June 11, 2025 Show with John P. Worrall on “Examining the Dynamic of Principle & Opportunity in Leadership”

The Meaning of Iron Sharpens Iron and the Show’s Purpose

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 Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland 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 Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 11th day of June 2025, and I'm delighted to have a first-time guest today.

His name is John Worrell. As he puts it, he is a reassigned servant of Jesus Christ. He was a pastor for over 50 years and now serves the king as a writer, teacher, and supporter of other servants of the king.

And John is the author of Not the Center of the Universe, a daily devotional for those in Christian ministry. He has also just released his newest book, The Second Man, an examination of King David and his nephew, General Joab.

It is a comparison between the core values of principle and opportunity. And today we are going to be addressing examining the dynamic principle of opportunity and leadership. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, John Worrell.

Thank you, Chris. It is my privilege as well. I am really interested and excited to share whatever God wants us to know.

Chris. Amen.

John Worrell’s Ministry, Salvation Testimony, and Calling

Well, before we go into the theme at hand, I understand that you are a leader in the Keystone Baptist Association here in central Pennsylvania. Why don't you tell our listeners about that?

Keystone Baptist Association is over 35 churches of Southern Baptist, and we go all the way from upstate college and down to the state line and across the Susquehanna. And we're part of the Baptist Resource Network of Pennsylvania and Southern New Jersey.

I have been years ago. I was moderator. Now I am the treasurer, which is kind of an you'd have to understand me to say that that's an amazing thing. But also I am a zone leader where I help the pastors to just to have opportunities to get together, encourage one another.

And in fact, we're going to have a breakfast meeting tomorrow morning and looking forward to that. So we just share the word and share one another's fellowship. And I can honestly say that I have never found a stinker among anyone.

And what I mean by that is the idea that these fellows are transparent, honest. They're not coming here to compare, you know, nickels, noses and kneelers. They're very interested in one another, want to help each other and certainly further the kingdom of God and bring others to Jesus Christ.

It has been a privilege to know these men. And I am very, very thankful to be part of this fellowship to help the work go forward. We have a great director and his name is Brad Horn, and I've never met a man who was more of an evangelist than this fellow.

Great.

Well, I would appreciate it if you passed on invitations to these men on my behalf to my next Iron Trump and Zion Radio Free Pastors Luncheon, which will be held Thursday, September 18th at 11 a .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, which is in Perry County, featuring my keynote speaker for the second time, Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries.

So it'd be great to see a good representative of the Keystone Baptist Association in attendance.

There.

Well, we'll see if we can make that happen.

Great.

Well, as we do here on Iron Trump and Zion Radio, whenever we have a first-time guest on the program, we have that guest give a summary of his or her salvation testimony, which would include any kind of religious atmosphere, if any, in which they were raised and what kind of providential circumstances our Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them.

So we would love to hear your story.

Well, I'm glad to share it. My mother and father came over from England just after World War II to Canada. And then my dad, who was a pastor, he got an opportunity to take a church on the border of New York and in New Jersey, the northern border of New Jersey, and settled into a church there.

And then I came along. I'm the only Yankee in the family. I was born in Newark.

Are you still there, John? John, are you still there? Yeah, you keep breaking up now. I don't know why.

So I grew up in a preacher's home, and I saw religion from the backside of the pulpit. What my mom and dad shared with others, it was the same both sides. But when I was nine years old, I was sent to a Christian camp, Montrose Bible Conference, up near Scranton.

And there I met another preacher's kid who was an assistant counselor. And I tell people that when he prayed, he knew who he was talking to. And I knew that I didn't. And one night, and in fact, it was this night, July the 4th, 1962, my cabin counselor came and woke us all up.

And as I was sitting on the edge of my bunk, I was listening to him share the gospel. And it started to make sense to me. So with that in mind, particularly, I remember one verse of weeping and gnashing of teeth.

And I said, I do not want to experience that. So by the side of my bunk, I asked Jesus Christ to be my personal Savior. And I went to bed that night with this idea. It was settled. And when I saw my parents on a Saturday, I told them, I accepted Jesus as my personal Savior.

Later on, somebody asked me, how do you know? And I said to them, because the Bible tells me so. So raised in a preacher's family, oftentimes you get the question, hey, are you going to be a pastor like your daddy?

And my answer would be, no. I want to be an architect. While we lived all over New York State, because preachers move around a lot, I had the opportunity during high school years to have a full major in mechanical drawing and architecture.

I had a regent scholarship from New York State and the opportunity to go for a full ride to Syracuse University, which is one of the best architectural schools in the country. But between my junior and senior year, God spoke to me once more at a Christian camp.

And he spoke to me and said this, John, I want you to build lives, not buildings. And I said, yes, Lord. And I have not been disappointed with what he has done with me and for me. And I've had a chance to build some things as well.

