49. 10 Reasons To Host A Pastor Story Hour

Welcome back to the podcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 49, 10 reasons to host a pastor story hour.

Welcome back to the podcast. As people all across the nation have been hearing about our pastor story hour,

I thought it'd be helpful if I just took a moment and sketch out some of my thoughts on why we were doing an event like this.

So I want to say first and foremost, thank you so much for listening to the podcast. Thank you so much for following along with our blogs and for praying for us and for this church.

We definitely need it because we want to share Christ in culture. We want to share Christ so that the world does not continue to devolve in chaos.

We want to share Christ to be faithful to what our Lord Jesus Christ called us. And because of that, we definitely need your prayer.

We love your support. And we thank you so much for tuning in and listening to the podcast. Now today, what

I wanted to do is I wanted to just talk about why we decided to do an event called

Pastor Story Hour. Now, again, I've mentioned this before. I heard about this from a friend of mine who also is doing a pastor story hour in Ohio.

Praise the Lord for him. His name is Michael Foster. I've heard of other men who are doing this in the country, but I wanted to just briefly share with you 10 reasons why the

Shepherd's Church is doing it. Out of all the things that we could spend our time on, out of all the things that we could do, why are we doing this?

And that's what I wanted you to hear today is 10 significant things, why we believe that this is not only a helpful thing, but it's a necessary thing.

So number one, why are we doing Pastor Story Hour? Well, we're doing it because of the gospel. The doctrine behind every conversion and the heartbeat that fuels every

Christian is the gospel. It's the power of Almighty God. And it is not only the most essential doctrine that we could ever learn as individuals, but it's also the most essential doctrine that our children must learn as well.

The gospel is the doctrine that's gonna guard their young hearts and forming minds so that they could find hope and joy in a secular world in case they find themselves in very secular places like a university or a college campus or in a job or vocation where their faith is being suppressed or silenced.

You see, the gospel is going to be the balm for our children's weary soul whenever they walk through pain and suffering that this life is inevitably gonna throw at them.

The gospel is gonna become the life raft for their doubts, the comfort for their sadness, and it's gonna become the fuel for their joy and gladness.

As parents, we're responsible for preparing our children for what life is gonna be like without us.

And to do that well, we have to, we must actively, deliberately, and passionately teach our children about the gospel.

Now, the Shepherd's Church's elders and pastors, we take that seriously. 1 Peter 4, one through two is just one verse out of many that we hold and cherish on why we have to do this work.

We wanna be a resource for our parents in helping them understand the gospel so that they can take that gospel and then bring it into their home and train up their children in that gospel.

So number one, we're doing this because we believe it's essential in light of what we believe about the gospel.

Number two, why are we doing Pastor Story Hour? We're doing it because we believe that we're called to pastoral leadership.

We believe that pastors have been called to bring the truth of the scriptures to bear on every facet of God's people's lives.

We don't wanna produce a people who simply behave like Christians during a Sunday morning church service.

Instead, we wanna develop a people who are impacted by the gospel at every level, at every nook and cranny of their lives so that all of life looks like Christ.

Now, to do that, we can't take for granted that our people, the people who come to church at the

Shepherd's Church and at every other church, they're leaving the safety of our church on Sunday in order to enter the battlefield on Monday.

While we are reading commentaries and preparing messages throughout the week, our people are gonna be inundated with the enemy's lies.

They're gonna be saturated with every wind of cultural dogma that's pressuring them to compromise.

And frankly, dear brothers who are pastors, if we are not actively seeking to help our people develop a biblical worldview, then we're not only failing at discipleship, we're preparing them for failure.

As pastors, as John Stott once said in his great book, we stand with one foot in the biblical world where truth and theology exists, but we also stand with another foot in the world that we live in, where liberal and secular ideology dominates.

We stand on the wall protecting our people from the coming threats.

We see trends coming. We see pagan philosophies forming. We see secular ideologies gathering steam so that we are the exact people that God would call to help his people.

