Video Transcript: Course Introduction

Praise the Lord. My name is David Wentz, and it is my joy and privilege to  welcome you to this course in practical ministry. Let's open with prayer, Lord  God. We thank you that you are in charge of all of this. We thank you for this  incredible opportunity. We thank you for the technology that makes it available.  We thank you for the donors that make these programs available for those  around the world who feel called to minister in your kingdom and in your church, we pray that over the course of these next 36 lectures, that you would be  glorified, that You would help each one who is here, because we know that none are here by accident. Each one is here by your calling, and we pray that each  one would hear and retain and learn and be able to put into practice the  particular skills and understandings that you have for them in their role in your  kingdom. Thank you, Lord. We invite you to be in charge of all of it in Jesus  name, Amen. Praise the Lord. I'd like to start with a passage from scripture, if I  can work these these machines, there we are. This is my first time doing  something like this. So bear with me, if you will. Ephesians 4:11-13. Now these  are the gifts Christ gave to the church, the apostles, the prophets, the  evangelists and the pastors and teachers, their responsibility is to equip God's  people to do his work and build up the church, the Body of Christ. This will  continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God's Son, that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete  standard of Christ. I want to start off by talking about a difference that I will be  using in this course, or trying to remember to use between the words pastor and the words minister. Every Christian has a ministry. So I'm not going to refer to  every Christian as a minister, because that would just be confusing and too  wide. Every Christian has a ministry, and every Christian should be involved in a ministry. I'm going to use minister to refer to anyone who devotes all or part of  his or her time to serving a church or a ministry in some way paid or volunteer.  In other words, because you are watching this that's you, or you are planning for it to be you, and thank you for answering that call or that potential call, a pastor  is one kind of Minister, if we go back to that passage from Ephesians, the gifts  that Jesus gave to the church are various forms of ministers, apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers. They are all ministers. Pastor is one of those. So  I'm going to use the word pastor to refer to the person in charge of a local  church, and I'll probably mix them up at times. So if I say Pastor when I meant  minister, and if I say Minister when I meant pastor, please bear with me and  understand what I am trying to say. The responsibility is to equip God's people to do his work and build up the church, the Body of Christ. This will continue until  we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God's Son, that we will  be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.  I paraphrase that the way that you see there on the screen right now. Your job,  the job of all of the ministries, individually and collectively together. Is to equip  God's people, to do God's work until they resemble God's Son. The job of the 

Minister is not to do all of God's work. What the minister does is part of God's  work. What the person going to school or the person teaching school, or the  person working a job, or the person staying home, taking care of the kids, or all  of those things, those can also be God's work, and all of those people are  required to do the kind of work that God has called us into. So the job of the  Minister is to equip God's people to do God's work and to continue doing God's  work until they resemble God's Son, because the way we become like Jesus is  to act like Jesus, to do the things that Jesus did. This course, in specific, is  about options and the best practices for being a pastor and leading a church. So most of what I'll talk about will be ministry skills that apply to ministers of all  kinds. Much of it will apply also to other volunteer organizations and businesses. Some of it will apply mainly to pastors in charge of churches, and for those  parts, if that's not you, if you're not a pastor in charge of a church right now, and  even if you never expect to be. Please listen and learn so that you will know  best how to pray for and how to help your pastor. Because, my goodness,  pastors need a lot of prayer and a lot of help, and who knows, maybe someday  God might call you to be a pastor in charge of the church. Now I want to tell you, just so that you will be aware if you start noticing things. These 36 lectures are  being recorded over the course of four days. So I'm going to be doing at least  nine lectures every day, so I'm starting off fresh here this morning, but by the  time we get to lecture seven or eight or nine, if I'm dragging, that's why. And as a matter of fact, I'm going to ask you to pray for the recording of these lectures.  Somebody says, Well, how can we do that, you already recorded them. I know,  but you know what? I'm not quite sure how prayer works with a God who exists  outside of time. He invented time, and he's outside of time, and so I'm not  convinced that your prayers, he can't take those and bring them back and apply  them to this session. So I'm going to count on that anyway. So I invite you to  pray for me. Thank you, goals of the course I forgot to get off of that. Okay, let's  see. There we are. I didn't mean to keep that up all that time. So anyway, here  we are, goals of the course. By the end of this course, you should be able to  understand God's purpose for the church. Understand what a pastor does,  understand what it takes to be a pastor, know whether or not you're called to be  a pastor, because pastoring is wonderful, but it's not a bed of roses, and your  common piece of advice to people who feel like they are called to be a pastor of  a church is, if you can do anything else, do it. In other words, only be a pastor if  you know God is calling you to that, or if you feel pretty strongly that he is  because it is hard work. So know whether you're called to be a pastor.  Understand some of the ways that different churches and denominations do  things and why? I'm not going to be trying and tell you how to do things. I'm  going to try and give you options and best practices that I've discovered for  some of the kinds of things that all pastors have to do. But if you are part of a  denomination or an organization or an association or a tradition. I'm hoping that 

