(By: Eddie Goodwin)

I have the privilege this weekend of traveling with Dr. Sam Waldron to The Reformed Pastor conference in Durham, NC.  This is an annual event hosted by Springs of Life Church in Durham.  This year’s speakers are Andy Davies, Sam Waldron and Nathan Finn.  Here is a wonderful quote from the conference web page to whet your appetite!

 

When many a modern day pastor has become an entertainer, comedian, esteem builder and/or CEO, it is time to call on the church to go back to the Scriptures and be reminded of the qualifications and roles God has established for the high office of pastor.

 

In his book “Working the Angles”, Eugene Peterson writes: “American pastors are abandoning their posts, left and right, and at an alarming rate. They are not leaving their churches and getting other jobs. Congregations still pay their salaries. Their names remain on the church stationary and they continue to appear in pulpits on Sundays. But they are abandoning their posts, their calling. They have gone whoring after other gods. They talk of images and statistics. They drop names. They discuss influence and status. Matters of God and the soul and Scripture are not grist for their mills. The pastors of America have metamorphosed into a company of shopkeepers, and the shops they keep are churches. They are preoccupied with shopkeeper’s concerns—how to keep the customers happy, how to lure customers away from competitors down the street, how to package the goods so that the customers will lay out more money. The strategies of the fast-food franchise occupy the waking minds of these entrepreneurs; while asleep they dream of the kind of success that will get the attention of journalists…What they do with their time under the guise of pastoral ministry hasn’t the remotest connection with what the church’s pastors have done for most of twenty centuries.”

 

When we speak of the term “Reformed” pastor we speak of a pastor whose life, teaching and ministry conforms to the Word of God alone as the only standard for faith and practice. In this conference we will plumb God’s Word and church history to discover what a “Reformed” pastor looks like and his vital importance to the local church today.