Him We Proclaim

And You Thought You Had Staff Trouble

2006-12-04T18:32:00.000-05:00

Series on Pastoral Visitation

2006-12-06T08:54:00.000-05:00

Paul Martin, owner of kerux noemata, has posted a series on pastoral visitation.

I am curious --- how do you men do on pastoral visitation? This series is very penetrating. I'd enjoy your thoughts.

Preaching to Christians and Unbelievers

2006-10-30T19:41:00.000-05:00

I would enjoy knowing your thoughts on Tim Keller's lecture at Covenant Seminary in 2004 on Preaching to Believers and Unbelievers (mp3 format). I found it rather compelling. What think ye?

Would you help supply books to Trinidadian pastors and lay Christians? (MPDC)

2006-10-24T16:07:00.000-04:00

(I posted this on my blog, but wanted to share it with this readership as well. --- MRP)

As many of the RU readership know, I will be going to Trinidad and Tobago in January to lead a conference with pastors and lay Christians in the area of marriage and family. God has placed a passion in my heart for the pastors in Trinidad â€” they have little formal theological and ministerial education and I believe God desires to use me to help in this.

I would like to take some books down there to put in their hands. You can help in this endeavor. I have set up an Amazon.com wishlist (click here) where you can log on and buy a book that will be shipped here, and then we shall take it on to Trinidad to give as a gift. It is a small way that you can help strengthen and advance the kingdom of Christ amongst these pastors, who in turn will help strengthen the Christians of Trinidad and Tobago.

Silenced (A Great Post from Pure Church)

2006-10-17T09:03:00.000-04:00

Thabiti Anyabwile, who pastors a church in the Cayman Islands and who formerly interned at Capitol Hill Baptist Church where Mark Dever pastors, posts a terrific and telling entry on his Pure Church blog.

I sometimes talk too much. I could benefit from hearing and heeding the words of James 1:19: "Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry." I'm not there yet.

But from time to time, I am silenced. It's not that I don't have things to say. That's a rarity. It's that the words I have seem so inadequate. I'm forced to recognize that there are situations that exceed my verbal prowess. Hospital visitations is where it happens most often.

To read the rest of the article, click here.

Any thoughts?

Hey pastors! Do you ever feel like this?

2006-10-10T09:08:00.000-04:00

The Heartbreak of Sin

2006-10-02T07:51:00.000-04:00

Note: I published this on my blog, but thought it appropriate here, too. Please forgive the redundancy.

The older I get, the more I witness the heartache of sin. The more I see its results, the more I hate sin.

God has been doing a work in my heart and my life in the past several months. He has been forcing me to face what lies on the other side of the "pleasures of sin for a season." Adrian Rogers used to say, "Sin fascinates, then it assassinates. It thrills, then it kills. It will take you farther than you wanted to go, keep you longer than you wanted to stay, and cost you more than you were willing to pay." I am seeing that firsthand in my ministry.

I see children who suddenly have their world turned upside down because one or both parents cannot be sexually faithful, or financially responsible, or simply trustworthy. I see grandparents forced to become parents because their adult children won't accept responsibility for their own progeny. I see forty-somethings who look sixty because of the effects of sin on their bodies. Every week I am forced to help people pick up the pieces of their shattered lives and try to fit them together, only to discover that some pieces are lost forever.

Sin cuts with a wide swath. Its effects are not only visited on the guilty parties.

And while I am speaking with the child whose father is in jail, or praying with the wife whose husband is in the arms of another woman, or trying to raise some financial assistance for the family whose father drank all their grocery money, my mind inevitably turns to the grief my sin has caused others. My sins may have been different, but they have not been safer. Sins are like handgrenades; one can't control which way the shrapnel flies. I can control my decisions, but I can't control the consequences of those decisions once I have made them.

I am striving for holiness in my life, but the nearer I draw to Jesus, the more sensitive to sin I become. I am learning that at the heart of all my sin is the suspicion that God is not good, that He has denied me something wonderful. The more contented I become with what God has given me, the less sin entices.

I want to satisfy myself in Christ, because He has given me everything I need for life and godliness. If I am to spend my life binding the wounds that sin has inflicted, at the very least I do not want to be their cause. May I see sin for the lie that it is and hate it with all that is in me, finding contentment in Christ alone.

Sometimes I worry that my students at Southern forget that ministry is not all about finer points of theology, but about people and their need of Christ. Students at Southern are usually brilliant, dedicated, and passionate, though sometimes that passion is misdirected to things not as important as they might think.

