Clint Pressley - SBC President - Hickory Grove

Show Notes

Clint Pressley, President of the Southern Baptist Convention and Senior Pastor of Hickory Grove Baptist Church in Charlotte, NC, joins Dan Ehrman on The Church Around the World to share how he is seeing God at work in the local church and from a broader perspective through the SBC. He shares practical leadership insights from coming into leadership in the church where he was raised, to navigating the challenges of multiple positions, tensioning life with family while serving in vocational ministry, and how young ministers can pursue vocational ministry. 
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Dan Ehrman

Director of Church Relations & Strategy - Tyndale House Publishers

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Here is your host for the church around the world.

Dan Ehrman. Welcome to the
Church around the world.

I'm Dan Ehrman, joined today by the pastor of
Hickory Grove Baptist Church, Clint Pressley. But you will know him more as his newest office, as the president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Pastor Pressley, honored to connect with
you now. Thanks for joining me, man.

Thank you so much for having
me. So glad to be here.

Well, I think it would be good for people to
get to know you, as you were elected in twenty twenty four to be the president of the SBC, is that correct? And, as you came into that role, there were interesting articles of you kind of being the safe guy and

The, the neutral choice and yeah,
non-controversial. You're stepping into a messy moment in the convention history.

And the Lord placed you here for
this season. How how are you doing?

Man, it's hard to say. I think I'm doing okay.

You know, I don't want to presume, but I think
I'm doing okay. You know, back then, we had there were seven, six or seven.

I lost count people that ran for, convention
president. It was really something.

And so being elected, as the neutral, I don't
know if that was the neutral one or not, but here I am. As you came into that space, obviously there's a little bit of a spotlight on that on that office, right?

I remember talking to one church leader, Rick
Warren, talked about he has a quote that, the media basically can tell two stories. They can build you up and they can tear you down.

And he's, he said, you know, they that don't
let the praise go to your head and don't let the criticism go to your heart. As, as you've entered into this space.

How, how do you position your, your heart so
that you're, you're neither callous nor, just bludgeoned, in the process. Well, I think one thing that helps is pastoring a church. Being a pastor does have real, built-in accountability to it.

So you are accountable to the people that
you're serving. Many of them are watching, they see your behavior, online and offline.

That's a pretty good, means of accountability.
The other is, you know, building those deep ruts of spiritual disciplines into your life.

You know, you can control early in the morning
what you can do. And then you can usually control the time before you go to bed, in between those two times.

Sometimes it's pretty chaotic, but building
some good disciplines, spiritual disciplines into those two areas have helped me, sort of balance or at least manage some of the chaos that comes my way almost every day. What are some of those disciplines that you've enacted?

I tried to, rise early about five a m every
morning, except for sundays at four a m and Saturday. I don't set an alarm, but.

So every weekday, and then it's been the first
hour and a half or so, reading the Bible, working on memorization, and then writing my prayer journal. And then immediately after that, we'll go and do some sort of exercise just to keep moving, and then start my day.

So I see you, I see you on Instagram. You're
you're lifting weights all the time, man.

You're out in your garage. You got it all.

You got the whole setup,
right? It's in the backyard.

You're right. And truthfully, about an hour,
I'll go out there and lift about an hour, three days a week.

And then tuesdays and thursdays, I might take
the dog on a walk or something. I'm just trying to keep moving on the back end of my own devotional life.

And then in the evenings, before I go to bed,
I'll try to spend the last hour of the day, reading something not necessarily devotional. A lot of times that's going to be biography or history seeing god's, you know, providence in history.

So if you think of the morning as trusting
god's sovereignty, looking forward and the evening, enjoying god's providence, looking backwards into history, I'm trying to build those two things into my life to help, manage some of the chaos during the day.

And you realize that some of the stuff you're
facing is nothing compared to what people have gone through in the past. And I love that you've categorized it as sovereignty and providence.

That's excellent. That's, that's huge.

As you engage with history and reading, what
are some things in the last year or so that you've stumbled on that or intentionally read that you've enjoyed? Well, a lot of what I intentionally, I got hung up on, british history.

So you started reading that, then you start
going back. If you get, you know, medieval, then you go dark ages.

Now I'm looking back into Rome and then, you
know, coming forward from, from the roman invasion all the way forward up to past the Tudors and the Stuarts and, you know, the Hanoverians. And, you know, all of that is Christian history.

