Meeting Transcripts

Opening Remarks by Darrel Lee

Welcome

Thanks so much for coming today. It is always an encouragement to all of us, I trust, to gather together and enjoy special meetings, and also to gather together for these ministers’ meetings.

Agenda

Please turn to the “Schedule of Events,” right after the opening page. We are going to change a few things. The first section will go as planned. We’ll rearrange the middle section by having Brother Nolan Roby speak first and then the three pastors who are named there. Brother Wayne Butler had to return to Woodlake, so he will be unable to speak today. We will try to have short breaks at the top of each hour. Brother Nolan will lead the final section and then I will conclude with some comments. After that, I have asked Brother Cliff Paulsen to give us an update on the progress of the campground.

Syllabus

If you will turn to the section titled “Syllabus,” you will see that we have added an element to our session today in order to provide a follow-up opportunity for those who would like to pursue it. We have added an optional assignment with reading suggestions. Objectives are listed at the top of the syllabus. Hopefully, these will be accomplished over the course of the next few weeks or months through today’s sessions and the suggested reading selections. When finished, you will be able to name the most important element of a minister’s ability to persuade the congregation—himself. You will also be able to describe the components of a successful sermon, which include God’s Word and illustrations. You will know that the style of a successful sermon is one that is clear, concise, and interesting. And that successful delivery methods include voice, demeanor, delivery, and more. You will also be able to identify ways of successfully approaching the congregation, which include developing a rapport and engaging the congregation.

Lastly, in the syllabus, is an assignment that pertains primarily to pastors. We’ve seen a number of success stories over the past few years in our branch churches. I became aware of some through personally communicating with pastors, and of others through reports that I have received. We have many success stories in our midst, but we have arbitrarily selected just four, so those respective pastors will share their stories.

Optional Assignment

Our study topic is centered on two books: Baxter’s The Heart of the Yale Lectures, which I will comment on in a moment, and specific reading from the Minister’s Manual. The added element is the optional assignment. We have designed it so that any pastor could hand this syllabus to a new minister and say, “Here’s your assignment.” First, though, the new minister would need to watch the March 8, 2007, ministerial training video. Any pastor can request one from headquarters. The syllabus was developed for training, but also with an eye towards the future. Had we had an official syllabus for every ministers’ meeting over the past 100 years, we could have packaged them into an accredited program. If we start with today’s meeting and continue on, perhaps one hundred years from now, if the Lord tarries, this material will be packaged and developed into an accredited program. Recently, a young man in Portland preached his first sermon. I would have loved to have been able to hand him this three months earlier. I would have loved to have had Brother Nolan hand me something like this. After I preached my first sermon, Brother Nolan did loan me his copy of The Heart of the Yale Lectures, which he asked me to read. I did read it and returned the copy, and he didn’t know it, but I bought my own copy and still have it. In fact, it is in front of me on my desk here today.

The history of that book is this: for the centennial of the implementation of these lectures that were given at the Yale University School of Divinity, Baxter went through the volumes of lectures that were delivered at that school of divinity and chose the heart—the meat—of the lectures as they related to preaching. Other subjects were also covered during that time as there had been a bequeathed amount to start the school and bring in lecturers. For the most part, over those periods of years, the invited guests were not repeated. The lectures began in 1871. This book was originally printed in 1947, but Baxter revised it and put it in book form in 1971. That’s the history of The Heart of the Yale Lectures. We have received permission to print a certain number of copies and so, you have a copy in your binder. The book is out of print, though there are a few books still available. If you were to get on your computer and do a search, you could probably get one if you could beat the other eighty people here to it. The book covers the three aspects that are noted in the binder: The Preacher, The Sermon, and The Congregation. Brother Nolan will present his own synopsis of the importance of those three aspects. He will not necessarily cover everything in the book. He will cover whatever the Lord has laid on his heart.

Number three of the optional assignment is key, and optional to all of you. It is not optional to the Portland Young People’s ministerial staff. They are hereby assigned to complete the assignment. I met with them beforehand. I also met with ten of the other ministers on our staff to get their reactions to this. They are not assigned this however, unless they want to do the assignment, then they are certainly welcome to participate. The assignment is a five-page report on this session’s topics. Take notes if you want to fulfill this assignment. Your notes should not be just on these sessions today and on the comments that Brother Nolan makes, but also on the reading of the book as you go through it.

In Portland, I plan to meet with the six youth ministers on a monthly basis over the next three months, covering one third of this book. For them, the assignment will be somewhat of a team effort, making notes together and then individually writing a report. I was concerned about overwhelming them. I told them that the key was not the report, but what they had learned. I let it be known to each of them that I would be satisfied with one page of hand-scribbled notes telling what they had learned, but they all said they were game to whip out a report. The report should be like a journal. They are to write what they have gleaned from this training and tell how they can improve their approach to the ministry as it relates to these three topics. They will not be writing about how someone can improve in general. They are to write about themselves. This is a personal assignment. The report can be a dialogue with oneself, with the Lord, or with the one reading the assignment.

Pastors, you are free to implement this in your church, if you have a ministerial staff. We have pastors here who are the ministerial staff. If you want to implement this with just yourself and one minister, feel free to do that. This can be implemented locally or people can participate by submitting their reports to my PO Box. If implemented locally, the pastor has the prerogative of asking that the reports be submitted to him or her.

Pastors who participate would also do number four of the assignment, which will be very clear as we go along and as the presentations are made today by the pastors. There are checklists in the book as well, so you can look those over. I skipped over the style format. The report is to be double-spaced, on 8.5 x 11 standard-sized paper. The font and the margin specifications are noted in your binder. Five pages might sound overwhelming, but it is not, given that format. If you find that it is and you want to participate, then do the one-page report in your own handwriting.

I will tell you how I will implement this in Portland. You may have a better way of doing it. I will read the report and make notes on it. For example, I may say, “Good thought,” or “Have you considered this?” Then, I will give it back to the minister. That may be how a local pastor will do it, or maybe they will do it in some other way, which is fine. The only thing that I do request is that the final product is submitted to headquarters. We need to keep a centralized record of who has done it, in case we have an accredited system in the future, when there may be some use for the records to have been kept. If you have questions along the way, you can ask me and I’ll try to answer them.

Confidentiality is important. It is important for the Young People’s ministers here to know that I will be the only one reading their report. This is important for everyone else. This is not going to suddenly show up on the internet. As it stands right now, if the local pastor does not implement this assignment, they will be sent to my PO Box and I will pass them to Brother Nolan. If someone requests that another minister read their report, that request will be honored. I will contact the person you requested. They would either say “Yes, I will do it,” or if they didn’t think they were up to it, I would let you know.

Finally, you may know of another book whose format would lend itself to a similar syllabus in the future. If you do, I would like you to submit that suggestion to me. Don’t send me the book. I have too many books sent to me already. Send me your recommendation and your summary of that book’s content. Then, I will meet with some others and bring our suggestions together and make a determination as to how we would proceed going forward.

Training Sessions Date Change

I have just a few more items before I turn this over to Brother Nolan. I have been asked if we could move the training session in March from Thursday to Friday, and the answer is, yes. We can do that next year, if Jesus tarries, unless some reason should come up that we would not do it, and I don’t foresee any. The reason it has been held on Thursdays—I know this because I have heard Brother Loyce Carver say it—is it was a way to get the ministers to arrive earlier. The same is true for the pastors’ meeting before camp. He could not get pastors to come early enough, so he scheduled the meetings for the Friday before camp.

We still want you to show up, but we have to recognize that things are different economically than they were in the past, in some regards. We would like you to arrive as soon as you can, but I think we have to face the reality that due to vacations and work schedules, it is going to be easier for a lot of people if we move this meeting to Friday, so if Jesus tarries that’s what we intend to do.

