Integrity Outweighs Technique with Marcus Honeysett

[00:00:00] It's possible to do preaching as a merely technical exercise. I can preach a technically decent sermon, regardless of whether my heart is inclined to the Lord and almost nobody will know that's just competence. And therefore questions about our heart are prayer life. The more I meet groups and

[00:00:23] my trained groups of trainee preachers, the more I want to ask them the question has your worship life. Because if the whole point of preaching is gathering worshipers, however technically competent it is, if it's not coming from a halt of worship, it's going to be spiritually

[00:00:41] debilitated. Hey, welcome to the Expositors Collective podcast episode 308. I'm your host, Mike Neglia. The voice that you heard is our guest Marcus Honeysett. Maybe you know this, maybe you don't, but throughout the month of December, I've been re-broadcasting some of the most popular and some

[00:01:02] of my favorite episodes from 2023. And this one, I think is powerful. It's important. It's crucial that people are familiar with Marcus Honeysett's work or more importantly the concepts and the ideas of healthy church leadership. In the past couple of years we've seen the damage of what unhealthy

[00:01:29] leaders can do. Those who have too much power, not enough self-control, not showing the fruit of the Holy Spirit, a lot of damage and destruction can take place under their tyrannical reign. Marcus Honeysett has written a great book called Powerful Leaders published by IVP that I really

[00:01:53] enjoyed is the wrong word, but that I read and thought it was one of the more important books that I read in the past year and was honored to be able to have a conversation with him. The first

[00:02:04] half has to do with just kind of the usual stuff, a sermon preparation, etc., etc., etc., and you got to make sure that you listen to the second half where we talk about what it means to

[00:02:15] manage your own hearts, to create structures of accountability that are for your good as a leader and also for the good of those whom God has called us to care for. In the show notes there's a

[00:02:31] link to his book books plural that Marcus has written and I hope that you either enjoy re-listening to this or you might even be hearing this for the first time, wholeheartedly endorse it. I hope that

[00:02:46] this episode and all the way to do with expositors to collective help you to grow in your personal study and public proclamation of God's Word. Here's my re-brodcast conversation with Marcus Honeysett. All right, hey, welcome to the expositors collected podcast, really excited to be

[00:03:09] speak with Marcus Honeysett. Marcus, good morning. Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you for having me, Marcus. Hey, so we're going to talk about preaching and all that type of stuff

[00:03:19] that we always talk about here on this show but I think I have a feeling things are going to go a little bit deeper and a little bit more organizational health-wise as things progress. I hope

[00:03:31] you're okay with that. Yes, of course. That's your thing these days but kind of the way to get to know the guests. I love to hear the story of the first time that you ever

[00:03:43] preached a sermon or taught the Bible in public. Do you do remember that, Marcus? Yes, yes, I do and like most of us, I cringe. So it was when I was a student, London University and I think

[00:03:55] it was on Ezekiel 34. No way. Both of the shepherds of Israel who only look after themselves but not after the sheep which given that I now work for a ministry, the doze, the cycling leaders and right on to situations of leaders go wrong seems quite pricyent.

[00:04:13] But the victory at the church that I was added invited me to preacher to student service and he said to the congregation, now Marcus hasn't preached very often before. Isn't that right, Marcus? And he looked over at me and I shook my head and he said,

[00:04:27] this isn't your first sermon is it? And I said yes, yes, it is my first sermon. He said, so everybody got to be really attentive and I preached for nearly 50 minutes. I have a bit. And afterwards he asked, did you preach to sermons because

[00:04:42] you didn't think that they'd let you have another go. I ran into him recently and he said, Marcus, I've got something that I'd been wanting to get off my chest for 30 years. I said, well, what's that, Alas? He said, you preached for 50 minutes and he was clearly still

[00:04:59] up by the experience of it. Yeah, going that long, it's a privilege not a right and it's something exactly you've got to earn that by years of faithfulness or well. And that's funny.

[00:05:14] Yeah, I kind of remarked because, you know, in your latest book which we'll talk about later, yeah, that section features prominently in the book so it's it's made an impact on you and you do this. Yeah, what made you choose that? Well, you weren't assigned that passage. I

[00:05:30] I only know I wasn't assigned that passage. I had no idea. Yeah, maybe I was just, maybe that was just in my devotion at the time. I have no idea why I went for a z-tool. Yeah.

[00:05:41] There we go. So I know it was too long but apart from that, like did you enjoy it? Did you enjoy it? I enjoyed it. Okay, today enjoy it. 400 completely impassive stony faces and then the

[00:05:56] vicar and the cure in the middle being as animated as they possibly could desperately try to make this a good experience for me. But you know, we live and learn, don't way? Yes.

[00:06:07] So you've lived and you've learned and since then I just would like to know how have you grown or progressed as a preacher? There's the obvious, you know, time issue but what are the

[00:06:18] sort of things that over the years that you have like intentionally added to your sermon prep routine or your delivery? Well, now I have, um, I have some on prep routine that has a whole set of

[00:06:32] questions that try to help me focus on. What is it that I'm actually trying to do? Yeah, what's what's the end result? The critical questions for me are, what is preaching? And what is preaching?

