Episode 38: On the Pastor’s Heart and Other Churches
How should pastors think about other churches? In this episode of Pastors Talk, Mark Dever and Jonathan Leeman discuss why pastors should have big hearts and care deeply for the communities that they are in. They explain why pastors should avoid narrow self-interest and instead cultivate a heart that loves other ministries well. They finish by sharing their advice on how pastors can coach their hearts to promote other churches.
- How Pastors Can Approach Other Ministries
- Why and How to Be a Big-Hearted Pastor
- Praying to Cultivate a Heart for Other Churches
Transcript
The following is a lightly edited transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
Jonathan Leeman:
Hi, I am Jonathan Leeman.
Mark Dever:
I’m Mark Dever
Jonathan Leeman:
And welcome to this episode of the 9Marks Pastors Talk.
Mark Dever:
Where’d the cameras go?
Jonathan Leeman:
That was one special only, but wait, let me tell him what we are and why 20 years old. 9Marks exists to equip church leaders with a biblical vision and practical resources for what it is for
Mark Dever:
Building Healthy Church.
Jonathan Leeman:
Learn more at 9marks.org. Mark-
Mark Dever
And we’ve been doing this for 20 years.
Jonathan Leeman:
No, we haven’t. We’ve been doing this for, this is like a 30th episode or so, somewhere around there.
Mark Dever:
36 or 37
Jonathan Leeman:
But 9Marks has been around for 20 years.
Mark Dever:
That’s what I meant.
Jonathan Leeman:
And we had a good time with that.
Mark Dever:
Where’d Match Marker go?
Jonathan Leeman:
That was a good conversation. I enjoyed that.
Mark Dever:
Okay, so it’s just us right now.
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s you and me.
Mark Dever:
It’s just audio.
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s right. Regressing.
Mark Dever:
Okay.
How Pastors Can Approach Other Ministries
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, here’s what I want to talk about. In light of the Sunday night service at CHBC, in which CHBC sent out 60 members to plant a church, I wanted to think about the pastor’s heart and other ministries. That’s the title of this episode.
Mark Dever:
The Pastor’s Heart, meaning the pastor of the capital of Baptist Church, but also giving time for nine marks.
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s one way to do it. Another way to do it. And here’s what triggered it in my thinking.
Mark Dever:
Or you being an elder at Shirley Baptist Church, Lord willing sometime soon.
Jonathan Leeman:
What triggered the thought of watching, is that’s one way I cultivate a heart for other churches. What occurred to me though was when I looked at you on Sunday night and you were emotional, you held the tears Zen kind of, but it was obviously a tough thing and I just thought to myself, how does Mark do this again and again?
How does he, again and again, send people out, start afresh, not with quite a new batch, but people that you’ve been ministering with, ministering through for years, then going off and doing other works? I just thought, goodness gracious, that must be hard. Any thoughts on Sunday night and if you want to tell people what happened?
Mark Dever:
Yeah, we had about 60 members, about 10 of whom maybe said goodbye, maybe. Maybe 12 said goodbye with each speaking for a few minutes. Jonathan was one of those speaking to the gathered congregation, and it was the last time they were meeting with us as part of our church.
And Lord willingness coming Sunday, they’ll start meeting separately as Shepherd Baptist Church brothers. If you wait until kids get a little bit older, it’ll be, I think a very similar feeling you’ll have when the kids start leaving home.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah, I assume that
Mark Dever:
With Annie and Nathan out of our house now, I saw Annie a couple of weeks ago in Oregon. I saw Nathan on the phone last night. I love them dearly, but so there’s sadness that that period is over. There’s joy at what’s to come.
It’s similar just when an individual leaves to go to another church or move someplace else in the country or the world. This was a little different than that normally because though we’ve done this many times, many times we’ve done this a number of times.
We’ve certainly never had this many people who’ve been here this long, all leave at once. So in that sense, it was a unique thing in my experience. I’m sure brothers listening to this may have had this or even more.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, and because those people had been at the church, the people in represent folk on the whole who have been here for over a decade,
Mark Dever:
A lot of folks came from 95 to 2005,
Jonathan Leeman:
Right?
Mark Dever:
Yeah. And we’re saying we’re having this conversation in 2018. So that’s a long time ago. So I kind of feel like they were saying goodbye to us, but they’ve already built this church. Now they’re going to build another church. And that’s what I hope to say to you guys when I’m with you, Lord willing for John’s installation end of February.
