Join me and Joel Beeke as we consider the joys of the merits of the difficulties of life in a small church. Most of the churches in America are small. Most churches are not pastored by celebrities. Rather they are regular men who work hard at preaching and even supporting themselves on the side. They love the church and are giving their lives for her. This discussion will center on encouragement for the small church pastor and church member.

Okay, welcome. So I'm here with Joel Beakey, president of Puritan Reform Theological Seminary, writer of four billion books and more coming as time is coming on. Joel, it's just so nice to be able to be with you here on the broadcast. Thank you. So Joel, during this conversation, we're going to talk about the local church.

You know, we've really given our lives to the blessing of the local church. You certainly in your local church life as a pastor, as a seminary president. The only reason you're doing that is for the bride of Jesus Christ. And so really we spend all of our time pretty much trying to find ways to be a blessing to the to the Bride of Christ. So we just want to talk about the joys and the merits, the difficulties of church life, particularly small church life.

We're here to talk about small churches. We're going to address pastors. We want to be an encouragement to pastors. We want to be an encouragement to members of small churches. The reality is that most churches are small in America.

The small church is the most prominent expression of the Church of Jesus Christ. The statistics are interesting. You know the small church is the norm, not the exception. I read recently that 43% of churches have fewer than 50 people, that 67% have fewer than 100, and 87% have fewer than 250. So you know most churches really are small.

And the truth is, you know, I'm part of a network of churches, you know, the NCFIC network. There are around 500 churches in that network. And these are small churches. Joel, these are churches that are on our network are 50 to 150 people. The mega churches are 300.

So they're really small churches. I hang around and I am I hang around pastors of small churches and I am one too, so That's my life. So So Joel, why do you think most churches are small? Well, I think most sound churches are small because I think we live in a day in which people want to go to church just to feel good and to hear what they want to hear and not to hear what God wants them to hear, not to worship God, to glorify God. And Christianity is in the minority, real Christianity.

And so churches will tend to stay small. In fact, Christianity has always been a minority in the world, even though the numbers sometimes look huge of nominal Christendom, but genuine churches that really want to preach and live according to the Bible tend to be on the smaller side. Right. Oh, hey, by the way, if anyone is listening, feel free to ask questions. You can register those questions and we'll try to answer them.

Joel, one of the things that I've observed over the years is that once a church embraces a historic confession, confessional churches, most of the churches in my network are confessional churches. They're either Westminster Confession or Baptist Confession of 1689. And that has a smallification effect. If you embrace a confession you begin to preach that doctrine and like in our church the elders are obligated to defend the 1689 Baptist confession But once you do that it cuts it makes some people very uninterested in your church. Yeah well in our churches we we actually embrace the three forms of unity, Heidelberg Catechism, Belgic Confession, the Canons of Dort from the Continental and the Dutch tradition.

And we embrace the three Westminster standards. So our people actually embrace six confessions. But I don't find it really a hindrance. I think when you walk into a church where they love the truth, these confessions are not just identity labels. They're things that we read, we love, and I think it makes for real solid church members over a period of time.

So maybe some people will leave, of course, when you have confessional theology, But I think what happens in churches that really take confessional theology seriously is that the core group becomes very, very strong. You always have fringe members, and the joy of being a pastor, where the core group is very strong, is an inexpressible joy. Amen. You know, and the doctrine creates the culture of the church in many ways. Over the years, I've had some people where their doctrine has changed over time and they ended up leaving our church but they say they all say the same thing.

They said we love this church, we love the culture of this church and I usually end up saying well the culture really is an outgrowth of the doctrine. So if you if you want different doctrine, you might find a different culture. It's possible. Right. So.

So small churches are not pastored by celebrities. They're pastored by regular men. Somebody once said the church runs on regular pastors. What do you say to the unknown pastor laboring year after year? He has no big platform.

He preaches the word of God. He's a regular guy. Well, I say to him what my dad said to me when I told him I was called to the ministry when I was 15 years old. He said, remember that to be a minister of the gospel is more important than living in the White House because you're dealing with the souls of people for a never-ending eternity. Right.