[00:06:46] Four. What's the goal of it? I wrote a book a little while ago with Gakletim Chester called Gospel Center preaching and in that we suggest that the goal of preaching the Bible is to capture

[00:07:00] people's affections for Christ so that lives are transformed by the Holy Spirit to the glory of God. So that again, it's preaching the Bible is capturing people's affections for Christ so

[00:07:14] that lives are transformed by the Holy Spirit to the glory of God. So preaching is preaching the Bible, it's preaching the word of God. It's not just preaching from the Bible or preaching him,

[00:07:24] things that I want to say and using the Bible. But it is not just so that people are educated in the Bible. That was the Pharisees issue, no, the Scriptures but not worshiping Jesus. As far as I'm

[00:07:39] concerned, the whole point is worship. I really like what John Piper says in his little book of the supremacy of God in preaching he says preaching starts with our ancestors preachers, worshiping over the Bible as we're setting up to prepare a feast for the congregation where

[00:07:57] we're pouring over it in our study, we're finding faith and joy bubbling up in our hearts. Then when we're actually doing it, when we're preaching the word is coming on the breath of the Holy Spirit, it is the word of God. In order to look faith in worship,

[00:08:13] Bible luck in everybody else's hearts as well. So preaching is a um, if you like it's a movement that starts with faith and worship in order to produce faith and worship. So the question about how I've

[00:08:28] improved it, that's an interesting one. I think to start with, I was all about, I must communicate what this word says accurately. Accuracy was king. And of course we should be accurate but accuracy

[00:08:43] isn't the same as preaching or heralding. I could just just tell them to go away and read a good concentrate. Preaching is not just presenting God information with not the God information people, or God information with an appeal for behavior either ethical or evangelistic.

[00:09:01] Preaching's not just a disemboweled objective presentation of God. We believe he's present, in power and the aim is hearts that are captivated by the love of God in Christ as they see

[00:09:17] him in the word with the eyes of their hearts. That's the correct answer three stuff as he gaze on him with the eyes of your heart. He transformed from one degree of glory to another. So I think

[00:09:26] what sermons are, um, sessions where people are tasting and seeing that the Lord is good. They're tasting sessions. They're tasting so that Christians are going to get comforted and consoled and delighted by Jesus and the gospel and the love of God. And so that flows into

[00:09:48] every area of life. They're tasting sessions that are calling people to the obedience of faith and to be imitators of God, therefore, Ephesians 5. There are, they're tasting sessions, so but delighted captivated people will be doing what Ray Orton says. They're going to float

[00:10:09] out of there, going, you know, while in my difficult life I can live for a cold life at this week. So I think that stops it being something that is merely correct. It's merely cognitively

[00:10:22] acknowledged but instead it means that God is being delighted in and the gospel is being embraced and people are overflowing with thankfulness and worship and aligning up with God is dominoing into every area of life. And for non-Christian to have there, I just, you have prayers well

[00:10:44] that they might find it so wooing, so seductive that they find themselves wishing that the Bible's message were true despite themselves. They, that they might go from not wanting what we have to,

[00:11:00] to being desperate to have what we have. So these days, those kinds of things dominate my preparation. It's really important to lace more expository stuff with application and wisdom. Don't presume that people automatically make the connections between the text and the

[00:11:24] so-what question? Yeah. I think my material is some less dense than it used to be because I'm not so committed to getting everything I've learned in my study and to their heads. I want

[00:11:36] to woo them with a proclamation or an immeasurably better story about an immeasurably better person and salvation. It's just such an attractive vision of life with God and eternity with him. So they'll embrace the hardships and sacrifices because of the suppressing treasure that they're

[00:11:57] hearing about. Basically, the best way to woo and invite people is to get them to delighting God and the best way to get them to delight in God is for us as preachers to delight in God to them.

[00:12:11] So, it's just not God information people, we're worshipers who are gathering worshipers. Yeah, Marcus, you've evidently put a thought into this and even hearing you speak about it.

[00:12:23] It seems as if you truly love this stuff and it comes out of, yeah, a love and a delight in the Lord and you referenced, yeah, pepper. I think he calls good preaching like expository exaltation

[00:12:38] that the preacher is just enjoying God in front of people. Amen. I completely agree. Yeah, but the interesting things that listeners could do sometime is, uh, got down the sounds and see how often worship and evangelism is connected and you'll find that

[00:12:55] it's quite a lot. It happens in three ways. So sometimes the Psalmist has been in the presence of God, maybe in the temple, and it says I'm going to go from there and I'm going to tell the nations.

[00:13:07] Now, the times it says, I'm telling the nation so they will dream to you as the kind of opposite thing, but the by far the most common is him saying, I am going to delight in you to them.

[00:13:22] Gonna worship you in front of the nation. So evangelism is not so much, let me explain about the Lord. It's saying, let me tell you about this delightful one and the wonders that he

[00:13:37] is ruled upon the earth. Let me commend this amazing one to you so that you will be able to blown away as I have. Sorry, that's a bit of a tangent. No, we welcome those, but podcasts are nothing

[00:13:54] but tangent collections. Yeah, our sermon should be focused, but our podcast can be broad. Yeah, and again, what a wonderful vision of a tasting session that is, again, you're not just a privately mentioned, enjoying this in private. But the table is open, everyone is invited,

[00:14:14] friends, because anyone can get in on this and I'm, yeah, what was maybe the first, like domino to fall? What was the first, you kind of listed a collection of ingredients that have gone into your new understanding of preaching? Like what was the first change?

[00:14:32] So, when I was being taught to preach as a young star, the two questions that we dealt with all the time were what did it say and mean to its original heres. And the basic idea was as long

[00:14:49] as you got that and communicated that, then you'd done the job. That's about, that's why comprehension. That's about understanding and I think it's really helpful and I still like to start there, but I think that there were a number of things that I subsequently realized that the

[00:15:04] we're missing from it and the first one probably the first domino to fall was, what was this written to accomplish? How does it accomplish it by what power? And that's another understanding question.

