Conclusion
Chapter 14: Multiplying Men: Training and Deploying Gospel Ministers
Jon M. Dennis
The theme for this volume in honor of Kent Hughes is taken from 2 Timothy 4:2: "Preach the word." Every preacher knows the glory of those words. They resonate in the marrow of our bones. To preach the word - it is the divine privilege of a pastor. It is the thing to which the apostle Paul - and Kent Hughes as well - gave his life. In a day and age when preaching God's Word is often treated as irrelevant, marginal, or unimportant, the voice of the apostle Paul rings out with urgency to restore the dignity to the preaching of God's Word that it deserves.
"Preach the word," writes the apostle Paul. As he writes, Paul looks back over the history of his life with a sense of eternal finality and upward to the presence of God and of Jesus Christ. Paul charges Timothy to preach the Word, not in view of the world, not in view even of the lost, but in view of God the Father and Jesus Christ who will judge the living and the dead. Paul writes, in a sense, on the brink of eternity sensing what Kent, now entering a new phase of gospel ministry, must sense as well: that he has poured out his life as a drink offering for the gospel.
This essay is written to examine 2 Timothy 2:2 as a model and call to train and deploy gospel ministers. It is not intended to be scholarly, but pastoral - written from a pastor's heart to the church and to the next generation of pastors and church planters. I intend to look closely at this single verse and its context and draw out eight principles for training and deploying gospel workers.
The context of 2 Timothy is well known. Paul writes to Timothy in the last stage of his life while imprisoned, most likely in Rome. Though Paul expects to live for a bit longer (he asks Timothy to come to him in 4:9), he certainly writes as a man who knows he is in the final phase of life. He writes, in fact, as if his life is already ebbing away: "For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith" (2 Tim. 4:6-7).
Paul envisions his life as if it is nearly over. He writes as if he is in the presence of God already - yet with his feet placed firmly on the earth. One senses that Paul balances on the edge of eternity. What is on his heart and mind? What are Paul's last thoughts in this final stage of life and ministry? As Paul sees the finish line of his ministry, his life-ending thoughts are upon the critical importance of the preservation of the gospel. The gospel is what he has lived and suffered for.
He writes, "I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom." In other words, the apostle Paul writes to Timothy with a blood-earnest intensity and with the vividness of eternal realities before him.
So let us take this one verse from the letter and meditate on its urgent call for training of others for gospel ministry. From this single phrase, familiar as it is, we can draw a number of principles for training and deploying men into ministry:166 "and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also" (2 Tim. 2:2).
Entrusting the Gospel with Care
The first thing we see when we look closely at 2 Timothy 2:2 is the care that Paul envisions that the training and deploying of ministers must take. The word Paul chooses when he commands Timothy to multiply men for gospel ministry is the word "entrust."
The word literally means to "entrust for safekeeping, give over . . . commend" or "to deposit, commit to one's charge."167 It is the same word, for instance, that Jesus uses when he cries out to the Father on the cross, saying, "Into your hands I commit my spirit" (Luke 23:46). At the desolation of the cross, the Son knows the one safe place for his spirit is the Father's hands. Jesus uses the word elsewhere in a parable to emphasize faithful stewardship. He says, "To whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more" (Luke 12:48). For Paul the gospel is not merely a message, but a deposit or trust given to him.
So it is that the apostle Paul, looking over the span of his life, clings to the necessity of the gospel's being instilled or deposited in others with great care and intentionality. The gospel must not die with him! One can almost sense the hushed breath of holy presence when Paul speaks of transmitting the gospel to the next generation. For Paul the gospel message is a holy treasure committed by none other than God to his charge.
Part of the reason Paul thinks of the gospel as something so valuable to entrust to others is that God himself had first entrusted the gospel to Paul. Earlier in 2 Timothy Paul wrote, "But I am not ashamed (of suffering for the gospel) for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that Day what has been entrusted to me" (1:12). The gospel is the divine treasure that God directly entrusted to Paul. God placed the message in Paul's possession to guard in God's strength, not his own. How long? How long is Paul to guard the gospel in God's strength? Verse 12 says, "Until that Day." "That day" is the eschatological return of Jesus Christ to reward his saints for their labor. Later he writes, "Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing" (4:8).
So the gospel is a treasure to guard - in God's strength. This is not just true for Paul, but for Timothy too. If God gave the message to Paul, Paul also deposits the same gift, the same gospel, with Timothy to guard in the strength of the Spirit. Paul writes, "By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you" (2 Tim. 1:14). So we see the beginning of a chain of entrusting - from God to Paul to Timothy. Each is participating in guarding the gospel.
