October 8, 2025 Show with Dr. David A. Harrell on “Seven Key Principles for Effective Ministry”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron.

This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnson.

Good afternoon, Kerbal and County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth, who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this eighth day of October 2025.

I'm absolutely thrilled to have a first-time guest today. His name is Dr. David A. Harrell. He is an author of a number of books, and he is the senior pastor teacher at Calvary Bible Church of Joelton, Tennessee.

Today, we are going to be addressing his book, Seven Key Principles for Effective Ministry, Nurturing Thriving Churches in a Postmodern Culture. And with that being said, welcome to Iron Sharpens Iron for the very first time, Dr. David A. Harrell.

Thank you. I'm honored to be here with you.

Well, it is an honor to have you, brother. And if you could, let our listeners know about Calvary Bible Church of Joelton, Tennessee.

Okay. We are an independent Bible church. I've been there as their pastor since about, well, in the early 90s. I've been the pastor there for 30-plus years now. And we are kind of a rarity in our area because we have a robust Reformed soteriology.

And as a Bible expositor, I'm a little bit of a rare breed because that's not exactly the flavor of the day. And yet we have a wonderful thriving group of people, especially a lot of young families with children, actually all ages.

And so we are just rejoicing in the many ways God continues to manifest His goodness and grace towards us. I'm humbled to be their pastor.

Amen.

If anybody wants any more details on Calvary Bible Church of Joelton, Tennessee, go to cbctn .org, cbctn .org. And I already know that I've got to introduce you to some pastor friends of mine in Tennessee.

Even though you're not right next door to them, the ones that I'm thinking of, you're about three hours away or so. But nonetheless, it'd be great for you to be introduced, and maybe you could cooperate and participate on events together and so on.

That'd be great.

Well, we have a tradition on Iron Trip and Zion Radio. Whenever we have a first-time guest such as yourself, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony, which would include any kind of religious atmosphere in which they may have been raised and the kinds of providential circumstances our Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to Himself and saved them.

And I would love to hear your story.

Yes. I rejoice in the fact that God in His great mercy drew me unto Himself in a very profound.

Way.

When I was about nine years old, I was raised in a very godly Christian home. My mom and dad loved the Lord. My dad was a lay Bible teacher and a very successful businessman, and also a man that had survived the sinking of the USS Indianapolis at World War II.

Wow. So he had quite a story to tell. In fact, I've written a book for him about that called Out of the Depths. But anyway, I came under conviction in a very profound way at an early age, and God saved me by His grace.

And then over the years continued to grow me in the grace and the knowledge of Christ. And thankfully, I had access to parents and to a church that continually led me in a manner where I could understand the scriptures and apply them to my life.

And over the course of the years, I was greatly influenced by the Moody Bible Institute, the Moody Network. My dad was the vice chairman of the Board of Trustees at Moody Bible Institute for about 17 years.

And it was over the course of those years that I got to know Dr. John MacArthur, and eventually that led to me attending Grace Theological Seminary and eventually being invited to go teach when I got finished.

And I declined that at first because I wanted to do more doctoral studies. And after that, I eventually agreed to go out. John had asked me to come and help them start a master's in biblical counseling program at the Master's University.

So I went out there and did that. And then realizing that it was going to be very difficult to live in Southern California with a wife and three kids, I said, Brother, we've got this up and running. I need to go back to Tennessee where I can afford to live.

And so I came back, and I've been at Calvary Bible Church ever since. But that's it in a nutshell.

Sovereign Grace and the Doctrines of Grace

Now, how did you first come to discover the doctrines of Sovereign Grace?

Actually, that was primarily through the ministry of several people that I got to know as a young man, because I think I was probably Arminian by default. That seemed to make the most sense to me because I'd never really thought it through.

Yes, Spurgeon said that everybody is by default Arminian.

That would have been me. And yet, I would say that especially as I began listening to John MacArthur and heard him exposit the word, it became abundantly clear what the doctrines of grace really were.

And through his ministry, through R .C. Sproul, through men like that, over time, it became real clear that that was the truth. And it was something that thrilled my soul as it continues to do. I'm profoundly humbled by it.

And so I would say that in the providence of God, those were the circumstances that led me to that understanding.

