Luke the Sought After Preacher - Christians Who Sell Jesus

Selling Jesus

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Allow me to introduce you to Luke. Luke is a gifted preacher and speaker. Some of the biggest summer camps book him years in advance, and large churches love to invite him to present at conferences.

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In the early years of his preaching ministry, he would only receive honorariums as a free gift that churches might give him to help cover expenses, but now he receives more requests than he can commit to.

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At one point, an old pastor told him that he needed to think about charging upfront for speaking engagements.

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This would help limit the amount of requests and enable him to start a college fund for his kids. His family agreed that this was a wise idea, and after considering it prayerfully,

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Luke began making it clear that he would require X amount in payment in addition to all of his travel expenses before agreeing to speak at an event.

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At first he didn't like how this exchange felt, especially when smaller, likable churches couldn't afford what he asked, but as the money started to flow, after a while he got used to it.

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Now and then, when Luke has quieted his heart and is out on an evening walk with God, conflicted sentiments crowd his thoughts and his conscience wonders whether he's doing the right thing by putting a price tag on sharing what

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God has freely given him, but he's quick to tell himself, at least you don't charge as much as your friend

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David does, he charges twice as much and doesn't even have the greatest things to say. Most respected

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Christian celebrities charge for speaking. Besides, how else could you help your kids with their college expenses?

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God wants you to care for your family. Luke is a classic example of a man who bases his pursuit of holiness on people around him instead of on the standard of God's word.

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As long as he's a little better than that other guy, he feels justified. He has believed a few lies.

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1. Putting his kids through college is more important than obeying God. 2.

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God is incapable of providing for his children through any other means than the ill -gotten gain of peddling

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God's word. 3. As long as his sin is not as extreme as those around him,

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God is pleased and honored. 4. Widely respected famous evangelicals are a better standard to live by than Scripture.

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While Luke is not actively trying to do evil, he has become complacent with the default state of affairs around him and is content to go with the flow.

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He's comfortable with worldly ways of thinking about money and ministry. So, why rock the boat?

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We're paid to uh and we're gonna discuss what that payment looks like um and appropriate possible appropriate forms of that but um yeah that was my first experience in in kind of thinking a little bit through money and ministry and the intersection there and at that time

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I was actually surprised I was genuinely surprised and it felt a little funny or even wrong but yeah

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I did think more about it this was way before I got involved in this topic and I'm not sure how many of the average believers realize that guest preachers will usually receive money and I'll add that everyone in this discussion we're all preachers we've done a lot of preaching in our day probably half of my time preaching has been spent doing it in Spanish a lot of it happened in Central Africa in Equatorial Guinea I was preaching almost every week at a church for quite a quite a long time so anyway just all that to say like we're coming at this this is this is something that's near and dear to our hearts and and I also want to frame this discussion you know what is the purpose of preaching from The Supremacy of God in Preaching by John Piper really great book definitely read it if you're interested in preaching what one of the things he says is that the goal of preaching is the glory of God and the ground of preaching is the cross of Christ and all of this is done by the power of the

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Holy Spirit and so what we're talking about here is one of those very clear holy sacred things this is something that's devoted to God it is not one of those gray areas that we might talk about on this channel sometimes where you know we could have a debate perhaps about whether this is a sacred thing whether this is a spiritual thing or whether this is ministry

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I think everyone would agree that this is clearly clearly clearly purely a ministry issue yeah well