What we must not lose sight of in the training of others is a simple truth: The gospel is a treasure. It is a possession of the highest value. It is a message to be cherished. It is a responsibility, a privileged possession, a trust. If we guard our earthly possessions, invest them in banks and put them under lock and key - it is no wonder that we can guard the gospel only in God's strength.
Paul, as he sees his own life receding from him, thinks about what is most important. What will he leave behind? What will be his legacy? What will he entrust to others? Only that which was entrusted to him. This he will entrust to others.
So it is for us in our day. As we watch Kent make his way to the finish line of his local ministry - the urgency of entrusting the gospel to others is heightened.
What a high calling for the pastor and for all of God's people! God has given the church and the pastor a coin of infinite value. Martyn Lloyd-Jones in his classic book Preaching and Preachers has written, "The moment we realize man's true need and see the only answer, it becomes clear that only those who are in possession of this understanding can impart this message to those who lack it."168 We have the gospel! Lloyd-Jones goes on to emphasize the importance of preachers. "The preacher alone is the one who can do this. He is the only one who is in a position to deal with the greatest need of the world."169 Both the church and preachers in particular have a great responsibility to pass on the gospel.
Could anything be more valuable than the message of life and death, the message of salvation? When we see the care with which Paul speaks of the gospel it motivates us to also pass on the gospel with the same care. If the financial investors of our day, Goldman Sachs and others, take such care with the deposits they receive, how much greater care must the pastor and the church take with the coins of the priceless gospel? We will never multiply men as we might until we feel, as Paul certainly did as he finished his ministry, the exceeding eternal value of what has been entrusted to us.
Passing on the Apostolic Message
Related to the value of the gospel in training gospel workers, we must also think about its content. Notice that when Paul tells Timothy what is to be passed on, he speaks of the gospel itself - the apostolic message. Paul writes, "What you have heard from me . . . entrust to faithful men." What Paul wants transferred is not merely his lifestyle or personality, it was Paul's teaching, it was content, it was the message that Timothy had heard Paul preach so many times. Timothy was not at liberty to simply invent a gospel or to change Paul's. He was constrained to "rightly handling the word of truth" (2:15). Paul emphasizes the centrality of the gospel a few verses earlier in 2 Timothy 2:8 where he writes, "Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel." As Paul felt his life ebbing away and sensed the awe of Christ as eternal judge, his emphasis was on the transference of the gospel itself.
So, let us train men to preach the gospel. It is the gospel centered on Jesus - his life and his work - that saves the lost; it is the gospel centered on Jesus Christ that strengthens the church. Paul was inflamed with the gospel. He could preach nothing else. He awoke thinking about it, preached it during the day, and sometimes went far into the night heralding it.
The men that our churches and seminaries train for gospel ministry must know all of the Scriptures, the facts and details, from Genesis to Revelation - but they must know how it all centers on the person and work of Jesus Christ. We can preach in a way that does not remember Jesus Christ risen from the dead as preached in Paul's gospel, and we must train our men to avoid it. Jesus himself taught the disciples after the resurrection how everything in the Law and Prophets and Psalms were fulfilled in himself (Luke 24:44).
Charles Spurgeon recounts a moment when someone complained that he had gone to hear a preacher the previous Sunday who had not preached Christ. In response another remarked that "perhaps it was not the due season." Spurgeon then writes, "But, my brethren, the due season for preaching Christ is every time you preach. God's children are always hungry and no bread will satisfy them but that which comes down from heaven."170
Charles Simeon's aim was to preach in such a way as to "humble the sinner, exalt the savior and to promote holiness."171 Lloyd-Jones called this giving the listener a sense of God. He wrote, "Preaching is theology coming through a man who is on fire."172 "What is the chief end of preaching? I like to think it is this. It is to give men and women a sense of God and his presence. . . . I can forgive the preacher almost anything if he gives me a sense of God, if he gives me something for my soul . . . if he gives me some dim glimpse of the majesty and the glory of God, the love of Christ my Savior, and the magnificence of the gospel."173 This must be our aim in our training - to give a sense of the majesty of God and the magnificence of the gospel. Paul's message was something alive, dynamic - not static, not inconsequential. Paul's message stirred cities, shook homes. This is what he wanted Timothy to transfer: the power and content of his message.