Well, since you mentioned the late John MacArthur, I'm going to read his wonderful endorsement for your book that we are addressing today. And once again, this book that we are discussing. By the way, you should probably contact especially your pastor, if you are not a pastor yourself, your elders, pastors of other churches that you know, and tell them to listen in today at irontreppansironradio .com, where they can live stream this program anywhere in the world.

But the book that we are addressing is Seven Key Principles for Effective Ministry, Nurturing Thriving Churches in a Postmodern Culture. And the late John MacArthur said of this book, Dave Harrell outlines with unusual clarity the essential features of authentic church ministry.

Prepare to be instructed, encouraged, and powerfully motivated. And also, my very dear friend, who is the executive director of Grace to You, the media ministry of the late John MacArthur, Phil Johnson, who has been on this program many times.

I only had one opportunity to interview John MacArthur, but I've had Phil Johnson on many times, and he said of this book,. This helpful work succinctly summarizes the essential principles of authentic biblical ministry.

It is an excellent corrective to the trends that have left so many postmodern evangelical churches spiritually weak and ineffectual. Another very dear friend of mine that I've known since 1996, and who's been on my program many times since I first launched the show in 2005, Dr. Conrad Mbewe, pastor of Kabwatha Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, who is also the founding chancellor of African Christian University, and is going to be speaking very close to where I'm sitting in February of next year in Baltimore, Maryland.

I'm going to be trying to get him to speak for the second time at my Iron Trip and Zion Radio Free Pastors Luncheons. I'm going to hope to have him speak in early March of next year, as long as his schedule is open to that.

We already are in dialogue about that. But Dr. Mbewe said of this book, Consider the chapters of this book as seven roots that must sink very deeply if you are to bear God-glorifying fruit in and through the church in a culture that has gone adrift from the moorings of its creator.

As always, a wonderfully profound commendation from Dr. Mbewe. Well, some of what I'm going to ask you is already answered in the endorsements I read, but what was the compelling factor in your heart and mind that said to yourself, I've got to write a book on this very issue to assist churches as they are struggling with a postmodern culture?

What were some of the most compelling factors that led you to either pick up a pen and paper or sit behind a computer keypad and start typing away?

Well, it was mainly the involvement that I've had over the years with former students that are now pastors and other pastor friends, and also many people who have even come to our church who have just been languishing in churches that really do not respect the authority of Scripture, and they're as shallow as water on a plate.

People are frustrated. And I might back up a little bit. For 10 years, I was in biblical counseling serving a number of churches in the Nashville area. I worked with a lot of pastors and highly visible church leaders and a lot of artists in the music industry and so forth.

But I became acutely aware of the challenges that pastors are facing and that churches are facing, especially with respect to the compromise that many pastors gradually began to embrace, sometimes unwittingly.

And so it wasn't like there was one episode that, boy, this really is the straw that broke the camel's back, but just many factors. As I continue to mentor other young pastors, I have a nonprofit called Shepherds Fire, shepherdsfire .org, and it's basically to help fortify pastors and church leaders.

And so as I mentor other pastors and I consult for churches that are having issues and so forth, all of those things came together to a point where I thought, you know, I really want to put something down succinctly that I think would be helpful to them.

And actually what happened before I even decided to write the book, I did an exposition of Colossians 1, 24 through 29. And in that, I began to formulate what I would call seven key principles for effective ministry.

And after preaching through that and receiving a lot of praise, so to speak, that it was helpful to people, I decided, you know, why don't I put this in book form and see what the Lord will do with it.

So that's kind of the background.

The First Principle: Consumed With God's Glory

Well, why don't we go through as many of the principles as we could fit into this two-hour program. Two hours does go by a lot faster than many people may think it would, especially since we do have commercials on the show.

But we will try to fit as many of these principles as possible, at least to whet the appetite of listeners to get a hold of the book. And by the way, let me, before I forget, give you all the website for Shepherd Press, the publisher of this book, shepherdpress .com, shepherdpress .com.

But let's start with the first principle.

Okay. And that would be that the first ruling conviction of a pastor's heart would be that he is consumed with God's glory. He must be consumed with God's glory. And the reason I begin there is because if you do not have a zeal for the glory of God, just a passion that comes from, frankly, a soul-captivating and sin-destroying vision of the majesty of God, then you really have no business being in pastoral ministry.

