his flock, and will be of use, we hope, beyond the North American context of the contributors.

by John Piper Modal , Daniel L. Akin Modal , Thabiti Anyabwile Modal , Mike Bullmore Modal , Sam Crabtree Modal , Ray Ortlund Modal , Jeff Vanderstelt Modal , and Douglas Wilson
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Full Text:
BROTHERS, TRAIN UP THE NEXT GENERATION
Mike Bullmore
I find there is a persistent temptation in my life and ministry. It is the temptation to just finish my own race faithfully.
“What’s wrong with that?” you ask. It actually sounds fairly biblical, almost Pauline. “I just want to finish the race. I don’t want to be disqualified. I want to be found faithful to the end.” Which is well and good, except if the understanding of faith- fulness to the gospel is limited to and concerned only with my allotted three score years and ten, or if by reason of strength, four score.
I don’t know about you, but with the challenges and weight of pastoral ministry, sometimes I can be reduced to “Lord, just help me to be faithful to the end.”
And on the flipside of that temptation is the simple fact that it is very hard to be passionate about, and to maintain passion for, the future, especially if that future is beyond our sight. It is easy for me to be passionate about my children’s well-being. And it is easy to extend that passion to their children. But for
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Still Not Professionals Ten Pleas for Today’s Pastors
how many generations out can you maintain that passion? For me it’s hard to go much beyond three generations without fall- ing into abstraction.
I share that simply to illustrate that there is a difficulty, even in our understanding of something as good as gospel faithful- ness, in holding the future clearly and rightly in our minds. This can contribute to a tendency to define faithfulness to the gospel too much in terms of our own tenure.
Let me state my point positively: Necessary to our faithful gos- pel ministry is an investment in the gospel ministry that will come after ours. I see this laid out in the first two chapters of 2 Timothy.
Disciple Faithful Men
Paul says in 2 Timothy 1:14, “Guard the good deposit entrust- ed to you.” Then, a few verses later, picking up some of that same language, he tells Timothy, as part of his “guarding,” to
“entrust to faithful men” what has been entrusted to him, and part of that “entrusting” is teaching them to pass the same thing on to others (2 Timothy 2:2).
Paul is telling Timothy that an essential part of faithful gos- pel ministry is this investment in the next generation. It is not some optional add-on. In other words, when Paul tells Timo- thy to “guard” the gospel, he is not just calling Timothy to pro- tect the integrity of the gospel from the effects of false teaching. He is also calling Timothy to fight to preserve the continua- ti