Osborne: Nourish and protect the flock

MARILLO?Biblically shepherding a church requires two things?nourishing and protecting the flock, Chris Osborne, pastor of Central Baptist Church in Bryan, told convention messengers in his final president’s address Oct. 24.

Osborne said he’d done about 15 different things during his ministry that he thought were clever, but the effective shepherd does two things, according to 1 Peter 2:1-4.

Osborne recalled a television episode of “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” in which a woman taught her cat to eat gourmet food using chopsticks and then warned pastors, “You’ve got a woman who would feed her cat with the best stuff, and we don’t do that in the pulpit.”

He cautioned pastors against borrowing pre-packaged sermons in place of doing their own preparation. Instead, allow God to give you a message for your own people through careful Scriptural study, he advised.

“I went to a conference with a preacher in California. I’m not going to name him, but he had a whole lot of purpose in his life,” Osborne said to laughter in an apparent allusion to California pastor and author Rick Warren. “This purpose guy said that he enjoyed expository preaching, but then he pretty much for the whole weekend made fun of it.”

Osborne, an expository preacher, said when the pastor was pressed about his sermon style, he defended his approach by saying he researches 300 verses on a topic as he prepares to preach. Osborne told the messengers, “You can’t research 300 verses every week.”

Instead of fishing for verses to support a topical message, Osborne called on pastors to find a Scripture passage, then “get in there and stay in that passage” to apprehend God’s message.

He added, “Scripture doesn’t tell us to read it. It tells us to meditate on it. I’m afraid we’ve become spiritually lazy people. Just log on and push a button and you’ve got 320 verses.”

Throughout 28 years of preaching, Osborne said, “I have yet to have a week where I didn’t see something I didn’t know was there.”

Studying to understand what the passage says in order to preach that to the people?”that’s your job,” he declared.

In fulfilling the other biblical mandate for a pastor, Osborne said pastors should make sure they’re protecting their people from truly damaging things.

“When you tell them to be afraid of things you don’t like but that really aren’t a danger, they won’t listen when we do come around with something they should legitimately be afraid of. They ignore it.”

For example, from the “danger of letting somebody in the church who’s been baptized by somebody else” to “freaking out when Baylor allowed dancing on campus,” Osborne said pastors sometimes warn against things of little importance.

“I’ve heard preachers wail against square dancing as if it were the most lustful thing in your life. Have you seen what they wear? If that creates lust in your life, you’ve got a lot of other problems.”

Osborne told of the large number of Baptists buying best-selling author Joel Osteen’s “You’re Best Life Now.” In answer to talk show host Larry King’s question asking whether Jesus Christ is the only way to God, Osborne related how Osteen said he does not talk about sin, hell or Satan at his church.

“Our people are reading his books. You stand against Joel and you’re going to get some e-mails, but that’s OK. You’ve got a delete button,” Osborne said. “Protect your flock from real danger, not square dancing.”

The next instruction found in verse 2 tells elders to oversee.

“If you can contribute to GuideStone, you’re an elder?that’s how we’re defining it,” Osborne said, drawing laughter from the audience.

While having oversight means to rule, Osborne warned pastors not to go home and tell their deacons to leave.

“If you do, you better hope the moving van’s not busy that weekend.”

He instructed pastors to lead their congregations through their deacons.

“They are not men to be pushed aside. They are men to be honored and used. That’s a good thing. If it goes in the tank, they’re with you. Lead them. Don’t dictate to them.”

From the instruction to lead “not under compulsion, but willingly,” Osborne said pastors should be “called by the heart of God.” Furthermore, they should not be greedy, he said, defining “shameful gain” as mooching.

“People in your church love to do things for you and if you’re not careful, you can enjoy that to the extent that you begin to expect that and think you’re entitled to it instead of appreciating it.”

Instead, he urged pastors, “Come to the place in your ministry where the affirmation of this Word and the affirmation of the Holy Spirit are enough applause so that it doesn’t matter what they say or don’t say.”