Preaching Romans and the Call to Ministry
I'm probably get myself a lot of trouble here. Preaching like that tends to
elevate the preacher more than it elevates the text.
Welcome to the Uncut Podcast. I'm Pastor Luke. I'm Pastor Cameron.
And this is the Uncut Podcast where we have uncut and honest conversations about
faith, life, and ministry.
Today, we find ourselves back in the podcast studio.
Yeah, we took the green screen down that had us out on a porch in the wilderness
last week or no, not last week, two weeks ago.
Yeah, we haven't been in here in three weeks to record an episode.
And last Monday, we didn't have an episode.
No, we didn't. First time we missed a Monday in a while. 42 weeks or something like that.
So, yeah. But all year, we had kind of committed to not doing,
An episode and then waiting three or four weeks and doing an episode and then
waiting six weeks and doing an episode we wanted to make sure that we Got as
much content out there on a regular and consistent basis as we could so,
um, but I was out of I was out of the country I was on vacation and um You were just busy.
I was busy. Yeah, so I didn't want to I couldn't I didn't try super hard,
but um, it was a weird staff week here I didn't really have anyone else to pull
in for the podcast by the time I was ready to do it on you know on Thursday and,
and I didn't want to do a monologue Don't just stare awkward.
I didn't feel like it. You know, I mean like like obviously there's time and
place for that I know you you know, the rooted podcasts works well and that
type of format but Yeah, I just by the time Thursday came around last week I
wasn't feeling it so yeah,
So we just let it sit, but anyway, we're back and it's good to be back in this format.
And for the last couple of, I think it's gonna be like six, seven weeks now,
we've been preaching through the Book of Romans,
and also teaching Wednesday night Bible study class through the Book of Romans,
kind of as a parallel guide.
And it's been, I think it's been really good. It's been good for the people
here at Conduit, at least I hope and pray that that's the case.
But also just been really good for me. Yeah, it's been, well,
cause it's been really, we've like, we shifted a little bit when we started this series.
We decided we were gonna slow down a little bit more in our preaching and how
big of a chunk we committed ourselves to preaching through each week and things like that.
And so... Yeah.
I feel like it, you know, we create the schedules and I think we think sometimes
that the schedules make it easier, but in some ways it can,
at least in cases like when you're preaching through Romans or a book that's
really rich or deep or long or whatever,
and actually the schedule can be somewhat restrictive for you.
Yeah, well, and you know, it always kind of.
I don't know, there's benefits to preaching bigger chunks and going through
things faster, and then there's benefits to slowing down, doing smaller chunks.
I feel like Romans is that book.
Inside of like pastor jokes and memes.
If a pastor's gonna, oh, I'm gonna do my sermon series on Romans for the next five years, right?
Yeah. That's kind of ironic joke, but it's also kind of reality.
I know churches that have spent literally one to two years preaching through
the Book of Romans because the pastor preaches two verses at a time.
And that's got its own... I don't want to say that that doesn't have value or
anything like that. It obviously does.
A lot of the preachers that people kind of like,
idolize in the years bygone preached really small chunks,
like Spurgeon would do one or two verses or half a verse or something like that,
but their preaching style was also not really exegetical.
Was it Martin Lloyd Jones that preached like 400 sermons or something like that
through Romans? That wouldn't surprise me Something's like super ridiculous
like that. It was like in the 400s or something.
Yeah, appreciate for like 16 years Yeah, so it's kind of a joke to kind of do
that but like there's also a reason for it, you know to like slow down and Work through,
Ideas and kind of get through them and a little make sure you squeeze everything
out of it that you possibly can And I don't know, sometimes for me it feels
like though that there is.
Um, there is a point where preaching like that, I'm probably get myself a lot of trouble here.
And, you know, I think I agree with you and the other preachers are listening.
I think preaching like that tends to elevate the preacher more than it elevates the text,
you know, because it's like, watch how I can preach an entire sermon or two
or three sermons out of this one verse,
or watch me preach one whole sermon out of this one verse, because,
sometimes one verse is really kind of inconsequential to the whole of the argument
that's being made in the larger chunk of the passage,
and it's not necessary to preach a whole sermon out of one verse, like,
you know, we're, by the time this episode goes live, we'd be essentially through
the fifth chapter of Romans.
We taught on Romans five last night at Bible study.
