Why I Will Now Wear a Clerical Collar
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Summary
Pastor Ken teaches on the importance of wearing a clerical collar at church, and why we should advocate for more pastors to wear one. Pastor Ken discusses the role of the clerical caller, and the role that a pastor should play as a first responder.
Transcript
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Well, praise be to God, and I am so excited to take us through this sermon, which is unexpected
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because we're in Romans 13, but I'm not preaching on Romans 13 today. I said that last week,
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didn't I? We keep pushing back Romans 13, one through two. I'm preaching on pastoral
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authority and dress today. And it's because I'm wearing a clerical collar today. And it is also
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the first time that I've worn a clerical collar at church. And so I wanted to make sure that we
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really understood the theological, historical, logical, practical reasoning behind that. And I
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I think that it's one of those things that, in America, a clerical caller can give, you know, the modern Christian American the willies.
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You know, it makes you feel like we're on our way to the Vatican.
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Now, nobody in our congregation over the last month or so, as I've been talking about the clerical caller, has expressed any concerns to me, which was encouraging.
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but again I recognize that even small changes you know a couple months ago we started kneeling
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a couple weeks ago we started raising our hands during the doxology and sometimes those little
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things can unsettle Christians because it might be shepherding them or moving them too quickly
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toward a different experience of Christianity that we might be familiar with. Oscar Wilde once said
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quote, a gentleman is someone who never insults another person unintentionally, end quote.
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And I don't want any of these practices to insult the sensibilities, the spiritual sensibilities
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of anybody in our congregation. And so my hope as a pastor is to take the congregation where Christ
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is leading me. That's what an under shepherd does. An under shepherd is studying the word of God.
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They're studying the doctrines of the gospel, and they're taking the congregations to where Christ is.
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And my aim today is to provide a little bit of clarity around some of these practices, especially the clerical caller.
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And I want to eliminate, well, I'll say this, I don't just want to eliminate misunderstanding.
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I actually want to get you to the place that I'm at, which is I believe we should be advocating for more pastors to be wearing a clerical caller.
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Now, imagine that you're on a sinking ship.
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Just, it's cold, the boat's going down, and you, in the midst of the chaos, you see someone
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in a uniform that wearing an orange life vest that says, rescue, emblazoned on the back
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Well, you know who to turn to for help in that particular moment.
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Their clothing declares their role, their duty, their responsibility.
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Now, the same principle applies to a pastor that's wearing a clerical collar.
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It's about making it clear to those in need who is qualified, responsible, and ready to help.
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And as I mentioned a few weeks ago, if you were at our annual members meeting,
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one of my friends, pastor up in the Northeast, but was originally from England,
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the first time he wore his clerical collar, he was on a train.
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Pastor, can you remind me why I should continue to live?
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and this woman was truly on that metaphorical ship sinking she was falling she was entering
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into tragedy and the lord used calvin my friend uh to save him or to save that young lady from
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tragedy he prayed with her he affirmed her in the gospel of truth talked about jesus and the value
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of her life. I also heard recently of another pastor who regularly visits assisted living homes
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and many of the residents at the assisted living homes have Alzheimer's or dementia and he says
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that they rarely remember him but when I'm wearing my clerical collar they always know a pastor is
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speaking to them. And I thought that was a really beautiful testimony. The question I have for you
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and I want to begin with today is, are pastors public servants? Are we considered public
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servants? When I check out at the barbershop, the cashier always looks at me and she says,
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are you a first responder, police, fire, military? That's what she does at the checkout, right? And I
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said, yes, I am a first responder. I'm a pastor. She usually laughs at me and doesn't give me the
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discount. But when I entered into ministry in 2017, I learned that when a tragedy strikes,
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you get really three people that show up. You get police, paramedics, and pastors. That's who's at
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a scene when tragedy strikes. I remember arriving at the hospital in Oregon. One of our members
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had an emergency surgery for an ectopic pregnancy. And I went to the front desk and I told them that
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I was their pastor and she asked for some form of verification. I happened to have a business card
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on me, so I pulled that out and that was sufficient. But when I was in the waiting room, I remember
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seeing another pastor come in from a Lutheran church and he was wearing a clerical collar.