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I think we should first start off by just saying whether or not it's biblical to receive an honorarium at all are we are we getting at something in particular with Luke or are we just saying that this is flat out wrong to have any kind of money involved in in the work preaching do you want to do you want to start off by describing what an honorarium is there might be some people that never heard that term before right yeah yeah sure so the word honorarium refers to some kind of money that's usually given to a speaker at some event to honor them right and this makes a little more sense in greek than it does in english because in greek the word to may meaning honor could mean to honor like we think of honor you know respecting someone or it could mean a price or something given in order to honor somebody so that's what's happening here is something is given to someone in order to honor them and it is right to honor someone in the work of ministry in fact first timothy five using this very word to describe financially supporting one who labors in the work of teaching you know before earlier in the chapter talks about the importance of honoring widows and then it goes on to describe how that means financially supporting them and then it says that those who labor in preaching and teaching especially should be worthy of double honor so it's comparing their financial support to the financial support of the widows anyway this is this is all throughout scripture even the same passage that we always talk about on this channel matthew 10 8 freely you receive freely give and the next two verses it explains that a worker is worthy of his food it is indeed the case that minister should be supported even financially so what we are not objecting to is the idea of honoring someone who even financially someone who is uh engaged in that work of preaching yeah and so i'll give another example another time in my life where i had a similar but different situation where i invited someone to speak on a topic that i wasn't very familiar with speak on that at my church um because i think that'd be really helpful for my church to listen to and the response i got was how much they expected to be paid and i was quite taken aback by that because i had um i was i became comfortable with with honorariums that are you know kind of given as a gift usually the amount isn't disclosed and you just receive an envelope after speaking but this was someone specifically saying how much they expected to be paid if i wanted them to come speak at my church and so i i didn't reply to that message um but um that was near the time where i was starting to think through these things and i felt that there was something wrong about that yeah well maybe you should jump in here connelly and talk about reciprocity more at length you've written an article about the fact that biblically speaking preachers should be paid so maybe you could summarize that a little bit for people who haven't read that article and then also talk about the issue of reciprocity which which john is describing with his experience right so yeah i already mentioned uh several of the verses you know one other passage that always comes up and this is first corinthians 9 1 through 14 where paul argues for the right of a minister to earn a living as he does ministry right and so what all that lets us know is that these passages that talk about the problem of receiving money in the context of ministry aren't about the minister being financially supported they're about something else and so what what is the distinction here it can't be about receiving money versus not receiving money because there's sometimes receiving money is is uh endorsed and other times where it's prohibited so there's some difference in each of these that isn't just whether or not you're receiving or not receiving and the distinction that appears very clear to me in passages like matthew 10 and passages like third john verses 7 and 8 is that distinction between reciprocity and co -labor so when jesus said freely you receive freely give he is saying that ministry should be given freely without it being exchanged for something there there should be no reciprocity and then immediately after that he talks about how they are to expect others to provide for them and he describes it in both luke and matthew as a as one who is a son of peace or a worthy household that would do this and so he's describing someone else who is dedicating themselves to the kingdom supporting this work and so that would be co -labor so we have this distinction between reciprocity and co -labor and i mentioned just a second ago third john 7 and 8 that passage says for they went out for the sake of the name not accepting anything from the gentiles therefore we ought to support people like these that we may be fellow workers for the truth so once again clear distinction between reciprocity and co -labor what did they do well well they did not take anything from those whom they were ministering to and why should we give them money why should we financially support them to be fellow workers with them and the truth so once again reciprocity bad co -labor good and what it comes down to in these honorarium situations is is the way that you are going about it communicating a situation of reciprocity where that person is exchanging with you for the gospel in a way that they are obligated to you for the gospel or is it a matter of partnership where you are working together with them for the sake of the gospel and that they are operating out of an obligation a shared obligation with you to the lord rather than to you directly yeah and i'll just jump in here and read the dictionary definition of reciprocity which is the mutual exchange of commercial or other privileges and so the the issue there is the mutual exchange i'm going to give you something what am i going to get out of it and i'm only going to give it to you if there's an exchange of something and it doesn't have to always be just a monetary transaction right yeah it doesn't have to be financial paul refused food from the thessalonians so a lot of people feel weird about money but are completely fine when it comes to other things that aren't money you really have to be thinking broadly about you know the benefits being exchanged and whether or not there's any kind of exchange and just another plug for those who are wrestling to understand this especially in light of corinthians and what paul you paul's interaction with the corinthians is complex over this issue and so conley has tried to boil that down into a really i would say user -friendly or just really easy to read conversation between the corinthians and paul in one of the articles on sellingjesus .org

