John Markum

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How to Know You Have a Good Pastor

Posted on by johnmarkum

Jesus warned us that there would be many wolves in sheep’s clothing seeking to devour God’s people (Matthew 7:15). Sometimes it can be difficult to spot the wolves before its too late. And if you’ve ever been “bit” you may have a tendency to see wolves where they don’t exist. So how do you avoid projecting your past pain or present fears onto a potentially good shepherd of God’s flock? There’s a few things we immediately think of that should be obvious, Does he preach the Bible? Does he regularly give the Gospel? Does he have model godly character? Does he care for the congregation? But let’s get more specific, because even these traits can be hard to discern. Here are a five qualities I look for in senior pastors that tell me they are the real deal…

  • He doesn’t always make you feel good about yourself. Another pastor once told me that the two-fold job of a shepherd is to “comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.” Some members can have an entitled attitude toward their pastor. But good pastors work for God first and foremost, and their congregation secondly. Paul said in Galatians 1:10, “For am I now seeking the favor of people, or of God? Or am I striving to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ.” Truth is, we need bold men of God, who lovingly call us out of our comfort zones, and model the way for us.
  • He praises people publicly and privately. A good pastor regularly acknowledges the faithfulness of the congregation with words of encouragement and other appropriate gestures, without needing to make themselves the “hero” of the story. With the responsibility of speaking, teaching, and preaching several times a week, it can be easy and tempting for a pastor to focus on themselves and take credit for the church’s accomplishments. But there would be no church without the people. Good pastors know this and honor their people for their love, generosity, faithfulness, and work in the ministry.
  • He handles confrontation well. A pastor has a massive responsibility to instruct and correct people (2 Timothy 4:2), but how they correct people will make the outcome more or less likely to succeed. Good pastors confront people with grace when necessary, for the purpose of restoration rather than to discipline people. Yes, sometimes a pastor needs to ask someone to leave, but these should be extremely rare. While I have had plenty of people leave my ministry over the past 20 years for a myriad of reasons, I have yet to ask someone to leave my church and not come back. Like amputation, telling someone to leave should be a last resort, and only when every other reasonable option has been attempted to bring healing to the person.
  • He smells like sheep. This one may sound a bit weird, but if you’ve ever spent any time around livestock, you get it! Cows, sheep, horses, etc. all just have a certain smell to them. A good pastor does not live in an ivory tower, untouched by the “smell” of people they shepherd. He lives among, hugs, laughs, eats, and serves alongside the people he is called to lead. You can impress from a distance, but you can only truly influence up close and personal. Good pastors understand that they cannot lead people somewhere they are not going themselves. As such, they do life among them, modelling the very behavior they are supposedly trying to teach. There’s two other reasons they smell like sheep. They actually love the sheep and want to spend times with them, and… we’re sheep also! We all belong to Jesus, which is why pastors should live a life that says “follow me, as I follow Christ.”
  • He watches over his whole church. This one gets tricky… I don’t mean that they personally have a deep relationship with every member of their church. That is impossible past about a dozen people. Even Jesus only had 12 close friends while on this earth, and one of those was a traitor. Your pastor – on his best days – might have the physical, emotional, and relational bandwidth to have 10 to 15 close relationships… max. Which means that if your church consists of only 100 people, you are only 10-15% likely to be one of the close people in his life. Good pastors build healthy infrastructure, leadership development, small groups ministries, and follow up systems to ensure that everyone is ministered to by one another, whether he is personally able to minister to each individual 1-on-1 or not. He “equips the saints for the work of ministry… until we all attain to the unity of the faith.” (Ephesians 4:11-13).

There are certainly plenty of other qualities one could identify in a “good pastor”. Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments, or show some love for the spiritual leaders in your life.

