Seminar (Part 1): Reflection on Pastoral Excellence

TRANSCRIPTION - PART 1 (read PART 2)

First, I want to thank all of you for coming to this event, at which we intend to reflect a little on a subject we work on every day. Each one of us, in our ministries, is constantly trying to give our best for ..... and we are constantly working on what we call the pursuit of excellence.

This pursuit is always tempted by all the things we see around us. We see some large ministries that have beautiful orchestras in their worship, and we say, “Wow, that is excellence!” At other times, we see ministries that transform lives day after day without necessarily being large ministries, without even becoming congregations—ministries in which God humbly works in each one of them.

In other cases, we see ministries that establish other ministries, and although they themselves never come to shine in the way others do, they become ministries that bless other ministries that do succeed in spreading the Word and work of God extensively.

At the Institute for Pastoral Excellence, an institution devoted to seeking out and training pastors and ministers for excellence, we asked ourselves that question. We have been working toward that goal for five years, and each of our courses and programs ends with an evaluation, with the constant pursuit of what excellence is.

For this occasion, we decided that gathering the people of God to reflect on that would provide guidance, an opportunity for collective learning, and an essential foundation for the work we are doing. And in its name, we decided to organize this event.

On this occasion, we have a group of panelists whose ministerial careers have been very fruitful in different ways, and we want to hear their opinions, which, enriched by yours, will become a collective vision of what we here in New England want to do in the Kingdom of God.

The procedure we are going to follow is this: Dr. Elwin Villafañe will moderate this panel, where we will ask each of them questions as simple as: What is an excellent minister? What is an excellent ministry? What are the characteristics that define a ministry? Because that will be the platform on which we may work over the coming years.

Let us be clear: it is no longer a showy, large ministry that does this that truly blesses the Kingdom. Through theological reflection, reflection on the practice of people who have studied the subject extensively and poured out their lives in the service of ministry, and through your experience, we can develop a set of ideas about where we should go in order to serve the Lord better.

On this occasion, I am going to give the floor to Dr. Elwin Villafañe. Dr. Elwin Villafañe is currently a professor at CUME, which is, we might say, the urban arm of Gordon-Conwell Seminary. He is Puerto Rican, was raised in New York, and has served in ministries in New York. He holds a doctorate in Social Ethics from Boston University and currently serves as a professor at CUME and as a participant in AET, the Association for Hispanic Theological Education, which operates in Texas. Welcome, Professor.

Welcome. Thank you. God bless you. God keep you. No, no, that was very weak. God bless you and God keep you. Don’t think that just because some people here are not Pentecostal in name—we are all Pentecostal in experience or something like that. Very well. Thank you, Brother Rodríguez.

This morning, we have the wonderful opportunity to speak with ministers and leaders, people whom God has gifted in a very special way and to whom He has given knowledge and vast experience. And as Rodríguez mentioned, the process and procedure will be simple.

First, I am going to ask the panelists to take their seats in the following order: Dr. Pablo Polichuk, then the Reverend Nelson González, Dr. Alvin Padilla, the Reverend Sergio Pérez, and Dr. Roberto Miranda. That is the order in which we will introduce them.

We are going to follow this agenda: we will ask the panelists to introduce themselves according to a certain order and certain questions I have here. Then we will present the three questions, more or less, that they are going to discuss. And once they have taken their ten minutes—we don’t have a clock over there, do we? It isn’t there. Who is going to be the timekeeper? Because you already know that when you see me going like this, and this, and this... you know your time is up.

After they make their presentations, we will open it up to you so that we can enter into a dialogue and participate. As time permits, I believe it will be very fruitful and can be a great blessing to our lives, and I believe this is a beginning.

We do not expect that today, in less than an hour, or however long it may be, or more, we are going to cover everything that excellence means. Something I must say before anything else—I don’t know if perhaps someone else is going to say it—but while we were singing and worshiping the Lord, what was deeply impressed upon my heart was the reality and truth that we serve a God of excellence, an almighty God. It begins with God and with the person of Jesus Christ, who in His ministry demonstrated all those qualities of excellence—and who better to follow as our model? But through our panelists, we are going to examine in detail how that ministry takes concrete form in our lives and in our ministry.

I am going to introduce them by name, but then I am going to ask them to take this little note because I want them to tell us their name, then their place of birth, where they pursued their academic or ministerial studies, their denomination, something briefly about their family, and their current ministry. That is going to take them almost ten minutes—no, no, no. We want them to be brief and precise in every case. But we would like to get to know them.

In the classes I teach, in which we usually have about fifteen or twenty students, I don’t know whether we did it in this one, but we ask similar questions. Sometimes, however, we ask them to name an animal that reflects their personality, but we are not going to do that today. This is a very dignified panel. Look at the way Pablo is looking at me; he is going to psychoanalyze me.

We will begin with Dr. Pablo Polichuk.

My name is Pablo, and I was born in Argentina. My parents were Ukrainians from Eastern Europe, and I grew up and studied in Argentina. I met my wife—we met at Luis Palau’s house, where we were staying while holding a crusade with Juan Carlos Ortiz. I was heavily involved in evangelism, and while I was stationed there for a month, I met Frances and proposed to her within a month.

We have now been married for more than forty years and are still together, thanks to the Lord. The thing is that when you were young and aggressive in evangelism, you did the will of God as you thought best and as God impressed it upon your heart. I remember those thirty days because we preached every day, every night, collected names, and at the end of the month-long crusade we baptized 120 people, called a pastor, rented a facility, and kept moving forward. Planting a church in one month is what I remember from when I met Frances, and that is what has always remained in our minds.