But being a pastor for over 50 years, been a wonderful thrill. And I'm very, very thankful. God gave me a wonderful woman who didn't grow up in the church. She was Roman Catholic, but she came to know the Lord once she was about 18 years old, a friend of mine.

And then she received Christ and God gave her six wonderful children. And one of them right now is a pastor. The youngest one has also been in the ministry. And many of them are active in serving the Lord Jesus.

But I love them all. I'm thankful for every one of them.

Tom.

Amen.

Why He Wrote Not the Center of the Universe

Well, before we move on to our main theme, the first book that you wrote, which has an excellent title, Not the Center of the Universe, a yearly devotional for those in Christian ministry. What was it that compelled you to write this healthy sized devotional?

And I'm assuming a lot of it had to do with the fact that you were a pastor for half a century. But tell us about some more details.

Well, that was a very interesting thing. My director of missions, Brad Horn, with the KBA, we spent a lot of time together. And one day he turned to me and he says, You ought to write. And I said, No one wants to read what I have to say.

And so he let it drop. And then six months later, he turns to me again and he says, You ought to write a devotional book. And father said, That's what I want you to do. And so I said, Yes, Lord. So for the next nine months or so, as I went through my personal devotions, I pulled out a special pad that one of my sons had purchased for me and started just writing bullet points down.

And then.

John, are you there? You broke off. You are silent right now.

Can you hear me?

Yes. I don't know why you keep going off the air there, but you're back.

OK, maybe I'm moving my hands too much. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

So.

As I was saying, I just work through my personal devotions and looking at particular portions of Scripture because I have a particular reading pattern. I read from law, history, poetry, prophecy, major minor, gospels, God, church letters and general epistles.

And I try. I emphasize the word try to do that every day. So from that, I created the bullet points for these devotionals and then started working through them. That was quite a task. Fortunately, I had my wife and also a good friend, Dean Birch, who is a specialist in grammar, punctuation and syntax, and he helped me a great deal.

But any mistakes you find are not his. They are still mine. A connection with those things. So I was able to put the book together and then, you know, you have to go through the idea of organizing it and choosing dates.

Some of the dates are personal, like my wife's birthday or a friend's birthday. A couple of my children in connection with their births, but not everyone. But just kind of organizing these things and trusting the Holy Spirit to help me to put this together, since he's the one who wanted me to do it in the first place.

So that's how the book came about. And then I was a little bit timid about this whole thing. I needed, honestly, a kick in the pants. And God brought another man in my life to speak into my heart and challenge me not only to write this book, Not the Center of the Universe, but also to think about this.

He says, how many books do you have in you? And I was flabbergasted. I, you know, I thought to myself, this is enough to cheat, but just to get one book out. And then he recommended a self-publishing company, Palmetto Publishing.

And I've been very happy with their work for me. And so that's how the book came into existence.

Leadership, Ego, and the Danger of Thinking You Are the Center of the Universe

Great.

And one thing I wanted to say about the title, Not the Center of the Universe. It reminded me of a quote by the 19th century English historian, Lord Acton, who famously said, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

I know that anybody in leadership is likely to be tempted to swell with pride, to think of himself more highly than he ought, to think of himself as the center of the universe, as your title implies. We are not the center of the universe.

Tell us in your own reasons why you chose that title.

Well, at first of all, I thought it was unique. And then when I started looking at other books, I realized it wasn't, but never anything from a Christian perspective. I believe that God doesn't put square pegs in round holes.

I think that he designs us with certain gifts, abilities, and talents that he wants to use for his glory. And some people don't like this, but I'm going to say it anyway. When you stand up in front of someone, you've got to have an ego to make a public address, to speak out.

There's got to be an ego. The question is, who's in control? And I believe that's when we let the Holy Spirit control our egos, that he can use them for his glory. But I know that the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.

And so, you know, there are a lot of people out there who think they're the center of the universe. Unfortunately, there are. We crank out these seminarians and Bible school students and never prepare them for dealing with the humanity.

There's too many of those of my calling who have dropped out of ministry. And I don't want to fix any blame or anything else like this, but oftentimes they weren't prepared for the hardships that come along.

If they truly keep Christ in the center of their lives and recognize you're not the center of the universe—a phrase I use often, especially when I'm standing in a queue and someone says to me, you know, I'm sorry you had to wait.

I said, I am not the center of the universe. It's helped me also in my driving habits, though I still sometimes yell at the next guy. I have to be honest with that.

Signs of Pride and Self-Centeredness in Ministry

Tom, what would be some signs that a man of God who happens to be in pastoral office specifically, but I mean, it could be any Christian in leadership, some signs that they should be on the lookout for, that they have come to view themselves as the center of the universe?