Preaching Considerations

An issue relating to the sermon and the sensitivity of the congregation keeps coming up. It relates to what we preach. We want to make sure that we adhere to what we have been taught. Please don’t use special meetings or camp meeting to float some new understanding of an old familiar text. Our people are sharp. They really want to hear what they’ve always heard. It really accomplishes little to try to repackage it and present it in a different manner. They want to hear the good old-fashioned Gospel and when they don’t hear it, they know it. Then they tell me that they’re not hearing it. So I am telling you, be careful. Stick to the simplicity of what we’ve always been taught and heard. If we try to impress people with our studying and our intellect, we won’t succeed. They’ve been around a long time, so stick to the simplicity of the Gospel.

There is another thing that comes up. It is when we step up to the pulpit and say, “If you have your Bibles, turn to Revelations 20.” First of all, it is “The Revelation,” not “Revelations.” People notice that. It is singular not plural, but that really isn’t my point. The point that comes to my mind and to the minds of many in the audience is: what if they don’t have their Bibles? Those who don’t have their Bibles have been immediately embarrassed. They think, Oh, I don’t have my Bible; everyone around me has their Bible, but I don’t have mine. What do I do? We have distracted them from what we were going to read out of The Revelation, Chapter 20. So we need to rephrase that. 

One other thing that we hear often is, “If you are here today and you’re not saved.” Well, is anybody here who’s not here today? Instead, we should say, “If you’re not saved, here’s what you should do.” I’ve probably said it that way myself unwittingly. We have probably all said it unwittingly, so we just need to be careful. You know what would be very helpful? Getting a cassette of what we have preached and listening to it. As painful as that is, we need to do it. We will pick up things that will put us on our knees!

Someone to mention to the young ministers not to sit on the platform with their legs crossed at the ankles. You probably shouldn’t sit with your legs crossed at all. We need to watch our posture. We don’t want to look like we just came in off the range, slouched over. Nowadays, instead of listening to a tape of our preaching, perhaps we need to watch a video of the whole platform, and just notice how we appear. It is possible that some of us look like we wished we were home in bed taking a nap. We want to be watching the preacher. We want to be responding to what the preacher is saying, with “Amen!” We don’t want to be daydreaming and looking around, because the audience sees that. Some of this relates to Brother Nolan’s topic, and I apologize to him in advance if I have infringed upon what he will say. But he can cover it again, if he wishes.

Questions and Concerns

I’ve been asked, “Can we contact you directly with questions and concerns?” That would pertain to all around the world. Obviously, the answer to that is “Yes.” That is what I spend a good part of my day doing. Here is an example that just came up two weeks ago: A pastor contacted me regarding someone recently engaged and wearing an engagement ring while in the church work. The question was, “Do you have any words of wisdom or tactics more successful than others?” By the way, if I had known I was going to be sharing my answer here today, I probably would have put more thought into my answer, but maybe my spontaneous answer is just as good as any. So here is the response I gave him:

“Like the poor, the wedding ring issue will ever be with us. I am not sure I have many words of wisdom. Perhaps the less you have to say the better. It seems that the more explaining we do, the less convincing we become. To me, it is a very simple issue. We request that those who participate in our work not wear jewelry, such as engagement rings, wedding rings, necklaces, and so on. We don’t have the energy to follow people around or investigate situations. We simply make a request. We have a rich heritage rooted in holiness, which has traditionally included abstinence from wearing that type of jewelry. If it comes up in conversation, I don’t hesitate to tell someone that it really does not work to take the ring off at the church door. It ends up being a double standard that we pass on to the next generation, which becomes confusing. We don’t condemn those who choose to wear rings. They have that freedom, and are entitled to exercise it. At the same time, as an organization, we have the prerogative to let our expectations be known. We would hope that our requests would similarly be respected.”

I went on to say that we would avoid debates and discussions that go on to the merits of having that type of a policy. We have it and can be quite satisfied with it, and we really don’t need to explain it beyond what I have stated here.

We have a brother from Moldova listening in the baby room. He is one of several who have recently learned of the Apostolic Faith. In their country, they are used to Pentecostals coming in, and in their view, destroying their churches with their liberal ways. They presumed that there was no true, respectable holiness church in America. Then they were invited to the Apostolic Faith Church. They came to our meetings and were stunned. They said, “We didn’t think such a thing existed in America.” Well, it does. We’re not perfect; we have a long way to go. However, the way that we convey that message to our own people in America falls on you and me.

Daybreak

How should you promote the Daybreak material? I do it by saying that if a Christian spends the next three months using Daybreak, he will have a much better grasp of Joel, Jonah, Amos, Hosea, Micah, and Isaiah—this particular quarter’s books—at the end of that three-month period than he had at the beginning of that three-month period. To me, it is exciting to think that in ninety days I could have a better grasp of that section of God’s Word. I think that’s worth promoting and worth encouraging our saints to cover. Remember, Daybreak is the daily devotional. Discovery is a byproduct of Daybreak. I have heard it said that it is too hard to cover that much material in one Sunday school lesson. Well, it’s also hard to cut tenderloin with a fork, but we will do it. We will do a lot of things that are hard. Studying God’s Word is hard. Teachers won’t be able to start studying on Saturday night. They’ll have to change their habits. That’s hard. I’m teasing here and I am certainly not intending to ridicule. The teacher’s goal should be to give an overview of the text. They can’t cover twelve chapters of Isaiah in one Sunday school session that lasts thirty minutes. They can give an overview of those twelve chapters and then zero in on one or two main points that stand out.

Old Sermon Tapes

Another question is, “We have old sermon tapes taking up room in our branch church. Do you want them in Portland?” The answer to that is, “Yes.” Brother Stan Monk would love to have them here. He archives Portland sermons as well as branch church sermons from preachers that were around before my time or that I hardly knew. That concludes my section. Now, Brother Nolan.

The Preacher by Nolan Roby

As ministers, we should all be able to say something like this: “God’s Word is the final court of appeals in all matters of faith and practice, not The Heart of the Yale Lectures.” We appreciate The Heart of the Yale Lectures, and you might want to take notes as we go along, because you might hear some things that you haven’t heard before—but it won’t be things that don’t have some credence. The preacher who stands in the pulpit is the most important power of persuasion to the audience. In other words, the preacher is the sermon. He is the message. His life is the sermon that he is preaching.

“For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Peter 1:21). Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. You may read that and not see anything there, but in my little course of studies, there are lots of Greek synonyms in the New Testament. It is interesting that in Acts 27: 15, 17, and 27, the word “driven” is used in speaking of the ship that was driven with the wind. We can picture that ship being under the control of that wind, wherever the wind blew it. All those words “driven” are the same Greek word that is used in this verse that means moved. I don’t know why they used the same word, but it gives you a picture that these men that spake were not robots. They were under the influence of a powerful force and they were holy men. They spoke the Word of God through the Holy Spirit driving and moving them.

I was thinking about this business of preaching and I thought back to Numbers 11 where Moses had such a tremendous responsibility. God told Moses: You have too much responsibility. I am going to take seventy of the elders and I am going to put my spirit upon them, so that they can help carry the burden of the people. God did that and those seventy began to prophecy and they did not cease. They just kept on preaching, and so a young man came running to tell Moses that Eldad and Medad were prophesying in the camp. And Moses said in Numbers 11:29, “Enviest thou for my sake? would God that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit upon them!”  I wish every young man and every young woman were prophets. Those men had so much of the spirit of Moses that they didn’t stop. They just had something in their souls that kept them going. We get a little picture here that this business of preaching is something that is very real.

It is also interesting when you think about the word “driven,” that shortly after Jesus began His public ministry, the Spirit drove Him into the wilderness. If you are a young preacher starting out, don’t believe everything people tell you about your sermon. The only way to avoid criticism is to do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing. You’re going to get criticism, but you have to be big enough to take it. Spurgeon said that you can learn a lot more from your critics you can from a thousand indiscriminate admirers. I remember Brother Carver once said that a man got up to speak one day and someone said all these nice things about him, and someone else said, “Yes, and his mother believes every word of it.” That’s the way it is.

We are Preachers of Righteousness

Noah was a preacher of righteousness. Righteousness to me is conformity to a divine standard. It isn’t conformity to the world. As preachers of righteousness, we are preaching against the world’s system. We have to remember that. If you want to be encouraged, find the song, “The Son of God Goes Forth to War.” Read those five verses. I’ll tell you, it will stir your soul. For additional good reading, read the speech that General Douglas MacArthur gave on May 12, 1962, at West Point, it is entitled “Duty, Honor, and Country.” That will stir your soul. The soldier quality is what God expects us to have as ministers.