We're the ones who are called to help equip them and to be able to think about things from a biblical worldview. And that duty must never be shirked, discarded, or abandoned.

For that reason, an event like Pastor Story Hour is so helpful because we can pick and choose topics to teach on that we don't normally get to on a

Sunday morning, especially if you're an expository preacher and you're dealing with the topics as they come to in the text, that Pastor Story Hour gives you the opportunity to teach in a faithful biblical way that's topical, that's relevant, and that's needed.

Now, we can also take these topics and use them as an opportunity to train our children and equip our parents.

I think this is a wonderful example of pastoral leadership. So that's number two. Number three, why are we doing

Pastor Story Hour? Well, we're doing it because we wanna encourage family worship. The more we become acquainted with the gospel, the more we realize that it's not just a

Sunday doctrine, and it's not the kind of thing that can just be contained in a one -hour church service every week.

The gospel finds its way down into every aspect of the believer's life, which means that we must also teach the gospel in every area that our children occupy.

That's why the gospel must be read to them in books and stories. That's why it needs to be sung in songs and prayed at the dinner table.

The gospel is what we tuck our children into bed with, and it's the aroma of our home that they're going to awaken up into.

For this reason, Pastor Story Hour is not only for the children to learn the gospel.

Of course it's for that, but it's also an intentional environment for parents to be able to come and watch us teaching their children and to observe how we do it, how we do it at our table.

We want moms and dads to be able to see how we do it so that they can get ideas and inspiration on how to do the same thing for their children in their homes.

We want our moms and dads to feel comfortable, confident, and competent in knowing how to instruct their children in the gospel.

And we believe that Pastor Story Hour is a wonderful, effective medium for being able to accomplish that.

Our goal is that Pastor Story Hour will be a blessing to every member of the family and that it would invigorate family worship in our community and beyond.

That's number three. Number four, why are we doing Pastor Story Hour? Well, because we have a high view of Christian education.

Along with family worship, we believe that the church has a God -ordained responsibility to educate the next generation of people in the gospel.

We believe that we're called to help equip them for service in his kingdom. And part of that is helping our people grow into a love of learning and a desire to read the scriptures, to study doctrine, to read good books, to love

God with all of our mind. And that work begins in the home.

And it begins in the education of our children, giving our children a godly vision for robust biblical

Christian thinking. And that way, Pastor Story Hour allows us to teach various topics that our children are inevitably going to face in this world, that they're gonna come into contact with and to do so in a robust Christian way.

We can't pretend that they're not gonna hear about these things, and we can't just not give them an answer. So we have to give them something truthful from the

Bible. So we get to do that in a biblical age -appropriate way, in a way that models a love for robust Christian learning so that our children will grow up strong with an expectation that they will be teaching their children, our grandchildren, the faith for generations to come.

Number five, why are we doing this? Resources. We believe that there's many faithful men and women throughout church history who have known

God in beautiful, precious, intimate ways that we're praying that we would be able to know

God like they did. Those Christians are the ones who wrote and produced some of the most excellent resources that have ever been written, such as the

Heidelberg Catechism, which is what inspired the book that we're gonna be reading this month, Sophie and the

Heidelberg Catechism. Now, we wanna pass along resources like this to our community because we believe that there are exceptional resources out there, and that our people,

God's people, would be blessed by knowing what those resources are. So we hope that by recommending resources every single month that a family can begin developing a library that will bless not just them and their children, but multiple generations of children who are growing strong in the

Lord. Now, also, the Lord has laid it on my heart to while we're in Pastor Story Hour, while the event is taking place,

I'm gonna bring extra books, and I'm gonna give those books away. And there'll be a way that I'm gonna give those books away, but I wanna resource

God's people so that God's people will be equipped for the work that he's called them to do. That's number five. Number six, why are we doing

Pastor Story Hour? Well, we have a missional reason for doing Pastor Story Hour, and that's because all of life belongs to Christ.

