Over the past few months I've met with or had lunch with a couple of pastor friends and whenever I do I am reminded why I consider pastoring one of the most difficult jobs in the world. Regardless of the quality of the pastoring job you do, you can generally expect frequent criticism, overly demanding expectations, and relatively low pay. Yet it is pastors who have great influence over the souls of parishioners and who help define the people who will lead the future of the church and the nations.
While thinking about the job of pastors earlier today, I backtracked mentally and thought of the pastors, both traditional and "virtual," who shaped my spiritual growth through the years, and went online to see if I could find out where they are now. I also thought I would record a few positive thoughts on each one of them, rather than the usual blogger's practice of recounting only the sensational negative ones. So here we go...some names you'll know, some you won't, but God knows them all: Jim Wilson, Mike Gilchrist, Adrian Rogers, Jimmy Jackson, Len Turner, Jim Henry, Hal Burke, Peter Lord, Charles Stanley, Andy Stanley, Johnny Hunt, Randy Pope, Louie Giglio, John Piper, and Billy Graham.
As a child, I didn't care much for church. We went to a church that was somewhat dead during my elementary school years in central Florida, an assessment that I think may have been made by evangelist Jim Wilson who preached a revivial there towards the end of our tenure there. I distinctly recall preferring staying home and playing ball to going to Sunday School back then. And when we did go to church, I enjoyed only the hymn singing and opening rendition of the Doxology, but from there I generally tuned out the soloist, special music, choir and message most of the time as I turned my attention to counting acoustical ceiling tiles and drawing tanks on the bulletin. But I do vaguely remember one other evangelist who came through town who, for some reason, I listened to and liked. I think his name was Mike Gilchrist. Looks like he went to be with the Lord a few years ago, and while he was not my pastor, it may have been through his ministry that the eyes of my heart began to open to the things of God.
In midle school my family moved to the First Baptist Church of Merritt Island, where Jimmy Jackson was the pastor, having recently succeeded Adrian Rogers in the pastorate. So, I list both as "pastors" who influenced me in formative years. Though both Rogers and his music minister Jim Whitmire had gone on to Bellevue in Memphis by the time I arrived at FBCMI, I listened to nearly every tape Rogers had in the library as a high school student, which was probably close to every sermon he preached there in the early 1970's and maybe late 1960's. I always thought that if anyone needed the voice of God in a movie, his was the one to use. He was one of the most gracious people I've ever met, albeit only briefly at NRB not long before his death.
It was Jimmy Jackson who baptized me as a middle schooler and who shepherded the church through most of my adolescence. Known as a teacher rather than a preacher, he, too, was down to earth and devoid of any pretense, theatrics or fakeness when preaching. Apparently I somewhat resembled his son, which made for some interesting cases of mistaken identity from time to time. Given the mop of hair I had at that age and the awful leisure suits I sported at the time complete with a wide white belt and Elton John platform shoes, I find it humorous that I resembled anyone remotely related to a pastor's son. Jackson left as I was in high school, I think, and went to Whitesburg Baptist in Huntsville, Alabama where it appears he still is pastor.
His replacement was Len Turner, who later would leave for Savannah Baptist Temple in Georgia. "Bro Len" was my pastor when I was working in youth ministry during my first two years of college in the early 1980's. That was a period where a number of us college students were doing "outside-of-the-box" youth ministry and teaching in the high school Sunday School department before it was cool to do so, and I don't know if the criticism we occasionally received ever reached him, but if it did, he never let me know. Turner went through some rough personal waters and burnout before going into full-time vocational ministry a number of years ago and now lives in Woodstock, Georgia, filling pulpits around the southeast for revivals and Sunday morning services.