In regards to this wilderness experience that Jesus had, I think our whole lives are a wilderness experience, in the fact that the most important times of our lives as ministers are the times we spend alone with God. There is no substitute for that. A young man like Erik who learned the bassoon spent many hours by himself with that instrument. And the sermons we preach are instruments—instruments that we have practiced on. It is interesting to me that in trying to put together a few remarks about The Preacher, The Sermon, and The Congregation, that the one I struggled with the most was the sermon. Then when I think about it, if the man is right, and he has an understanding of who he is preaching to, the sermon should be really quite simple. You can see an example of that in Paul’s sermon at Mars Hill, which is about 260 words long.

There was a man by the name of Dr. Dehan on the radio years ago who preached about the faults of Paul the Apostle. Brother Allan Crabtree said that if he had a thimble full of what Paul the Apostle had, he’d have a lot to be thankful for. Take what Paul said in 260 words: he preached about God, he put a little bit about man in there, and then he said, “He (God) hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained” (Acts 17:31). Those men he preached to were lawyers and that man, by the name of Dionysius, who was converted was the equivalent of a Supreme Court Judge. I can’t find any fault with that in a 260-word dissertation. I’ll tell you something that we need to do in all of our sermons; we have to do what Paul did—he took a shortcut to Calvary in every single sermon. He preached Christ crucified. That was his message and his ministry. We would all do well if we asked one of our fellow ministers to keep track of how many times we say “I” in our sermons. That’s worse than listening to a tape. We need to preach Christ crucified.

There is one thing about the wilderness experience that teaches us the nature of reality, and we all need to understand the nature of reality. Moses learned this on the back side of the desert. We are human, we’re really human. We have feet of clay. We can learn from Jesus that “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). Also, “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God” (Matthew 4:7), and, “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve” (Luke 4:10). The temptations and the struggles that we have as ministers all fall within those three categories; the three moral elements. I’ll touch on that after a while, because Paul touched on those in his final letter to Timothy.

The Call of God is a Gift

When we think about this call of God, it is a call to the ministry. It’s a gift, which means that we did not ask for it. I’ve heard people say that so and so may be holding back from pressing on in the Gospel and getting their deeper experiences, because maybe they have a call on their life. I never did like to articulate it that way. That doesn’t make sense to me. I know that God usually calls us in the midst of spiritual activity or in the midst of a life that is ready to go. I think of Isaiah when the Lord touched him and said, “Thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged” (Isaiah 6:7). God made him holy and then he heard a voice behind him saying, “Who will go?” He was ready to answer the call.

The call that we have is a gift from God. He gives us grace according to the measure of the gift. I always liked to hear Brother Crabtree who said that “being a preacher doesn’t make you one wit better than anyone else.” He just laid it on the line. When you are ministering, what you are doing is exercising the particular gift that God has given you. And you are accountable for that. “For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance” (Romans 11:29). I remember after I was saved, I was out at the First National Bank in Central Point, Oregon, and I had a trombone in the closet at the house. They needed trombone players at the church. I was just dust-mopping the floor and all at once the Lord said, “Will you play the trombone?” I looked right up to the ceiling, and I said, “Lord, I’ll play the trombone.” There were no secrets there. I knew the Lord nailed me down. So I got the trombone out. About three months later, Brother Carver talked to me about being a student minister. Later, I thought to myself, how important it is that we pray that young men and women who aren’t in the ministry will follow through on their consecrations and answer the call, because once I got beyond that, the Lord could talk to me and to Brother Carver. The call of God is real and the gift of God is without repentance.

 Paul said to Timothy, “Stir up the gift of God, which is in thee” (2 Timothy 1:6). We can think in terms of the gift as being something that is like fire. It is a flame of fire, a burning heat, a driving energy. Your job and my job, if we are called, is to stir up this gift and develop it. Someone told me after a ministers’ meeting one time, “If I did everything they said in the ministers’ meeting, it would take me twenty-five hours a day.” My remark was, “At least you’ve come to a correct understanding of the situation.” What else can you say?

The authority of the minister is not in the office he holds. The authority of the minister is in the Word that he preaches. When Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” (John 14:6), no other man could say that. Truth is a moral abstraction. This may sound intelligent, but I think it is the way to say it. Truth cannot stand alone. It must have its representation and end in a person, and that person is Jesus Christ. Now we are getting closer to the heart of what you and I are supposed to be as ministers. We are supposed to have the truth embodied in us, so that what we say in the pulpit is backed up by our lives. In a farmer’s terms, you can’t live skim milk and preach cream. You might remember that definition better than the moral abstraction one. Truth has to have its representation in a person. So when you preach, you are the message. That was what Paul wrote in his last letter to Timothy. The last words that came from his mouth to Timothy were, “Stir up the gift of God, which is in thee.” (2 Timothy 1:6). Don’t let the embers of that fire die down. If the church is the pillar of truth, and the truth is embodied in the church, then the church is effective in the world. Only as the minister has the truth embodied in his life is he able to help develop others in the church into living a life of holiness. The minister has a tremendous responsibility of the Gospel. “Blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful” (Psalm 1:1). I know it says, “Blessed is the man.” But I would like to say, “Blessed is the preacher!” “But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night” (Psalm 1:2).

Someone has said that there is no accounting for the mind. Monsters can lurk in there. You and I as ministers have to be accountable for our minds and what we meditate on. I told Brother Darrel the other day that I believe we live in a time when the art of meditating is being lost. People’s minds are invaded by too many things. You and I, if we are going to be able ministers of the New Testament, have to pay a price. It takes a great deal of effort and time to be a successful minister. It’s ironic that I was notified that I was going to be doing this on February 1, and I arrived in this room today thinking that I was less prepared than when I started. I was telling Brother Robert Moore that it’s like the Board members of a mega church that were concerned because of a problem they had. Finally, one man said, “I guess we are going to have to trust the Lord.” Another said, “Has it come to that?” What’s wrong with us? I told Sister Joan on the way up here, “If the Lord doesn’t bless, it isn’t my fault.” You have to do what you have to do as a minister. I think that the same Holy Spirit that moved and drove those men will drive you and me.

What was it that the Apostle Paul had in his life? In 2 Corinthians 1, there were two things that Paul said were an encouragement to him. The first one is noted in verse 4, “Who comforteth us in all our tribulation.” The second is noted in verse 11, “Ye also helping together by prayer for us.” I do believe that the prayers, of our fraternity of ministers, for each other are probably one of the most underestimated, but strongest and most prevailing forces in our ministry. We are not in this alone. We must pray for one another. I pray for all of you, maybe not by name, but I pray for the ministry.

I believe there is one other thing that is part of our lives, and I feel that it must be present in our ministry. When we are alone with God, in those lonely times of communion, there flame out from God such visions that we cannot talk about them, but they remain with us, and they create a note of confidence and authority in us along with a desire and inspiration to prosecute our ministry to the very end. We have to have those flaming moments. Paul could not handle them very well. He said, “All right, you have compelled me. I have to tell you why I am able to go through what I am going through. Fourteen years ago, I was taken up into the third heaven and I saw things that I couldn’t tell you about. But lest I should be exalted above myself, God gave me a thorn in the flesh” (in reference to 2 Corinthians 12:7).

Take out Brother Charles Rodman’s booklet, Lesson 21, under “C” on “Running the Race.” Read where he talked about the “besetting sins.” We all have things that beset us, maybe one or two or three things that buffet us all the time. Brother Rodman said that it might seem like we are on our way out, when the truth of the matter is that we are probably on our way to higher ground. I can’t say it the way Brother Rodman said it, but I know it’s in there for those who’d like to research it for themselves.

When you think about this gift, it is something that God has given us. In the Minister’s Manual, it talks about the gift and the grace. Paul said to Timothy: “Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2:1). We need the means of grace in our lives. We need to have a life of prayer. We need a devotional life. I believe it was Spurgeon who said, “Don’t spend your whole life preparing sermons.” If you have a strong devotional life the sermons will come.

