Preaching to preachers

This weekend our Tricounty Baptist Association is hosting an evangelism conference. It begins on Saturday evening with a night of music and praise from our music evangelists.
On Sunday, the evangelists will disperse to different churches throughout the association to share in their Sunday services. Monday and Tuesday will have morning and evening sessions of music and preaching at the host church, which just happens to be my home church of Hopedale.

The morning sessions largely consist of preaching to preachers.
The evening sessions should have more people from the churches in the association, and should also have a good number of preachers and church staff in attendance.
I'll be at Galena Baptist Church on Sunday morning and preaching at the conference on Tuesday evening.

It may seem a little weird to be preaching to preachers (it used feel weird, too), but the truth is that preachers need encouragement from God's word, too! It's good for all of us to be able to step back and look at what we are doing through distant eyes. We often get so focused on what we are doing that we lose the big picture of what is going on around us and we fail to adapt accordingly.
Not only do these types of conferences serve to encourage pastors in their own work, but they offer pastors an opportunity to hear some of the available evangelists and encourage them to use vocational evangelists in their local churches.

Maybe it's just the introvert in me that doesn't really look forward to these conferences.
In the end, I generally enjoy getting together with the other evangelists and hearing their encouragement. I always look forward to sharing the gospel. But...

I don't know...
It just feels funny to be marketing to get bookings to go to churches at a later date.
I do see the conferences as a good opportunity for pastors to hear the people that they would invite to come speak in their churches. I believe that pastors need to guard their pulpits with great care and surrender them to others only rarely.
But I've never been good at marketing myself in this situation. I don't want to feel like a snake oil peddler when it comes to the gospel and I often think that's what we sometimes appear to be.

In any case, I'll be preparing for this conference in the coming days, as well as preparing for a wedding in two weeks and another conference at the end of the month. In between all of that, I'll just be taking it easy, planting a garden, and living the retired life in southwest Missouri.

Give 'em heaven, brothers!

John <><