Disciplined Privilege

One of the enduring memories of my first (of two) trips to Africa was visiting the church of an African pastor. In many respects it revealed that he was effective in his ministry and was providing good care for a needy people. When he showed me his study, I was struck with the size of his library. All six inches of it.

What riches I have by comparison.

As is often the case with the rich, we do not take full advantage of the privileges granted to us.

This post is not about getting good books into needy hands. That is a work worthy of our support. Rather this is about those of us with good books not taking advantage of what we've been given.

The pastor is to be a scholar of two worlds – the world of the sacred of the Bible, and the world of those to whom he is called to preach. And to be scholar of both demands disciplined study reaching in both directions.

It is easy to lose sight of the critical importance of moving in both directions. We have spoken already about the importance of knowing the world into which we speak. We must be as diligent in becoming a scholar of the message we preach.

John Stott, with a hand both stern and gentle, challenges pastors at this point. The one thing which keeps a pastor from study, he suggests, is laziness. He says that pastors are prone to laziness “because we have no employer to supervise our work or to reproach us for our neglect of it. Besides, we have neither set tasks to do, nor set times in which to do them. We are our own master and have to organize our own schedule. So it is possible for us to fritter our days away, until our time-wasting lapses degenerated into a life of gross indiscipline.” Ouch.

I would not be as harsh as Stott (on myself, at least!). My impression is that the lack of study arises not as much from laziness or unwillingness, but from a lack of a proper vision of the pastor’s task. I mean, does it really feel like work when I’m sitting in my study reading for several hours straight? Am I persuaded enough that this is part of my job, that I can defend such investment of time? And do those whom I serve understand that this is a vital part of my ministry?

If we were persuaded of the value of study for our public and private ministries, we would gladly labor to allocate and defend the time necessary for it.

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Allocating and defending the time is one thing; knowing how to find and make use of that time is another, which is what we'll address next week. I've been greatly helped in this regard by David Allen's Getting Things Done
. His seminars cost far more than our church, or most, for that matter, can afford. But since he is an alumnus of New College of Florida, I get to hear him speak this afternoon at the college for peanuts. I'm very excited!