Category: Random

Brian Croft Reviews The Pastor: A Memoir

Brian Croft of The Gospel Coalition posted this sobering review of Eugene H. Peterson’s Book The Pastor: A Memoir.

Be careful that your calling and ministry is evaluated by Scripture, not experience.

Although there is merit in the way God prepares a man for ministry through his experiences, Peterson placed an uncomfortable amount of focus on experience as that which identifies a pastor, instead of the biblical qualifications clearly mapped out for us in Scripture (1 Tim. 3:1-7, Titus 1:5-9, 1 Peter 5:1-4). In fact, the book ironically entitled, The Pastor, was eerily silent on the issues of internal and external calling in Scripture. According to this volume, which recounts Peterson’s personal experience and call as a pastor, calling is to be evaluated based on the happenstances of life instead of Scripture. Be careful that you do not evaluate your calling, pursuit of pastoral ministry, or your level of faithfulness in ministry by your experience alone…

Pastors, make sure as we reflect back on our own ministries that not just our experiences with our flock come to our minds. A confidence in God’s sovereignty, the hope of justification by faith alone in Christ, and the unchangeable attributes of our great God could never be absent as we share about those experiences, especially, if you are that unique gift of an older pastor.

You can read the full post here.

We Are Not Sitting Ducks

Could it be that I’ve been reading Matthew 16: 18 wrong all these years? The full verse says:

“And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”

I’ve always thought that this means that the church will be in the defensive, that hell and the entire force of darkness will try and attack the church to destroy it.

Continue reading We Are Not Sitting Ducks

NLT Spotlight

Joshua 1: 8

KJV: This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.

NLT: Study this Book of Instruction continually. Meditate on it day and night so you will be sure to obey everything written in it. Only then will you prosper and succeed in all you do.

The definite authoritative sense in the phrase “book of the law” has been weakened into a “book of instruction.” When men open a box of a new gadget, they just switch it on without looking at the instruction manual. Some people think they don’t need instructions but everyone knows they have to obey the law.

What Happens After Training for Victory?

In the book Simple Church, Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger talked about four elements that characterize most vibrant churches: Clarity, Movement, Alignment and Focus.

My local church has no problem with clarity so let’s just skip that for now and let’s tackle the second element- movement, or the fluid hand-off of people from one step to another. It seems to me that we while we have no problem moving people from the worship service to small groups to Training for Victory, everything just kind of stop right there.

People graduate and go back to whatever it is they were doing. After we trained three batches, we have yet to see new small groups opening up. The truth is that we are still struggling to birth second generation leaders. Our small groups are still being led by people who have been leading these groups for years. After taking the Training for Victory, we’ve lost our momentum.