Preaching the Word and Loving the People

by BRIAN VOS

We met at a local small-town restaurant. The elderly gentleman sitting across the table had called and invited me to lunch. I was two months away from beginning my journey of pastoral ministry. He was two years away from completing his. A recent seminary graduate, I was full of energy, overly confident, and naïve. A nearly retired pastor, he was deliberate, humble, and wise. It was the summer of 1997. In two months I would be taking my candidacy and ordination exams to enter pastoral ministry. In two years he would be preaching his final sermon and making his last pastoral visits, retiring from a ministry begun in 1959. The words he spoke to me that day were simple, yet profound: “Preach the Word and love the people.” After nearly 40 years in pastoral ministry, this was the counsel he wanted me to remember. As I approach 25 years in pastoral ministry, I believe this was some of the best counsel I ever received. Though I have neither preached God’s Word perfectly, nor loved God’s people perfectly, it remains the aim of my ministry to preach the Word and to love the people. As I think upon the advice of that seasoned pastor and how God worked through him to prepare me for pastoring, I realize how many other pastors God has used, and continues to use, to shape and mold me for ministry. I want to recount some of them here, not to tell my life story, but to give thanks to God for the ways in which He has shepherded me through the ministry of pastors.

Before studying at Westminster Seminary California, God shaped and molded me through several pastors. Chief among them was my pastor for the first 22 years of my life. I was privileged to sit under the faithful ministry of one pastor who preached the Word Lord’s Day after Lord’s Day and loved the people year after year. His was a long pastorate of faithful preaching and compassionate shepherding. In many ways he was the embodiment of what it means to preach the Word and love the people. Every year I am in the ministry I appreciate his pastor’s heart more, and how much God used him to prepare me for ministry. In my college years, God graciously used the college chaplain, an ordained pastor, to show me the humility and love of Christ. As he led me and several other students through a close reading of Calvin’s Institutes, he exhibited a Christ-like spirit, exemplifying what it means to walk before the face of God. As I began to enjoy biblical studies during my college years, God brought three other pastors into my life who encouraged me to attend WSC. One of those pastors, a WSC board member, took time to encourage me and pray with me about seminary. Another one of those pastors, the president of WSC at the time, met with me and talked with me about WSC. The other pastor was a WSC alumnus whom I heard preach. He proclaimed Christ so sweetly and passionately, I remember thinking to myself, “If that’s how WSC teaches you to preach, then that’s where I need to go!” I am grateful for the pastors God placed in my life during my college years as He prepared me for gospel ministry.

After graduating from college and getting married, my wife and I moved to Escondido to attend WSC. The very first Sunday we were in Escondido, the pastor preached on the Providence of God (a message we desperately needed as we had just moved half way across the country, leaving family and friends, to begin our seminary years in California). We were blessed to sit under his faithful ministry for the next three years. Every Sunday was such an encouragement, as I was reminded that what I was studying in seminary was not merely academic, but the very Word of Life.

Early in my seminary studies, I began to sense a call to Gospel ministry. In college the truths of Reformed doctrine captured my mind. In seminary the Gospel warmed my heart. I thank God that the men under whom I studied in seminary were not only professors, but pastors as well. I’ll not forget the first time I exhorted in a large church, where several seminary professors attended. One of them had the wisdom and

grace to say to me, a very nervous student, “Remember that seminary professors need the Gospel too.” Not only did his comment calm my nerves, it also made clear to me that my professors were also pastors who hungered for the very Gospel they taught. In every subject, the Gospel held central place. My Hebrew and Greek professors taught me vocabulary and paradigms, but they did so as pastors who wanted to impress upon me the need to keep studying the text until it drives me to the pulpit with a burning desire to preach Christ and offer Him to sinners. All of my professors taught me the beauty of Covenant theology and Reformed doctrine, but they did so as pastors whose desire was to exalt Christ, showing me that there is no hope apart from Christ and His work. My church history professors taught the subject as pastors, who were interested in showing me the care and compassion of Christ for His Church. My preaching professors were men who had spent years in the pulpit, and labored faithfully as shepherds of the flock; as pastors they taught me to preach the Word and love the people.

While God used pastors to shape me prior to seminary and to prepare me in seminary, He continues to use pastors in powerful and profound ways to encourage me in ministry. One of the greatest refreshments I experienced in ministry was a three-week course at WSC on pastoral ministry. Though I had been in pastoral ministry for just over a decade when I took this class, it proved to be a turning point for me in gospel ministry, as the professor-pastor challenged us to preach and to pray in such a way that we accurately reflect the heart of God, a God who is for the world. With the heart of a pastor, he set before us the great calling of the ministry: to bring the world to God in prayer, and to bring God to the world in preaching (1 Timothy 2:1-7). His faithful teaching from that three-week course continues to shape my preaching, prayers, and pastoring.

In my most difficult season in ministry, God again used pastors to help me—pastors who were able to look beyond the sheep entrusted to their care to a fellow shepherd who desperately needed the love and care of the Good Shepherd. These brothers called me, visited with me, and prayed with me when I was discouraged and didn’t want to carry on. It was also during this time, with the encouragement of my wife, that I began studies at Ligonier Academy of Biblical and Theological Studies. Perhaps the greatest joy of this program was working on my thesis on Canons of Dort I.17—a subject that has personal interest to me, since my wife and I experienced the death of our first child only hours after his birth (I should note that it was a hospital chaplain, a pastor, who stood with me, wept with me, and prayed with me the night our son died. It was a pastor who counseled my wife and me in the months following the death of our son, reminding us from the book of Job that God is sovereign and God is good). Throughout the process of writing my thesis, I received constant support from professors who were also pastors, brothers who prayed for me, encouraged me, and helped me to finish the project. In one of God’s kind providences, my thesis examination was conducted by my church history professor from seminary. With the heart of a pastor, he examined me on a subject he first introduced to me over two decades earlier. I am so thankful to God for the blessings all of these pastors have been in my life.

God has graciously given me nearly 25 years in ministry. I am grateful that for a number of those years He gave me the privilege of serving alongside a dear brother and friend in the Lord, a WSC alumnus, and fellow pastor, through whom I saw the glory of Christ and the goodness of His Gospel as he ministered God’s Word to my soul. God has blessed me so abundantly through the ministry of pastors. I continue to experience those blessings today, as the congregation I serve was previously pastored by a WSC alumnus who faithfully preached the Word and loved the people; I see firsthand the fruits of his faithful ministry. As I began my charge, it was a joy to have my installation service led by a friend who is also a WSC alumnus; in that service he called me to serve as an ambassador for Christ, proclaiming Him as the Savior of sinners. As I continue on in my ministry, I am encouraged regularly by a member of the congregation, a WSC alumnus, a dear brother in the Lord, who prays with me and points me to Christ, not only by the words he speaks but also by the manner in which he speaks them. As I think back to that meeting in the summer of 1997, and to the wise advice that pastor gave me—advice that has sustained me for nearly 25 years of ministry—I am reminded of all the pastors God has used to prepare, sustain, and refine me for further gospel ministry. I am grateful that He raises up men who proclaim with Paul: “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptance: that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief” (1 Timothy 1:15). How thankful I am that God uses pastors to keep me focused upon the Great Pastor, our Lord Jesus Christ, who preached the Word and loved His people to the end. Christ is the great Preacher of the Gospel, and the great Pastor of His people. Praise God for giving us a Pastor who loves us so!