Future Shepherds are found in the Living Room (part 1 of 3)

Realizing I still need to finish up my third installment on sermons, I wanted  to overlap it with another three-part series on leaders in the local church because the two are so intimately intertwined I think it'd be beneficial to have them driving down the road together. So, please enjoy and drop some feedback if you're so inclined.

                                                                                                  

Horatius Bonar writes in chapter one of his book Words to Winners of Souls, 'The Importance of a Living Ministry': 

"How much more would a few good and fervent men effect the ministry than a multitude of lukewarm ones!…The mere multiplying of men calling themselves ministers of Christ will avail little. They may be but "cumberers of the ground." They may be like Achan, troubling the camp; or perhaps Jonah, raising the tempest. Even when sound in the faith, through unbelief, lukewarmness and slothful formality, they may do irreparable injury to the cause of Christ, freezing and withering up all spiritual life around them. The lukewarm ministry of one who is theoretically orthodox is often more extensively and fatally ruinous to souls than that of one grossly inconsistent or flagrantly heretical…Can the multiplication of such ministers, to whatever amount, be counted a blessing to a people?

          When the Church of Christ returns to the primitive example, and walking in apostolical footsteps seeks to be conformed more closely to inspired models, allowing nothing that pertains to earth to come between her and her living Head, then will she give more careful heed to see that the men to whom she entrusts the care of souls, however learned and able, should be yet more distinguished by their spirituality, zeal, faith and love."

     Amen and amen!  What a blast of fresh air that is to read, and Bonar was referring to the Church in the 1800’s!  We today, just as Bonar apparently was in his, are in desperate need of re-form concerning the kind of men we have leading our Christian communities.  God’s qualification for being a shepherd among His People is first and foremost proven, fruitful,  faithfulness. As Paul tells Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:1-2 “The things which you have heard from me…entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.”  First comes faithfulness then comes teaching.  

The Lordsday Rest

There are numerous benefits, joys and angles to the diamond that is the Lordsday, but one aspect I'm fond of emphasising to my family in various ways, and one I've discovered to be clarifying for others is that the Lordsday is for us, to turn away from us. 

By the Spirit this understanding can direct our gaze, our hearts, onto Jesus and will aid us to not only know Him more through sabbath, but too, begin to help us truly understand our own selves more through the knowing of Him who is the Eternal Word.  

So, on the Lordsday it is fitting and liberating to say along with John the Baptiser,  "Christ must increase, but I must decrease." (John 3:30)

A Brand Spanking New Word!

My father recently emailed this out to me and I thought it worthy of placing here.

Ineptocracy (in-ep-toe-crassy) – A system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.

Creeds? Who needs 'em?! Right?

"Beyond question, God has ordained, as a means of grace and indoctrination, the oral explanation and enforcement of divine truths by all preachers. Thus Ezra [Nehemiah 8.8] causes the priests to "read in the book of the law of God distinctly, and give the sense, and cause them to understand the reading." Paul commanded Timothy [2 Timothy 4.2] to "reprove, rebuke, exhort with long-suffering and doctrine." He, as an apostle of Christ, not only permits, but commands, each uninspired pastor and doctor to give to his charge his human and uninspired expositions of what he believes to be divine truth, that is to say, his creed. If such human creeds, when composed by a single teacher and delivered orally, extempore, are proper means of instruction for the church, by the stronger reason must those be proper and scriptural which are the careful, mature, and joint productions of learned and godly pastor, delivered with all the accuracy of written documents. He who would consistently banish creeds must silence all preaching and reduce the teaching of the church to a recital of the exact words of Holy Scripture without note or comment."
     
- R.L. Dabney,  "The Westminster Confession and Creeds"

Pray Baby, Pray

"If you are not praying, then you are quietly confident
  that time, money, and talent are all you need in life."

Paul Miller - excerpt from A Praying Life

Eternity Depends on Talking to One-another

"Our families, our schools, our congregations, not to speak of our cities at large, our land, our world, might well send us daily to our knees; for the loss of even one soul is terrible beyond conception!  Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has entered the heart of man, what a soul in hell must suffer forever.  Lord, give us bowels of mercies!   What a mystery!  The soul and eternity of one man depends upon the voice of another!"

Horatius Bonar - Scottish pastor and hymn writer (Not What My Hands Have Done) 1808-1889, this is an excerpt from his book Words to Winners of Souls 

The Poetry of John Donne

A Hymn to God the Father

Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
And do run still: though still I do deplore?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For, I have more.

Wilt thou forgive that sin which I have won
Others to sin? and, made my sin their door?
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year, or two: but wallowed in, a score?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For, I have more.

I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by thyself, that at my death thy son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;
And, having done that, Thou hast done,
I fear no more.


John Donne - English pastor & poet (1572-1631)

The Full-orbed Good News

"The gospel announces that the wall is broken down by the Cross, and therefore the Gentiles are welcomed to the same table and on the same basis as Jews; thus the gospel is sociology. It announces that the babble of tongues has been transformed into the harmony of Pentecost; thus the gospel is international relations. It announces that God has founded a new city, the Body of Christ, and that the King has been installed in heaven, at the right hand of the Father; thus the gospel is politics. It announces the coming of the new creation and includes the promise that the groaning creation's labor will someday end in a glorious birth; thus the gospel is science."

    Peter J. Leithart, excerpt from "College & the Gospel"