I do everything I can think of to keep them rooted in reality. For that reason last week I invited a man from Buck Run to share his testimony with them. In complete candor he spoke with my preaching students about his gambling addiction, how it led to criminal activities and even to thoughts of suicide. He shared with them how he came before the church and confessed his sin and how the church is now holding him accountable and helping his family. I sat in the back of the room and watched my students' spellbound faces as he unfolded his story with brutal honesty. Eventually he told them, "You can debate theology all you want, but you better remember that you are preaching to idiots like me and you need to say it so we can understand it."

In the seminary we can and should properly discuss and debate church polity (elders or pastor led?), Calvinism (three, four, or five points?), eschatology (pre, mid, or post trib; pre, post, or a mil), and denominational matters (just how significant are the bloggers? what about the no-alcohol resolution?). That is an important part of seminary. Whatever our opinions on those matters, however, let's resolve to hate sin, to satisfy ourselves in Christ, and to care more about the victims of our enemy who have fallen prey to his lies. High on my list of theological priorities I place two great foundational truths: that I am satisfied with Christ and a hater of sin.

Preaching through the Bible

2006-09-17T00:09:00.000-04:00

While I have always wanted to preach through the Bible, I have not been anywhere long enough to do it, and I doubt that I would ever cover all of the Bible even if I tried to cover it in eighteen years like W. A. Criswell did. Still, this year I have enjoyed preaching through the Scriptures in a different way. On January 1 of this year, Buck Run members committed to read through the Bible this year. Several hundred of our members purchased the Everyday with Jesus Bible from Lifeway. Each day's reading contains passages from the OT, NT, Psalms, and Proverbs.

So as we read through the Bible in this way, each Sunday I have preached from a passage that we read that week or are about to read. Last week, for example, I preached from 1 Corinthians 10:1-13 and this week I am preaching from 2 Corinthians 4. It's not quite preaching the whole Bible, but at least my folks are getting a good dose of the Word of God and I am getting to preach from many different portions of the Bible.

By the way, if you ever want to listen to any of my sermons online, you can just go to www.buckrun.org for a free listen.

What are pastors reading?

2006-09-28T10:18:00.000-04:00

Nine Marks Ministries passed along an article from Duke University's "Pulpit and Pew" outlining what pastors from Catholic, mainline, and evangelical churches are reading.

Any surprises you see?

Cultural Values and the Preaching of Repentance (Mark Driscoll -- DG National Conference Video)

2006-09-08T15:30:00.000-04:00

The Bridge Between the Mind and the Will (Wiersbe)

2006-08-08T15:51:00.000-04:00

"Because so many preachers (and some who teach prechers) have forgotten that basic fact [that imagination governs the world], hermeneutics has become analyzing, homiletics has become organizing, and preaching has become catechizing. The sermon is a logical outline, a lecture buttressed with theology, that majors on explanation and application but ignores visualization. We have forgotten that the bridge between the mind and the will is the imagination, and that truth isn't really learned until it's internalized."

(Warren W. Wiersbe. Preaching and Teaching with Imagination: The Quest for Biblical Ministry. Baker Books, Grand Rapids, MI. 1994. p.24)

Contagious Growth

2006-07-25T13:38:00.000-04:00

"Never stop learning. All leaders are learners. The moment you stop learning you stop leading. Growing churches require growing pastors. The moment you stop growing, your church stops growing. I don't worry about the growth of the church. I never have. In fact, it will probably surprise most people that in 21 years we have only set two growth goals -- and they were both the first year of the church! What I focus on is keeping myself growing and motivated, and if I am on fire, other people will catch it."

--- Rick Warren

Prayer for the family of Giles McNiely

2006-07-15T21:49:00.000-04:00

I received an e-mail from Roddie Taylor, pastor of the Mt. Beulah Evangelical Baptist Church at Point Fortin, Trinidad, at around 6:05 tonight that his father, Giles McNiely, passed away at the age of 80. Mr. McNiely had just come through prostate surgery in good order, so this was very unexpected. He was on our prayer guide for both physical healing and for salvation --- we pray that salvation did take place through Christ.

For those of you who may not know, our church has partnered with him on a number of projects so this touches us quite deeply. Roddie's e-mail is mtbula@hotmail.com . I know he would truly appreciate any condolences you may offer.

Want to send your congregations reeling?

