Would you feel threatened?

I pastored one church where the former pastor had a PhD and was a teacher at a nearby Baptist College. He stayed on as a member in the church but I had no problem with him after the night I beat him at Bible Trivia at a Sunday School outing.

In my next church I had about 10 employees of the State Convention, all of whom I considered smarter than me. But again I had no problems.

 

If my pastor could not deal with my questions, then I would wonder where he was--not to say that he isn't godly, but having been a believer for a long time, I don't ask the easy questions. And when I ask the hard questions, it isn't to threaten, I just need answers. I would need a pastor that could help with those answers.

 

In one church I pastored we had some people who were very well educated. One in fact was in the same field I did my undergraduate in. Another taught physics and another had been to seminary. One of the men regularly asked me questions about Greek because he was trying to learn the language. I loved having dialog with those men. In fact most of the time I had better dialog with them than many pastors. Those men were my challenge, correction and direction. The man who had been to seminary went to further his theological education and he continued to keep up.

To be quite honest I got tired real fast of those who had been Christians for years and were lazy and did not study. I worked hard to deliver good sermons that were well studied and prayed about.

Probably one of the things that helped me most is when I taught Sunday school to seminary students while I was in seminary. Everyone of us still communicate with each other. Some of us are over 1500 miles apart.

The best time I had was when I started meeting with a group of men each week to get input on sermons I would eventually preach. The men in that meeting knew my heart and held me accountable. Those were the best sermons I ever gave. To this day I speak regularly with each one of those men. They are my friends for life. One of them is in ministry to day because of the training I gave him in ministry. He helped me and I helped him.

There are a lot of pastors I know from my seminary days and a number of them do not keep up with their academic skills in the languages and sermon preparation. It's sad but true. It takes discipline to keep up with Greek and Hebrew and to read regularly. When I pastored I read probably about one book each week. Each year I spent about 4 - 5000 dollars on books.