what I will be teaching here will contribute to that and fit into that and and if it  doesn't, then you need to be really praying about I would say the default is go  with your tradition. And what you're if you have superiors, what they say. So,  who am I to be teaching a course like this? Well, I was saved. I let me say this. I  grew up in the church, in the Episcopal Church, which is the American version of the Anglican Church, or Church of England. When I was about 18, I had a  salvation experience where I really realized what all the beautiful liturgical  language of the Episcopal Church had been talking about where I first heard it  said in words that I can understand, that I needed to put my faith in Jesus Christ, and not in church, and not in my own goodness and not in anything else, but to  trust and believe in Jesus Christ, asked Him to come into my heart and be my  Savior and Lord and take over. And I remember when that happened. I was at a, actually a interdenominational Christian summer camp called Young Life, if  you're familiar with that. And there was one evening when we were given a  salvation message and then sent out to be by ourselves for 20 minutes and pray and think, what are we going to do about it? And I thought, Lord, I grew up in the church. I believe in you, but if there's more of you, I want it. And if there's more  of me to give you, I want you to have it at that time, the most important thing in  my life was my saxophone. I played saxophone, and I loved saxophone, and I  told, God, Lord, if you want it, I will dig a hole in the ground and put my  saxophone in it and cover it over with dirt and bury it, I'm willing. That was the  biggest sacrifice I could think of at that time, as an 18 year old boy. God didn't  ask me to do that, and I appreciate it, but it was giving him all of me, and I have  never regretted that. I came home from that camp and I ran into some friends  who invited me to a meeting, a conference. And it was I was at this point, boy, if  it's more about Jesus, I want to learn it. And I went, and this turned out to be a  full gospel businessman's meeting, a charismatic meeting, and I had there a  charismatic experience of receiving what they called the baptism of the Holy  Spirit was speaking in tongues. I'm not trying to push it. If that's not your  experience, that's fine. I am just saying this is part of who I am, and just passing  on what works for me. It has been an important part of my life. But I am happy to say I am great friends with many colleagues who have not had that experience,  and some who don't even believe in it. And so again, I believe it's biblical. It  helps me. I leave it with you, between you and God. If your tradition doesn't  believe in this I Thessalonians 5:21, says, Test everything. Hold fast to what is  good. Test everything. Hold on to what's good. Let the rest of it go. I heard an  old country preacher say, be as smart as an old cow, swallow the grass and spit  out the sticks. So that's basically what's going on. Anything in here that I say that doesn't quite go down with you. Don't throw out everything because of that. Hold fast to what is good. All right. Education. I have a bachelor's degree in systems  engineering from the University of Virginia. I was in that career just for a couple  of years when the Lord really called me into ministry, I went to seminary at a 

charismatic seminary, Melodyland School of Theology in Southern California,  and I received a master of divinity degree there. I felt called into the United  Methodist Church. Many of the people at that seminary were non  denominational. Professors were from all different kinds of denominations. I felt  that God was calling me to be in a denomination, and that it was the United  Methodist Church, because. That seemed at the time to be the most open and  free to allow me to preach the kinds of things that God wanted me to preach,  and also because for me personally, the idea of being appointed by a bishop  instead of hired by a church meant that I wouldn't be always subconsciously  wondering about, how's the congregation going to accept this sermon? Are they  going to fire me when I say this? That's just my personality. I'm not saying  anything about I know many, many wonderful pastors who work in the other  kinds of denominations that are call system and so on. But just telling you, at  this point, my own history received that Master of Divinity degree was appointed  to a church back in Maryland, My native state in the United States, appointed to  a church there, in the United Methodist Church, and then was told, Oh, by the  way, your degree is no good. And so my seminary that I had attended in  California was not on the approved list of The United Methodist Church. So I  was able to transfer two of the three years worth of work into a United Methodist Seminary in Washington, DC, Wesley Theological Seminary, and received  another master of divinity there. Some years later, I received a Doctor of Ministry degree from Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky, which is a an evangelical Wesleyan seminary. So I have kind of a wide background of education. I've  attended all kinds of churches, from communes to Roman Catholic Church to  Baptist to Pentecostal to all kinds of churches. And I have served prospect and  Marvin, a two church, country charge, faith. I have to add them up in my head,  from faith, I went to magazine to mount oak to Trinity. Then I retired, and I came  to move to Missouri and took on a part time little small town church. So I've  served those churches. Some of them were pretty big, some of them were pretty small. Some were in the city, some were in the country, some were in the  suburbs. Some were rich, some were poor. I have a wide variety of experience  and education, 38 years in the ministry, so I think that I have some experience  that I can pass on with you. Personally, I live in Missouri. The little blue dot there is the Ozark Mountains area. The Ozark area very rural in Missouri, in the  middle of the United States. And I am married to Paula. This is our land, kind of,  what a piece of near where we live. And that's Paula. I have we together. Have  five kids, 14 grandchildren. The kids are in various places around the United  States, and one's in another country and serving the Lord, loving the Lord, and  we are very proud of them. This course comes about because of, Oh, I forgot to  get it out so I can show you. Here we are because of this book, pastoring the  nuts and bolts. I wrote this in response to a request from some pastors in  Turkey, I was invited to go there and do some workshops for them. And they I 

