Elder installation
Transcript
Well, good morning. Like I said, my name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. Today is an exciting day in the life of our church. We are installing Spencer Carey as an elder. And so it's going to be a good morning for us.
We are taking a break from our time in Genesis to install Spencer. He's been doing pastor and training stuff with us for a couple of years. And a lot has gone into this, and we're excited to be able to do this this morning. I hope everybody made it safely through the great mist of 2018. I know that if you live closer to the coast or have family that way, that there has been some significant damage in that direction, although we didn't catch the brunt of it. So thank the Lord for that, for Columbia.
So a little bit about what we're going to do today. It's going to be kind of like a wedding, because in some ways Spencer is going to be committing himself to our church family. And us as a church family, we're going to commit ourselves to Spencer. So there'll be times where I'm talking to us as a church family. There'll be times where I'm just talking generally from what the Bible says. There'll be times where I'm specifically addressing Spencer.
And so in similar ways, when I get to do a wedding, the couple stands. And then there are times where I'm talking to everybody, just kind of what the Bible says. There are other times where I specifically address the couple. Except for today, I think that as we specifically address Spencer, he'll listen. The couple at a wedding usually doesn't. They're just kind of staring doughy-eyed at each other.
But I don't think Spencer's going to be doing that with you all right now. So hopefully he'll listen as we kind of walk through this. I got to meet Spencer in college. And it took us a while to kind of admit it to each other after he had been hanging out here. But we did not appreciate each other's company in college, which I think is a testament both to our judge of character in college and our general attitudes towards humans.
And so we've grown since then. We like each other now. And Spencer's been around for a while. He felt called to plant in Lexington. And so he moved from Sojourn from Louisville, Kentucky, where he was going to Sojourn. No, Sojourn was the church.
Sorry, Southern Seminary is what I'm trying to say. Sojourn was the church he was a part of. Moved from Southern Seminary to be here to plant in Lexington. Called us up because somebody said, Hey, well, there's some guys that are planting a church. You should get to know them. He said, Well, I already kind of know them.
But he had to have a sponsor church. So he thought, Well, maybe these morons will sponsor me and we can go ahead and plant our church. And so we met and it turns out we had a lot in common. We had a lot that we believed similarly about how to pursue the mission and to worship Jesus and to mobilize people and make disciples. And so Spencer started hanging around. Eventually he started feeling like he was actually called to be here.
And that was an exciting moment for our church. And now as he's been doing pastor and training, we are going to install him today. So I want to go ahead and tell you a few things. One that Spencer's already done for our church. One of the things that he did pretty early on was he and he treated it like it was a gospel issue that we have better coffee on Sundays. So he used to be a barista or a barista.
I don't know. He's a guy. I don't know how that works. And he he he kind of just said, We can't drink this. If we believe all the things that the Bible says about how God's good creation, we can't be drinking this on Sundays. And we're like, What?
It's like seven week old Maxwell House. I don't understand what the problem is. And so we've gotten better coffee. He he fought hard for liturgy, which means a set order to worship. It stresses him out any time that we kind of break from that. But he's he fought hard for that.
So if you like responsive readings, you can thank Spencer. If you're like me and they make you uncomfortable, you can thank Spencer. I remember when he would say he's like, Why don't you all do responsive readings? And the answer was basically, I don't like them. And he was like, Well, you know, the Bible, he like went. He pulled the Bible out on us.
And he was like, You know, the Bible says for us to read together, for us to devote ourselves to the reading of scriptures. And I was like, Yeah, but they make me uncomfortable. And so since we didn't have a good point and he did, we've started doing them. And they've actually been really good and helpful. And I do appreciate them now. Other things that we have in liturgy are when Spencer gets up here and says he's going to give us a benediction, which is a blessing for the road.
And we had to tell him, Stop saying that. Just do it. Just say the benediction. He also fought really hard for shorter sermons. And I know some of y'all have been hanging around for a little while and you're like, These are the short ones. Yes, these are the short ones.