As Nehemiah wept upon hearing that the wall of Jerusalem was broken down, so should we also weep to see neighborhoods or churches without gospel witness in them, or churches that have turned to politics or psychology rather than the gospel-centered preaching of Jesus Christ. Gospel centered expository preaching is uncovering the raw glory of God from a particular passage and showing how it relates to Christ.
If we want to fulfill a ministry of gospel multiplication, then gospel-centered content in our training is critical. As Paul nears the finish line of ministry and remembers the turning away from the gospel in Asia and foresees the hardness of days to come for Timothy, it is his own words that he emphasizes must be passed on. The apostolic message of the gospel is at the heart of multiplication.
There are so many things that might be multiplied in the modern church today - good things even. We can multiply music, we can multiply churches, we can multiply services; we can multiply people, marriages, and ministries. But if we do not multiply the gospel-centered message of the apostles, then we are merely building monuments to ourselves. Teaching is what Paul wants passed on. He writes later, "You, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith" (2 Tim. 3:10). It is teaching he is concerned about. It is the message that Paul wants Timothy to guard with his life: "guard the good deposit entrusted to you."
It would be impossible to overstate how important the gospel is in Paul's understanding of multiplying men. It is the gospel for which Paul suffers (1:8, 12), the gospel for which Paul has been appointed an apostle and teacher (1:11). Elsewhere Paul emphasizes that the gospel is not only what we are saved by (1 Cor. 15:2; Rom. 1:16), but it is what is to be taught as of first importance. Why? Why Paul's finish-line emphasis on the gospel in multiplying ministers? Certainly one reason is that it is the gospel that the teachers of the day were turning away from. He writes of his opponents, "Their talk will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have swerved from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already happened" (2 Tim. 2:17-18). Earlier in the same letter, Paul wrote, "You are aware that all who are in Asia turned away from me, among whom are Phygelus and Hermogenes" (1:15).
As Paul nears his own execution he sees that much of his fruit has turned away. It is with a sense of abandonment that he writes later in the letter, "Do your best to come to me soon. For Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica. Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia. Luke alone is with me" (2 Tim. 4:9-11).
In the gospel, Paul tells us, God manifests "the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to life through the gospel." (2 Tim. 1:10) The gospel is our life, our salvation! The gospel is not a matter of secondary importance but of first importance (1 Cor. 15:3.) All of our efforts in deploying and training men for ministry must have at their very heart the gospel itself.
Entrusting the Gospel in a Context of Community
The next important principle from Paul's charge on multiplying the next generation of gospel leaders is the principle of training within the context of community. Paul writes, "What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men." In other words, when Paul entrusted the gospel to Timothy personally, it was not in isolation, merely in one-on-one contexts - though Paul did take Timothy with him when he traveled. Rather, Timothy learned the gospel message and how to do gospel ministry from Paul as Paul taught publicly in places like the synagogue in Corinth or the homes of believers like Titius Justus (Acts 18:5-8).
Jesus used the same principle. He sometimes trained the twelve disciples alone behind closed doors, but just as often Jesus taught them through his public ministry throughout all the cities and villages. For instance, the Sermon on the Mount was preached to his disciples with the crowds pressing in behind (Matt. 5:1). His classroom for training the disciples was on-the-job, the mobile environment of the dusty road, the noisy market, and the open plain. Even the training of his closest circle of disciples, Peter, James, and John, was done within the community of the other nine disciples.
In other words, Jesus trained in community. He would speak to individuals such as the woman at the well or Nicodemus. But he intentionally built a community of men around him. So it must be for us. Pastors need to train other younger men within the context of the local church. Our churches must build training communities within the local ministries that specifically recognize, challenge, and train younger men for gospel ministry.
One of the most beautiful and enduring marks of Kent Hughes's legacy is not merely the growth of the church he pastored or the many books that he wrote. It is the men that he trained - in the context of community. Many younger men have learned to preach by hearing him preach. Fathers and mothers had the gospel passed on to them in the presence of many witnesses. On November 19, 2006, I had the privilege of watching Kent "finish" twenty-seven years of pastoral ministry at a retirement celebration in an evening service at College Church. What struck me most was what happens when the gospel is faithfully preached in a single location for many years: the ministry of the gospel is multiplied, young pastors are trained and mentored for ministry, and hundreds of committed Christians are equipped for the gospel. God allowed Kent to create a ministry that reinforced dedication to the study of God's Word.
