Monthly Archive for January, 2011

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J. Michael Thomas: Elder Brothers and Sisters Anonymous

Published on January 23, 2011 in Recommended Links. 1 Comment

I personally needed to read this post.

J. Michael Thomas:

Anne Lamott, in her book, “Traveling Mercies” retells an old story about a man getting drunk at a bar in Alaska. He’s telling the bartender how he recently lost whatever faith he’d had after his twin-engine plane crashed in the tundra.

“Yeah,” he says bitterly. “I lay there in the wreckage, hour after hour, nearly frozen to death, crying out for God to save me, praying for help with every ounce of my being, but he didn’t raise a finger to help. So I’m alone with the whole charade.”

“But,” said the bartender, squinting an eye at him, “you’re here. You were saved.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” says the man. “Because finally some dumb Eskimo came along.”

It seems that often times we just don’t get when God is trying to help us out.

The rest here.

Thom Rainer: Responding to the Great Distraction

Published on January 22, 2011 in Church and Leadership. 1 Comment

Churches that have a low standard for membership shouldn’t be surprised by grumbling.

Thom Rainer:

For years I assumed that criticisms of pastors and other church staff was just part of leadership. Indeed, no leader to my knowledge has ever been spared the verbal or written jabs of the critic.

So my advice has been for the leader simply to move on; to focus more on the vast majority who are supportive of him than the relatively few not-so-well-intentioned dragons. Now I’m not so sure my former advice is sound. The level and frequency of criticisms toward pastors and other leaders has increased significantly in the past several years.

The Reasons Behind the Great Distraction

I call this resurgence in criticisms “the Great Distraction” because it often causes leaders to lose focus on leading their churches in the Great Commission. And though any rationale used to explain the increased negativity is subjective, my observations of working with churches for over 25 years lead me to a couple of conclusions.

Read the whole thing here.

Reviews of When the Word Leads Your Pastoral Search

Published on January 21, 2011 in Pastoral Search Committees and When the Word Leads Your Pastoral Search. 0 Comments

If you click over to the site for my recent book, When the Word Leads Your Pastoral Search, you can see links to a review of the book and also an interview of me.

Is small talk worthless?

Published on January 21, 2011 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Like C.J. Mahaney, I tend to want to avoid small talk.  I am often pressed for time.  To my shame, at home especially, I often hurry conversations along.  However, Dave Powlison recently challenged C.J. about the importance of “small talk.”  It’s a post worth reading.  It certainly challenged me.

Click here.

Trevin Wax: “It’s a Big Thing to Know You Are Small”

Published on January 20, 2011 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Trevin Wax:

During the Emerging Church conversation a few years ago, there was a lot of talk about mystery. What can we know? How can we know it? Should mystery be embraced?

When it comes to God, the Bible seems to simultaneously encourage and dispel mystery. The Bible is God’s revelation to humanity, and in it, he discloses himself. And yet, the Bible often reminds us of what we can’tknow about God.

  • The Apostle Paul tells us that God dwells in unapproachable light (1 Timothy 6:16).
  • Many passages in Scripture portray God as distant, removed, altogether holy and distinct from us.
  • The Psalmists praise his glory and greatness, saying that no one can fathom just how awesome he is (Ps. 145:3).
  • His knowledge is too wonderful for us.
  • His thoughts are so high and lofty that we cannot think them after him (Psalm 139:6).
  • His ways are beyond finding out (Romans 11:33).

Verses like these clue us in on the fact that God is not like us.

Read the rest here.

Cal Thomas: 38 years and 50 million

Published on January 19, 2011 in abortion. 0 Comments

Cal Thomas:

On January 22, the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, think of it this way: 50 million branches of family trees cut off; 50 million regrets over what might have been; 50 million babies who could have brought joy out of sadness and a future that might have contributed substantially to the human race, snuffed out at the beginning of their lives.

It is precisely because the 7-2 Supreme Court majority vote in 1973 read something into the Constitution that isn’t there, to wit, that a “right to privacy” means the right to kill an unborn child — even when it is capable of living outside the womb — that Congress must restore the original intent of the Framers, which includes the “endowed by their Creator” clause in the Declaration of Independence. The Constitution cannot be separated from the Declaration, its philosophical and moral foundation.

Read the whole thing here.

What made King David great?

Published on January 19, 2011 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Kevin DeYoung:

Everyone who knows the Bible knows that King David was a great man.

And yet everyone familiar with the Bible will also recognize that David did a lot of not-so-great things. Of course, there was the sin with Bathsheba, the murder of her husband Uriah, and the subsequent cover-up. That was not exactly delighting in the law of the Lord (Psalm 1:2). But there was also the ill-advised census motivated by David’s pride, not to mention a series of lessons in how not to manage your household well. For being a man after God’s own heart (Acts 13:22), David managed to follow his own heart quite a bit.

So with all these flaws, what made David great?

The rest here.

Logic that will lead to disappointment and disillusionment in church life

Published on January 18, 2011 in Church and Pastoral Search Committees. 0 Comments

True or False: If we do everything right in our local church, the our people will be completely unified.

I recently posted on how this statement is often misapplied to a pastoral search on the When the Word Leads Your Pastoral Search web site.  You can read that post here.

See also, Expect Conflict.

Carl Trueman reflects on Ted Haggard’s new television show

Published on January 17, 2011 in Uncategorized. 4 Comments

Carl Trueman:

A man who betrays his wife can be forgiven; but I am not sure he can be forgiven for making it an opportunity to further his career.  When Haggard talks of acceptance and does it on a TV show, and others cover their sleaze with blog talk of `sins of relational mobility’, is it any wonder that the world looks on with utter contempt?

Read the whole thing here.

Where Spurgeon says the fight is won or lost

Published on January 16, 2011 in Preaching. 0 Comments

This post should help us know how to pray for our pastors.

C. H. Spurgeon, as recorded in Lectures to My Students: Second Series (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1877), page 146:

The pulpit is the Thermopylae of Christendom: there the fight will be lost or won.

To us ministers the maintenance of our power in the pulpit should be our great concern, we must occupy that spiritual watch-tower with our hearts and minds awake and in full vigor. It will not avail us to be laborious pastors if we are not earnest preachers.

We shall be forgiven a great many sins in the matter of pastoral visitation if the people’s souls are really fed on the Sabbath-day; but fed they must be, and nothing else will make up for it.

The failures of most ministers who drift down the stream may be traced to inefficiency in the pulpit. The chief business of a captain is to know how to handle his vessel, nothing can compensate for deficiency there, and so our pulpits must be our main care, or all will go awry.

HT: Tony Reinke