Discouragement and Ministry

Ministry Discouragement and Unrealistic Expectations

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and we are recording shows for the summer. I might be in California a little bit this summer, and if it still exists, well, I�ve been preaching through Hebrews, Hebrews 13 chapters.

It�s been taking me, I think I started Hebrews in 2015, and I think I had a round of prostate cancer gone in the summers, I don�t know, of other things, and so it�s been taking me a while. But to my defense, Philippians, four chapters, Colossians, four chapters, Titus, three chapters, it�s like I preach through those books, right?

Thirteen chapters, let�s see, Colossians, Philippians, 2 John, 3 John, Titus, doesn�t that equal 13 or something close? So I�m going to preach through all those books. In the fall, I hope to start preaching chapter by chapter for about a year, just different books in the New Testament to try to get ourselves kind of an overview of those.

So that�s kind of what�s going on here. Don�t forget about Israel. We still plan on going, hopefully that will be next year, and we are heading out with Uncle Pat that is Omaha Bible Church and the people at OBC.

When I�ve gone in the past, Pat and I have led two trips together in the past, and I think I ended up liking the OBC people better than the BBC people. Just kidding, I like them just the same. But I like the people at Omaha Bible Church, and so I think we get a few people who actually listen to the podcast.

So, Omaha Bible Church, go have a runza, enjoy yourself. There you go. What are we going to do today? Well, I have a few things in front of me, and so we probably should get right to it. You�re probably getting bored.

A Pastor's Letter of Resignation and Burnout

I found a real letter by a pastor, and I thought, you know what, this probably makes interesting radio. Here�s from a pastor to someone else. �I�m through. Yesterday I handed in my resignation to take effect at once, and this morning I began work for the land company.

I will not return to the pastorate. I think I can see into your heart as you read these words, and behold, not a little disappointment if not disgust. I don�t blame you at all. I�m somewhat disgusted with myself.

Do you recall the days in seminary when we talked of the future and painted pictures of what we were to do for the kingdom of God? We saw the boundless need for unselfish Christian service and longed to be out among men, doing our part towards the world�s redemption.

I�ll never forget that last talk on the night before graduation. We were to go to the mission field, and I went to the church, and we had brave dreams of usefulness. You�ve realized yours. As I look back over the years, I can see some lives that I�ve helped and some things which I�ve been permitted to do, and some of them worthwhile.

But sitting here tonight, I am more than half convinced that God probably never intended me to be a minister. If He did, I am not big enough and brave enough to pay the price, and even if it leads you to write me down as a coward, I�m going to tell you why I quit.

In these years, I have not found but a few earnest, unselfish, consecrated Christians. And I don�t believe that I am especially morbid or unfair in my estimate. So as far as I know, my own heart, I am not even bitter.

But through all these years, a conviction has been growing within me that the average church member cares precious little about the kingdom of God and its advancement or the welfare of his fellow man.

He�s a Christian in order that he may save his soul from hell and for no other reason. He does as little as he can, lives as indifferently as he dares. If he thought he could gain heaven without ever lifting his finger for others, he would jump at the chance.

Never have I known more than a small minority of any church which I have served to be really interested and unselfishly devoted to God�s work. It took my whole time to pull and push and urge and persuade the reluctant members of my church to undertake a little something for their fellow man.

They took a covenant to be faithful in attendance on the services of the church, and not one of ten of them ever thought about attending a prayer time. A large percentage seldom attended church in the morning and a pitifully small number in the evening.

It didn�t seem to me anything to them that they dedicated themselves to the service of Jesus Christ. I�m tired. I�m tired of being the only one in the church from whom real sacrifice is expected. I�m tired of straining, tugging to get Christian people to live like Christians.

I�m tired of planning work for my people and then being compelled to do it myself or see it left undone. I�m tired of dodging my creditors when I wouldn�t need to if I had what was due me. I�m tired of the vision of a penniless old age.

I�m not leaving Christ. I love him and I�ll still try to serve him. Judge me leniently, my old friend. I certainly can�t bear to lose your friendship. I wonder how you�d respond. If you received that and a dear friend wrote that kind of letter, obviously hurting, self-admitted as tired, how would you go about helping?