The Minister’s Manual talks about that fire, that flame that comes into our lives when we are not just studying for a sermon, but when we begin to study the great themes of God’s mercy (Page 127, under “Study and Preparation,” the sixth paragraph). God’s holiness could have been vindicated by destroying mankind from off the face of the earth, because sin smites God in the face and wounds Him in the heart. But God in His mercy, instead of destroying man, reached down and offered him pardon and peace. When we study those things, something will begin to well up in our hearts as we realize that except for the mercy of God, we wouldn’t be here. So your devotional life will fan that fire. It will give us that fuel so the fire will keep burning in our souls.

When we get up to preach, if we don’t feel our message, the people aren’t going to feel it. There are great perils, and the greater the privilege, the greater the perils that exist. I would also like to say that the greater the privilege the more precious the prize. There are perils that beset us as ministers, especially pastors, when we constantly fall into what you could call an area of perfunctory, where we realize that it’s Sunday again, or it’s Tuesday, or Friday. The peril is a familiarity with divine things to where they no longer thrill us. They no longer have that thing where we can say, “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out” (Romans 11:33)! That needs to sweep over us. People are going to feel it when we feel it. And those flames, those visions will only happen when we are alone with God. Our prayer lives should surpass any other thing in our lives. Prayer isn’t always just getting down and having something to say to God. It is getting down and listening to God, and letting Him speak to our hearts.

We need to be always handling the Word, reading it and studying it. Unless we are careful, it will cease to surprise us, cease to amaze us, and the gift, whether it is to be an Apostle, an evangelist, or a pastor will become dull and dead. When a preacher who constantly handles the divine Word loses the spirit of humbleness and reverential awe in the presence of the Holy and glorious Being whom he serves, he is in great peril. Thus in the evening of his days, the great Apostle was not allowed to forget the surpassing glory of the One whom he served, and as he neared the time that he should seal his testimony with his blood, he spoke of His Master as the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God to whom be glory forever and forever. We should all be able to articulate that. It should thrill our hearts. When I read the Bible and Paul’s writings, I am amazed at how often he speaks of this glorious Savior. “Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Ephesians 3:8).

The humble cow can provide us with a valuable lesson. She feeds upon the rich pasture without giving any thought whatsoever to providing someone else with milk. She eats the grass to satisfy her own appetite. When she has eaten what she wants, she lies down contently. She brings back what she has been feeding on and chews the cud. The resultant rich milk and cream which she gives are purely incidental to her. These were simply the inevitable results of satisfying her own desires. Likewise, as the minister reads the Bible to refresh his own soul and gratify his own spiritual appetite and then seeks to meditate upon that which he has read, he is enabled to give others the rich and sincere milk of the Word. Hallelujah! Ninety-five percent of the difficulties that you will face as a minister could be better understood by a better understanding of God’s Word.

In 2 Corinthians 6:1-10, Paul said that some things were done so that they brought no offense to anyone, so that no one would be kept from coming into the Kingdom of God. It is interesting to me that in those remarks he said nothing about his sermons or the miracles that he performed. A lady once remarked to another that a certain Thackarey woke up and found himself famous. The reply was that Thackarey had been writing eight hours per day for fifteen years. The man who wakes up and finds himself famous hasn’t been asleep. How much time does it take? It takes all of our time. This gift is a consuming passion. It has to be. Paul told Timothy in 1 Timothy 4:15, 16, “Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them; that thy profiting may appear to all. Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine.” He didn’t say to prepare great sermons or learn how to be up there and do it. He said, “Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee” (1 Timothy 4:16).

When I take a drink of water out of a hose, I want to taste water. I was in South Africa recently and I took the nozzle off for a drink, and all I could taste was rubber—the hose. So I let the water run for a while and then I could taste the water and not the hose. That’s how we want to be. We don’t want people to see us. We don’t want people to say anything about us. We want to preach Christ crucified. We want people not to worry about us, but to see Jesus. Someone put a note on a pulpit in a church, “We would see Jesus.” The preacher took it to heart when he saw the note. The disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. People will always be glad when they see the Lord in your preaching.

The Sermon by Nolan Roby

Winston Churchill was going to speak at a college, so the professor encouraged all the young people to bring their notebooks and pencils. Mr. Churchill got up before them and said, “Young people, never give up. Never give up. Never, never give up,” and he left the stage. That’s my admonition to you, “Never give up. Never give up.”

No Substitute for God’s Word

You may get a lot of different descriptions of a sermon, but to us it is a form of discourse on spiritual truth designed to save or to edify the believer. Acts 8:35 states, “Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus.” Philip opened his mouth and said, “It’s sure good to see you. It’s nice to be here today. You are all so fortunate to have me here.” Not so. Brother Earl Phillips stood where I am standing today and said that the first four rules of preaching are number 1 to read your text, number 2 to read your text, number 3 to read your text, and number 4 to read your text. We have no credentials to stand in this pulpit in this church or any other church, except the Word of God. Ministers do not need introductions—they need conclusions.

It always bothers me when a minister says, “And finally.” That isn’t the end, yet. We need to begin by opening our Bibles and reading the Word. Philip opened his mouth and began at the Scripture to preach unto him Jesus. I can’t emphasize enough to the younger preachers that they need to learn to preach Jesus. When Jesus met the disciples on the road to Emmaus, Luke 24:27 says, “Beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning Himself.” And what happened? Later on they said, “Did not our heart burn within us?”(Luke 24: 32). God didn’t say that He would bless what we say anyway. He said He would bless what He said, and that’s what we have to do. We have to preach the Word. As was mentioned earlier, the more we have of the Word in our hearts, the better off we are. David said, “Thy Word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against thee” (Psalm 119:11). There is no substitute for God’s Word.

A Good Delivery

The Heart of the Yale Lectures and some of the other books you can read on preaching, put a lot of emphasis on the type of delivery. I would like to say that the best delivery is the one that no one sees, unlike the fellow who has two problems: no delivery and nothing to deliver. May that not be said of us. Good delivery is one that people don’t see. Paul in 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 says, “And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.” Isn’t that what we want in our sermons?

The word “sermon” has its origin in a Latin word which means a stab or a thrust. This indicates that the purpose of it is to pierce with the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. I had such a blessed experience, back in about 1975. Brother Crabtree was in Medford holding evangelistic meetings. We were at Brother Norman’s house for lunch and Brother Crabtree went in the house, and I followed him. He sat in a chair in the living room and I sat on the footstool. I said, “Brother Crabtree, what advice do you have for a young man?” He said, “Nolan, I’ve always felt that the sword of the Spirit is the Word of God. That’s what the Spirit uses—the Word of God.” He said, “I’ve tried to commit as much as possible to memory.” God uses His Word, not what we say but what He says. That’s the instrument that we use to pierce the darkness of this world and of people’s hearts. We will speak more about this when we cover “The Congregation,” but for now it suffices to know that “sermon” means to stab or to thrust. And one, “Thus saith the Lord,” is worth more than ten thousand, “Lest I be contradicted” or some other remark. Thus saith the Lord—that’s what we are to preach.

Brother Dwight Baltzell mentioned one time, that when we get up to preach it is kind of like fishing. We can’t fish the whole lake in one sermon. We can’t even fish all the fish out of that one hole. So when we get up to preach, we have to have one big idea. You might say to yourself, “What’s the big idea?” People should know within the first twenty seconds of your sermon what you’re going to preach on. They should probably know what you are going to preach on by the text that you choose.

Do not try to use obscure texts just to sound like you are probably going to deliver a whole lot more than what they are going to get. Use plain text. Brother Frost encouraged all the younger ministers to use a narrative from the Old Testament. He said that the congregation should almost be able to anticipate what you are going to say next. Another thing he said was, “Nolan, avoid the spectacular. Don’t try to be different.” I’m not sure if this is stated in The Heart of the Yale Lectures, but I have heard it said that a minister that always tries to pull something out of his sleeve will eventually end up pulling out the lining too. There’s a lot of truth in that. People aren’t interested in the spectacular. They are interested, as Brother Darrel said, in the old truths of the Gospel. I remember Brother Norman sharing with me that there was an old brother in San Francisco who said, “Brother Norman, just preach on the love of God.” Brother Norman said “I thought about that, and I didn’t have to preach on Hell very often, because I had a couple of younger ministers who did that ahead of me.” That ought to tell us something.

