I like to post here comments from various eras affirming the importance of shepherding and caring for the flock in day to day life. So here is a quote from McConnell’s Manual for Baptist Churches (1926): The pastor should be a student of men and books. He should know the people intimately and enter into …
Gospel Coalition has teamed up with BibleGateway.Com to provide a forum on Bible translation. Various Bible professors have provided answers to specific questions on translations and a few are posted each day. Currently the question being addressed is “What makes a translation accurate?” Today my answer to the question was posted. Answers from Denny Burk …
Here is a good word from 80 years ago. Let us shepherded the flock of God, seeing them as those bought with the blood of God (Acts 20:28), regardless of their number. The pastor should look after the spiritual needs of the church which honors him by electing him to this high and responsible office. …
As we celebrate Reformation Day again this year some may say that we simply glory in men, or revel only in historical dates, or gloss over the shortcomings of those involved. By no means! In celebrating the Reformation we celebrate the work of God in the recovery of the gospel, the greatest revival since Pentecost, …
John Gill in his commentary on Titus 1:5-9 speaks of the love a pastor should have for his people. He writes: “…if he is not a lover of them, their company will be disagreeable to him, and he will be of no advantage to them; and if he does not love the souls of men, …
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In an ordination message preached in 1785, Baptist pastor, Abraham Booth, gave a powerful exhortation on the need of pastors to attend to their own wives and children. He voices in first person what he fears is the cry of too many pastors’ wives and closes with an exhortation referring to one’s wife as his …
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What essential for a pastor? Much could be said in answer to this question. Wayne Oates several years ago stated this: “…the consummate requirement of him [a pastor] is that he depend devotedly upon the Chief Shepherd for his own spiritual sustenance and live in the buoyant expectation of his continual manifestation of himself. Titus …
I have been reading recently on Isaac Watts who has blessed the church so richly with his hymns. Below is a good, though lesser known, example of Watts poetry (originally published in Hymns and Spiritual Songs, 1707-1709). Many of Watt’s hymns were composed to accompany his sermons and you can see him as a pastor …
Here is a good, encouraging word from Spurgeon on the task of preaching and the inexhaustible richness of the Word of God. “After preaching the gospel for forty years, and after printing the sermons I have preached for more than six-and-thirty years, reaching now to the number of 2,200 in weekly succession, I am fairly …
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In 1743 the Philadelphia Baptist Association adopted as a statement of their discipline Benjamin Griffith’s treatise, “Concerning a True and Orderly Gospel Church.” In this treatise is the following description of the duty of pastors (emphasis added, and reformatted): The minister being thus put upon his work, proceeds (1.) to preach the word of God …