Timeless Truths for 21st Century Ministers – Part III
The third and final installment in our three-part look at Timeless Truths for 21st Century Ministers. I often tell young ministers that all ministers take their share of 'hits" in ministry: from being disappointed by others to being fired; from not being taken care of by a church board to being abused by a church; from non-responsive church members to church splits. I tell them that by the time they are a "grey hair," IF they have survived in ministry (most...
Timeless Truths for 21st Century Ministers – Part II
This article is the second of a three-part series on essential truths for 21st Century ministers. You can read the first installment here. World events, church issues and the ministry itself tempt the minister to focus first on the ever urgent and always must-be-done now list. For others, attention and energy are spent one breath at a time in payment to the numbing grind of the mundane. Like a pair of scissors, the urgent and the mundane...
Timeless Truths for 21st Century Ministers – Part I
When I entered full-time ministry forty years ago, I wasn’t naïve. But I was idealistic. In our twenties, most ministers are. I believed in the goodness and sovereignty of God, the truth and promises of His Word, the salvation and power of the Gospel, the beauty of the church, the privilege of serving in ministry. I believed in all these things. I believed in them then and I believe in them today even more than...
Reformation v.2020 Part II: Sola Scriptura or Sola Cultura?
On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed 95 theses to the door of the local church in Wittenberg, Germany, 95 reforms he believed necessary to revitalize the universal church and restore Jesus to His rightful place as Savior and Lord in church doctrine and life. In effect, Luther grabbed the church by the throat & shook it with its own need of God. That the church convulsed against Luther’s attempt at life saving is true....
Reformation v.2020 Part I: Solus Christus or Sola Cultura?
Culture is imploding, collapsing in upon itself. Denying all absolutes and objective truth, culture is now without safeguards, consuming itself in a death spiral of spiritual and moral chaos. In his outstanding essay, “The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World,” David Wells writes: “The evangelical church has a sense that moral absolutes are evaporating like the morning mist, knows that truth of an ultimate kind has been dislodged from life, (but) apparently does not perceive that...
Death Matters (Each One)
It is hard to have patience with people who say, “There is no death” or “Death doesn’t matter.” There is death. And whatever is, matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn’t matter. C.S. Lewis The simple wooden casket was set on the far side of the plain and somewhat shabby room in northwest Indiana. Silence filled the space in an unearthly and...
Psalm 23 Pastors For a 21st Century Church
Some silver lining on this dark cloud called COVID-19. A long-standing prayer of mine may be in the process of being answered: the return of Psalm 23 pastors to the church of Jesus. Call them “undershepherds” of the Great Good Shepherd of John 10. TECHNIQUE-BASED PASTORS: Members of Journey Pastoral Coaching know that I am no fan of technique-based ministry. You’ve read the articles that fill the internet: “Five Steps to Church Growth,” “Seven Tricks to Turn...
7 Questions COVID-19 is Hand-Delivering to PASTORS
QUESTION 7: JOURNEY'S PASTORS OFFER THEIR THOUGHTS With the national conversation shifting to the question of ending the quarantine, pastors find their burden not lifted, but shifted as well. And deepened. As they shepherd their people in quarantine, they are asking how they will Psalm 23-shepherd through the transition back to normal. They are asking what the new normal will look like. In recent weeks as we have processed the COVID-19 crisis and lockdown, several...
7 Questions COVID-19 is Hand-Delivering to PASTORS
QUESTION 6: Will pastors survive or thrive? I was talking with a medical doctor just today who has kindly agreed to do a webinar with the members of Journey Pastoral Coaching. The subject of the webinar is handling stress. Like most doctors involved in surgical procedures, she’s well qualified to talk about stress: medical school, four years of residency, and now a career in a practice that deals with anesthesia, intensive care medicine, critical emergency medicine,...© [2015] — Journey Pastoral Coaching