[00:15:19] We could we could think about some probing questions that saw a solid fall into place afterwards, like, um, what are the hard questions raised by this? Both generally and for my specific audience

[00:15:35] in this real world of there in that we're sitting in front of me. By what power did it accomplish its purpose? And by what power does it accomplish its purpose today? How is this passage intended

[00:15:47] to draw forth faith and worship from our hearts? Are we going to as a result of this be casting ourselves on him as saviour, judgment, care and worshiping on our faces with the light

[00:15:59] crying holy? And are we going to float out of church deeply comforted living for Christ because we've been consulted by the love of God? But for me, sort of those application questions started

[00:16:12] to fall into place much later on. What differences does this actually make to my life? Do I really matter to God? Does my job might illness, my situation, my, my unbelieving family,

[00:16:24] my depression, my cancer, my, does everything matter to him? Can I trust this God to whom I matter and how is this passage going to help me? Are I going to obey it as opposed to just

[00:16:38] understand it? Am I going to do what this was written to accomplish because Jesus says, teach them to obey or he commanded? And that leaves us down a whole different trajectory about them. Are there ways in sermons we can try to remove barriers, not just a comprehension

[00:16:59] but to the obedience of faith? Because we want to know what would this look like if it was true in our lives? You know, we're teaching people not just to know but to delight and obey.

[00:17:18] That's sir, that's yeah, those don't have a sort of fell for me over a period but probably another really significant one was when I start first started to figure out that it's possible to do preaching as a merely technical exercise. I can preach a technically decent sermon,

[00:17:47] regardless of whether my heart is inclined to the Lord and almost nobody will know that's just competent. And therefore questions about our heart, our prayer life, the more I meet groups and my trained groups of trainee preachers, the more I want to ask them the question has your

[00:18:07] worship life at them because if the whole point of preaching is gathering worshipers, it's not however technically competent it is. It's not coming from a heart of worship, it's going to be spiritually debilitated. But those things kind of came over a period and

[00:18:29] the reason I didn't start there was partly because of the folk betraying me. And partly because I was one of these sort of bright, pretentious university educated youngsters at types who thought

[00:18:42] that everybody should be stunned by my clever Bible handling and all the stuff that I could show them but they couldn't have got for themselves. The Lord had a humbling work to do. And still

[00:18:53] us. Yeah, well I appreciate letting us in on that behind the scenes process and just all the the trail of wisdom crumbs that you've fused up there. I bet people will be reminding to catch

[00:19:07] some of those things. You said so many good things in a row. But here is kind of a pivot point because you're I'm sure referencing things from the the gospel centered preaching book that

[00:19:18] that you wrote a while ago. But you know if I can put this maybe as kind of bluntly, it seems though that you would say that preaching is important for like establishing a healthy culture to church but like it's actually insufficient because you recently also published this other

[00:19:36] book, Powerful Leaders, when church leadership goes wrong and how to prevent it. Which adds like other dimensions to a healthy life-giving and churchy community that is not necessarily tied to the pulpit. So yeah maybe you want to comment on you just talked about the opportunities

[00:19:57] that the pulpit has but one of the limitations and how can there even be let's say you mentioned a careful and a proficient and technically accurate sermons from a heart that's not a worshiping

[00:20:09] heart. But then there are also as possible those same sermons can be taught by a heart that is prone towards abuse of power, abusive people but can still do technically proficient preaching.

[00:20:22] So what your comments are thoughts in that? Yes, and I've seen worse than that as well. I've seen hearts that are given to coercion and manipulation and overbearingness. That's used being technically

[00:20:37] competent as a preacher and Bible handler as a cover up for that. Who's going to gain say the guy stands at the front? We'd just had to be very, very savvy to that power dynamic if we want to be

[00:20:48] humble leaders. So I think we make a category mistake when we equate being a shepherd with preaching only and it's an easy one to make because lots of leaders love preaching. If we tell

[00:21:03] ourselves that's really the whole job then it legit makes us spending all our time in our studies over our books and that was roughly what we fancy doing anyway. Yeah, yeah. So at the heart of

[00:21:15] shepherding a passage I really like is the end of Philippians one and the start of Philippians two. What we read there is the possible he's writing from prison. He says I think I'm going to get

[00:21:27] release and come be with you Philippians and he tells us what he wants to accomplish among he says I want to work with you for your progress in the faith and your joy in the faith.

[00:21:41] So you glory abundantly in Jesus with the attitude of humility that is in Christ Jesus and that's what I want to know. Progress in the faith that is getting taken up with Jesus in such a

[00:21:57] way that we apply his gospel to every area of life and then actually adjust our life to fall in with his Lordship, we line up that's being a disciple, it's applying the gospel to every area

[00:22:12] of life and changing life to a light with it. So that's progress in the faith and you need to know some stuff, you need to know the gospel, you need to know the scriptures, doctrine, ethics,

[00:22:22] better and better. That's growing as a disciple and aligning yourself with it but then joy and the faith that's growing as worshipers at some that's growing in spiritual depth putting down deep roots by streams of living water with souls that are full so that we glory abundantly

[00:22:44] in Jesus with the attitude of humility that is in Christ. That's what it looks like. We got a loads of other passages, couldn't wait. Philippians, one, the start of it, the goal is their

[00:22:55] love will abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight. You know just not that your knowledge and insight will abound, but your love will abound. So they will be discerning and filled

[00:23:07] with the fruit of righteousness. God of Ephesians 4, the point is the body building itself up in life. But I think a critical one, one that I love, is some, first Thessalonians 1 of that all,

