Jimmy Scroggins said his dad was a high school football coach, and the one thing he prided himself on the most was how many of his assistant coaches became head coaches.
“There were more than 50 who became head coaches,” said Scroggins, pastor of Family Church in south Florida. “He felt like that was a greater mark of his success than anything else he accomplished.”
That’s how he feels about mentoring — that growing up the next generation of disciple makers and pastors is “the best part” of being a pastor.
He shared that during a panel discussion June 9 at the Southern Baptist Pastors Conference in Dallas, along with Mark Dever, pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., and Dwayne Milioni, associate professor of preaching and coordinator of the preaching Ph.D. program at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina, and pastor of Open Door Church in Raleigh.
D.J. Horton, Pastors Conference president and pastor of Church at The Mill in Spartanburg, South Carolina, said the conference’s focus book — 2 Timothy — has mentorship at its core as Paul trains up Timothy for ministry. He said Scroggins, Dever and Milioni have a “track record of investing in other men.”
Click here for more stories from SBC 2025 in Dallas.
Scroggins said if you’re a pastor, like Paul you’re “called to be a mentor.”
“Read 1 Timothy 3, read the Book of Titus and you will see it’s a part of your calling,” he said. “God wants all pastors to look into the eyes of the men in our congregations and call something out of them that they don’t even know is there.”
Dever said ever since Jesus gave the Great Commission, “it’s been basically fulfilled by the local church producing more pastors than it needs.”
He said mission boards will come and go, but this model will always be the core of how the Great Commission is being accomplished.
He recommended that pastors ask young men a question such as, “If you’re still here in this city in five years, why wouldn’t you be an elder at our church?” That will get them thinking about where they might still need to grow, he said.
Milioni said 2 Timothy 2:2 “doesn’t give us an option.”
“The only way for the church to continue on generation after generation is for us to equip and train future pastors and then they do the same,” he said.
The size and scale of the New Testament church is small, he said. “Paul lays out a simple strategy that has worked for 2,000-plus years. Why can’t it continue to work now?”
Milioni said if your church isn’t doing it, it’s possible that somewhere along the way you lost the tradition of equipping your own pastors.
“This is ingrained in Scripture, so I really do think it’s a matter of faithfulness,” he said.
Dever said it doesn’t have to feel big and scary — it’s “probably something you’re already doing as a pastor, just be a little more deliberate about it.”
He said there are five things he sees pastors focus on — evangelism, discipling, raising up elders and pastors, church planting and missions.
“I think those five things are deeply related, and I think when you see a church that just does one of them, something’s wrong,” Dever said. “It’s like some fake fruit you’ve stapled on the tree. When it’s happening naturally, you’re going to see all five going on.”
Evangelism naturally leads to discipleship which leads to people being called as pastors and going out to plant churches and be involved in missions, he said.
RELATED: Study shows rate of pastors leaving pulpit each year remains unchanged in last decade
“I think as pastors, we want to help our members understand that what it means to be a follower of Jesus, part of the basic plan, is that you help other people follow Jesus,” Dever said. It’s not the advanced plan that only advanced Christians are doing, he said. “If you say you’re following Jesus and you don’t help other people follow Jesus, I’m not sure what you mean when you say you’re following Jesus.”
Scroggins said any church of any size can start by praying Luke 10:2, that the Lord of the harvest will send out more workers.
“You know when you’re praying a prayer that Jesus specifically told you to pray, it’s highly likely God is going to honor that prayer and answer it quickly,” he said.
Second, you can start taking someone with you everywhere you go — to the hospital, on an evangelistic visit, to preach somewhere else.
“Why don’t you make it a principle, ‘I don’t go anywhere without taking someone with me.’ You don’t have to tell someone you’re mentoring them to do it,” Scroggins said. “That’s usually the best way these things work.”
For more information about the SBC Pastors Conference, visit sbcpc.net. To see Powell’s sermon and others from the conference, visit sbcannualmeeting.net.