Like all of that is Christian history. Then
it's, it's then calls me want to go there.

Like we're getting ready to go on our second
Christian history tour of England. take a group from our church each year, and there you see the ups and downs of the church and realize that you're just one little dot.

You're one little bitty dot in the history of.
Let's just take the Protestant wing of the history of the Protestant reformed evangelical tradition.

I enjoyed going through. I listened to the
audiobook of the massive three volume history on Church hill, a year or two ago.

Manchester, Manchester. I think that's right.

And that was a beast. But it was fun.

I learned a lot. So oh, so much.

And that's a great that's a great
trilogy. It was, it was solid.

I picked up a few things along the way. And,
you know, if you're listening to that book, you're not actually reading it.

Somebody's reading that book to you. Dan.

You know, you're going to say that to all of
Church history of literacy rates at three percent two hundred years ago. Come on, come on.

So I actually listened to I use audible
A good bit. I just don't count them.

Like if I'm trying to, I set a goal. I've never
have reached it, but I've tried to read a hundred books in a year.

And my problem is I keep getting these big
tomes and so I can't get through them. and then I'll listen to probably one a month.

But I don't count those in the ones that I've
read. I went back through my audio books from the library app, back toward like twenty eighteen.

And I had something like twelve hundred
books that I had read. Goodness gracious.

So, audiobooks don't count. It might be
about, you know, five a year, but oh, man.

Well, this guy is not the president
of the SBC. So I got, I got you.

I may have some more time than you do.

Well, learning from books then into the day to
day. You've been a pastor for your whole career.

You know, what are, what are some of the things
that drew you to the pastorate that, have kept you, in serving the Lord that way? You know, truthfully, I never really wanted to do anything other than be a preacher my entire life.

Like, I can't remember either being a preacher
or a stunt man. And they're very similar in a lot of regards.

And so I, since I was eleven years old, I mean,
I got saved really early and then pretty soon after that, I wanted to be in the ministry. We were going to, PC, USA church at the time.

They're very quiet and pretty lax. And we
stumbled upon a Baptist church and I heard a man standing in the pulpit preaching with an open Bible, and I thought, man, that's what I want to do.

And we joined the Baptist church. I didn't
even know anything about this doctrine.

I just liked what they were doing and then sort
of backed into, Southern Baptist life. but that's all I've ever wanted to do is, is pastor.

And I think. I think over the years, as I've
grown and still growing in my my thoughts and understanding of sovereignty, that's been what's held me.

The lord's grace held you in the ministry like
it's all dependent on, on the Lord. And that growth and that theological stream has been very helpful just for my own well-being.

Along the way, you've served with the
convention, it looks like for in various positions for at least like fifteen years going back. How have you brought in both the convention leadership with pastoral ministry and how have those things built?

Have they competed with one another?
Have they built into each other?

You know, early on the first two churches I
served were in rural Mississippi. And, I went to, I went to seminary in New Orleans.

So it's one hundred and forty miles away.
Didn't have the internet, so I drove down in the morning, drive back in the afternoon and go to, you know, full time student and pastor in the church.

And you learn how to, you know, you learn some
of those necessities of time management and what you, what you have to do, what needs to be done and what you can let go. And, that was a really good preparation for pastoral

Ministry because once you get to a certain size
of church, it's like that all the time. And then as you add the layer of trying to lead in some sort of, convention position, I think being a pastor is the best training for that.

I think serving the church is really the best
training. Like I wouldn't want to serve in a convention role without, pastoring the church.

That gives you great insight. the
Church is where the action is.

That's my, really, my calling and the thing
that matters most in my life when it comes to serving is going to be serving the church in my own career. I remember getting to a point maybe fifteen or twenty years ago, where I had worked with churches growing up with my

Dad's company, and I had been burned by so many
Churches. I just said, I'll do anything other than work with churches.

And I ended up in a retail job for a couple
years, and God brought me back into this. But there is an element of working with church that is full of pain and hurt and hardship, and that's part of the call of the pastor, too, is to serve and minister to the needs of the people.

And that gets compounded by, you know, tens of
thousands when you get into a convention role with that. How, how have you, kept your heart from being, beat up along the way where you kind of see the full throated pain of these things, but see God meeting and and sustaining

Both you and the church through all that. I
think that comes from the health of a local church and being involved in your local church.