And what is going to come from your heart through your lips will not be that which will cause people to share your zeal for the glory of God. Instead, you will end up having more of a life-dominating obsession with the things of the world, the things of the culture.

Your church will become man-centered rather than God-centered. And therefore, as I looked at this passage of Scripture and especially just the life of the apostle Paul, it became very obvious that this is what really drove him at a most fundamental level.

He had a preoccupation with just the unfathomable glory and greatness of God. And that really drove everything that he did. And so that's why I started with that particular ruling conviction.

If you could give us some of the details that would fall under the umbrella phrase or term, the glory of God, because as you may know, that term is thrown around a lot, especially perhaps even in charismatic and Pentecostal circles.

They'll call out or cry out that term or phrase, glory to God. But perhaps very few uttering those words even know what that exactly means. Could you give us some idea, paint a picture of some of the key things that would fall under that description?

Yeah. It would certainly begin with just an understanding of the infinite perfections of the nature, of the attributes of God. Understanding who he is as our creator, as the sustainer, the redeemer, the consummator of all things.

And certainly in the context of all of that, you come to a place where you realize that God's glory is manifested not only in his creation, but it's manifested in his word that he has given us that helps us understand who he is and what he has done to bring glory to himself, especially through the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so that means if you're going to have a zeal for the glory of God, you've got to understand the person and the work of Christ. You've got to understand the great doctrines of Scripture. There are so many, especially the doctrines of soteriology, because all of those things point us to who he really is and therefore who we really are, and that is profoundly humbling.

And so it's based on propositional doctrinal truth, not some quiver in our liver.

And I'm assuming that that is so closely and inseparably connected to the fact that a Bible-believing, biblically-functioning church should be God-centered, not man-centered, which tragically so many churches, if perhaps even the majority of churches today, are very man-centered.

Well, absolutely. And this is the unfortunate consequence of evangelical pragmatism that essentially sees becoming more like the world as a better method of evangelism than preaching the gospel. And so most people, especially people that I counseled over the years, including many pastors, they have a very, very weak understanding of who God is and a weak understanding of the great doctrines, and especially when it comes to the doctrines of grace, all of the issues pertaining to soteriology.

And also what happens is when you start preaching those things, many times people get offended. I mean, who wants to hear that all that they are and all that they do is fundamentally offensive to a holy God, and unless they repent and cry out for a mercy they do not deserve and a righteousness that they cannot achieve, that they will go to hell.

I mean, people don't want to hear that. And so in order to fill up your church, you've got to kind of be a little more therapeutic, a little more tolerant, and kind of shave off the rough edges of the gospel, remove its offense, and that way people will embrace Jesus, but unfortunately they will embrace him for the wrong reasons, typically.

So these are the issues that you deal with with respect to these things.

Amen.

The Second Principle: Content With Suffering

Well, we have to go to our first commercial break, and if you'd like to send in a question of your own to Dr. David A. Harrell on this very important subject that we are addressing today, Seven Key Principles for Effective Ministry, Nurturing Thriving Churches in a Postmodern Culture, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors. Still praising God for the addition of Gold Wealth Management to the Iron Trump and Zion Radio family of advertisers.

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So go to royaldiadem .com today and mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We are now back with David A. Harrell. He is a first-time guest today on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and we are addressing the theme of a very important book, Seven Key Principles for Effective Ministry, Nurturing Thriving Churches in a Postmodern Culture.

And if you could, go to that second key principle, brother.

Yes, the second key principle is—I'm trying to remember it here— content with his suffering. I'd forgotten. Content with his suffering. We must be consumed with God's glory, but we must be content with the suffering that we have.

And certainly that comes from Colossians 124, where Paul said, Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of his body, which is the church, in filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions.

And the idea that the world continues to hate Christ, even though he is gone, and we as pastors, church leaders, people in a church, all believers, we are kind of the lightning rods that continue to bear the brunt of the world's hatred of Christ.

And unless you are content with this kind of suffering, you will never have an effective ministry. And once again, if I can back up, you first must be consumed with God's glory. And as I recall in chapter one, the illustration of Isaiah, who you will recall had just a soul-terrifying, sin-destroying vision of the glory of God in Isaiah 6.