These are the shorter sermons. He's done a lot with shepherding and member care. I will also say that we have already made some allowances for Spencer that we hadn't made for other pastors. Everybody who's a pastor so far, the way we did email addresses was your first initial and your last name. But Spencer's name is Spencer and his last name is Carrie.
And he was really up in arms about having scary at millcitycolumbia.com be his email handle. So we already changed that up for him. So here's what we're going to do today. We're going to look briefly. I thought it was an awesome email address. We're going to look briefly.
I was like, didn't your parents do that on purpose? We're going to look briefly at three different passages. The New Testament has a lot to say about pastors and about what the church is supposed to look like. The New Testament church. And we're going to look briefly at three different passages that just deal with the kind of the role of the office of pastor, of elder. And we're going to talk through that this morning.
And then kind of at the end of our time, we're going to call Spencer up here and we're going to go through a list of things that he's going to commit himself to. And then we're going to commit ourselves to him as a church and he will be installed in our church as an elder. So I'm going to pray and then we're going to jump in. God, we thank you for this time and we thank you for what it means for the life of our church. We pray that we'd honor you well as we study your word together this morning and as we install Spencer as a pastor of our church. Thank you.
And in Jesus name. Amen. Grab your Bibles, go to Titus chapter one. Titus chapter one. It's going to be on page 579. If you have a Bible that looks like this.
And we're going to pick up in verse five. So we're going to talk briefly about the character of a pastor, kind of what the Bible outlines. There's several passages that do this. We're going to look at Titus today. Before we do that, I want to answer kind of a big question for us. So he says in verse five, this is why I left you in Crete.
That's where Titus is so that you might put what remained into order and appoint elders in every town as I directed you. OK, so what happens is the New Testament, Paul and the other apostles travel around. They share the gospel. People believe the gospel. People become Christians and become disciples of Jesus. And then it would say that they would come back through and kind of appoint elders, make sure that all the local churches and all the churches in all these cities had some organization, had some leadership.
And so that's what's happening here. And so today we will install. We will appoint Spencer as an elder. Now, for some of us, that word, we're not really familiar with the word elder. We use that term interchangeably here at our church. So the Bible also uses it interchangeably.
The word elder overseer are different words in the Greek, but they're used interchangeably. And we also use the word pastor. And so those are all three different words in the New Testament that are used to describe this kind of same role, the same office, this same thing that people are supposed to do. And so we interchange them. Now, some people look at that and go, OK, doesn't elder mean older? And then you might look at us and say, you don't look older, to which I would respond.
Thank you. I moisturize. I appreciate that. No, I would respond. We aren't that old. We are on the young end of kind of pastoring.
We're on the far end of this. And here's the thing. The term does mean older. And it originally meant in the Old Testament, you're going to see it means all the older people, all the heads of families were called together. But as it comes into the New Testament, it is only ever used as an office.
Similar to our term senator. Same root word is senile. Same same root word. It means older. But now we just use it as an office.
And that's how the New Testament uses this. And the primary thrust of what the Bible calls for from an elder is not physical age, but spiritual maturity. And so that's why he lists off these qualifications. In these qualifications, there is a call for maturity, but never a specific age. So that there can be people who are young and spiritually mature, old and not spiritually mature.
And the hope is that we would grow as we are young pastors. We would grow to be more spiritually mature over time. As we age. So here's what he says. Verse six. If anyone is above reproach, means nobody can bring any kind of claim against them.
The husband of one wife and his children are believers and not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination. For an overseer as God's steward, meaning that he's a stand in for God. The person who's overseeing a church, an elder, a pastor, is handling God's people, God's word. He's not in charge. He works for God. Must be above reproach.
He must not be arrogant or quick tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy for gain. But hospitable, a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined. He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught so that he might be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it. So let's talk briefly about the character outlined for a pastor. So these are character qualifications.