We're doing this at the library instead of inside of our church building because we believe that Christ is Lord over everything.

He's not just Lord over Sunday morning, but he's Lord over the entire world, as Abraham Kuyper once said.

There is not one square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry, mine.

That means the public square does not belong to the public or to the world, it belongs to Jesus.

The library has been built with his bricks, his material. It's been carpeted with his fabric.

It's been filled with people who are made in his image. Therefore, we need not be afraid to enter a realm that is under his sovereignty and authority.

Instead, we can live confidently as children of the king, knowing that this land is our inheritance.

With that, we must have the courage to live boldly, confidently, humbly, and persistently as Christians in a world where Jesus is already reigning.

Because of these convictions, we cannot retreat as the people who have no hope because Christ is the hope of the world.

We can't hide the light of the gospel because he's the light of the world. We can't store away the salt in the church cupboards because he's called us to be the salt of the world.

Because of this, we must be present and active in our community.

We must love them enough in order to let the light of the gospel shine on them, even if it was too bright right now for them to comprehend it.

We must be willing for the saltiness of the gospel to get on them, even if it burns.

We must love them enough to be present in society.

We must love them enough to let our light so shine among them so that they may see our good works and hopefully we pray to God for this, that they would give glory to our father in heaven.

We must be loving, present, but we also must be patient because they're going to malign you.

They're going to hate you. They're going to say all manner of evil against you. And we must be persistent and consistent enough to keep that light shining because we want more than anything else.

Those who hate us today will come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ tomorrow.

That's number six. Number seven, why are we doing Pastor Story Hour? We have a masculine vision that needs to be reclaimed and repurposed for the world.

Our children are growing up in a world where it has become shameful and inexcusable for a man to act in masculine ways.

Today, men are encouraged to be avoidant, passive, and timid like their father, Adam, which is not

Christ's vision for redeemed manhood or boyhood. So with that,

Pastor Story Hour is a wonderful opportunity for us to show boys and girls what biblical men look like, what they are, how they act, what they do.

And you may ask, what do biblical men do? Well, they slay dragons. They tame the chaos.

Men build things. They fight against injustices and errors that cripple the world around them, and they fight for the ones that they love.

They take godly calculated risks. Men stand for the truth. Men take responsibility for the world around them and labor to make it a better, sweeter, safer, more beautiful realm for our girls and for our women.

Men, real biblical men, do not stand idly by complaining about how bad things are or romanticizing or nostalgicizing about how things used to be in the old days.

We instead stand up and we do something about it. We don't complain.

We work. And our children need to see that sort of godly, biblical, masculine example that motivates us to action.

They need to see us running towards problems and working to find Christ -honoring solutions instead of cowering and running away.

The world keeps lunging like they're in a handbasket headed towards hell, and our children need to see us showing consistent

Christian love for those who are perishing. That's the kind of man that we find in scripture, and that is the kind of men that we want our boys to become, and that's the kind of men that we want our daughters to marry.

That's number seven. We have a masculine vision. Number eight. Why are we doing Pastor Story Hour?

We have a vision for what being committed actually looks like. See, the last thing in the world that we'd ever wanna do is we would do this event in Chelmsford and throw this a big event that causes a lot of noise and social disquieting, and then never come back again.

We don't wanna be a one -hit wonder. We don't wanna be a one -and -done. We think that would be actually unloving if we did that.

Instead, we want Chelmsford, we want our cities to see us being consistent and committed to the community.

We want them to see us convicted that we must live publicly for Jesus so that they will see

Jesus in us. I mean, odds are that we're the only glimpse of Jesus that some people in this town are gonna get.

Because of that, I'm praying that we would showcase Jesus faithfully, that they would see our good works, give glory to our

Father in heaven, and that they would come to know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. They would bow their knee to Him.

