Category: Quotes to Note

noteworthy quotes

Quotes to Note 30: Pastors as True Shepherds or Mere “Mutton Farmers”

~ Bob Hayton

Recently, I’ve been reading some forums that have been lamenting poor leadership in certain IFBx circles. Some have shared painful testimonies about years of harsh treatment by parents and teachers who ostensibly cared about the children’s welfare, but ultimately just rejected them (literally throwing them out, and disowning them completely) when it became clear that they weren’t keeping in step with the brand of fundamentalism these pastors and church leaders advocated.

Then I stumbled across this quote in studying for my Men’s Bible Study lesson on Mark 6:31-44 where Jesus looks on the crowds with compassion and considers that: “they were like sheep without a shepherd.” I almost started weeping when I read these words about what a true shepherd should be. Praise Jesus he is not like some of the “shepherds” I’ve known…

Most contemporary listeners are unfamiliar with the job description of a shepherd. Lena Woltering has pointed out that a shepherd “is needed only when there are no fences. He is someone who stays with his sheep at all cost, guiding, protecting, and walking with them through the fields. He’s not just a person who raises sheep.” They lead sheep to food and water and are ever mindful of the sheep’s condition (Gen. 33:13). They gather lambs that cannot keep up in their arms (Isa. 40:11). They seek out lost sheep, and when they find them, they carry them back to the fold on their sholders (Luke 15:5). They guard against predators and thieves. It is a dirty and hard job. Woltering castigates those bishops who regard themselves as “tenders of the flock” and brands them as little more than “mutton farmers.” “They build fence after fence after fence, keeping the flock within sight so they don’t have to dirty their feet plodding along the open fields.” They turn the difficult role of shepherd into a position of rank and superiority and sequester themselves from the sheep. Ezekiel’s castigation of the self-indulgent and irresponsible shepherds in his day (Ezek. 34) is no less applicable today to those who want to dominate and crush others rather than feed them. — David E. Garland, Mark, The NIV Application Commentary, pg. 258-259 [quotes from Woltering were cited in Salt of the Earth 15 (July/August, 1995), 34]

Quotes to Note 29: John Bunyan on Studying the English Bible

~ Bob Hayton ~ 1 Comment

Today, there are many who encourage pastors to study Hebrew and Greek. Back in the day, the Puritan greats were masters of the Bible’s original languages. I’m not discounting this at all, although my proficiency in Hebrew and Greek is feeble at best. I just found it interesting to come across an anecdote passed down concerning John Bunyan and his being challenged on this very issue.

Bunyan was a tinker and not an educated scholar. But he had no qualms about picking up his English Bible and preaching boldly, however. I share the following anecdote about Bunyan and the English Bible below.

I might fear that some will now take this story and assume Bunyan was really a King James Only proponent. But I would just remind them that Bunyan used the Geneva Bible like all good dissenters of his day!

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Another story… concerns Bunyan’s encounter on the road near Cambridge with another university man, who asked him how he, not having the original Scriptures, dared to preach. Bunyan was nothing if not quick on his feet, and so he answered the scholar with a question: “Do you, sir, have the originals–the actual copies of the books written by the prophets and apostles?”

“No,” the scholar replied, “but I have what I know to be true copies of the originals.”

Perhaps there was the hint of a smile in Bunyan’s reply. “And I,” he said, “believe the English Bible to be a true copy also.” At a loss for words, the university man turned and went on his way.

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Excerpted from John Bunyan (Christian Encounters series),
by Kevin Belmonte (Nelson), pp. 79-80.

Quotes to Note 28: Daniel Doriani on How Pastors Read the Bible

~ Bob Hayton ~ 5 Comments

Recently, I was referencing Daniel Doriani’s commentary on James again. I have reviewed his commentary previously, and it is very good. He has a lot of pastoral wisdom, as seen by the following excerpt.

Here, Doriani exposes the tendencies of pastors or other teachers, to be too professional with the Bible in their own lives. His thoughts are worthy of reflection, which is why I’m sharing them with you here: Let me know what you think and if you agree that he strikes a nerve.