And political leadership is important, but spiritual leadership is most important. Secondly, I would say to such a pastor, not only do you have the most important job in the world, I often say to women, you've got the most second most important job of the world to be a mom, but I think a good pastor, a good preacher sees his church as his family. And so if you have 50 people, you've got a big family. You may think you have a small church, but you've got a big family. You've got 50 kids.

And I think you feel that more as you get a little bit older like us, God, you sort of feel more and more like a father to your people. I've been 34 years in my church now. And oh, just have a guy call me 10 minutes ago, my colleague is doing his wedding tomorrow and he just said, I would like you to just, at the reception, could you just say some fatherly words to us about what marriage is to be? Oh, what a joy. So you just look at those young people tomorrow, I call them young people because they're only about 20, and you just speak your heart to them and give fatherly advice.

What a great joy that is. So remember you've got the most important job in the world, you've got a wonderfully big family, and then I think, remember, you're a shepherd, so you're doing all the tasks that a shepherd does with his sheep, and shepherds love their sheep, And so you ought to love your occupation, your calling, your vocatio. I love that statement Edward Payson made. He was a 19th century great divine, great minister. He said, sometimes I just sit in the study and I just clap my hands with joy and say, I can't believe that God has called me to be an ambassador of Jesus Christ.

I mean, isn't that great? Yeah. Who's worthy of that? So when I went to Westminster Seminary, Dr. Clare Davis used to say to us, being a professor, I mean, it's important because you're training men who are training others, but we've got the easy job.

You guys who are in the small churches, you're in the trenches, you're doing the real work, and you're fighting the battles, you're in daily spiritual warfare, but Be encouraged. There's a high priest at the right hand of the Father, whoever lives to make intercession for you. So stay the course, be strong. It's not easy being a father, it's not easy being a shepherd, it's not easy being a minister of the gospel. And you wonder, oh my, I just prepared two sermons this week.

It was hard work. It's like letting down a big boat that you built into the water, it makes some waves. And whew, Monday morning you're tired, you're spent, you've poured your heart out, and then you gotta do it all over again next week. But the point is you're doing the work of the Lord. So you never have to wake up any morning and say, I have a midlife crisis, is my job important?

You never have to wake up and say, this is trivial. So don't look at those 50 people or those 20 people and say, oh, what a poor, ragged group of people I have. Look at them as sheep, as children, and you're in charge to care for their souls. And just like a father will have trials in his family, you'll have trials, it comes with the territory. He who stands in the front, the old Dutch divines used to say, will get kicked in the rear.

You will have critics, you'll have problems, But you're doing the most important work in the world, so press on. Don't resign, but resign. Amen. Amen. Amen.

So, you know, what advice do you have for church members with the normal pastor? Here's what I mean by that. You know what it's like. Your preacher is a regular preacher. He's not Charles Spurgeon.

He's not John MacArthur. He's not Joel Beekie, right? Okay, so, and church members are, they have access to the greatest preachers in the world. And it can happen where the favorite sermons of the church members aren't the sermons of their pastor. It's some great preacher.

What do you say to church members like that? Yeah, that's a very good question. I've got some important things to say. For one, it's just like your parents. If you're a young person, you know, the Hunderberg Catechism says, it pleases God to govern you by their hand.

So your parents aren't perfect. Your pastor's not perfect. One member of my church once said to me, you know you're not my favorite pastor. And I said, well dear brother, I put my hand on his shoulder and I said, I didn't come here to be your favorite pastor. I just came to bring you the Word of God.

That's all and I think Church members need to realize that When they hear a famous preacher once a year You know the old Dutch saying a fresh broom sweeps clean. Of course, this is gonna come across really powerful and wonderful. So you have to teach your church people to be realistic, to be realistic, and to appreciate your pastor for the gifts he has and don't always be yearning for the gifts he doesn't have. So in leadership magazine some years ago, there was this ad or this little cartoonish thing. And there was elders and deacons, and they were trying to figure out to make an advertisement for a pastor, the kind of pastor they wanted.

And they had a long list of things that they wanted in a pastor. He had to have all these gifts. And finally someone said, no, no, no, let's throw away the whole group and let's just put down two things. Number one, he needs all the gifts the last pastor had. And number two, He needs none of the faults the last pastor had.