I studied engineering at the University of Buenos Aires, but at that time the Lord called me more directly to put down the books and preach. After several years of evangelism and travel, I decided to continue my studies at the University of California, Berkeley, earning a bachelor’s degree in Psychology; then at San Francisco State, earning a master’s in Research Psychology; then at Fuller Seminary, earning a master’s in Theology; and then at the Fuller Graduate School of Psychology, earning a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology. After that, I pursued postdoctoral work at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital as a lead intern and a fellow, and later served as chief psychologist for the city of Chelsea for ten years.

I worked with Massachusetts General Hospital for seventeen years, supervising interns and training psychologists at the doctoral level. But, let us say, family has always been important in our lives. We have three children. Frances is also Argentine, but her parents were British and Scottish. In Argentina, everyone comes from somewhere in Europe, and so we came together there and are Argentines.

My children were born in California: Karen, Kenneth, and Keith. Karen is married and is now going to have a baby in February in Mill Valley, California. Kenneth is also married; he has two children and another one on the way. He lives here in Bayfield, Massachusetts. And Keith is single. Keith had a catastrophic accident a year and a half ago when, while diving into the ocean, he fractured his fifth vertebra and became quadriplegic. He is fighting, and in fact I arrived late because I am his nurse in the morning and at night. So I care for him from six in the morning, helping him with everything he has to do until he gets up.

He works, he studies, and he exercises a great deal. He is one of the first five people participating in research to see how far the neurons below the spinal injury can be retrained. So we are praying and trusting in the Lord that one day he will stand up and walk in the name of the Lord. But he has struggled a great deal, and we have stood by his side. We were nearby for a month in the intensive care unit at Beth Israel. Well, it is a very long story, but the Lord has helped us, and we are there fighting.

The family has always been close-knit, and that has kept me in faith and joy. Frances is at a shower for Karen—a baby shower—today in California, so I am juggling a lot of stuff on my own.

As for my current ministry, I teach full-time at Gordon-Conwell Seminary. I am one of the cofounders of our counseling program, which offers a master’s degree in counseling, both in mental health and in marriage and family. We have been there for many years, working full-time.

In addition, I provide psychotherapy in private practice in Southampton, at a place called Willowdale. I have another office here in Cambridge, where I have worked for more than twenty years in Harvard Square, treating private patients.

Besides that, I am always preaching, often as an interim pastor. We have served as interim pastors in Cambridge at the American Assemblies of God church, where Elwin also preached years ago. After that, we preached in Baptist churches. In fact, before my brother Roberto assumed the pastorate, I served as an interim pastor, preaching every Sunday in Central Square at Central Baptist Church in Cambridge. After that, we went to other churches, even helping at the daughter church in Everett, where Pablo Giovanini is now the pastor. I preached there for a couple of years.

Not long ago—no, not long ago.

We also served as pastors at Park Street Church for one year, from 1996 to 1997, and at Wayland Congregational Church in Wayland, Massachusetts, as well as at Trinity in Peterborough, New Hampshire. So I have had about six or seven interim pastorates, lasting one or two years each.

And I serve as an itinerant pastor who tries to heal the wounds that the body of Christ inflicts upon itself, when pastors leave and disasters behind them, or when pastors die—because pastors also die, because the Lord tells them, “That’s enough,” and they go. So I have continued preaching.

My current ministry also includes helping to establish two counseling centers in Israel: one in Jerusalem among converted Jews, Christians, most of whom come from Russia and Ukraine. They are full-blooded Jews, but they have converted to Christ and are now doing the work in Israel.

They also work among the Arabs of Haifa, where we have been establishing a counseling center with eight social-service providers who also offer Christian counseling.

We have been offering short courses. I teach at the Israel School of the Bible. We are going to have the first cohort of Christian counselors graduate from a Christian university in Jerusalem and in Etania. So we have been laying foundations, and it is currently the first counseling center in the nation of Israel to be recognized by the State of Israel. So we are everywhere we can be, doing the will of God and always trying to behave ourselves.

Amen. And Assemblies of God credentials.

I am an Assemblies of God minister. I came to preach in New York City and preached 623 times in two years, in 1965 and 1966. So it has been forty-one years since I preached among the Puerto Ricans of New York, and Elwin and I met, along with Sun Sullivan and the crème de la crème of the Puerto Rican community.

Very well, thank you, Pablo.

My name is Nelson González. I was born in Puerto Rico, and at an early age I was moved to the city of Chicago, where I came to know the Lord at the young age of fifteen. I felt the Lord’s call when I was sixteen, and at that time the customary thing was to join a Bible circle, which is where I began. That was my first experience of Bible education. At the age of seventeen, I began studying, and I graduated when I was twenty.

I immediately entered the ministry and served as an associate pastor in three different churches in different cities. Ministry took me to the Midwest, to Topeka, Kansas.

That is where a Pentecost began.

And it was a beautiful experience. I later discovered that this was where Pentecost began, but there were no Hispanic churches there when I was there. I ministered there for about three years, and it was also when, just as I was beginning, I married my wife, Nidia, whom I had known there for about four years from Chicago.

It turns out that when I started there, there was a great deal of potential and many challenges. I was a very young man with very little experience in ministry, and I thought the first thing I should do was get married. So I rushed to Chicago, we got married, and we came back, and our honeymoon was in the city of Topeka, Kansas. I do not recommend that to anyone.

Looking back, what many see as a heroic step all depends on your perspective. We see it as, yes, guidance from the Lord, and God blessed us in spite of it, but it was also madness on our part. Three years later, we had to leave there to see whether we could save our marriage, to see whether our marriage could be rescued from the blows of ministry.

And for that reason, we moved to this area and served the Lord at the Defenders of the Faith Church here. Incidentally, it was in that council that I came to know the Lord.

