Pastoral Ministry

Some words are difficult to like. Do you know what I mean? Maybe I am not being clear. There are various reasons why we may not like this word or that. Some may be on unfriendly terms with a word because it is difficult to spell (think handkerchief - good thing for auto spell!). A few may avoid a...

“The preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God.” This line from the Second Helvetic Confession summarizes how we should think of the Biblical authority exercised in the pulpit. We see this concept reflected in Scripture, when someone preaches they are bringing the Word of God with authority...

Men and women were created in the image of God. [i] The image of God consists of true knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. [ii] In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve had true knowledge. Their minds could understand the mind of God expressed in creation. They walked and talked with God thereby they...

Jesus thinks reading is a big deal. After all, he wrote a book. And Jesus thinks reading his book is a big deal, because, well, he is. For a blog post on the sufficiency of Scripture and biblical scholarship this may seem overly simplistic. Aren’t scholars supposed to talk about really complicated...

In this final post (see part 1 and part 2 of this series), I would like to raise three challenges to the dominance of the extrovert and entrepreneurial ideals for pastoral ministry in the American church. First, the present culture is at best ignorant of the history and tradition of pastoral...

For the less adventurous among us who don’t like to take many risks, especially big ones, how handy it would be if God would give us a clear, detailed roadmap for our life and a smartphone app that guarantees we won’t take a wrong turn through a bad decision! If that resonates with you or that’s...

Y oung John Bunyan (1628–1688) hardly seemed fit for preaching. He was a coarse person with little education and a mouth full of foul language. He had lost his mother and sister to death and was exposed to the evils of military service before his seventeenth birthday. As a young man, he worked with...

Adam McHugh, plainly and accurately states that the “slant towards extroversion in the larger culture has also infiltrated the church.” [1] (See part 1 of this series for more on how this ‘slant’ came to be.) Not only has this slant permeated how our congregations interact, how our services are...

The gospel of Jesus Christ is astounding. To think that when we were yet sinners God sent His only begotten Son to keep the law that we were unable to keep and to bear the curse we were unwilling to bear is enough to strike us dumb! And yet, that is exactly what the sovereign Creator did. Think of...

“Anybody else discouraged today by the pastoral blueprint in the ‘church growth’ movement?” writes Jared Wilson, a pastor from New Hampshire. “The most ‘successful’ types of pastors today,” he continues, “are more of the entrepreneurial type than the pastoral. They are speakers, CEOs, innovators,...