So there’s definitely, as you saw, there’s sort of an emotion of sadness on my face, but it was definitely equaled or outweighed with the joy, the excitement, the satisfaction, the anticipation of what the Lord will do.
Jonathan Leeman:
At the same time, Mark, it’s like sending us, I assume I’ve not been there yet, a son or daughter away to college or whatever, but it’s something I’ve been watching you do brother again and again and again. Maybe if you had 20 children and one after the other every two years, you had to send that precious child away. Doesn’t that get exhausting? Do you grow weary?
Mark Dever:
Well, I certainly, there’s an aspect of that I don’t enjoy, which you’re suggesting. I’ve already missed having you at elders’ meetings. So I think our eldership would be stronger with you sitting there.
But if you were sitting there, then you wouldn’t be part of doing this other thing. So just the equation in my mind I think is pretty clear that you can’t have both and these things need to happen. So yeah, I dunno.
Living Under the Great Commission
Jonathan Leeman:
Living life under the Great Commission has to be sent
Mark Dever:
Yes, and with confidence that it’s all going to work, and that this whole story ends well. So yeah, we’re straining ahead, but we know we’re not finally going to fall on our face and fail. We know that finally there’s the victory of Christ.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, and that refrain from the hymn that kept coming up on Sunday night from Jerusalem, my happy home, where congregations, nare, breakup, and Sabbath have no end.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. We meet the part and part to meet
Jonathan Leeman:
Anticipating that
Mark Dever:
When earthly labors are complete. Yeah.
Why and How to Be a Big-Hearted Pastor
Jonathan Leeman:
I’ve heard Brad Wheeler say, and maybe he heard this from you, that pastors should be big-hearted. Why is that true?
Mark Dever:
I’m sure many people have said that.
Jonathan Leeman:
Perhaps
Mark Dever:
I think a command deduction,
Jonathan Leeman:
He’s the one I heard it from.
Mark Dever:
Cool. Well, I think if you have a narrow self-interest only, you’re not hearing what Jesus called the two great commandments, love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love your neighbors yourself. You’re not hearing those.
You’re not obeying those. So I think you want to, if you’re pastoring a church, you want to pray to have a concern, certainly for your own life, your own family, your own church. But beyond that, you want to have a concern for your neighborhood, your city, your area, your nation, and the world.
And that’s got to mean having a concern for the future as well. So you have to be investing in people who are not merely your peers, but younger than you, and you have to be encouraging them with a gentle but firm hand on their back, pushing them forward in the race.
Jonathan Leeman:
What are the things that you do when you’re looking at younger guys and thinking about them and the potential future ministry or a guy is an elder or a guy comes to you and says, Hey, I want to go into ministry, I want to go to seminary.
What are some of the signs that you see in a brother? It’s like, yeah, you have an outward-directed big heart as opposed to turn, a small, competitive heart. Is that the sort of thing you’re examining, looking at? Sure.
Mark Dever:
That’s one of the things I think they’re going to naturally be evangelizing and discipling, even if I don’t prepare a platform for them for ministry. So a brother’s standing on the side and saying, well, or a sister for that matter, for the kind of things we’re talking about and saying, I really want to serve the Lord, and then they’re looking at me like I have the power to let them do that or not. I’m thinking, okay, they at least don’t have a good understanding here.
I’m thinking of Charles and Vine kind of stuff, that if they love the Lord, if they’ve been reading the scriptures if they’ve been affected much themselves, they’ll understand that they have the ability to turn to another human and start talking to them.
They’ll have an inquisitiveness about how others are doing when they see them at Bible study or at church, and they’ll be initiating and setting up those structures of ministry entirely apart from whether anybody at the church ever officially asks ’em to be a small group leader, or whether I ask my brother to preach on a Sunday night.
Jonathan Leeman:
And you would say this is something that isn’t exclusive to extroverts?
Mark Dever:
No.
Jonathan Leeman:
An introvert should bear some of these qualities.
Mark Dever:
Yes. I mean, I think some of the great pastors the Christian Church has seen have been introverts. Some of the pastors I know today, who are most reflective, healthful, introspective, and most powerfully meditating on scripture are more introverted. And I think that’s,
Jonathan Leeman:
But there’s still that inquisitiveness about the person sitting next to them, how they’re doing, whether or not they’re prospering.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, when I use the word introvert anyway, I don’t mean somebody who’s unconcerned about others at all. I simply mean somebody who finds it more energy to be around and talking to others usually as opposed to energy-giving. So you can be very extroverted in not loving at all.