Well, that's unrealistic, you know? So my dad used to say, if people just appreciate the minister for the gifts he has and don't look for the gifts he doesn't have, then they'll value every minister they have. And it's God's pleasure at this particular time, 2020, in your church that you have the minister that's assigned by you and the sovereign providence of God with the set of gifts he has, if you appreciate them, glean from him what you can, and if there's things missing, well, yeah, buttress it with good reading, buttress it in your family worship, and do buttress it with listening to sermons during the week, that's fine. But support your local minister as long as he's preaching the truth. And don't expect gifts that he doesn't have.

No, that's really good. You know, being satisfied with what God has given. Yeah. There's this covetous spirit in us where we want something that God hasn't provided. And so we're not satisfied with what He has provided.

And that can extend to everything, your job, your wife, your whatever. Absolutely, I tell my wife almost every day, it's kind of a fun thing, I say, honey, I love you so much, you're the best woman in the entire world for me. I used to tell her she was the best woman on the east side of the Mississippi, then she wanted to know who was better in the west, and that didn't work, so I just made it universal. I said, but you know, I love you so much that I love you even for the few faults you have, because you wouldn't be you without those few faults, And I accept you as the whole package, right? And you won't be you if you are another person.

And so when you have that attitude, then you're not hankering or comparing one woman to your wife and say, well, she's this way, my wife isn't that way, I'm gonna be dissatisfied. That's what people do with ministers. They say, oh, I wish you were like that. Well, that's a sure way to make sure that you don't get much out of sermons every Sunday, if you're always wishing for something different. Amen.

Well, now that you talked about your wife, I've got to give a plug for the marriage conference we're gonna do together next year. In February at my house, I've been doing this, Deborah and I have been doing this every year, and you and Mary are gonna come. Yes. Valentine's Day weekend and I just can't wait to do that. That'll be really a joy.

Yeah, that'll be great. To get those couples sitting on couches and we have a very large living room. That's great. And just hang around with them and encourage them. It's going to be a joy.

So if you're listening, you know, come, come to my house, Valentine's Day next year. And that'll be a nice time. Joel and Mary will be with Deborah and I. Okay, so if you're in a small church, often you're bivocational. So you're juggling a lot of balls, you're carrying a lot of weight.

I mean my prayer is for bivocational pastors to be able to somehow be full-time and give their whole life, their whole schedule, you know, to the building up of the church for the preaching of the Word and things like that. But okay, so that's not reality for most small church pastors. I don't know what the statistics are, but there's an enormous number of bivocational pastors among these small churches. So what advice do you have for pastors who are bivocational? Yeah, one thing I would say is to pull it off.

You need to really be disciplined in terms of how you use your time. And I think you just need to say, I'm not my own man, I'm the Lord's man, and I'm not going to waste any time in my life. And you have your balance time with your family, balance time with your wife, with your work, and then whatever time you can, with your secular work, you give to the ministry. And what it means, I think, for many men is, let's say you want to spend 15 minutes preparing, or 15 hours, rather, 15 minutes, no, 15 hours preparing a certain sermon, and you like to look up every source you have on it, but you just recognize I cannot do that with the time that is allotted to me. So you do the best you can with the amount of time you have.

But you might be surprised how much time you can actually get for a ministry when you cut out every non-essential from your life. And hopefully, this is the way I feel about ministry anyway, you love everything about ministry so much that you'd rather be doing that than surfing the internet or other kinds of silly things that waste your time. So even though I'm in a larger church, Scott, I am a president of a seminary, so I have the same time crunch. It's almost like I have, I'm bivocational. And I've just, over the years, learned to just discipline myself and I always say to my wife, I don't wanna waste five minutes of my life.

Now, it doesn't mean I don't spend time with her, but I spend time with her purposefully and I do everything purposefully so that my life is balanced, I do believe, and I feel sometimes I come short in every single area because everything is cut a little bit shorter than I would like. Time is precious. To me, time is more important than gold. So you've got to treasure time and learn to use it wisely. And I try to do that, I have a lecture on that to my students in which I say, you put things in three piles in your life.

