Tony Merida: Ministry Work Is People Work

Tony Merida

I’ve told guys before, like, the problem with just Podcasting A pastor sermons is you’re only seeing one aspect of his ministry. It would be really cool if you could, if you could watch him in the foyer, or you could see him interact with the children, or you could see him visit the hospital, like there’s, there’s so many ministry work is people work. I

Tony Merida

so I’ve been really moved. We’ve studied, we did it in reverse. We studied Second Corinthians a couple years ago, and now we’re doing First Corinthians. We did. We didn’t do first and then second, but I’ve been moved in both letters at just how Paul interacts with these cantankerous Corinthians. I mean, he’s like herding cats, and there are so many issues going on at the end of one of his chapters. I think it’s chapter 11, he says about the other matters we’ll talk about when I show up and you just wonder about what else was going on in this church. And yet, even though Paul does, you know, he provides correctives and rebukes, and throughout the letter, he also says things like, at the end of second Corinthians, I will most gladly be spent for your souls like so I would just say to a pastor, I would I would just immerse myself in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, I think it’s Dane ortland, and his commentary on Second Corinthians said that we could, we could call Second Corinthians a pastoral epistle, even though we don’t categorize it as that, because Paul there is being very vulnerable, and he’s talking about his relationship with these Corinthians. And just, I’ve been ministered to, just with that theme of strength through weakness. And part of the weakness that Paul is dealing with is not just the thorn in his flesh, whatever that is, but he’s dealt with difficult people, and just to see how he communicates to them, really does speak to me. He could write about the Philippians, you know, like you’re my joy and my crown, but to the Corinthians, he’s got quite a handful there. So that’s been very, very meaningful for me, and to just trust the Lord’s sovereignty in that, that the Lord has put people in our lives for different reasons. And if we’re going to do ministry, we are going to deal with difficult people, and we’re going to be difficult at times ourselves, so I would encourage them in those ways. Yeah. So I became a Christian in college. I was baseball player, had several teammates that were huge influences on my life. Began to follow Jesus. Got in multiple Bible studies, very involved in campus ministry. And then my junior year, a seminary professor named Jim shaddock came and preached for three consecutive days at our school. And that was the first time I’d sat under expository preaching. And I just said, I want to do that the rest of my life. It was a resist of fire in my bones. I met with him. We talked all week long. I ended up graduating and then moving to New Orleans to study with him. I knew I wanted to be in ministry, having, having after that experience with Jim, just, you know, speaking, sharing my testimony in various places, serving at a youth camp or the crawl over the next summer, and just felt like, Wow, man, this is, this is what I want to do. I felt the aspiration to do it, and then I had others that were given the the confirmation that I should move in that direction. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do when I went to seminary. And it wasn’t till my second semester that the Lord really clarified that call to pastoral ministry, and it was a strange set of circumstances. It was the combination of a Church Administration class and reading a Charles Spurgeon biography, and the Church Administration class just gave me a real, practical sense of what, what, what was involved in a church. And I even started thinking about church planting even then, planting, even then, what would it look like if I started from scratch, as we were talking about everything from deacons to parking lots to childcare policies and then so that class, coupled with sort of the romantic vision of the church that Spurgeon was giving me in in Dallas, biography on Spurgeon was a real pivotal semester where I said, I want to be a pastor.

Tony Merida

I would miss most having a front row seat on seeing lives changed by the gospel. That’s just what I get to see. We get to see a lot of hard things, you know, but we see a lot of hard things, but the getting to see lives changed by the gospel, a front row seat to that, to see someone come to faith in Christ. I mean, I met so many new people yesterday at church, and to see some of them, for the first time, begin to put the pieces together on how the. Bible is a unified story, story after story like that. Of I wouldn’t be part of those conversations. If I weren’t a pastor, I would really miss sermon prep and preaching. It’s not the the actual deliver. I do love that too, but it’s it’s the process. It’s immersing myself in a passage. And I love the experience of starting on Monday, or whenever you start and you’re looking at a passage, and you think, what, what am I going to do with this? And then by Sunday morning, you’re like, This is the most important sermon I’ve ever preached. So that that’s that experience is is amazing. Just, I would admit, if I were just traveling and preaching, I think I would rely upon a lot of old sermons and and that’s fine, but I love being able to work book by book through books of the Bible. It’s such an edifying experience. And to see other people learn how to study their Bible as they observe how I do exposition, that’s just super exciting. I would miss the pastoral prayer time in our church. That’s a time that has really grown to be one of my favorite things about pastoring, of taking you know, leading the people in prayer together for the various needs in our church. I think the older I get, the more wounds I absorb, the more sorrow I go through, the more difficulty I experience. It. It helps me to identify with people who who are in the same boat and and it’s it’s shaped my prayers. And I think a lot of people at i at our church, would would talk about that component in corporate worship being really meaningful to them, and it’s meaningful to me. It’s something that I prepare for. It’s something that I take our elder prayer time into account. I’ll begin to hear what’s going on in the body and really try to pray. So I would miss that immensely. Yeah, the most important thing about being a pastor that I did not learn in seminary would probably be and this is not the seminary fault, it’s just people skills and the need for personal affection and warmth and the you know, seminary focuses on doctrinal precision, and I think that’s what they should be doing. But there’s more to pastoring than doctrinal precision. There’s also the need for personal affection. There’s the need to handle conflict, respond well to criticism, welcome people warmly to your congregation. I’ve told guys before, like, like, the problem with just Podcasting A pastor sermons is you’re only seeing one aspect of his ministry. It would be really cool if you could, if you could watch him in the foyer, or you could see him interact with the children, or you could see him visit the hospital. Like, there’s, there’s so many ministry work is people work and it you can’t, you can’t really teach that stuff. You can emphasize it, I guess, in seminary, but you need to kind of be out and about to get that field experience, if you will. And I’ve just seen guys, unfortunately, that are really good with doctrine, but they’re not good with people, and they don’t make good pastors. And I remember again, to quote Spurgeon, he has a paragraph in one of his lectures where he says, I want a pastor who’s whose face says, Welcome, not Beware of Dog. And he goes on to describe the individual that has this big heart and that a man must have a big heart if he is to have a big congregation. So I just think the the need to emphasize life on life relationships, how to handle people, how to love people. And then I think also, like pastors need friends. That’s another aspect of relational ministry, is that this is a this is a hard journey, but we don’t have to walk it alone. I think it was JC Ryle that said, friendships have halves our sorrows and doubles our joys, and I’ve experienced that, but it is the relationships I’ve been able to build with friends, most of whom are pastors, really has, you know, helped me to deal with My own sorrow and has also multiplied my joy.