And when you think about it, that is what motivated him to continue on in his ministry, even though the pre-incarnate Christ himself told him that most people aren't going to listen to you. And so you've got to have that zeal for the glory of God in order to be able to endure the sufferings and be content with your sufferings.

And I think it's important for pastors in particular to understand this because we are going to suffer in unique ways. The gospel that we preach that brings glory to Christ just incites the anger and the malice of Satan and his followers because it exposes them, the unfruitful deeds of darkness and all of the things that Satan hates.

And so we are going to suffer, but the suffering that we have will even go beyond just the opprobrium of the world. It's going to include things like illness and calamities, poverty, heart-wrenching burdens.

I mean, just dealing with broken relationships. And so as you go into pastoral ministry, especially with the young guys, I want to tell them that you're going to have to have a real contentment with what God is going to bring your way for your good and for his glory, especially in young pastors that go into smaller churches that I always say they tend to be family-owned and operate.

Many times they're controlled by biblically undiscerning people. Sometimes you have even a theologically illiterate oligarchy that has no intention of submitting to a godly shepherd. And there can be problems in the church, and you just have to realize that this is part of it, but that also that God in his infinite love and wisdom has ordained to allow these things in order to dramatically display the goodness of his glory and grace and his attributes in our life.

And so that's why I dealt with that second ruling conviction that you must be content with your suffering.

Now, that is probably, I would imagine, the hardest of all the truths of Christianity to really take hold of, believe in, and act upon. Many people may say they believe in that. You may have many people that say they believe in many things.

They may say they believe in the sovereignty of God over all things. They may even say they believe in the entirety of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, and we could go on and on. But when it comes to, as they say, the rubber meeting the road, they very often will fall far short of the conviction that they profess with their lips.

Yeah, that's right. And that's why I deal with this in that particular chapter, because what we see is that saints through the ages have found great consolation knowing that whatever they're suffering, God is in it.

He's not only intimately aware of it, but he is ultimately the source of it, even if it's the result of evil, because we see that from the beginning, God ordained to allow evil to enter into his perfect universe.

And he did this through the voluntary choices of moral creatures in order, as I said earlier, to just dramatically display his glory through his holiness, his wrath, his mercy, his grace, love, power, and so forth.

And certainly it's a supreme blasphemy to consider God the author or the cause of sin. But because God is infinitely holy and he's utterly bereft of any form of unrighteousness, he cannot act wickedly.

And so he's never the cause of sin, but he does bring it about indirectly through the willing, voluntary actions of moral creatures. And that's why I say that he is ordained to allow these things to happen.

And when I understand that as a pastor or for any believer, I realize that this hasn't caught God by surprise. This hasn't kind of slipped up on him. And now he's having to react because God is a sovereign God.

He is not a contingent God. God knows it is omniscient. He knows all things and he's all powerful. And so I find great comfort as do others. And I know I give illustrations. I forget all of them in the chapter, but you find great comfort in knowing that whatever we're dealing with, with respect to suffering, God is ultimately the source of it.

God is ultimately doing something in his providence that we can't understand. And therefore we should never ask why, but what, you know, God, what do you want me to do to give you glory in the midst of this great trial?

Because certainly you don't owe me an explanation and I wouldn't be able to understand it if you did. So these are the issues that I deal with in that particular chapter.

The Third Principle: Convinced of Your Calling

And why don't you provide for us the third principle?

Okay. The third principle kind of flows from the other two. And that is, I call it the third ruling conviction. You must be convinced of your calling. A pastor must be convinced of his calling. And Paul spoke of this with regard to himself in Colossians 1 .25.

He says, of this church, I was made a minister according to the stewardship from God bestowed on me for your benefit so that I might fully carry out the preaching of the word of God. And I've dealt with a number of young men in particular who struggle with, you know, am I called to do this?

And I struggled with it early on, especially when early on in my pastoral ministry, I encountered great difficulty with people that were frankly wicked. And there were times where I just wondered, Lord, am I in the wrong vocation here?

Is this really what you want me to do? And one of the things that helped me survive as well as many others, and I'm thankful that I had godly mentors to go to, was just that sense of divine calling. And I give in this chapter, I give tests of divine calling.