And my whole life is is tied up in the church.
And so my identity is not tied up in the Southern Baptist Convention, being the president or whatever role I've, I've had there.

That's not the highlight of my life. The
highlight of my life is actually pastoring the local church.

And so my friends and brothers and sisters in
Christ are here. If there's something tragic that happens in my life.

I mean, you know, we're coming up on the two
year anniversary of losing my youngest son. So I mean, that what got us through was, you know, the people of of God in the church walking beside you.

That's where we've drawn our strength. And so,
you know, you see the vitality of the church and how and why God designed it like he has and how good it is.

I mean, it does have some some, you know, you
got dragons in the church like anywhere else. But man, the overall sense of being with a body of believers has such great health to it for me.

How, how have you navigated this with your wife
and that call to ministry? And her name's Connie, is that right?

Connie. And, you know, for
Connie, how has all of this been?

Does she does she have kind of a sense of, a co
calling with you, in this and how, how does that impact how you guys work? I'm not sure I would call it a co calling.

You know, I was fortunate in that Connie, her
mom and dad, her daddy was a pastor her entire life in Mississippi. And so she knew what, what, what a pastor goes through what church is like.

She's very familiar. And so she knows some of
the demands that come with serving as a pastor.

And, just by the lord's grace, her own
temperament is such that she, has not, you know, felt like the church was some sort of mistress or something like that. She's, she's always loved the church and know that the church has supported us.

She knows that I make my living. That's, god's
provision has been given to us through the church.

Attitudinally. it's it's been such a blessing
to me to be married to someone that understands that and loves the church as much as I do.

As you guys have, kind of navigated through
ministry over the years and served together. You know, is there, are there, are there moments when you look back where you see God moving and working that are kind of those calling cards back to your heart of when you have

The bad day and you think back and reminisce
on, here's what we've seen God do. What are some of those moments where you've, you've seen, you know, this is God moving.

This is god's work. This
is what god's calling is.

Yeah, we've seen that, with a couple of places,
probably at my third church, Dauphin way Baptist Church in mobile, Alabama, and, church that had gone through a really. Go ahead.

You got something to say? I was going to say,
hearing you say that with a southern accent is, sounds like music to people here from the midwest.

Anyhow, the church in mobile, Alabama, to to
go there. You know, I wasn't from mobile.

I really had not spent any time, you know,
Mississippi and Alabama are the deep south North Carolina kind of, you know, we're almost there. And so going to mobile, was a really, felt risky.

The church at the time had been through a hard
time. It was, we felt like it really could.

I could be the chaplain that says the last
rites, or it could be there. And the Lord do something that is so far beyond anyone getting credit.

And our six years there, really were probably
some of the highlight years of just joy in the ministry, god's provision, the church being, revived, people coming back, getting money in the bank. I mean, you know, all of those things that you, the tangible

And the intangible markers of what's kind of a
successful, almost easy ministry were there so that you had no choice but to say, man, the Lord has just been kind and, and given us like, I feel like that was the vacation.

And the last fifteen years have been the work
where, you know, that was like, I don't I'm not a visionary. I didn't have I didn't lay out great visions for the church the Lord just provided.

And it was really great. That's, that's
got to be sweet then to have that.

It really was. Man, we had a great time there.

And I thought that's where I would be like, I
thought that's where I would retire one day. And you know, Hickory Grove is my home church, right?

That's where you grew up, right? Well, kind of
we joined it when I was in, like, the tenth grade.

So close enough. This is where I sort of
learned, what discipleship, you know, is.

And so to come back here has been the great
sort of call of my life. Like, this is what I want to give myself to.

And, to see this church sort of transform from,
A genuinely attractional kind of church growth ish church to, some real, gospel centered kind of things. That's, been a real, a joy, but it's been hard work.

I've had to work much harder than I
thought I was going to have to. What?

When you talk about that
hard work. What is that?

What is that grind look like? It kind of give
us a window into some of some of the struggle.

Well, you know, if you're if you're trying to,
if you're trying to change a ship from a cruise ship to a battleship and you want to do it without dry docking it, so you have to make the changes while you're at sea. Then you have to judge what's what can I do here to make

Changes without sinking the ship? Like, how can
I make the appropriate, necessary, even, even, vital changes and do it without just, you know, bombing the thing?

