Ministry, Marriage, Mistakes by Mark Driscoll

Session 7
Thursday AM
Mark Driscoll: Mars Hill Church Planting Conference

There are a lot of things we do not know about pastors and their marriages. A lot of them have poor marriages.
The wife cannot qualify you for ministry, but she can disqualify you.

Story: after having lunch with Rick Warren, Mark learns that out of tons of young pastors that Rick has been praying for, only a few are still faithful to their wives and to their calling.

The most important day of your marriage is your last day of your marriage, not your wedding day. You need to be constantly sowing to a successful last day.

Adam and Eve didn’t even get attacked by the devil until they were married and God put a call on their lives.

When you stop repenting and stop calling others to repent, the sin destroys you or you end up changing your theology to justify what you are doing. This always ends badly.
What we don’t need are more statistics.

1 Timothy 3 — Description of a Pastor

Singleness is under a cultural condition when there was persecution coming. Jesus was single, but we’re not Jesus. It would be very difficult for Jesus to be equally yoked. If God is going to call us to singleness, it would be a culture where we could expect martyrdom. We live in a culture where marriage is the issue: from gay marriage to divorce, marriage becomes the epicenter of the culture we create. In the people we lead, they will model after our marriage.

The first priority of a pastor: to be devoted to Christ and live a lifestyle worth of the calling we have received.
The second priority: to be devoted as a husband to your wife
The third priority: to raise up Godly children and be a parent to them
The fourth priority: to lead a ministry that honors God

Ministry is the fourth priority of a pastor and should only be our focus after that of our relationship with God, our relationship with our wives, and then our relationship with our children.
God, as the Head of our homes, has given us one of His choice daughters as a wife. Would he be pleased with our we are treating His daughter?

We don’t need more church planters; we need more Godly men. If we have more Godly men, then we’d have more successful church planters.
Our priorities as a man: 1.) Christian 2.) Husband 3.) Father 4.) Pastor
We cannot substitute our responsibilities as a husband or a father in order to be a pastor. Our responsibilities as a pastor should be attained to after we serve the needs of our wife and our children.

The husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. What it does not say is that the man is over the woman, but that the man sacrificially loves his wife the way Christ loves the church.

The wife is to be the helper, not the enabler, but a helpmate to the husband. Your wife is not meant to be free staff for the church. Her first priority is to be a a Christian, then a wife, then a mother, and finally a support to the ministry.

Tip for church planters: have elders and counsel from people outside of your own church who can give you direction and correction. When the elders of a new church plant are young and inexperienced, it is harder to get proper direction and wise counsel if they already work in the church and have a more narrow view than someone outside the church who can work on the church.