[00:23:21] first Thessalonians. So the church in Thessalonica received the message with joy given by the Holy Spirit in spite of severe trial and it says they became imitators of the Lord and the apostles and the

[00:23:37] churches in Judea. They became imitators and I believe this idea of imitation and emulation if you like is really important. Listeners might like to go up and down the epistles sometimes and see just

[00:23:51] how much being a Christian leader is about being able to be imitated and it's a lot. Follow me as I follow Christ. And first Thessalonians Paul says we would gentle among you like mothers, we were strengthening like fathers in it's familial, it's affectionate, it's relational,

[00:24:13] it's close. If you look at the list of qualities for elders in 1 Timothy 3, when I was younger I used to think it was all about character, character character, one competency aptness to teach. So obviously that was the one I concentrated on because I liked that one and I

[00:24:32] wasn't too sure about how to grow in character through to the spirit. But now I would concentrate much more on character, but also I would concentrate on the other competency that I totally missed

[00:24:45] the part of which is the ability to manage your family well. That's the relational bit that's the imitation bit. Spiritual parenting is like parenting and the reason I missed it before was because

[00:25:02] I was single and didn't have a family. If I just stand in a pulpit and deliver instructions to my wife and nine-year-old from a distance, in such a way as they can't see my life, then that would be

[00:25:18] crazy. And if I stand in a pulpit and do that with a church, it's equally crazy. So I do think that a limitation of the pulpit is that if we aren't careful, we can use it not to be close to the

[00:25:33] people so they can see our lives, see how we're trying to live for Jesus, see how we're walking in repentance and faith. But rather we can use it actually to distance them from that, so easily

[00:25:48] come become part of the mask we wear. And people like it, they want the leader a bit of a distance, it's more comfortable that way. They like the idea that their preachers are all sorted and

[00:25:59] have figured out this Christian life they're never sinned and so it's very, very easy to collude in that. I think that's one limitation. If I were to identify another one or another two, firstly, preaching alone doesn't make a good leader. Doesn't make a good shepherd. Sure, yeah.

[00:26:17] I go competency. But perhaps being a little bit more provocative, Mia Expo took tree preaching doesn't necessarily make for a theological well-grounded congregation. So, you know, I'm from a tradition that preachers book by book and text my text. The danger is that we end

[00:26:34] up with a congregation that knows what's in the amyre, but can't answer a question that's framed systematically like, what does the Bible teach about men and women? Or what does the Bible teach about justice or what does the Bible teach about anything? Here's a really good test.

[00:26:57] If I were to get the average church member in listeners' churches up the front and say, could you just tell us all one meaningful thing about justification by faith? Would they be able to?

[00:27:12] In a church that has good expository preaching, I think that in many evangelical churches of UK at any rate the average church member wouldn't be able to, which tells you that we've done exposition at the expense of systematics. And we can do exposition at the expense of

[00:27:32] church history and ethics and a wide variety of other things as well. So, I do believe that book by book and passage by passage preaching is wonderful and necessary and we prepare feasts for people but it isn't sufficient. It tastes the insessions, it's not everything was needed.

[00:27:52] Yeah, yeah. Well, hey, you're on the expositors collective podcast right now. So, you're sorry, you better tread lightly buddy. So, how? Okay, you said you had two things and I'm kind of interrupting

[00:28:05] you in the middle of the second one but how and again, the biggest picture is like church church health and you're asking, you're making comments about, can I have some knowledge things,

[00:28:19] being able to define this sort of to define that. But I don't think you're pairing it's not are you healthy or are you informed? Those those things do kind of flow together. But how in an

[00:28:31] expository preaching manner can these themes be interwoven in our feasts or tasty insessions that we're invited people to week after week? So, the thing that I am most interested in is spiritually vibrically healthy leaders for spiritually vibrantly healthy churches. And

[00:28:55] the slight disconnect that I'm suggesting this morning is that you can have technically competent expository ministry without being spiritually healthy. What's your prayer and worship life like? It's how your devotions is much more interesting question about spiritual

[00:29:15] healthings. But I do think that the question of spiritual healthiness is right upstream. When the well at the top of the hill is spiritually healthy it claws over everything else. When it isn't then we take other things including good preaching and use them as a substitute for it,

[00:29:34] oh we must be spiritually healthy church could be good preaching. We must be spiritually healthy church because we have vital stuff as we must be spiritually healthy church because we got smiles ahead. Everything, everything either flows out of spiritual healthiness

[00:29:51] or it's a good holy looking substitute for it. And we all know some of those good holy looking substitutes are. If you've got the spiritual healthiness do you know what? You can shut

[00:30:02] ministers tomorrow and it doesn't matter. You can have people cast a spursions that you as a leader and preacher. It doesn't matter. You're righteous in Jesus' upper perfect reputation. You're spiritually healthy, living in His grace, you're receiving

[00:30:17] of the gift of righteousness, you're reigning in life as it says in Romans 5 17, if things are spiritually healthy then you will stand. If they're not spiritually healthy you will try to stand by adducing those other things and some of them look very impressive. They

[00:30:35] look like the right things but they're nodding on other themselves into kaitos of spiritual healthiness. What were your questions again? Well, I had to get in a different way. No yeah maybe that was me trying to get you off track of the most important thing which is

[00:30:58] that idea of a healthy well at top you know in parts life to everything else. That's the most important thing and then I had a technical question about incorporating systematic theology.

