Dying to Self: A Teaching from Lloyd Pulley
During the November 2025 Calvary Chapel Association (CCA) International Pastors Conference, experienced leaders delivered powerful teachings to build up and encourage attendees fulfilling the legacy left by Pastor Chuck Smith. Featured here is one from Lloyd Pulley, senior pastor of CC Old Bridge, NJ. View the archived teaching at the end.
“I’m really burdened in my heart with one word in ministry: die.” In 2 Corinthians 5:14-15, the apostle Paul wrote, For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died; and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.
Pastor Lloyd compared marriage to ministry. “Love compels: That essentially is a part of what gets resurrected when you die. Apart from that, we live for self, pleasure, our own egos, our own purposes.” In marriage, you lay a foundation. “What you’ll learn in marriage is death. This is the key: If you don’t die, your marriage will die. It’s the same in ministry. If you don’t die in ministry, your ministry will die. There’s something about It’s not about me. This is what we see personified in Jesus, who died for us.”
The love of Christ compels us, Lloyd emphasized. “The tyranny of self is a very painful thing. Those that seem to get along, get success in this world, … many don’t learn … that it’s not enough. They still struggle. It breeds a frustration that’s more gnawing to your spirit because we live in the If Only: If only I get a little more money, that job, that spouse, that ministry. We have the hope that one day our ship will come in. But when you get everything you want, and you realize you’re still miserable, where do you go?”
Lloyd described the differences between the transactional vs. relational aspects of salvation. In the “transitional relationship with Christ,” which is very simple, our “old man” was crucified with Him. “On the cross, it’s finished. The transaction is complete.”
It’s like the differences between a contract and a covenant, he explained. “[In] a contract in the Old Testament, you do this and God will do this. You obey and God will bless you. That’s transactional. But it only proved that we didn’t have what it took to keep up our end of the bargain. We could not be that good.” In covenant, God does the work. “So God performed that transaction for us completely through his Son on the cross through His death … the righteousness that comes by faith and what He did.”
Lloyd continued, “This transaction where He died—One died for all—was not just a foundation; it was also a framework. It’s the ground of salvation as well as the pattern for life, because imputed righteousness is what we get when have that foundation in Jesus’ finished work.”
He added, “You have to strive to realize it’s finished, because by nature we think we’ve still got to do something. But righteousness comes by faith, not by works.” When people focus so much on the transactional aspect of righteousness, they have misplaced more of the relational. “The relational is like the friendship—it’s the give-and-take.”
God created us for relationship, not transaction, Lloyd taught. “He settled the transaction; now we’re brought into this union with Christ. We want to enjoy it. And in enjoying it … we inspire others to taste and see the Lord is good.”
The theme in 2 Corinthians Chapter 1 is that death is working in us for a good thing. “I worked hard to please myself before I became a Christian. I had to have the right amount of sin, of party, alcohol, and drugs. You worked hard to please yourself, to find people around you to please you. You’re never quite there. Oh, to be free of that tyranny, that slavery to sin!” The transaction completed, “now I’m just learning how to walk in the relational aspects of that.”
Ephesians 5:21-22, which describes how husbands and wives are to submit to one another in the fear of God, is applicable to ministry as well. “God is giving us a framework in which He brings us into what He did. He modeled perfect love to the end, laying His life down. And that’s where that seed multiplies. We’re to follow that model. We’re not to be thinking of ourselves. If you’re planning your life and ministry and have your ducks in a row and people to serve your vision, it’s going to die. Because the vision should serve the people, equip them to get a vision and multiply. Otherwise, you’re just building a little sandcastle in your own life.”
Lloyd noted that Paul suffered [in loving] others. “You know what encourages me about our world? We could talk about all the horrible things going on. There’s so much craziness. In our own nation, we’ve lost our mind. [Yet] right now, 280 million people around the world are being persecuted for their faith in Jesus Christ. Do you read that as a negative? I don’t. I read it as 280 million people willing to suffer rather than deny Jesus. We should be rejoicing from the hilltops and encouraging one another all the more to join them!”
He shared the efforts of his church in trying to bring righteousness to their community, through the school system and pro-life work, difficult work but both yielding positive results. “People are responding to the Gospel because they want to hear the truth.”
Paul learned that facing the Roman government in the first century was not easy—but despite the great persecution, there was revival. “And [now] you’re seeing revival in the younger generation at the same time that wokeism, pressure, and persecution [are] off the charts. I think we have to steel our minds to face the fact that ministry is difficult. It’s not business as usual. This isn’t the little country church on the edge of town, and you preach the Gospel and they’ll come. I still preach the Gospel … but I also see that we need to step in the danger point.”
Finally, Lloyd urged the pastors to be holy by yielding themselves to the influence of the Holy Spirit. “Paul wielded this amazing influence not because of his authority but because of his heart. That’s why Pastor Chuck Smith [Calvary Chapel founder] was so meaningful to me. He moved us by example. Jesus did that, and Paul does that. The goal [is] not living for yourself.”
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