AI Summary
5 min readScott Cook, senior pastor of Oconee Presbyterian Church and adjunct professor at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, did not want to be a pastor in high school. He wanted to teach theology. But through a series of providential relationships—a Reformed Baptist Bible teacher who gave him Millard Erickson’s systematic theology in ninth grade, a mentor in Jay Adams who showed him that preaching and counseling are not separate callings, and an internship at Second Presbyterian Church where he watched Rick Phillips handle session meetings—he came to see that pastoral ministry and academic rigor belong together. “Education is fundamentally soul craft,” Cook says. “You’re shaping somebody’s worldview and person, particularly in seminary, and trying to pass on the faith once delivered to the saints.”
Conversion, Catechism, and the Crooked Stick
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What you'll learn
- 1 Timestamped Outline
- 2 (00:02) **Opening: The Power of Prayer** - Dr. Scott Cook opens with a story about elders praying through empty Sunday school rooms, then warns his younger self not to forget prayer as the mainstay of ministry.
- 3 (01:53) **Jim's Legendary Introduction of Scott** - Jim tells the (mostly true) story of first meeting Scott at Greenville Seminary in 2011: the Corvette, the Ray-Bans, and Morton Smith deferring to him in class.
- 4 (10:14) **Conversion: From Jesus Film to Genuine Faith** - Scott's mother prayed for him before he was born. At age five, he responded to the gospel call at the end of the 1980s Jesus film.
- 5 (20:43) **Pastoring on the Second Commandment** - Scott explains how he shepherds people through the biblical case against images of Jesus, especially when they've never considered it before.
- 6 (27:09) **The Fourth Commandment and a Mother's Story** - Jim shares how Scott challenged him early in their friendship about going to Panera after church, connecting it to Scott's own mother who was kept from worship because she had to work Sundays in food service.
- 7 (32:50) **Exceptions to the Ten Commandments in the PCA** - Scott expresses concern about the trend where exceptions to the second and fourth commandments have become normalized in Presbyterian courts.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
Jim McCarthy talks with Scott Cook, who is the Senior Pastor of Oconee Presbyterian Church in Seneca, South Carolina. He is also the Visiting Professor of Apologetics at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Listen to his sermons here.
Special thanks to Nathan Clark George for our opening and closing instrumental. Nathan serves as the Pastor of Worship alongside Kevin DeYoung at Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, NC. You can access Nathan's fantastic catalog here.
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