Passing on the Baton: Preaching Mentorships and Ministry Training with Alan Stoddard

[00:00:00] Paul said, given away Timothy so that others can give it away to Jesus to 12 and he gave himself away expected them to reproduce. Hey, welcome to the Expositors Collective podcast episode 339. I'm your host Mike Neglia.

[00:00:18] The voice that you heard is our guest for this week, Dr. Alan Stoddard. And this message which was recorded in person in our August 2023 training event, which took place in Temecula, California. Well Alan talked to us about the man who mentored him up close in personal through

[00:00:42] pastoral coaching or seminary classes and then also kind of the radio rabbis whom he learned from the far from. And Alan really then encourages you and us to not gatekeep our education or our

[00:01:01] skills or the talents that we've developed in our own years of personal study and public proclamation of God's word. He really gives a stirring invitation to pass on the knowledge of how to prepare and to preach into the next generation. And make sure you listen to the end

[00:01:21] because I love his stories about training bike-reduits, how to expose it the scripture. That's what it's all about. And Alan really lives this. In fact he has a book that just came out recently

[00:01:35] which is all about disciplining new believers. And there's a link to that in the show notes and this guy practices what he preaches. I've spent a lot of time with Alan over the years. He's on

[00:01:49] the leadership team of expositors collective, this dude cannot stop evangelizing. He talks to every Uber driver, everyone near him gets a gospel presentation. And then also new believers are always encouraged to grow. The church believers are encouraged to become ministers of the gospel that save

[00:02:10] it might go further out and further in. Well speaking of this stuff going further, as maybe you know, maybe you don't. Expositors collective is invited to come to Uganda. Very first time we'll be doing an event in Africa. We've done loads in the US. We've done some

[00:02:31] in Europe and we can't wait to go to Campalla, Uganda September 11, 12th and 13th. And there's an opportunity for you to get involved and to sponsor a rural Uganda and pastor for his transportation and lodging costs to get from the outskirts of the country into the

[00:02:56] capital city of Campalla. I'm going to let Pastor Zetti speak to you and give you a little bit more about how you can contribute. Hey, what's up expositors? Mike, thank you for your time here

[00:03:10] and I'm thrilled to let you know that the expositors collective training event is coming to Uganda Africa. Pastor Zetti is my name. I do pastor David Tapakampala and we're trying to get

[00:03:23] over 200 pastoral come to Campalla. It's in the middle of the city so some are going to be jumping from way out of the country so we're asking you guys to get involved in some of them.

[00:03:33] We need your help to help these pastors get into the conference. The conference is free of charge. We're going to provide a free of charge for those who can't attend. Over some of these

[00:03:42] pastors are coming from remote areas, they need to cover the cost of transportation food and lodging while they're there. It's going to cost about $100 per pastor. So if you can help us sponsor

[00:03:51] a pastor to get to the conference, would really appreciate it. You can do so at the expositors collective website. Yeah that's right thanks guys I appreciate your prayers and would you

[00:04:00] have a sponsor and expositor? All right so there's a link in the show notes that will bring you to a giving page. You might have to click the bar and then scroll down to expositors collective

[00:04:15] Uganda and if you give money there we're going to use it to equip encourage and up skill Uganda and pastors. Well here is Allen's talk about mentorship. I want to share with you about mentorship and preaching. Let me give you a couple of verses here second Timothy 2-2.

[00:04:42] What you have heard from me Paul said in the present of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. And then Mark recorded

[00:04:57] Jesus life like this it says he went up on the mountain and he called to him those whom he desired then and they came to him and he appointed them to 12 whom he also named apostles so that they

[00:05:12] might be with him and he might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons. Now there are two marks of becoming a disciple of Jesus first you get to know God knowing God that's

[00:05:32] good the other one is this word I hope it will see you're into your soul a little today. Reproducing we for too long in local churches have accepted a cup ministry when we need to be a

[00:05:52] conduit ministry. We don't need to just fill containers we need to replenish more containers as we reproduce and that's become a big thing lately reproducible disciple making did you know that only one in ten new believers gets to cypal after they get saved and baptized? One in ten

[00:06:15] it's hard to start new groups sometimes it's hard to start new churches sometimes it's hard to reproduce and so what we're tempted to do is make the measurement easy on ourselves but I want to

[00:06:28] encourage you to find a preaching mentorship. Now reproducing we're here in these days paying attention to the nerdy things of hermeneutics and homoedics two great big words that mean Bible