Preach Christ

This reminds me of the young man who went to seminary. When he came back he was going to preach at the local church. An older man and his wife knew this young man. The older man couldn’t go to hear the young man preach, so he sent his wife. When she returned, he asked her “How did he do?” “Oh,” she said, “He’ll do much better after he suffers a little.” The sermon grows as the man grows. Brother Carver, when he started me out said, “Nolan, Brother Matthews is saying things in Grants Pass that you won’t be able to say for thirty years.” How true that is. You have to earn the right to say some things. You cannot have understanding beyond your experience. Even all the Scriptures won’t lend credence to you. You want it to go beyond that. So just preach within the confines of your experience. That’s why Brother Ray Crawford used to say to the young ministers, “Learn to preach Christ. Preach a Gospel of good tidings.” Someone said, “But there are no sinners in the meetings.” He told them that we might be surprised how many people in any meeting need the Lord. In fact, I have a little problem with young ministers who think that their business is to get up and whip the old time saints into some sort of a frenzy of prayer. You don’t have to beg the old saints to pray. They can’t wait to get on their knees. Our job is to preach Christ and Him crucified. And then we’ll get a picture of the incomparable Christ, and they’ll be glad they saw the Lord.

Don’t read thirty-four verses for your text. If you do that, you will lose the congregation. It is also not advisable to read a lot during your sermon. Eye contact is so important. Every time you lose eye contact, you have to reestablish it.

 You know what a fanatic is? A fanatic is someone who majors in minors. In every sermon he preaches, whether he starts in Genesis or The Revelation, he always ends up on the same topic. Brother Dick Taylor said he knew a guy who had one sermon that he preached four different ways. We’ve got to have more variety than that in our sermons! You get the picture. Someone said that the only difference between a hobby horse and a horse is that you can get off the horse. I have a Bible at home that was given to me by someone and I discovered that the only verse that was underlined in it was Deuteronomy 22:5 which says, “The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment.” So, I asked someone, “What was with this guy?” I found out that verse was that guy’s hobby horse. He never got off of it. Get off the horse! Preach the Gospel. Don’t be a fanatic. Don’t just have one topic that every time you preach you end up on.

Remember, the best style is still the one that no one sees. If I look like a robot the whole time I am up here, it is not good style. That draws attention to me. So style is the one you don’t see. I can think of one, maybe two, whose in-the-pulpit performance is dynamic and robust, but around the altars they are as lifeless as a galvanized corpse. I can’t say it any other way. I have very little confidence in a minister who can just tear up the landscape and is lifeless around the altars. In fact, I believe that if all of us would get down to the altar and pray the way we did when we received the baptism, we would probably have a revival. Brother Floyd Kasper and I were having a prayer meeting in Medford Sunday morning. We were just enjoying the Lord, and pretty soon people started getting re-annointings. It was a wonderful time. A lady said to me afterwards, “Who were you praying for?” I said, “It never entered my mind.” I was just enjoying being in the Presence of the Lord. Is anything wrong with that? No. Let’s not have an in-the-pulpit persona that does not match our out-of-the-pulpit performance. If you have one in that situation in your congregation, you should help them.

Brother Marty Girard said that one time Brother Frost nudged him when he was praying at the chancel rail and said, “Martin, I honestly didn’t know whether you were dead or alive.” Marty told me that, so I’m not telling on him. One young man came to me and said, “Someone buttonholed me and told me that they didn’t see me around the altars very much, or in the prayer room. What do you think?” I said, “I would never give him the opportunity to say that.”

Delivery Style

Delivery style, manner of speech, grammar, diction, voice, gesture, eye contact—if you want a book to read on these subjects, Brother Carver gave me “Spurgeon’s Lectures to His Students” when I was a young minister. It’s quite a volume, but it covers such things as minister’s fainting fits, how to complement young women, etc. I liked one thing in particular. Spurgeon said that pride is a terrible thing and it doesn’t need the parish water pot to help it grow. There are times when I have felt that a minister deserved a compliment. It would just inflate his ego, and we don’t want ministers going around with inflation of the cranium. I rarely mention this, but I used to love Brother Dick’s messages. Sometimes there are musical pieces played that you almost feel like you’d like a hush afterwards. To clap would destroy the sanctity and the beauty of it. I was very careful around Brother Dick. I never said very much about his sermons, and yet down inside I was just so thrilled. I knew I was in trouble one day as a minister, when I was talking to Brother Dick and he said to me, “You know, Brother Nolan, sometimes, I just feel like apologizing to the Lord for the poor job I did.” And I said, “Where am I?” And I still feel that way today, so take note.

Spurgeon said that God has a school of humility that He submits His ministers to, to keep them where they should be. Paul said, “For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake” (2 Corinthians 4:5). We don’t preach ourselves. We shouldn’t feel like we should be congratulated after the Lord blesses us. Recently, on a Sunday morning I was preaching about “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20). After I got through I just stood up there and wept. I felt like this is wonderful to present a Christ who is within the reach of everyone. I felt like this is the heart of the Gospel. I shouldn’t be congratulated because I lifted up Christ. What else can I do? You want to find out where you are? Read Fanny Crosby’s hymn, “Tell me the Story of Jesus.” Get down to that last phrase. Listen to this: “Stay, let me weep while you whisper. Love paid the ransom for me.” You want a high-water mark in your life? And I’ve been meditating on that: Can I weep when someone whispers love paid the ransom for me? We’re preaching a Christ who died for us.

If Paul could preach the sermon on Mars Hill with 260 words, we certainly should be able to learn something from that. In some cases, fifteen minutes is too long, and in some other cases, an hour is too short. Someone said a sermon should be so long. That’s like saying that a pair of pants should be so long. One depends on the length of the leg, the other depends on the length of the brain. Remember, unconscious people really don’t care how long the sermon is. As Moody said, “Let us stand and sing number 101 while the brother finishes the prayer.” You know, there is humor in this, but yet there is reality. As I was telling Brother Erik Calhoun, two little boys were sitting in the front row of the audience, and the minister was crying. One little boy said, “Why is he crying?” and the other said, “You’d cry too, if you couldn’t think of anything to say.” My wife’s favorite joke is this: The minister was going beyond his allotted time and supposedly a little lady picked up a songbook and threw it up toward the front of the church toward the minister. She hit another lady in the head, and the little lady that got hit by the book said, “Hit me again. I can still hear him.”

We should have an opening to our sermon. The congregation should know where we are, and I’ll touch on that later in The Congregation. We should also have a closing. We should take a shortcut to Calvary. I failed to give an invitation or hit upon the importance of being saved, but when Brother Darrel prayed, he brought that back to center again. Maybe he did it unconsciously, however he did it, I took a lesson from that. As a minister, I need to take a shortcut to Calvary. We need to make sure that in every meeting people are invited to pray and give their hearts to the Lord. I know that sometimes that gets passed over in a sermon. It shouldn’t, but it does, so sometimes the one who prays the closing prayer has to put a little bit of a nudge in there and help it out. So those are my notes on the sermon. Are there things that are missing? Probably a lot of them. But that’s all I have. I’d rather be like a good musician and leave you wanting more than to belabor you. Thank you.

The Congregation by Nolan Roby

I was in a couple of workers’ meetings with Brother Frost near the end of his tenure. He had a row of workers, and when one of them gave a testimony—Brother Brittson or Brother Brown or one of the old-timers—it didn’t make a difference if it was too early to close the testimony service, if that testimony was a clincher, he called for the last special. He wanted to close the testimony part of the service on a high note. Every part of our services really should not depend upon the other part. Every part should be a clincher, and nothing that we say or do should take away from that. Are you with me? Isn’t it a thrill, when the person who gets up to sing the last special sings a song that just matches our text and then the Lord blesses? That probably happens more times than we talk about because we pray about our services.

