"All right," you say. "So you've followed a tall steeple man. What is that to me? And how does your experience and insights impact my ministry?" Well, your pastorate may be different, in context, in size, larger, smaller, or different in many things. However, there are things in this matter that concern all of us. For aren't we all following in a line of godly preachers? And who among us feels worthy to the task of standing between God and man, announcing God's Word to men, and standing with men and women to petition God for help in their time of need. You may not follow Ben Haden (who, incidentally, has been wonderful to me), but you do follow Spurgeon, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Whitefield, Edwards, and the college of preachers who stretch across denominational and ethnic lines all the way back to Paul, John, Moses, and our Lord Jesus Himself. All of us deal with questions about our pastorate:

• How can we be faithful in our ministries?
• How can we have a ministry approved by God?
• How can we have an effective pastorate?
• How can our ministries, our preaching, support church health?
• How can we have power in our ministries?

There are significant answers to those questions that may be located in the Bible, cultivated through prayer, study, consecration, and dying to ourselves. But I want to consider one single answer, and to do so from the Word of God: 2 Timothy 3:16 through 4:1-5. There, a little pastor named Timothy, just like the name of the mouse in Dumbo, who followed a ministry giant, a pastoral pacaderm named Paul, is instructed on how to latch on to the legacy. Hear the Word:

I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound* teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. (2 Timothy 4.1-5 ESV)1

Let's just say it and let the power and the possibility for failure sink in: Timothy was pastor of the church planted by Paul. When I feel really challenged, I think of Timothy. The elders at Ephesus had fallen on the neck of Paul and wept over his departure at Miletus. Three years of powerful ministry gave Paul the right to call them to shepherd the Church of God that He had purchased with His own blood. And Paul, in his swan song at the twilight of his remarkable ministry, reminded Timothy how he had to follow Him. He gave the secret to power. He lifted a mouse (no, his words were so divine and powerful that they magically transformed the mouse into an elephant), a giant linked to his ministry, and linked to Jesus Christ, powered by Almighty God Himself. And what did Paul commend? He commended the Word of God, and after calling it God-breathed, he charged a God-called man to preach. The answer to the question, "How do mice latch on to elephants?" is neither original nor surprising. Like Charles Hodge addressing new students at old Princeton, I, too, say to you, "I glory in saying that you will learn nothing new here." But it is an answer that every frail follower of pulpit giants must remember: