I wrote recently in response to Sinclair Ferguson’s comments about blogging. My friend Steve Kneale has written more directly with his response here. I share Steve’s sentiments. I think Steve is right to suggest that such comments portray a lack of insight into the nature of Gospel ministry. On a side note, one of the… Continue reading A big bug bear
Tag: pastoral ministry
How we talk about the pastor’s role matters
Last week, I engaged with Tim Suffield on whether pastors have jobs or not. Someone who engaged more supportively with Tim was John Barach. He tweeted: My response was that this is all sounds very pleasant but isn’t how Scripture describes the call to pastoral ministry. He responded by saying: In our conversation he developed… Continue reading How we talk about the pastor’s role matters
Food from around the worldwide web
Woman – Eleni Brooks says “Reading John’s gospel last week, I noticed that sometimes Jesus calls women “Woman”, like it’s their name and I don’t like it. So I sat with the discomfort and this is what came out…” 2023 Life Audit – we are now a little way into the New Year but it… Continue reading Food from around the worldwide web
Pastoring the grieving
I’m continuing a little series on the day to day work of a pastor and so today we want to think about what happens when a member of the church or one of their family dies. What should you be doing. We cannot be over prescriptive here because every family will have different needs and… Continue reading Pastoring the grieving
Why I believe women should pursue degrees in theological AND pastoral studies
The other day, a Christian woman announced on twitter that she’d completed her BA in pastoral ministry. This drew the following response from a US Theology professor. There has been an ensuing debate around the rights and wrongs of women studying at seminary particularly in a complementarian context. Complementarians understand that men and women are… Continue reading Why I believe women should pursue degrees in theological AND pastoral studies
Discerning a calling (2) Why we need to look backwards
Some of the questions you will want to ask when helping someone to discern a calling focus on what has happened in the past? Can’t we just forget the past and look forward to the future? Well, there’s certainly a risk that we can refuse to consider people for ministry now because of what has… Continue reading Discerning a calling (2) Why we need to look backwards
Anxiety
I’ve written before on Faithroots about depression and have recently contributed to a book on the subject. Here I want to talk about another aspect of mental health sometimes linked to depression. When I was signed off sick by my GP I was diagnosed with Mixed Anxiety and Depressive Disorder (no the anachronym for that… Continue reading Anxiety
Finding the right hill to die on in practical pastoral leadership
I’ve been enjoying reading Gavin Ortlund’s “Finding the right hill to die on” about theological triage. The concept of Theological Triage was coined by Al Mohler to describe how Christians go about distinguishing first, second and third order issues. In other words, there are theological issues that are central to the Gospel itself, it is… Continue reading Finding the right hill to die on in practical pastoral leadership
What would it help to know?
Yesterday I commented on the need of the pastor to be informed on a whole range of issues outside of their specific expertise in Biblical studies. We cannot and should not seek to become experts in every field but there are things we can do to help pastors be prepared for this aspect of ministry.… Continue reading What would it help to know?
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