And if you were to look at, like a chapter, like chapter five in Romans,
you could probably preach quite a few sermons out of something like that. Yeah.
But like Romans chapter 4 is essentially one big argument.
It's not like, there's not several points, there's not even really any really
good exit ramps into anything else.
No. It's one singular point that he summarizes at the end about Abraham being
justified by faith and he kind of uses Abraham as his own little personal proof
text for the idea that righteousness is from faith,
not by works or not by adherence to the law or not by anything other than faith.
To take a verse and to make multiple sermons out of it, when there's whole chapters
that are one sermon or less.
I think for me, sometimes what it feels like is like, you just want your people
to know how smart you are,
or you just want like, I don't know, sometimes it just rubs me the wrong way.
Well, I get what you're saying.
It's interesting the way you...the reason I don't love what some people call...so,
sometimes I've encountered...will encounter people who say, oh,
like...and this could be, like, if someone were to come to our church,
I think, listen to the majority of our preaching,
somebody could be critical of us in this way, and I'd actually be kind of happy
that they're critical of us like this.
But some people say, well, I go to a real church where we preach the Bible and
our preacher, he preaches it verse by verse.
And what they usually mean by that is the pastor kind of slogs through an overly
detailed Bible study, not a sermon, and he goes a handful of verses at a time.
And one of the reasons I don't particularly love that style of preaching is
because it loses, it focuses, you have the danger of focusing so much on the
tree that you lose the forest.
And I'll point this out to people all the, not all the time,
but I try to point it out regularly.
I know I've done it in that Wednesday night class, and I've done it, um...
In the pulpit at times, where if we are so zeroed in on one particular idea
or subject or paragraph,
and this happens a fair amount inside of our Bibles, because our Bibles are
broken up somewhat artificially by chapters.
So, like, we have these chapter divisions that weren't original to the text,
that somebody... I'm not saying chapter divisions are bad, not saying that,
but they do create a division in the text that wasn't original to the author's intent.
And so I think the last time I pointed this out was the end of chapter 1 of Romans.
It gets really into this list of sin, really is talking a lot about homosexual
sin and things like that. It's really just driving at that.
And if you were to preach that text in a really broken -up, segmented manner,
it'd be really easy to go real hard right there, and then forget what's coming
in the very next verse in chapter two.
Judge... Judge not, essentially. Because you do the same thing too, you stand on...
So, and I made that point in, I think, our Wednesday night class,
I said, it would be really easy for me to look at the examples that Paul are
using to typify Gentile sin here, and go all finger -wagging,
but that's if I only ignore the very next couple of verses that are meant to
also humble me as I preach this.
And so, it's things like that where I think if we're overly, like...
Set into this kind of very segmented piece by piece place, we could potentially
miss the larger picture.
And I think some people do miss that larger picture.
Yeah, it's, and you thought you knew what I was gonna say, that I thought I
knew what you were gonna say. Oh.
And then so I, but I think this is essentially what you are saying is that we
don't... I don't even say we don't preach verse by verse because,
or word by word, because sometimes it's necessary.
Like you're preaching on Romans 5 this week, you could take the first six verses of Romans 5,
suffering produces perseverance, and perseverance produces character,
and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint.
That could be Oh, like a verse -by -verse, word -by -word sermon.
Very easily, because that's what the text... The text kind of demands that you
take that section of scripture like that.
And that would be a good sermon, in my opinion. It would, but there is also
whole chunks of scripture that have, and I think this is more typical to our
style of preaching, is that we don't preach word -to -word, we preach idea -to -idea.
That there is an idea or a premise or a...
That... A larger argument. A larger argument, like, yeah, essentially what you said.
It's being made in this chunk and then, okay, then it moves to this chunk and
then it moves to this chunk.
And sometimes that chunk is
a sentence and sometimes it's a word and sometimes it's a whole chapter.
It just... So my preference is to not...
It's an unnecessarily slog through a portion of scripture simply to say,
I preached this word for word for word,
when it's not really necessary and it really only ends up elevating my own apprehension
of the text, but doesn't really add any value to those who are listening.
Wow. And it like, yeah, like over -referencing the Greek, well,
in the Greek, this word means Well, you know what? No one cares.
Literally, no one cares. Well, what's your thought about this?
Other than no one cares, because I know that there are some people who don't
care. There are some people who do care.