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And the woman at the front desk didn't ask for any verification. Well, why? Well, because his
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uniform communicated the role that he was playing. So clothing is a powerful tool. It communicates
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something very important. In fact, in Scripture, we have an entire theology around clothing.
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There are books written on a theology of clothing. There's priestly garments in Exodus 28,
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2-4. There's wearing black and sackcloth around mourning to communicate the internal state of
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your soul. You can see that in Genesis 37, 34, Esther 4, 1, Jonah 3, 5 through 6. We have head
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coverings, and some of you ladies affirm head coverings in 1 Corinthians 11, 2 through 16.
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We have symbolic robes of righteousness that Christ gives us, his righteousness given to us
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by faith. We see that in Isaiah 61, 10, Revelation 7, 13 through 14. So that's just a small micro
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sample of the theology of clothing, but God uses clothing throughout the scriptures to communicate
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certain truths, certain positions of authority, certain responsibilities, certain postures of
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the soul. Now, when it comes to pastoral dress, I think there's a risk. And here's the risk.
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Matthew 23, five through seven, Jesus says, quote, they do all their deeds to be seen by others
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for they make their phylacteries broad. Now phylacteries are these like little strings
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that would hold scrolls that are like the Old Testament, New Testament, the law. I wouldn't
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have the New Testament, it would have the law, have the Old Testament, maybe in the Psalms,
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and it would have the law of God and they would tie it onto their waist or their wrists or around
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their neck, and it was a way for someone to identify a priest. Now, he's talking about doing
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that broad. As the law became more burdensome to them, they would wear these big, ridiculous-looking
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phylacteries to kind of draw attention to themselves. He goes on, Jesus goes on here to say,
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it says, and make their fringes long, and they love the places of honor at feasts in the best
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seats in the synagogue, in the greetings in the marketplaces, and being called rabbi by others,
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end quote. Okay, just like you might have like a power-tripping cop that wants the uniform
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just to abuse authority or to have that sense of authority over people, you also can get
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power-hungry or attention-needy pastors who only will wear something like a clerical collar
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in order to receive praise and attention. That's a real genuine temptation of anybody wearing any
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uniform with authority. And Jesus is not condemning the use of the clothing to identify
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a particular individual. He's warning against a prideful heart that can come behind it. He's
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warning against also immodesty, where you're kind of leaning into extravagance. Now, for a moment,
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I wanted to shift the discussion to clothing as a means of communicating authority,
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especially in a casualized culture that we live in. I remember a friend of mine who
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he's a police officer and he said 99% of authority on the job is communicated
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by the uniform. It's not the gun, it's the clothing. And I thought that was really fascinating
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and I think it's true. It's the uniform that communicates authority far more than the gun does.
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Now, here's the question that's remaining at the core of the discussion today.
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Why is it not strange to us that police and fire and military and paramedics and doctors and judges and postal workers and airline pilots and even fast food employees can wear clothing that identifies their authority to the public?
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but it feels odd to us when a pastor does the same.
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That's the core question that I want to present to the church today.
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Now, spiritually speaking, I don't believe that this is an accident,
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that we would affirm every other category except for the church.
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I believe it's part of a subtle strategy of the enemy
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to strip away any visible identification of God's representatives in a broken world.
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In terms of just eliminating any visual presence.
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We actually see this in church buildings as well.
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Okay, you can, if you can make a church not look like a church,
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then it reduces the visible dominion of the kingdom of God in a particular city.
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By God's grace, in the next decade, we'll build a church that looks like a church with a cross on the top of it.
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And I'm tired of these buildings that look like, you know, glorified mini malls that have big giant glass here and big giant there.
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And it looks essentially like any business could be in it.
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And we want to have these beautiful architecture that matches the beauty of the gospel.
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You go to Utah for a second and you quickly know who has dominion.
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Because there's Mormon temples and Mormon churches everywhere.
