In the Lord’s work as in anything else in life, there are essentials and non-essentials. There are the loadbearing features and cosmetic for-appearance-only aspects.

If we don’t know which is which, we’re in big trouble.

In the late 16th century, the mayor of Windsor engaged architect Christopher Wren to design and oversee the building of a town hall. When it was completed, the mayor refused to pay the bill, insisting that it needed more than the few columns Wren had designed. No matter that it was pointed out to him that the columns were holding up the building just fine. He wanted more columns and would not pay until they were installed.

Christopher Wren had several more columns added to the building. Each was identical to the first ones he had installed, with one exception. Each lacked one inch going all the way to the ceiling.

Some of those columns were load-bearing and others were cosmetic.

It’s a wise church leader who knows which is which in the Lord’s work.

Here is my list of “six load-bearers,” six essentials which we must get right in the Lord’s work or it’s all over.

Please let me point out up front, these are not arranged in the order of priority. This is to ward off letters I sometimes get from debaters and arguers that B is more important than A, that C should be higher. I suggest, somewhat impishly, that he should have read the article more fully, because I said in the body that there was no particular order, that they are listed as they occurred to me. Anyone who writes learns quickly that some people prefer to skip the reading of the material in order to get on with criticizing it.

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Recently, in an article on this website, I cautioned young assistant pastors on a snare lying in their path (i.e., certain church members puffing them up into believing that they are superior to the pastor and ought to have his job). In telling my own story from several decades back, I expressed gratitude that I had not become the senior pastor for several reasons. Chief among them was the extremely strong laymen who exercised great influence in that church, and who would have “chewed me up and spat me out.”

Nothing that follows is meant to imply that I have all wisdom on this subject. Far from it. I carry scars from encounters with some of those men. Not men from that church in my previous article, but from their clones with whom I did battle in two subsequent churches.

The Apostle John wrote to a friend whom he called “beloved Gaius” in the little epistle we call III John. The key issue is a church boss who was exercising tyrannical control over the congregation. John says, “I wrote to the church, but Diotrephes, who loves to have the preeminence among them, does not receive us. Therefore, if I come, I will call to mind his deeds which he does, prating against us with malicious words. And not content with that, he himself does not receive the brethren, and forbids those who wish to, putting them out of the church.” (III John 9-10)

They’ve always been with us, these self-important self-appointed church rulers who reign as big frogs in small ponds and get their thrills from dominating God-sent ministers.

Who are they?

They are almost always men. I’ve never seen a woman try to control the church and the preachers the way some men do. Perhaps you have. Human nature being what it is, doubtless there are female Diotrephes out there. Thankfully, they are rare.

Where do they come from?

Ah, there is the rub.

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I was 30 years old and had left my first post-seminary pastorate to join the staff of the largest church in the state. My title was “Minister of Evangelism,” although some of my closest buddies kept pronouncing it as “Vandalism.”

Once in a while, the pastor let me preach in his absence. It was a heady experience.

The church I had just left ran slightly over 200 in attendance. The new congregation was over seven times that size, and was peopled with an entirely different kind of human beings. The governor was a deacon, a previous governor sat on the front pew, the state denominational leadership could be found throughout the sanctuary, and television cameras beamed the live broadcast across the state.

The first time I preached in the pastor’s absence he had come down with a cold and called me the night before. “Be ready to preach,” he said. “Just in case.” The next morning, his wife called. “You’ve got it.”

That day, a dozen people joined the church.

Leaders told the preacher, “From now on, when you see you’re going to be out of town, there’s no need to bring in guest preachers. Joe can handle it.”

And that’s when it began to happen. That snare that traps all assistant pastors at one time or the other began to be set for me.

One day, I found myself sitting in the office of the editor of our state denominational weekly. He was encouraging me. He liked my kind of preaching. My sermons, he assured me, were more biblical than the pastor’s. More meatier, more edifying.

I floated out of his office thinking I must be one of the best preachers in the state if that veteran leader thought so.

Not good. Not good at all.

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I’m trying hard to answer this question with a straight face.

Short answer: No.

Longer answer: No sirree!

Last night, driving the interstate from Jackson, Mississippi, to New Orleans, I passed a billboard advertising some ministry that is focusing on biblical prophecy. Big letters: “THE USA IN BIBLE PROPHECY!” And a website.

My opinion–and that’s all this is; this is my website and I can freely post it; thank you very much–is that the people involved in this kind of “find the USA in the Bible ministry” are of two types: 1) well-intentioned unthinking believers who love Jesus but were never grounded in the essentials of the Christian life, and are now being led seriously off-track; and 2) clones of Harold Camping (the guy who gets his kicks out of his own off-brand interpretations of Scripture and loves to predict the end of the world) who spend all their time trying to unlock the Rubik’s cube of the Bible so they can know more than anyone else as to what the Lord is up to.

Both groups are in bad trouble.

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For some of us in the ministry, sermons for Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, Father’s Day, July 4, and the like come easily. But other pastors have a difficult time planning such sermons. Some ignore those days altogether.

Here is my approach. It might possibly help a pastor somewhere find how to pull this off without feeling that he was caving in to the culture and turning his back on his call to preach the Word.

Right now, I’m thinking about my sermon for Father’s Day. That Sunday, I’ll be filling in for Pastor Craig Beeman at the First Baptist Church of Winnsboro, Lousiana. It’s nearly 3 weeks away and a good time to get to work.

Typically, we pastors close the door to our study and sink into our chair and say out loud, “What do I want to say about Father’s Day? Lord, what do you want me to say?” And, if I may say so, typically no answer comes. We’re stuck. That’s why this sort of thing is no fun.

I suggest those are the wrong questions. A better question is: “Lord, what lesson have you taught me about fatherhood?”

Sit there for a few minutes and consider your own role as a father, your dad’s role, the men you have known who were fathers and granddads, and sermons you have preached on this subject before. What key points, what definitive stories, what lesson looms large in your mind?

In my case, as I consider that question, two things occupy center stage in my mind.

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