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and that's just called conversations between paul and the corinthians so you know it's it's basically structured kind of like a text message back and forth trying to summarize you know what is this interaction about and how what can we learn about the issue of reciprocity from paul's interaction with the corinthians yeah and so even though money is is being received there's a different purpose to it and so the money isn't the purpose of the money isn't to cover the cost of the teaching like the teaching has a value that must be covered um no the teaching is sacred so it can never be paid for and so the purpose of the money isn't to cover the cost of the teaching it's to support the one who is doing the ministry so we can see how there's a different purpose to it there yeah absolutely and just to riff off of what you just said john which is excellent in the supremacy of god in preaching here's another quote james stewart said that the aims of all genuine preaching are to quicken the conscience by the holiness of god to feed the mind with the truth of god to purge the imagination by the beauty of god to open the heart to the love of god and to devote the will to the purpose of god how do you put a price tag on those things is my question how do you evaluate their their worth you know with a dollar amount and uh you know that's what we're getting at here you can't and you should not if you do you by the very act of putting a dollar amount value on them by that very act you cheapen these things you change their very nature and and i think that's one of the things that happens in this whole issue is when we start charging for preaching putting a price tag on it with reciprocity we cheapen our ministry we cheapen what we have to say we cheapen the act of preaching and and this is something everybody understands i think by nature you know when you have conversations even with lost people they they understand this when when you take something that is even lost people consider sacred like marriage and all of a sudden you put a price tag on it people will say that they'll say well you've you've cheapened yourself you've cheapened the the whole relationship by the act of charging money for it so this is what we're talking about we don't want to see a beautiful powerful spirit wrought thing cheapened by this commercial mentality that evangelicals have developed and this blind spot that they've developed so i think it would be useful to go through this section about luke uh luke the preacher that is and talk about what is it about uh the thoughts going inside of his head that we're you know able to see as we so we're reading this that make this a matter of reciprocity and not co -labor what are the what are the red flags here and i think there are there are several one of them that comes at the end that might be worth pointing out is that he compares himself to others right and he says at least you don't charge as much as your friend david does he charges twice as much and doesn't even have the greatest things to say right so there's this there's this idea that you know what i'm giving is worth this much and therefore they're paying for that thing right if they're paying for that thing and they're paying you for that thing this is no longer co -labor this is reciprocity you you've sold the gospel right they're paying for the gospel at that point not working together or giving out of gratitude for god if the if the payment is uh coordinate with the the value of the message being preached biblically if you if you study these passages that are about false teachers who are charging for money not i'm not saying luke's a false teacher in this example but if you study the passages in the bible that talk about people charging for ministry you will come across second corinthians 10 that describes the super apostles and then second corinthians 11 that explains that they're charging for ministry what is one of the things that they say to themselves they compare themselves by themselves and this is what paul points out the foolishness and measuring themselves by themselves and not considering what god has actually required and his words are betraying him and that he's speaking like the super apostles of second corinthians 10 and so in this story luke one of the arguments he gives is that he'll require money in payment but also in addition to his travel expenses now i'd be interested to hear conley would you say that requiring payment for travel expenses would be an issue let me start off more generally by saying i don't think necessarily requiring funding right requiring support is wrong if it is necessary to have uh help in order to do some ministry and you're not well enough supplied to do it on your own it is right to you know in a sense require it and this is exactly what you see in acts when paul is only laboring part -time you know he's withholding some of his ministry he could he could be working full -time but he knows he does not have the resources to make that happen so that's why he's working as a temp maker and you know perhaps he's not using the language of well unless someone pays me you know then i'm not going to do it you know and he's not he's not speaking of it that way he is in a sense requiring that he has the support necessary to do that so i'll start with that that it's it's not necessarily wrong to require but thing is what is it being required for is it being required in order that you have the necessary support to do this work or is it being required because you think the thing that you have this gospel is valuable enough to be sold that way rather than being so invaluable it shouldn't be sold and that's the that's the real problem here is that he does seem to be uh you know with these different red flags with these different indicators wanting to sell the gospel and about travel in particular well first of all you know i think there's a lot of practical questions we could talk about like well is he already employed by a church what's his main source of income and things like that that would also you know play into this but if you think about paul once again he's not charging people for his for his tickets places right he when you see him raise support he's talking about coming to people so they can send him on his way right he's not he's not saying well unless you give money i'm not even going to come to you he's coming to them and then you know among believers in that area they are sending him outward so