We are currently in the city of Lawrence, where we have been pastoring the Hispanic Evangelical Church since 1990. It has been the longest and most blessed period of my ministry. We have three children: Gabriel, Joel, and Sheila. The oldest is 19, and the youngest is 13.

My formal education was at Franklin Pierce College in New Hampshire, and I have done some studies at CUME, but I still have not finished them. God bless you.

Let me mention something. It is important for us to listen carefully, in a sense, to each person’s testimony and pilgrimage because, as I often tell the students, I remind them that in order to read and understand the biblical or theological expositions of a great theologian, for example, it is good to know his biography and background. It gives you a certain understanding that you usually cannot otherwise attain. I believe that when they begin to speak about excellence, they will have a background to which they can refer. We continue with Dr. Alvin Padilla.

My name is Alvin Padilla. I am from Ponce, Puerto Rico. My family immigrated to Massachusetts .................. when I was 12 years old.............. then the economy collapsed ............ I converted to the Lord after college. I ......... from high school, then I went to college in Pennsylvania. I always felt the Lord’s call, but I always resisted because I was stubborn........... but several months after finishing college, well, I surrendered my heart to the Lord and immediately felt the call to ministry, and I thought about attending a seminary. Since I had been raised Catholic, I thought seminary was only for Catholics, and I did not know where I could study. I studied for one year at a Bible institute, and it was there that I perhaps learned more about what a seminary was, and after a conference........... to go to ................ to study and begin my formal studies there.

There I met my wife, Catherine, who was also a student. We married during my final year. She finished one year before I did, and when we completed our studies, we left for New York ............. to start a Bible school for the Assemblies of God..............I converted and already had an operation by that time..................... we started a school called ........School of Theology, which is still .................. and my wife and I started it. And we spent eight years there starting this work............ God .........also while I was a teacher, dean, and president, all those things at the same time. I was studying full-time because ................

After ........... with the Assembly of God, I decided to transfer my credentials and become a pastor in New York, and I did this for eight years at a Presbyterian church in Washington, on the island of Manhattan. From there, the Lord called me to serve as academic dean here in ...........Boston with CUME, and .........I am now completing ten years, beginning my eleventh year as academic dean, and I have the privilege of being the head mentor of Alvin Villafañe. ..............................

.......... I have four children, and ....................... College, now finishing her final year; she is in social work. Benjamin is in his first year at ........and two boys, Lucas, who is 15 years old and says he is 21, ............. Family ............... is very important.

As a pastor, I always............................ devote a great deal of time to being with them, being a community leader, a Boy Scout leader, a baseball coach, ................spending some time in my children’s lives, besides being their pastor............ I currently continue with .....................

My name is Sergio Pérez, senior pastor .......... ministry .........and surrounded by all these doctors, I am more or less like a nurse. And with everything Brother Polichuk has done, anyone would think he had lived for about 200 years........... Congratulations, brother.

I am originally from Guatemala City, and I graduated from what would practically be a vocational school, or its equivalent, with the title of Marketing and Advertising Specialist. When I was studying at Landívar University in Guatemala, continuing my advertising degree, my father became very frightened by my attitude at the time. He thought I was in danger in Guatemala and said, “I would rather have you alive and far away than one day receive the bad news that you have been killed or something.” And that was the urgency behind leaving Guatemala and coming to Boston. Believing that I would then have greater freedom to continue with my evil plans, I began to hear God’s voice, and here I fully gave my life to the Lord 21 years ago.

Then I continued the pilgrimage of discipleship, during which I was nurtured, ministerially speaking, at Elim Evangelical Mission. I was then ordained there in 1989, and in that same year, 1989, I returned once again to Boston. That same year, I took charge of the church, which was a small group at the time. That same year, I married Johanna. Today we have been married for 17 years; that is, we have now been ministering in the congregation for almost 18 years. We have two precious sons, Ariel, who is 15, and Joshabe, who is 13.

At present, our focus and energies are being channeled into a vision God gave me, which I have led together with the ministry, believing God’s instructions and believing in a revival that will result in an abundant harvest of souls. We have believed God and launched a project to construct a church building for 1,500 people, whose construction, well, is still in progress. Its purpose is to prepare us, as I was saying, for the revival, for the harvest of souls. We believe that revival has to do with conversions of souls as a result of that revival. And that has been our pilgrimage so far.

Roberto Miranda, pastor of the León de Judá congregation; I believe many people here know us. I am of Dominican origin. I came here to the United States at the age of ten, in 1965, so you can do the math. I have been here in the United States for 41 years; we first came to Brooklyn.

My family’s history follows that immigration pattern. My father came here first from the Dominican Republic in 1962; then, in time, he sent for us, and we settled in Brooklyn, New York. Well, I grew up there; I spent most of my life in New York.

In terms of my studies, I earned my bachelor’s degree at Princeton University in the area of International Relations, with a view to entering the field of diplomacy. Then the Lord changed my direction somewhat, and I entered Harvard University to pursue my doctorate in Romance Literature and Languages, specializing in modern Spanish American literature.

During my doctoral studies, the Lord led me to a church that had just opened a couple of weeks earlier here in the South End area, at the Emmanuel Gospel Center. Pastor Juan Vergara placed a small advertisement in El Mundo inviting the community to attend this new church. At a time of spiritual renewal in my life, while pursuing my doctoral studies, I had asked the Lord to guide me to a Hispanic church where I could reconcile myself with His call on my life and specifically serve Hispanics. And for reasons that would take a long time to explain, the Lord led me to that advertisement. I attended that church’s second or third meeting, and it is the church I pastor today, which changed its name and is called the León de Judá congregation. That was in 1982.

The Lord changed the direction of my life and guided me into ministry, for which I will be eternally grateful to Him. It has been a great privilege to serve the Lord throughout all these years.