2006-07-11T09:05:00.000-04:00

Preachers certainly must do their homework in preparation for Sunday. Paul urges Timothy to be diligent so that he may rightly divide the word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15). Yet, I believe if we are to preach with authority, then we must preach confident of the text before us. If we do like this fictional preacher does in this cartoon, we erode our people's confidence in the Scriptures --- something entirely contrary to our calling.

So do your homework, yes! But if you want to send your congregations reeling, step into the pulpit without confidence in the authority of God's Word and shroud it in the clouds of diplomacy by saying, "But there may be other interpretations!" But I submit to you brothers that we are to do exactly what the Apostle Paul urged Timothy: "Preach the Word!"

Preach, O Preach the Word!

This is a charge we are to keep!
To tell it loud before His sheep!
To rouse the lost out of their sleep!
O preach, O preach the Word of God!

Be ready, shepherds, to reprove
Exhort the church so it may move
To spread the truth, embraced with love!
O Preach, O preach the Word of God.

The world moves out with itching ears
That long to hear what they hold dear
And mute the Word that’s all too clear!
O preach, O preach the Word of God!

With sober minds and patient hearts
We persevere as from the start
Fulfill your calling --- do your part!
O preach, O preach the Word of God!

(By Matthew Perry. Written November 1, 2005. Based on 2 Timothy 4:2-5. 8.8.8.8.)

You Might Be a Preacher If...

2006-07-07T08:59:00.000-04:00

Stan Toler recently wrote a little book entitled, You Might Be a Preacher If…

You might be a preacher if you have ever received an anonymous U-Haul gift certificate.
You might be a preacher if you have ever dreamed that you were preaching, only to awaken and discover you were.
You might be a preacher if you find yourself counting people at a sporting event.
You might be a preacher if you have leading the church into the 21st century, but don’t know what you’re preaching on Sunday.
You might be a preacher if you ever wanted to wish people Merry Christmas at Easter, because that’s the next time you are going to see them.
You might be a preacher you have ever wanted to give the soundman a bit of feedback of your own.
You might be a preacher if you have ever walked up to the counter at the Dairy Queen and ordered a church split.

And on a more serious note:

You might be a preacher if you have written a letter of resignation on Monday morning.
(From Stan Toler's You Might Be a Preacher If... . Albury Publishing, March 1996)

We welcome Ben Skaug to our Him We Proclaim team

2006-07-06T16:20:00.000-04:00

Ben Skaug joins Hershael York, Don Browne and myself in this preaching blog and is week-by-week proving to be a great help to making this one of the finest blogs dealing with the area of homiletics on the web. Ben, we look forward to you and all of you others who have not yet introduced yourself to do so.

Welcome again, Ben!

Do You Pastors Offer Regular Time or Quality Time?

2006-07-04T09:51:00.000-04:00

The Preacher and the Text: What is the Goal of the Message? (Aaron Menikoff, 9 Marks)

2006-07-03T13:45:00.001-04:00

In 2006 the Pew Charitable Trusts released its annual report on American journalism, "The State of the News Media." The report charted everything from the rise of blogging to the declining circulation of print newspapers. The people from Pew asked some interesting questions. For example, they explored whether the public "trusts" the news. One pollster concluded it is the general perception "that news organizations act out of their own economic self-interest, and journalists themselves act to advance their own careers."¹ No surprise there. When asked if the news media is primarily interested in informing the public or attracting bigger audiences, the vast majority concluded the media is most interested in increasing ratings.² Of course, the fear is that the quality of journalism suffers when delivering the news becomes secondary to gaining viewers. When the goal is popularity, hard news inevitably becomes a thing of the past.

Sadly, the same phenomenon can take place in the local church. When the primary goal is numerical growth, the Good News inevitably takes a backseat to entertainment. Consumerism twists the task of the preacher, making him a servant of the pew instead of the Word. This begs the question, "When it comes to preaching, what is the goal?" I am in agreement with John Piper who argued that the goal of preaching is the glory of God.³ The pastor’s primary duty is to make much of the sovereign, holy, gracious, loving, unchanging Lord in everything he does and says. This is the ultimate goal in preaching.

To read the rest of the article, click on the blog entry title.

Is the Pulpit Preacher a Thing of the Past?