I think over the years my analysis of this letter is a little different, and you would hope it to be, right? You�d hope it to be more mature and more biblical. What do you tell a tired, quitting pastor?

Now, of course, this is not how I�d initially respond, but it could be true. God never called him in the ministry, right? When you leave the ministry, are you ever really called? That�s a fair question.

But I think the overall problem with the email, now you could say, well, it�s himself and he�s thinking about himself, et cetera, I just think that he was expecting, or maybe he was expecting a little too much out of the congregation, and therefore he was doing things and if they didn�t respond a certain way, then he was disappointed.

When you think about the Lord Jesus and his life and how he ministered, even to Peter after the denials, Jesus is a tender shepherd. Think about how he patiently waited for these disciples to get it. It is not good nor right to have a pastor suffer and have no money.

Maybe this guy didn�t spend his money wisely, but from the sound of this letter, they didn�t pay him enough. You don�t want your pastors thinking about money. Take care of them. But I sense, as I read this, he had a certain idea of what ministry would be like in seminary, and it didn�t measure up.

Well, okay, so did I, or to say in New England, so don�t I. You read all these great stories of missionaries and pastors, and maybe you�re sitting at a seminary where there�s a pastor that�s very popular, and you think, you know what?

If I just preach the word, thousands will come. James Boyce and John MacArthur and all these people, right? R .C. Sproul. That�s not typical. What�s typical is, behind the scenes, nobody knows about you, nobody will ever know about you, except the Lord, and you�ll be vindicated on that day, you�ll be rewarded on that day.

Probably that�s a better word than vindicated. But your hard work will be shown forth on that great and glorious day. It�s okay to just work behind the scenes. It�s okay to work with people that don�t do what you ask them to do.

Now, some of this could have been bad shepherding, some of it he could have been a better discipler, but I don�t see these people serving. They do the bare minimum, they do this, that, and the other, and I think to myself, do you know what?

What�s his standard? Is the standard his own work? Is his standard, well, if I look here today, here is the Heidelberg Catechism, question 114. It�s resonating in my mind, it�s ringing in my ears. Question 114, Heidelberg Catechism.

I have my little pocket Puritan book that I read in the mornings after I read my Bible. You ought to, too. Can those who are converted to God keep these commandments perfectly? And he�s talking about the Ten Commandments because he�s just got done discussing those.

Can you keep them perfectly? And of course, everybody here on No Compromise Radio would realize, �No, I can�t. Okay, but to what degree? Keep them a lot? For the most part, we keep them. I mean, we�re so sinful, we don�t even know what�s in our souls.

We don�t even know how bad we are. But the Heidelberg Catechism, it�s writer, it knew, he knew. Answer, can those who are consecrated, converted to God, keep these commandments perfectly? Answer, no. But even the holiest men, while in this life, have only a small beginning of this obedience.

Yet so, that with earnest purpose, they begin to live, not only according to some, but according to all of the commandments of God. Interesting. Even the greatest men, the holiest men, people you think are in the Hall of Faithfulness, Hebrews 11, Hall of Faith, what�s it say?

Have only a small beginning of this obedience. Yes, they have an earnest purpose, and the direction of their life has changed, and they�re creatures in Christ Jesus, and they want to serve, but dear friends, really?

I think if this man would have been trained in Reformed Sanctification, and not a Keswick, not a Synergistic, not a Modern Dispensational, not a, you know, General Evangelical, but okay, I get it. I get it that you train people, and you want them to motivate, but this takes a long time.

Think about Jesus and the parables, and all the sowing seeds, and watering, and planting, farmer stuff, right? Second Timothy Chapter 2, Farmer. It takes a lot of work, and what do you have to show for it?

If I thought to myself here at Bethlehem Bible Church, after 23 years, what do we have here? The parking lot�s worse, the building�s just as decrepit, but what about the people? Some of them, they don�t do much, they show up on Sundays, but others, it�s amazing to see them grow and learn, and when you have kids, and they have the growing bean up against the wall, or they just have your little pencil marks, you know, are they growing?

Is it slow, or is it fast? I mean, we want everything so fast, I mean, at least what�s happened with the whole COVID -19 deal, is you say to yourself, I�m going to the store, I might have to wait in line to get in, and I might have to wait in line to get out, and I�m just going to have to learn how to be patient, standing there, waiting for the person in front of me, 6 feet, so they go do their transaction at the register, so can I now.

