Pastor Scott Lehr teaches at Dallas Theological Seminary's annual week long Church Planter chapel series with a core topic of "Jesus is Stronger." Lehr provides the convictional core to any pastor servant-leading people in church planting, which is merely ensuring God's mission of making and training disciples of Christ in a local area to see people inspired by truth and love to make life, disciples, and churches all about Jesus." Typically pastoring to localize people around this mission involves difficulties common as well as uncommon to other work in life. We want pastors to be raised up and called to this heart and mission.
Lehr is a quick talker, packing in a lot of life experience and exposing what Jesus said to live by in order love and lead people to him, and God transforms people to them to live for him. Pastors, especially church planting pastors, are doing the same primary tasks from the foundation of the gospel in the midst of great evil and Satanic plans of attacks to keep people from trusting and being transformed by God. Lehr says, "When God is at work, Satan is also at work."
Lehr intertwines life issues of marriage, addiction, church planting decisions, etc. to draw the point that the gospel addresses every area of life. One particular issue is the spiritual "navel-gazing" or "self-centered" spirituality, but Christ calls us to not look at ourselves but to Jesus. In that, we truly listen to and understand what Jesus said and did.
We want pastors to live and lead by this telos centered heart, where God and the gospel are at the convictional core of their life humbling and aiming them to trust, follow, and love Christ. When that happens, people are loved and trained to learn and love Christ in real life to "make life, disciples, and churches all about Jesus."