You have the must do pile, you have the should do pile, and you have the I want to do pile if I get through the first two piles. And the secret joy of life is to learn through your bivocational work to actually love the must do pile. When you learn to love the must do pile, you'll say you probably won't get to the I would like to do pile hardly at all, but it won't bother you because you feel like you're God's man and you're doing God's work and you can even learn to love your secular job. And if you love both jobs and you see them as in a way working together because at least you're not an ivory tower theologian, now you're out in the real world, you can get some illustrations from there, you know, and you can learn to love both. And I think men who are bivocational in the ministry, who really learn to love both, are the happiest men, and they become the most influential.

Amen. And I've also, I think I've experienced with the men that are bivocational from the seminary, I think most small churches understand. I think they understand, they're just grateful. They've got 20 people in this church. We're just grateful we've got a minister who works for $10, 000 a year.

You know, I mean, we get this man preaching to us, he's sacrificing himself, they're grateful. Yeah, I think time allocation is really important. In many ways, there are a lot of parts of my life like that. I have a certain amount of time to allocate to it, and then it has to be done. If I don't do that, I won't be part of my family and I won't be part of other things.

So I have to allocate it and invest that amount of time and trust God with it. You know, it's a lot of pressure to think that you've gotta spend 20 hours preparing for every sermon. I don't know how a bivocational person can do that. No, no, but you can learn to function in such a way that you say, this is my priority. This is the most important thing I do is prepare for Lord's Day worship.

So I've had this myself, not dozens of times, but on occasion. So what happens? There's a wedding, there's a funeral, there's sicknesses and seven people went to the hospital. You have to go see them all. And lo and behold, it's Saturday.

You haven't started, but you've already made an appointment with somebody on Saturday afternoon. What do you do? I call them up and I say, brother, I love you, but I'm sorry, I'm just completely out of time. Do you mind if I could reschedule for next Tuesday night? I need time to spend for the sermon.

So, and people understand, and they'll accept it. They might be momentarily disappointed, but as soon as they hang up, they start thinking about it. Our pastor's overwhelmed, he needs that time to prepare for the sermon. So you always put priority in the sermon, but you meet people's needs the best you can in between. Amen.

Hey, let's talk about advantages of being a member of a small church. What are some of the advantages? Well, the big one, of course, is it's like a family and you get very close to people and you know them all by name. At my church, I think I know all the adults by name, but it's really embarrassing shaking hands with a teenager at the door that you don't know their name. Or a child, You know, you could be friendly, you could be warm, but you think, oh, what's the name I get?

You know, so the closeness, I think, is a big thing. A real big thing, an advantage. The biggest disadvantage, I think, is that in a small church, a small problem can become a big problem. If you've got a church of 20 people and five people are upset about something, you've got a big problem. That's 25% of your church, okay?

If you have a church of 800 people and five people are upset about something, You can handle that on the side and it doesn't create waves and so on. So there's pros and cons. I had the privilege many years, I don't do it now, but we had a third service on Sunday. I preached in the morning and the evening to maybe 800 people. In the afternoon I would preach to about 25 people because most of our people were involved in other ministries.

But we preached three sermons on a Sunday. And you know, that was often my favorite sermon to preach because you could be more intimate from the pulpit. I don't know, psychological maybe, but you could be more intimate preaching to 25 people than you can to 800. But there's a flip side of a disadvantage to that as well. And the disadvantage is, let's say you're warning against some aspect of worldliness, and you've only got 25 people there, and there's only two people that maybe are engaging in that form of sinful worldliness.

They might feel like you're just purposely targeting them. So you have to be very careful in a small church. I mean, and maybe in a way you are targeting them, but you have to be very careful in a small church, even that you don't look at a certain person, you make a certain point too long. In a bigger church, there's more freedom that way to really preach strongly without worrying about, oh wow, I just made that person feel like I put that individual on the spot. I don't know if that makes any sense, but.

Yeah, oh yeah. You know, also the pressures can be relieved if you have a plurality of elders, if you have a number of elders that can carry the load, that helps tremendously. You know, I feel that all the time or where other elders and deacons do a tremendous amount of work that's extremely helpful to keep it. In a small church if you have really good elders that church can function extremely well. But there again, you get the same problem.

In a big church, you can have a few elders and a few deacons that you say, oh, they're okay. But as long as you have some that are really good, you can carry a lot of water. But in a small church, if you can only have a few elders and a few deacons, and they're not too helpful, you're in trouble. And hey, deacons are tremendously helpful. The deacons in our church, they do every administrative thing so that we can focus on the ministry of the word of prayer.