There's only one in here that is a skill, which is the ability to instruct, the ability to correct. The rest of them are character, character qualifications that you have to see over time that wouldn't show up on a resume. So here's what it says. It says if you're above reproach. This is actually why as we went to install Spencer, we would announce we're going to install him on the 23rd. If you have anything to bring against him, anything that he has done, any slight, we need to know about it so that we can approach it, that we can talk to him about it, that we can correct it.
And that we see that he seems eligible for this, but we want to make sure that he hasn't been wronging and harming people in other areas. It says the husband of one wife, which means a one-woman man. This has been an honor to see how Spencer pursues his wife there. He's very busy. He does a couple of days here serving. He teaches often here, which takes a lot of his time.
He works with our member care and shepherding. He's put a lot of work into that, and then he does real estate, which keeps him very busy. And so there's often days where he's here working. He goes and does some showings. He goes and does some pastoral care. He gets home late, and he has to be very intentional with his wife, Anna, and it has been beautiful to see how intentional they are to spend time together, to date one another, to enjoy one another.
But it says husband of one wife and his children are believers and not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination. 1 Timothy 3, which also outlines character qualifications, says that manages his household well and his children are submissive. And so one of the things we see is that one of the first realms that you pastor is your home. And so we did not, when I first became a pastor here, who's considerably younger than I am now, didn't have any children. So now that qualification matters more because I have to keep my children submissive.
At some point, my son, he's three. He can't really be open to the charge of debauchery, although he did feel a little insubordinate last night before he went to bed. But we handled it. Boy, you're being insubordinate and churlish. Like, we walked through this with him. But what it means is that you manage your household well, that your children grow up.
And this is one of the things that we talk about on a regular basis as pastors is that as our children get older, there may be a season where we say, hey, guys, I no longer meet these qualifications. I have children who are rebelling, who are pursuing open, flagrant sin. They're not submissive. I'm not leading my household well. And I need to step back. We talk about that regularly.
This is the thing that we need to be prepared for. This is one of the reasons why not only do we believe it's biblical that we would have multiple pastors. Some people would look and say, you're going to have four pastors for this size church. And our answer is yes, because we believe that elders are supposed to be plural. That's why he says appoint elders in every town, that there should be more than one. And we believe that it's healthy.
It's helpful. It gives us room to shepherd our families well. It gives us the ability to shepherd each other, to be accountable. But there may be seasons where we have to walk through that. For an overseer, God's steward must be above reproach. He must not be arrogant or quick tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy for gain, but hospitable.
He must have his home open to people. He must love good, be self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined. So that those who are to lead the church are meant to be, they don't eat too much. They don't drink too much. They're not too aggressive. They're not too loud.
They're tempered. They control themselves. That they're disciplined. That they might set an example. Then he says he must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction and sound doctrine and also able to rebuke those who contradict it.
So there ought to be an exemplary character and a love for the scriptures and an ability to rightly teach and correct. We take this very seriously here. If there's two kind of caricatures of pastors, maybe many of you have grown up and you've known pastors who are really genuinely good people. They loved the Lord. They were humble. They were gracious.
They were caring. And that's one picture we have of pastor. The other one is that pastors are messed up. They're sneaky. They're greedy. They're power hungry.
I know that that's in me. When I meet somebody and they say they're a pastor, I'm like, okay, well, you might be weird. And I feel bad that I feel like that because I know I tell people I'm a pastor and I assume they think maybe the same thing. It's like, okay, weirdo. We'll see. But that's the thing.
And so we take it very seriously that we would uphold and display what God has intended. I want to turn. I'm going to talk a little bit more about this, but I want us to turn to the next place before I do. So we're going to look at the commitment of a pastor. So we're going to go to Hebrews 13.
So just a few pages over. And again, there's a lot of different passages, but I wanted to highlight a few things. So the Bible says that the pastor should have a godly character. And then it talks about how we are to commit both to the pastor and the pastor commits to us. And so I want to talk about, Spencer, what you're committing to today and what we as a church are committing to today. Because we are, as a church family, making a commitment when we install a new pastor.