But I was told by my preaching professors, and I think I agree generally with
this principle, is like, if...
Like, reference the Greek sparingly, or the Hebrew,
because you don't wanna undermine the congregation's confidence in them being
able to handle scriptures themselves without the Greek and Hebrew.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, like I think that that does kind of.
Yeah, you don't want to undermine there, but to me that seems a little patronizing.
It is a little patronizing. That's the reason why I sometimes do reference it.
Yeah. Cause I'm like, I don't know. Like sometimes there is like a reason to
call people out. People want to know stuff.
Yeah. And it's not like, even when I started seminary or when I started undergrad,
I was taking Greek classes, like there wasn't the type of resources that there
is for the lay person that there is now.
Like now I don't, I don't go back. I haven't had to maintain my Greek.
I don't have to maintain my Greek recollection now.
Because the tools that are available to me and to everyone online are so much better.
Like I've only got so much bandwidth up here, you know?
And like if I have an easy tool over here where I can reference and study the
Greek, Then I'm not gonna memorize it cuz I don't need to I was never good at parsing.
Yeah, I've got logos now I just hover over the word and it parses it for me, right?
Yeah, exactly So it's not it doesn't become necessary. I you know,
like do people need to know the Greek?
Some people do well, I mean academics like I want to read I want to read a commentary
by somebody who knows the Greek Yeah,
you know, but here I guess for me the the problem the problem lies in how much definitive difference.
Is at this point in Christian scholarship or New Testament scholarship in particular,
how much definitive difference is knowing the Greek,
making in the idea of the passage?
It may make a difference in the way that you, the grammatical like function
of the passage, It may make a difference in the literary function of the passage,
but we're not seeing any Greek scholars now are like, well, thank goodness I know the Greek,
because now I can tell you that all of Christendom has been seeing the passage like this,
but I can tell you it should really be translated like this,
and my translation dramatically affects the theological trajectory Of this whole book.
Oh Cameron. There are people who are saying that well, I know but they're So
wrong I can think of one person who's saying that and they're wrong Right and
like I don't know like yeah, they do say that but I don't know anyone that actually
takes those people seriously Yeah, well you at least shouldn't,
right and,
and I read a Real or Instagram post the other day and I think I actually reposted
it But like, it's not, like we are an over -educated.
Christians are generally over -educated and under -obedient.
Ooh, yeah.
You know, like they know way more than they're actually willing to be obedient to.
Yes, yes. And so the issue is
not that like, oh, we need to hear the Greek because we need to know more.
No, the issue is, is you need to do what you know.
You're not under -educated, you're under -obedient. Under -obedient.
Yeah. Yeah. How much of the last Bible study have you applied? Right.
This was a sermon I heard forever ago from Matt Chandler, and it has always stuck with me.
He was talking about this concept, and he described, he's like,
there are too many spiritually obese Christians.
Too many Christians who listen, and I'm one of them, like, listen to podcasts
all the time, sermons, read so much, study so much, how much of that have you applied?
You don't need to understand more of God's word. You need to obey more of God's word.
I mean, no one wants to hear this, but it's a form of works.
It's a form of works righteousness.
Like I'm going to be better when I know more. Yeah.
False. In fact, it often ends up being the opposite because in our quest to
know more, we become calm puffed up with pride.
Mm -hmm. And it actually ends up being something that we lean on rather than,
rather than, you know, like seeking to be obedient. So.
So you're saying, Cameron, that faith in Christ or faith of Christ in Romans.
We shouldn't dig into that?
Well, it depends on who you are.
It depends on who you are. I think that's a detail in Romans we haven't talked
about. We didn't talk about in the sermons or the... Because it is kind of a...
At the end of the day, it kind of is a bit of a wash.
Still imputed to us. Right. Or what I read a lot, and there's one particular
commentary that I had to set down, because I'm like, this is not helping me. Really?
Yeah. It was actually and it's this doesn't happen to me a lot,
but it's actually NT Wright's commentary.
Oh Interesting. Yeah, the new interpreters commentary. Mm -hmm,
which is those big ones that I have.
Yeah, they Romans one is written by NT right and I usually really appreciate his stuff,
But like And I'm not here to argue with him.
He's way smarter than I am Like, obviously, I'm not here to argue with him or
anything. We're not here to argue, right? No, no. He publishes, like, more books.
He publishes, like, five books while we're sleeping. Yeah, and he's probably,
like, the most prolific Pauline scholar alive today. Yeah. One of them, at least. Yeah.
And anyway, so, like, he, his, one of his main premises is, like,
the righteousness that's talked about in.
In Romans is more about a quest for God's justice, that righteousness in Romans
is closely related to his justice.
And the justice of making all things right and just.
But it's such a nuanced view that it's not super clear You know,
it's not, you have to do literary study, grammatical study,
deep Greek study to come to that nuanced understanding.
And so to take what he's saying in the commentary, which is not a super technical
commentary either, to take what he's saying in the commentary as like a,
oh, this is the way to understand Romans, and then to go to preach it,
I would have to do so much nuancing of the, I know your English Bible's conduit
says this, but this is what it actually is.
And I know the flow of Paul's thought in your NIV looks like this,
but this is actually what he's talking about over here.
It does, I think, create practical problems for people as they're reading their Bible.
It's like, well, I'm gonna just stop reading my Bible because obviously I don't understand any of it.
I don't get it. Every week my pastor gets up there, he's telling me to scratch
out one word and put another word in.
So, I just don't find it particularly helpful, nor do I find that it makes a
significant difference in the way that people, in the access that people have
to the heart or the spirit of the passage.
If there's something that really dramatically changes something,
then yeah, I wanna bring it up and I wanna talk about it.
But they're You know I'm not I'm not super eager to do that if that if it just
is really like a distinction without a difference that just elevates My understanding
of the text because I could read
the Greek when they can't yeah It just doesn't make sense to me, right?
Well in that gets to the the theological conviction of perspicuity of Scripture.
Yeah perspicuity What's perspicuity, Pastor Luke?
It's this belief that whatever... that the Bible, not all of the Bible is perfectly clear.
There's passages that we read that are weird, passages that maybe we don't understand
or we don't quite grasp or are kind of obscure, but...
So the perspicuity of Scripture doesn't say that all of Scripture is clear.
What it does say is that the primary and important elements of scripture are clear.
Christ being divine, God being creator, God's redemption plan for humanity through
faith in Christ, like, those things, pretty clear.
Whether or not it's Arminian or Calvinism, not so much.
Pre -post -A -Millenniism. Oh, yes. you know, the end times.
I just say glorious return at this point.
The rapture, who is the Antichrist, who is the Antichrist by the way?
Oh, he's this really random guy that lives in Oklahoma.
Some people have said.
Yeah, okay.
What were we talking about? All of Romans. All of Romans.
So anyway, like, you know, how you move through a passage of scripture,
how you move through, how you form sermons,
I don't know, like, I don't, it's interesting to me because it's easy for us
to talk about these things like they're normal to everyone else in all of life.
Yeah. You know, but it's not like, I don't know that everyone really thinks
about how their pastors go about creating content for sermons or Bible studies
or anything like that. I think there's just this assumption that.
I don't know. I don't know what the assumption is. I don't know.
I mean, everybody who's listening, if you're not in ministry or pastor,
this is what at least I want to talk about at social parties when I'm done with
small talk, and I don't want to have anything else to talk about.
I just want to talk about nerdy Bible stuff. Yeah.
Yeah. But yeah, I don't know that this is like, because I had a conversation.
I don't know if I talked about this on the podcast or not. I had a conversation
several months ago now with some people who were developing an AI sermon writing app.
Now, that's not what they pitched it to me when I had the conversation with
them, but as soon as I sat down with them, I was like, oh, this is like... That's what it is.
That's what it is. It was chat GBT re -skinned and like being,
you know, sold as like a way to write your sermons in it entirely.
And I had some conversations with them, I was like, well, you know,
like, you need to figure out if you're going to have a, like,
inductive sermon or a deductive sermon, if you're going to follow this,
a big idea model of preaching, or if you're going to follow,
like, a question model of preaching,
are you going to use, like, a story method, like, what are the methods of your preaching,
like, having those kind of base outlines, and, you know,
and I said, it's not enough to just say, like, to enter into a...even...this
is, like, one of the problems with Google research, is it's not enough to just
enter into Google, what does Romans 5 -7 mean?
Because you're gonna get, like, you know, no one...like, what?
Like, 90 % of people don't go past the first search page.
And those first couple links are all gonna look the same.
They're all to have these very popular understandings of it.
