Over this past weekend, Charity and I visited one of our favorite places in the world: The Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC.  This estate is the largest personal residence in the USA.  Charity and I love to tour this beautiful home every Christmas season.  As we tour it, we observed the fine persian rugs, antiquitous tapestries, a lavish collection of first editions, and fine furniture.  The home is breathtaking.  At the conclusion of the tour, we peripatetically patrolled the multitudinous shops, but suffice it to say, we were a bit too parsimonious to purchase anything more than $20.  Finally, we meandered through the milieu of perturbed patrons of this pretty palace and I got a palatable latte while Charity consumed a tiny chocolate treat.

As we left, Charity put things into perspective.  She began extemporaneously pontificating of how the Biltmore Estate is a mere shack in comparison to our eternal home in Heaven with Jesus.  Amazingly, two days later, the Lord continued to remind me of the truth of what matters in life.

At the conclusion of a splendid service yesterday morning, a homeless man named “Daniel” arose from his pew and gave his testimony about how he received Christ as his Savior on his knees in a Waffle House restaurant the previous Friday.  He spoke of how he lived in a tent in the woods, but was happier than he’s ever been because he has the joy of Jesus beaming within him.

As I think of the differences between the Biltmore Estate and the tent-dwelling-man, it causes me to reflect upon tents, mansions, and the difference thereof.  I’m not speaking of the differences between earthly residences, but the differences between people who have an eternal home with many rooms in the Father’s house (John 14:2) and those who have an eternal destiny much worse than the life of a tent-dwelling-person on Earth, eternal destiny in Hell (Luke 16).

I thank God that He has a home prepared for me that makes the Biltmore Estate look like a mere shack.  What a joy it will be to worship my Savior in His home forever!

Last April, Dr. Ronnie Floyd wrote a blog post entitled, “Change Must Happen in the Southern Baptist Convention.”  Pastor Floyd’s article has resonated in my heart since he posted it seven months ago.  The posting he released was surely a risky one for him.  He knew he would probably offend some people who were comfortable with the way things are, but Pastor Floyd saw that our current denominational set-up is resulting in decline.  I know with this blog post, it may frustrate some of my friends in the academic world, but I think it needs to be stated.

Lately, I have been increasingly thinking about how change must happen in the American seminary educational process.  This topic is one I have pondered for some time.  As I reflect upon this topic, there are just a few points, in particular, that I wonder about: clinical training, pastoral training from non-pastors, lengthiness, and a lack of change.

Clinical Training

My wife, Charity, is a Registered Nurse with a Bachelor of Science from Union University in Jackson, TN.  As Charity was an RN student, she engaged in clinical training.  She trained as a nurse at all different types of hospitals.  One semester she was trained at St. Jude’s children’s hospital in Memphis.  This is one of the biggest and most well-respected hospitals in the country with some famous doctors, and is in the heart of the downtown region of a large city.  She also trained at a mental hospital in Bolivar, TN.  This mental hospital is in the middle of nowhere, but is doing great work in healing mentally diseased people.  Then, she had the opportunity to be trained at a general hospital in Jackson, TN.

As Charity was clinically trained, she was learning in a hands-on way about how to care for patients.  She learned in a hands-on environment at all different types of hospitals.  I am so thankful she had these opportunities.  As I think about this, I also think of other jobs that require significant hands-on training: doctors, construction workers, plumbers, electricians, and the list goes on ad infinitum.

There is no way I would allow a surgeon to cut me open had he or she not been clinically trained in a surgical unit.  However, that is exactly what is done to young pastors.  We’re taught in a classroom, merely encouraged to get a position on staff at a church during academic training, and then we sit in a classroom for 97 credit hours (more on the lengthiness later).  Do you realize how little sense this makes?  I was taught in a classroom about the theological aspects of communion, but never served it until my second week as a pastor.  I was taught about preaching, but was only required to deliver one sermon in a classroom in my entire Master of Divinity program.  I was taught about counseling, but never counseled a single person until I was full-time in the pastorate.  It just blows my mind that clinical training is required for a medical professional, but for a vocational minister, it is largely theoretical and minutely practical.

Pastoral Training from Non-Pastors

Another area I find to be of significant interest is that a majority of the pastoral training I received in the seminary classroom came from people who have never been pastors, haven’t been pastors in multiple decades, or who pastored declining churches.  Can you imagine a Medical Doctor being taught by someone who had never been a Medical Doctor in a practice?  Can you imagine paying a plumber hundreds of dollars who had not been under a sink in multiple decades?  Can you imagine being taught how to develop a hedge fund financial firm from an advisor with consistently declining results?  All three of these points of imagination sound ridiculous, but for some reason many academicians do not see the ridiculousness of an analagous situation in the seminary classrooms around the USA.