It could be like a frog in a kettle scenario where a man enters into the ministry, one of the most humble and gracious young men that his peers in seminary had ever seen or fellow church members, but then as time wears on, there may be sadly changes in a negative fashion that take over this person's mind and heart and character.

What are some signs that you can share from your 50 years of experience of why men should start to question whether they view themselves that way?

Well, a lot of it has to do with the ability to take criticism or a different point of view. When the scripture tells us that a multitude of counselors, in that multitude of counselors, are safety, often we feel that we're the spiritual force.

What we say is the will of God. We've prayed over this. We've sought others out. We've got this plan. We've got everything going in this particular direction. And as John Maxwell would say, oftentimes people who don't take people with them, when you don't take people with you on the journey, all you're doing is going out for a walk.

And I believe that there are a lot of pastors who just think, well, you know, I'm the pastor. You should do what I tell you to do, because I'm God's man, and I'm sure that he's God's man, and I am sure that he's had a calling from the Lord.

But that doesn't mean that you're the center of the universe. It doesn't mean that you know everything, or that you really have taken the time to grasp what kind of ministry you have. I believe that a church is a church because it carries out two things, the Great Commission and the Great Commandment.

But how those two things are manifested in a local assembly can be very different from L .A. to, you know, Podunk, Iowa. There's a different way of handling it. I remember we had people who were really eager to be able to reach out and help people in their need.

And so they considered the idea of, we're going to hold Thanksgiving for the community. We're going to let everybody know. We're going to put it out on flyers and pass up the information and post into things like this.

And we're going to host Thanksgiving for the community. And no one showed up, because we're living in rural, you know, western Pennsylvania, and they all had their plans. And the only people that ever took the veil were people that were moving.

They were moving into the community, they saw the sign, and so they took the Thanksgiving dinner. We ended up taking all this wonderful cooking that we enjoyed, but we took it down to eerie, to the city mission, because, well, you know, we're going to throw it out.

We just didn't think about the idea that didn't match the community. And when we come up with plans and we don't look for help from other people, from those who are grown up in the community, who know the community, and oftentimes we think, well, because they've grown up in the community and they're just insults, you know, they're set in their ways.

They don't know what's going on. They aren't aware of what the Spirit of God is calling me to do. I'm the one who's supposed to set the agenda. Well, yes and no. I think it's important for a pastor to listen to his people.

You can't do anything of worthwhile effect under five years. You need to listen to who your people are. Do you know what their backgrounds are? Do you know, you know, what their hurts and what their hopes and what are the problems that they faced?

If you don't understand the history, then you can't bring them along. And a lot of people just think, well, you know, I'm here and I'm going to do the gospel ministry and we're going to go in this particular direction and it will succeed because I have the drive.

I have the initiative and, you know, and they're just going to follow along in line with me. And some of them are saying in the back of their head, we've already tried that before and it didn't work. And we'd like to say, well, it's because I wasn't leading it.

But maybe there's something else to be considered. So that's part of the problems that I see with young pastors. I was talking to our director of missions about a young man who was having, uh, he was just having real struggles.

People weren't listening to him, following him. He wanted to do third, just, you know, I'm trying to be generalized a certain direction. And, uh, he got to the point he was going to quit. He just was going to quit because things weren't going the way he thought they should go.

Fortunately, our dom kind of came alongside of it said, you know, let's pray about this. Let's think about this. And he shared it with me. And I was just praying for him because I, I didn't, I didn't have an authority to speak into his life, but there's a lot to be accomplished with a matter of prayer and with us on our knees, humble before God.

Well, then I think that God starts to open the doors. He, he puts a man in a place for a reason. Yes. It's to share the gospel. Yes. It's to teach people to love one another. But the idea that, you know, it's to get them to work together in a, in a wonderful, a wonderful way that, you know, can only be described as the function of the direction of the Holy Spirit.

So how's that? Well, it sounds good to me. And I'm,.

Balancing Humility with Faithfulness to the Gospel

I'm assuming you would agree with me that the two-sided coin of the issue at hand with that, with that very matter of a, of a pastor, making sure that they listen to the thoughts and ideas and beliefs of others carefully.

And obviously there is a line to be drawn where, where you no longer keep an open mind to entertaining something because heresy abounds. Oh, amen. But, but what I was going to say is while you're being humble and open to hearing what other men have to say, don't we have to make sure as we examine our hearts, well, especially in this case, I'm talking about men in the ministry, that they fear God more than man and do not adjust the teaching from the pulpit according to popular opinion in the congregation.

They cannot be so fearful of being disliked or even being removed from their position that they soften the gospel, they dilute the gospel, they keep their mouths shut about certain vital issues that many pastors are silent over.

Am I making.