Put God’s Name Before the People

Leviticus 9:22-24 is a very interesting set of verses that tell how God wanted the Children of Israel to hold services in the Tabernacle, “And Aaron lifted up his hand toward the people, and blessed them.” I wonder, Do any of us reserve the right to say anything we want to from the pulpit? Is that too heavy? Not. What I am trying to say is that when Aaron lifted up his hand toward the people, What did he say? God told him what to say, and we find that in Numbers 6:22-27: “And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto Aaron and unto his sons, saying, On this wise ye shall bless the children of Israel, saying unto them, The Lord bless thee, and keep thee: The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace. And they shall put my name upon the children of Israel; and I will bless them.” Pastors, you have the opportunity to conduct the services. I don’t expect that you need to follow the pattern that they have here, since this was under the Law, but God said, “Put my name upon the people.”

While in Brooklyn years ago, I noticed that Brother Dicks closed the meeting with “The Lord bless thee and keep thee.” I don’t find anything sad about that. When we go into the tabernacle or sanctuary for our meetings, this is not necessarily a solemn occasion (though it is a serious occasion) as it is an opportunity for God to bless. God didn’t tell Moses to make some announcement about how to prepare manna, but He said, “Put my name upon the people.” We don’t need to insert a lot of things into the church service that have nothing to do with the Lord or the Lord’s service. I am seventy years of age and I enjoy a church service. I came up under Brother Carver, and Brother Frost, and we had church. I think church should be church. The Lord said so.

This section is about The Congregation. The people in your congregation built the church with their hands. They paid for it. They built a sanctuary for God, if you please, where His presence will dwell and where they can bring their sacrifices of praise to Him. When they do that, God says that “He inhabits the praises of His people.” Amen? “But the Lord is in His holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him” (Habakkuk 2:20). He’s in Heaven and we’re on the earth. Let our words be few. That, my friend is good advice straight from the Word of God. When the orchestra and choir have practiced a long time, the prelude is glorious. When Brother Darrel gets up, he doesn’t do anything, but let that Spirit carry into the service. He may say, “We want to welcome all of you here this morning. We pray that God will bless you. We’re going to open our song service this morning with a song and Brother Erik will lead us.” That’s it.

Sometimes announcers can be like an entertainer at a ballgame who jumps over the banister, runs all over the place, depending upon how he’s dressed discloses the seriousness of the offense, but the game is stopped until he is back in the seat. To me, those announcers need to stay off the playing field. The announcements need to be brief, to the point, and bear no reflection upon ourselves. It’s not about us, pastors, assistant pastors, or ministers—it’s about God’s service. The Holy Spirit, God the Father, and God the Son, are the players. They don’t want you and me on the playing field. Can I make it any plainer than that? I come to church to worship God.

Moses and Aaron and the Children of Israel were following directions. The people brought their sacrifices, and God blessed them. It’s our job as ministers to display the glory of God in the things we say. If we are not, then we are not glorifying God with what we say. When Moses and Aaron blessed the people, “The glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud” (Exodus 16:10). That’s what people come to church for. They come to feel the glory of God, and to feel a presence—something that only comes from Heaven. It’s your job and my job as ministers to do all we can to be sure that happens.

Read the story of Solomon, how the Queen of Sheba came and saw all the details, how it just drained her of her spirit. That’s what we want people to feel in our meetings. It comes with a price. The glory of the Lord appeared. The Children of Israel brought their sacrifices. They followed God’s instructions in the minute details and then the fire of God came down. You like fire? Hallelujah! I want to tell you that there is something down in my soul that realizes that we have the most wonderful thing in all the world. When the Children of Israel saw the glory of the Lord, they shouted. Every pastor here would like to hear the people shout. A lot of us would like to hear the people shout, so we wouldn’t even have to preach. The Children of Israel shouted and fell on their faces. Do you think that God reserved that just for those people? Someone said to Brother Crabtree, “That’s for those people in those days,” What’s for these people in these days? It’s the same glory. The Lord wants to fill the temple.

We are the leaders in this church. We must be good listeners. We must say, “Lord help me.” Our congregations have built these sanctuaries. Remember, the centurion who had a servant that was sick? The people came to Jesus and said, “Lord do something for this man. This man has built us a sanctuary. This man has built us a place where we can worship God and feel His Spirit.” God help us to stay out of the way! I can’t say it any plainer. We don’t want to hold back the blessing of God by some off-the-cuff remark we make, when God’s fire wants to come out and consume the sacrifice. We are ministers of the Gospel! The things we say, the things we do, should be prompted by the Holy Spirit. We want to see the Spirit of God move, do we not? We are the ones that are going to make it happen. Brother Darrel said that there are three kinds of people, those who watch things happen, those who wonder what happened, and those who make things happen. I want to be someone who makes things happen. Praise the Lord!

When Moses and Aaron came out, they blessed the people and the glory of the Lord appeared unto all the people. It was the priest’s job to display the glory of the Lord. I’ve read the account of John Wesley preaching to a group of young people, and the power of God was on his life. There was a moment during a sermon that one little boy reached out and pinched him on the leg. John Wesley jumped, and the little boy said, “He really is a man.” There was something about that man of God that awestruck those little boys. They wanted to make sure he was real. People should feel the glory of God in our lives, and in our sermons. The Lord said that His angels are ministering spirits. His ministers are what? Flames of fire! That’s what we want. God rewarded the Children of Israel for making a place where His presence would dwell. The celebration was a joyous occasion. God wants to be with us. He is with us. But let’s stay off the playing field. Can we do that?

The public prayer that is prayed in our meetings isn’t like a seventh inning stretch at a ballgame. It is not just a time—it is a moment when we should pray to God in Heaven to invoke His blessings upon the meeting. One time in Medford, when I was a new minister, I was asked to lead in prayer. When I was done and sat down, someone said to me, “You left out Korea.” We can’t bless everything in our public prayer and I never left out Korea after that. I left all the nations out. One brother used to pray, “Lord, bless those behind the iron curtain, bless those behind the Punjab curtain, bless those behind the bamboo curtain,” I didn’t know how many curtains there were by the time I got through. Our prayers don’t have to be officious; they’re just simple prayers evoking the God of Heaven. Tell your wife to keep track of how many times you used the name of divinity in your prayer. Every other word doesn’t have to be Lord this and Lord that. And, please, slow down! Practice your prayers. Our prayers need to be more than just words.

We can’t have a preacher and a sermon without a congregation. The members of our congregations come from all walks of life. When Jesus stood up in His home town of Nazareth and preached His sermon. He didn’t have any trouble finding a text for that meeting. He had served as an apprentice for his dad from the time he passed his Bar Mitzvah to when he was thirty years of age. That is a total of seventeen years that he was in Nazareth working in people’s homes. He knew the widows. He knew the single mothers. He knew those who had afflictions.

The Gospel is Common Ground

When we preach, there is a congregation that needs to hear something. When we get up to preach, we want to meet the people on a common ground. We really do. The Gospel is common ground. The people want to hear Good News. When Jesus went to Nazareth, he preached the Gospel to the poor, He went to “bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord” (Isaiah 61:1). He didn’t preach, “This is the day of the Lord God of hosts, a day of vengeance” (Jeremiah 46:10). He didn’t. He left that out.

When Dave & Glenda came into our church years ago, they said they didn’t want to hear about all the judgments of God; they knew about that. They came to church to hear the love of God. The common ground that you and I have when we get up to preach is the Good News of the Gospel. Everyone wants to hear good news. “Forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven” (Ephesians 6:9). You may say, “Brother Nolan, aren’t we supposed to preach about the wrath of God?” That reminds me of a minister who invited a man to preach in his church on a special day during the Thanksgiving weekend. The man got up and preached on the wrath of God. Use the proper day to preach the proper message, or get out! He never invited him back, and rightly so.

