By Neisha Roberts
The Alabama Baptist
The call to be “Sent … Here, There and Everywhere” in Ryan Whitley’s life was simple, he told messengers to the Alabama Baptist State Convention annual meeting Nov. 16.
He was a senior in college and his then girlfriend, now wife, asked him to join her at a church event.
“God spoke to me and called me into the ministry [that evening],” said Whitley, who serves as pastor of CrossPoint Church, Trussville, and gave the second theme interpretation during the annual meeting held at Eastmont Baptist Church, Montgomery.
God also used mentors in Whitley’s life to help develop that call, along with Scripture passages, like 1 Peter 5, that have spoken to him over the years.
In the New Testament letter the apostle Peter writes to various churches in Asia Minor, exhorting the leaders to lead well and teaching the followers how to conduct themselves in the face of persecution and suffering.
In order for Peter’s words to carry more weight for the church leaders, he offered three credentials for why he sent a letter of exhortation, Whitley shared.
First, Peter affirmed that he too was a church elder. Second, he called attention to the fact that he was an eyewitness to the sufferings of Jesus Christ and had experienced his own suffering because of his relationship with Jesus. Third, he was a partaker in the glory that would one day be revealed.
“What are your credentials in ministry?” Whitley asked. “You are called. You are saved. You are sent by the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s not your education. It’s not your ability. It’s not your skill, not the size of your church. It is the Lord that is your credential to ministry.”
Responsibility to feed, lead
Peter also exhorted the leaders (or shepherds) to lead the church (or sheep/flock), Whitley said.
“The passage speaks of our responsibility to shepherd the flock of God. To feed, lead and protect our sheep. But the congregation that you lead is not your congregation. It’s God’s congregation,” he said.
In verse 2, Peter writes what Whitley calls three “not-but statements” of leadership — “not under compulsion but willing,” “not for shameful gain but eager to serve” and “not lording over them but being examples to the flock.”
With those three statements Whitley asked participants to think about their own attitude toward serving in ministry, toward a pastor’s compensation and toward each person in the flock.
To share alongside the theme of being sent, Whitley asked three pastors, Orlando Buck, Charles T. Carter and Blake Kersey, to share about their own call to ministry.
Buck, pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church, Ariton, urged participants to “be willing to go wherever He sends” and that it’s “not a matter of if we’ve been sent but wherever we’ve been sent.”
Carter, professor of pastoral ministry leadership development at Samford University’s Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham and long-time Alabama Baptist leader, said he has learned that a “call to be sent is a call to prepare.”
“Learn the Scriptures,” he exhorted, “so you can lead others in how to be saved. Hide God’s Word in your heart.”
And Kersey, pastor of First Baptist Church, Decatur, said he used to think he didn’t have a dramatic testimony to share since he was raised in a Christian home and accepted Christ in third grade after Vacation Bible School.
‘Dramatic testimony’
“But then I realized I do have an extremely dramatic testimony. I was dead and Christ came and He made me alive. I was useless to anyone and He came and by His grace has made me useful to Him.”
To conclude his message, Whitley asked those who had been called into the ministry to stand, first with those who had been called since 2010, then 2000, then since the 1990s, 80s and so on. By the end of the demonstration nearly every person in the room was standing and Whitley spoke this word over them — “So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed: shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory.”
Whitley said, “Scripture is clear. We will receive a crown of glory. … But that crown is not one-size-fits-all. It only fits the head of Jesus and when we receive it, we will properly place it at His feet.”
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