There's not going to be a whole lot of back and forth.
And the really hard thing about like AI,
even for like the future of AI when we stop, because people are starting to
stop using Google and they're starting to use chat, GBT and other AI bots,
is you don't even get a list of results.
You just get an answer, synthesized.
But you don't know the argumentation behind the synthesization of that.
Of that answer you got. So anyways, I was talking to them all about that, those complexities.
I was like, well, you really do need multiple sources in order to understand,
because if one person thinks the passage needs this, I need to understand why
he thinks that, even if I end up disagreeing with him. I need that understanding.
And they just sat there and looked at me and they said, wow,
you take this very seriously. And I was like,
Yeah. What kind of pastors have you been talking to?
Who doesn't take it this seriously?" Which made me really concerned because I was like...
Because I do know that there is...
When I first... I don't... Maybe this would be an interesting question about
your very first sermons, Cameron, but... Nope.
... When I started preaching, I hadn't gone to Bible college or anything yet.
But I was just serving as like a youth guy, and I say youth guy because I wasn't officially anything.
I was just, I wasn't on staff or anything, so I was like the youth leader,
but I was a volunteer, so I was the youth guy is what I called myself.
I was just listening to sermons and just trying to mimic what they did.
And I was like reading my Bible. I don't know that I was consulting.
I don't really remember consulting very many commentaries.
I was, you know, I had some very basic Bible study skills. I could,
like, look at a concordance and stuff.
But I kind of just hodgepodged it together, and by God's grace,
I think it bore some fruit.
And also by God's grace, none of those were recorded for posterity,
because I'm pretty sure they were pretty abysmal.
But I think some people never move past that type of preaching,
of just kind of hodgepodging it together.
I don't know. What was your, what were your early preaching?
Oh my gosh. What was that like? Do you know how old I was?
I preached my first sermon.
27 years ago How old were you 14 you were 14 was 14, yeah, I think I was at
least 19 or 20. Yeah, I was 14,
I God bless my pastor I was 14 years old. Uh -huh. Is it my home church?
I was so short like physically This is my stature,
I was I had to get one of those little small kitty chairs from the nursery and
I stepped up onto it So I could be seen from behind the pulpit everyone laughed.
I remember that There is a recording of it out there somewhere I don't know
that I have it or that it was ever saved but it was that Yeah, probably,
And it was I don't remember what it was what I preached on.
I do remember that every year, there was a youth group Sunday where the youth
group did the whole service.
They led the worship, they did the readings, they did the preaching, or whatever.
And it was, I don't know if I volunteered to preach or if I was voluntold to
preach or not, but I think it was for, you know, I don't really remember a whole lot,
but it was, I think it was clear at that point that God had a calling on my
life to preach, and so I got to preach when I was 14.
And then I preached about once a year after that, until I, really until I was
into college and actually studying to be a pastor and preacher.
And then, actually by the time I got to college, I was preaching multiple times
a year, and sometimes at even different churches.
So 17, 18, 19, I was preaching at a couple different churches a couple times a year.
And then, I would say that my first,
well, Well, then in college, my...
My junior year of college, I got a job as a discipleship, I think it was a director,
but it was a discipleship pastor at a United Methodist Church on the west side
of the city of Rochester, and got to preach there as a staff person, and then,
and so I would preach whatever they were, and this was in the height of the
purpose -driven movement.
And they were... Oh, the purpose -driven church. Yes. The purpose -driven life.
Yes. The purpose -driven family.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they were a purpose -driven church. It was a...
Honestly, it was a great, great, great church.
And the pastor there, Pastor Jeff Long, I think he's retired now,
but was, man, such an awesome guy and loved me and discipled me and gave me
so many opportunities that I had not earned or deserved and really appreciate him.
And so I preached in there about some discipleship stuff and some evangelism things.
And then I do remember when I got my, when I was appointed to my first church as pastor.
This would have been, Sherry and I had been married less than a year at that point.
And I was in seminary and living in a small apartment above a garage.
I was working construction, make ends meet, going to seminary,
got called to pastor my first church, a little church out on the lake here in DeWittville.
I was 22 years old, 22 years old, and this is a church of maybe 22 people,
you know? It was pretty small.
And I think the person closest in age to Sherry and I was 40 years older than us.