I am married to Meche; many of you know her. We have two daughters. Sonia, who right now, as I speak, is traveling from Brazil to Boston and will arrive at Logan Airport in just about ten minutes, God willing. She has been involved in a trip lasting a little over two months through different countries in Latin America. She graduated from Harvard a few months ago and is still celebrating her graduation. Shortly, she will begin working right here at León de Judá, specifically in the ministry of the Academic Resource Center, in the area of mentoring, leading a group of young people in academic mentoring.

And Abigail, who is 17 years old and is a senior in high school here at Boston Trinity Academy, an excellent Christian school that was founded recently through the ministry of Park Street Church. It is a very good school, which I recommend to you, by the way. If you hear about it at some point and have an opportunity to explore that ministry in greater depth, it is a very lovely academic ministry here in Boston.

And let us see what else. I think that is the essential information in terms of details, and I believe we will have an opportunity to continue later.

Thank you. Before we continue, I am being told that there is a little problem with a car. Do you want to identify it? There it is. Very good. Okay.

You can see that we do indeed have a very, very diverse panel: different nationalities, denominations, and a wealth of study, preparation, and ministry. With that background, we begin the next process: each person will have ten minutes to respond to these three questions. In a sense, they may emphasize one aspect or another, but it would be very beneficial if they could address all three. These are three questions that we can state as follows:

1. What is an excellent minister?
2. What is an excellent ministry?
3. What are the criteria or characteristics that define excellence in ministry?

In summary, what are a minister and a ministry of excellence, and what are their characteristics?

We would like each person to touch on all of those, but if you wish to emphasize one aspect of the question or another, that would be very beneficial. I would ask the audience to take notes and write down their questions and comments so that, when they finish, we can have a good, beneficial dialogue. We likewise begin with Dr. Pablo Polichuk.

I believe the three questions are interrelated: the first concerns the person, the second concerns his work, and the third again combines the person and the work—the characteristics of excellence.

You will notice that the word “excellence” seems to appear in various words, such as ecclesia or eclectic and so many other things. It is like departing from the ordinary, leaving a certain place or exceeding a limit, or being beyond the norm. That is, a person always aims to be more than he is because God calls him from above, so to speak, to fulfill a higher function. That is, he is outstanding—not merely someone who works and is an ordinary person who lives, grows, and dies, but someone who has a certain specific and special function. To say that he is a minister means that he is a servant, a person called to be a steward of the things of God, an administrator of the things God assigned to him in terms of tasks, functions, and people.

And what is an excellent person? How do we measure excellence? Because each person has his own methods or variables for determining in what sense we can say that someone is an excellent person.

I believe the Sermon on the Mount focuses on three broad traits or capsules. The first is character—who we are in terms of the Beatitudes: humble in heart, meek, thirsting for righteousness, and so forth. So, character.

The second is conduct: how a person behaves excellently. And the third is the infusion of radiance, or what a person emanates in terms of interpersonal influence, social influence, but above all spiritual influence. Thus, character, conduct, and influence are what characterize the minister who is excellent.

I also think that serving people is one thing and serving the Lord who called him is another. There is a very interesting passage in Ezekiel 44 which says that God is going to restore excellent ministry in Israel. But there are two kinds of ministers: those who were not so faithful and those who are faithful. And He calls them from the order of Zadok, as those who were faithful to David.

Then, speaking of the restoration, he says: Those who were not so faithful—I still love them, and I am still going to restore them because I called them to serve, and they are Levites, they are ministers—but they are going to serve outside in the tabernacle, where offerings have to be burned. There are various kinds of offerings where, in the heat of the day, amid the sweat, they are going to sweat because of the people; they are going to work for the people in order to keep in step with what they have to do for the people.

But those who were faithful to me, I am going to restore them, and they are going to serve me—not the people, but me—in my sanctuary, in the holy place, in the tabernacle, and they will dress in linen because I do not want their sweat to come into my presence.

I give the ministers a new commandment: You shall not sweat in the presence of God. No, because working with people makes you sweat, yes. People are the ones who ruin a person’s ministry, just as we ruin people. But when one serves God, it is refreshing; it is praise, worship, gratitude, thanksgiving, the sacrifice of lips that confess his name, fine linen, justified by faith, nothing to do, nothing to work for—Cain and Abel, right? The offerings of sweat or the offering of faith, in the blood of a lamb that paid for his life. A totally different approach to God.

So I believe that the excellent minister knows the difference between serving the God of the house and the house of God, the Lord of the harvest and the Lord’s harvest. So these are two branches of excellent ministry. Sometimes we are so concerned about being loved by people that we forget that our first mandate is to please the Lord who called us. So, serving God.

For me, excellence lies in recognizing those two things. So, character, conduct, influence—and perhaps I want to refer to the points about the i’s that I wrote years ago concerning group and church leadership. God gives us life as a gift, but we have to develop that life in the sense that our identity, our character, must be like Christ. To be imitators of God as beloved children. So the prototype for our ministry is Jesus: how he did it, how he worked, how he spoke, how he treated women, children, people, married couples—how he did it. That is how we must be: identity in Christ.

Second, integrity: being who we are when no one is watching us, when God watches us from above, so that we function as he has called us to, with integrity—honest and possessing many qualities of transparency and faithfulness and all of that.

Third, our intimacy with God, as well as radiating intimacy with our spouse and with other people in the way we share ourselves. Even when Paul speaks to the Thessalonians about his ministry toward them, he says, “We not only gave you the Gospel, but we gave ourselves to you by the will of God.” It is one thing to preach and another to give oneself so that the church may be blessed. Thus, identity and integrity result in intimacy with the body of Christ, as well as with the Lord and with one’s family.