That's number eight. Number nine, we have a vision for what it means to be active. Whether it's pastor story hour, or it's something else, we want our children, and we want our people, and we want the world to see us being active on the earth.

We don't want our children to grow up hiding from culture. We don't want them to believe that our faith is private, quiet, or secretive.

And we certainly don't want them to grow up afraid to engage. We want them to feel encouraged, to labor for Christendom.

We want them to be excited and eager to see Jesus reclaiming territory for His kingdom in their lifetime.

We want them to have a view that Christ is going to be victorious, and everyone who adopts a worldly view of any topic is on the wrong side of history, because Jesus is

Lord over history. We want them to have that humble, quiet confidence that comes in the gospel, knowing that Christ is

Lord over all. And we want them to be able to see themselves in the work. We don't want them to grow up thinking,

I could never do that. We want them to grow up having living examples of men who did that so that they can go do that.

When we model for our children, they catch a vision for how to do it for themselves.

And that's what we want. We want our children to grow up and be kingdom builders, and we want their children, and then their grandchildren, and their great -grandchildren.

We're not living for a single generation here. We're living for a thousand generations to see

Christ's kingdom come in full, so that when He returns, He returns to a completed kingdom.

That's what 1 Corinthians 15 is all about. Finally, 10 reasons why we're doing

Pastor Story Hour. Number 10, we have a vision for what courage looks like. The world is in the shape that it's in because the church has grown cowardly.

The church overall, and I'm not talking about specific pastors, specific churches. I'm just saying in general, the church has grown cowardly.

And sometimes we've labeled that with a veneer called winsomeness. While we've retreated from the world, the world has redefined marriage.

They've made moral arguments that a child in the womb is just a clump of cells that you can throw away or discard without recourse.

They've forgotten what a man or a woman actually is. And in fact, the more that we retreat, the more confused and the more morally depraved that they're going to continue to become.

With that, we want to simply acknowledge that God has put us here as lights to shine in a crooked and adulterous generation to help preserve them from future and further decay.

Now, that's going to take courage to live that way, but I pray that we will.

And I pray that we would step into it because God has called us to it. Now, as we closed, I want to just remind you of a couple of truths.

God's sovereign. He's in control. He's all powerful. He is all authority in heaven and on earth.

And he's called us to be his witnesses, to live publicly for him. And if he's called us to it, then he's going to see us through it.

And if he's asked us to do it, then he will supply everything that we need to accomplish it, which is what

Matthew 6 .33 is all about. So in conclusion, if you're a pastor listening to this, if you're a congregant listening to this, if you go to the

Shepherd's Church and you're listening to this, whoever you are, my prayer is that you would have faith in who

Christ has called you to be, that you would live boldly, that you would believe, that you would live faithfully, and that you would be blessed in your labors as you seek to honor

Christ in everything that you do. Now, if you're interested, our next Pastor Story Hour in Chelmsford, Massachusetts is

February the 18th from 9 .30 to 10 .30 at the Chelmsford Public Library. The Chelmsford Public Library is not sponsoring this event.

They are the place where we have chosen to meet for this event. And because they have allowed us to meet there, they are the site that we're gonna be meeting at, but they are not the host for the event.

The Shepherd's Church is the host for the event. Now, with that, I'd like for you to pray for us. I'd like for you to share this episode, invite other people.

And if you're a pastor listening to this or you're reading the blog, please consider hosting a

Pastor Story Hour in your town as well. It would be a strange and altogether beautiful providence if liberal

Massachusetts led the country, not in abortions and not in transgenderism and not in every other liberal trans -sectional category that you can come up with.

No, it would be amazing if Massachusetts led the nation in Pastor Story Hours. It'd be amazing if Massachusetts led the nation on the gospel being taught to children.

It would be amazing if pastors stood up and took a bold stand and said that we will showcase

Christ no matter what hell might come. Until next time, you are loved, God bless you, and thank you for listening to the podcast.