And Spencer today will be making a commitment to us. So let's look. We're going to read a couple of verses and we're going to jump kind of a section and read another couple of verses. Because Paul introduces this idea. He talks about some specifics for this church. And then he kind of closes with this idea.
So we're going to verse 7. He says, remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. I didn't have this on there, but I want us to read verse 9 as well. It says, do not be led astray by diverse and strange teachings.
Okay, I just want to read that because it's going to apply to something we're about to have to read in here on verse 17. So verse 17 says this, and this is to the church. The church was talking to us collectively as a church family. Obey your leaders and submit to them. For they are keeping watch over your souls as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning.
For that would be of no advantage to you. So if you're part of our church family, if you've committed to membership here. One of the things that happens when we install a new elder leader in our church family is that this applies. That we would obey and submit to our leaders. Now, as a pastor here, I wish that was worded differently. I wish it said like, consider it, but you still make the call.
Like, you know, think about it. They've probably been studying stuff, but don't overdo what they say. But that's not what it says. It says obey and submit to them because they're going to be held accountable. That's what the passage says. That's scary to me.
And this is another reason why we take eldership really slowly here. One of the phrases we use is we take it slower than we want to take it. I think Spencer could have been ordained a while back. The truth is if he can be ordained now, he could have been ordained earlier. That's usually how that works. Could have been installed earlier.
We actually had people, I had somebody in my group come to me and say, why isn't Spencer a pastor yet? And she was like, he's the best one we have and he's not even a pastor. And I was like, you said that right to my face. Like, I'm here. You're talking to me. And the answer is twofold.
One, character can only be seen over time. So he just said, remember their way of life. We have to watch way of life. We could tell Spencer could preach when he showed up. I remember the first time he preached when we were doing teacher development. I thought, yeah, we could listen to this guy.
You could listen to this guy week after week. That was helpful. That was good. That was encouraging. But there's certain things that don't show up on a resume that aren't going to show up as you get to talk to somebody.
And that's character. You have to see him in seasons of life. Are they consistently faithful? Do they love their spouse? How do they handle it when they don't have any money? How do they handle it when their child is going through a really difficult stage?
How do they handle it when they're sick? How do they handle it? Character only unfolds over time. So there's no way to do that quickly. Secondly, after we install him today, we as a church family have to obey and submit to him. And we want to make sure he's got some sense.
Because that would be really difficult to do. We want to see that. We take that very, that's a very weighty thing that we would say that we believe that we're going to, he's going to be my pastor after the day. I'm going to have to submit to his leadership. We wanted to watch and see, can we do that now? I've been submitting to some of his leadership.
I've been obeying some of the things that he lays out because he's got wisdom and he handles the Bible well. But we're co-signing that as a leadership team, as an elder team for the rest of our church family. And we want to take that really slowly. And the other thing that we have to see is that the, as Matthew 20 says, Jesus says, I didn't come to be served, but to serve, to give up my life as a ransom for many. What he says is that the leaders of you should be your slaves. The first among you should be last.
So what happens is Spencer's about to move into a position where he can lean into the fact that our church family is supposed to obey and submit to him. And he can do that as someone who is power hungry and loves authority. Or he can do that as someone who understands that his role is a servant. He's meant to die to himself on behalf of those that he serves because they belong to Jesus. One of the things we say often is if you can't take the trash out, you can't lead a church. You can't be an elder.
Or if you can't serve, you don't get to do anything else. Because it seems from a worldly perspective as if he's moving up in the ranks. But biblically, that's flipped upside down and he's moving down to be a slave to more people, to serve more people. So the Bible says, obey your leaders. Now, that does not mean check your brain at the door. We just read where it says, don't be led astray by diverse and strange teachings.