Put differently - as a principle - preaching is often more caught than taught. What will multiply godly expository preachers more than anything else? It will be men devoting themselves to pastoring and preaching in their local contexts and at the same time intentionally training younger preachers "in the presence of many witnesses." I thank God for the classroom instruction of my own seminary training. But I also thank God for the training I received within the context of the local church. As a freshman in high school, I watched my youth pastor preach and teach. But it was later, when he challenged me to join him in ministry by teaching junior high students, that I began to see how to do ministry.
Later, in seminary, I had a similar experience. As I finished up my coursework, I was on a dynamic pastoral staff. So I had the chance to wrestle through the theological issues from the classroom within the context of the community of a pastoral staff. More churches will be planted this way and more future pastors will be trained if we stay faithful to preaching and pastoring in our local contexts - all the while training up others.
For a number of years in the church in America there has been a strong emphasis on "discipling." Usually we think of discipling as meeting with someone one-on-one for Bible study. This is important. But it wasn't Jesus' or Paul's primary method. Yes, Paul brought Timothy and Barnabas with him. But their training was on the dusty roads of Palestine, learning as they went in community together. The main way that both Jesus and Paul multiplied preachers was in the context of community. They taught others to do ministry, to preach by equipping within the context of community.
A Vision of Multiplication
Related to training within the context of community is training for multiplication. In his little volume The Art of Prophesying William Perkins (1558-1602) has a chapter called "The Scarcity of True Ministers." There he argues that "good ministers are one in a thousand."174 He sees what Paul saw - the need for the gospel to be entrusted to others - the principle of multiplication. He writes, "If ministers are few in number, then all you can do is increase their number."175 He adds, "So, let every minister both in his teaching and his conversation work in such a way that he honours his calling, so that he may attract others to share his love for it." This is multiplication. We attract others to the ministry of the gospel in such a way that they share our love for it.
For Paul the increase of ministers comes by thinking "generationally." Often we only think about teaching or preaching the gospel to those who are directly in front of us. We counsel with an aim to help solve the immediate problem. We instruct in a classroom to instill biblical knowledge. But our teaching ends with the people before us.
Not so with Paul. Paul looks out on four generations in his charge to Timothy to train others:
-- generation 1: Paul
-- generation 2: Timothy
-- generation 3: Faithful men
-- generation 4: Others
He writes, "and what you [generation 2] have heard from me [generation 1] in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men [generation 3] who will be able to teach others also" (generation 4).
The principle of multiplication for several generations might be illustrated this way. I remember as a youth pastor complimenting a parent on how well I thought he was doing in raising his children. The parent turned and looked me straight in the eyes and said with all seriousness, "How do you know?" A little taken aback I said that I knew the parent's children. The parent remarked, "You won't know how good a parent I am for several more generations - until you see if my children's children are still praising God." The parent had the same generational view that Paul had. Our training of others - even our children - should look out far beyond this generation.
This is in fact what we find elsewhere in the Scriptures. In Psalm 78 we read that God "established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers [generation one] to teach to their children [generation two], that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn [generation three], and arise and tell them to their children [generation four]" (vv. 5-6).
We need a vision for multiplying the gospel beyond us! As we seek to train new pastors and plant new churches, we need the same view. When we come to the end of our ministries as Paul did, we want to be able to say that the gospel has not only been passed to us from our mentors, but from us to new churches and new gospel ministers beyond them. May our churches entrust the gospel in a way that multiplies throughout the world!
Entrusting the Gospel to Faithful Men
Critically related to the multiplication of the gospel for several generations is the matter of the character of those to whom we entrust the gospel. Robert Coleman makes this point in his classic work The Master Plan of Evangelism. He calls it the principle of selection. He writes, "It all started by Jesus calling a few men to follow Him. This revealed immediately the direction his evangelistic strategy would take. His concern was not with programs that would reach the multitudes, but with men whom the multitudes would follow . . . men were to be his Method of winning the world to God."176 Men of character - and men who would be able to invest their lives in others - were the ones that Jesus chose. Coleman writes later, "Jesus devoted most of his remaining life on earth to these few disciples. He literally staked His whole ministry upon them."177
Paul charges Timothy to select some - not all - to entrust with the ministry of gospel multiplication. So, whom to select for gospel ministry? The criterion for who is to be selected could not be more simple. It is "faithful men who will be able to teach others also." A faithful man is one who is "trustworthy, dependable."178
Paul himself gives faithfulness as the reason that God chose him for ministry. He writes, "I thank him who has given me strength because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, though formerly I was a blasphemer" (1 Tim. 1:12-13). Likewise, those whom Paul personally selected for ministry alongside him were often listed as faithful. Of Timothy he writes "That is why I sent you Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord" (1 Cor. 4:17). He speaks similarly of his associate Tychicus in Ephesians 6:21, calling him "Tychicus the beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord." In Colossians 4:9, he calls Onesimus "our faithful and beloved brother, who is one of you," and he calls Epaphras "our beloved fellow servant . . . a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf." (Col. 1:7) Such are the men to whom Paul personally entrusted the gospel.