talked about a number of things, but the things they really wanted to hear about, what they asked me to write down and give them their notes was the practical  bits about operating a church and being a pastor. So I wrote this with that in  mind, intentionally trying to be what you might call pan denominational and  cross theological. In other words. I don't try and tell you this is how you have to  do it, because this is what my denomination says, or what my theology says. I  am historically orthodox in my theology and my Christian theology, but I'm not  trying to tell you you have to believe this particular interpretation of that  particular verse, it's options and best practices. The meaning of nuts and bolts.  Some people who are not from North America, not native English speakers, may be confused by the phrase nuts and bolts and and that basically just means the  little details that hold everything together, that make all of it work. It's kind of  funny when I first published this and put out the notice about it, when people  saw it on their phones, it cut off the bottom, and all it said was pastoring the  nuts. And now again, in North America, the nuts is a phrase meaning somebody  is kind of crazy, so pastoring the nuts, I got a lot of laughs out of that, I have an  application guide that goes along with it, and if you follow through the application guide, I don't know whether that's going to be part of this course, but it has  specific questions and ways to apply what you will be learning in the book or in  the course to your specific situation, so that if you go through that, you'll wind up with a custom made action plan for your church. God has used this in amazing  ways. When I first wrote it, I put it out online, digitally, sent it to people asking for  their comments, and a young pastor in Kenya, Africa got hold of it and asked me if he could teach it to his fellow pastors. And I said, of course. And he started  teaching it from his telephone. He had downloaded it on his telephone, and he  would read it, and then he would translate it into Swahili, just on the fly. And  wound up putting together a 53 hour course and giving people certificates, and  then opening a Bible college. He got a lot of other courses and everything. And  from there, it began going digitally to other pastors in other countries. I got  people saying, May I translate this? It's been translated by volunteers into the  Chichewa language of Africa, into French, into Urdu, into Swahili now, and there  are others going so it's amazing to me how God has used that. Then I got  somebody that said there are a lot of these pastors here who work in poor rural  areas who can't even afford a telephone. They can't download it, they can't use  a digital copy because they don't have a telephone. Can we get it printed here?  So I formed a nonprofit called doing Christianity, incorporated that pays for  printing and distribution under the oversight of local pastors. So we're printing in  Eldoret, Kenya, and we're printing in Pakistan and printing in various other  places. And the book is distributed there to pastors that don't have the ability to  use it, so you can find a lot more about that kind of thing on my website.  pastordavidwentz.com, or my Facebook page. Pastor David Wentz, I'm going to  ask you also for prayers about that, for the distribution of the book, for to get to 

the right people, for ongoing translations, for fundraising to make it possible. And if you would like to get a digital copy, it's available in print on Amazon in various  countries and also in India through Omega book world in Bangalore. All right,  moving on the course, the lectures and the readings. Now, as I understand it,  the book, the readings for each lecture from the book Will be made available to  you through the same means that you're watching the lectures, so you'll be able  to read them on your phone or or whatever. If you want a hard copy, you can  certainly buy that the lectures in the book will often cover different materials, so  you need both. I want to mention that the quoted passages in the slides will be  the New Living Translation, unless otherwise indicated. I use different versions  for different things. New Living is a very readable, easily understood version. If  you really want to get down into nitty gritty comparing of verse by verse Bible  stuff, you might want to go with the New American Standard or English Standard Version, various others. And by the way, if you're in Africa and can get it, or even if you're not in Africa, but especially if you're in Africa, there's a study Bible called the Africa Study Bible. It's in English using the new language, new living  translation, text but has tremendous study notes by African pastors and  theologians from all denominations in all parts of the continent. It's an amazing  resource, and I recommend that some of the points in the course, especially the  cartoons that will be coming out, are from the context of American mainline  churches. So if something doesn't apply to your setting, please bear with me. I  tried my best to eliminate cultural and denominational assumptions and make  these thoughts universal. If you have somehow gotten the idea that you should  try to make your church like the American mainline church, maybe some of the  cartoons will help you get over that. And finally, I am looking forward to meeting  you in Heaven and hearing about how all of this works. And in the meantime, if  you want to contact me, email me, Facebook message me is probably the  easiest way you can find me on Facebook. At Pastor David Wentz and send me  a Facebook message. Tell me you saw the course, tell me about yourself, what  you're doing. I'd love to hear from you. So let's say another closing prayer, and  that'll be it for today. Thank you, Lord, for Your Grace, your blessing, your love.  Thank you for this opportunity. Be with us now in Jesus name and help us carry  it out to your glory. Amen You.