2006-06-26T08:02:00.000-04:00

For the last several years, I have been watching the "house-church" movement grow. I was shocked when I searched the internet and found a very large and organized "house-church" movement in my county that I never knew about. According to Barna, it seems that this movement is coming into its own very quickly. Maybe I am being too narrow-minded but I have hesitation in promoting this movement. In harmony with the context of this blog, I wonder what is the role of preaching within the "house-church" movement? Read Barna's article and tell me what you think. Do you have any good links/resources that could help me learn more?

How To Botch an Altar Call (Kevin Whitt of RU)

2006-06-22T13:37:00.000-04:00

Kevin Whitt, pastor of Harvest Community Church in Eminence, KY, has given a great post on "How to Botch An Altar Call." This is good reading for all pastors out there. Click here to read.

A dangerous assumption by evangelical pastors

2006-06-21T09:56:00.000-04:00

Mark Dever notes:

I think the most basic practical division among evangelical pastors today may be between those who pursue faithfulness and assume relevance and those who pursue relevance and assume faithfulness.

That truly just cuts to the heart of the matter among us pastors, doesn't it? To read the rest of Dr. Dever's article, click here --- and be prepared to be challenged and blessed!

Best and worst lines from the Convention --- from the same guy!

2006-06-14T07:12:00.000-04:00

Special congratulations to Frank Page as our new SBC President. Timmy Brister noted rightly that this seems to be more a vote against the establishment SBCers than it was for Frank Page. Although I voted for Jerry Sutton, it was clear that the other nominees jumped on the fact that Ronnie Floyd's church gave only 0.27% of their annual budget to the Cooperative Program. Frank Page's church gives over 12%.

The best and the worst lines of the convention came from Frank Page's nominator, Forrest Pollock, pastor of Bell Shoals Baptist Church in Brandon, Fla.. The best was this: "My father could not spell SBC President without the letters 'CP'." As he concluded his nomination speech with that line, everyone applauded profusely --- and I knew right then who had won. Page garnered just over 50% of the votes, while Floyd and Sutton each had around 25%.

But he also gave the worst, as noted, "This vote is not about theology, but methodology." Are they mutually exclusive? To most Southern Baptists, they must be. In fact, I'm convinced that for too many Southern Baptists, theology doesn't drive anything! But theology (what we believe about God) drives everything. If theology is not driving your methodology, I'm not interested in your methodology.

What think ye?

Back in action

2006-06-11T17:01:00.000-04:00

After careful consideration, this preaching blog is back in action and I hope to have a bit of help from my DMin cohort friends from Southern. There are six of us scattered throughout this photo from a session we had this past week at the Stephen F. Olford Center for Expository Preaching in Memphis, TN. They are dear brothers in the Lord! What a blessing to spend time with such men who share the same calling to preach God's treasured Word.

As you look at the picture, you will see in the front row David Olford to the far left and his mother, Heather Olford. I am very much indebted to them for such wonderful hospitality --- they provided wonderful nourishment, both in literal and spiritual food. It was just what I needed!

Death By Ministry (Mark Driscoll)

2006-05-25T10:00:00.000-04:00

At our recent Reform & Resurge Conference in Seattle, my good friend Pastor Darrin Patrick from The Journey in Saint Louis spoke frankly of the burden that pastoral ministry is. I have pushed myself to the edge and over the edge of burnout throughout my nearly ten years in vocational ministry. Subsequently, I have been doing a great deal of research that I am compiling in hopes of not only improving my own life but also the lives of the leaders at Mars Hill Church and the churches in our Acts 29 Network. As a leader I commonly set the pace of ministry for those under me, which can lead to wholesale burnout of others if I don’t learn this lesson and teach it to others. The following points that I pray are helpful are some brief thoughts from what God has been teaching me as of late. Lastly, the fact that at least twenty-two separate organizations exist in the U.S. solely to deal with pre- and post-pastoral burnout indicate that this is a widespread problem that has only been identified and researched since the 1950s.

To read the rest of this article (and you must), click here.

Exegetical Escorts? (BP)

2006-05-23T12:41:00.000-04:00

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (BP)--Preachers must escort their hearers into the presence of God by submitting to God’s inspired Word and proclaiming it to His church, preaching professor Robert Smith said during Southern Baptist Theological Seminary’s Power in the Pulpit Conference.

Smith, of Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Ala., said preachers serve as exegetical escorts for their congregations by presenting God’s Word in an understandable way.

“The exegetical escort is an individual who serves in the Lord’s service by taking this Word of God and exegeting it, expounding upon it, dissecting it and saying what it says,” Smith said.