You could be very narcissistic and yeah, so extroversion, and introversion in my mind are not virtuous or unvirtuous states, they’re predilections. It’s a different way the wind’s blowing. Then as a Christian, you just got to figure out how to set your sail to go in the right direction.
Jonathan Leeman:
This is going to be a tough question to answer, so large and amorphous and unspecific, but let’s see.
Mark Dever:
Well, this will be the first.
Jonathan Leeman:
Let’s see if I get anything casting this line into the water.
Mark Dever:
Are you usually here? This light?
Jonathan Leeman:
Wow,
Mark Dever:
It’s four, it’s four 15. I mean, I thought generally you’re at home with your feet up by now
Jonathan Leeman:
And all the nice things I was trying to say about Mark’s heart. What was I thinking, Mark? Sometimes I don’t feel like I love other people very well. I want a heart that loves other people more. What do I do?
Mark Dever:
Well, obviously you pray about it.
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s what you’re talking about, right? Yeah. Loving other people.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. Well, yeah, there’s also some wisdom in knowing sort of what to do. So there can be somebody who has a very sincere sense of good disposition towards someone and really not be very wise and thinking about what to do with that. You could be very selfish with that.
Jonathan Leeman:
Let’s think of Paul’s prayer that your love may have bound more and more knowledge and depth of insight. That’s right. Okay. There’s a love that doesn’t have knowledge and depth of insight. Sorry, go on.
Mark Dever:
Well, in that sense, you can think of love as the strength of the wind that’s blowing. Use my sailboat analogy from a moment ago. And what we want is the wisdom to know how to capture that and help move the boat in the right direction.
How Do I Get More Wind?
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay, let’s talk about the wind. How do I get more wind?
Mark Dever:
You pray. You try to stoke your own heart with thoughts of what the Lord has done in forgiving. You understand more how you are the object of God’s love, how that’s not love that you’ve deserved. When you pray that from that, then he gives you an overflowing heart of love toward others.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. Sometimes you will often, in fact in our church, you will, while encouraging people to go, Hey, go on this plant. Consider missions. You’ll simultaneously qualify by saying, now some of you should stay, some of you, the best thing you can do is continue on and a ministry here and maybe find a house on Capitol Hill, et cetera, et cetera.
Right? So you do both. Here’s my question. What’s the difference between wrongful, and selfish? I want you people to say a right selfishness or rather a right. Hey, some of you should stay.
Mark Dever:
Well, certainly if either one of wanting people to go or wanting people to stay is for your own comfort, if that’s your main end in it, well, that’s not right. That’s not the north star you’re supposed to be guided by. So you need to be thinking for the Lord’s glory and then also for the good of that person.
So I’ll give you an example. I have a friend right now who’s a member of the church I love dearly, and it looks like he may be offered a very nice job elsewhere in the country. Well, I mean I have engines crashing in my own mind because I really want him to stay, but I’m more fundamentally his friend and if I think he can find a good church there for him and his family, I think I’ve got to encourage him to go.
So it’s not always clear to me what’s best, but I know that I have to be, this local church is going to be fine. The Lord is going to take care of us, he’s going to provide, and if we feel more on the hungrier end, sometimes maybe we’ll work more at evangelism or discipling.
So what I need to do is with each individual, try to help them with kind of their life path of what would be good and useful for what the Lord seems to be calling them to do. So more generally than with your question about how do you encourage people to go and to stay? I think you encourage people to be deliberate in their actions.
So most people throughout most of human history and in most places in the world, even today, most people are not able to make many decisions about where they’re going to live. They kind of are living where they’re living and that’s just they don’t have the means or the motive or the ability to go and relocate someplace.
So because we’re in a major metropolitan area, there are a lot of people in our congregation who can make that choice and who will have choices. A lot of people who’ve been through university and then they’re looking for a job so they can locate in various places. So there’s a kind of stewardship that comes with that.
And also our area can be a very expensive one to live on, live in, depending on where you live, it can be less convenient than what a lot of Americans have experienced in suburbs or rural areas.
So there are disincentives, at least carnal disincentives for living here. So all that kind of has to go in together to try to help somebody think through, okay, should you go to this place or that place because there’s a good church there?
Or you could help get good gospel work going there. Or are you the kind of brother or sister who can actually stay here? And as I say sometimes hug a parade. Can you stay here and help us have a local congregation here that people can come through that will bless them and encourage ’em and export elsewhere?
And that’s where I think of brothers like Herb Carlson or sisters like Maxine Off Herb’s been here since the forties, Maxine since the fifties. And yet here, herb’s not able to be here anymore. But here’s Maxine every week, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. She’s recently lost her husband and yet still she’s here praying, encouraging.