Jesus stood up to preach to the people that He had known. One thing we need is a vision of people who are spiritually needy. People who have broken hearts, people who have broken lives, they are the congregation. They come to be fed. They come to hear the Word of God. Our job is to be a preacher of the good tidings of great joy. How can anyone be offended at the message the angel gave to the shepherds, “Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the City of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:10). That’s common ground. The Gospel is Good News. If that’s a broken record, let’s just keep it going, because we must have to have common ground. We can’t take people anywhere that we haven’t been. If we’ve never tasted the crystal fountains that flow from the hills eternal, we’ll never be able to preach to the people about that.

A Healing Ministry

There is just something about having a feeling and an empathy for the people in our congregations. Our jobs are to be healers. When Jesus went around preaching and teaching, He healed the people. The ministry of healing was a manifestation of His power to implement His teaching and preaching. When He healed the people, it opened their hearts to receive His teachings. How many people over the years have been healed and brought into the church? Look at Grant Hill’s wife, the Claspers’ daughter. When the neighbors said to the Claspers, “Bring your daughter to the church; they’ll pray for her and the Lord will heal her.” God did heal her. The healing ministry implemented Jesus’ teaching ministry. Just physical healing is not the only type of healing. There is emotional healing and other types of healing. So what we do out of the pulpit will help implement who we are in the pulpit. If our ministry outside the pulpit is a healing ministry, where people know that you have an empathy for them, where we are not shooting ourselves in the foot by making off-the-cuff remarks and doing things that hurt people, then our ministry in the pulpit will be successful. Otherwise, our ministry is flat. When we have a healing ministry, people will listen to what we have to say. “The common people heard him gladly” (Mark 12:37). The Lord must have loved the common people because He sure made a lot of them. There is something about the simple Gospel message that we have to tell. The Bible says, “commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God” (2 Corinthians 4:2). It does. There is something about the message of the Gospel. As preachers, we are healers. We are liberators.

Years ago, I went to Roseburg to pastor, and Jack and Wendy were there. I didn’t know who Jack Chasteen was, but I remember the day he came to me and he said, “Nolan, I went home and told Wendy that I’ve been to five meetings and Brother Nolan’s had his arm around my shoulder five times.” I didn’t even remember that. If an arm around the shoulder or a pat on the back is a healing, brothers let’s get busy. Let’s let our congregations know that they are valuable. They are important. Our sermons should be sermons and we should pray until God gives us sermons that have the Good News. Sermons that heal and liberate. Sermons that herald good tidings. The Lord said that He was going to comfort all that mourn, and “give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness” (Isaiah 61:3). Study the text that Jesus presented in his home town. What happened? They all marveled at the wonderful, beautiful, and gracious words that proceeded from His lips.

I believe that’s what we’re striving for. When we stand up in the pulpit, we need to let gracious words proceed from our lips that will cause people to marvel. Millions of people have looked into the Gospel and looked at the beautiful doctrines that Christ taught. None of them have walked away and said that they were distasteful. No. It is the responsibilities and obligations of the Gospel that cause people problems. It’s not their weak minds, but it’s their weak hearts that won’t accept the challenge. We need not apologize for the Gospel. It’s not distasteful. Heaven? The glory of Heaven? Life here on earth without condemnation and above sin? That’s Good News. We are not ashamed of it, and if it is presented right, it will appeal to people’s hearts. Let’s remember this. Your supreme concern in the pulpit must not be your sermon, but must be the souls of the people. That’s it. God bless you!

Taking the Land by Darrel Lee

“And Caleb stilled the people before Moses, and said, Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it. But the men that went up with him said, We be not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we” (Numbers 13:30-31).

Introduction

First, I would like to express appreciation to Brother Nolan for his presentation today. We have certainly benefited. I appreciate so much all our veteran pastors who have labored faithfully and set the bar quite high for all of us. We thank God for them.

My section was titled, “Three Things We Need to Know About Taking the Land.” The three things are “Know Your Enemy,” “Know Your Friends,” and “Know Your God.”

Know Your Enemy

We have two things going for us as an organization: our holiness way of life, which includes, but is not limited to, maintaining the doctrinal positions of the Latter Rain Gospel, and our unity. We should not be surprised if Satan will attempt to attack us in those two areas. The attacks, we’re told in the Bible, will not always come from outside, but often they will come from within. That’s what Paul said just before the saints at Philippi fell on his neck and wept when they knew they wouldn’t see him again. He had words of caution, declaring that after his departure “shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also, of your own selves shall men arise” (Acts 20:29). We want to be wise to that. We want to know our enemy. The enemy is the one who casts doubts and fears, and undermines our unity. The enemy is the one who accuses you to your peers and accuses your peers to you. The devil is a liar. We should never forget that.

I preached my first sermon on the first Sunday of February in 1978. Prior to this, Brother Nolan invited me to go to Dairy Queen with him. We went, and he had a short question for me: “Do you feel like God has called you to preach the Gospel?” My answer was shorter than his question. I said, “Yes.” There was no other explanation to offer. He asked the question and I gave him the answer. A few others had asked me the same question, to which I had replied that it was up to God. If they pressed, I told them that if it was of God, He would certainly notify whoever needed to be notified. I wasn’t anxious to do it. Brother Nolan shared with me that he had also been asked the same question some years before by Brother Carver. He told me that six months after he was asked, he preached his first sermon. So after my conversation with Brother Nolan, I went home and told Debbie, “It looks like after camp meeting I will be preaching my first sermon.” (By the way, before Debbie and I were married, I had told her that I was probably called to preach, so it was no surprise to her. I wanted her to know what she was getting into. Of course, she didn’t, but neither did I.) So the next day, Sunday morning, Brother Nolan said that it was not very often that we got to hear somebody preach their first sermon, but that we would hear someone that evening. I immediately wondered who was coming from Portland to preach their first sermon and why they were doing it in Dallas. But that was just an instantaneous flash because Brother Nolan quickly told the congregation who was going to preach. So that’s how I heard of my first assignment.

That next month, there was a ministers’ meeting here in Portland. Of course, Brother Carver conducted it. The transcripts were mailed out, just like they are now, and I kept them. I benefited from reading them. Someone recently made an off-the-cuff remark that we are challenged because we leave what we learn in these meetings. I told him, “You didn’t leave what you learned in these meetings.” Neither did I. I’ve kept the transcripts, and have thirty years’ worth of them. We are a product of what we have heard over these years. I have never been satisfied to say that we are not adequately trained. Any shortcomings on my part are not because I did not have opportunity to be trained.

In my first ministers’ meeting that day, Brother Carver said, “We’re always learners. We’re always students.” That is certainly the case. Early in those meetings, one of the things that I heard over and over again was “Refuse to pick up problems that don’t pertain to you.” It’s a good idea to stay out of challenges that you think you might be aware of in other areas. If something from a branch church comes to you, stay out of it. Leave it alone. Nine times out of ten, it will remedy itself. Actually, ten times out of ten it will remedy itself, but only if we stay out of it.

That can be challenging when we are so intertwined amongst each other. We have many relatives in the church, including some by marriage. When I first came in, it was just Ginny and myself, and later a few family members. But when I married Debbie, I instantaneously became related to many others, including Brother Nolan and Brother Al Friesen. Since then, my family has come along, and now there are many of us. Because of this, even though I did not live in the same town, my family at times was affected by different situations. It’s possible that I may have heard something. However, I did not touch it. Brother Nolan knows that I won’t touch things like that because I have told him before, “I don’t want to know.” I didn’t want to know because it would have put Brother Nolan opposite my family, and I was afraid I would side with family. So I had asked him not to tell me, and he didn’t. Do not pick up trouble that does not belong to you. Do not fight the battles of your adult children, of your brother or your sister, of your mom or dad, or aunt and uncle. Don’t go to bat. It doesn’t pay. God is able to remedy the situations without our help.