Anybody can come in and just and say, look,
we're going a different direction. And, you know, if you're patent, you can say lead, follow, or get out of the way.

But the truth of the matter is that's not how
you do church, to, to actually provide change. You, you stand in the threshold of that door and how much can they handle?

How much can the church take?
Give it some breathing room.

. And all of that change can make
it feel schizophrenic at times.

So you can walk into one section of the church
and think, man, this is really strong and healthy. Look how great this is going.

And then you open another door and look in
there and think, my goodness, that what's happening in this in this Sunday school room. So, leading that change, you know, can really be tiresome because you almost never really win.

You just actually are managing, the level of
loss as you're, as you're providing the change. That's tough.

How long was that season? So I
think it would be five years.

You know, it probably I'm probably still in
it, fifteen years. We're on the back end.

Like I'm at a, at a point now where I might go
for thirty minutes or an hour and not think about the church. And so that feels a nice, you know, some relief.

I can actually go on vacation now and enjoy it.
If we go on vacation, I don't feel like I'm going to be getting back, but it took about ten years to get to that point.

But, you know, we've been here fifteen years.
The people have, been very gracious and, and received me as the pastor.

And I'm very thankful for that. I'm thankful to
have a church and have it vibrant and healthy and headed in the right direction.

I grew up at a church in Wheaton, Illinois,
with it was called College Church. And, our Kent Hughes was the pastor back then in the nineties.

And, he was known as like a good preacher. He
has a big commentary series with Crossway and all this kind of stuff.

And I always thought, oh, he'll be known for
that. But in a lot of ways, he invested into the staff on his church.

And if you look at the ministry circles today.
The resonant impact of his ministry is like the biggest impact that he made is in the leaders that he built into, and, you know, so I saw that modeled and I can kind of appreciate it now.

I didn't know it was going on when I
was fifteen, you know? Right, right.

But, to see that, how have you kind of woven
in, development and training and building into the other leaders in your church along the way? You know, here at Hickory Grove, we have, there are eighteen other pastors on staff.

And, so you have a real team that you're
working with, and those brothers are trying to treat them just like you would brothers. You know, you do have sort of an organizational chart, but that chart remains flat unless there's an emergency.

And then you have the decision tree, so to
speak. But for the most part, we're working as brothers.

And, and our meetings will have a real, element
of accountability and discipleship. we'll read books together.

We actually have a group meet where, every
single day, every single pastor posts what he read in the Bible that morning so that there is a built in sort of group accountability that every one of the leaders here on staff are at least

Reading the Bible every day, spending time in
prayer and praying for one another. And there's been a culture shift with the staff.

If you're viewed as a team, I think it's helped
to provide some longevity. so many of our guys have been here for a long time and I've been here fifteen years.

I've got guys that have been thirty years. Two
of those, they're probably five guys that have been here fifteen years, and several that have been here ten or more.

And so building in that ten year, walking
together, walking together over some really rough ground over the course of time. It builds a camaraderie that you can't hardly.

You know, you can't hardly fake. And
you go through difficulties together.

You know, one another can depend on one
another. And, that has been a great asset.

Now it hurts when guys leave. You
know, I have a couple on staff.

I know that they'll go past our church
somewhere. I'll help them do it.

Some people said, you know, will it be like
losing children? Well, kind of, except those guys are actually useful to me, you know?

You know, I mean, losing, losing children.
They're coming off the payroll and you get a little relief.

Losing the guys that I'm going to
lose, they're. They do great work.

And so there'll be big holes in our
ministry when they leave. But I'll rejoice.

And because I was in that position at one
point two. And, and we'll help them get there.

That's good.. you mentioned early on, I'm going
to switch back to the personal and a couple of things.

One thing — with your children.
You guys you and Connie adopted.

Was it two? Two sons?

Is that right? That's right, that's right.

How has adoption kind of framed your view, both
of family and of who God is and of ministry? you know, it's one of those great salvation words.

And, and then when you sort of walk through it,
adopting children, you realize in a faint way, what, what it means to actually be legally brought into god's family, even though you were not part of that family. And now everything I have, would belong to them one day.

So it gives you a real, tangible kind of
picture of what salvation is in Christ. We don't belong to him.

And yet in Christ, he adopts us. and then for,
you know, having some of those struggles, the Lord uses all of that.