That�s pizza coffee, by the way, if you hear me drinking something. I have a fair life nutrition plan, 30 grams of protein here in front of me, and a pizza coffee, black. So the expectations of men in seminary, I think, need to be established, that here�s what you�re going to get, probably not a whole lot of kudos, is it worth investing in a bunch of people behind the scenes, and then go die after 30 years?

I mean, I�m 60, I don�t know how long I�m going to live, if I live another 20 years, that�ll be pretty amazing. So what�s my legacy? Mad, going to quit, people don�t measure up? Well, of course people don�t measure up.

That�s not the point. So in the old days, I guess what I�m trying to say, NoCo Radio, land, I used to think, you know what, guy�s never called in the ministry, he should just be out. I get it. Christians don�t do much.

And now I just see wrong expectations. Are we not supposed to just be faithful in our work and God will take care of any kind of growth, the breadth of the ministry? When you read Adoniram Judson and William Carey�s accounts, how many people got converted really fast.

When you look at the Lord Jesus, how many believed in him, true belief, followed him? How many just bailed at the first thing, they ran out of no more bread from this guy? Do you get tired in ministry?

Yes. I don�t know if this guy delegated or not, I don�t know if this guy trained up other men or not. That�s a big thing, 2 Timothy chapter 2, maybe the church was too small to do a lot of training up men.

But I�m thankful here that God has raised up other men, that if I go for the summer, it continues. If I have to have chemotherapy, it continues. When I die, I sure hope it continues. If this church is built on me and my personality and my celebrity, oh, but there was a day, I have to tell you, in the flesh, if I could only speak at the Shepherd�s Conference, if I could only speak at, I don�t think I ever really wanted to speak at Gospel Coalition, but those big kind of events and auditoriums.

Once I spoke at Branson at the Oak Ridge Boys� Theater, I think two times I was there, maybe three, two, two, three, something like that. Anyway, to sit in an auditorium that seats 3 ,000 people, I could only see where the lights were, so the 1 ,200 were pretty close.

You kind of get that feeling like, huh, this isn�t too bad. Big boom cameras and all these other things break out into Elvira. Anyway, for you, listener, let�s say you tell me, you know what, I�m not a pastor.

Encouraging Your Pastor and Serving Faithfully as a Christian

Well, number one, encourage your pastor. Pay your pastor. When there�s opportunities in your life where you see the Lord working and you got to evangelize someone or you�ve been learning scripture or you�ve understood some theological concepts or some kind of growth is taking place, tell your pastor about that.

This is what the Lord is doing in my life. That encourages the pastor because then the pastor thinks, you know what, while I might be dopey as a pastor, I�m preaching the word and God is faithful to use his word in the life of this person, and therefore, that would be good.

If you�re not a pastor, though, and you�ve already done those things, the other thing is in your ministry, which you ought to have a ministry, and harder maybe if you�ve got a bunch of kids at home for moms, but you can still have a ministry.

You say to yourself, �My expectations are to honor the Lord, to please the Lord, to glorify the Lord, and if there�s a lot of fruit, great. If there�s a little fruit, okay. If a lot of people show up, you know, they all show up for such and such a ministry, the rest home ministry, but the jail ministry, nobody shows up.

They all show up at the potlucks, but nobody shows up at the movie ministry. By the way, that doesn�t just happen here. We have a great movie ministry. Nobody shows up for the prayer meetings, but everybody shows up for the pig roast at the lake.

Okay. Just think about our lives as leaders. Are your lives as a non-leader, but you�re just trying to learn from this application here? Yes, there is a temptation to fall into those things and fall into pragmatics.

How many people attend? How many people show up? There could be probably a temptation to say, �I start a ministry. Nobody shows up. Somebody else starts a ministry. I don�t even think it�s as good, or as needed, or as important, and lots of people show up there.

Well, then praise the Lord. What does it matter? I mean, again, this is no I have no death wish, but what does all this matter at all in just a few years, a decade, two decades? What�s it matter? What does no-compromise radio matter?

I mean, I will be dead and gone, and my wife will miss me. My children will miss me. Hopefully, I�ll have grandchildren by then. They�ll miss me, and then they�ll grow up, and then they�ll get married.

