May 17th, 2016
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I was once sitting in the pastor’s office doing my sermon preparation and one of the members of the church passed by the door and noticed me highlighting my commentary and writing notes in the margins.
May 10th, 2016
One of the things that I’ve noticed over the last ten years is, more and more Reformed churches are letting the evening worship service fall to the wayside. Churches either drop the service all together, or turn it into a Bible study, or perhaps only have one evening worship service a month.
May 3rd, 2016
One book that I would highly recommend for any serious student, even the not so serious student, is A. G. Sertillanges’s, The Intellectual Life. While there are some things in the book that one can set aside, Sertillanges approaches the subject of the intellectual life from the vantage point of a Christian called to academic studies.
April 26th, 2016
We live in an ever-increasing age where numerous technological developments vie for our attention. Slowly but surely we are programming ourselves constantly to be on the alert and listen for imminently arriving bleeps and buzzes from our electronic devices informing us of a newly arrived e-mail, text, phone call, or tweet.
April 19th, 2016
Ever since my teenage years I’ve done my best to exercise three to four times a week, which means that I’ve spent time in the gym for a good portion of my life.
April 12th, 2016
If you follow the American job-then-retirement narrative, you’re supposed to go to college, get a job, work for forty years, retire, and then spend the rest of your days on the tennis court or golf course.
March 29th, 2016
Over the years I’ve been able to watch seminary students excitedly depart for summer internships and then hear from their supervising pastors how well or poorly they did. Many interns do fine, but there are some who have trouble.
March 22nd, 2016
One of the most important elements of being a good pastor is maintaining a good poker face when you’re counseling, that is, showing no reaction. I promise, chances are you will sit down with people in your church and hear of some crazy things.
March 15th, 2016
One day during a heated doctrinal debate at presbytery my wife walked into the back the church sanctuary where we were having our meeting. She was supposed to meet me for dinner so she arrived a few minutes early.
March 8th, 2016
When I was an intern I served at a church that had its building by a main road. This meant that we received our fair share of people who were looking for handouts. Rather than usher the people away, the elders of the church made a genuine effort to help people with diaconal assistance.
March 1st, 2016
In our culture there are many things that society tells us makes a man—can he earn a healthy salary? Does he own a house? Drive a truck? Wear stylish clothes? Popular with women? Bench press 250? You get the idea.
February 23rd, 2016
At times I find myself swimming against the tide of popular trends. In particular, one such trend where I find myself out of place is in the desire to read biographies of great Christians. In general, I’m not opposed to learning about the lives of famous Christians, but I do have two concerns.
February 16th, 2016
I think when people imagine what it’s like to receive pastoral counseling, they envision their pastor or elder giving them wonderful advice. And, to a certain extent, this is true. When you have a problem and need advice, your pastor or elder should be able to give you sound counsel.
February 9th, 2016
One of the things that the pastorate can do is take a toll on your body. Perhaps it’s because the pastorate is conducive to a sedentary lifestyle—you sit at your desk and study for hours, then you meet someone for lunch, show up to a church social and eat a stack of cookies piled high on your tiny cocktail napkin, and then meet someone at your local coffee shop and, why not, go ahead and grab a scone.
February 2nd, 2016
As a pastor you will meet a lot of different people throughout the course of your ministry. I have met fighter pilots, professional athletes, contractors, school teachers, stay-at-home moms, accountants, politicians, musicians, children, students, and the like.
January 26th, 2016
I’m not sure why, but pastors often fail miserably at performing funerals. I can remember sitting in a funeral service where the pastor stood before a very large congregation and admitted he was at a loss for words—he did not know what to say. Ok, fair enough.
January 19th, 2016
All you have to do is read the headlines on the interweb to know that we live in some crazy times. It seems like people are all to willing to use violence as a means of promoting their agenda.
January 12th, 2016
One of the biggest surprises in my ministry was the opposition to the gospel that arose within my own church. I always assumed there would be opposition to the gospel from outside the church, from the unbelieving world.
May 6th, 2014
When I was regularly preparing my weekly sermons I often wondered whether I would make any type of impact upon my church. After all, a pastor will pour anywhere between 10-20 hours of preparation to preach for 30 minutes, give or take.
March 13th, 2014
The digital age is upon us and that means that there is a publishing revolution that is afoot. It used to be that seminary students and ministers had to make a lot of space on their bookshelves for all of the tomes they wanted to own, but with the creation of the e-book, all of a sudden things have changed.