[00:06:46] study and how to preach the Bible. We're here to pay attention to things on a Saturday you gave up your time your money your efforts your love for God we're simply moving into the teaching ministry of the

[00:07:01] church. Now if I don't if I could take a moment to say the hour is getting late our culture is in this is unreal what we're seeing in this world of ours now is the time for us to not slow down

[00:07:19] but to hit the gas and in doing so let me let me give you what a preaching mentorship is this is in your booklet it says a preaching mentorship includes a worthy mentor worthy mentor who takes the time

[00:07:36] to offer input opportunities and feedback that's what Rod just stood here and talked about to willing mentees who work hard preaching and teaching is hard Paul said honor those who labor hard in the teaching and preaching ministry to work hard to steward what is entrusted to them

[00:08:05] everyone needs a mentor it's the Christian way of spiritual growth and it's the biblical way to develop leaders now here's my big idea are you women here's here's my big idea preaching mentorships will take your teaching and preaching further faster you want to accelerate your teaching

[00:08:33] and preaching ministry and whatever that looks like you want to really get up to another level get into a preaching teaching mentorship with someone whose further farther and you will go further

[00:08:47] farther faster hey have we not proven it in these groups we're in I've been doing this for 32 years 10 years of theological education which I didn't deserve thank you God and all kinds of

[00:09:04] conferences and experiences and I'm going to tell you what man I'm sitting on the front road taking notes I'm still learning I was learning in our group man we're not going to stop learning we're going to

[00:09:14] go for it and my my my challenge here for a few more minutes is to encourage you to take this home and do something with it our churches need it and Calvary chapels are tailor made to reproduce

[00:09:30] what you get here this weekend back in a local church well I've already read the two passages Paul said give it away Timothy so that others can give it away to Jesus took 12 and he gave himself away

[00:09:45] expected them to reproduce there's a biblical history first of all uh there's an outline though put up just a biblical mentoring history that we pointed out number two is I want to tell you my

[00:09:58] history with learning to preach I became a Christian in 1988 I married a Southern Baptist girl I was a binge-partyer from Florida and I got saved in the spring of 88 I didn't think I could be

[00:10:13] forgiven I was like y'all don't know what I've done all you Christians are just shush I don't want here y'all and the Lord was like in church one Sunday you shush you don't know what you're talking

[00:10:28] about are you in or are you out and I gave my heart to Christ I believe in the death burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of my sins and the power of God in my life

[00:10:41] to live the new life not in know how that was going to work back then I'll polished how I say it now but when I became a Christian my history your history with preaching and teaching starts when you

[00:10:52] become a Christian I did know the Bible I didn't barely have a Bible only a few months maybe and it was King James guys like me I was Van Halen guy I didn't know King James are you kidding me

[00:11:08] and then I heard a guy on the radio I had no idea who he was and El Paso he came on at 5 a p.m. his name's Chuck Smith and he made the Bible so simple and I considered Chuck Smith my

[00:11:24] radio rabbi next I married to Southern Baptist girl so I heard a lot of Southern Baptist preaching which is highly evangelistic next I listen to a guy anybody remember Walter Martin the original

[00:11:38] Bible answer man I listened to that guy I didn't know any Bible I didn't have a framework for theological thinking I had zero and I listened to that guy dismantle Colton I thought I like him

[00:11:54] he's great and then there was a pastor in El Paso name only I Kirk none of you know pastor only I Kirk he's in heaven right now he was basically popular in El Paso and a few other places

[00:12:08] with him black culture we went to a black church man if you didn't get there on time you didn't get a seat and it was fire pastor Kirk would run down that aisle with the hanking in his hand

[00:12:19] waving it he always ended up almost always ended up with the woman at the well in every sermon and he was shared with the gospel he was 65 years old we thought he was going to have a hard

[00:12:28] attack one Sunday he'd start singing a sermon the way you do in black church I had never seen such church I thought wow this is awesome well then God four years after I got saved call me to the

[00:12:44] ministry and a small black church in Shwineford Germany they were only 15 people there that night my wife said I'll never marry a pastor because her dad is a pastor and God called me and I

[00:12:58] moved I didn't plan on it with the Holy Spirit moved and I came up and my wife you should have seen her face she couldn't believe it she was like what are you doing I think God's call me to the

[00:13:10] ministry girl she didn't know what to do my pastor Elijah Mitchell who I would say he would hate me saying this but he had the rhetorical skill of Martin Luther King when pastor lit it up oh my gosh

[00:13:28] it was artwork man black preaching that it's best he taught me how to preach he's he's the one to talk me about an introduction a body of a message and a conclusion I learned to preach I love saying this

[00:13:44] I love to I learned to preach in a local church not at Southwestern seminary not a Gordon Conwell not at a conference my pastor taught me how to preach he gave me my first well it's really not

[00:14:00] my first I was thinking about it earlier session my first experience preaching was in El Paso street preaching but my formal first time in a church house pastor Elijah Mitchell gave me an opportunity

[00:14:14] taught me sermon basic prep rob springle taught me missions in preaching had Robinson my doctoral professor I really knew him before I ever knew him because I had started reading his book trying to

[00:14:26] understand it I felt like the Ethiopian unique how can I understand unless somebody guides me and little did I know I'd get to be in a cohort with hadn't Robinson I was but John we were in the first

[00:14:39] cohort together and preached three times there and in the cohorts only one of them that I get it right the other two just like we got done evaluating each other I bombed out on both them

[00:14:54] and I thought I wasn't going to get kicked out of the course I thought I'm done and Robinson was like what are you talking about we're going to lunch let's go

[00:15:03] another one is Lloyd C. Blue you don't know blues name but you know the pastor he used to work for Dr. Blue used to work for eB. Hill and Dr. Blue taught me evangelistic

[00:15:17] exposition now why am I telling you my story because I want you right now to be thinking about your own story somebody has had an effect on you God is put you in places where he wants you to see the

[00:15:30] influences that he's putting your pathway because if we recognize where God's put us it ought to motivate us to be in somebody else's pathway and so what's your history of being influenced to

[00:15:44] teach the Bible all of us have a responsibility to teach the Bible now you may not be gifted you may not be called to the official teaching ministry of the church but the great commission says

[00:15:56] teaching them to observe all things that's not just the pastors that's everybody you do yourself well come into this conference you help the kingdom of God you help the the local church

[00:16:11] surely your pastor has to be smiling because you're here number three what do we do in mentoring relationships we gather and no more than a small group preferably one on one or one on three is best

[00:16:30] could be one on twelve you could do that that's why I love Calvary Chapel I was the Southern Baptist guy for twenty six years and I've been a Calvary I was closet Calvary the whole time I finally came

[00:16:43] out of the closet and I got fired from two Southern Baptist churches the last one I said that said I'm out I don't have any more heart fitness mess and Calvary Chapel's do a school of ministry

[00:17:01] I like that pre Bible college approach to things that Bible college I like it and when you break it down you can teach people to preach and a guy like me when I became Calvary that was one of the first things

[00:17:13] I thought oh we're gonna start a school of ministry you couldn't do that in the Baptist church they want to send you through the seminary so they can mess you all up I'm just kidding I like seminary

[00:17:23] one on one one on three one on twelve what do you do in the mentoring relationship next I won't camp on this because it's been preached on but I want to stay it we allow character to be first

[00:17:35] formation inside is more important than gifted this outside you don't even know other anymore that we create a lab for practice like we just did then we create a smaller opportunity

[00:17:47] for it to be real your pastor can open doors for you to do devotions and staff to take on a Sunday school or sorry thinking like a Baptist a youth group a mid school high school

[00:18:04] anything any opportunity to teach the Bible your pastor and others can open a door for you my first preaching opportunity when I got the fourth word in seminary was at a retirement center and I'll tell you what there's a couple of people in there with Alzheimer's old ladies

[00:18:22] couple of dudes I'll tell you something if you can preach to a senior adult crowd in a in a in a season where they they can't remember anything that will give you a lot of experience I can tell you that

[00:18:36] while we create a lab experience so that you can do what we just did we give you the loving feedback we give you some things to think about it's not about the the things those things that

[00:18:48] we list out that we could do better those are important but what's more important is that we put ourselves in an environment where we ask those questions and we let them be asked how can we be better

[00:19:02] I after all these years you can tell I'm a little nervous right now and I don't know why and when I start talking I sometimes speak perfect ebonics I've been in too many

[00:19:16] black churches I'm from the south and I just speak southern I'm from Texas now it's all messed up but I still need to grow it's I don't want to arrive arriving seems anti-climactic

[00:19:35] No, I want to keep growing we allow for real evaluation next we do preaching I do these preaching mentorships work number four a survey was done years ago on heart patients they studied some

[00:19:50] heart patients that came in the rehab and they had some that stayed in groups and they compared the results to those who did not stay in groups and the ones that stayed in rehab and did it with other people

[00:20:03] were more apt to not revert back to the bad eating they got them in the heart doctor to the heart doctor in the first place preaching mentorships can do the same thing for you

[00:20:16] you can grow further and you can grow faster by pill-faring on the best of right work but by piggybacking on your pastors educational experience and church life so how do these things work and do they work you may not be able to go to college seminary

[00:20:38] even online maybe that's enough for you but you can get educated through your pastor at Calvary Chapel Rudy Doso what I would do what I did as I got in a room with only about

[00:20:50] eight to twelve people most least about eight I got a whiteboard in there and I drew a bridge and on the left hand side I put first century on the other side I put 21st century

[00:21:05] and I took everything God gave me and I poured it out on that whiteboard and those eight people four of them were biker types and they learned about the subject they learned about the compamage on they learned about the exgenic allidea they learned about the sermon purpose

[00:21:24] they learned about the grecoe Roman world they learned about literary form of the Bible all that I could get out on that board they learned it I could call them right now and put them

[00:21:35] on this microphone and say tell me what the exgenic allidea is and they'd be able to tell you these bikers I had am preaching in church I just want to say parenthetically that wouldn't have happened in the southern Baptist church but Calvaries are tailor-made for it amen

[00:21:52] Tim Jane Eric and Sicily they know it do they work teaching people to preach works the cycle making works it works if we will do it okay now here's number five and I'm getting close to stopping

[00:22:12] how do you start a preaching mentorship culture my concern becomes that we would come to something like this and go back and you all you're gonna get busy this afternoon you're gonna go back

[00:22:26] and life is sitting there if you're a pastor I want to encourage you to do this give away your education and experience give it away the pastor you probably don't even barely have to

[00:22:41] study to teach key willing mentees how to teach the Bible in preacher you can probably do it off the top of your head all it will require review is to give a lunch up what for eight weeks or something like that

[00:22:56] and the fruit that you will get in your own life because there is something to teaching preaching that allows you to learn it in a way that you don't get just by preaching I said something right there

[00:23:10] pray for open tool excuse me extend your teaching ministry by reproducing all you have into others and then next starting labor day and ending before Thanksgiving why don't you key in on the fall if you're

[00:23:25] a pastor in the room why don't you start right after labor day a month from now or the less and say you know what if you're in to stand up and tell people it's you're not probably not

[00:23:38] going to have that many they'll take you up but you already got two or three people they're probably just waiting for you to say hey I want to show you how to teach the Bible every you

[00:23:47] pastor ought to be trained to teach the Bible by a lead pastor ought to be requirement if you take a check from the church sorry you got to go to lunch with the pastor amen okay if you're a

[00:23:58] student in here today and you maybe your pastor's not here tell your pastor you want to be mentored in preaching your pastor will probably like that it will probably encourage I want to

[00:24:10] say stroke your pastor's ego I don't really mean it like that I mean in a very positive way your pastor's probably going to go I would love to do that your pastor's busy got lost stuff going on

[00:24:21] maybe he's just waiting for you maybe God's going to use you to stoke up a situation to where this happens in the church next if you're a student pray for open doors to be disciple than preaching next make yourself a teachable person next take non-platform opportunities

[00:24:43] to hone your passion and gifting and I'll leave you with this here's what Paul said about preaching and teaching in the church he said practice these things immerse yourself in them so that all may see your progress first Timothy chapter four verse 15 amen amen

[00:25:09] All right well thanks for listening all the way to the end I just I just love the thought of just bike or dudes in the pulpit expounding God's word that what a what a wonderful glimpse into just

[00:25:21] the kingdom of God it brings joy to my heart and maybe you heard as Alan mentioned that he got a chance to be in a seminary cohort with Dr. Haddon Robinson well if you want to hear more about

[00:25:36] Haddon Robinson and his impact upon the preaching landscape of the English speaking world check out last week's episode episode 338 it's a great conversation with Dr Steve Matthewson and he speaks about some practical examples of how Haddon has impacted his

[00:25:57] introductions his way that he approaches illustrations and then also just some of the the heart that the late Dr Robinson displayed in the classroom all right I hope that this episode and all the new exposures collective helps you to grow in your personal study and public

[00:26:16] population of God's word see you next Tuesday this podcast is a part of C.G.N Media a podcast network that points to Christ we're supported by listeners like you to help us create more great shows visit cgmedia.org slash support