1. Avoid an uncertain sound. Don’t engage in activities or associations that make your testimony for Christ unclear.

“For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?” (1 Corinthians 14:8).

2. Let not your good be evil spoken of. Be willing to limit your Christian liberty to avoid causing a stumbling block to others.

“Let not then your good be evil spoken of” (Romans 14:16).

One of the highlights to me of World Impact Missions Conference at Lancaster Baptist Church is seeing missionaries who grew up at Lancaster Baptist and/or graduated from West Coast Baptist College and and are now serving the Lord on mission fields around the world. (The picture above is of WCBC alumni who were here for Missions Conference ’23 earlier this week and are now planting churches around the world.) 

From the early moments of church history, we see glimpses of the kind of leaders the Lord desires to be present within His church. 

Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business. (Acts 6:3)

That phrase “look ye out among you” is significant because it shows that these qualities are not to be present in pastors only but also among godly Christians within a local church family. 

Forty years ago today, I was ordained into the gospel ministry. As I look back over the past four decades, I say with the apostle Paul, “And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry” (1 Timothy 1:12).

Aside from my salvation and my family, there has been no greater joy in life than to serve Christ as a preacher of the gospel.