So he says, don't be led astray, obey and submit to your leaders. So what he's saying is biblical, healthy, godly leadership is what we follow. That we open the Bible. There's a reason why we set this out in the middle of everything. And we open the Bible up and we set it on here because this is what is leading us. This is what is teaching us.
God through his Holy Spirit, as he empowers his word, I could fall over dead. And what is important is still here. And so we follow the leadership that's outlined for us in scripture. But there are places where pastors have to make house rules. Because the Bible tells us certain things we're supposed to do and certain things we're not supposed to do. And then there's some areas where we got to make some calls.
Give you an example. It's kind of like parenting. When I was growing up, I had to be in bed at nine o'clock. All the way until I left my father's house. Eighteen years old. At a nine o'clock bedtime.
A little more lax on the weekends and during the summer. But not real lax. Just a little more. During school, nine o'clock, go to bed. You could get away with it a little more if you weren't annoying him. You could push it to like 9.15 or 9.30.
But if he like, if you bothered him, it was close. Bedtime. Now, as a house rule. At your house, you may not have had that rule. I was called to obey my parents. He said, go to bed at nine.
If I stayed up, if he told me to go to bed, and I said, no, I'm sinning. If I was up at ten in rebellion against my father, I'm sinning. Now, at your house, where you had no curfew, you weren't. Because it wasn't a house rule. You were supposed to obey your parents. They said, show up by three.
I remember when I first started dating my wife, Anna. And I said, what time do you need to be home? Because I was trying to, you know. She said, I don't have a curfew. And I was like, your parents hate you. Truth was, she had never done anything that had to be restricted.
She behaved herself. Phillip's voice, home at nine, in bed. There were restrictions at my house. And this messed me up. Because I was in college. And at 9.30, my body started to shut down.
I'd been going to bed at nine o'clock my entire life. People were like, you want to do stuff? And I'd be like, yeah, it sounds. My body's like, what are you doing? You're going to die. I'm like, you know what?
I'll catch you later. I've got to go to sleep. My roommate my freshman year hated me. And he moved out. And it was nice. I had my own room.
And I went to bed at nine. And he didn't make any noise. There are house rules. One of the house rules we have as a church family is our community groups. The Bible does not say you have to be in a group. People ask us this all the time.
What does the Bible say you have to do that? No, it doesn't. But the Bible does say that we're to love one another. We're to serve one another. We're to bear with one another. We're to forgive one another.
We're to be hospitable to one another. And we live in a culture where you are never forced to do any of those things. There's another church right down the road. So as soon as something gets difficult, you don't have to forgive. You can go over there. You can go over there and tell them how terrible everybody was here.
And you know what that church will say? We're so sorry. Because they want to put on a good impression of Christ to you. And they'll say, well, we love you. We'd never do that. And they're well-meaning.
But the truth is you should have stayed here and repented. Or you should have stayed at your last church and repented. We're called to do all these things. And we live in a culture where you don't have to. You can go home and watch, friends. You don't have to have any.
My brother, when they canceled the show The Office, he said, I feel like I've lost a lot of my friends. And I'm not going to see him all the time anymore. Then Netflix came out, and he's fine, you guys. So we say you need to be in a group. Because we're trying to apply what the Bible said. So we made a house rule to help us accomplish what we think we're supposed to do.
And so when the Bible says obey your leaders and submit to them, there are places where that shows up. And that means there are going to be times where, as a church family, we disagree. That's what submission is. It doesn't say agree with your leaders. It says obey, submit. And so we take our time to try to figure out, this person loves Jesus.
Does he love the word? Are we in agreement on how this plays out? Because the truth is, since there are house rules, Spencer might be installable elsewhere, but not here. Because we disagree on what the Bible is saying and how we ought to live that out. So we take our time.
But here's what it says. The two commitments that the church family is making and that we'll make later, we'll actually read and we'll kind of say, by God's grace, that we will. Is we're committing today to obey and submit to Spencer. And then it says, let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you. So some of us maybe said, okay, well, I'll obey, I'll submit.