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nowhere. Now, without visible identification, without that, the public has less opportunity
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to seek help, spiritual help. It has fewer reminders of the kingdom of God, that it's
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present and around us. And I believe this effort for kind of religious markers to fade
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in society. They're kind of fading into obscurity. It's rooted in our culture's obsession with
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egalitarianism and sameness. Let me explain this. Imagine walking into a museum, and this museum,
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let's just say that it's relocating and moving from one building to another, and every masterpiece
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has been kind of stripped of its frame. Every plaque has been removed. Every sculpture has
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been taken off its pedestal all of the beautiful artifacts are taken out of their glass boxes and
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they're kind of thrown into the corner and with a bunch of desks and chairs and office supplies
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and they're all just sitting over there all of those beautiful artifacts that are just sitting
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there the the beauty the significance of those artifacts and the sense of awe it's all gone
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not because the art or the value of these things has changed.
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The frames, the pedestals, the glass boxes are removed.
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And that's what our society is doing to itself.
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it's uh we're stripping away these key societal markers of honor and integrity and responsibility
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and respect we're taking down monuments and removing distinctions and removing titles and
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erasing traditions we're leveling everything just to kind of be the same the sirs and the
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mams have gone away the titles of mr and mrs have disappeared dress codes have been eliminated
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you know head coverings among women generally in the church are gone uniforms are gone school
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uniforms are gone monuments are being pulled down everywhere in the standards of weddings
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or funerals if you've been to them they've just been casualized just into nothingness liturgies
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have been simplified sermons have been made shorter there's so many things that we've just
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kind of flattened society to be just kind of this amalgam androgyny unisex mess and what's the cause
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what's the root cause of this i believe that it stems from this deep sense of insecurity
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and pride that can't embrace submission and honor and respect for positions of other people in
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authority. And it's why we have resisting arrests have gone up astronomically over the last 25
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years. There's just no respect for authority. They can't understand the idea of just submitting
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to somebody else. And so to cope with our societal insecurities, we minimize positions
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of authorities. We strip away these symbols of distinction in an effort to make us all feel
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the same. That's, I think, really the underlying reality. So this desire for sameness that we have
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has made us believe that casualism actually communicates closeness and love more than
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formality. Oh, you know, hey, if I come over to your house and I'm wearing, you know, sweats and
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a shirt that I clean my garage in, man, we're real close. You know, now we really like each other.
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In some perverted way, we have believed that stripping away formal distinctions proves how much we care for a person.
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We somehow believe that informality is authentic.
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That's our kind of rally cry of this generation.
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You know, where's my, you know, barn wood, you know, set behind me?
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True closeness isn't found in erasing distinctions.
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No, the true closeness comes in embracing the authority structures and respecting them according to the word of God.
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and we live in a society right now if you're not aware that has massive institutional distrust
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we don't trust anything we don't trust any company we don't trust the medical system
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we don't trust you know the church we've just lost massive trust and we're kind of
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deconstructing everything it's this kind of decentralization this democratization this
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kind of leveling down of all things. And it leaves us in this lost sea of sameness with no landmarks
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to go to. Like very little structure. It's even hard for us to comprehend that because we've been
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swimming in it for so long that we think it's normal. And so in order to restore this for our
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It's going to take restoring order from previous generations.
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Paul says in Romans 13, 7, which maybe one day we'll get to,
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Now, to answer more directly the question that I asked earlier,
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I believe modern Protestants, especially, struggle with pastoral identification for three reasons.
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First, as I said, a uniform communicates authority.
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Christians, and society at large, have generally rejected the idea that a pastor has any real authority.
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And I believe this is the result of a few reasons, and I want to talk about them.
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First, I think it's the mass decentralization of the church.
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This independent church is everywhere, and non-denominationalism is not helping anybody.
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Okay, as you guys know, we're in the middle of joining the CREC.
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The non-denominationalism creates this kind of sea of independent churches that are never connected together,
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that have no authority, structure, or accountability, and I believe that's part of this problem.
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In America, the role of a pastor is really kind of reduced to this passion position.
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It's like a vocation that kind of can be interchangeable.
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You might just start and do that for a season of your life, and then you leave.
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I would say that a pastor in America has almost the same amount of respect as like a life coach.
