Your pastor needs your prayers. I’ve taken a prayer from The Valley of Vision and edited it so that it is not a prayer for a pastor to pray for himself, but rather for church members to pray for their pastor. I pray that this prayer is beneficial for you and I know that it …
We must preach with the broken in mind. There are prideful men and women in every congregation that need to hear the stinging words of rebuke directed toward Pharisees, but there are also men who have been destroyed by demons and women who have been abused by men. Jesus met a woman by a well in Samaria. She was an outcast who bounced from house to house. We don’t know her whole story, but it is possible that in our day and time she might be known by a different term: abuse survivoror even trafficking victim. We know is that as Jesus looked at this woman, he saw something different than everyone else who looked at her. Jesus saw her as a broken person in need of a savior. He didn’t paper over her sin as though it didn’t exist, but he didn’t discount her struggles and pain either. Jesus was honest and forthright, but he was compassionate and kind. He preached the gospel to her with tenderness and compassion. The Shepherd of Israel found a wayward sheep and lovingly brought her into the fold.
Preach to the real people in the pews. God has called you, not only to be their preacher, but to be their pastor.
“Lord, please give me the courage to stay here as long as you’d have me stay.” I began praying that prayer not long after coming to Malvern Hill Baptist Church. In the early days of my ministry, that prayer came about as a result of struggle and strife that were often present in our church. …
The common wisdom is that the tenure for most pastors following a building campaign is eighteen months. For that reason, I’ve waited to write this post until I had crested the eighteen-month mark. The story of our building process actually began in 2010. In the early parts of that year, we were growing rapidly and …
Everyone is a theologian, but not everyone is a good theologian. Theology is the study of and understanding of God. Everyone has some thought or understanding about God, but not everyone has correct thoughts about God. Everyone is a theologian, but not everyone is a good theologian. As shepherds over God’s flock, pastors have the …
Many of you who are reading this just came back from the Southern Baptist Convention where you rubbed shoulders with the pastors you want to be just like. If we are honest (and not careful), we will also admit that we rubbed shoulders with some pastors we are jealous of. It can be easy to …
Pastors are people of the Book and people of many books. It is unavoidable. But what of these books of ours? How should we approach our reading? As a person who loves books and spends great a great amount of time and money investing in books, here are a few rules by which I try …
Burnout is a dangerous ditch along the path of pastoral ministry; it should be avoided at all costs. Entire books have been written on burnout, but for the sake of brevity, we will just say that burnout is a mental and/or physical collapse caused by overwork, stress, and self-sufficiency. Burnout is often a result of …
I preach 30-40 minutes every Sunday. I spend large swaths of my week preparing sermons that require mental focus for an extended period of time and I do not apologize. Over and over I find that people are able to engage for an extended sermon time so long as the message is passionate and engaging …