The third is being industrious: working, working. Even though we work so much in the field and return to the Lord’s house, we have to serve him despite having worked all day, because he has first place. To work for the Lord and unto the Lord, and to have that interpersonal influence I mentioned, which radiates when one is blessed by God. My blessing is that I want the Lord to fill me with his Spirit so that anyone who comes into my presence may be blessed in some way. For me, the model is Jesus, with the hem of his garments flowing around, and anyone who touched the hem of his garments was healed.

If only every minister could be a blessing so that those who come near might receive the emanation of the Spirit, the virtue of the Spirit, the sharing, the impartation of the Spirit. As Peter said, “I have neither silver nor gold”—he sounded Hispanic, didn’t he?—“neither silver nor gold, but what I have I give you: in the name of Jesus, get up and walk.” And he was alive, full of strength. Sometimes I tell the more traditional Americans, “When the Lord comes, you will go first,” and they ask why. “The dead in Christ will rise...” and afterward we Pentecostals who are alive... will be caught up.

Thank you, Pablo. Very well said.

Well, although I had reflected on the term excellence before, it was really only now, as I looked at these three questions, that I considered excellence in relation to the minister. And in addition to the words our brother Polichuk mentioned in defining excellence, some of the words I found were “of superior quality,” and some of the synonyms were “perfection,” “quality,” and “first class.” First class. Well, then I became even more confused, even more confused, because it is difficult for me to understand, much less explain, this question in light of passages such as Luke 17:10.

You may remember that Jesus used the illustration of the servant who goes out to the field and returns, and then the master tells him, “Get ready, serve me, and after you finish serving me, you may serve yourself.” And Jesus said, “So you also, when you have done everything you were commanded to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have done no more than fulfill our duty.’” We have done no more than fulfill what we were supposed to do.

And let me explain with a personal experience. When I was in the city of Topeka, Kansas, barely 23 years old, I was pastoring a church that my wife and I were starting. I come from a Pentecostal background in which great emphasis is placed on fasting, prayer, biblical reflection, etc.

And very early in my ministry, I discovered that I did not have enough to feed this flock and that the church I was pastoring did not resemble the New Testament church at all. I became frustrated and began seeking the Lord. A book written by ......, The Normal Christian Life, fell into my hands—perhaps some of you have read it—and every page I read answered many of the questions I had, and it ministered greatly to me. But what shocked me most was that what Wash....... called normal, we called super-spiritual, out of the ordinary.

So I believe that sometimes we measure ourselves against one another, and for me, an excellent minister is perhaps what the Bible calls normal, what Jesus expects of us as his servants: someone who resists mediocrity by virtue of his self-denial and his commitment to please the Lord who called him, and to live honorably or serve honorably the people whom God placed under his responsibility.

I believe that some of us are going to use the Apostle Paul as an example, and one of the passages I want to add to the others that this panel will present is 2 Corinthians chapter 4, where the Apostle Paul says, “Therefore, since by God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart. Rather, we have renounced everything shameful; we have renounced everything shameful that is done in secret. We do not act deceitfully, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, through the clear presentation of the truth...” This is a ministry of excellence. “...through the clear presentation of the truth, we commend ourselves to every human conscience in the presence of God.” So this also adds the minister’s vulnerability, so that we may examine one another—or the English word that comes to mind, accountability—so that we may give account and keep one another in line.

Verse 5 of the same chapter says, “We do not preach ourselves”—a ministry of excellence—“but Jesus Christ as Lord.” That must be the focus: “...we are nothing more than your servants for Jesus’ sake, because God, who commanded light to shine out of darkness, made his light shine in our hearts so that we might know the glory of God that shines in the face of Christ.”

And verse 7 says, “...but we have this treasure, this treasure in jars of clay, to show that such sublime power comes from God and not from us”—and that is the New International Version. The 1960 version says, “...that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.”

And for us... jars of clay today are considered relics, aren’t they? It is something lovely, being able to own jars of clay, but back then they were as ordinary and commonplace as paper cups. It says, “We have this treasure, this excellence of ministry, this calling, in paper cups.” And what do you do after you use the cup? You have used it, and that is the end of it.

So that the excellence—once again, God’s excellence—may stand out, and not us. We do not commend ourselves, but the one who called us. A ministry of excellence, then, fulfills that calling from God. For me, this calling carries an obligation to the present generation and to the generation to come.

I drew up some criteria that are important to me, using the first letters of the alphabet: personal self-denial in order to be a servant, a servant, as Brother Polichuk emphasized. We must maintain our vertical relationship first, and I fear that sometimes, because of all the work and all the pulling and straining, we forget that we are worshipers, that our relationship with God is vital above all. And those of you who are in ministry know this, don’t you—that we can become so distracted in ministry that we forget that? We forget that.

The second, with the letter B, is: “The excellent minister seeks connections with other ministers to keep him responsible, accountable.” What I did not say earlier is that I pastor an independent church and have been pastoring this church for 16 years, so my challenge is how to remain connected with the rest of the body and connected with other ministers before whom I can be transparent and who can ask the difficult questions.

The third little letter is commitment, a commitment to family health—something everyone here at the front has emphasized. How many have heard about the mechanic whose own car is always the broken one, right? His car is always the one with something wrong. Well, that cannot happen in ministry. The minister’s family cannot be neglected, and I understand that there are decisions made by our children, etc., that have consequences, and that in many of those cases the pastor or leadership is not to blame. I understand that. I understand that, but once again I emphasize the need to commit ourselves to family health.

The letter D is diligence in preparing the Word, and this is an incredible challenge for me because I find that I have to study twice, and sometimes three times, as much as my colleagues in order to nourish my congregation in a balanced way.

And finally, the letter E: focus and singleness of purpose. Oh, how easily we can become distracted by a hundred things to do, when the Lord called us to do one thing and to do it with excellence so that it will be effective.

Once again, reading what the Apostle Paul says: “Do you not know that in a race all the runners compete, but only one receives the prize?” He says, “Run, then, in such a way as to obtain it.” Run as though you desire excellence. All athletes train with great discipline. Discipline. They do it to obtain a prize that will perish. We, however, do it for one that lasts forever. “So I do not run,” the Apostle Paul says, “like someone without a goal; I do not fight like someone beating the air.” He has a purpose, do you understand me? “...rather, I strike my body and bring it under control, lest after preaching to others, I myself should be disqualified”—and that should be a red flag for all of us. That after we have served so faithfully, we might make a mistake, right? Someone wrote a book called Take Me Home Before Dark—“Take me home, Lord, before it grows dark”—before I enter a darkness in which I cannot see the light.

For the last two or three years, I have been working on ....... a purpose statement for my life, and I want to share it. It is still a draft; I still have not said... but it is a draft, and it is already in its third revision. And my mission statement, my declaration of mission, is to fulfill my calling as a pastor successfully by listening to, faithfully following, and imitating the Prince of Pastors, and by feeding God’s flock through teaching—or teaching them through words and example—and discipling others for the next generation.

Amen. Very beautiful. Amen. Thank you.

When I ........ about the subject, I remembered my.....current, that we prepare men and women for ministry ......... reality.......... a great deal of thought ........., a great deal of time over the past 15 years, about what an excellent ministry is, what an excellent minister is, because that is what we do in seminaries: prepare men and women who possess excellence.

The teachers....... well, ............ the teachings of the Apostle Paul to a........beginning in a ministry ......in chapter 4, and we come to the phrase there, “...if you do these things, you will be a good minister of the Lord,” and there, from verses 6 through 16 of that chapter, the Apostle points out a series of qualities that a good or excellent minister must have so that he or she may..... fulfill his or her calling. And some things that come to mind here, first of all ....... also divided, as my colleagues here have done, into two parts: the personal life,........... and the professional life, which is an excellent ministry, and then the characteristics that make it excellent, which are a synthesis of the two things, as Pablo already mentioned.

First of all, ............. Paul teaches his disciple that he must be a student of the Scriptures. Repeatedly he tells him, if you are nourished by the words of faith and good doctrine. The idea is to be a student, to devote time to study; it does not have to be...... perhaps we are going to emphasize, although you are going to be a lifelong student. I graduated ...... twelve years ago, and I still have the same eagerness to be a student. My children complain about having exams, and ...... tells me that he does not ..... study because I am no longer a professor, and I tell him, for me tomorrow is the final exam every day, every day. To be a student of good doctrine—there are many very bad things out there—of good doctrine; in Timothy he is talking about..........

Also, the good minister avoids the influence of false doctrine..... influences that are almost ......... to the faith.........if we do not study and ............ fellowship, people with whom we can have a relationship, so that they can have......... let us say, ......... of what we are teaching, doing, saying...... a man or a woman who enters a ministry that is faithful.....

Third, an excellent minister in Timothy is a person who, Paul says, exercises himself in personal godliness. Several times he tells Timothy that he must exercise himself in godliness. And the word godliness means being like God............ right? That you want to be like God.

When I was at the university, I was on a very excellent .......... team. We were national champions in the ......... division, but we worked, as my father used to say, like dogs. Because to be number one, you had to run 15 miles a day, in the morning, and then run again in the afternoon.

My body wore out a little, as you can see. But it was because one exercises oneself; that is the word the Apostle Paul uses, the word for physical exercise, but in godliness. There is so much emphasis now, right? on nutrition and exercise, that you have a gym in your own home to stay very fit, right? But in godliness, and that has to do with being a disciple; above all, the pastor is a disciple of Christ.

It always strikes me that Jesus gives him....... Scriptures that I cannot lead the people whom I am going to direct as a pastor where I have not been. And if I am not a disciple who puts Christ first, with all those qualities of what a disciple is—I am going to get into that—I cannot lead the people I am directing. I know that he exercises himself in godliness.

Related to that, the Apostle tells Timothy—and elsewhere the Corinthians and others—to be an example of spiritual virtue. Those of you who have taken a class with me know that I often tell my students that one of the things I have come to detest to a certain extent—and it points to a reality—is pastors who tell people, “Do not look at me; look at Jesus.”

It is true, but Paul actually says, “Be imitators of me.” People are not going to see Jesus; they are going to see you. And do not use that as an escape so that people will not look at your children, your family, your relationship with your wife, right? Your financial wastefulness, the bad decisions you make, that you are not, right? Tell the truth: it is an escape, because I had a role model who used to say that, and it made me angry. “Be imitators of me,” says the Apostle, and you should say the same thing.

Now I continue with qualifications: I am a weak man, I am indeed struggling with sin in my life, and I struggle daily, but also by the same grace by which I am saved, I press on, right? I get up and press on in the Lord. Thus, a person who is an example of virtue; a person who is, once again, in the............ I paraphrased it as soaked in the Scriptures. He tells him twice, devote yourself to this: the reading of the Scriptures, exhortation, and study. Three times he tells him that there in that passage. ..... that everything you are going to do will be based on the Scriptures, studying and teaching others. And, as has already been said on several occasions and will be said again, the excellent servant is a person who works hard.

There again in the same passage, the Apostle uses three different words to describe what it means to work strenuously. And the word means that one works until one is completely exhausted, right? That one has given the very best one knows how to give, so that when it is over, you have done the very best you could do, to reach..... what angered our coach the most back when I was in ........ was when someone finished a race and said, “If you can run two more doors, then you did not run fast enough.” You have to run until, at the end, you cannot give any more. And that is how it is, right?