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…This seems obvious, but pastors and seminarians are prone to professionalize their use of Scripture, to read it to help every soul but their own. Let me offer a typology of the ways pastors can read Scripture.

When he is a new Christian, the future pastor’s reading is naïve and devotional. He devours Scripture, underlining virtually every word in his new Bible, feeling that God speaks directly to him with every word.

After a few years, the budding leader’s reading becomes sophisticated and devotional. He still feels that God is speaking to him in the text, but he has learned to read texts in their contexts. He reads Bible dictionaries and commentaries. He knows the translation strategies of various Bible versions and begins to use that knowledge to get at the original text.

The future pastor decides to go to seminary, where he becomes a technical reader. He reads Greek and Hebrew; he consults scholarly sources. He respects the distance between his world and that of biblical thought. His zeal to describe biblical history, culture, and language grows. He pursues what the word originally meant and perhaps neglects what it means today.

As ordination comes, our friend remembers that his study has, as its goal, the edification of the church. He continues to read technically, but now he shares his findings with the church. He becomes a technical-functional reader. His reading may be detached, personally speaking, but he stores and organizes his discoveries so he can offer them to others. While this phase may mark a partial improvement, he does not directly profit from his reading of Scripture.

He needs therefore to become a technical, devotional reader. Every technical skill remains, but he reads like a child, letting the word speak directly to his heart again. He gains what Paul Ricoeur calls a “second naiveté.” He is both technically astute and meek. He both receives God’s word and expounds it. In this way, he finds strength to endure trials and to check the growth of sin.

[pg. 50-51, James (Reformed Expository Commentary) from P&R Publishing]

Quotes to Note 27: Dallas Willard on Lust

~ Bob Hayton ~ 7 Comments

I’m working on my review of Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality by Wesley Hill (Zondervan). You can follow other reviews of the book at Zondervan’s Engaging Church blog, but mine should be up tomorrow. I found this book immensely helpful on many levels, but more later.

In this book, on pages 135-136, the author quotes Dallas Willard on an important distinction when considering the nature of sexual lust. I thought Willard’s insights were quite helpful and so I’m sharing them here with you all:

Dallas Willard helpfully defines lust as “looking to desire” — looking at someone other than a spouse in order to indulge in sexual fantasies. “That is, we desire to desire. We indulge and cultivate desiring because we enjoy fantasizing about sex with the one seen. Desiring sex is the purpose for which we are looking.” ¹

This purposeful looking — the “second glance” — is different, Willard says, from “looking and desiring.” Looking to desire is intentional, willful. Looking and desiring is natural, reflexive, part of the experience of a God-designed and God-given desire for intimacy with someone of the opposite sex; it could happen at any time, in any place — as you drive down the road and see a billboard, as you place your order at a restaurant, as you browse shelves at a bookstore.

When we only think of sex with someone we see, or simply find him or her attractive, that is not wrong, and certainly is not what Jesus calls “adultery in the heart.” Merely to be tempted sexually requires that we think of sex with someone we are not married to, and that we desire the other person — usually, of course, someone we see. But temptation also is not wrong, though it should not be willfully entered. ²

Looking and desiring, according to Willard, isn’t sinful; it’s what you choose to do with the desire that determines whether the first look will turn into cultivated lust.

 ¹ Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997), 165.

 ² ibid, 164

Quotes to Note 26: D.A. Carson on the Diminishing Authority of the Scriptures

~ Bob Hayton ~ 2 Comments

Here is another jewel by D.A. Carson from his recent book, Collected Writings on Scripture (Crossway, 2010; compiled by Andrew Naselli). In the conclusion to his essay, “Recent Developments in the Doctrine of Scripture”, Carson turns his sights on conservative Christianity and our own contribution to the diminishing authority of Scripture. The following excerpt is a bit lengthy, but I trust it will prove helpful. I found it painfully close to home as I think about many sectors of fundamentalism and conservative evangelicalism.

Carson starts this section with, “A high view of Scripture is of little value to us if we do not enthusiastically embrace the Scripture’s authority.” He goes on to allege that we “reflect the antiauthoritarian stance that is currently endemic to the Western world.”

