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 …
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 …
As I mentioned in the previous post, we had the privilege of launching a new church, ordaining two new pastors, installing a third to serve with them this past weekend. I had the opportunity to give the charge to these men, and thought I would share it with you as well. I love ordinations where …
I have recently read Julia Duin’s Quitting Church: Why the Faithful are Fleeing and What to Do about It and I hope to post some thoughts from it. For now, I wanted to post this quote from Eugene Peterson. As usual, when talking about pastoral ministry, he is so good! In a day when hard-edged …
This is long but well worth reading to note what was considered to be a good pastor in Chaucer’s day. Note that this man is not merely a speaker but a shepherd visiting all of his flock. Note also the point about not always travelling elsewhere to “get enrolled” in a “brotherhood.” Rather, “He stayed …
I have a quote from a student response to an assignment in my survey class today. I have not addressed issues surrounding pastoral ministry in this class so far. However, the students in reading Mark Strom’s Symphony of Scripture were asked to respond to this question from Strom: Peter described leaders as shepherd in 1 …
My posts have been infrequent this last week and will probably be so this week as well with the conference coming this weekend. I have a backlog of book reviews which I will hope to get rolling next week. In the meantime, let me recommend Joel Beeke’s excellent brief article in the most recent Tabletalk. …
I am really enjoying going through the gospel of John with my Johannine Literature class this semester. This week we discussed John 10, where Jesus describes Himself as the Good Shepherd. The main point of the passage is Christological. However, with the rich OT background and subsequent NT application of the title ‘shepherd’ to pastors, …