And the word also means that one likes the work. Do you know what that is? One can work hard at something one does not like....... they do the yard quickly, with great effort, because they want to finish, not because they like it. But here it is because it is something you love. I love studying the Scriptures, and I love it, and I worked very hard to preach because I rejoiced when I saw that people finally understood something and their lives were transformed; and that is why I devoted myself to praying and working for them and ministering to them in their lives. The servant is a person who works.

Now, concerning what an excellent ministry is, or the professional side, several things once again. Being an expert in the Scriptures has to do with teaching. An excellent ministry is a ministry that teaches. Sometimes we fail to take into account that in Ephesians 4, the Apostle Paul tells the church that within the ministry of the church, one says pastor and teacher, and the two are one thing, right? The pastor must be a good teacher, able to communicate the truths, so that you can teach in such a way that lives are transformed, and so that they may, as he says again in Timothy, know how to keep in mind the context in which he is.

In Timothy, teaching warns the people about the danger of false doctrines. And how many of us take time to study what is happening in our community, our society, and our nation so that we can train the people regarding what is going on concerning homosexuality, postmodernism, truth, all those things—the things our children will confront when they go to the university? So.... a teaching ministry.

Second, that he has to... be a person who exhorts powerfully, who preaches. And Paul, once again, twice in the passage tells Timothy, “Command and teach these things.” You know what it means to command, right? When I was a child, my father would tell me something and I had to do it, right? because he was the father, and I was the son, and I had no choice. That is the word Paul uses here, right? “Command these things,” with authority, right? You have to preach powerfully, declaring that this is God’s truth for the people, and say it in such a way that you are convinced of this truth. And use different models of... be creative, right? Bring the word of God with freshness, so that the people can see the relevance of the ancient and eternal word to the lives they are living today.

And I will finish with this right now: administration as well. An excellent minister is a person who pays attention to administration. One of the most difficult things for us pastors is administration. It is the cross we bear, we say, right? I am one of them, but one simply has to pay attention. That does not mean you are going to do everything; rather, you will realize that perhaps you need another person to handle the details, but that you are the person responsible for ensuring that the details are carried out and for being accountable. A good administrator, especially because he is administering the resources that God’s people are bringing, right? They are sacrifices for serving the Lord.

And what does all of this have to do with it, right? To conclude it, actually, here is something brief that I wrote. Regarding what the characteristic is—and I am going to say just one phrase, and that is all—God calls us to be faithful to the ministry to which He called us, because excellence here will not be determined by whether I reach 600 church members or build a new building. Those are things that happen and should happen, but that is not being faithful to the calling. And faithful to what? Especially to the eternal word of God. Here we have it: God has revealed Himself in the Scriptures, the eternal word, and He wants us to proclaim this word to this world, but at the same time, to preach this word within the idiosyncrasies of personal life in the twenty-first century. In other words, it must be relevant to where we are today, right? Yes, the word is eternal, but it comes from an ancient culture, and now we have to apply it so that the people who are here today—and for us, a mostly bilingual people, right?—can understand what this means for my life, and so that it results in transformed lives that impact the society in which we live.

Very well. Thank you.

I would like to focus on Paul’s verse to the Thessalonians, 5:23. It says that God Himself, the God of peace, sanctify you completely and preserve your whole being—spirit, soul, and body.

I would like to address this introduction, and I believe it encompasses all three aspects; at the same time, well, it has been my area of work. I believe it is a major area. I believe excellence has to do with the restoration of a Gospel that comes to affect our being just as God created us: spirit, soul, and body.

I fear that for many years the church, especially the Latino church, has focused very, very heavily and passionately on the aspect of the spirit: only a vertical relationship, teaching us to pray, if indeed we do it properly; to worship; to serve God. I believe the aspect of the soul has been greatly neglected and, to an even greater extent, not to mention the aspect of the body. Somehow we have elevated the spirit above the soul and the body. I am aware that we are spiritual beings in physical bodies, and we have explained that quite a bit when we talk about the composition of the human being: spirit, soul, and body.

It strikes me that throughout the Scriptures, from Genesis to the end, I see an emphasis from God on these three areas. So much so that God’s seal was upon His creation—not only creating, but overseeing every aspect of God’s creation, a material creation of trees, animals, stars, and moons; that is, tangible things. And the Lord placed His seal upon it, and Scripture says, “And God saw that it was very good.” And after creating another aspect, God saw that it was very good, and it was good in one way, and it was good in one way.

I do not know to what extent the cradle in which it was born—the cultural cradle in which the Gospel of Jesus Christ itself was born—has greatly affected us Christians today. And I am referring to the curious fact that one interprets the Scriptures according to one’s own idiosyncrasies.

For example, the suitable helper—the wife, the suitable helper. Culturally, I will be honest with you: I would read “suitable helper,” and I would say, “Yes, I need someone to iron for me, wash my clothes, cook...” In my idiosyncrasy, that was what I understood. Later, as my mind and my soul prospered, wow, I came to understand that a suitable helper was not a maid, a servant in my home. That is another responsibility. My wife is my suitable helper because she truly thinks so differently from me and sees other angles of life that I do not see, both in the church and in the home. That is, I now understand that a suitable helper was more than what I understood through my idiosyncrasy, through my upbringing.

Likewise, when the Gospel reaches our time, you will remember that Greek culture was already running rampant as the predominant culture, and even Rome was completely invaded by the art and way of thinking of the Greeks and their great thinkers and philosophers, such as Plato and Aristotle, their origins.