It was so crazy, but I do remember my first couple, I do remember outside of
my first introductory sermon, which is really just about the story of my calling,
was I preached a two or three week series on the Lord's Prayer, and I do still have that.
In fact, I have it upstairs in my office on a VHS. Oh, wow.
So, we could probably, if we could ever find a VCR, we should bust that out and not watch it.
I'm sure it was... This sounds like a staff activity to me. I'm sure it was
just... I can probably pull up an old one of mine, too. miserable, horrible, but anyway.
What was the original question? I guess I was just... I was just reminiscing there.
Oh, no, I was mostly just kind of like, what was your... Because I remember
starting to preach and I had no idea what I was doing.
Like I was just... I was kind of like monkey see, monkey do.
You could tell if I had listened to... You could tell which preacher I'd listened
to that week based on how I had preached. Like, and I was preaching to youth.
I started out with running a weekly youth ministry at my church,
and that was like a really fun time of ministry and really appreciative of all of that.
And then I think I went into college, and in my first ministry I was assigned
in college was doing Sunday service at a retirement home, and I alternated preaching with another guy.
And so... What a great way to start ministry, honestly, that's...
It was really good. Yeah.
And they were very sweet, and they were very kind, and they also challenged me.
They would tell us when... And it was a jarring thing for me from going to teaching
youth, high schoolers, to teaching people who were facing down death.
And who had been Christians longer than you'd been alive. Exactly.
And so I learned a lot through that experience.
But I also definitely stuck my foot in my mouth more times than not,
and I'm sure that if I were able to look back, if those had been recorded,
I would maybe cringe at how...
Not just the unpolishedness of it sometimes, but even my own character flaws
that come through, and that's... I mean, that's just preaching in general.
But I just was kind of like... I was just kind of thinking, like,
you know, the way I began when I started preaching, was I kind of just...
Just did it. I didn't know what I was doing. And I think that was typical of
what I just thought preaching was.
And did you have a similar experience? Or did someone ever like sit down and
say, Cameron, like you need to like kind of figure out this is how you're going to structure it?
No. No. No. Yeah, it was the same.
And quite honestly, I didn't pay enough attention in my actual preaching classes
for it to, for even to get, for that to even to take root and like,
no, here's actually how like you should.
Yeah, I wasn't a particularly conscientious or diligent student.
I was a good student when I applied myself.
And I, it wasn't that I'm like a theological Neanderthal.
No, you're not. It was just that I didn't care.
Right. I said, I don't care about this. Like, I just wanna go,
can I just go do it? Like, I have, let me just go do it.
And I will say that like most of,
I say this with no, like zero, I hope you hear me and know my heart in this,
like zero pride, zero anything other than this is just how we have always experienced it,
is that from even from like as early as I can remember the Sunday school class
that I've talked about a lot lately,
but my Sunday school teacher in junior and senior high,
like I, for whatever reason, for the reason I just believe God had a call on
my life, is that when I look at scripture,
or when I think about faith, or when I think about theological points,
it just makes sense to me.
And I can kind of like see and like feel how this scripture or this theology
or this thing needs to be talked about,
could be talked about.
Now, that's always been a real blessing because it hasn't, it's never really,
like, preaching is by far the easiest part of ministry.
By far. Yeah. Like.
Like, it's not even a question. I think you and I would both agree.
The easiest part of being a pastor is preparing and preaching.
It's time consuming, and you have to put in... It is work for sure.
I think we're both also... I think uniquely, I think you and I are both gifted.
I would say that's one of the things that you and I both... Strength we both
share is in that area of ministry. country.
I've seen other... I've seen big -name preachers who are not good at preaching. Right.
It's just a struggle for them where they can... They are fantastic administratively,
and I could have... I'm not.
It goes back to the same issue that I had with school. I don't care.
I'm forced to care, and I need to care, and I need to do a better job at it,
but at the end of the day, I'm,
Like, I wanna love people, I wanna disciple people, I wanna pray for people,
I wanna counsel people, I wanna teach the word, I wanna preach the word.
Leave me alone about all the other stuff.
Can't do that, but suffice it to say, I think that the gifting in preaching
has actually, obviously it's a gift and a blessing, but also does sometimes,
when you are like, when you lean too heavily on the gift, you become lazy about the prep,
and you can, like I could probably be 10 times better of a preacher than I am now,
if I put more work and effort into it, if I developed more illustrations,
if I developed my points a little bit better, if I worked on my,
the delivery, the cleaning up my delivery,
you know, my like cleaning up my language.
