Brokenness is "the recognition of our shattered pride without a need to glue it back together again," said Ed Litton, senior pastor of First Baptist Church, North Mobile, in Saraland.
Litton, who closed the morning session of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) Pastors Conference at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis Monday, June 9, with an altar call for "broken" pastors, told the tragic story of losing his wife 10 months ago in a car accident. "In that instant, my life changed and I began a journey to a place I did not care to go," said Litton, who was also elected president of the 2009 pastors conference during the Monday afternoon session.
When God leads us to such a place, He forces us to face our deepest fear but restores us in ways we cannot imagine to prepare us for significant ministry, Litton said, preaching from Psalm 23.
"Some of you are facing the worst fear of your life. And some of you are on the verge of the greatest movement of God in the history of your life, your ministry and your church," he said. "God doesn’t call complete, fully contained, self-actualized people who have it together — He calls the broken."
George Harris, pastor of First Baptist Church, Kerrville, Texas, said brokenness isn’t sought or caught. Instead it’s "a process that God takes us through in order to get us to hear Him."
Hayes Wicker, senior pastor of First Baptist Church, Naples, Fla., added that brokenness does not come without a struggle. "God wrestles with us to bring blessedness from brokenness."
Preaching from Genesis 32:24–31 and describing Jacob’s struggle with God, Wicker explained that brokenness leads to blessings, awareness, change, a supreme Christ and a strong faith that comes from desperation.
Alan Day, senior pastor of First Baptist Church, Edmond, Okla., said it is important that being wounded not be mistaken for brokenness. "Most of us have been through breaking, but I don’t know if most of us have been through broken," he said. "God wants to do something in your church. He is only going to do it when pastors become broken men" and allow God to fill them with Himself.
During the Sunday evening session, speakers urged pastors to renew their commitment to prayer and get their own spiritual lives in order.
Tom Elliff, the International Mission Board’s senior vice president for spiritual nurture and church relations, used a familiar analogy from his native Oklahoma to describe what can happen even to pastors who fail to address sin in their own lives.
Describing the "fallow ground" that original settlers found on the Oklahoma plains as almost impenetrable, Elliff told the pastors, "If you are willing to embrace what God would do to break up the fallow ground of your heart for revival, I am going to ask you to come and join me for a time of prayer right here at what we are going to call an altar."
In Oklahoma, Sooners and Boomers looked across the land and thought "instant farm" as they anticipated the rush to stake their claims to the land, he said. But they discovered the ground, matted down with prairie grass, often was so hard it had to be broken up with an ax.
Like Oklahoma sod, the hearts of pastors can be marked by hardness, become impervious to God’s Word, show stubborn resistance, be unfruitful and remain asleep through every season, Elliff warned.
"A heart like fallow ground will take a lot of effort," he said. "What’s God going to have to do to get our attention?"
Nothing short of deliberate, diligent attention can cause a revival of one’s spiritual life, Elliff said.
He listed temptations to which pastors may surrender — prayerlessness, lack of devotion to Scripture, disobedience, faithlessness, lack of love, poor stewardship, lying, slander, gossip, secretly wishing ill to others, habitual sin, moral failure and selfishness.
During the Monday afternoon session of the pastors conference, speakers dealt with revival.
Jimmy Draper, president emeritus of LifeWay Christian Resources, observed a lack of passion for Christ in churches today. "Complacency surrounds our services. Deadness prevails. There is no fire in the altar. Our churches flounder in apathy, while the world plunges deeper into sin."
Draper, a former SBC president, noted that despite better training and resources, Southern Baptists baptized fewer people last year (346,000) than they did in 1950 (376,000) when the convention had only 7 million members compared to today’s 16 million.
Southern Baptists are reaching fewer people for Christ because "we don’t see the world through the eyes of Jesus, who died for them. We don’t win the lost because we don’t like them," he asserted.
Repentance is the key to revival, said James MacDonald, senior pastor of Harvest Bible Chapel in Rolling Meadows, Ill. "Repentance is the funnel through which revival flows," he said, defining repentance as a recognition of sin "followed by heartfelt sorrow, culminating in a change of behavior."
McDonald cited several characteristics of genuine revival.
– Grief over sin. "We want people to feel grief over sin," he said.
– Repulsion toward sin. "Repentance allows you to get to the place to what once aroused you now repulses you."
– Restitution toward others. "it is an energetic pursuit of fixing the fallout from sin — to make it right with the people you injured."
Also preaching during the pastors conference were Johnny Hunt, pastor of First Baptist Church, Woodstock, Ga.; Daniel Simmons, pastor of Mount Zion Baptist Church in Albany, Ga.; Southern Baptist evangelist Bill Stafford of Chattanooga, Tenn.; Stuart Briscoe, minister at large of Elmbrook Church in Brookfield, Wis.; Charles Lowery, president and CEO of Lowery Institute for Excellence in Lindale, Texas; Kerry Shook, senior pastor of Fellowship of the Woodlands, The Woodlands, Texas; and Jay Strack, president of Student Leadership University in Orlando, Fla.
Michael Catt, senior pastor of Sherwood Baptist Church, Albany, Ga., served as president of this year’s pastors conference. (TAB, Editor’s Network)
Share with others: