A Marble Pulpit in South Carolina

This week on Things Unseen, we’ve been thinking about places that matter to us, sacred spaces, not because one space is more holy than another, but because there are places that God seems to make special in our lives and special in our memories by the blessings He gives us there, or the lessons He teaches us, or the ways in which He deals with us.

I began on Monday thinking about the significance of the pulpit from which I first heard a sermon that brought me to faith in Christ from John 8:12, and from which I later had the privilege of preaching frequently when I became the church’s minister. So, I thought it would be a good and fitting way to end the week with another pulpit, thirty-eight hundred miles away as the crow flies: the sacred space and place for me of the pulpit in First Presbyterian Church in Columbia, South Carolina.

In common with the pulpit in Scotland, the one I mentioned on Monday, it’s white. But unlike the Scottish one, this pulpit is an enormous marble block. Sometimes men in the congregation who had served in the FBI or other agencies would express to me their concern about my security if anything untoward were to happen in a service, and I’d enjoy pointing out that with this solid marble protection, I was probably in the safest place in the whole building.

But of course, there are other kinds of attacks that can be directed against the person in the pulpit. But as I look back on preaching God’s Word and seeking to feed and serve God’s people from that particular pulpit, I think of it as a priceless privilege God gave me, not just because of the preaching, and indeed, not primarily because of the preaching, but because of the privilege of loving the people of God and sensing the love and affection of God’s people in return.

Many of them were like Barnabases to me, you know, the son of encouragement. I’ve actually sometimes known people that I call “sabanrabs”—that’s actually Barnabas backwards—because they’ve been the very reverse of encouragers. I wish every minister received the kind of encouragement I did and the love and affection that I still feel from the congregation I served in Columbia—just as the Old Testament saints felt about Jerusalem, that they loved the stones of which the church was built. Then, I think I could say my memories could fill a book, and all of this prompts a thought in my mind that I think is worth sharing.

I reflect now on the fact that I left the church and retired, or at least kind of retired. Why would a minister do that? Of course, there are always going to be several dimensions to the answer, but I thought it might interest you to know one of them. A pastor is part of a spiritual relay race and team. He enters into the labors of others, and his task, in a way, is to serve his people well so that he can help prepare them for the next ministry. And, at least in my own case, I felt that the Lord had given the congregation the next ministry and the next minister, already someone who was with me, who would give them a sense of continuity and progress. I’m talking about my then colleague and longtime friend and fellow Ligonier Teaching Fellow Derek Thomas.

In a sense, every pastor comes to a congregation because he wants to love them, and he needs to learn to leave them because he wants someone else to love them. I wish every pastor had the blessing of knowing he could leave the people he loves with the person he knows also loves them, and that person already being there. I say that not in an ultra-pious way, as though love for a congregation is a special minister’s virtue. No, it’s actually part of what’s given to a minister or a pastor if he’s really called by the Lord. Of course, he is to work at loving, maybe especially loving some of the members, but actually it’s much less of a virtue and much more a gift from God that’s part and parcel of his call to minister to the congregation.

A pastor’s love for his people isn’t so much worked up as it’s sent down, like the servant in Jesus’ parable in Luke 17 about the servant who says he was only doing what servants do. That’s how you feel as a pastor in loving the flock. You’re simply using what God has given you. Yes, sometimes it’s a challenge to express that love and sometimes a challenge to express it to particular people. And I know that can be more difficult in some settings and in some people’s lives than it is in others. So, it can be a challenge to love, but it’s first of all a gift from heaven.

So, when I think of that great white pulpit, it’s not my own sermons I think about; it’s loving the people to whom I preach the sermons, and loving to serve them with food from God’s Word, and to worship with them, and to serve with them, knowing I could never repay the love that I received in return. So, that great marble pulpit is also a special place for me because of the people who surrounded it.

So, I began this week with a pulpit, and I end it with another pulpit to remind me of the sacred places that have brought so much blessing to me and for which I’m thankful. And the central one of those blessings is the blessing of belonging to the family of God, to the church.

Now, I know most of us who share this podcast aren’t ministers or pastors, but I hope you share this with me, that your church family is a sacred place for you as well—where you’ve met with God, where you’re fed on his Word, where you’ve loved and been loved. And actually, I hope you’ll join us again next week because next week, what we’re going to think about together is exactly that: the church. I hope you’ll join me then.