Earlier this month I had the privilege of participating in the lecture series of the School of Christian Ministries at California Baptist University. I titled my address “Portrait of a Faithful Pastor.” Drawing from 2 Timothy 2 and other texts I argued that to be a faithful pastor a man must give himself to God, …
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Good Friday: Pause to perceive the pain, sit with the sorrow, contemplate the cruelty of the condemnation of Christ, the substitute of the sinless Son Sad Saturday Saturday, the settled gloom Speaks only doom Our Lord sealed in the tomb. Our hopes were high. Why did he have to die? Was it all a …
Amen, John Stott: “In our day, in which there is much confusion about the nature and purpose of the pastoral ministry, and much questioning whether clergy are primarily social workers, psychotherapists, educators, facilitators or administrators, it is important to rehabilitate the noble word ‘pastors’, who are shepherds of Christ’s sheep, called to tend, feed and …
Today in my Pastoral Ministry class we will be discussing 1 Thess 5:12-13, which is a significant passage on the duties of pastors to congregation and congregation to pastors. Some seek to evade the language of authority in this text, but that is misguided. I think it reveals our discomfort with the idea of authority- …
I recently came across another hymn by Horatius Bonar, which I have added to my “Poems of Perseverance” file. It is on my office door this week as my Poem of the Week. “Go, Labor On; Spend, and Be Spent” Go, labor on; spend, and be spent; Thy joy to do the Father’s will; It …
While preparing for an upcoming lecture on pastoral ministry I came back across this helpful quote from the little gem, The Ministry: Addresses to Students of Divinity, by Charles Brown. Where some in the past thought the press had made preachign irrelevant, many today think various forms of media have had the same effect. Brown’s words …
Issue 111 of Christian History Magazine is titled “Billy Graham: Apostle of Changed Lives and Second Chances” and is completely devoted to the the legacy of Graham. You can see this issue here. I am excited to peruse this issue. Here is more information about it from the press release: Christian History magazine’s guest editorial consultant, …
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My poem of the week last week was a new baptism hymn written by one of my pastors, Justin Wainscott. We really do have a shortage of good baptism hymns, which is odd for Baptists, so I was delighted to see this new hymn from Justin, whose poems I have posted here before. It is …
George Weigel’s recent essay, “Men Without Conviction, Churches Without People,” deserves reading. Here is the heart of his thesis: The radical secularization that has transformed Christianity’s heartland into the most religiously arid half-continent on the planet has at least as much to do with the craven surrender of ministers of the gospel to theological and …
My poem of the week this week comes from one of my favorite poets, Edgar Guest. I love how Guest speaks of the beauty of everyday life, home, family and perseverance. There is simple wisdom here. “Patience” The patient man who stands to care And shrugs his shoulders now and then At little hurts …