that that has a different shape than what we see with luke where it's where it's not support me in this work so that i can do it but you have to give to me in order for me to decide this is going to be worthwhile worth my time yeah i agree that's a that's a big difference yeah and one of the things that i've noticed a lot lately is the idea that of and the attitude of a lot of people in ministry that they don't want to make any sacrifice so you know they want to cover there's this big really strong motivation to cover costs and so they're willing to give their time but they're not willing to give their money or they're not willing to lose anything in the ministry and you know i i don't think people should be burdens needlessly put themselves in difficult situations if they do need support but you know the idea of like i'd like to you know do ministry but i don't want to i don't want it to hit me financially i want to be totally just the same as if i was doing any other job yeah like i think i think people in ministry should be well well supported well supported but if the attitude is that unless i am well supported i'm not going to make any sacrifices i'm just going to make sure i always cover my costs there's not a very biblical attitude yeah and and this is what connelly highlights in the dorian principle as well there is an element of sacrifice in the act of giving right that is what christ thinks you know that's what's the gospel the gospel is all about that you give and you give to the point where it hurts or even takes your life and that's what we're called to be as the church as well that's what we're called to be as husbands towards our wives you know to lay down our lives all of that kind of stuff should really saturate us as gospel believing followers of christ and so it should be i would say a foundational sort of current that runs through everything that we do in ministry and so it shouldn't ever come to us as a surprise to us that when god calls us to minister to people that might involve an inconvenience on the financial level or even on our time level you know but now westerners are so fragile in so many ways that they can't even imagine being inconvenienced with their time much less their money early on in college i grew up in my faith under the ministry of matt chandler in abilene texas before he was really really famous and before he went on to pastor but back then he was my college pastor at a small church in abilene which is a podunk ugly town in west texas nowheresville kind of thing especially back then at that point in his life he was a very sought after like luke he was a very sought after speaker some of the biggest camps in the world were having him come as their main speaker for the camp and at this point in his life he was barely finishing college or barely out of college and he was making six figures and back then that was that was you know that was like before the year 2000 so six figures back then was a lot so he's making six figures this church calls him and they offer him i think twelve thousand dollars a year to be their full -time college pastor and so he basically had to decide am i going to take this massive massive pay cut to serve this church or not and he did he took the pay cut and he and his wife couldn't afford even to buy meat or sometimes to heat their house and stuff like that and i thought you know this has all of the marks when i heard that story for the first time i thought this has all the marks of a true servant of god this is what we should expect to hear of of true servants of christ that they're willing because they believe that god is calling them to a certain area to suffer some of these inconveniences or lack of sufficient standard of living or whatever and that really struck me and and since then that's that's stuck with me you know that example i think is a is a fantastic example another story it's just from my own life when i was coordinating the the master's program it was a long distance master's program in equatorial guinea for local pastors through a latin american seminary and what we would do is i had to coordinate professors to come from different seminaries to come and do modules and teach and there was a seminary professor at southern seminary i reached out to because we needed a certain course to be covered and so i talked to him on the phone and i said the master's program has a budget we'll cover all your expenses your flight your time here everything will be covered no worries we just need two weeks for you to consider you know coming for two weeks to teach this course this intensive course to these african pastors and the guy was was very frank with me this is kind of the opposite of what the matt chandler story was but he was like i am frankly not very thrilled with your offer uh even though you'll be covering all the expenses etc i can't believe that you're asking me to do this pro bono i have better things to do with my summer thank you very much so you know there's this two kinds of attitudes that we can approach this with those are just a couple stories i wanted to share to get people thinking of applications yeah and to you know continue on that thought of the suffering that's involved in ministry something i point out in the book is that and i think this might have been what you were alluding to so paul when he lists his troubles and all his trials and being shipwrecked and beaten etc he always listed he works with his hands working hard and not getting to enjoy the fruit of your labor because it's being spent on your trial because it's being spent on ministry costs it's that that's suffering it might seem silly that he includes oh i had to work as one of his persecutions but it it really does count as one of these real sufferings so when someone gives to the minister not enjoying the fruit of their labor they're basically sharing in their suffering truly becoming a co -labor you know that kind of suffering being not categorically different that from the suffering of you know getting beat and shipwrecked etc and so i think one of the things we're pointing out here is that if you've got various people engaging in the shared suffering but it's happening in such a way that it actually removes your suffering because now not only are you well supported but let's say which that might be fine you know for someone to be no longer be bearing any financial burden but let's say they're not bearing any other kind of burden either you know they're not going out of their way for anything and