A Word of Pastoral Encouragement Upon the Installation of Pastor Kyle Degagne
(Delivered at Emmanuel Baptist Church, Norfolk, Massachusetts, Feb. 22, 2026)
Pastor Kyle, it is a great pleasure to be here with you and your wonderful family to celebrate this important day in the life of the Church. Not just this Church, but THE Church.
When God calls a man to lead a congregation of His people in the Word of God it is inconsequential to the world, but it is momentous in heaven – far more significant than the Patriots flying out to the Super Bowl, or any of the other things that the world rejoices in. But the thing is, only God and the people of God – and the devil – know it!
And – mark it down – the mantle the Lord is laying upon your shoulders is no easy one – especially in the day in which we have been called to pastor.
The Apostle Paul encouraged young Pastor Timothy, in what would be among his final written words:
“Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. 3 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, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. 5 But as for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry (2 Timothy 4:2-5).
So, the pastor is (1) always to reach for the lost – “do the work of an evangelist” – but he is to (2) carefully preach the Word and teach the flock.
Here Paul was looking to a then-future time when people would not “endure sound teaching” – the word translated “endure” here means to “regard with tolerance, to put up with, to permit.[1] [2]
When the Bible was written, a full 30% of it was unfulfilled prophecy – much of which has now been fulfilled.
So let me update the apostle Paul: The time is not coming when people will not endure sound teaching, the time is here!
Pastor Kyle, the desperate need of the Church today, as in every century, is that it be well fed and protected.
And so, in that awkward, post-resurrection meeting with Jesus – the first one since he denied that he even knew Him – Jesus looked Peter in the eye and asked three times, “Simon, son of John, do you love me.”[3]
Each time Peter responded that he did, to which our Lord replied:
First, “Feed my lambs.” Then, “Tend my sheep.” And finally, “Feed my sheep.” (John 21:15–17).
‘Do you love Me? Then feed My lambs, shepherd My sheep, feed My sheep!’
The New Testament Pastor demonstrates his love for Jesus by feeding and shepherding well the flock He has committed to his care.
And notice Whose these sheep are: They are “My sheep,” Jesus said.
Undershepherds are – and tremble at this! – men entrusted with the care of Christ’s own flock![4]
This is a grave responsibility, Pastor Kyle![5]
Feeding the flock well on the Word of God is vital because it’s the Word that insulates us from the many schemes of the enemy!
The enemy has a strategy to ‘blind the minds’ of unbelievers to keep them from coming to know Jesus (2 Corinthians 4:4).
But he also has a strategy against believers!
And so, Paul warned the believers at Corinth: “I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ” (1 Cor. 5:8).
It is the Word of God which keeps us from being led astray from “a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.”[6]
And so, to the pastor, Paul writes, “preach the word; be ready in season and out of season” (2 Timothy 4:2a).
Pastor Kyle, we’re living in a time when the Word of God is decidedly “out of season.”[7]
Yet, the Church, especially through her pastors, is charged with standing for the Truth against a godless culture that seeks to neutralize its authority and impact.
Believers led by their shepherds are to resist the ungodliness of the encroaching culture by declaring the things which God has spoken – especially when they are not popular.
In a quote attributed to the great Reformer Martin Luther:
“If I profess with the loudest voice … every portion of the Word of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Him. Where the battle rages there the loyalty of the soldier is proved.”
We are never to do this in anger, but always in the love of Christ.[8]
It’s sad, Pastor Kyle, but today the untoward culture all around us is influencing the Church more than the Church is influencing it.
The great Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon warned:
“A time will come when instead of shepherds feeding the sheep, the church will have clowns entertaining the goats.”[9]
That time too, I’m afraid, is here.
And that’s why this day – February 22, 2026 – is SO important to the history of the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ.
For today, it has pleased the Lord to install a faithful, godly shepherd over this precious flock!
And so, I’ll leave you with one final encouragement – one that Paul left with Timothy:
“Remember …” “Remember” what?
What is the one thing the Pastor must never take his eyes off of?
What is the one thing that must be present in all of his preaching if his preaching is to please the Lord?
This: “Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David … [and] do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:9, 15).
Pastor Kyle, I have known you for many, many years.
I have been your teacher, and your brother in Christ, and your friend, and your co-laborer in the Gospel.
I know your integrity and your love for the Word of God.