Faithful men are those to whom we entrust the gospel. Of course whether someone is faithful is not always immediately clear. How do you know if someone is faithful? Phillip Jensen in Australia speaks of having a category of young men that he calls "Blokes Worth Watching." These are men to test against the descriptions of faithfulness in Titus 1:5-9 and 1 Timothy 3:1-7.
The gospel needs to be multiplied. Faithful men are the ones to whom we look to entrust it to.
The Role of Suffering for the Gospel
Related to the principles of community, multiplication, and faithfulness is what comes next in Paul's charge. The men we train must be ready to suffer as soldiers, athletes, and hardworking farmers. The next verse from Paul following the charge to Timothy to entrust the gospel to others is, "Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus." (2 Tim. 2:3) It is an apt image. Soldiers know that the discipline of warfare requires personal sacrifice. They understand how to enter the tough arena of boots and blood and mud. They commit themselves to physical discipline.
Soldiers are not the only image Paul presents for preparing to share in suffering. He also writes of the athlete and farmer. He writes in 2 Timothy 2:4-6, "No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. It is the hardworking farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops." All three are images of discipline with the final two promising reward. The soldier disciplines himself single-mindedly to obey the orders of his commanding officer. The athlete disciplines himself with self-control hoping to be crowned. And the farmer disciplines himself to work knowing that he will share in the harvest. So our curriculum must train men to be physically and spiritually disciplined.
The men whom Timothy trains need to be ready to suffer. Nearly the entirety of the letter trumpets this call to Timothy. In 1:8 Paul writes, "Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God." Later in his the famous and magisterial charge "to preach the word" Paul writes, "As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry" (2 Tim. 4:5).
What an amazing call! How easy it is for us to overlook the suffering in training. How often do we hear today the call to suffering? How often do we as Christians heed the words of Paul to embrace suffering? In the Western church in particular this is a very difficult reality to embrace. Yet, it is part and parcel of the call of Paul in 2 Timothy.
So, we ask the question: as we seek to multiply men - as we seek to take faithful men and train and deploy them for ministry - will suffering play a part? It isn't an easy virtue to weave into the seminary curriculum. But it certainly was a part of the apostle Paul's curriculum for Timothy. Share in suffering. Endure suffering.
Certainly Jesus expected suffering. Who can forget those piercing words of Christ's, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me" (Luke 9:23). If this is the call for every Christian, should it not be even more so the path for those we train to lead and teach others?
Let us train men to suffer. Let's train preachers who feel called not to live on flowery beds of ease but to wade in the mud of the soldier. Let's raise up not merely those "who wear soft clothing in kings' houses" but those like John the Baptist who are called to a lifestyle that goes against the prevailing culture.
Jesus' call to all Christians is to take up their cross and follow. How much more acquainted with suffering must the preacher be, who leads a procession of crossbearers. We must raise up a generation of men who are willing to suffer as good soldiers, athletes, and hard-working farmers.
Relationship as a Requirement
Part of the reason Paul could so easily call Timothy to suffer is that Timothy was familiar with Paul's own life and suffering. Paul mentored Timothy. Timothy saw Paul suffer. Paul can write, "You, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions and sufferings that happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra - which persecutions I endured; yet from them all the Lord rescued me" (2 Tim. 3:10-11). Timothy was there as a firsthand witness with Paul through his hardship including Paul's stoning in Lystra (Acts 14:19) when they left Paul for dead. So the appeal to multiply the gospel in others was founded on an intimate and comprehensive mentoring relationship.
Notice the fatherly affection of Paul in writing to Timothy. He calls him in the greeting (1:2), "My beloved child." He says, "I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day" (1:3) and writes, "As I remember your tears, I long to see you, that I may be filled with joy" (1:4). Is this merely apostolic? Or is it inherently part of Paul's success in training?
Affection must have a place in the training and deploying of gospel ministers. We are not producing robots. We are producing shepherds. We are trying to raise up those who will love the sheep. Does the generation we are training know our affection for them? Our children can tell if we love them! Cannot also our spiritual children - our sons and daughters in the faith?
