Author: Jojo Agot

Pastor at Victory. Faculty and adviser at Every Nation Leadership Institute (ENLI). MA in Theology and Mission at Every Nation Seminary.

“You’ll Be Eaten By Cannibals!”

When [missionary John G. Paton] resolved to go to the unreached tribes of the South Sea Islands in 1856, a Christian gentleman objected, “You’ll be eaten by cannibals!” To this Paton responded:

“Your own prospect is soon to be laid in the grave, there to be eaten by worms; I confess to you, that if I can but live and die serving and honoring the Lord Jesus, it will make no difference to me whether I am eaten by cannibals or by worms; and in the Great Day my resurrection body will arise as fair as yours in the likeness of our risen Redeemer.”

Excerpted from John Piper’s Thanksgiving for the Lives of Flawed Saints

Conversion

John Bunyan on Christian conversion:

Conversion is not the smooth, easy-going process some men seem to think. It is wounding work, of course, this breaking of the hearts, but without wounding there is no saving… Where there is grafting there is a cutting, the scion must be let in with a wound.

Church and Numbers

“I am not against numbers. I want more people to come to know Christ like they did in Acts. I like it when my church is growing. I know that every number represents a person. I am not against big churches. What I am against is the assumption that numbers are the best, or even one of the most significant, indicators of church health. The church in Jerusalem grew rapidly at first, but then it took slow steady growth over centuries for Europe to be Christianized. More to the point, while Paul frequently prayed for conversion and opportunities to preach the gospel, you never see him concerned over the growth patterns in his churches. He made faithfulness and fidelity aims of his ministry (and this includes reaching out and evangelizing). But he neither assumed church growth nor thought it could be accomplished by the right methodology.”

Excerpted from Kevin DeYoung’s Listening to and Questioning the Seeker Church

Indispensable

“The more important and needed I feel, the less I find myself carrying out my proper calling before God. All those indispensables have piled up on me to the point of actually threatening my opportunity to stay with the church I now pastor. By being busy in too many areas I’ve jeopardized my usefulness in the one main area to which I’ve been called by God.”

—Bruce Mawhinney

Mawhinney on Pastors Who Quit

Bruce Mawhinney on pastors who quit their post to move to another church:

A few years out of seminary, [a pastor’s] reservoir runs dry, usually about the same time the enthusiasm for the ministry starts to wane. It’s a deadly combination, leaving the preacher with little left to say and even less desire to say it. So he starts to struggle with whether it’s time to leave…

The minister [gets] a call to another congregation…

And when he gets to the new church he’s enthusiastic and they’re enthusiastic. His preaching is fresh and new to them, not like the preacher’s that just left. But what they don’t know is that the new minister is not saying anything new and fresh at all; he’s merely repeating himself from his prior ministry. He’s being very repetitious, but they haven’t been around long enough to hear the repetition yet. Continue reading Mawhinney on Pastors Who Quit