The grandchildren will, and maybe they�ll pull out an old book. Maybe one of them will be a preacher one day, and they�ll say, �I think great-grandpa, I think grandpa, you know, I think he wrote some books that should have been maybe more reformed and maybe they�ll find them, and then it�s over.

I�m so gone. It is Ecclesiastes, and if it wasn�t for the permanency of my soul and God acknowledging His promises about rewards and eternal life and all these other things, then we would be like Ecclesiastes.

Hey, dogs die, you die. What�s the difference? What dies with you? Everything. It�s gone. I think we value this life too much. We don�t think about the city that is to come. We don�t think about the enduring city.

We think about right now, and for us as Christians to realize the extent of what Jesus had to go through on our behalf that we might be forgiven, our response just needs to be thankfulness and honoring Him, and I don�t mean set your expectations so low, but you can set your expectations pretty low and still live, because you could say, �You know what?

I don�t have to do anything in order to get results. I just will be faithful and I�ll leave the results with the Lord. Isn�t that not what we�re after? That is what we�re after. I just found a bunch of paperwork here that I�ve been looking for.

That is so funny. Sitting here on this stack of things, no compromise radio. Come on. Where have you been all my life? I�ve been looking for these things. Anyway, dear Christian, it�s okay if you never get acknowledged for your babysitting nursery duties.

It�s okay if nobody says, �Great job, Usher. It�s okay if nobody says, �You know what? Thanks for mowing the lawn at the church. It�s okay if nobody recognizes the extent you go to keep the kitchen clean and stocked at the church.

To all those people, thank you. I try to encourage people. Every time we have some food, I walk through the kitchen. I�m not supposed to cut, but I do. I just say, �Thank you, ladies. If there�s a man in there, thank you, ladies and gents, for serving today.

I really appreciate it. I have my job, and that�s to preach. They want to serve, and so that�s what they do. When they say, �Thanks for preaching that�s encouraging to me. I want to encourage as well.

It�s not a matter of setting expectations low. It�s a matter of who you�re going to honor. Who�s the one that you want to hear, �Well done, good and faithful servant. Do I love praise? Yeah. Sadly. Do I live for praise?

I don�t think so, but whatever. I think when it comes to praise, if I got praise from my wife but nobody else, I could live as the old saying goes. But if everybody else praised me and my wife thought I was a doofus, which sometimes I act like one, that�s harder to live.

By the way, tomorrow in real time, it will be my 31st wedding anniversary, and what are we doing? Teaching a women�s breakfast on spiritual gifts, probably going to a funeral, and working around the house.

We�re going to postpone it again. I was supposed to be in Rome, so for those of you that think I�m lacking or I�m a lackey, I was going to take her to Rome for the 31st, because the 30th, I was in New Zealand preaching.

But for the 31st, I was going to take her to Rome, because I took her to Rome for the 10th maybe or 15th, and we were going to walk around, sit at the Trevi Fountain, having some gelato and adobio espresso, and we were going to have some Italian food and some Welch�s grape juice.

What else do they serve there? There's something about walking around Rome that's pretty fun. I like that a lot. Now with my knee, I think I could actually walk for a ways, but I probably would have been limping some.

I can only go but a couple miles. I can go farther on a bicycle, but we're slowly rehabbing on the knee. Anyway, my name is Mike Eppendorff. When you think about pastors, try to encourage them. If you're a leader in a local church and you're a pastor, I want you to think rightly.

Right now counts for eternity, and you need to think, who are you doing this for? If you do it for the Lord and nothing really happens, then it's okay, because you did it for the Lord. We're not going to be pragmatists.

If we are, this kind of selfish, self-focused view and gaze is going to lead us in the wrong direction. I want to finish well. I want to honor the Lord. I want to see lots of people saved. I want to see lots of people grow and learn, but what I want doesn't always count.

I will submit to God's sovereign plan. Is it worth just seeing one person get saved underneath the preaching of the word that I had? I think all eternity would say yes, but all the more happens, and I just don't know what it is until eternity, but that God could use somebody like me, praise the Lord.

Closing Station Identification and Ministry Encouragement

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Eppendorff is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible-teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.