Recovery Program For Pastors Addicted To Popularity and Pragmatism

In endeavoring to say a word of challenge to the men tonight and also to all of you who are here to give you a perspective of what lies before them and to put you in a position of accountability to hold them to it, I am drawn to a passage, not far away from one read earlier in the same neighborhood. 1 Timothy 4, and it seems to me that in this text from verses 6 to 16, there is a wonderful summary of what ministries should look like. These are not things that the men do not know. They are things they know very well. They are certainly truths that most of you know very well. But they seem to be rarely displayed today. In fact, as I was thinking through this text, I was drawn to the fact that there are basically twelve things that the apostle Paul says to Timothy, twelve things, twelve essential features or elements of effective ministry. And so, I thought this is kind of a twelve step program. This would rival AA and all other twelve step programs which are very popular today.

Such programs have been developed for all kinds of human malfunctions and become very popular in the world and even very popular in the church. In many churches you can find a plethora of twelve step programs. But in many churches, the one who really needs a twelve step recovery program is the pastor because he has lost sight of what he should be doing and become addicted to marketing cultural relevance, politics, social reform and other substitutes for the real thing.

So this is a twelve step recovery program for pastors that we hope none of you will ever have to enter because you'll never be in a position to defect from it. The key phrase in 1 Timothy 4:6 is the phrase, "You will be a good servant of Christ Jesus. You will be a good servant." - Dr. John MacArthur

Read and listen to 12 Marks of Excellent Pastoral Ministry from Dr. John MacArthur.