I’ve been a pastor for nineteen years. Looking back on my first five years makes me want to buy a time-traveling DeLorean (remember Back to the Future?) or phone booth (remember Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure?), so that I could go back and advise my younger self. Too many Saturday nights were spent in the study upstairs while my wife sat alone downstairs watching television. Too many opportunities to be a godly example to the church family that I loved were missed precisely because I didn’t love my family first.
As a 25-year-old starting out, 1 Timothy 4:12 was my favorite verse to rehearse. I wanted to be an example so that no one despised me for my youth. Yet the example I set in those first five years threatened something worse than church members despising my youth; it threatened to hinder their own godliness. The two, after all, are linked.
If I could go back in time, I’d tell 25-year-old me to re-read his favorite “verse to rehearse” and say, set a good example for the church by being a godly man in the home first. How does one set such an example?
1. Through Exemplary Speaking
Youthful fervor in ministry
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