This pastoral affection in training is so apparent in men like Charles Spurgeon. When one reads his Lectures to My Students, one senses that he indeed truly loves the men to whom he speaks. He understands their trials in their small rural parishes, the difficulty of contending for the gospel. So it is with other ministers. Homer Hodge tells of his attraction to E. M. Bounds, the great man of prayer. He says, "He drew me to him with hooks of steel."179 Bounds prayed fervently for Hodge, asking God to anoint him for ministry. And Hodge was drawn to early times of prayer (4 AM) inspired by Bounds's example.
Certainly Timothy was drawn to Paul in a similar manner. As a church planter, Paul specifically desired Timothy to join him in the ministry of beginning new churches. Luke tells us in Acts 16:3 that "Paul wanted Timothy to accompany him." The reason is clear. Besides his godly character, Timothy was uniquely suited as a church planter to reach both Jews and Greeks, since his mother was a Jewish believer and his father was a Greek (Acts 16:1).
Nor was Paul's mentoring relationship to Timothy distant. Their relationship was one of gentle intimacy. The vision for multiplication itself is preceded by the endearing address, "You then, my child." For Paul, ministry multiplication was not a program but a relationship founded on and framed as gospel family. Paul writes remembering Timothy's tears, longing to see him.
As we seek the multiplication of the gospel, our churches and we as leaders need the same language and lifestyle of mentoring. We need Christians who self-consciously invest in others. It is the only way multiplication will happen. And yet, as important as Paul's relationship with Timothy was to create a context for the multiplication of gospel ministers, there was one relationship more critical, namely, that of Timothy's with Christ. This brings us to our final principle.
A More-than-human Venture
If we are to multiply the gospel as a treasure for generations to come, we must remember the source of our strength for training. Training others for gospel ministry requires divine strength. Paul writes just prior to his charge, "You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus" (2 Tim. 2:1).
This is the ever-present irony of human weakness and divine strength in Paul's writing. Essentially he tells Timothy to be strong: "be strengthened." And Timothy obviously will need it as he trains and deploys men in the face of terrible suffering and fierce opposition. Yet, what is the source of that strength? Irony of ironies - it is not Timothy's own strength but the grace that is in Christ Jesus. We are made strong in grace.
Paul is the model of strength in weakness. The classic statement of the concept comes in 2 Corinthians where Paul tells how God reassured him: "'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me" (2 Cor. 12:9). In fact, earlier in 2 Corinthians Paul writes of his trials in Asia that "we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead" (2 Cor. 1:8-9). Paul's philosophy of power in ministry and, by extension, training others for ministry, was founded on the irony of weakness - when we are weak, we are strong.
Paul illustrates this philosophy elsewhere. In Colossians he writes of his labor for the maturity of the church, saying, "For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me" (Col. 1:29). The irony is that it is Paul working ("for this I toil"), but as he works he struggles with God's strength ("with all his energy") - yet God's energy is within him ("that so powerfully works within me"). This principle is the one upon which Paul bases Timothy's charge to train. As Timothy trains, he is to do so "strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus."
Those who raise up gospel ministers today need the same understanding. Church planters seeking to multiply gospel ministry must know the experiential reality of being strong in weakness. Seminary professors must instill the content of the gospel, but also the lifestyle of dependence that fits with the gospel. Lay trainers seeking to train others in evangelism need to personally experience strength in grace and then instruct others in this principle. Indeed, those who have been most mightily used of God and have multiplied others have understood this philosophy.
This grace that is in Jesus - what is it particularly? It is a divine strengthening by the power of the Holy Spirit, who makes us adequate to do our work, to guard the gospel when we are not adequate and when we may grow discouraged. Related to 2 Timothy 2:2 is 1:14, "By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you."
This is the final principle for training other gospel workers. The entirety of the ministry must be done in the power of the Holy Spirit. Spurgeon writes, "To us, as ministers, the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential."180
Conclusion
It is a privilege to honor Kent with these essays as he enters into a new stage of the race of his ministry. As he does so, may God continue to multiply men through him and through the church. The prophets speak of a day when "the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea" (Hab. 2:14; Isa. 11:9). And George Whitfield, seeing such a day, spoke not of water, but of fire, saying: "Surely our Lord intends to set the world in a flame."181 When this day comes it will be because God uses the church to enormously multiply ministers - ministers who view the gospel as a treasure - and are willing to pass it on, even while suffering, in the power of the Holy Spirit. May God fulfill Paul's vision for multiplication even in our day. The world awaits the word of the Lord.