So with infertility, the Lord uses, you know,
you walk through that nothing is wasted with the Lord. None of your struggles are.

And so none of ours have been to. To be able to
have some insight about what just of experience of struggling with infertility and then some of the uniqueness that comes from adopting children.

They were special needs children.
They had been, you know, abused.

And so walking through some of that, and then,
you know, with ultimately the loss of my youngest, grappling with, with all of all of the issues that come with that, with the tragedy, with the sorrow of, of, you know, being hurt like

That how God uses that for the life of the
Church. You know, we just trust that he does and to, and to actually be, you know, it's one thing to try to minister to someone that's hurting, it's another thing altogether to actually be

Hurt and ministered to and, know, the value of
pastoral and, and church ministry. All of that was was going on while you were in a position with, you know, with your son passing just a couple years ago.

You're in the middle of ministry and convention
stuff and. life and to, to have that going on concurrent with that.

How was that for you?? Like, how do you, how
does the Lord preserve your soul in the midst of that?

I think those are the simple, the simple sort
of means of grace that the Lord has given the church that the Lord has given us. We underestimate the simple means of grace that God gives us when it comes to worship, fellowship, personal

Discipleship, rest and routine, striving for
godliness, the value of friends, all of those good things that God gives we take for granted until you know, hey, you have something like this happen. And then you find yourself relying on that and you

Realize just how good that is, how good the
Church is, how good Christian fellowship is, how how good it is, how god's provision has been so good over the course of time, even through through all of that. it's helpful.

You lift weights, you lift weights,
frequently. what's your favorite lift?

What's your, what do you hate doing?
But you do it because you have to.

I started lifting weights in junior high
school. And so you go through junior high school, high school and play football in college.

You did all that and just never really kind of
just never, I don't know, just never stopped. And so my lips are not really that they're not I'm not like the strongest guy in the world.

I just like to do it. I think probably my
favorite is going to be everybody's favorite of bench press and maybe deadlift.

I like the compound
movements. Bench dead squat.

I wish I could still do power cleans, but I'm
fifty six years old. Not quick like I used to be.

So I don't really do that one as much anymore.
But I like the simple we do just the simple lifts.

Go in, get them done and get out of there. I
remember in college, lifting, my roommate had been a minor league baseball pitcher and, he, you know, I'd come in just sort of general kid growing up and played sports in america.

But, he started teaching me all these lifts to
build up strength for throwing. And I remember, like, not even realizing it was happening in a year later.

Like I could throw a baseball probably twenty
miles an hour faster. You know, I'm that good.

That's going from sixty to eighty. You know,
it's not like you go one hundred miles an hour, but, still, it was it was wild to see how a little bit of training and strength and that kind of thing.

It can make an impact and to sustain.
No doubt over the long term.

And it's just helpful long
term. it's good for stress.

It's good for camaraderie. It's good for your,
I don't know, just being as good shape as possible.

And plus I don't eat very good.
I eat like a nine year old.

Like I don't eat vegetables. I eat junk
and so I gotta do something with it.

Well, you know, you keep it up. You can
be president of the SBC and keep lifting!

All right.

So, well, you know, looking at the church, more
broadly, one of the things that has kept me working with the church was, and brought me back into, serving with churches was that God loves the church, and God chooses to work through and to

Recognize that God sees the brokenness of
Church and still moves in love toward us. You know, what are, what are some of the ways that, you know, even even now that you're, or maybe even a story of like, how are you seeing God at work in the local church?

Yeah, I think especially, you know, two
thousand and twenty five. And, so look at the world, broadly in the united states and then the trends of, let's say, just sexuality, the trends of morality.

And, and really there's been this sort of kind
of micro revival in the churches that have seen the need for depth and pressed toward that. And, and you get a sense that some of the good things that God has given us, let's just say with the goodness of of maleness

And the goodness of femaleness and how it's
presented to us in Genesis, there is a little bit of a, of a, of a renaissance of seeing, celebrating the good things of the Lord, within the church that are healthy. I think you see, there's been a resurgence of congregationalism.

What I mean is on a Sunday where we're moving
away from a performative, on, on stage and people sitting like they're at a show moving toward a actually participatory worship that is engaging. You're seeing in the last twenty years, I think a

A renaissance of expositional preaching guys
actually dealing, what does the Bible say? And then trying to withdraw.

