Florida pastor Mac Brunson urged Southern Baptists to refocus on the pre-eminence of Jesus Christ.
“I’m afraid that in our convention and across the ministry today, we are far better preachers at battling one another than we are at battling our enemy (Satan),” Brunson, pastor of First Baptist Church, Jacksonville, Fla., said in the convention sermon, delivered to the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Orlando, Fla.
Basing his message on John 3, Brunson exhorted Southern Baptist ministers to proclaim the pre-eminence of Jesus Christ in their lives and sermons and in relying on God’s resources.
Observing that Jesus’ disciples had become jealous and agitated with John the Baptist, who was also baptizing in the Jordan River, Brunson asserted that it was “all because they had begun to focus on themselves instead of the pre-eminence of Jesus Christ.”
Brunson noted a study conducted years ago by former seminary professor Ken Chafin, who found a high rate of bitterness and resentment among pastors.
“That’s what was happening with the disciples,” Brunson explained, noting that Chafin’s survey found three common attitudes: The pastors tended toward being negative, were highly competitive and didn’t like other preachers.
“There is something happening among pastors today that absolutely has the watching world astounded, the devil laughing and our almighty God grieving,” Brunson asserted.
To rectify this condition, he emphasized a need for preachers to recognize that any success they have in the ministry is because God gave it.
“I am saved solely because of God’s grace. I have received His salvation,” he said, reminding preachers that “any church growth you have is an act of the sovereign God. You receive it!”
Calling the people of his congregation “a gift from God” that he has received only because of God’s goodness, he asked, “Do you realize, pastor, you are a gift to that congregation … (and) that congregation is a gift to you?”
Retelling a story about a church near Dachau, a concentration camp in Germany, which decided to sing louder to drown out the whistles of passing trains and cries of thousands of Jews heading for death camps, Brunson lamented, “Sometimes we get so religious, we shut out the voice of not only the Holy Spirit but also the cries of the lost.
“We don’t need just a resurgence or a revival. We have got to get back and refocus on pre-eminence of Jesus Christ,” Brunson concluded. (Editor’s Network)
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