it's others that are that are suffering and it's no longer a shared suffering because it's only the givers who are suffering you know once again not that not that the minister needs to be suffering and finances necessarily but there's got to be some sacrifice or else it's it's not the ministry that christ exhibited and calls his servants into yeah and maybe even just to back up a little bit some people may be slightly incredulous perhaps is this actually a big problem are there really that many people like luke you know maybe in some people's circles i know that there are some conservative circles denominations etc where this would be unthinkable they've maybe never even heard of it that's okay so so how common is this i i know conley in your experience yeah you had an axe 29 church pastor refused to come and speak right right and this is in you know my vicinity it's not you know it's not distant travel it's just for you know a small event where he'd be one panelist and you know his secretary asked me whether or not there would be any honorarium and when there wasn't interest quickly fizzled so yeah you know and that's that's something that you know i hinted at before if you have a congregation that's supporting you well as a congregation typically is going to at one of these larger churches and they don't recognize that as part of your ministry and you're going above and beyond that and you know getting more money from other things there's something wrong there um ideally this congregation would be partnering with you so that you'd be enabled to do those sorts of things and i mean i don't know about this particular man maybe maybe his congregation wasn't giving him that much or something but there is a very healthy avenue to receive in the the weekly giving of the church and as i've mentioned before a lot of these problems arise when funding is not happening through the church and then you have to get creative and then more things become akin to sales rather than co -labor yeah and so i i would say that this is not a super rare occurrence in a lot of circles and so people just need to be aware of that and i saw an article about a year ago maybe we'll have to dig up dig it up and you know go ahead and insert that into this episode but i saw an article a while ago outlining some of the more popular christian celebrities you know some of them outside of what we might consider orthodox some of them inside man there are some there are some large fees that some of these people are expecting yeah very large fees like we're talking we're talking tens of thousands for you know one event that kind of large and and this is one of the things about the jesus trade that i think is slippery or maybe more deceptive is that it a lot of it flies under the radar and you don't really get confronted with some of these things that really make you cringe until you actually are the one seen behind the scenes a lot of people in the congregation you know you say you have somebody like francis chan come to your church and speak and i don't know if he charges fees or whatever but let's let's say you have a celebrity pastor come and you're just in the congregation you're just like oh well praise the lord wow that was so wonderful that he got to come i got to hear him blah blah bless me but you're not behind the scenes and no one is announcing these things and no one is is making public uh this guy just charged twenty thousand dollars for for that it just doesn't get a lot of publicity and i think it is probably because there's a lot of guilt and maybe just a like luke you know this unsettled feeling that bothers them at night when they they think about what they're doing and how they're doing it i just wanted to add one more example of keith green you know keith if you read his biography written by his wife one of the things that was a hallmark of their ministry was they were the first musicians in that era to to decide we're gonna just give everything away as much as possible and not charge set concert fees and all that kind of stuff and admission fees and whatnot and before he was really really famous he he was doing church events and worship events and stuff like that and a lot of them involved a significant travel expenses and he remembers a church offering him a significantly small amount compared to what it would cost him to actually go and do that but he did it you know it was the same principle that you were talking about john and u conley considering that ministry is is more than just getting back your investment it monetarily it's it's a sacrifice that has to be made on on multiple fronts sometimes and and he was willing to do that and that really was an impactful thing for a lot of people back then and his ministry left a huge imprint on the church at that time and god used it powerfully and i think because that spirit was behind it yeah i was thinking through a few things about this topic earlier and i feel like it can be a bit gray sometimes especially when we're talking about motivations and so as conley you were mentioning that there might be an appropriate situation where there is some kind of expectation or or a request for payment so then we're we're more getting into the area of motivations rather than explicit practical acts right um would you agree with that i would yes i think there are some things that clearly earmark it and other things that aren't and i haven't even mentioned the thing that the biggest red flag in this that i think most clearly earmarks it i'll let you finish your thought before i do that yeah and so i guess it's good to acknowledge that there can be a bit of confusion when we dig into the area motivations that that's another reason why something like copyright makes things so much more clear when you are making it explicit that you're teaching whether it's and sermons are copyrighted right so when you when you perform a sermon when you write one that's automatically copyrighted and when you give talks at a conference they are copyrighted and you start selling them after the conference that is explicitly commercializing the grayness we're talking about is where there is an issue of motivation where the money is being received but the hope is that it's being received to support the ministry not to pay for the teaching but when you have something like copyright it is very clearly paying for the teaching and commercializing the teaching and there is there is little room for debate about that yeah good word conley going back to what you said you