And I’ve listened to a number of your fine, recent sermons on the epistle to the Ephesians.
And so, I congratulate this congregation for following the leading of the Spirit in calling such a fine man to lead this local assembly.
And to you, Pastor Kyle, I say, keep doing what you’re doing and the Lord will be pleased – which, in the final reel, is the one thing which matters most.
Illustration: The Story of the Prodigy Pianist. And so, we live ultimately before an audience of One.
Pastor Kyle, my prayer for you is that you’d never shrink back from defending the Word of God against anyone who would do injury to it.
It is a shame, Pastor Kyle, but the world is challenging the truths of God’s Word more than ever before.
Yet, in the words of the great Athanasius, something I heard Calvin Robinson quote recently, “If the world is against the truth, then I am against the world.”
Church, please pray for your pastor and his family.
Pastor Kyle, never cease to pray for the flock the Lord has entrusted to your care.
May the Lord’s favor be upon you all.
[1] Arndt, William, Frederick W. Danker, Walter Bauer, and F. Wilbur Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), p. 78, ἀνέχω.
[2] And here it’s in the imperfect tense: ‘they will keep on producing the action of not permitting or putting up with sound teaching.’
[3] “Simon, son of John, do you love [ἀγαπάω] me more than these?” Peter said, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love [φιλέω] you.” Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.” [ἀρνίον, once understood to be diminutive of ἀρήν, but no longer felt to be such in NT times; hence, a sheep of any age. Ibid., Arndt, Danker, Bauer, and Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, p. 133.] Then Jesus asked a second time [ἀγαπάω], and Simon answered, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love [φιλέω] you.” Jesus said to him, “Tend my sheep.” [“Tend” is actually “shepherd” or “pastor” (ποιμαίνω). “Sheep (πρόβατον) we thought of as sacrificial animals, defenseless and in grave danger if they have no shepherd. Op. cit., Arndt, Danker, Bauer, and Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, p. 866.] And then Jesus asked him a third time, “Do you love [φιλέω] me?” Peter answered, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love [φιλέω] you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep” – “Βόσκε τὰ πρόβατά μου” (John 21:15–17).
[4] Sheep in the first century were understood to be extremely vulnerable, “defenseless in the midst of wolves, and in grave danger if they have no shepherd” [Op. cit., Arndt, Danker, Bauer, and Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, p. 866.]And so, Jesus “went throughout all the cities and villages” and when He saw “the crowds, He had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:36).
[5] Paul communicated how precious the flock is to the Ephesian elders with these words: “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which He obtained with His own blood” (Acts 20:28).
[6] Psalm 119:11: “Your word I have hidden in my heart, That I might not sin against You.”
[7] In his masterful book, The God Who is There (1968), Dr. Francis Schaeffer described how new ideas come full circle to acceptance in a culture. They begin with a philosophical idea that finds its way into the arts (literature, drama painting, film) and finally into general culture. He wrote: “Each of the steps represents a certain stage in time. The higher is earlier, the lower later. It was in this order that the shift in truth affected men’s lives. The shift spread gradually … People did not suddenly wake up one morning and find that it had permeated everywhere at once … [I]t spread as represented in the diagram, from one discipline to another, beginning with the philosophers and ending with the theologians. Theology has been last for a long time. It is curious to me, in studying this whole cultural drift, that so many pick up the latest theological fashion and hail it as something new. But in fact, what the new theology is now saying has already been said previously in each of the other disciplines” (Schaeffer, Francis A., The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer: A Christian Worldview, Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1982, i.8–9, italics his). The last place a change occurs to bring it to full acceptance is in theology – and as it should be. When the Church begins to accept ideas that re contrary to Scripture, those ideas – which began in the world, not in Christ – have come full circle.
[8] The lost are not our enemies; they are our mission field. And so, putting away all falsehood we’re to speak the truth in love each one of us to our neighbor (Ephesians 4:15, 25).
[9] The quote “A time will come when instead of shepherds feeding the sheep, the church will have clowns entertaining the goats” is attributed to Charles Spurgeon in multiple sources. However, a critical examination by Lifeway Research indicates that no verifiable record exists of Spurgeon uttering or writing this exact phrase. The quote appears in various articles and sermons posthumously, but its origin remains unconfirmed in Spurgeon’s known works. Therefore, while widely cited, the statement cannot be definitively traced to Spurgeon’s original writings or sermons.
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