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some of you might have noticed uh in our constitution it says quote ordination is for
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life end quote and we say that because romans 11 21 or 11 29 which i preached about not too
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long ago it says for the gifts and the calling of god are irrevocable end quote
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and so if you're ordained of god that's why also god warns don't be quick don't be hasty to lay
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your hands on somebody if you're ordained of god you're a slave of god yes you may take a
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sabbatical that's that's a real thing i think you could back with scripture but you're ordained for
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life you will spend your entire life in ministry you want to see the people who were falsely ordained
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it's the people who quit. The people who were in it for three years or five years or seven years
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and quit. In fact I think I don't know what the stats are exactly but I know that a mass amount
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of pastors quit within five years. Lots of false ordinations that are going on.
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Now when you combine this kind of low view of pastoral calling with the kind of hyper
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casualization of our culture you begin to understand how pastoral dress that communicates
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authority can feel strange. Now, Ephesians 4, 11 through 12 says that God has appointed certain
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individuals. Quote, and he himself, talking about Christ or God, gave some to be apostles,
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some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints,
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for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ. That is beyond the
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God has given the church pastors, teachers, and evangelists.
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In fact, pastor-teachers is one word in the Greek, so it's really a pastor-teacher and evangelists.
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He's given the church those particular individuals for your edification.
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They hold an office to represent Christ in the public square.
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We have been granted in the pastorate a real pastoral or spiritual authority to speak on behalf of Christ,
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to administer the sacraments, to assure people in their faith, to teach, to correct, to rebuke, to even excommunicate.
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That is an authority that we have, again, what happens today is people just get upset.
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You call the church over there and you tell them what's going on,
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after Paul clarifies morality and gospel doctrine,
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Declare these things, exhort and rebuke with all authority.
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Peter says to pastors, shepherd the flock of God that is among you,
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exercising oversight, not under a compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you.
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Not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock.
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Acts 20, 28, Paul says to the pastors in Ephesus,
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pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock
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in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers
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to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.
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1 Thessalonians 5, 12-13, Paul tells Christians how to view ministers, saying,
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We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord,
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and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work.
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Not many of you should be a teacher, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.
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And by holy, I mean set apart for a particular work.
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He is qualified. He is ordained. He is accountable.
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2 Timothy 2, 24-25, Paul writes about Timothy's pastoral work.
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And the Lord's slave, speaking to pastors or to Timothy about his pastoral work,
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The Lord's slave must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness, end quote.
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So pastors, according to Scripture, I think, well, one, we're all slaves of Christ.
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But the Scriptures make a very clear argument that there is greater accountability for pastors.
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In fact, the very purpose of the clerical collar is to demonstrate slavery.
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A Presbyterian pastor here in Arizona, down in Queen Creek, once said,
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quote, the collar is not a sign of superiority, but of slavery.
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And honestly, the collar isn't as much of a reminder for you as it is for me.
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In fact, when I put this on this morning, it was such a helpful reminder.
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that I am not my own. And that is a reminder that pastors need today, because pastors have become
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charlatans, platformers. You know, it's a very real risk. It reminds me to not speak
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now today i'm wearing a blue shirt today uh traditionally most clergy shirts are black
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and they're black because they're symbolizing that you're dead that's the whole reason
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for the black shirt and jacket and pants um and i don't know about you but i i find physical
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reminders helpful you know some of you guys might have notes on your your you know your window or
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your mirror in your bathroom. Some of you guys might have a particular piece of jewelry that
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reminds you of something. Some of you might have a tattoo that reminds you of a particular truth
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that you want to remember. That's what the clerical collar is. It's a powerful and useful tool
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to express the holy authority of the pastoral office, but not just to the world, but to the
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minister. To me, in this particular example. All right, the second reason why I believe Protestants
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struggle with pastoral identification is because they think it looks Roman Catholic, okay?