Blessings,
Pastor John

Good Theology isn’t Enough

Posted on by johnmarkum

Hear me out… I’m not a heretic, I swear. Strong, Bible-based theology is a critical component to how we walk with Christ. I’d even argue that it’s the first and most important job of Pastors – to ensure the doctrinal integrity within the church. With that said, the problem with our systematic theology is that ultimately it’s a man-made categorization and classification of Biblical truth: We make absolute truth statements summarizing our understanding of Biblical teachings – but these are our statements, uninspired by God, and therefore possessing room for the possibility of misunderstanding, misinterpretation, or error. For example…

Consider the crowds and the Pharisees who dismissed Jesus as not being the Messiah because they read in Isaiah that we wouldn’t know the origins of the Messiah, only that He would come from Bethlehem. And in John 7, the crowds say in verse 27, “However, we know where this man is from; but when the Christ comes, no one knows where He is from.” and then later in the same scenario, “Others were saying, “This is the Christ.” But others were saying, “Surely the Christ is not coming from Galilee, is He? Has the Scripture not said that the Christ comes from the descendants of David, and from Bethlehem, the village where David was?” So a dissension occurred in the crowd because of Him.” (v. 41-43).

To summarize… Some didn’t accept Jesus as the Christ, because they “knew” Jesus was from Nazareth not Bethlehem like the prophets had told them, and they had a somewhat obscure verse that convinced them they wouldn’t know where the Messiah had come from…

Except they didn’t know. Jesus actually was born in Bethlehem as the prophets foretold, and left for Nazareth, likely out of Egypt as a young boy until He began His public ministry. The irony, is that the crowd’s misinterpretation of the prophets resulted in them fulfilling the very prophecies they were quoting – they really didn’t know where He came from! They had excellent theology, poor execution. They needed solid orthodoxy (“pure doctrine”) and orthopraxy (“pure practices”).

Enter Asbury University of Wilmore, KY who has shared reports, videos, and now thousands of eye witnesses claiming a nearly two-week, 24-hour, nonstop revival has been building in momentum. The “Asbury Revival” in turn has inspired or influenced a series of other “revivals” around the nation including reports from Cedarville University and even more secular schools like Yale. With the arguably sensational reports of revival, repentance, salvations, and constant praise that almost seems akin to something you’d read out of Acts 2 with the Day of Pentecost, there’s been no shortage of internet preachers and Christians ready to accuse this revival of nothing but nonsense and attention seeking. Except the college has consistently been turning down several news stations offering to give their college and this revival national coverage.

I’m not writing today to call this (or other) revivals authentic, nor to label them as just emotional hype. But what I am writing to say, is that when God shows up, it defies our explanations. The best religious minds of Jesus’ day knew the Old Testament and the prophecies of the Messiah by heart, many of them memorizing the largest portions of the Torah and Isaiah. And yet they looked the incarnate God of the Universe straight in the eye – the very One they longed for and prayed for – and said, “Nah. Can’t be Him.”

It is inadequate to have strong doctrine, we must also have a strong relationship with the actual Living God of our theology. Here are a few thoughts I have for the Asbury Revival and the other similar occurrences we see around our nation right now:

  • I pray to God that it is real and sincere! I’ve been asking for revival among this generation before they even had labels like Gen Z, Gen Alpha, and so on. Our nation needs revival, and all of us who believe in Jesus know it.
  • God doesn’t operate on any of our agendas! What would real revival in our nation look like anyway? Do you really think Jesus wouldn’t shake the cart of our carefully formed religious systems like He did in the first century? Let’s hold our ideas of revival with very open hands…
  • Apply the Gamaliel Test. When the church was born in the book of Acts, the Sanhedrin turned to one of their oldest and wisest teachers, Gamaliel (who actually trained the Apostle Paul). Gamaliel’s advice was simple: Watch and see, Trust in God’s sovereignty, Stand on God’s side. He cautioned that if the early church was just a man-made effort it would come to nothing anyway, and they didn’t need to worry… but if it actually was from God, be careful that they didn’t end of fighting against God Himself. The Sanhedrin basically said, “Good idea!” and then immediately fought against the move of God anyway.
  • You can’t conjure a move of God. All we can do, is position ourselves to be receptive when God does show up. Authentic or not, there will likely be many who want to imitate what’s happening at Asbury, and for the most part, I want to say I hope it happens. But revival won’t happen because you planned it, but because you prayed for it.