used the term earmark maybe some people aren't super familiar with that could you maybe unpack that a bit yeah so i'm not much of an accountant but uh when you're doing accounting and you want to know what money was you know either spent on or or brought in because you might earmark it different ways to to let it know so we have money changing hands to a preacher and i've already acknowledged that that's actually a good thing to do and so the question is what what are the flags that earmark this as being reciprocity or co -labor what what makes this clearly reciprocity rather than co -labor i've mentioned a few things that i think are good signals that this is reciprocity that's going on here the one that most concerns me is this reasoning that he says that if he's disclosed this to others especially that this would help limit the amount of requests that he gets so he's trying to put a limit on how much he's giving and he's specifically limiting to those who can pay the most yeah so james too says my brothers show no partiality as you hold the faith in our lord jesus christ the lord of glory and then it goes on to give the example of what kind of partiality well if you say to the rich person who comes in sit here and the poor person sit there and this is what he's doing now i get get it you know he's not infinite he can't be everywhere he can't do everything and so maybe he does have to limit you know his ability to speak live but to make the deciding factor on whether or not you're going to who you're going to speak to be how much coin they're going to offer you that's that's a real problem right there so you're you're directly violating james too and it becomes a matter of reciprocity at this point yeah and i would just add to that in this day and age where god has given us technology to be able to give our message to in one recording make it available to millions of people for free there is no reason why you should feel like oh well i i have to reach everybody so you know it's going to take so many live appearances use technology and use it to freely give i see so many people miss this all the time it's just crazy to me and the most practical simple things people who who have wonderful things to say are limiting themselves because they refuse to use technology in a way that would that would open it up to more people yeah you know and this talking about preachers selling messages and recordings which you know this this profile wasn't exactly about maybe you could we could have a whole distinct profile about that one in particular there is one coming up later yeah okay well maybe well feel free to cut these thoughts but i'll say them anyway desiring god i think it was for one of their anniversaries they had a video with mo bergeron who was the guy who convinced john piper to start releasing his sermons for free back before then you know this is in the early days of the internet that few of us remember but uh back then it was very common to have people send money and then you would send them a recording and mo bergeron said hey look at what the bible says about this so many people would listen if you would just make this available and he did and then he shot up in popularity and people were listening to his messages and it's really what what led to the success of his ministry and if it hadn't been for this other pastor mo um encouraging him in this way desiring god would not be what it is today and john piper would not even be the recognized you know preacher that he is today so yeah god really blesses ministry that that operates according to his principles and yeah the idea that we're gonna somehow make more out of it by using our own methods and means you know i could give the example of abraham and how he decided to use his own methods to receive uh what he wanted and uh it didn't work out so well he should have stuck to god's plan with isaac yeah so practically speaking you know a recommendation to luke like steps forward to abolish the jesus trade in his life would be simply to stop putting a price tag on what god has freely given him to share and accept honorariums when they're given that's fine uh be open to that but of course don't require them and do what's within the limits of your you know your energy and your family and all of that stuff you know be wise with your time obviously put first things first don't let it don't let the demand for your speaking prowess overrun your life in other areas and that's just another issue of use wisdom use wisdom to decide where you're going to speak and when you're going to speak and how much you're going to speak and that's not impossible and then trust god to provide for your kids when when uh you know and this is the sad thing is that we we let this pragmatism take us from trusting jesus to selling jesus instead of just trusting jesus we've now decided to sell him and that's exactly what luke is doing you know trust jesus to provide for your kids college expenses he provided for my college expenses my parents didn't pay for my college at all zero and so you know it can happen going back to what you were saying conley thanks for bringing up the issue of the sin of partiality because that's something we haven't talked about a whole lot on this podcast yet but really so much of the jesus trade the sin of commercializing christianity is tangled up with the sin of partiality and that's a really important thing i think i would encourage people to meditate on james too at length think about how the the implications of that reach into so many of these areas and you'd be surprised so i have some other practical advice for luke i don't believe it's even healthy for someone's primary involvement to be you know outside the local church in that way that it really should be with a focus on the local church so you know if he's got a healthy involvement in the local church ideally they would be supporting him and understand that this is part of their ministry together with him as a church is to support these conferences by sending him there and if they don't have the resources for that then they can partner with other churches in order to get the funds that are necessary to support luke so that he can do these kinds of things so those are those are several things and just another reason why it's not healthy we've been talking about this financially but really there's an accountability that comes from the local church and that is a lot of people like the freedom that they have outside of the structures that god created but god