[00:31:08] But I want to say, I would track that question and I want to keep on on the main thing which is yeah healthy churches, healthy organizations and proper power understanding so forgive me for that. You'll forgive them. Thank you. So yeah a third thing you were on your

[00:31:27] way to say. No I'll call them and I'll ask another question. Okay okay so that's some of the limitations of the pulpit but like what are some of the opportunities that we have in the pulpit?

[00:31:43] Knowing that it's not everything but it is a it's not something that we should so quickly dismiss as as meaningless and you're certainly not saying that but yeah but given the real possibility of you know an unhealthy leader can mask themselves through competencies. Yes that is possible

[00:32:10] but how can hopefully a healthy well up front? How can like what's the the sort of teaching or preaching that communicates proper understanding of power and you know a respectful congregation and a place of health and flourishing? How can we use this time whether it's 50 minutes

[00:32:31] or something more realistic? We gone weak to build that type of values and currency into our congregations. So a great first I think to start that question with in second Corinthians 4 5 that we don't preach ourselves but we preach Jesus as Lord and ourselves as your servants

[00:32:51] for Jesus' sake and that for Jesus' sake is pretty crucial some congregations want their leaders to be their servants for their sake. No we are your servants so that he gets glorified in you. We're not your servant so that we are built up. It's just worth

[00:33:12] done a couple of definitions when I think about power what I mean is having the ability to do something, having the ability to act and when I think about authority I think about having the right

[00:33:23] to do and you can easily see how those two things can go together but they can't be separately people can't have the power to do things illegitimately and pulpits can give them the ability to do it because they are powerplats. Generally speaking congregations don't know what the limits

[00:33:45] of elders past as preachers authority is and elders past as preachers can be bad at self-limiting and having that big platform is the easiest thing to misuse for that. It can puff up our

[00:34:01] ego so easily people are listening to me wow and if a lot of people are listening to me big wow I think back to my mid-thirtutes and I took a decision in my mid-thirtutes that I am

[00:34:20] profoundly grateful for now. I was starting to get my first really big stage preaching invitations and in the UK that sort of two three thousand to not huge by American context but

[00:34:34] pretty big in the UK context and I've read on two or three I realized it was doing very bad things to my ego I was enjoying it but for some pretty toxic reasons and I sat down and prayed with some

[00:34:50] folk and I took a decision and that was I just wasn't going to do an animal so invitations started to come and I deliberately turned them down and these days I think I probably have not everybody

[00:35:02] ever some people are going to handle that in their hearts absolutely fine with humility and so on and walking and repentance and faith that wasn't going to be my experience I think.

[00:35:13] So I turned them down and 25 years on I think I probably could do those things now with help probably without too much difficulty but I look back at that and think it was probably

[00:35:26] spiritually the best thing I've ever done was not taking the big platforms. I think I could very easily have become somebody who would have used the pulpit to build me up.

[00:35:41] So the crucial thing is to not use the pulpit to build us up we preach Jesus as Lord and ourselves as your servants so never use illustrations that make you look spiritually good. Perfectly okay to use ones that highlight our foolishness errors and sins.

[00:36:05] Never ever present as being spiritually sorted and now not sinning. The very good friend who says that leaders and preachers need to be the chief repenters in the church because if we're not

[00:36:17] how is anybody else ever going to know it? And I think it is as crucial as possible to be as sadly as you possibly can be to the power that the pulpit gives us and to do our absolute

[00:36:30] utmost to shine the light on it for everybody else because the power that the pulpit gives us creates massive power imbalances out of the pulpit. Nobody is going to gain say the person who is authorized

[00:36:43] to tell everybody what's true from the word of God on Sunday. And we might not always feel that power imbalances think I'm just not the santa, approachable. But actually it puts the ceremony readily superior position in power dynamics and we just got to be as careful and transparent

[00:37:02] and accountable about that as we possibly can be. Leaders will be aware of many instances that are gone horribly wrong where people haven't been savvy to that. Personally I would be very up front

[00:37:16] with a church that the person who is at most risk of abusing their power and authority as me because I've got most of it. And I would make it as easiest possible for people to raise questions and

[00:37:29] concerns about me safely to them. Leaders and preachers who are the most proactive about that are the most immune from going wrong. There's no paneseers, nothing's ever perfect. But they are the ones who are committed to creating a healthy atmosphere of accountability. That includes them.

[00:37:52] If you have pauses and procedures and means of accountability in your church that includes everybody apart from the senior leaders and the preachers, they're not worth the paper there at all. They have to be applicable to us first before they're applicable to anybody else.

[00:38:10] In the opening chapters of your book, you speak about like yeah would it would a healthy power structure looks like or what a biblical understanding of authority and power? And you talk about four values of their accountability, plurality, transparency, and embodiment.

[00:38:31] Now how can that come across or how can that be communicated in a Sunday message? Are these bullet points to make sure that we hit all the time or is it as you're maybe suggesting is it through self-deprecating stories or mentioning your own need for accountability

[00:38:49] that that filters through the congregation? Generally speaking, I think I would do this in other parts of church life and not in the Sunday message. Okay, well I'm not in favor of shoe-holding

[00:39:01] this kind of stock and to every passage that we come across obviously when it is there and appropriate, we do it. For the moment I'm an easy-heal 34, perhaps, easy-heal 34, perhaps, easy-heal 34. I'm doing some study at the moment from David to Ahapp. Things go from the high point of

[00:39:24] David if there is one, I think that's debatable. To the low point of Ahapp and Elijah thinking he is the last believer left, I mean just imagine that thinking of the last Christian left on the planet.

[00:39:39] But it goes from that, the high point for the low point in a shade under a century. It's a remarkably quick collapse, absolutely astonishing and the study that I'm doing, thinking about writing on is some basically how does it go from one to the other?

