Month: March 2010

Quick Looks

Travis Agnew does a great job of looking at The Arrogance of My Generation’s Church Leaders. Just because you are a critic of yesterday’s church does not make you an expert of today’s church.  I have seen too many people in my generation grow a church by making fun of and demeaning the church of …

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Lessons I Am Learning

In the conclusion of his biography of Augustine, Luther, and Calvin entitled, The Legacy of Sovereign Joy, John Piper offers four lessons that we can learn from the lives of flawed saints who have gone on before us.  Below they are listed along with some Scripture passages to reflect on.  Pastors, as inadequate as you …

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Preaching: What You Say and What They Hear

Perception is reality. I learned this well early in my ministry when, in a sermon, a senior adult lady in my church misunderstood a statement and believed that I said you couldn’t be a democrat and be a Christian. Politics aside, my greatest disappointment from this encounter was the realization that she had not heard …

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A Radical Call to Gospel Centered Stewardship

John Piper seems to often have a way with words. As a “retirement age” pastor, he has the experiential weight to criticize modern ideas of retirement in light of the gospel. This video does that well and is a rallying cry to all of us toward gospel centered stewardship.

Pastor’s Work = Book Work

“The Word of God that saves and sanctifies, from generation to generation, is preserved in a book.  And therefore at the heart of every pastor’s work is book work.  Call it reading, mediation, reflection, cogitation, study, exegesis, or whatever you will–a large and central part of our work is to wrestle God’s meaning from a …

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Feed Your Soul, Feed Your People

“What a preacher Augustine became in his passion not to be ‘silent’ about the all-satisfying pleasures at God’s right hand!  ‘Can any man say enough when he speaks of you?’  He explained to his own congregation how his preaching came to be: ‘I go to feed [myself] so that I can give you to eat.  …

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Three Books Worth Your Time

The Gospel in Human Contexts by Paul Hiebert. Hiebert’s book is written with a focus on international missions, but in the glocal we find ourselves in today, cultural anthropology and missiological focus is needed as much in the Christian West as in the far East. What then is the relationship between the gospel and human …

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A Word of Care

Jesus did not neglect his natural responsibilities in light of his Spiritual responsibilities. He cared for his mother, even from the cross. February 28, 2010–A Word of Care–John 19:25-27 from Malvern Hill Baptist Church on Vimeo.

Multi-Tasking and Sermon Preparation

I ran across a quick article from Matt Perman of Desiring God, that addresses the issue of multitasking. Surprisingly (at least to me) his article outlines some findings from a research study at Stanford University that discovered the more a person multi-tasks, the worse they get at it. Multitasking, in short, is not only not …

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Amazing Grace

Below is a testimony given by Dr. Chuck Lawless, Dean, Billy Graham School of Missions and Evangelism at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary during a chapel service last week.  Dr. Lawless is a godly man, and I am thankful that I was able to learn from his life and teaching while a student at Southern.  …

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