My last two years of college had me in Orlando, where I joined the First Baptist Church of Orlando, pastored at the time by Jim Henry. Henry is a highly likeable people-person, and either he has an amazing memory for names and faces (i.e. mine), or he has a gift for making people feel he does. I remember trying to work through some decisions about where to go to work after college and I ran into him one evening when we were both out on solo prayer walks. He took time to pray with me under a streetlight. I later learned he was out on a walk that night likely praying through much more difficult matters than I was facing at the time. Henry is now pastor-emeritus at First Baptist Orlando, now pastored by David Uth. I was also pastored to a degree in those days by Hal Burke, who was the Campus Pastor for the Baptist Campus Ministries at UCF (University of Central Florida) where I went to school. That was back when the college was surrounded by miles of woods and pastures rather than the miles of subdivisions, office developments, and retail that I found there when in Orlando on business trips over the past several years. With Hal and a number of other students we were involved in the 1983 Billy Graham Crusade in Orlando and were also able to have Josh McDowell come by for a brief Lecture Series on "Evidence That Demands a Verdict."
After a few yeas in Orlando I spent a couple of years back on the east coast in Brevard County where I sat under the teaching of Peter Lord at Park Avenue Baptist Church in Titusville, Florida. I had heard it said that Peter Lord preferred a small church of committed believers to a big church of pretenders, and apparently there had been something of a shakeout before I arrived if what I had heard was true. But this church of a couple thousand or so was a church of serious believers in spite of it's ahead-of-its-time casual and contemporary style. Church services were available on Saturday night for the benefit of the shift workers at NASA's nearby Kennedy Space Center (and this was the mid 1980's--I don't know of anyone else doing Saturday services back then unless Bill Hybels was), and it was there that I began to question the whole "decisional regeneration" concept after hearing the explanation as to why there was rarely a typical Baptist invitation given at the close of the service. The music was contemporary worship for the period (remember the early Integrity and Maranatha music?), and the call to serious discipleship unmistakeable. Peter Lord is an interesting guy. He's not polished, he's not slick, he's not cool, he's not smooth, he's not interested in much beyond what the Bible says and he's as down to earth as they come. A native of Jamaica in the British West Indies, his accent can be a little hard to follow the first time you hear him speak. But it was Peter Lord, and not Andy Stanley, who I first saw regularly use pulpit props, stage illustrations and congregational interaction to amplify the points he was making as he taught the Bible, several of which stick with me to this day. A teacher more than a preacher, and more of a "bapticostal" than a traditional baptist, his devotion to the Bible, love for spiritual depth and growth, and his progressive means of applicational teaching ministry perhaps may be one reason I was less opposed to contemporary ministry later in life than some of my Baptist brethren.
In 1987 I moved to Atlanta and after visiting a number of churches I settled in at First Baptist Atlanta under the preaching of Dr. Charles Stanley, the master of 18 point messages. Stanley's messages were so fully filled with references and Scripture it was highly challenging to keep up with notetaking. Stanley was not a typical Baptist either, in many regards, and FBA was the place to be in Atlanta in those days if you wanted to learn the Bible. Many good friends were made during those years with other godly men and women who found refuge and fellowship studying God's word together under his leadership.
When FBA opened a second campus that would eventually become North Point Community Church, Andy Stanley became my pastor. Andy has come a long way since I first met him nearly twenty years ago at First Baptist. In those days he was a youth guy who didn't much want to get involved in adult ministry; he preferred working with kids who hadn't totally messed up their lives yet. I still have some of his preaching tapes from back then when he would substitute teach for John Riley (no relation) at the Metro Bible Study. Some readers may be surprised to learn that Andy is also gifted musically. Somewhere in storage I still have a cassette recording called "34-a" of Andy and the "Good Stuf" band singing a number of songs he wrote back in the 1980's. Playing guitar on the tape was a teenager named Todd Fields, now a songwriter and worship leader at North Point. But God moved Andy out of his comfort zone, and today as pastor of North Point he has arguably as much infuence, if not more, than his father Charles. Andy is a gifted teacher with a gift for plain talking and winsome communication. His ability to take a principle of Scripture and illustrate it in a manner that people with no church background can understand is the result of God's giftedness and Andy's faithfulness to persevere through the years. He's a humble guy who is truly amazed at what God has done at North Point. Things got rocky in those days in my life and in the lives of others as North Point and FBA eventually parted ways, but God's restorative grace prevailed. Today both North Point and First Baptist are seeing God at work in their midst reaching two very different segments of the population.
