What’s Happening During Pastor John’s Leave.pdf

My name is Sam Crabtree, and I am the executive pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church. The aim of this video blog is to address the question: What’s going to happen with the preaching during Pastor John’s eight-month leave? Who is going to be in the pulpit?

Preaching is very important to a church, and what is very important to preaching is that when the preacher has finished preaching, the people will have heard from God, they will have heard, “Thus saith the Lord” in the Scriptures—that when they hear the gospel, there is another Voice talking to them.

Well, the good news is that the same Christ who has been in the preaching and present with the preaching of Bunyan and Luther and Wesley and Edward—and John Piper at Bethlehem for 30 years—is still here. And He is going to be with us.

But the question still is, Who is going to be in the pulpit to be the instrument in the Redeemer’s hand in these days?

In January or February when it became pretty clear to me that we were on the trajectory toward a leave for the Pipers, I put together a spreadsheet for all the dates through the end of the year, with a place for all the campuses to be listed, a place to list preachers who would fill in for those various weeks, and a place to note special features about given services, like, “Is it a Communion service? Is it a Child Dedication service? Is it a Covenant Affirmation service? Is it Mother’s Day?” And so on and so forth.

But before putting any names in the spreadsheet of who’s going to preach where, we first asked the questions, What are the values we want to keep in view as we build a spreadsheet like this? What’s important? What do we want to make sure happens in the planning for preaching in these days?

And we came up with values like consistency, continuity, stability. Instead of having many preachers rolling in a kind of Rolodex plan of preaching, one continuity of thread and theme is woven throughout the preaching plan.
 
We had the value of good communication, someone who can speak to young and old, male and female, saint and sinner.

We had the value of frugality. We didn’t want to spend a lot of money to fly in speakers from around the world.

We had the value of shepherding the people through the preaching. Not just giving them good lectures, good sermons, good exegesis—which is important—but to shepherd the people through the preaching.

Which led to another question: What does Bethlehem need in these days? And we surveyed all the elders, asking that particular question.

After weighing these values for a couple months and going through many iterations of this spreadsheet, one of the values rose head and shoulders above others, and that was continuity. Consistency. Stability. To have one primary preacher. He won’t be the only preacher, but one primary preacher. There will be some exceptions for Missions Focus and some other things throughout the eight months, but one primary preacher who week after week would bring us to God through the Scriptures.

Then the question is this: Who? And there was a collective sense that it should be Kenny Stokes. Kenny didn’t put his own name forward. We called Kenny (who was away on sabbatical) and asked, “Could you come in? We need to visit with you about something.”

And we asked him and Kathy to consider whether there might be a mantle on his life for such a time as this. And it seems the answer is yes.

Kenny is here; he’s been here for years. He knows Bethlehem; Bethlehem knows Kenny. He has communication skills, and we think he has a shepherd’s heart as the Downtown Campus Pastor to shepherd us through a season of preaching, not just a couple of good sermons and then on to the next guy.

So we’ve asked Kenny if he would do it, and he’s agreed that he would do it. In fact, we’re going to give him the title Interim Pastor for Preaching during the next eight months.

He’s going to start out in May preaching, teaming up with Isaiah to take us to God. If you want more details about this, you can check the Star article (April 28, 2010) that Pastor John wrote this week, but the main thing I want to ask you to do here is pray. Because we can stand up in the pulpit, and we can flap our gums, and say things from the Bible, but if God doesn’t show up, it’s just talk in the air.

We would love for God to do revival. We would love for there to be conversions. We want there to be a thunderclap of God showing up here in power.

So would you please pray to that end?

Thank you.