I'm not cursing from the pulpit, but like, but those transition words,
the ums, the ahs, the rights, you know, all that kind of stuff,
the rights, the rights, man, you do it too.
So I do too. I never did it until I came here. I blame that on you.
You're welcome. Um, so.
You know, I think sometimes the gifting can lead to a laziness and it takes
an intentional effort to Get better when you started out Fairly good at something.
Yeah I don't say that with any prize just the reality. No.
Yeah, like And I get it, you know, it's we we you know that You know the same
thing happens no matter what it is that you're gifted at right?
Like it happens to kids who said right?
Yeah, well, thank you Someone re listen to this podcast and do a who says right
more often probably me maybe but.
Saying oh like kids who play sports Mm -hmm, right the naturally play naturally
gifted sports player will get pretty far until they kind of like stall out and
like If they don't put in the work, they're not gonna get farther than that Yeah.
And it's like that with anything that you are naturally gifted with. Yeah.
How would, like, I... What would you say, Cameron? I don't know,
I've been thinking about this.
I've been thinking about, like, calls in the ministry and, you know,
and kind of wondering, like, are there people around us who are called in the ministry,
and, you know, do we need to be issuing,
like, you know, I don't know, we don't do, at least I don't think we've ever
done a sermon here that I know of, well, I've been here at least,
that's been like a direct call in the ministry.
I know that that used to be like a type of sermon that pastors and churches
would preach on occasion.
There's not really a...I guess there's probably texts out there that you could
use for that, but there's not like a text that in itself is a call to ministry
necessarily. Yeah, no, I can think of like...
Paul's words to Timothy about fanning the flame of the gift that was in you,
have people lay their hands on you and pray for you.
But yeah, I don't know. But to answer your question, yeah, I think we should.
Even if we're not doing it from the stage or from the pulpit in a public way,
we probably we should be more cognizant, aware, looking for,
raising up, calling out of the congregation, those who we believe have been called to ministry,
or have a calling in ministry.
How does someone know? Like, what are your, like... Oh, boy.
Maybe that's a podcast episode. Yeah, wow.
How does someone know?
That's a really good question.
I feel like the cliche answer. I don't know I kind of I like and I don't like
this answer because it gets at something that's true but it also I think it
I think it unnecessary. I don't know.
The answer I've always heard, and I think it goes way, way back.
I don't know who the first person was that said it, but if you can do anything else, go do that.
But if you feel this unlike... I think I said that.
Well, yeah, you've said that, but other people have said it before you, Cameron.
Oh, okay. I think it's original to me, actually. Okay, yeah.
All right, Cameron, all right.
Well, no, because I got it from John Wesley, who essentially said,
know, unless God raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by
the schemes of men and devils.
Yeah, yeah, and I think Spurgeon said something similar. Yeah,
do something else, for sure.
So, you know, this kind of like internal desire, but, you know,
one of the things I don't particularly love about that is it doesn't call anybody,
which is kind of counterintuitive.
It's of following the model of Christ, like, you know, kind of this,
you know, Christ was very...
He was well known for saying things that made people turn away from him,
right? Unless you eat of my flesh, you cannot have eternal life.
But... Foxes have holes. Yeah, but the Son of Man had no place to lay his head.
All these things that would make it unattractive to go into ministry or to follow Christ.
And so I think there is some wisdom there, but at the same time,
if that's the only thing we're ever saying,
like, is anybody ever going to say yes to ministry or even think or consider,
they're like, well, I mean, I'm not doing ministry now, so I suppose I should
just keep doing that. You know what I mean?
Yeah, I think we should do a whole podcast episode on this,
because I feel like there can be a list of things.
Here's how you may be discerning a call to ministry, and then similar,
but in the same conversation, but different, is if you wanna get into ministry because of this, don't.
Yeah, right, do something else, or do something adjacent, but not ministry. You don't.
And then to talk about the difference in types of things of ministry within
a church or within a ministry?
Because you might say, well, I'm called to ministry, but I'm not called to be a pastor.
Because usually what people think, I'm called to ministry. Well, you want to be a pastor?
Like, no, I don't want to be a pastor, but I'm called into ministry.
Well, what does that, what do you mean?