Remember that these men came to understand life through their souls, practically speaking, through their fallen nature, and they did agree on two spheres of creation: an aspect of forms, which we might call spiritual and invisible, where love, goodness, and beauty reside; and the other aspect, the physical and material. They explained, as Plato did, for example, that the two dimensions of life existed simultaneously. But they did not understand the concept of God’s creation. They understood that the material realm was a world of chaos, a formless and even negative world, while the realm of spiritual values was positive.

That is why so much art and thought arose from there, because the explanation they gave was this: you see, for example, a piece of wood or any other material; it is through human thought that it is given form and a beautiful image emerges, whether a sculpture, a painting, or any other work of art.

Because they understood it that way, they elevated the spiritual realm above the material, natural realm. The result was to withdraw, to abstain from material things, to isolate oneself completely, and to devote oneself solely to cultivating the mind, to art, music, writing, and learning. Meanwhile, the other realm was in a much lower sphere, unworthy of attention. One was a positive current, while... the material was only a negative aspect. From there, then, came sacrifice, abstinence from pleasure, and abstinence from enjoying life in its natural aspect.

You may say, what does that have to do with anything? Well, that was what was prevalent at that time; that was what was in the air. The Gospel teaches us another perspective; it teaches us that God has certainly given us a spiritual life, but He also made a creation that was very good.

When we think about these thinkers, these philosophers, who elevated the spiritual aspect above all things, even the Catholic Church adopted that—it was... it was not known as the Catholic Church; it was simply the Christian church of that time, the Christian church, period—where only the spiritual mattered. From that came monasticism, withdrawal, asceticism, the focus solely on the spiritual, retreating to caves and convents, nourishing only the spiritual part because the other part was not considered worthy of attention or of an investment of time or effort. Hence, the greatest sacrifice a person can make—with apologies to the unmarried—is to give up delight, sexual pleasure. They said that the greatest sacrifice is celibacy. The greatest sacrifice is taking vows of poverty.

I do not read that in Scripture. What I read in Scripture—in fact, when one reads the Old Testament—is, “These blessings will come upon you and overtake you.” Not that you will pray more, not that you will fast more, not that you will have more fellowship with God, although you should, because that is the foundation; if you heed the word of God, these blessings will come.

When you read Deuteronomy, for example—not only chapter 28, but many chapters—what blessings do you find? Things will go well for you in your home, in your work, in the field, in the city, in your household kneading bowl, among the offspring of your livestock, and in the fruit of your womb. In other words, this was a God speaking to His people and elevating what I believe He was elevating: the aspect that for many centuries had been pushed down as something worthless. Throughout Scripture, I see God’s concern—and that is why I read that verse—for the spirit, yes, and the soul, but also the body; He speaks to us about the physical.

For me, excellence, whether at the level of an individual minister or at the ministry level, is found in one who maintains a focused balance involving the spiritual—yes, it is true, we are tremendous at that—but who also restores the realm of the soul: relationships with others, emotional life, learning, as has already been said, the ability to continually nourish our minds and our intellect, always being a disciple who is learning to... but also in relationships, in the emotional realm, and also the body.

Brothers and sisters, I believe in the importance of restoring that aspect. Sooner or later, life presents its receipts, its bills, and we have seen ministers who for years submitted to a life of sacrifice, even taking vows of poverty for the sake of the Gospel, but life makes them pay very dearly in the end. They die poor, without any plan, sick, because they never thought that material matters would be so significant and relevant in life. This is my passion and the focus of the studies I undertake in this area, which is one of the subjects that fascinates me: the comprehensive growth of a ministry.

I do believe in growth; I believe in the multitudes. But I also believe that those multitudes must be taught to develop healthy relationships and a healthy emotional life, and that I must also instruct them—even if it sounds like a good joke—in what Dr. Polichuk said about Hispanics, right? Without silver and without gold, without money or gold. But I do not believe that has to be a sentence. I believe God wants to restore even that aspect which has been so greatly neglected and which the world has taken advantage of to finance all its trashy projects that are so harmful to society, while the church is fine as long as it does not touch the material realm. Let them continue enjoying themselves within their four walls, rejoicing, jumping, and praying as much as they want, provided they do not make an impact. Because resources are needed to make an impact on society.

I believe excellence has to do with—I only want to focus on those two; perhaps I will not address the third—among the criteria and characteristics of a ministry of excellence, I want primarily to focus on those two. I believe it is our responsibility to restore those three areas that God considers of utmost importance, namely, care at these three levels: spirit, soul, and body.

Thank you.

Well, the problem with being last is that by then it feels as though absolutely everything one might say has already been taken away from you... It is simply what we call adding rain to an already soaked ground.

I was sitting here scratching my head. Well, what can I add? A tremendous amount has actually been said, and if I were a truly humble man, I would say, “No, there is nothing more to say. I will be quiet here and let the four of them speak.” But I am not, so I am going to try to add my own perspective to all this, mostly by adding nuances to what my brothers here have said.

One thing I believe is important for those of you listening to all this discussion about ministerial or pastoral excellence is that sometimes one may tend to say, “Well, that is for pastors.” But in fact, I believe that what we are discussing applies to every kind of leadership, and I believe that most of you are here because you exercise some type of leadership and ministerial influence and are involved in ministries—because we could have an entire debate about what ministry is, couldn’t we? It is service, and each one of you is serving in different capacities. Regarding what we are discussing, I beg you, in case that idea has not dawned on you yet, to view it in light of your own ministry, your own life of service, and how you can apply these qualities and reflections to your own ministerial and spiritual journey, okay? So it is very important that we remember this so that we do not make the mistake of mentally distancing ourselves from what we are hearing.

All right, another point is that, as Dr. Polichuk said, these three questions—What is an excellent minister? What is an excellent ministry? And what are the criteria or characteristics of an excellent ministry?—are actually interrelated, and it is difficult to separate one from another too rigidly.