[00:39:57] What are the missteps that are taken? And in those kinds of passages you can very easily, you can very easily do that because it's loads and loads of examples. Let me give you just one. Very first thing that happens when David is so

[00:40:15] interested in King Arthur, he's led the people with the Ark into Jerusalem. Joe outhead of the army, murders, apnea ahead of souls army is coming over to him. David won't enact justice. He has a funeral for Ahappner, makes Joe outwalking front of the Ark so

[00:40:38] everyone knows it's Joe out and not him. Sorry, in front of the coffin everybody knows it's Joe out of David who's done it. But then end of second Samuel 3 he says, he's not going to discipline

[00:40:51] or going to an Aha Justice against Joe Ab. Because the sons of 0 I, Joe Ab and his brother, Abishai are too strong for me. Justice deferred and obviously then later on with Bashir with John Blatt gets led off the leash and after that he's a Terminator.

[00:41:10] I'm in David world and that justice against his family either. With an Aha and all in Tamar and perhaps London and stuff that he shouldn't have done. He looked into those kinds of passages, it's pretty easy to talk about these kinds of power themes from because you can

[00:41:30] see it going wrong right there in the passage. I wouldn't just shoehorn it in everywhere, but I would command people to look at passages where these things are, these things are real. Yeah and now a moment ago you talked about our personal illustrations that we shouldn't

[00:41:52] be trying to make ourselves the hero in these personal illustrations about ourselves. But what about our organization? What about our structures and policies? Is there a way that that we can make our policies and structures the hero, you know, to say and here we have David

[00:42:12] is understanding a power and follow through is really lacking. I just want you to know that here at our church we have this, this, this, this to make sure that this sort of thing takes place.

[00:42:22] Is that what you're thinking of? So literally I think about that's a perfectly valid application of that. So that's a policy can be the hero but maybe not a preacher. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. I think that what we're doing when we do that is helping people

[00:42:38] um firstly make a connection from a very German text about how something should or should not be done and say, well this is our version of that here. Okay and what that does is it creates

[00:42:53] confidence and trustworthiness and you can only ever do in churches what you have confidence and trustworthiness to do but it creates confidence that leaders are never going to do this kind of stuff and we have publicly available mechanisms in place to do it. Yeah,

[00:43:13] one thing that leaders might like to have a little look at is a resource that we do in our organization living leadership. Now the thing called our leaders commitment scheme which is it circulates around two codes of practice that the work together. The first is a code of

[00:43:32] practice for how churches carefully does and the second is a code of practice for leaders about how we boundary our practice, healthily around five key boundaries. So that everybody knows how part-trol ministry works here. They know what looks back. They know what to not expect. They know

[00:43:53] how to um challenge things early on and safely if necessary. So you can find that at www.livingleadorship.org and then just put in the search box the leadership commitments have scheme that we do. But we think

[00:44:13] that being completely up front about how those practices work put them on your website, sign post everybody. Here's how it works, here's how it doesn't. We're slightly off-pricing but here's an obvious example. Sign post if you share confidential pastoral information with

[00:44:36] a pastoral and elder where does that information go? You know, there's a code to the other elders, doesn't go to their whites, does it go elsewhere? We're basically about creating confidence and safety so that people know that we are never going to overwrite that for them

[00:44:57] and preachers of the ones who find it easiest to do that because we're the ones who handle the word of God and people don't gain sales. I'm glad to hear that. I'm where we build in our

[00:45:09] website right now and so I'll be a little personal note to make sure to include these types of things like work. We're going to be sure to include such common sense things as like our

[00:45:21] child protection policy on on our websites and some of these types of things not that I expect anyone's going to ever read it but I think as a parent it's just it's nice to know as you're

[00:45:37] considering visiting a church. Oh, they have a child protection policy and it's available for me to read if I like and the leadership commitments maybe they're going to be read maybe

[00:45:48] they're not that no offense. I'm sure you spend so long time writing them but just being able to signpost people to them. Yeah. Somebody says how does it work you? Just being a psychwrot. There it is.

[00:46:00] You can't go wrong. Yeah. Yeah. And on our present version of our website we have our complaints procedure which is just sat there unused for years but in the past 12 months it's come in and

[00:46:11] that's a post traumatic. I don't want to talk about that but yeah there's things to kind of live online and they're unnecessary until they're necessary and so it's good to have them there.

[00:46:22] I'm particularly in a world but is now post COVID the world has changed with respect to the way people think about authority, leadership, organization, organizational values and there's a distrust in the air and so many scandals coming

[00:46:44] to lighten the evangelical world that people instinctively distrust or are going to be trust. Getting ahead of that just by saying we want to be the most transparent people we know how to be

[00:46:56] will not get it right but we're on a journey we're on trajectory that's where we're heading. Build Trust. Yeah yeah yeah I this probably hasn't reached the UK year news cycle but in Ireland one of our like television presenters from one of our state

[00:47:16] funded television programs you know turns out he had his official salary and then kind of a side salary where he's being supplemented and that's taxpayer money and that's been all the

[00:47:27] rage for the past week and a half in in the news cycle and so in our announcements this past Sunday I just talked about all the usual stuff and then our tight boxes over there. Hey I just want

[00:47:40] you to know you know we're all thinking about you know money and where it goes to charities and governance and you know and I didn't go through our whole policy but just kind of made reference to

[00:47:50] we have our AGM coming up in a few months um we're going to kind of disclose our whole financial situation then and if anyone has any questions about the money that you give where it actually

