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 appreciated Eric Smith’s recent post, “Meeting a True Bishop,” for the portrayal of proper pastoral boldness in the life of Basil the Great. It brought to mind a section I had just read in Baptist Piety: The Last Will and Testimony of Obadiah Holmes. Edwin Gaustad, the author, is describing the setting into which …
Here is another excerpt from Wilson’s A Serrated Edge: A Brief Defense of Biblical Satire and Trinitarian Skylarking. Here he is critiquing our current culture’s view of humility and arrogance. “We see the same thing in the conflict between biblical and modern theories of preaching. The biblical preacher is a herald, a steward. He has …
This passage is an important one for understanding pastoral ministry biblically. It is addressed to the congregation and calls for them to respect and “esteem highly in love” their pastors. These pastors in turn are expected to do three things: – labor among them- work hard in their midst – to “be over them in …