Justin Taylor today posted on John Piper moving to the pastorate 30 years ago. In that post he cited an excerpt which John Piper’s dad sent to him advising him on the realities of the pastorate. There is much wisdom here and it affirms the argument often made here of the importance of involvement n …
I am currently refreshing my Latin by working back through a grammar with a friend. It has been a delight. Today in the exercises for translation was this sentence: Pauci viri de cura animi cogitabant. Which means, “Few men were thinking about the care of the soul.” Given the concern of this blog and the …
I was away from blogging most of last week with my duties at our “Southern Baptists, Evangelicals and the Future of Denominationalism” conference. I was very pleased with the way things came together. I think ti was an important conversation about the future of the SBC with implications for broader evangelicalism. Several bloggers gave summaries …
This week Union will be hosting the “Southern Baptists, Evangelicals and the Future of Denominationalism” conference which I have mentioned here previously. As part of that conference I will be giving a paper under the title of this post. My aim will be to argue that the oversight of souls is the heart of pastoral …
Just this week I came across this quote from John Erskine. He is discussing various challenges of pastoral ministry and urges his readers to know their flocks. This is just one more piece of the long chain through the history of the church of understanding pastoral ministry as involving personal knowledge of one’s people. “Sermons, …
As I mentioned previously Dr. Gerald Bray is with us at Union for a couple of weeks as our Scholar-in-Residence. On Tuesday he spoke at our Christian Studies colloquium addressing the current debate on justification particularly the recent interaction between John Piper and N. T. Wright. Bray’s editorial on this topic in the Churchman stirred …
Last month I came across a very interesting discussion of the loss of discipline in Southern Baptist churches. This topic has been much discussed recently, but what made this essay particularly interesting is that it was written 50 years ago as part of a discussion held at Southern seminary when it was much less conservative. …
I recently came across Edward Judson’s book, The Institutional Church: A Primer in Pastoral Theology(New York: Lentilhon, 1899; link is to a reprint) and found an interesting discussion of communion. Judson was the son of Adoniram Judson and had been born on the mission field. He served as pastor of Memorial Baptist Church in New …
The “Southern Baptists, Evangelicals and the Future of Denominationalism” Conference at Union University will begin Tues of next week and run through Friday. I am excited about this conference and the conversation that will be taking place here during it. Three brief videos have recently been produced with three of our speakers talking about the …
For several years now I have enjoyed Elizabeth Prentiss’s poem collection titled Golden Hours (now nicely reprinted by Solid Ground Christian Books). I came back across this poem this week as I have been contemplating communion. “In Remembrance of Me” Dear Jesus, Thou this feast hast spread, Invited guests are we; We come as Thou …