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Now, in the early church, pastors did not wear distinguishing attire, not clearly at least. But
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several church fathers emphasized the importance of pastors wearing simple clothing. So the way
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they would distinguish themselves is they would not look rich. Now, this was actually part of
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kind of what led into the monastic movement, which is like you would try to be as poor as you could
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in the poverty gospel. The poorer you are, the better you are because you can be like Christ
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where you don't even have a house, you don't have anything. And that really led to the monastic
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movement now in our casual culture even a suit even if it costs 250 bucks for a whole suit
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can still make you look extravagant in our culture which is unfortunate we need to reverse that
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so that you know wearing sweats to school as i see all these kids doing these days it's insane
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but i think the principle of modesty remains valuable and pastors should aim for just like
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uniform. Look at a police officer. It's not to look rich. It's to look functional. It should be
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professional. It should be functional. It should be modest. You know, we don't need pastors, you
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know, wearing $2,000 suits, $1,000 watches, $500 shoes. We don't need that. And by the way,
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there are lots of pastors that do that. We also don't need big giant Roman hats or Eastern
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orthodox hats and giant robes with chains and gold things
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flying around everywhere. We don't need that either.
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That's kind of what Jesus was talking about in Matthew 23.
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It's, wow, how did you get that from the New Testament?
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I understand that if you look at the Old Testament, you can see
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and you can kind of make a correlation to the priesthood around
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the ephod and the different elements of the pastoral dress
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and the sash. I get that. But the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church
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has gone even beyond what the Old Testament priests were wearing.
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And so what we need is, again, functional attire that communicates office, it communicates
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responsibility, it communicates authority. Now, as society gained complexity and size, as we grew
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as a society, we needed more uniforms. There's actually a really great book that talks about
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the development of uniforms. If you look back in like the Roman world, there wasn't a lot of
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roles that required uniform outside of the military and magistrates.
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But as society grows, it gets more complex. You know way more people and things blend together
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and you need identification that helps and is useful it's a tool and during the 300s and 400s
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pastors and teachers adopted what's called the pallium and this is kind of a cloak associated
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with philosophers it had like a three-piece thing that you would have like a cross on
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during the council of laodicea in 363 364 they actually issued a canon that required clergy to
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wear modest and distinct clothing during worship services. After Constantine legalized Christianity
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in Rome in the 4th century, early 4th century, clergy wore what was called an alb.
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It's a white tunic. It symbolizes purity. It's kind of like a stole, you know, and you have this
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stole that goes over your shoulders, around your head and neck, that was supposed to symbolize a
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yoke. And you were like yoked to Christ. By the 6th century, most clergy would wear what's called
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a cassock. If you've seen the movie The Matrix, Neo is wearing a cassock-looking thing. And
00:32:16.440
by that time, clerical garb had become fairly common in the 6th century, the 500s.
00:32:22.640
And the clerical collar, like the one that I'm wearing here,
00:32:27.460
it actually started under the Presbyterian church in the 1600s.
00:32:31.960
So we're taking a huge, long journey from the 500s to the 1500s,
00:32:36.420
a thousand years of change and shift that's going on here.
00:32:44.200
And a cravat was a neck scarf that would go under your collar.
00:32:51.240
Now, if you've seen any old paintings of a Reformed theologian like Charles Hodge or, you know, maybe Jonathan Edwards,
00:32:58.600
you're going to see their collar popped with a scarf around their neck.
00:33:02.600
And that wasn't something that everybody did. That was something that clergy did.
00:33:07.120
And on Sundays, those pastors would add to those collars what's called preaching tabs.
00:33:13.880
Now, again, these preaching tabs are two ribbons that hang down to the left and the right.
00:33:18.060
and academics wore them at that time and they would represent
00:33:22.060
Old Testament, New Testament or law and grace. So that was the
00:33:29.880
preach in what is called vestments. Some, I would say most
00:33:34.080
you know, Orthodox Presbyterian churches, if you go to
00:33:37.920
like an OPC, Prescott Presbyterian, I don't know what Charlie preaches
00:33:41.940
in, but there are lots of men that wear vestments, a full black gown
00:33:48.500
You might see pictures of Martin Lloyd-Jones, the great doctor of theology.
00:33:52.980
He's wearing his Genevan robe when he preached in Europe.
00:33:59.620
And many of you guys have been to my house, and you've seen in my office on my wall,
00:34:04.820
It's called Appointing Elders at a Scottish Kirk.
00:34:06.960
And it's a Presbyterian painting from the 1800s.
00:34:09.060
And it shows this old man who's an elder at the church.