“The exegetical escort is designed to embrace the text of Scripture in order to usher the hearers into the presence of God for the purpose of transformation.”

Smith, a former preaching professor at Southern, was one of three speakers at the annual conference, along with Southern Seminary President R. Albert Mohler Jr. and professor of Christian preaching Hershael York. More than 200 pastors attended the event.

Preaching will always elicit a response, Smith said, noting that the Gospel herald can expect one of two responses.

“God’s Word will not go out and come back void; it will accomplish that for which it was sent,” Smith said. “Sometimes people will respond in rebellion and sometimes in reception. The Word will draw people or it will drive people away.”

Many modern preachers mistakenly value style more than substance, Smith noted. He cited Augustine’s four books on Christian doctrine, “On Christian Teaching,” where the first 75 percent of the material focuses on doctrine, while only the last quarter is devoted to style in presentation.

“What we do is turn it around. [If we wrote the book,] we would deal with style in the first three sections and substance in the last one,” he said. “Substance must be considered primarily and style secondarily.”

Another problem with contemporary preaching is the eclipse of the cross, Smith said.

“We have so much cross-less preaching. Don’t we understand that there is no salvation outside of the cross of Christ?” Smith asked. “It was necessary for Christ first to suffer the cross and then enter into glory. That is what the reformers taught. The theology of the cross [comes] before the theology of glory. Today, we want to wipe out the cross and quickly move to glory.”

Smith also said that many preachers dilute grace in their preaching.

“We start off by preaching salvation by grace and, before we know it, we are preaching sanctification by works,” he said. “Anytime we add anything to grace we are diluting grace. I am justified by grace, sanctified by grace, adopted by grace and I’m going to be glorified by grace. It is grace plus nothing.”

Smith said it is the preacher’s role to be like Philip in Acts 8 guiding the Ethiopian eunuch through Scripture and explaining what he did not understand.

“[Sometimes] the text is closed and the preacher has to open it,” Smith said. “My job is to be an exegete. I am supposed to help people see what they can’t see.”

Mohler, in his message during the mid-March conference, noted there are church buildings on virtually every street corner in America but few expository preachers and the remedy for this shortage is a generation of ministers who will proclaim the changeless truth of the Gospel to a culture that views nothing as changeless.

“We are now in big trouble because as you look across this country, you can find on almost every block a church -- that is, a building,” Mohler said. “You can find bricks and stone, and you can find steeples and organs, and you can find pulpits and all the rest.

“But you do not find preaching -- at least as the church of the Lord Jesus Christ has understood preaching for nearly 20 centuries -- in far too many of these churches. And I think it’s because it’s getting harder [to preach].”

Preaching from James 5:7-8, Mohler urged preachers to have patience as they wait for their ministry to bear fruit in listeners’ lives.

“The one thing we may forget that is indispensable to our preaching is patience,” Mohler said. “And the one thing our people do not even know to expect as a matter of our preaching is patience.”

Often preachers become frustrated because every sermon does not appear to change lives instantly, he said.

Biblical preaching is further complicated by the fact that postmodern Americans find it strange to take instruction for modern life out of an ancient book, Mohler said.

“We show up and say, ‘This ancient book is going to tell us how to order our lives today.’ And that sounds extremely strange to a world that isn’t ready to hear an authoritative word from an ancient source,” he said.

But preachers must teach the Bible week-in and week-out because faithfulness to God’s Word over time will yield eternal results, Mohler noted.

“Be strong,” he said. “Be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near. How long do we have to be patient? Until the Lord comes. But take heart. The Lord’s coming is near.”

York exhorted conference attendees to preach faithfully even during life’s most difficult times. Drawing on the example of Ezekiel, York said effective ministers often learn to trust God through trials.

“It’s easy to serve the God who will give you your best life now,” he said. “That’s the God we want. That’s the God we create. That’s not the God we serve. How do you serve a God who causes what you have always regarded as the worst-case scenario in your life?

“Dear brothers, I tell you, you’ve got to preach the Word even in the midst of your worst-case scenario.”

During difficult times, the preacher should think about God’s call on his life as motivation to continue proclaiming the Bible, York said.

“Commitment to preach really is a function of your calling,” he said. “If you have a light regard for your calling, if you’re not very certain that God’s really called you, if you feel like you’re just trying this out to see how it works, you will wash out at the first sign of trouble. If you have a light regard for your calling, you’ll have a light regard for your preaching.”