Well, that’s a tremendous calling. So I don’t want people to think the only show of spiritual maturity is to go help a church plant or to go out. There is a great show of maturity of being able to stay here and endure like Bill Barons has that you mentioned on Sunday night.
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s right. Well, and what you’ve used before, the language of old growth, new growth, and the need for pastors to have some old growth and the church that they can continue to rely on. But what strikes me throughout that entire conversation, Mark, is you’re trying to help people think about kingdom purposes, whether staying or going. And in some regard, I don’t want to say detaching your heart, but not making that the priority. I see
Mark Dever:
My own personal heart.
Jonathan Leeman:
I see you love people acutely. I see you tear up often and seemingly more often. And yet these people are coming and going, you’re like the example that you just gave with this brother. Let me tell another story from this church plant of watching you for years, Mark, you have felt like a CH church plant wasn’t the most strategic thing for this church
Mark Dever:
To do. I think I called it our last church plant. It would be our last church plant. We’d be like taking the heart out because most of these people,
Jonathan Leeman:
Our old
Mark Dever:
Gross, like you had moved there specifically. So you could be so close to Capitol Hill but have a slightly larger house and more yard for your kids as they grow up as opposed to what you could have here on the hill. That’s how Jason Townsend deceived so many of us into moving out there.
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s right. Jason real estate agent,
Mark Dever:
Ryan’s twin brother.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah, that’s right.
Mark Dever:
The plot thickens.
Jonathan Leeman:
It’s a conspiracy. But then fast forward, I’m sitting in your study with three other elders talking to you about John Joseph and the three or four of us said, Mark, we think we should do this.
Mark Dever:
And John just being starting a new church in Chevrolet,
Jonathan Leeman:
Plant in Chevrolet in that place that you didn’t think was strategic that you said was the last for plants, and we think John Joseph May be on board, and I watched your heart. I don’t know that your heart switched, but immediately you got behind it. You said something like, well, it seems like this is what the Lord’s doing. I’m going to support it all the way.
Mark Dever:
Yeah,
Jonathan Leeman:
You might’ve even said, it wouldn’t have been my first choice, but I want you to know I’m going to be completely behind this. And that big-heartedness was striking to me, and I would love more brothers to be able to see and learn from and
Mark Dever:
Well, thank you, brother. I think that’s not just big-heartedness. I think it also at least tends to be humility before the plans of God are different than my plans when I see them. So part of that’s the respect I would have for you and Dan and Claw. So when I see three elders who live in willing to leave a church that I know all three of you love and willing to do this and John then a preacher, also an elder in our church, willing to go help you to lead that work.
Well, that just sounds like something, yeah, it just seemed immediately obvious that that’s something that’s good and should be encouraged and supported. So I think part of that is it’s not just big-heartedness. I hope it’s humility toward the Lord’s ways of being different than mine and him normally speaking through elders.
Jonathan Leeman:
And I would also say your addiction as you’ve put it to the big picture, what God is doing in the big picture.
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
Do you want to say anything about why you chose not to speak on Sunday night as much?
Mark Dever:
Well, yeah. I mean if I were scripting this thing, I think I might’ve had me speak some more, but I’m going to get to speak to the CH group, Lord willing in a few weeks when I’m there for
Jonathan Leeman:
The installation in front of the entire CHBC as we’re all up on stage
Mark Dever:
And I speak to them all the time, but in that particular moment, well, I was just too overcome with emotion. I mean, I just really couldn’t say much. It would be useful. I would just start blubbering and that’s just not going to be helpful for anybody.
Jonathan Leeman:
I think your instinct there is unusual. I think a lot of pastors,
Mark Dever:
I don’t think so. What man wants to stand in front of a thousand people and cry?
Jonathan Leeman:
No, that’s true. That’s true. But I think a lot of pastors would say, no, it’s good to show ’em your heart.
Mark Dever:
Well, yeah, okay. All the congregation has lots of chances to see my heart. So when I was preaching on Sunday morning from Hagi too, I was talking about the Lord coming into the temple.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah, yeah. Okay. On a slightly related topic of the heart, what about coaching?
Mark Dever:
Oh, look at the time.
Praying to Cultivate a Heart for Other Churches
Jonathan Leeman:
What about coaching your heart to promote other nearby churches? A lot of guys don’t naturally do that.