And I would say in a real general way,
that there is kind of the inverse of what we had already said,
is that there is a undeniable and burning passion that this is your life's work.
At least that's how I understand or have understood my calling in the past is
that while there are other things that I could do,
I could work at Home Depot, I could do X, Y, or Z.
Cameron is always saying how he'd love to go organize the two -by -fours.
Yes, they need organized.
I could do this certain thing that there is.
There's an undeniable and burning passion to serve the Lord through his church for me.
And I know that unless the Lord dramatically changes my heart or my call or
is like burning bush moment, then…,
Cameron, Cameron.
Yeah, right. Go organize the two by fours. Yeah, we'll organize the two by fours,
that I will spend the rest of my natural life as a pastor, of some form.
Sherry and I have even talked recently about like, so we've got,
you know, like we save for retirement.
Sure, good for you. Yeah, and I'm also like, why though? Why would I retire?
Yeah. I have a really hard time with the concept of not doing things. Yeah.
I say that after I just got back from vacation where I did nothing but write
like I can't imagine being like, Oh, 67 all done now.
All done. Gonna go play some golf. Yeah. Gonna go trim my lawn.
And that's not to say like, I don't, I don't take any issue with people,
pastors who are like, man, I did my time.
Sure. I'm, I'm done. Yeah. I'm done.
Um, no issue with that at all. I just don't feel like I'm in a place where I like I I don't know What?
I don't know how I could do that and maybe retirement Will look like the ability
to serve a church without the Complexities of being employed by it.
Yeah, or or like having the church be burdened by having to pay me, right?
Or serving a church in like a capacity that our Pastor Gordy does here,
encourages the staff and the pastors,
teaches a Bible study class or a Sunday school class, like involved in ministry
and discipleship, loving the people.
But I can see that, I can see coming alongside younger pastors,
pastors who are just coming into ministry and just encouraging them and loving
them and being a safe place for them to land.
But being done with ministry just doesn't compute with me.
But yeah, I think let's make this our next podcast episode. How do you know
when you're called to ministry? What is ministry?
Like how do you define ministry outside of what it means to be a pastor?
What does it mean to be a pastor?
Some of that we talk about kind of normally, But do you have any like?
Immediate like how do I know I'm called? No,
okay other not nothing other than what I think we've said, you know I you know,
there's like the framework of internal call external call and yeah Communal affirmation.
Yeah, I mean people are gonna tell you you're called you're not gonna believe
them Then you're gonna start to believe it and you're gonna start to see gifts
that align with the calling and when you use those gifts fruits gonna be produced
and But I'll also be the first to say,
I met a lot of people who their grandmother or their youth pastor said,
oh, you'll make a great pastor,
and went away to Bible college, they got halfway through Bible college,
and they're like, I should not do this.
Yeah. You know? And so it's a difficult discernment, so. Yeah.
Yeah. So if you hear this and you've got any questions about callings to ministry
or creative ways of being in ministry and not being a pastor or anything like that,
drop us a comment when you hear this episode so we can include it as we record
the next episode. Yeah. Yep. That would be great.
And we did get a question in on our text line.
Oh, yeah, we did. this past week. We did.
Who is Cameron Linehart? Who is Pastor Cameron? Who is Pastor Cameron?
Yeah. Who is Pastor Cameron? Yeah, well, I am Pastor Cameron.
And my last name is Linehart, and I pastor at Conduit Ministries in Jamestown,
New York, 120 Delaware Avenue, Jamestown, New York, 14701,
www .conduitministries .org.
I am not hard to find.
Nope. We worship on Sunday mornings at 10 a .m., and you can also find us online
with our services via Facebook or YouTube or on our website. So.
Or Instagram, or you can just show up. You can, if you're in Western New York. Yep.
So, who is Pastor Cameron? That is me. That is you. That is me.
So that was the question.
But seriously, if you do have a question you'd like us to address on the podcast
or elsewhere, you can always text us, 716 -201 -0507. You can comment if you're
on YouTube, watching this on YouTube.
We have been able to interact with some of the comments on YouTube.
Last couple of videos up on YouTube or episodes on YouTube got quite prolific in the comment section.
Wish we had more time to really delve into those. Also wish we had more time
to, I just want you to sit down with some of these people.
Hug them, love them, hear them, spend time with them. Like, because the medium
of like, communicating via comments section... It's very detached.
So much to be missed there.
Music.