Another brief season living near Woodstock, Georgia, placed me under the preaching of Johnny Hunt at First Baptist Woodstock. "Pastor Johnny" is an unusually gifted preacher with an unparalleled love for the lost. A full-blooded Cherokee indian from the housing projects of North Carolina, his preaching style is something of a throwback, stylewise, a mix of occasional yelling, story telling, personal opinions, a few rabbit trails and good old southern style gospel preaching. There's no pretense or fake showmanship-- he simply preaches the gospel the way God has gifted him to communicate, passionately calling people to Christ. Though he's more of an evangelist than a theologian, those who know him know he's also a pastor to pastors, supporting struggling pastors through failures and mentoring younger ones coming up. He has invested in the lives of countless pastors over the years behind the scenes where lesser men would have used their notoriety and influence to further only their own kingdoms.
As some personal failures and disappointments prompted me to dig deeper into theology seeking anwers to deeper questions about the Christian life, I began to read Jerry Bridges, J.I. Packer, and Chuck Colson. Slowly a me-centered entitlement theology began to crumble away to a God-centered one as I glimpsed for the first time the extent of my self-centered depravity and the massive need I had for a Savior. After meeting the woman who would shortly become my wife, we were led to move to Perimeter Church, pastored by Randy Pope. Randy, though an analytical introvert, is passionate about relational evangelism. He's a "soul winner" in the truest sense of the word, as evidenced by a trail of changed lives, not just a stack of decision cards. Under Randy's leadership Perimeter Church has become one of the few churches in the nation that I believe has successfully modeling a culturally engaged, progressive ministry within the context of the historic, Christian faith. Sunday mornings at Perimeter are a mix of both contemporary, God-oriented worship and theologically rich, deep preaching in an era where many churches tend to do one well to the neglect or absence of the other. Members are also encouraged both to serve in community mercy ministries while also growing in their faith through a thorough discipleship program. And for bibliophiles like me, the bookstore is second to none.
During my tenure at Perimeter, there were two other men who have "pastored" me outside the confines of a typical pastor/church environment. First, Louie Giglio, while not a pastor per se, is a pastor of sorts to campus pastors all over the country and increasingly around the world. My wife and I were privileged and blessed to have worked with Louie and his wife Shelley in ministry for a number of years beginning around the time of Passion '98. Much of what I understand about worship I learned through Louie, either from books Louie gave us or people I was introduced to directly or indirectly through the Passion ministry. Through both our work with the Passion team and sixsteps artists, and our friendship with the Giglios, my view of God continued to be reshaped more and more by the Bible and less and less by evangelical culture.
Secondly, it was Louie who introduced me to the speaking and writing of the next pastor I list, John Piper. I have probably taken in as many sermons from Dr. Piper as I have anyone else listed on this page, and reading his books have been like drinking fresh, cool Powerade after finishing the Peachtree 10K roadrace on a sweltering July morning. Piper's writing and teaching filled in countless gaps in my understanding of God and has been something of a theological "missing link" in my life, helping to strengthen my heart and renew my mind. Though I have never been a member of Piper's church and have only met him a few times over the last ten years, I am thankful for his ministry, and for his love for the Scriptures, the Church, and God.
Last, and certainly not least, is Billy Graham, perhaps the most consistent influence over the entire span of time referenced here. I'm sure it is safe to say that each pastor on this list would acknowledge having been powerfully influenced in some manner by Mr. Graham's ministry. Mr. Graham's commitment to preach the Gospel is legend, as was his personal fidelity to his wife. And to me, his loyalty to his ministry associates is highly admirable; as his stature grew, Graham generally continued to stick with the guys God brought to Graham in the beginning, understanding that it wasn't so much about the preacher, the cool factor, or the management team...it was about God at work in the hearts of His people.
And that's the way it should be.
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