But man, am I going to make that awful. And the truth is, it's not what he says. It says, let them do it with joy. Spencer's supposed to be here. If he's supposed to be here, if he's supposed to serve, he's supposed to do this. Then we want him to do it with joy.
We want him to do it not begrudgingly. We want him to show up excited to be a part of this church family and to serve this church family and to slave for this church family. We want that to be a joy because it does us no good if he's bitter and unhappy, if he's frustrated. That is not how you want your pastors to be. So as a church family, we're designed, supposed to make things joyful.
Now, as a pastor, I want to give you a few tips on how to do this. One, if you are frustrated or hurt by something that one of your pastors has done, just go talk to them. It's one of the best ways to make bleeding a joy. Because someone sitting you down and saying, hey, you hurt my feelings. It's so much easier. It's so much biblical.
So what we're supposed to walk through. There are times where somebody sat me down and said, I think you need to repent. And when they got up, I was like, you're right, I do. I do need to repent. I handled that poorly. My thinking on that's been wrong.
And I get to grow and we get to move forward together in love. Being frustrated and complaining and whispering to other people doesn't help us grow. It doesn't model the gospel. It doesn't display anything good. So when you're frustrated, go talk to the pastor.
Whichever pastor it is. It's probably razz. Go talk to him. Sorry. I do remember I've had people sit down with me and after doing that, because they did it, they thought it was biblical, they knew they were supposed to, they sat down and afterwards said, that wasn't that bad. It's like, yeah, I just look angry.
I'm actually not a terrible person. Tell your friends. Encourage. When you see something that is encourageable, encourage. Fan the flame. When Spencer, and be specific.
When he does something that's helpful or encouraging or blessed you or you see Jesus at work in him, tell him. Because the truth is, often we as pastors run around, we get to work and serve. We've been called to this. We work and serve with everybody who's hurting. Everybody's weak. Everybody's frustrated.
Everybody's in the midst of sin. And we may spend a week, three weeks, four weeks, five weeks, just doing that. And if you're doing well and you see Jesus at work in your life, you see Jesus at work in your group, just grab a pastor sometime and just say, hey, I just want to let you know how this is working and how this is going. Grab Spencer at some point and say that to him, because that helps make this a joy. Spencer. Verse 17.
Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls as those who will have to give an account. You are committing today to care for the souls of Mill City Church. This is one of the reasons why we do membership is that we want people to actually look and say, no, I commit to this. I believe in Jesus. I'm going to be here. I'm going to belong.
We don't know how it works. We know that as pastors, we're saying we're in charge of care for souls, eternal souls that will exist either in hell or in heaven with Christ and that one day we will stand before God and we will give an account. Not just for how we care for souls, but also the Bible tells us we have a stricter judgment for those who teach that we actually studied, that we actually tried, that we actually were as clear as we could on what the Bible says. But there's going to be a time, and I don't know if we get to go in together, I don't know if the four pastors of Mill City Church are going to stand shoulder to shoulder, I don't know if they're going to read off a list of names, I don't know how it's going to work, but we're going to stand before God and be accountable for souls.
Spencer, you're committing to that today, to have a moment in judgment that otherwise wouldn't exist, to have a moment in our judgment before God that wouldn't be there outside of accepting the call that you think he's placed on your life to do this. To stand before him and say, I wasn't just distracted, I wasn't just in it for gain, I wasn't just in it, but I was praying, and I was weeping, and I was trying, and I was studying, and I was pouring myself out. Because he knows. We can fake it in front of people, but he knows. That's what Peter says, one day the chief shepherd's going to show up, and we're going to be held accountable.
So that's what you're committing to in church family, that's what we're committing to. Turn to Acts chapter 20, it's one of my favorite passages in the Bible, it's where Paul calls together the Ephesians elders, so it's going to be back to the left. This is kind of some of the stories from the early church, after Christ had died on the cross, after he had risen from the grave, and the church had been commissioned and sent out into the world. So we're going to talk about the charge, kind of the commission or the task of a pastor. And yes, they were all three C's, because once you do two C's, you have to do a third one or you get in trouble.