[00:48:00] goes to we welcome that and you know not a single person asked a question maybe they never well but it's just a little a little drop that just says we think this is important and we would like

[00:48:10] to be in a different category in your minds than the other people who take your money and really good how they use that. Yeah really good I really like about. Yeah you know 90 seconds

[00:48:21] done and tested forgotten by most but maybe remembered by some and it's just the sort of thing that hopefully communicates what we're all about and that we're on as you said we're on a trajectory

[00:48:31] towards more and more health more and more transparency. Yeah yeah absolutely yeah keep keeping that messaging consistent and doing it. Yeah that's the most important part doing it is more important than talking about it or having it on your website doing it's most important. Yeah well yeah

[00:48:51] on the topic of yeah kind of kind of doing it yeah maybe the last question is like yeah you mentioned a while ago that we've kind of stopped talking about preaching and yes we have and so maybe some people

[00:49:02] have you know stopped listening at this point but this is all a trick Marcus I just want to get you in the ears of as many preachers as possible so that you can talk to them about preaching

[00:49:14] yes but then these other bigger issues kind of as a last I want to hand the microphone over to you you're talking to you know thousands of preachers people who hold varying degrees of influence

[00:49:29] and in churches maybe their youth leaders maybe their you know lead pastors or bishops or whatever but like what do you wish that the current generation of Bible teachers and preachers kind of could hear from you what's maybe the message of your most recent book or

[00:49:46] living leadership as an organization what what do you want us to know? The thing I'm most want you to think about is what does it mean to be vibrantly spiritually health it. And there are two different questions for me but first is what's going on with preaching

[00:50:05] what is what is preaching how do we do preaching how do we do that well and the second question is what about ourselves as preachers what about our hearts what about our worship lives so I'm in living leadership we disciple church leaders that's what we do

[00:50:27] and we have a network of associates around the UK and Ireland and network of pastors are pastors essentially and so great joy to be able particularly post-COVID to the disciple church leaders and listeners might want to check that out on our website as well because we can

[00:50:45] very easily come alongside usually a very little cost to not all no cost to the people who need it are an encourage and help and support but what I'm really interested in is the heart

[00:51:02] what I'm really interested in is are we walking in repentance in faith what I'm really interested in is our prayer lives what I'm really interested in is are we recipients daily of the grace

[00:51:14] that we are commending to people because if we're not then we're trying to invite other people into something that we're not experiencing and compelling preaching does not come out of that per very long compelling preaching doesn't come out of spiritual dryness compelling preaching doesn't

[00:51:43] come out of hearts that are not enjoying God Paul says you want to work with you for your progress and your joy and the faith yeah that's what is going to lead to folk glory and

[00:51:52] abundantly in Jesus when you can't do that for your church if that's not true in your life so your interior life is totally vital to this and giving attention to your own soul care is not an indolible luxury because other people's joy and God depends upon yours

[00:52:12] as a leader so second Corinthians 13 says examine ourselves test ourselves to see if we're in the faith and our experiences that we're living leadership is that we're pretty bad at doing that on our own just in splendid isolation we might know that we're spiritually stuck very often actually

[00:52:35] people will grind to a halt after 15 years in ministry or age 45 whichever comes first because you set up unsustainable patterns for you and your spouse 15 years before and for 15 years you fed everybody else while being released fed people in the church and the burden on you have gone

[00:52:55] up and the help that you were getting from previous generation 15 years before is now dissipated and people don't know how long it takes to do the stuff that you do or how much you do you know

[00:53:08] they know of one toxic marriage issue in the church but they don't know about the other four whatever it is you get to you get to 45 or 15 years in and loads of people are on their last legs

[00:53:18] but you might know that you're spiritually wrong drive but you don't know what to do about it and then we all have our own blind spots as well and we have our cultural blind spots

[00:53:36] and we have things that we would very much like to not see and so it's very very easy to end up on the exam and in ministry and I think that's really dangerous nobody is so sanctified that we can't

[00:53:50] go wrong so we should never be our own judges on that matter a couple of questions I'd like of these firstly what would protect me and everybody else from the worst version of me what would protect me and everybody else from the worst version of me

[00:54:10] or worst version of you as a preacher because the worst version of us is pretty bad and the other question is how would I know if I was going wrong would anybody be close enough

[00:54:22] to spot it would they be brave enough to confront me or feel they had permission to do it because basically I would much rather somebody was bold enough to have a Nathan type conversation with me before everything went off the rails rather than afterwards yeah

[00:54:37] so I want to encourage you listeners to think about our hearts and be honest and insightful with ourselves but get others to do it as well we don't like self-examination and Peter Scazero in his book Emotiony Healthy Leader has a very interesting chapter on why we don't

[00:54:59] and he basically says we don't want to stop we don't want to sabotage we don't want to look at things because if we find that there are things are wrong areas in which we've built on shaky foundations

[00:55:13] that will be devastating and maybe not particularly easy to alter either so we want to avoid stopping and having that long hard look and do you know what we've got the perfect excuse to do it

[00:55:28] the way we as preachers and leaders avoid taking that evaluative look at ourselves is doing more ministry but which we are highly socially approved and we can always fill up all our

[00:55:41] time and never stop so you can always justify never evaluating yourselves and that creates this very odd thing that we are applauded very often for overworking and not taking a long hard look at things

[00:55:57] and we can get criticized if we do stop and take a long hard look at things and then try to change things the the law disshining his spotlight on that's a really weird disincentive to healthiness

[00:56:14] so my appeal really is that we find need to find ways in practice to actively bring ourselves into the light to ensure personal and organisational accountability is the actually work not just say we do but the really function people procedures policies, procedures policies are less good because we