created these structures for a good reason and yeah you know i once uh i once had the opportunity to have lunch with ravi zacharias and uh and some others this is before things came out about his scandal but i had asked him the question whether or not he was a pastor at a church somewhere because i didn't i didn't really know a whole lot about his background or anything and he said his response to me and i don't want to misquote him but it was something along the lines that i'm too much of a free spirit well that was a phrase he used i'm too much of a free spirit to tie down somewhere and i thought that pretty uh sketchy statement i didn't want to uh you know i'd been invited to this lunch and i didn't want to push it and pick a fight right there or anything but a couple years later and you see all the scandal that happened because there wasn't the kind of accountability that was in his life because he really was too much of a free spirit so that's my first that would be my first real practical question for luke is you know what's local church involvement and how can they help you amend this situation yeah and thanks for bringing that up because so much of what our discussions boil down to is this issue of para church versus church right and and how people are using the para church as an excuse to sell jesus because it's not inside the local church so it's it must be okay that kind of indirect association versus direct association and so i would encourage people to as you think about these things in other areas of ministry think about what conley brought up this issue of how should this be rooted in the local church and then go from there rather than just assume that the local church is this invisible and irrelevant part of the discussion which i think a lot of people do they sidestep it and and they miss out you know especially just the basic things like hey the local church can actually fund this the local church can actually co -labor with you to make all of these kinds of things that you want to do possible like counseling or whatever you aren't just like this lone ranger like every christian is not just some lone ranger that needs to figure out some random way to fund their ministry and then they they have to go crawling to the world to to get their advice for how to do that the the church really is a beautiful solution to many of these questions yeah and so i would say it's good to think about paul's practice in first corinthians nine and just his practice for the corinthian church in general how he didn't believe they were mature enough to co -labor with him and so he refused payment um in in those situations although he did request to be sent out by them and so if you are invited to speak at a church that either tells you up front how much they're going to pay you or you just get the feeling that you know they are they are viewing this as a reciprocal thing that they are paying you for the teaching then go ahead and deny that that payment uh if it's appropriate to do so if they yeah if that would be helpful in that situation just just decline to receive it and preach anyway my attitude to these things is my own practices has changed recently when i was a student minister it was very helpful when i was receiving support for doing some guest preaching because i didn't have a lot of that time it was actually helpful for me to receive some support whereas now i'm in a better financial situation where me speaking every now and then at a different place their their support is not going to go very far because it's just a one -off event for me and so i'm more inclined to simply decline to receive payment in those situations because it's not really although i i might appreciate it it's not really making a big impact in terms of supporting me in ministry and so i'd much prefer just to do it for free and so in situations that are more reciprocal such as at weddings i've simply made a policy of simply and thanks to connelly's advice on this simply not receiving any payment for things like weddings and private events um which i'm much more comfortable with so yeah before we finish this let's just make it clear that we are not against honorariums so don't i hope you don't come away from this discussion disheartened or disillusions that preachers are usually receiving money for their speaking we're not against that it's as it's really a nuanced discussion here um so don't lose the nuance um it is about motivations and it is about clear practical things as well such as copywriting commercializing teaching so don't lose the nuance in what we're saying yeah that's really helpful john and just to add a little bit to that i would say you know if you have that kind of situation come up that john was describing where it's really clear that these people are treating it as reciprocity that they want to pay you for your teaching and they're going to tell you right up front you know how much they they value what price tag they put on it if you if you refuse that also take that as an opportunity to do a little evangelism of these kinds of things you to promote the dorian principle to get that church thinking more biblically about these maybe send them send them a copy of the dorian principle or something like that or send them a link to our site whatever that's what we want this site and everything that we're producing here to end up doing is helping those people who may be blind in certain areas to discover this and and change and so conley before we sign off could you just summarize that conversation between paul and the corinthians so that people understand like this is a real issue where paul at one instance he's talking to the corinthians and he doesn't want to accept from them and then at another time he does want to accept from them why is that and and just to give people that clear example summary of that clear example from scripture of what we're talking about yeah so i definitely encourage you to check out the uh article where that conversation is laid out because it's going to go into a lot more things and misconceptions than just those but paul and speaking to the corinthians and first corinthians 9 explains that he would never take their money and then says the same thing and second corinthians chapter 11 and in each of these cases it seems very apparent to me especially when you look at the context additional context given in second corinthians they were paying him back for his work in planting the church and the evidence that lets us know that is how he is comparing