Lengthiness

My brother, an MBA from University of Texas, asked me why I sounded surprised when I told him of the declining enrollment of many Southern Baptist seminaries.  He then went on to tell me of how odd it seemed to him to require so many credit hours for a Master of Divinity.  If you wanted to go through University of Texas’ dual degree program of an MBA and Master of Manufacturing and Decision Systems Engineering (MDSE), it is only 76 credit hours.  If you wanted to become a nurse anesthetist, with an MSN from Union University, it is only 73 credit hours.  However, where I went to seminary, they advertise it as a 91 credit hour degree with six additional hours required in elementary Greek courses.

The degree is way too lengthy, but it is expected to be the degree of pursuit for those who feel called to the senior pastorate.

Lack of Change

Besides the addition of internet courses, how has the seminary educational process changed since the 1950s?  People cheer in agreement when, at pastors’ conferences, a preacher will proclaim how if the 1950s come back, our American churches will be ready.  However, the same is true with the seminary educational process.  My Dad, a 1979 graduate of Southwestern Seminary, in comparison with me, a 2007 graduate of the same institution, found very little difference in the process of how we were trained.  Similarities are eery from his academic experiences to mine.  On a rather humorous note, even the same tables and chairs are still in a majority of the classrooms from his time in south Ft Worth, to mine nearly thirty years later.  Meanwhile, the world around us has changed dramatically.

Conclusion

While I have offered the reasons for needed change in the American seminary educational process, I will offer my proposed solutions to these problems in a future blog post.  Stay tuned . . .

For nearly three years, I served as the pastor’s intern at Prestonwood Baptist Church in my hometown of Plano, Texas.  My pastor, Dr. Jack Graham, took me to lunch my last week as his assistant and taught me four life lessons that I should always apply to my ministry.  I hope you can apply these to your life, too:

(1) That I will be faithful to obey God’s Word, and be strong against temptations that would pull me away from intimacy with God.

(2) That my relationship with my wife would continue to grow and that it would emulate the biblical example of a marital relationship.

(3) The health and well-being of my family would be more important than that of the church.

(4) That I will follow the leadership of the Holy Spirit in my preaching and other opportunities to minister.

As a young preacher, I have worked through my processes of homiletical styles, approaches, preparatory processes, and delivery over the last six years.  With this, a choice of what approach to preaching I would choose: expository, topical, or a combination thereof (depending upon the respective series being preached).

At the outset of this blog post, please allow me to define, in my own words, along with a brief explanation of what “expository” and “topical” approaches to homiletics actually are.

• EXPOSITORY PREACHING is an approach that begins with the Lord leading the preacher to a text that needs to be taught to a congregation.  By text, I mean a verse, passage, chapter, or book that will be taught.  It involves taking the text and exposing it to the audience.  With the exposing of this text, it is then illustrated with stories (both biblical and non-biblical anecdotes), applied to the lives of the context of the audience, and it concludes by always pointing people to the cross of Jesus Christ.
• TOPICAL PREACHING is an approach that begins with the Lord leading the preacher to a topic that needs to be taught to a congregation.  By topic, I’m referring to an issue with which people must cope, and finding verses throughout the Bible to explain how to cope with the respective issue(s).  A common approach to topical preaching is from Andy Stanley’s book, “Communicating for Change,” where Stanley describes his approach of “Me–We–God–You–Us.”  Click here to read an interesting interview with Andy Stanley on Dr. Ed Stetzer’s blog.  Examples of topics preached include: Sadness, Hope, Love, Parenting, etc.

I was raised listening to pastors whom preached with both styles, but from what I remember, it was predominantly more topical than it was expository.  Over the last (nearly) two years I have served as Pleasant Hill Baptist Church’s Senior Pastor, I have developed a strong inclination toward preaching predominantly-expository messages.  My reasoning behind this is that apart from God’s Word, I have very little to say in front of a congregation.

I recently heard Dr. Johnny Hunt explain the reason why he expositorally preaches when he explained the idea of reading a letter.  Imagine you just read one paragraph from the third page of a letter, then a paragraph from the second page, then read one sentence from the last page, and tried to tell me what the letter said.  You would be explaining the letter out-of-context.  This reminds me of how a news reporter may interview someone for thirty minutes, edit the video down to two minutes, and make it look like the interviewee is saying whatever is desired to be reported.

My job is not to teach people “how to” do anything.  My job is to serve as a mouthpiece for God’s Word and it naturally teaches “how to” live your life.

