As iron sharpens iron,
one person sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)
Let’s say you’re listening to your pastor preaching in your church. (You might be a pastor and instead of listening, you preach each week. In that case answer as you would want your members to respond.)
Your church believes in expository preaching. Your pastor reads a passage and explains the sense of the passage. Then he gives some application of how that sense plays out in our lives today.
“…the International Mission Board (IMB) of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) revealed [2/24] that it has lost 1,132 workers—almost twice as many as its low-end estimate.”
“One of the most important truths that can be learned to alleviate fear in witnessing is the nature of unbelievers according to the Bible.” Understanding Unbelievers
“Whatever the merits of including children from early on in church services (and there are, I think, many), I’m not convinced the evidence for such being the unequivocal practice of previous ages is all that strong.”
1. Fewer than half of solo pastors receive any health insurance … 2. Almost three-fourths of full-time worship/music leaders receive health insurance… 3. Many full-time church staff receive no retirement benefits…. 5. Only six in ten full-time pastors and staff get any type of automobile reimbursement…. CPost
Several decades ago as Jay Adams and men like him began writing on the topic of biblical counseling, conservative pastors gained a needed and necessary foothold in the area of the psyche (ψυχή), or care for the soul.
For a decade or so before the birth of what was called nouthetic counseling, conservative churchmen were buying the notion that you could not take the pastor anything dealing with the mind because he simply was not qualified. Thankfully, biblical counseling has restored the right appreciation for the pastor’s role of leadership in the area of mental, emotional and spiritual health vs. idea that only secular psychology can help in the various challenges of anthropology.
A few years ago I noted in my book The Pyramid and the Box: The Decision-Making Process in a Local New Testament Church (Wipf & Stock, 2013), that I was seeing a couple of disturbing trends among ecclesiastical leaders, especially from my perspective as Western Coordinator for Institute of Biblical Leadership (IBL). Some pastors are self-deceived that they are something of a mediator of a theocracy, and in their mind, they are Theo!
“To continue reshaping faith in America, McLaren is also re-writing traditional Christian hymns, especially those he and others consider dangerously outdated theologically.” BNG
A tribute from Ray Pritchard: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10156484433310207&set=a.1999240…
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