THE CLERGY CRISIS
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
Jeremiah 20.9
February 10, 1998
Dr. Ernest L. Easley
What an honor for me to be on the campus of
Southern Seminary today! What a wonderful period
in the history of this institution to be a seminary
student here! And I want to encourage you to take-in
all you can while you're here! These are days of
preparation and equipping and I thank God for all our
Southern Baptist Seminaries!
Now .. take your Bible and turn please to the
book of Jeremiah. And once you find Jeremiah ...
turn to chapter 20! I want to talk to you this morning
about a crisis that is taking place today in America!
No .. it's not the Clinton Crisis in the White
House! It's the Clergy Crisis in the Church House!
500 pastors every month are walking away from
God's call upon their life! Some of them are
terminated by their churches. In 1997 ... over 300
pastors were terminated in Texas churches! 1800
Southern Baptist ministers were terminated last year!
I talked to pastor not long ago in Louisiana who
was in such deep depression that he had thoughts of
suicide!
Well .. he' not the first preacher to consider
suicide. Jonah cried out, "It is better for me to die
than to live." Elijah said, "It is enough. Now, Lord
take my life." The prophet Jeremiah had become so
depressed over the rejection of the people he
preached to that he cried out in Jeremiah 20.14-15,
"Cursed be the day in which I was born! Let the
day not be blessed in which my mother bore me!
Let the man be cursed who brought news to my
father, saying, "A male child has been born to
you!"
Vv.17-18, "Because he did not kill me from the
womb, that my mother might have been my grave,
and her womb always enlarged with me. Why did I
come forth from the womb to see labor and sorrow,
that my days should be consumed with shame?
In other words .. Jeremiah was saying, "It would
have been better f ...
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
Jeremiah 20.9
February 10, 1998
Dr. Ernest L. Easley
What an honor for me to be on the campus of
Southern Seminary today! What a wonderful period
in the history of this institution to be a seminary
student here! And I want to encourage you to take-in
all you can while you're here! These are days of
preparation and equipping and I thank God for all our
Southern Baptist Seminaries!
Now .. take your Bible and turn please to the
book of Jeremiah. And once you find Jeremiah ...
turn to chapter 20! I want to talk to you this morning
about a crisis that is taking place today in America!
No .. it's not the Clinton Crisis in the White
House! It's the Clergy Crisis in the Church House!
500 pastors every month are walking away from
God's call upon their life! Some of them are
terminated by their churches. In 1997 ... over 300
pastors were terminated in Texas churches! 1800
Southern Baptist ministers were terminated last year!
I talked to pastor not long ago in Louisiana who
was in such deep depression that he had thoughts of
suicide!
Well .. he' not the first preacher to consider
suicide. Jonah cried out, "It is better for me to die
than to live." Elijah said, "It is enough. Now, Lord
take my life." The prophet Jeremiah had become so
depressed over the rejection of the people he
preached to that he cried out in Jeremiah 20.14-15,
"Cursed be the day in which I was born! Let the
day not be blessed in which my mother bore me!
Let the man be cursed who brought news to my
father, saying, "A male child has been born to
you!"
Vv.17-18, "Because he did not kill me from the
womb, that my mother might have been my grave,
and her womb always enlarged with me. Why did I
come forth from the womb to see labor and sorrow,
that my days should be consumed with shame?
In other words .. Jeremiah was saying, "It would
have been better f ...
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