Sense? Oh, absolutely. And it makes me think about my father. His life verse was 1 Corinthians 9, 16. Woe unto me if I preach not the gospel. That there are certain things that are certainly non-negotiable, you know, and things essential to the idea that there is unity and things doubtful liberty, that all things share.

And so we have to recognize that, again, these two things, to love one another and to share the gospel of Jesus Christ are those two things that identify us as a church. And how they manifest themselves in the local congregation are going to be different, but still the same message.

It's still Christ died for sinners. It's still the idea that the love of Christ constrains us, that we are called, you know, the greatest example that Jesus tells us, the new commandment, the love for one another.

And that means not the warm fuzzies. It means the idea that we use, and I define love as, of course, a behavior and an action to say who you are and what you've been given. Or as God said to Moses, what is in your hand?

In other words, he just set a rod, but God used that rod. And we think of, oftentimes, we don't know what we have in our hand. I think a pastor's responsibility is to find out what is in the hand of their people, to find out what's their gift, and how can I help them to see themselves past the idea of, you know, this barrier of sharing the good news, which seems to be, you know, part the enemy and part our own foolishness in connection with how we need to share the love of Christ.

Does it constrain us to do that? My dad went through a lot of experiences, unfortunately, in that same manner. I remember hearing a deacon in one of the churches say, well, if these new people keep on coming in, pretty soon we'll be out of a job, we'll be out of office.

So they determined they didn't want my father around anymore, because people were getting saved, people were coming into the congregation, and the church was growing, but they didn't want to grow. They just wanted to have their social club.

So after a year and a half, he was gone. So I've seen religion from the backside of the pulpit, and I recognize again that God is good. You know, we oftentimes say, you know, ministry is great if it wasn't for the people.

But the people are the ministry, and loving people, and showing them the love of Christ. Romans 2 .4 is a portion of the verse is so important to me. It says, it's the goodness of God that leads us to repentance.

And what we need to show to others is the goodness of God. You know, it's John 3 .16, God so loved, God gave. And that's what I want to share with others, and help pastors to see how they need to teach that to their family.

You and I are given responsibility to be shepherds, to be instructors, to lead in green pastures, to help them to understand that even in the valley of the shadow of death, we can trust the king, because he never, ever fails.

Amen. And we have to go ahead and finish your thought, because we have to go to our first break.

He's a good master.

Amen. Well, we have to go to our first break. If you have a question, please submit it to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.

Don't go away. We're going to be right back with John P. Worrell after these messages from our sponsors.

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So go to royaldiadem .com today, make sure you mention Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio. We are now back with John P. Worrell. We are discussing examining the dynamic of principle and opportunity and leadership.

And if you have a question, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence. And we do have a listener, Tyler in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who says, would you say a strong leader is one who isn't domineering and overbearing, but that a good leader is one who is guided by the Holy Spirit and recognizes the strengths in others and puts them in positions that fit those gifts where they can grow?

Well, you've already addressed some of the first part of what he asked, but the second part of raising up other leaders in the church because you recognize gifts they have, I don't think that's something that you specifically addressed yet.

So why don't you answer that question of Tyler's?

It is a good question and makes me think of some of the things that I've had as themes in a devotional book. The simplest definition of leadership is that leaders help others succeed, that as a servant of God, as a shepherd, an under-shepherd, we have to feed the sheep.

Our purpose is to make sure that the sheep stay alive and that they follow the great shepherd. Years ago, I read a book, I wish I could remember its title now, but it laid out something that just resonated with me, and here it is.

Jesus is prophet, priest, and king. He is the proclaimer of the truth, and he is the one who ministers to our deepest need, and he is our king and soon will be returning. So as a pastor, as an under-shepherd, I need to emulate my great shepherd to be a proclaimer of truth to my congregation, to help them in the times of adversity, to bring comfort from the word of God, and to lead them in the right path.

But here's the truth, and I have seen it through 50 years of observation of not only myself, but others in ministry. You might be good at one thing, and you're okay at the second, but you stink at the third.

It's just human nature. We are not all things to all men. I know that I'm not everybody's cup of tea. Some people, I cannot believe it, but some people don't really care for me. They might think I'm too flippant, or I'm too direct.

A lot of reasons. The sound of my voice nauseates them. I have no idea. But there are some people who sometimes you speak the truth into their life, and they're not ready for it. What I have found in connection with ministry is that I know what I'm good at.

I know what I'm okay at. I also know what I need help with. And there's the thing that a pastor needs to find the people in his congregation who are, as an example for me, mercy givers, who are able to reach out to people in times of need.

They seem to empathize in understanding how to comfort and care for people. I am a crisis manager. I will be ready with you. I will hold your head over the bucket. I will help you in your distress. I will bring you along.