What does the Bible say? Truth for their
people, giving it to them, knowing that's what feeds their souls.

Moving toward church being for our soul care.
You know, it not being entertainment, not being psychology, not being social ministry, but what is our biggest issue and our struggle with sin?

And that the gospel is not only there for
salvation, the gospel is there to minister to every single part of what we do and how we live as as christians. I think I think I've seen some of that in the church move back in that direction, even in the midst of this sort of deluge of,

Of immorality in the world we live in. I
remember in twenty twenty, in the middle of Covid and then everything else that happened in the culture over that summer.

And it was kind of wild. It, it felt very much
like a, you know, nineteen sixty nine kind of a moment in the culture.

And as that was going on, I was looking at
Churches, and I was struck that the only churches that were growing in that moment were the churches that took a really strong political stance to the left or to the right. And maybe that was just a chicago thing, but I think it

Was happening more broadly in that moment. But
I also looked at that and said, this isn't going to be sustained, that you're not going to have the political poles pulling that way.

And yet those elements are still there. There's
elements of, you know, government, stepping into talking about theology, through governance and, you know, navigating all of that, how do you see the church kind of pulling and what is that bigger picture?

How do you see God moving and working and
orchestrating, even in the midst of a lot of unknowns and in some turmoil? I think that, it goes back a little bit of what I was talking about earlier is, is knowing, you know, what is the, what is

The lane that we run in as pastors and churches
and then being really good in that lane, and then understanding that's going to inform all the others. It's not like all the lanes are equal for us.

You know, there's one big sort of important
piece of being human, and that is to be connected to God through Christ and then and then growing in our own biblical understanding, and then those things that we care about. I mean, they inevitably will play out in, in politics in

Some way. But as christians, we don't start
with politics and reverse engineer into, into the Bible.

You know what I mean? We start with who we
are in Christ and what does the Bible teach?

And then everything else is downstream from
that, not the other way around. And I think that's where there's been some confusion, in christians, they've got it, got it backwards, that, that your christianity downstream from politics, where ours, I

Think is rightly ordered is going to be, your
politics downstream from where you are and your walk with the Lord. What does the Bible teach?

What are some of the foundational things
we care about? You go to the polls.

What do we vote? you know, we
vote regardless of a personality.

We have some convictions that we end up voting.
And they they do show up politically, but that's not where we start.

I remember hearing Tim Keller talk about
epistemological hierarchy and rightly ordered loves and, you know, things, things like that. And, you know, I think that resonates with a lot of people of seeing, you know, if we love the Lord, then there can be

Political implications across the board. But
yeah, you know, keeping those things in the right place.

You're leading the, you know, the president of
the Southern Baptist Convention, there's a lot of history, a lot of controversy. It's a huge convention, biggest in the US.

And a lot of weightiness to that, is a leader.
They talked about you coming in and being the stable guy and that kind of thing.

But I don't think stability comes from like, if
you're if you're leading a ship, stability doesn't come from standing still necessarily. But be, you know, of being on mission, in that and how, how do you see yourself as kind of catalyzing people to pull the church forward?

And, you know, what is, what does that future
look like for the convention? So for the Southern Baptist Convention, it's good for us to remember, you know, why we even exist.

And if we can look at to why we exist, and
there are just a couple of reasons why, and then start pressing those reasons back into the heart of our own fellowship. Why?

Why do we gather together? Because it's
I mean, we're autonomous churches.

All of them are independent.
We don't need one another.

We don't there's no hierarchy. So why do we
gather and then trying to call attention and celebrate those things that we actually do well.

Because there are some really I mean, it's the
largest, it's the largest missionary sending agency in the history of the world. the Southern Baptist Convention is, and I worked in Asia for a couple of years and was in the middle of nowhere

Where I was serving and was shocked to meet
people from the SBC serving in that same place. And, you know, I can testify to that on the other side of the world of like, whoa, that was there, right?

And not only that, you know, they're sent there
and are fully funded by what we call the cooperative program. That is the genius of gathering all of these independent churches together and having them give to one giant bucket called the cooperative program.

And out of that comes our funding missionaries
that whose sole purpose is to win people to Christ. I mean, they're going with the goal of preaching the gospel to see people actually converted to Christ.

So that's something we do, you know, really,
really well. And the other is domestically.