Mark Dever:
Well, again, I had lunch two days ago with a brother who’s here planting a new church here in the district. And I just wanted to get to know him better and encourage him by God’s grace. We’ve seen a lot of new churches get started here in the last 20 years that are good, that are helpful, that are preaching the gospel, and that men and women are being built up and coming to Christ.
And some of ’em do things more like I would do them others, other less like I would do them. But I would still preach that Jesus is the only way that his atoning sacrifices our hope for salvation. Faith in him alone is the way to be reconciled with God, to be forgiven of your sins.
And I want to encourage those. It’s the image I use sometimes it’s a time of starvation. So we don’t care if everybody eats at our restaurant. We just want people to eat. And the point is not that they have to eat with us.
Jonathan Leeman:
And that translates into the sort of praying you do on a Sunday morning,
Mark Dever:
No praying regularly for other churches by name. In fact, this guy, I said, this church planner I had lunch with on Monday. I said, Brother, if you want to come by some Sunday evening, just let me know ahead of time. I’ll interview you.
We’ll pray for your church. And this is one way, Jonathan, where our kind of single service understanding of what an assembly is, and that is a special, weird, and historically unanimous understanding that we have. Is that an assembly in fact assembles?
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s right.
Mark Dever:
So we think a congregation congregates. So because of that, our building is full. So either we build a larger building or we need to have folks leave this assembly and start new assemblies. And that’s by God’s grace what you, Jonathan, are helping to have happen. Even this coming Sunday.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah, maybe somebody should write a book on that.
Mark Dever:
How’s it coming? I know you’re working on it.
Jonathan Leeman:
Going to get back to it soon.
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
Paul says, that some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from goodwill. The latter do it out of love knowing that I’m put here for the defense of the gospel, the former proclaimed Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me, punt in my imprisonment. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed. And in that, I rejoice.
Mark Dever:
Amen.
Jonathan Leeman:
Any reflections on that brother?
Mark Dever:
Just stuck in the providence of God. That matchmaker just walked into the room.
Jonathan Leeman:
Here he is. Guess what we’re doing another.
Mark Dever:
We were just talking about, where Matt goes. Where’d the cameras go? And he, Hey,
Jonathan Leeman:
Do you work for any reflections on that? I mean, Paul, is he actually rooting for bad preachers?
Mark Dever:
No, of course not. He knows the sovereignty of God. He knows that the Lord is going to win when Christ in Matthew 16 promises that his church will succeed. That the gates of hell, which is a defensive move, the gates of hell will not prevail.
That the church’s aggressive offense will work. And Paul is confident of that. And he knows that God, just like he used Balaam’s donkey, can use preachers even with bad motives who are going to preach the truth of Jesus Christ so that he will be glorified by others.
Jonathan Leeman:
Any other final thoughts for us, brother on the pastor, his heart, and other ministries? What have I failed to ask?
Mark Dever:
You’ve done a great job. Pray for other work, pray for other gospel work. Pray for God to bless it and in your messages, make space for people to obey by going and people to obey by staying deliberately and in your own personal dealing with people, trying to be your most flatly honest about what you think would be best for them and for the work. And sometimes that might mean you awkwardly suggest somebody stay,
And sometimes it’s going to be for you yourself awkwardly mean. No, I think you should probably go so you can pray for me in that with this friend who I mentioned, I’m not naming and his job offers, I really don’t want him to go. And there’s part of me that wonders like, oh wow, with how he’s stuck in here and what the Lord doing at this church.
I don’t know where he is going. He’s going to find a church that’s going to get second in the same way. But man, they’re going to offer twice as much money and he can take care of his kid’s education and it’s kind of professional development.
So I told him the other night when we took a walk about it, I said, 10 years ago I would’ve told you to go. But actually these days I’ve heard so many bad stories from people who’ve just gone that I’m not quite as sure. Anyway, pray I have wisdom on that.
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s good. I find one of the best ways to encourage my own heart, to love others and other ministries is what you just said, which is praying for those and their fruitfulness and their success.
And even the attention I get where my heart may be wanting attention. I find that it just has a wonderful effect on my heart when I say, okay, Lord, may his tribe increase. Amen. Thank you for your time, brother.
Mark Dever:
Thank you. And that’s why we pray that Ligonier would prosper.
Jonathan Leeman:
Amen
Mark Dever:
And grace to you would prosper and desiring God would prosper. And these other ministries, it doesn’t just need to be nine marks,
Jonathan Leeman:
No
Mark Dever:
Nine marks are just trying to help everybody out.
Jonathan Leeman:
There we go. Thank you. Thank you.
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