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, …
My friend and fellow pastor, B J Maxwell, has written a wonderful and powerful exhortation on ministering to those who have lost a spouse titled, Cry for Her Now (or Thoughts on Ministry to Widow(er)s). He rightly notes the biblical mandate for this ministry (and how we might tend to avoid it) and then gives …
While thumbing through William Lumpkin’s Baptist Confessions of Faith I came across a fascinating point in the confession of faith of one of the Baptist groups in Amsterdam. The document is titled “A Declaration of Faith of English People Remaining at Amsterdam in Holland” and is dated 1611. As this Baptist group summarized the principle …
Recently I had the privilege of talking for a while with John Thornbury who recently retired from his church, Winfield Baptist, after pastoring there for over 40 years. He has also written several books. I was struck by the amount of wisdom and experience he has to offer to the rest of us, particularly as …
If you are not aware of Carl Trueman’s writings you ought to be. His latest essay in Themelios is a summary of what he says to students wanting to pursue a PhD. Along the way in the argument, though, Trueman makes a key point about the importance of church membership and the personal involvement of …
“The office of a true and faithful minister is not only publicly to teach the people over whom he is ordained to pastor, but, so far as may be, to admonish, exhort, rebuke, and console each one in particular.” – From “Visitation of the Sick”, contained in John Calvin: Tracts and Letters, vol. 2, ed. …
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A friend who is preparing to serve as a pastor recently sent me some of his reflections on pastoral ministry drawn from his work on his farm. I thought I would pass them on. As I told you, I have cows, goats, sheep, donkeys, and yes, dogs and cats on our farm. The sheep have …