Proverbs 26:17 says: “He that passeth by, and meddleth with strife belonging not to him, is like one that taketh a dog by the ears.” When is the last time you took a dog by its ears? I don’t think it is talking about a rottweiler, but wouldn’t want to take a poodle by its ears! Enough strife will come to us that belongs to us, even though we don’t want it. There are those who are negative by nature, adversarial, and discouraged—nowadays, they are branded as toxic members of the community. Someone once encouraged me to illustrate a story on how Brother Carver handled a certain situation. I went back to that person later and said, “You like to tell warm and fuzzy Brother Carver stories, but Brother Carver was not always able to handle things in a warm and fuzzy manner.” This party knew that. I would rather speak on a warm and fuzzy topic, but we need to know our enemy. The enemy is the devil; he’s the one that would interfere with our edification, as well as all of God’s people.

Know Your Friends

I’ve noticed that it is helpful to me, when a situation comes my way, to try to distinguish between morality and personality. We need to be able to distinguish between the two. Moral shortcomings include pornography, drug and alcohol addiction, adulterous or flirtations behavior, sewing discord among the brethren, etc. Mark it down, if you run into someone who is trying to tear down another person, what they are really trying to do is elevate themselves. Personality flaws are different. We need a lot of compassion and mercy with respect to personality flaws. After we work with one another for a decade or two, or three or six or seven, we know each other pretty well. We know one another’s strengths and we know one another’s weaknesses. The beautiful thing of the Gospel is how God can take a group of about eighty flawed human individuals, such as ourselves, and work among us. It is thrilling how His Spirit moves amongst us, in spite of ourselves. I see that as a very positive thing. I don’t think it is a negative thing that we are aware of one another’s weaknesses. The personality flaws are the aspects of our lives where we are works-in-progress. We all are a work-in-progress. Some are known to be impetuous. Some are characterized as slow as slugs. Some are noted for talking too much. Others are noted for not talking at all. Some are personable in such an overwhelmingly positive manner. Some cross a threshold and are considered obnoxious. Some accuse a song leader of rambling on. Some object because the song leader calls a song and says nothing else. By the way, I think it is better to err to the side of letting the song speak. I don’t think we have a lot to offer. I am with Brother Nolan on that. For that matter, I’m with him on all that he said.

We need to go easy on one another. If you leave with any thought from today’s sessions, it should be that we need to go easy on one another. We are one body. The hand cannot stab the foot without inflicting pain on the body. I had a situation lately where someone thought they crossed a certain line and asked me for forgiveness. It is easy to forgive, but that’s not the end. In this situation, I felt that there may be the need to go back on the trail they took to get to where they were and fix the damage they had done.

Your friends are the ones that are sitting next to you. The devil is the one that disrupts. We are examples to our congregation. The congregation follows our pattern, whether it is good or not so good. They observe. They see how we ministers interact. They hear. They know who is not satisfied with the Apostolic Faith Gospel. We’re examples to the congregation, and we are examples to our children.

When we disrespect our peers to our children, we are undermining our children. If we disrespect the church or the organization to our children, at some point we will weep the day that we did. The criticism of one against another is far more blatantly wrong than what that person is criticizing. The most harsh and demanding among us are those who can least afford to be so. Not one of us has earned the right to tear down a brother or a sister in the Lord. 

One time, I was baited by an anonymous email. By the way, when I know that something is anonymous, I don’t even read it. I don’t. This email was very short, so I couldn’t help but read it, but the person wanted to tell me something very important about someone in a congregation, if I wanted them to do so. I tried to give them a kind reply, but my reply was very short: “It’s hard for me to ask for you to tell me something about someone in the congregation if I don’t know who you are.” I didn’t want to just slam the door on them, but I should have slammed the door on them, because I got a follow-up note that was just a little bit longer that pointed out my personality flaws. I wish I would have known who they were because I would have loved to have told them, “I agree. I am a work-in-progress.” But that person, whoever he or she is, one day if they get saved, they’ll have to make it right. I am a good forgetter, but now since I repeated this story I’ll keep remembering it for another year, but eventually I will forget it again.

We Can Take the Land

Notice that in Numbers 13 some said they could take the land. My predisposition is that we can take the land! I don’t care where we live. I served the Lord in two small churches. I didn’t have the innovation and the inspiration that some of these younger pastors have, and I am thrilled that there are those who have the energy and innovative spirit to make things happen. However, I will say, the churches were small and finances were meager, but I could never get away from the fact that we could take the land. God is with us. We can do it. In the chapters in Number, you can notice that God has an order. When that order is violated, we risk confusion and chaos, so we don’t want to undermine the order that God has. It is chilling to me that people will randomly make off-handed comments about their superiors, ministers, or even peers. Whatever happened to, “The Lord forbid that I should stretch forth mine hand against the Lord’s anointed” (1 Samuel 26:11). Notice the location of this account of taking the land. Numbers 12 is sandwiched between Miriam and Aaron speaking against Moses. Then in Numbers 16, we have Korah’s insurrection, and Dathan and Abiram who were emboldened to not only resist Moses, but to recruit two hundred other leaders to do the same. Conspicuously sandwiched between is the account of taking the land, and the words of Numbers 12:3, “Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth.” I hear a lot about leadership, so I can’t help but think that these men looked at Moses and viewed him as a weak leader. Perhaps the two hundred men all attended the same leadership conference where they were taught to challenge authority and examine existing principles. What they didn’t take into account was that the business and government model of leadership is one thing, but the Biblical model of leadership was rooted in God’s word to Moses. He was the meekest man. He wasn’t the weakest man. God has an order. If you try to transplant the business model into the church model, you will be very frustrated. Somebody told me lately that there is a 360-degree leadership model. I am wishing that there was a 360-degree discipleship model. Leadership books sell better than discipleship books.

Leadership in the absence of discipleship is not leadership at all. If you cannot follow, you cannot lead, even if you have the title. I’ve been blessed to serve with faithful friends in the Gospel—all of you. From my first time in the Apostolic Faith Church, I learned something from every pastor. Brother Marty Girard was my pastor for a year, Brother Earl Phillips was my pastor for a year, Brother Nolan Roby was my pastor for five years, Brother Ted Friesen for five years, and Brother Dwight Baltzell for four years. I wish that would have been longer. I also lived close enough to Portland to have some familiarity with Brother Carver, but certainly not to the extent that those who lived in Portland did. However, I did get up here a few times and observed him. I feel like I’ve been blessed. I feel like I still am blessed. We want to know our friends. We want to remember that as flawed as we are, we are one another’s friends. And God can send His glory amongst us and He does.

Know Your God

We want to know our God. Perhaps the ten spies didn’t know their God, since all twelve of them saw the same thing. We can look around and see the giants. We can see the high-walled cities and the challenges. But we can also see the God that we serve. We can take the land! We really can. God commands us to. For us to take the land is to take it wherever we live. A few years ago, someone asked me what my plan was for evangelizing the United States. They asked me that in one of the evaluation sheets, which, by the way, I read, but we didn’t include this time. I have not responded to that one yet. I ponder these things and talk to the Lord about them. I might tell the Lord, “Lord, they think I have a plan. They think I need a plan. What’s my plan to evangelize the United States?” It comes to me that my plan, and your plan, is God’s plan, and God’s plan is to go into all the world and preach the Gospel. So my plan to evangelize the United States is you. You are my plan, so what are you going to do to evangelize the United States? I can tell you your plan. Hold Gospel meetings. Let the community and your own people know that you’re in business. I don’t care if there are six or sixty or six hundred in your congregation. Hold Gospel meetings. We don’t need to relegate our church services to playing a tape. That would be easy. I could name a lot of Sunday mornings when I would just like to plug in a tape and sit and listen to it with the rest of the congregation. Brother Gary mentioned in his sermon that three percent of the Norwegians attend church. My, what an opportunity! Ninety-seven percent do not. Look at that field, it’s white unto harvest. It would be like having a lake full of fish and you’re the only one that shows up to fish. You’d say, “Let me at them.” I think America is in that state. We have a generation or two or three who don’t know about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We shouldn’t be satisfied to fold our hands and wait for headquarters to do something about our locations. I don’t even know who headquarters is. We’re one body. We just happen to live in different areas of the world.

So we want to know our enemy, we want to know our friends, and we want to know our God. I believe God is going to go with us. We thank God for each of you. May the Lord bless all of you as you leave special meetings and go back to your posts of duty! May we all be challenged to take the land!