There's five of them that I give, and there's a lot of overlap, but I would suggest that there's five categories that emerge from Scripture that can be affirmed by just the personal experience of every faithful pastor.

He must have, first of all, a longing to know and serve Christ. A young man must ask himself that. Is that truly who you are? Do you have a longing to know and serve Christ? And then secondly, do you have a sense of urgency to preach the gospel?

Is this a consuming priority? Is it a burning in your bones, so to speak? And then thirdly, do you have a pervasive feeling of inadequacy? You know, as Paul said, who is adequate for these things? The answer is none of us are.

I mean, apart from Christ, we can do nothing, but we have to have that pervasive feeling of inadequacy. Otherwise, we will go out thinking that we can do this on our own, and we can't. And then the fourth test would be, do you have a burden to shepherd the flock?

And I go into great detail of what shepherding is. It's not just getting up and preaching a sermon, but it's getting in there, mixing it up with the sheep, struggling with them, smelling like them, so to speak, and being involved in their lives.

And then the fifth test is a public confirmation of spiritual gifts and character and abilities. You know, just because you think you would make a good pastor and because mommy and daddy say you're a good preacher doesn't mean that you are.

And so there needs to be a public confirmation of those things. Like in the old days of the Reformation, I mean, you weren't allowed to ascend the sacred desk unless you had been ordained and really tested by godly theologians, because after all, you're going to be a physician of the soul.

And so it was a very serious thing. And so those are the categories that I use with respect to this whole issue of being convinced of your calling.

Yeah, that issue, a couple of the elements in that issue, especially in regarding to possessing a shepherd's heart, seems to be, from what I have heard from elder boards who have been looking for a preaching and teaching pastor because the pastor that they had retired or moved on to another church or what have you, and they would have applicants that some of whom were magnificent orators and who were brilliant and who were just flowing with beautiful and biblical summaries of the God-breathed Word and even not only the content of their messages, but the manner of their messages, manner of delivery of their messages.

But I can remember when I was helping a church find a new pastor, they got back to me, those that were on the pulpit search committee, and said, you know, everybody loved the way this young man preached, but we observed him during times of social gathering and so on over meals, and he seemed to have little concern of learning anything about the sheep in his midst and seemed very self-centered and aloof and seemed to isolate himself with his wife and children, and I could go on and on.

And they were too apprehensive to extend the call to this man because of that.

And rightfully so. You know, I think of 1 Peter 5 too, where we're told to shepherd the flock of God among you, and it says, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but voluntarily, according to the will of God, not for sordid gain, but with eagerness, nor yet as lording it over those allotted to your charge, but proving to be examples to the flock.

And, you know, that's why Paul would say, what is it, Galatians 4, I believe, he talked about his children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you. And so there has to be a part of this man that loves to be working even one-on-one with the sheep, to be willing to serve in obscurity when nobody's looking.

And to be able to do that with great joy. And the people will respond to that. That's why I have made it a policy, and certainly I fail in many, many ways, but I make it a policy that if you need me, here's my phone number, here's my text, here's my email, I will get back with you as quickly as I can, because I want to spend time with my people.

And this has to be a part of pastoral ministry, because if it's not, you really, if that's not who you are, and you have no real desire to do that, I don't think God has called you to do that.

Now, the aspect of that concept of knowing your calling, and you were speaking about the humility that needs to be in the heart and mind of someone truly called of God, and they need to recognize that they are completely dependent upon the triune God to successfully answer the call and continue and strive in the call.

There is, and I've met men like this, who perhaps, I don't know if it's something that they really believe in their heart and mind, or if they are overcompensating, trying to, and I don't want to be too harsh, but put on a show of humility.

But I have been concerned about some of my brethren that I know that are very gifted men, who I believe belong in that office. But, you know, you ask them to speak somewhere, or, you know, you're just in a conversation with them, and it's this long, self-deprecating, tearing down of themselves, of being worthy of any kind of consideration like that.

Sometimes it can be so obsessive that you start to wonder, should I be asking this person to speak at such and such a conference? You know what I'm saying?

Right, yeah. Yeah, and certainly that can be an issue. And what I talk about, I call it a pervasive feeling of inadequacy. I'm talking about, like Paul, remember when he came to Corinth to preach the gospel?