00:34:12.480
and he's got his hands up and his robes flowing and he's got his preaching tabs on.
00:34:16.800
That was the common reality in the America that we lived in 100, 150 years ago.
00:34:26.280
Now, during the 1800s, the style for men to leave their collars up shifted
00:34:36.100
So the cravat was still wrapped there around the neck,
00:34:39.560
but they folded the collars down, leaving a little white piece in between the middle of
00:34:44.100
their collar. And that was the way that they would identify themselves as clergy. And that is how we
00:34:50.400
get the collar that we have today. Mine is essentially just a more developed expression
00:34:55.360
of the cravat. It's kind of emerged into a more functional reality. So what I want to say is that
00:35:04.080
clerical dress did not originate from Roman Catholicism by any means. Not by the Roman
00:35:08.920
catholicism that we think about today um nor was it this particular clerical collar an invention
00:35:15.340
of rome it was a total reformed presbyterian thing now clergy dress has been um a long-standing
00:35:25.780
tradition uh backed i think with biblical principles it's it's a you know i think a
00:35:32.160
modest adaptation. And I think it's, again, a helpful tool for public ministry. Now, the final
00:35:39.580
reason Protestants struggle with pastoral identification is because they can't find it
00:35:45.200
directly prescribed in Scripture. It's not in Scripture. So why are we doing it, right? That
00:35:52.340
is a very common thing and leads to a whole bunch of really weird things, okay? You might have been
00:35:59.540
a part of, you know, exclusive psalmody, no instruments group. It's a real group in the
00:36:07.580
church where they think singing the doxology is sinful because it doesn't say to sing things like
00:36:17.700
that. You're only allowed to sing hymns, which they would interpret as actually psalms. And you
00:36:24.900
can only sing psalms and you cannot use any instruments because it's not commanded in
00:36:28.940
scripture to use any instruments. The piano is sinful, right? So that is the kind of other end
00:36:34.980
of that spectrum. Now, there are two standards in the church. There's what's called the regulative
00:36:41.580
principle of worship, which states that we can only do what scripture prescribes. And then there's
00:36:48.740
the normative principle of worship, which says that we can do anything that scripture doesn't
00:36:55.900
condemn now i think both extremes are really dangerous okay one extreme is that you just end
00:37:02.940
up in a very strange legalistic we can only if it's not in there we can't do it which really
00:37:09.560
makes you struggle because the the church doesn't ever mention buildings or the scriptures don't
00:37:13.900
ever mention buildings or chairs or any of that stuff you can go down a very weird track the other
00:37:20.100
side is that well hey scripture doesn't condemn us from dancing around and and doing different
00:37:25.040
things in the worship service or wearing these big funny hats and so let's do that too so you
00:37:31.020
have two ditches on either side of these principles of worship now king's way i would say holds
00:37:37.620
generally more to a regulative principle of worship meaning that we want to anchor everything
00:37:41.580
we do in scripture or at least biblical principles i might not be able to give you a direct passage
00:37:46.880
of scripture that says do this but i can from the scriptures argue for the logic or the systematic
00:37:58.060
Now, I want to give you two passages of Scripture, I think, that help us
00:38:04.520
12, and it says, all things are lawful for me, but not all things are
00:38:12.660
We can do actually all things. We won't be condemned
00:38:16.600
under the law for those things, but is it helpful?
00:38:20.200
Because there's a lot of things that we do in the church that aren't that helpful.
00:38:23.180
In fact, they're actually detracting from the gospel.
00:38:30.620
For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them.
00:38:36.840
I have become all things to all people, that by all means, I might save some.
00:38:43.160
Do you know that Timothy did not have to get circumcised as a full-grown man?
00:38:52.200
Because he thought that by all, you know, I will become all things to all people that I might save some.
0.98
00:38:57.260
And that an uncircumcised man talking to a bunch of Jews might not actually be successful in his evangelistic efforts.
0.97
00:39:03.920
So he was willing to make a modification because all things are lawful.
0.97
00:39:07.800
And in fact, that thing was particularly helpful in that time period.
00:39:12.160
So, can we make modifications to ourselves if they're helpful and defensible by Scripture?
