My oldest son, Nathan, recently brought my attention to this powerful poem. Nathan has an interest in poems about nature, adventure, and perseverance- and that pleases me! I am quite taken with this poem, so I looked into the author, Douglas Malloch (May 5, 1877 – July 2, 1938). He was a poet and author of short …
A friend sent me this video yesterday. It is an excellent, brief discussion of pastoral ministry, hitting many of the key points I try to speak to at this site. I recommend this video for any pastors, and especially for guys just starting out as pastor John Powell talks about some of his struggles in …
A few weeks ago I had the privilege of preaching at my home church, FBC Jackson, TN, as we celebrated Justin Wainscott’s 10th anniversary as pastor at FBC. I thought it was a good opportunity to revisit what the New Testament says about the task of pastors, so that we might be reminded what it …
At the London Review of Books blog, historian Lyndal Roper has a helpful, brief piece on Luther’s response to the plague that came to Wittenberg. Roper is Regius Chair of History at the University of Oxford and has written a biography of Luther. Her column is largely a summary and interaction with Luther’s pamphlet, Whether One May …
Continue reading ‘Luther on Pastoral Duty during a Plague’ »
I am editing for publication a brief piece on the Psalms and came back across this beautiful quote from Spurgeon on the Psalms: “Above all, I trust that the Holy Spirit. has been with me in writing and compiling these volumes, and therefore I expect that he will bless them both to the conversion of …
This summer (June-July) I will get to teach a class I’ve been dreaming of for years- Portraits of Pastoral Ministry in Modern Novels. I already teach our regular Pastoral Ministry class where we walk through key biblical texts while reading seminal texts on pastoral ministry from the 6th century to today. We seek to understand …
Continue reading ‘Summer Class- Pastoral Ministry in Novels’ »
At church this evening we sang a John Newton hymn, which I don’t remember ever singing before- “Behold the Throne of Grace”. I enjoyed it immensely so I looked it up once I got home, and have pasted the full poem in below. This is great example of a poetic exposition of scripture with pastoral application. …
Each year I keep a list of the books I read all the way through, typically with brief notes, as a way of tracking my thoughts and a way to look back on each year and see some of what influenced me. So, in this post I have drawn from that list some of the …
Recently I had the opportunity to preach at my home church, First Baptist in Jackson, TN. We are currently in a series through the book of Revelation so the text up that week was Revelation 3:7-13, the message to the church in Philadelphia. I have taught this text various times, but I felt like in …
Each year I keep a list of the books I read all the way through, typically with brief notes, as a way of tracking my thoughts and a way to look back on each year and see some of what influenced me. So, in this post I have drawn from that list some of the …