their attempt at paying him to their payment of the super apostles who were positioning themselves similar to paul as as the father of the corinthians and the ones who had who had uh done this work that he had done you know he says that he's not like them claiming to do i have done another man's work right so they they're claiming to have this position and they're receiving money as though uh you know it were in exchange for this gospel that they have then received and he would never take money in that way however in both first corinthians 16 and in second corinthians 1 he talks about hoping to come to them in order that they can send him on his way and there's a greek word for that it's propempo that implies uh not just saying goodbye to someone or something like that but to financially support them you know there's heavy undertones of financial support to support them financially on the way and there are a lot of other verses in the bible that use this term and it's even more clearly financial in some of them so paul was happy to receive their money when it was co -laboring with him when it was funding the work of ministry he was not happy to take their money when it was reciprocal when it was payment back for the gospel they had received and people who struggle with this issue and they they wrestle with it and they try to figure out why is paul receiving money sometimes and not others there's actually lots of different questions to answer with that but in act 16 there's one example where paul encounters lydia and it describes her as a worshiper of god and the lord opened her heart to pay attention to what is said by paul and after she was baptized and her household as well she urged us saying if you have judged me to be faithful to the lord come to my house and stay and she prevailed upon us now if you read the academics who are really trying to wrestle with what what is paul's financial policy they often really struggle with this particular example because some people even say well paul you know isn't sure what he wants to do or you know he feels guilty about the situation and later you know and they really try to over psychologize paul on this but why does he seem at initially hesitant why does she have to prevail upon him to receive her hospitality and i think the answer once you accept this reciprocity co -labor distinction it is very clear here that okay she's a worshiper of god she already is in a sense converted but not to christianity in particular which she is when she is baptized and so paul has this question you know is this woman paying me back for this gospel that she's received from me or is she doing this out of thankfulness to god and what wins him over it's the statement if you have judged me to be faithful to the lord come to my house and stay right she is doing this out of thankfulness to god not out of an obligation to paul and that's what wins him over and you see this in every example where paul either refuse or accepts or in this instance expresses hesitation yeah because it would be fair for him to assume that she's a spiritual infant and doesn't yet understand this issue i'll just add to what you've been talking about first corinthians 3 1 paul says directly to the corinthians brothers and sisters i could not address you as spiritual people but as people of the flesh as infants in christ so this is just a really clear statement that paul's interaction with them is based on them as infants in christ dealing with people who are still misunderstanding a lot of things and acting according to their misunderstanding and in that case when they try to repay him he doesn't want to accept that as payment for his teaching and that's what an infant in christ would do and i think paul's example also lets us know that the right response isn't well let me just clarify for them real quick and then i'll take the money right uh yeah so if you're if you're in that situation where you're receiving from someone who clearly is doing it out of an obligation to you rather than thankfulness to god the right response isn't well you know let's just do that as as co -labor let's let's say you're paul was never he never took that route right he didn't when he was offered food from the thessalonians he didn't you know try to clarify that when in first corinthians 9 or uh second corinthians 11 he said you know i'll never receive this money he didn't say well let's earmark it differently you know to to use that phrase again that's that should be one takeaway there yeah and so that's that's why there is a lot of nuance to this and if we go back to what said about not being a peddler of god's word the reason he's so clear on that is because he wants to be sure people know of his sincerity and so that's why it is there is nuance to it because it's about being sincere and you can't it's not necessarily just about changing the practical aspect of it's just paying or not paying but it's about ensuring there is sincerity there in the ministry to further nuance what i was saying earlier about potentially declining payment when you don't necessarily need it at the same time you you don't want to reject people who are trying to sincerely co -labor with you and so if the support would be helpful and if someone wants to do it then you shouldn't necessarily stop them either because they that would be not denying them the chance to co -labor in the work that you're doing so i guess it does require a lot of wisdom in in this specific situation yeah ultimately you should be concerned about what's best for the kingdom and you should be asking yourself you know as a partner in the gospel what's going to be best for the work of the gospel and it's not about you know just making sure that you're in the clear uh you really should be doing this for the good of the of the other person interacting with you and if they want to support you should figure out you know how best to let them support that work yeah thank you for bringing up the issue of sincerity because that is such a huge thing that i would love to see evangelicals stop denying let's all stop denying that putting price tags on these kinds of things doesn't compromise sincerity because it absolutely does you know and even lost people understand this they they understand that it's certain things if once you start charging for them they lose their sincerity completely and i'll just share an example for the the crazy shock factor of it from my own life when i was in bethlehem i was staying as a couch surfer couchsurfing .com