So the charge, what we're called to do. So we're just going to read this passage, and we're going to make some observations about what this is supposed to look like. So verse 26, Paul's called together the elders of a church, the pastors of a church, he's going to call them elders, he's going to call them overseers. We said that's interchangeable. Verse 26. Therefore, I testify to you this day, that I am innocent of the blood of all.
For I did not shrink from declaring you the whole counsel of God. Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. I know that after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. And from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore, be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to admonish everyone with tears. And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.
So look back at the first thing that Paul says. He says, I'm innocent of the blood of all, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. And so as we stand accountable for souls, what he's saying is that we, Paul says, I'm innocent because I read, studied, knew my Bible and proclaimed my Bible to everybody. I didn't shrink from even saying things that were unpopular or disliked. I proclaimed what was true. One of the most frustrating things, Spencer, is that we cannot help people repent.
We can't make them see it. We just get to say it. We just get to plead with people. We get to sit them down and say, this is what the Bible says. And this is where you're headed. And this is where destruction lies ahead for you.
And they don't see it. They don't believe it. Some of the stuff we tell people sounds crazy about marriage, about sexuality. Paul says he didn't shrink from it. He proclaimed it. And then he can walk away without having the blood of others hanging over his head.
So the first charge I would say for a pastor is that we would know our Bibles, love our Bibles, and proclaim from our Bibles. We would know it. We'd memorize it. We'd believe it. We'd trust it. In Paul's letters to Timothy, he says, I charge you in the presence of God and Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead by his appearing and his kingdom, which about as many things as Paul could think of, all the things you could charge someone by, he pulls them together and he says, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season, reprove, reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching.
Then he says, until I come, this is in another passage, I devote yourself to the public readings of scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. This is one of the ones that Spencer cited on us that said we had to publicly read scripture. Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you. Practice these things, immerse yourself in them so that all may see your progress. We as pastors are supposed to grow in being Bible people. We're supposed to grow in it.
Progress should be seen. From what I understand, this is already true for Spencer. One of his first sermons he got to preach, he talked about the cross and repeated the phrase, gaze upon the carnage so many times that it made people very uncomfortable, but not in a good, here's the gospel way uncomfortable, just in a, you probably should stop saying that way uncomfortable. I'm sure there are more, but that's the one I wanted to talk about. But that this should be a thing that growth is seen, that we grow as men who love and trust our Bibles and proclaim our Bibles.
Because what else are we going to proclaim from? We do not have sufficient wisdom, but the Bible makes the simple wise. And there's our hope. Verse 28. So we would be Bible people.
Secondly, he says, pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. So Spencer, you have to commit today to watch your own soul, to pay careful attention to your own sin, to your own proclivities, to your own desire for evil. And then pay careful attention for God's people, that you would love them, that you would care about them, know them, pray for them. They belong to Jesus. He purchased them with his blood. Then he says, I know that after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock, and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them.
Therefore, be alert, remembering for three years I did not cease night or day to admonish everyone with tears. So that today you commit yourself to a group of people that you might love, that you might proclaim the word of God to them, that you might weep for them. I remember when I was first doing some internships with Midtown Fellowship, the pastors there said that they felt like pastoring a lot of times was standing next to somebody on top of a roof saying, don't jump. Please don't jump. I can tell you how far it is down there. I can tell you what happens when you land.
I can tell you why jumping is a terrible idea. Please don't jump. And then watching them jump and then immediately saying, okay, I'll meet you at the bottom. That's what Paul says. I didn't cease to admonish with tears to correct, to say, don't do this. Please see your sin.
Please turn. Please love Jesus. Spencer, you're a sinner and you're not sufficient. For the weight of caring and caring for the souls of those who belong to Jesus. In order to kind of highlight how big of a sinner you are, we got your wife to do a video where she outlines some things. No, that would have been fun though.