00:39:24.000
And so, I believe the clerical caller is helpful.
00:39:28.900
In fact, I really hope you guys believe that it's helpful.
00:39:34.280
I believe it's proven to be historically fruitful and effective.
00:39:41.720
I believe it communicates what it's intended to communicate, which is pastoral authority.
00:39:46.520
Now, we have all types of distortions, right?
1.00
00:39:49.240
You have the Roman Catholics that are out there wearing this.
0.88
00:39:51.680
You have Lutherans, which again, you know, are Reformed Protestants wearing it.
00:39:58.520
You have the Lesbitarians wearing it, right?
0.98
00:40:01.500
You have all types of weird things going on that are out there.
00:40:09.000
The frustrating part is the faithful pastors in America aren't wearing it.
00:40:12.820
so now you have the enemy making identifications of all of these other people and not actually
00:40:20.900
much of the reform protestant gospel focused clergy that exists in america and so i really
00:40:28.340
do think that this is something one because it was started by protestants we should actually be
00:40:34.800
fighting to get back and again not one of us would feel any uncomfort about this if we were just a
00:40:42.800
hundred years ago. And so restoring structure is very, very helpful for this generation.
00:40:52.820
We need to be reminded of basic truths. And at the end of the day,
00:41:00.660
it's not a question of whether I will be identified as something. It's how I will be
00:41:06.780
identified. There's no neutrality in me being identified. I'm going to be identified as
00:41:11.620
something. You are going to be identified as something. Wearing a suit and tie, again, I think
00:41:18.120
it's a respectable attire, but it associates me with the business and corporate world.
00:41:23.980
I remember walking in here and I see guests and I'd have to tell them that I'm the pastor.
00:41:30.080
That's weird. And because they can't identify me. Go into any other institution and that is never
00:41:37.400
going to be the case go to the military and try to for a second not know who you're talking to
00:41:43.760
if you know the military ranks first thing you do is go you're looking at their chest you're
00:41:48.580
looking at their arms like you're identifying quickly who they are what the rank is how you
00:41:52.980
should approach them all of that right there it's very helpful um now personally i also dislike
00:41:59.560
the church being associated with the business we're not a business we're a church
00:42:05.920
i don't like the senior pastor being viewed as the ceo i'm not a ceo i'm a pastor i have a
00:42:14.720
completely different calling than a businessman and again i believe the clerical caller helps
00:42:20.280
distinguish that in a world that has turned the church into a business
00:42:24.260
now one brief point as i close some of you might be wondering
00:42:38.440
We've added kneeling, we've added raising our hands
00:42:42.860
like a Roman Catholic, feels like we're on our way to the Vatican, right?
00:42:47.680
Okay, think about these things. Where are the brakes?
0.89
00:42:56.600
But there's a long gap between restoring Protestant Christianity in America and flopping into Rome.
00:43:07.440
We have just deconstructed a really beautiful structure of Protestant Christianity for so many decades now that even restoring back a little bit of order feels strange to us.
00:43:21.920
again you know the average christian walks in here and kneels down and sees me wearing a collar
00:43:28.680
they're going to go tell all of their baptist friends about this you know you come from alabama
00:43:32.800
you go wow that was that was something else no the reality is is that we have a lot of work to
00:43:39.420
do in the church and i promise you and assure you that everything we do at this church will be
00:43:46.940
within the bounds of the Westminster Confession
00:44:15.220
starting here, to our families, to our city, and by God's grace, we'll see something beautiful.
00:44:22.400
Amen? Amen. Let's pray. Father, we thank you, Lord, for the work that you're doing in the
00:44:30.180
restoration of your church, bringing order. Lord, we know that you are a God of order,
00:44:36.580
and we know that it's either Christ or chaos. And Lord, we ask that you would take these small
00:44:44.460
elements of our worship, and you would help reform us back to goodness and scripture and truth.
00:44:51.200
Lord, we pray that you would have our church to be an example to other churches, to other pastors,
00:44:57.300
to other congregations, that we might be faithful. Lord, but we also ask to keep us humble,
00:45:05.020
to keep us faithful, and that you would continue to fulfill your work in us and through us here