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 …
A very strong proof of this destruction of death and its conquest by the cross is supplied by a present fact, namely this. All the disciples of Christ despise death; they take the offensive against it and, instead of fearing it, by the sign of the cross and by faith in Christ trample on it …
Today in one of my classes we discussed B. B. Warfield’s classic booklet, The Religious Life of Theological Students. There is much wisdom in this little booklet, so if you have not read it I encourage you to do so (online here). In one places he exhorts theological students to realize and appreciate the privilege …
I continue to be intrigued by the wide-ranging, deep impact of the Psalms across the centuries. This quote is just one more documenting this impact on the church and the surrounding culture. “The Renaissance was a cultural movement founded on the enterprise of translation …. The Earl of Surrey and Richard Stanyhurst translated Virgil’s Aeneid; …
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Tonight Baptist21 will host a panel discussion at Union University at 8pm in Bowld 247. Here is the information from the Baptist 21 site: Panelists include Greg Thornbury, Ray Van Neste, Taylor Worley, and Nathan Akin. In effort to best serve Union students and promote Gospel-centered conversation among Southern Baptists, the questions will focus on …
In Augustine’s Confessions his description of Ambrose as a pastor is instructive. He mentions how Ambrose is taken up with ministering to the needs of his people (“to whose infirmities he devoted himself”) and then stealing time for study (Book 6.3). His first mention of Ambrose’s labors provides a model portrait for pastors: And to …