When it comes to planting and revitalizing
Churches, focusing on not only planting churches where. There's not really much gospel witness, but here in some of the South and Southeast.

Some of the churches, their buildings are still
there, but the congregations have diminished. And young guys coming in and, you know, leading in a revitalization effort, we're really pressing that issue into the heart of some of the young pastors coming in that that is a

Really great thing to go and lead a church and
revitalization. And then, you know, the Southern Baptist Convention has we support six the largest seminaries in the world.

And all six of those seminaries are true to a
confession of faith, one that is aligned with historic orthodox christianity, the Apostles creed, the Nicene creed, our Bfam two thousand. The Baptist faith and message from two thousand is a genuinely orthodox,

Conservative, biblically conservative
confession that all six seminaries adhere to, and every person working there as a professor has agreed to joyfully teach according to and not against. Yeah, that that's a that's an accomplishment in and of itself.

So you take those couple of things that, we do
and do really well and point to that, I think provides some reminder of this is why we actually exist. And that's what I've hoped to do in the last year or so.

If I'm elected again, I hope to do that for
another year. We have seen a lot of upheaval in seminary education just in this last month, Trinity Evangelical Divinity school is is merging into western something or other up in, in Vancouver.

And, you know, that's a that's a shift here in
chicago for sure. But that's not the only seminary where that's occurring.

If you were to speak into, you know, young,
young men or women considering vocational ministry and wanting to study at seminary, what are, what are some like practical insights you would give to them in terms of, you know, how to get involved, how to discern that, how to

Navigate, whether it be, you know, anything
from like practical stuff of student debt, but then also getting into, like, how is God moving and working? And why is seminary vital to the pastorate?

So I'm, I'm reading a, rereading a book, Martyn
lloyd-Jones preaching and preachers, taking a young pastor through it. And, you know, he's, I'm at the section where he's talking about, the preparation for ministry and he talks about, you

Knowing church history, knowing church history,
because it does inform, it to remind you you're a dot here. And there have been movements throughout Christian history.

It talks about systematic theology, having a
good grasp on systematic theology, and then having a really solid, sort of saturated view of the Bible that your life saturated with the Bible. And I think you find a place where you can have those three things.

One that is true to historic christianity, that
is not grappling with an errancy or any of the other doctrines that are necessary to hold on to historic christianity and then find one that's going to fit your budget and then find one.

You know, if you can move there, I think the
best way to get the seminary education is either, living on campus or where you can get to it very quickly and take the classes in person, interact with the professors. But if not, if not, you can, you know, what is the best

Online delivery of that education. Finding one
where it's going to equip you with Bible saturation, church history and systematic theology, I think is a is a really good preparation.

Some of the other practical stuff, you just got
to be in it to learn it. That that's true for so much of life, right?

Where. Yeah, right.

You just got to be in it. You prepare and
then you take your licks and carry on.

Well that's good. In terms of the drive you
you've pressed, you know, whether it be the weightlifting and the regular, you know, just disciplines and everything else that you do.

What are those things that keep you pressing
on, day in, day out? What is, what is, what's your mission that, that keeps you focused?

There are a couple of things.
What does Paul say in Colossians?

That he is a minister of the gospel, the
stewardship that God gave him. So God gave us a stewardship.

And what I've been given here at Hickory Grove
at our church is a stewardship, just for a little while. All of us are just sort of interim pastors.

Some, some interims are longer than
the other. But I'm here for a while.

I have some obligations, that I've got to
uphold some responsibilities that I have to fulfill. And then there's an urgency with that.

And, you know, as the older you get, the more
you feel that you become like Churchill on an old man in a hurry. You know, that's what you end up being.

You feel that urgency to fulfill what God has
given you to fulfill, to do so in a way that honors the Lord. And so I think that really is what that's enough.

I mean, right, that right there is enough to
motivate you. And if you know, if that doesn't motivate you don't want to be lazy.

Nobody likes a lazy preacher.
So let's not have one.

You know, you ought to be doing
the work. That's a good word.

Well, Pastor Clint Pressley, really an honor to
speak with you. Get a little window into what's driving you and what you're, you know, seeing God do both through, Hickory Grove and then also through, the SBC.

So, thank you for taking time to
share with us. Thanks, brother.

Appreciate you having me. You've been listening
to the church around the world with Dan Ehrman, discovering how God is working in and through the church.

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