[00:56:37] always get around those but people in particular who expose us to the light there is no downside of doing so but Satan will want to tell you that there is Satan loves false repentance

[00:56:54] but he knows it leads to death Satan loves superficiality and church because leaders are never repentant therefore nobody else knows how to do it Satan loves getting leaders and preachers into situations whereby the one sin that everybody would really value here in a sermon about we are

[00:57:20] not gonna preach about because we've done it yeah Satan loves that he will do everything to keep you enslaved he will offer every inducement he will offer every incentive he will offer every threat

[00:57:36] he will even make you think you are gonna die rather than if you come into the light but then you've got us a tanakly superficial church life and even those of us who preach in a systematic

[00:57:52] and expository way know that we tell everybody else so we're just preaching exactly what the Bible says and when a passage says something will you know we'll get to that passage and we'll say

[00:58:03] we know that we can be selected even regardless of that we know that you get to a passage where it says something that you really don't want to touch on so you take a whole chapter and

[00:58:13] concentrate or else in the chapter expand the periphery yeah exactly oh i'm gonna home in on this verse because I really don't want a home in on that so let's be honest the Lord

[00:58:32] gathers his flock like a shepherd he is a father and things go wrong when pastors and preachers stop being shepherd some spiritual parents and we become something else distant generals CEOs head teacher strategists slave drivers who just use people as tools for what we want to

[00:58:56] accomplish we will be down in the weeds ship puts no their sheep like now and they get to see all lives so they can imitate yeah well thank you thank you for that again this was all just a

[00:59:11] just a setup to to to let you say that and to speak to us and i i'm benefited from this then I as I said to you before we hit record i've been so benefited by by your writing on this topic

[00:59:26] and this conversation and i just i don't want to keep you to myself i want others to be learning from this you've mentioned the leadership sorry the living leadership website which

[00:59:36] will have a link to also kind of a helpful summary doesn't put together that kind of is it you said it is a checklist in regards to church power structures is that right yes there's

[00:59:48] a free downloadable resource on on the intervars to UK press websites on the goes along with the book powerful leaders but if you don't want to buy the book the resources were useful yes well

[01:00:01] you should buy the book and there'll be yeah a link to the the resource and the show notes along with some of the other stuff that's been mentioned but but ultimately like yeah markets

[01:00:11] would you just maybe maybe pray pray for us that's for some who have never considered this for some that we're expecting just to hear a a pithy conversation about expositional preaching methods that have been ambushed by this that that this type of

[01:00:28] thinking would would work its way that the journey would begin towards a healthier model of church leadership and I guess the end of well healthy asymmetrical power dynamics because there's always going to be different power but the healthiest versions of it using power and leadership

[01:00:47] to serve for the good of others rather than for the good of self thank you that's bright father the Lord Jesus said he came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a

[01:01:04] ransom for many and as we call people to the obedience of faith we too are servants where under shepherds and we're leading out of weakness and it's not about us pray for anybody listening who has tempted right at the moment to build their brand and their

[01:01:25] platform a reputation make it about them will the children break their hearts that you'll lead them again to the Lord Jesus or there is no righteousness that is worth having in us it's Paul says in Philippians 3 all that stuff he brew of Hebrews second sized on the

[01:01:44] eighth day advancing beyond all his peers and Judea is he now considers a rubbish in order that he may gain Christ father we want to want to gain for us who aren't Christ thank you that we are

[01:01:58] clothed in the Lord Jesus thank you that we have died and our life is now hidden with Christ in gold thank you that we are safe we're seated with him in the heavenly realms and there is no human

[01:02:12] reputation that is worth having compared with the righteousness that is in Jesus and we can only have one or the other I pray Lord but all listening to this prayer the sound of my voice the

[01:02:25] small name will just dedicate themselves to Christ that we want him and nor does in the words of John the Baptist he must become greater and I must become lesser we don't want to build our

[01:02:36] our reputations on Jesus but Jesus is reputation and we stand on your promise in that lovely Colossians passage that when Christ who is our life appears we also are going to appear with him

[01:02:54] in glory so father let's make it this podcast I pray that there will be helpful things for listeners but most of all we want to know your love your words says that everything in our

[01:03:07] ministry is comes by way of you pouring your grace and love into our lives by the Holy Spirit whom you've given us pray for anybody who's listening struggling to know that you love them maybe preaching every Sunday but still not assured that you love them maybe preaching thinking

[01:03:26] that you're a harsh task master who is demanding it off them maybe feeling guilty if they're not living up to it Heavenly Father you don't want slaves in ministry you've called the sons

[01:03:37] and Hebrew is Cersei another shame to be called our god you've prepared a city for us it's so comforting to know that we can come and rest in you Jesus is your kizzi as burdens light

[01:03:48] so comfort listeners I pray lift eyes to see a glory and minister into our hearts and lives now as we enjoy guys we humble Jesus and we also give us a second amen well amen

[01:04:03] amen thank you so much Marcus I'm yeah glad that this episode can go out again and that it's important message and content might reach new ears and new heroes thanks so much for listening

[01:04:22] so we have one more classic episode that's going to be released next week there's a conversation that I had with Dr. Jim Wilson about just some real heart issues as well that I want to get out

[01:04:40] there into the wild once more so make sure that you're subscribed we have one more classic episode coming out and then starting on the ninth of January it's brand new content to help you

[01:04:51] grow in your personal study and public proclamation of god's word make sure that you find us on at least one social media channel we're on Twitter Instagram Facebook we have a private Facebook group

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