This week I was honored to attended the Acts 29 DWELL conference in Manhattan. There was a rainy, cold, and foggy theme to my first time in the Big Apple, but that didn’t dampen the experience.

Around 400 church diverse church planters–some wearing suits, others wearing faux-hawks and tattoos–gathered on the edge of Central Park in an 170-year-old, baroque church building owned by the Fourth Universalist Society in upper Manhattan. You get a sense of the impressive architecture, stained glass, paintings, and pipe organ from this photo I took with my phone.

The attendees were seated (by the dozen) around tables where application discussions took place between addresses. It was great to see a few old friends and meet some new one’s, too. It was an impressive lineup and location for a church planting conference.

C.J. Mahaney opened with a message titled, Pastoral Priorities, Watching Your Life and Ministry, centered on 1 Timothy 4:16: “Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.”

C.J. closed his message with these words on the second half of the passage.

Paul is not teaching self-atonement. Instead he is accenting human agency in the experience of salvation. … Calvin comments on this passage, “Although salvation is God’s gift alone, yet human ministry is needed as is here implied.” In this passage we are reminded of the vital importance of human ministry and godly leadership as a means of grace. And in this passage we are assured that if we watch our life and doctrine closely and persist and persevere in these practices, we can expect God to preserve us, and those we serve, for that final day. Here in this passage we find a promise of effective ministry in a most unexpected place.

And, most importantly, what stands behind this profound promise? The reason Paul can make this promise is the one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus (2:5). The mediator stands behind this promise. What stands behind any effective pastoral ministry is the mediator Christ Jesus. What stands behind our watching our life and doctrine, what empowers our watching our life and doctrine, what guarantees the effectiveness of watching our life and doctrine, is the Savior.

Listen, if it were not for the work of the Savior, the burden of this verse would be simply too much to bear! But because of the Savior we have hope this morning for our pastoral ministry and in our pastoral ministry. We have hope that our lives, by the grace of God, will, in ever-increasing ways, faithfully reflect the transforming effect of the gospel. We have hope! We have hope that our preaching will faithfully proclaim our Savior. We have hope that our ministries will contribute to the preservation of ourselves and the congregation we serve. So, brothers, as we watch our lives, as we watch our doctrine, we are confident we will also watch the Savior work.

For me, sitting off to one side, there was dramatic irony in these closing paragraphs. C.J.’s voice rose a few decibels reminding us of the ministry-sustaining power of the gospel. The amplified emphasis of his voice, proclaiming the importance of the gospel, echoed through the old unitarian church built intentionally hollowed of the gospel and doctrine.

As I listened to the echo it was not only a great reminder to persist in watching my life and teaching, but in looking around at the church’s ornamentation it was also a reminder that failing to watch our life and teaching may not mean our churches will empty out for us to see our failures in this lifetime. A very sobering reminder we can take into all areas of life as we walk by faith, seeking to please God.

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A longer version of this message was delivered in the 2006 Together for the Gospel conference message, “Watch Your Life.” Download here.