You are not sufficient for the weight. And that's why Paul ends, as he's talking to them, he says this to them. We're going to end with it. I now commend you to God. So Paul's telling him he's not going to see him again.
And he says, I'm handing you over to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified. That those who lead the church are sanctified the same way that everybody else is. They're saved the same way that everybody else is. That we trust that Jesus, through his grace, has accomplished for us what we could never accomplish. That we are sinners who need a savior and ought to be the first to proclaim them. So Spencer, as you take on the weight of shepherding among our church family and among this people for as long as God gives you the grace to do so, we commend you to God and to his grace that you might walk in it and that you might one day stand sanctified along the rest of our church family, trusting that Jesus has redeemed us from our sin and set us free and given us hope, which he is our hope, our only hope, that anything would be good.
That you will not save yourself through pastoring well, that you will not save yourself through people responding well to what you teach, that you will not save yourself through your family being proud of you, that you will not save yourself through how well you lead a group or how often it multiplies, that you will not save yourself by leading people to Christ, that you will be saved the same way that everybody else is saved through the blood of Jesus on your behalf as a sinner who had no other hope. At this time, I'd like to ask our other two pastors, Matt and Raz, to walk up and Spencer to come up as well. So we're going to read a few things that Spencer will respond to, and then we're going to read one that we as a church family will respond to, and I'll tell you when that's coming. Spencer, do you believe by God's grace in your life that you meet the qualifications laid out in Scripture for an elder and have not hidden sin in order to serve in this capacity?
Spencer, do you commit yourself to God's Word, to study it, meditate on it, cherish it, striving to mold your life to its instruction while actively seeking to train others to do the same? Spencer, do you commit yourself to keep a close watch on yourself and your sin, being quick to repent in an error? Spencer, do you commit to keep a close watch over Mill City Church, sacrificially loving and serving and leading those to whom God's Holy Spirit has seen fit to make you an overseer? And Spencer, have you committed your life to Jesus above all else, believing only in the gospel, not your good works or efforts or success in ministry for your salvation?
Okay, church family, this is ours, so if you are a member of Mill City Church, we're going to commit to the things we talked about earlier. So we're going to respond with, by God's grace we do. Church family, do we commit, under the authority of the Word of God, to submitting ourselves to Spencer's direction and seeking to make his time serving here one of joy? By God's grace we do. Spencer, by the grace through Jesus Christ that we have, we commission you to serve alongside of us as an elder of Mill City Church, as one of God's stewards over his beloved people, sacrificially loving, serving and leading those to whom he has assigned to us for as long as God, in his grace, allow us.
Please come stand here, we're going to lay hands on you, we're going to pray. God, we thank you for this moment, for what it means. We thank you for this man. We pray that you would bless him, that your Holy Spirit would be at work in him to do beyond his ability in loving and forgiving and repenting, that you'd help him to be quick to see his sin, that you'd help him to be quick to offer grace, that you would work through him to enable your Holy Spirit and his giftings to serve your church for as long as you see fit, that you might receive glory. In your name, and in the power of the Holy Spirit, and as we collectively gather as a church who belong to you, we appoint Spencer Carey as an elder in our church family to lead, to serve, to sacrifice, and to love.
And we pray that we collectively would respond well to him, that we collectively would serve well together to see more people come to know you in this city. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
That's good. Amen. invite you to in a moment as we stand and sing for you to come down the aisle, for you to take some bread, dip it, and partake in communion as we celebrate that Jesus has covered us, that his blood has redeemed us. If you have a gluten allergy, the metal tins are for you over here. Let's pray and then we'll sing and take communion.
God, we thank you for your grace on us as a church. We pray that you would multiply the efforts of our church in loving, serving, sacrificing, forgiving, and caring for one another and for this city, that you might be given great glory. We love you and we praise you in Jesus name. Amen.