Let’s not allow our pre-conceived ideas of how God “has to” bring revival get in the way of Him actually bringing revival on His terms. I believe we are the greatest threat to God not bringing revival in the first place. We have to come to God like Jesus in the garden and say, “Not my will, but Yours be done.” We must be sure that we leave plenty of room in our theology for God to still show up and destroy our expectations. Doctrine is important… but not more important than God Himself. Good theological statements are pinpoint specific where they should, and broad where they cannot be. But God Himself is infinite, so let’s be careful to not put Him in a box of our theological preferences. And let’s pray for the real God to bring real revival – even if it means we have to adjust our expectations.

Blessings,
Pastor John

PS…
Among the things that make me take notice, I also love that at the Asbury Revival there appears to be none of the following:

  • Professional sound/lighting
  • Nothing for purchase
  • Nothing to autograph
  • Zero Christian “celebrities”, at least none getting any attention.

Just a bunch of average, unknown, amateur young people. Leading a revival. “Smells” legit to me, and I hope it is.

Kanye West and celebrity “conversions”

Posted on by johnmarkum

Recently I came out in support of Kanye West’s conversion to faith in Christ. Read that again. Slowly. I support his conversion, his profession, his faith in Christ…

Not any of his past. Not any of his present antics. Not his political choices. Not even every spiritual sounding thing he says. I support his very vocal, very well-articulated, very public salvation experience through his acknowledgement of his need for Christ, and faith in His work.

Am I skeptical of Kanye? Sure. I’m skeptical of anyone who wants something from me – whether that’s my purchase of their album (which I did), or persuade me to give them my vote (which I never do).

Here are some observations I make about people who sincerely receive Christ into their lives:

  • They can’t shut up about Him! Whether we’re talking about Biblical characters like Zacchaeus (Luke 19), or the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4) – people who get saved by Jesus, are consistently compelled to share Jesus. Kanye – in true Kanye fashion – has not stopped talking about what Jesus did for him. That rings true to me.
  • They are reckless in their abandonment of their old life. Peter got called by Jesus to follow Him (Matthew 4), and Peter literally quit his job on the spot! Walked out on his fishing business with his dad to follow Jesus. Kanye is an artist, but he’s an artist who made millions promoting godless, moral-less anthems. Since his faith experience, he’s put all of that reputation in jeopardy. Maybe more accurately, you could say he’s crucified that life with this new faith.
  • They have to do something! I mentioned Zacchaeus earlier. Zacchaeus was a legal thief, a.k.a. tax collector for the Roman government. When he encountered the love of Christ, he made a decision to pay back what he took unjustly from others, with heavy interest. Kanye writes music. He’s using what he has. In his words, from God Is, “I can’t sit here and be still, everybody I will tell, ’til the whole world is healed!”
  • They are messy. Almost every new Christian is messy. Some more “mature” Christians are messy! Basically we’re all a just a forgiven mess. But my point is, that new believers are still figuring everything out, and how to die to themselves everyday. And that’s not easy! Kanye, and those who celebrated his faith, came under fire when a quote he made about himself being the “greatest artist God ever created” came out. Yeah, that’s arrogant! But I also know that with all the publicity he’s gotten lately he was bound to say something stupid eventually. Wasn’t that everyone’s point? Isn’t that why he keeps getting attention, because people are more interested in seeing him fall, rather than succeed in his faith profession? Shame on us.

I would never feel any compulsion to support everything someone does or says – a celebrity whom I’ve never met, least of all. And Kanye is no different. But what I will defend – literally to my last breath – is that Jesus died for everyone. And absolutely anyone who turns from themselves to Christ’ work on the cross, His death and resurrection, is fully and utterly redeemed by God. Whether that person is a politician, rapper, college student, “cradle Christian”, or LGBT+. That is what I’m supporting. That is where I’m coming from.

What Kanye needs right now is grace and discipleship, which I hear he is receiving. I hope that’s true. What we need, fellow Christians, is to actually stand on the gospel – and it’s power to save absolutely anyone. Heaven will be filled with people with sketchy pasts. You and I included. We just might not have to figure our new faith out on a worldwide stage.

Blessings,
Pastor John

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