My Precious: Lies or Truth? Power or Integrity?
While attending university the first time, I worked as a customer service representative for one of the country’s best-known package delivery services. My duties included not only working with the public, but with fellow employees who loaded our center’s delivery trucks for the day’s deliveries. Even before dawn, it was a lively workplace. Several of my co-workers (all friends) were members of a well-known cult. They were unapologetic and gracious in their attempts to convert...
Pastor or Leader? – Part II
In our previous article, we began answering the question, “Pastor or Leader?” Should the role of the person who directs a local church be that of a pastor or a leader? Is this person's function best defined by leadership or pastoral principles? We pointed out that this choice of “either-or” is a bit too limiting. There are at least four perspectives on the question at hand. In our previous article we presented the first two of...
Pastor or Leader – Part I
A frequent conversation in the study and practice of pastoral ministry is "Leader or Pastor?" Should the role of the person who directs a local church be that of a leader or a pastor? Is this person's function best defined by leadership or pastoral principles? This article is the first in a two-part series that looks to help pastors answer the question of "Pastor or Leader?" Or is it possible that this either-or choice is...
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...© [2015] — Journey Pastoral Coaching