He continues:

This libertarianism has engendered two surprising children. The first is a new love of authoritarianism among some believers: they do not feel safe and orthodox unless some leader is telling them exactly what to say, do, and think. Inevitably this brings some power lovers to positions of religious leadership, supported sometimes by a theology that ascribes “apostleship” or some other special, charismatic enduement to them, sometimes by a theology of churchmanship that makes each pastor a pope. The authority of the Scriptures is in such instances almost always formally affirmed; but an observer may be forgiven if he or she senses that these self-promoted leaders characteristically so elevate their opinions over the Scripture, often in the name of the Scripture, that the Word of God becomes muted. The church cries out for those who proclaim the Scriptures with unction and authority while simultaneously demonstrating that they stand under that authority themselves.

The second is a fairly conservative mood, a reaction to the times, that some interpret as a great blessing. But this conservative swing does not appear to be characterized by brokenness and contrition. Far from it: it is imbued with a “can do” mentality not far removed from arrogance. Many of the most respected religious leaders among us are those who project an image of total command, endless competence, glorious success, formulaic cleverness. We are experts, and we live in a generation of experts. But the cost is high: we gradually lose our sense of indebtedness to grace, we no longer cherish our complete dependence on the God of all grace, and we begin to reject themes like self-sacrifice and discipleship in favor of courses on successful living and leadership in the church….

Mere conservatism must not be confused with godliness, mere discipline with discipleship, mere assent to orthodox doctrine with wholehearted delight in truth….

Along with the arrogance has come the exegetical and philosophical sophistication that enables us to make Scripture support almost anything we want….

…even some of us who would never dream of formally disentangling some parts of the Bible from the rest and declaring them less authoritative than other parts can by exegetical ingenuity get the Scriptures to say just about whatever we want–and this we thunder to the age as if it were a prophetic word, when it is little more than the message of the age bounced off Holy Scripture. To our shame, we have hungered to be masters of the Word much more than we have hungered to be mastered by it.

The pervasiveness of the problem erupts in the “Christian” merchant whose faith has no bearing on the integrity of his or her dealings, or in the way material possessions are assessed. It is reflected in an accelerating divorce rate in Christian homes and among the clergy themselves–with little sense of shame and no entailment in their “ministries.” It is seen in its most pathetic garb when considerable exegetical skill goes into proving, say, that the Bible condemns promiscuous homosexuality but not homosexuality itself (though careful handling of the evidence overturns the thesis), or that the Bible’s use of “head” in passages dealing with male/female relationships follows allegedly characteristic Greek usage, and therefore, means “source” (when close scrutiny of the primary evidence fails to turn up more than a handful of disputable instances of the meaning “source in over two thousand occurrences). It finds new lease when popular evangelicals publicly abandon any mention of “sin”–allegedly on the ground that the term no longer “communicates”-without recognizing that adjacent truths (e.g., those dealing with the fall, the law of God, the nature of transgression, the wrath of God, and even the gracious atonement itself) undergo telling transformation.

While I fear that evangelicalism is heading for another severe conflict on the doctrine of Scripture, and while it is necessary to face these impending debates with humility and courage, what is far more alarming is the diminishing authority of the Scriptures in the churches. This is taking place not only among those who depreciate the consistent truthfulness of Scripture but also (if for different reasons) among those who most vociferously defend it. To some extent we are all part of the problem; and perhaps we can do most to salvage something of value from the growing fragmentation by pledging ourselves in repentance and faith to learning and obeying God’s most holy Word. Then we shall also be reminded that the challenge to preserve and articulate a fully self-consistent and orthodox doctrine of Scripture cannot be met by intellectual powers alone, but only on our knees and by the power of God.

(D.A. Carson, Collected Writings on Scripture [Crossway, 2010], compiled by Andrew Naselli, pg. 106-109; originally part of a chapter in Hermeneutics, Authority, and Canon [Zondervan, 1986], ed. by D.A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge. Emphasis added.)