As I preach, my approach is to give contextual background historically, linguistically, and geographically.  As an aside, my father-in-law, Dr. Tony Crisp, leads a ministry, TLC Ministries, Inc., that has a sole purpose of teaching people the Bible historically, linguistically, and geographically.  After giving a background, I read the text, and outline the natural flow of the passage based upon its grammatical makeup.  Sometimes, that is one point, sometimes three, and sometimes six.  Throughout each point I glean from the text, I creatively illustrate it and apply it.  Throughout the sermon, I attempt to summarize at the beginning of every new point to keep the audience on-track with that which is being proclaimed.  At the conclusion, I usually attempt to tell a story to draw the audience back into my attention, and re-state the points once more in order to hammer home that which I am trying to teach.  So, I guess you could call my typical structure “BACKGROUND–TEXT–OUTLINE–STORY.”

I am not saying that others whom use completely different approaches are ungodly or unbiblical preachers, I am just seeking to explain my approach to preaching, and why I have chosen this approach.  May God’s people be equipped more effectively through the preaching of His sacred Word.

I thought I’d share with you about some simple ways to invite people to “Friend Day” at Pleasant Hill this Sunday:

(1) Facebook: I’ve created an event invitation for you to use to invite your friends to “Friend Day” via Facebook.  Click here to check it out.

(2) Telephone: Whether its through an old-school phone call or a new-school text message, invite people via the telephone.

(3) Straight Up Ask’em: Just walk up to a friend and say, “Will you please come to church with me this Sunday?  We’re having a Friend Day, and I need to bring a friend.  I’d love for you to come!”

Don’t forget to tell people you invite that they will get an extra hour of sleep this Sunday, so there is no better time to check out church than on a day when they get an extra hour of sleep.  Telling them about the time change eliminates an excuse for people to not come.

Also, check out day 30 of the My Friendship Connection devotional here.  It’s awesome!

Get out there and invite people to Friend Day!

Reaching East TN, America, & the World for Christ,

Dr. Jeremy P. Roberts, Pastor

If you’re a fan of Seinfeld, which I definitely am, you may remember the “Bubble Boy” episode.  I think this episode is hilarious!  As I reflect upon this episode, I think of how many Christians get stuck inside “the Christian bubble.”  George played games with the bubble boy, and conversed with him sporadically, he was ultimately uncomfortable speaking with the boy in the bubble because he was separated from him.  Just as George had a hard time relating to and conversing with the bubble boy, so do many Christians have a hard time relating to and conversing with non-Christians.

Christians find comfort in being around other Christians.  Jesus is Savior, and there is comfort in the fellowship of other believers.  A person’s closest friends should be Christians so as to sharpen one another (Prov. 27:17) and be equally yoked in close relationships (2 Cor. 6:14), but Christians also need to beware of only being friends with Christians.  Followers of Jesus need to be around non-followers in order to have opportunities to share their faith with others.  The balance of this should not involve only being friend with non-Christians, but there should be a balance.

In order to be friends with non-Christians, one does not have to act like non-Christians.  As a follower of Jesus Christ, God wants us to be in the world, not of the world (Luke 9:23-26).

As we look at the life of George Costanza and reflect upon him conversing with the bubble boy, may we think about how to get outside the bubble in order to communicate the love of Christ most effectively in order to reach this world for Christ.

Check out a clip of the bubble boy Seinfeld episode below.

Blessings,

Pastor Jeremy

Yesterday, here at Pleasant Hill, I had the opportunity to deliver the message from God’s Word with a sermon entitled, “No One Left Behind” from 2 Kings 6-7.  I find it so interesting to examine the way the four lepers in 2 Kings 7 chose to get out of their seats, take a risk of entering the enemy’s camp, and they found a multitude of blessings from the Lord, including food, gold & silver, and water.  The went from leprosy to luxury in a matter of moments.

As I think about the three questions the lepers had to face, and you & I have to face, I feel a sense of urgency to reach the dying culture in which I live to see that no one is left behind.  The four lepers found all of these wonderful things while their own people within the city walls whom abandoned them and ostracised them were starving and thirsting to death.  As a matter of fact, in 2 Kings 6, we learn they were buying the heads of donkeys and dove dung for mass amounts of money in order to have something to eat.  The four lepers discovered the camp of the Syrian army, the very army that cut off all food and water supplies and surrounded the city walls, but the Lord scared the evil army away from their camp abruptly as they left all of their supplies.

The four lepers were gorging themselves with food, wearing fine jewelry and clothing they found in the abandoned Syrian camp, then realized their own people were on the verge of death.  Here are the three questions they faced, and you & I face with people who do not know Christ:

(1) Am I aware of those who are left behind?

(2) Do I care about those who are left behind?

(3) Will I share with those who are left behind?

November 1st is the Pleasant Hill FRIEND DAY.  Invite someone to Friend Day at Pleasant Hill, or if you aren’t an attendee of PHBC, invite someone to your church, and do your part to ensure that not one lost person you come across will be left behind the pearly gates of Heaven.

May we work together to Reach East TN, America, and the World for Jesus Christ!

Blessings,

Pastor Jeremy