I feel it's such a luxury because that's really all I have to do and it's a blessed but it's those deacons that that make that happen because they have a vision for what we should be doing in our as pastors. And what does that remind you of? Act six. There you go yeah. Act six.

There's this question of churches not growing, people are very sensitive to their church not growing. And just what's top of mind regarding that situation? You're in a rural church that the town is not growing. And there you are. You're stuck in a church that's probably not going to grow.

So what do you say to that? Well of course the thing you're supposed to say and you do say but you can't always swallow too well is that God wants us to be faithful. That's the most important thing. God isn't going to ask you on the judgment day, how much did you grow the church? God's going to ask you, were you faithful in the calling?

So that's number one And that's the most important. On the other hand, I think it's good. I think it's good to have an inward burden, not just for the internal growth of the church, but also an evangelistic burden that other people might be drawn in. And then it becomes a matter of prayer, but not a matter of desperation. That people in the pew will feel like, well, he's not very happy with us because he's only happy when people come in from outside.

And also remember growing a church isn't always a picnic. Sometimes you get people from the outside that come in and try to change the whole culture of the church and create havoc. And you invest a lot of time and energy, I've done that many times in my life, invest a lot of time and energy making people feel at home in our church and they become members of our church and two years later, they're gone. So don't be too jealous of ministers whose churches are growing somewhat numerically. It can also be a lot of burdens with it as well.

But I think the important thing is to a real pastor wants to see the church grow both qualitatively and quantitatively. And so- Yeah, we all want our churches to grow, particularly through conversion. Yeah, and those are burdens we should feel. So don't be embarrassed by feeling that burden and don't try to get rid of that burden. You want that burden, but again, you don't want it to the point of desperation.

Right. A church can get bigger, but not better. But the question is, are the members hungry for the Word of God? Are they increasing in holiness? Do they love the words of their faith and they share them, do they love the Lord?

Are they responding to the word of God? Are they an obedient people? Are they a holy people? I think those are really critical. You want your people to love the gospel and love the pleasures of the Lord so much that they can't stop talking about it when they leave the church.

That's right, that's right. There's one other important thing here too, Scott, and that is this. Take the long view, not the short view. So I can get easily circumstantially depressed if I take this short view and I look around and say, you know, I haven't heard of any conversions in this church for three weeks now, or five weeks. What's wrong with my preaching?

Or I can say, well, let's look at the long view. I've been here 33 years. Oh, you know that deacon sitting over there? He was converted into my ministry, yeah, about 17 years ago. But that elder over there, that was only five years ago, and here he is already serving as an elder.

God's doing great things for us. Where have we are glad? So when you take a long view, even in a very small church, and you look around, and you know all the people very well, and you remember, oh yeah, when I came here, that man and that woman, they were having terrible marital conflicts. And now look at their marriage. Went to the preaching and my pastoring of them.

God has blessed my work with this couple. It's just wonderful to see them. And It's like your marriage, it's like your family. Appreciate what you have and appreciate how the Lord has used you. But look at it often from the long perspective and you'll be much more encouraged.

Joe, can you suggest really good biographies for pastors, for small church pastors, maybe, faithful men who favored year in and year out. Yeah, well, that question's a bit challenging because pastors of small churches don't often write their biographies. See, the problem is this, when you're in a small church, you still have to preach, at least in my tradition, two sermons every Sunday, and you still have to do pastoral work, you still have to go to the hospital, you still have young people's group, even if there's only seven young people there. So, and you tend to have to do everything, or nearly everything. So you don't have time to write your autobiography.

You know, That's a luxury for a guy that doesn't have much to do. So I don't think there's a lot of good ones. But I think the goal is not to get the small church pastor to read biographies about small church pastors. I think the size of the church is important here. What you want as a small church pastor, or as a big church pastor, you wanna read the great biographies.

Amen. That really move you. Spurgeon's two volumes, you know, the early years and the full harvest. Ah, those two volumes moved me, formed me, transformed me when I was 15 years old. And I came to my dad one day and I said, dad, I have to quit high school, I have to go out and preach, because Spurgeon was preaching when he was 15.

I mean, they just moved me to the core of my being. Or a Delamore on Whitfield. I mean, what a great that two volume. Or Murray on Lloyd-Jones. I mean, go ahead and read some of those fat ones that really have a lot of pages, but really are page turners, and they can really stir you up.

They can really stir you up. Lloyd-Jones himself said that when you were spiritually in the doldrums, One of the best things you could do is read those great biographies from ages past. And small ones like Grace Abounding by John Bunyan, I mean, that's fantastic still 400 years later. And Augustine's Confessions, Oh, what a book that is. So I'd read the great classics from the pastor's autobiographies.

Amen. Okay, so let's wind it up with two things. Just kind of, What's your last word of encouragement to the small church pastor? Press on and don't give up don't despair and If you meet like Samuel Rutherford said One soul that was saved under your ministry and glory, your heaven will be two heavens. So your life is worthwhile if God uses you for one person.

Very worthwhile. So don't play the numbers game on yourself and bring yourself down into depression. Do the work faithfully, look to God for benediction and labor in such a way that on the great day God will be able to look at you out of free and sovereign grace, out of his amazing grace and say, well done, thou good and faithful servant. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord. Happy is he that has a God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God.

Okay, one last thing. What would you say to the church member of the small church who's find themselves in a regular place without all the glitz and glamour of a larger church? Yeah, I would say two things. I would say, first of all, glitz and glamor are very shallow. It's like a half inch deep.

You want depth in your Christianity. And when you're under a faithful pastor who brings the word of God in a simple but beautiful way, and you're in a plain church building, and you're worshiping God in spirit and in truth, you don't need any glitz and glamor. You're embracing the doctrines of justification by faith alone and necessity of sanctification. There is nothing more than that in Christ. You don't need the glitz and glamor.

That's number one. Number two, where you come into difficulty in a small church and this is a challenge, is with your children. Where do they go for spouses? Where do they, what kind of friends do they have? I've talked to a lot of parents who struggle with that.

They themselves are fine in a small church. I think then you need to take steps to have your kids go to youth camps in the summer maybe or other things that really reach out to young people that they can meet other God-fearing young people. Or go to an NCFIC conference. There you go. Yeah, you see a lot of them there.

Good conferences, and take your family, that kind of thing. So take steps. I mean, when you go to NCFIC conference, for example, and you've got like 1200 people there, and they come from churches of 20, 30, 40 people. What an encouragement that is for not just the parents, but for the young people. They see all these other young people around being brought up pretty much the same way they're being brought up and they can establish friendships and so on.

So I think when the church is very small, you just try to take steps like that to try to counteract some of those drawbacks. Amen. Hey, by the way, we're having a singles conference in front of our national conference that you're gonna come greet at. So you might think about that, but yeah, I'm really excited about that. That'll be a lot of fun.

I've got about 20 people I'll send to that. There you go. No, I mean, we have hundreds of marriage age kids that come to our conference. They're all over the place. And many of them get married when they meet each other at that conference.

So I've really been delighted. I've done a lot of weddings that have popped out of that conference. There he is. Well, I've been known to be a bit of a matchmaker too. And people say, well, how often is this successful?

I said, well, okay, you know your baseball? And they go, what do you mean? I said, well, a baseball player who hits 250, he's okay. If he hits 300, he's outstanding. So, you know, my percentage of matchmaking is somewhere around 300, so that's pretty good, isn't it?

It's pretty good. Okay. Yeah. Learning for the major leagues. Well, Jill, thank you so much.

I really appreciate the time. And I can't wait to see you. Yeah, it'll be great. I hope, hey, we're planning to do our conference. Yeah, great.

We'll see if anything changes. I don't know what's gonna happen between now and then. I hope we can do it. We have a lot of people signed up right now. That's great.

That's good. We surveyed our people that were signed up and 98% of them said, we're coming, please have it. That's good. Yeah, yeah. And we're doing ours at the end of next month.

And we've had a couple of handfuls of people say, you know what? I don't want to compromise my health or something. You know, they've got some immune system problems. Few of them are backing out, but not many. Actually, Paul Washer is supposed to come to do our conference this year.

So that's it. Good. Oh, that's great. That's lovely. Alrighty.

Okay. Well, thank you so much. God bless you, Joel. God bless you, Scott. All right.

Bye-bye.