Hezekiah Harvey was a prominent Baptist preacher, teacher and author in the 19th century. His comments here on the importance of the church are strikingly relevant today. “The gospel becomes a permanent and aggressive power on earth only through the church, the divinely constituted organization, to which God has committed it, and through which it …
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Rescue the perishing, care for the dying, Snatch them in pity from sin and the grave (Fanny Crosby) “Christ had the good of souls in his eye. He came to seek and save that which was lost …. Follow Christ in this, O my soul, that thou mayst be a fisher of men. When thou …
From time to time here I comment on the value of Greek for ministry. Though many today seriously doubt the real, practical value of Greek study for day to day ministry, I want to encourage pastors to discover (remember, or maintain) this value. Here is an astute comment from a current Greek student: “Enriching our …
Years ago, while in college I read a few entries from Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost for His Highest. One entry really struck me and has stayed with me these last 20 years or so. In preparing to preach tonight for a student event, this came back to mind, and I was able to find it …
“The friends of evangelical doctrine, and the advocates of orthodoxy, have the following objects to keep ever in view in this age; they must take care of their Bibles, that they be not mutilated or curtailed by lawless criticism; they must take care of their theology, that it be not perverted by false philosophy; and …
This powerful warning from John Angell James in his valuable book, An Earnest Ministry, still applies today: “The prevailing disposition, therefore, to do such homage to talent, rather than to moral excellence, is only another species of idolatry, more refined and subtle than the worship of stocks and stones, but scarcely less guilty…” But when …
Reading The Return of the King (third volume of The Lord of the Rings) to my boys a comment from Halbarad, a Ranger and kin of Aragorn, struck me as paralleling pastoral ministry. Speaking of the Shire, the peaceful land of the Hobbits, he said: “Little do they know of our long labour for the …
Psalm singing continues to be a great joy in my family having a standard place at our evening meal. We began a little over a year ago with Psalm 128, and have added a few more along the way. As we began 2010 we introduced Psalm 127 the other really strong family Psalm. The version …
“[John Chrysostom’s] excellence we appreciate today from an exegetical point of view, from an ethical point of view, and from a literary point of view. The preaching of this master centers in his series of exegetical sermons on individual books of the Bible. . . . . his great authority as a preacher rested in …
On Thursday, April 29, Greg Thornbury and I will be the speakers for a one day Bible conference with the theme, “Communicating Familiar Bible Stories in Unfamiliar Ways,” hosted by Union University, Hendersonville. We will be considering the familiar pastoral struggle of preaching texts which you feel like the people already know very well. Pastors …