Pastor Connect 2009

Teach Your Team to Pray

Could there be anything more critical to the health of the team you lead than taking them into the presence of God? It is there that lives are adjusted, unity is gained, requests are granted, and the God of the universe is brought into the equation. But most pastors pray little . . . and their teams even less. One study showed that the average time American pastors spend in prayer is seven minutes a day. Praying with a team will not only help the regularity of your prayer life, it will foster an attitude of prayer in your team and ultimately your ...

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Creating Environments for Encountering God

Everything flows from the presence of the Lord. Everything.   If you have Him, you have everything you need. Without Him—His life, presence, provision, and power—you have nothing of importance. Our greatest concern as pastors should be simply this: Are we personally encountering God daily?   Our work as shepherds should be to bring people into environments where they too can encounter God, because only He changes lives. We must work hard to ensure that every part of our church creates an environment where God can freely dwell and do what only He can do.   What does it take to ...

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Why I'm Glad to Preach at Funerals

When I first entered the pastorate, I saw funerals as the "fine print" in my pastoral duties. I was expected to bury the deceased and comfort the grieving families, but it wasn't something I knew how to do, much less would enjoy. I still remember my first funeral. I had no idea how to minister to the family (I barely knew them) or how to organize a funeral service or what to say. Thankfully my dad, a veteran pastor who has preached at dozens of funerals, was visiting our home that week and was able to coach me on ...

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Bodies Matter

As pastors, we often think of ourselves as spiritual practitioners, "physicians of the soul." And so we are. We are charged with keeping watch over the souls of our people (Heb. 13:17). And we are ministers of the new covenant, ministers of the Spirit (2 Cor. 3).

But we must beware of forgetting that all human spirituality is, by necessity, embodied spirituality. We are physical, earth-bound creatures, and all of our relating to God, Christ, the Spirit, the Word, and one another is defined by our physicality.

To treat people as if they are bodiless souls is to be ...

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Living with Intention:

Few men have impacted me through their writings as much as Jonathan Edwards, the eighteenth-century New England pastor-theologian God so greatly used in America's first Great Awakening. Edwards' writings and ministry uniquely combined keen, penetrating theological analysis with a profound depth of heartfelt devotion. While Edwards' iron-clad logic was unsurpassed, the clarity of his God-centered thinking was always joined with the intensity of God-centered affections. This unique combination of head and heart sweetened his letters, treatises, and sermons with the beauty of holiness. Perhaps one secret to Edwards' balance was his intentional living. Long before writing personal mission statements ...

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Sermons That Stick

Pastors are communicators. We are charged with teaching and proclaiming life's most important message: the saving Word of the cross. As Paul said to Timothy, we are to "preach the word" (2 Tim. 4:2). Given this mandate, we should do everything we can to communicate in ways that really connect with people. We should want our sermons to stick.  A helpful book is Chip and Dan Heath's Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, which explores six principles that make some ideas "sticky." While applying these principles is no substitute for powerful, Spirit-filled preaching ...

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Spurgeon on Christ-Centeredness

One of my heroes is Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the famous Baptist pastor of nineteenth century London. In reading Spurgeon, I am convinced that a secret behind his ministry's extraordinary fruitfulness and enduring legacy was his relentless focus on the person and work of Christ.

His Creed

Spurgeon's Christ-centered focus is evident in his first words spoken at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, which was built to accommodate the multitudes who came to hear him preach. Setting the tone of the thirty years of ministry which would follow, he said: "I would propose that the subject of the ministry in this ...

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If God Is Sovereign, Why Pray?

There is no theological issue more knotty than the relationship between divine sovereignty and human responsibility. And this is no mere academic question, for our understanding here (or lack thereof) significantly affects such practical areas as evangelism and prayer. Prompted by an ongoing correspondence regarding predestination and free will, a friend asked me these thought-provoking questions: 

• If God already knows what will happen (and what choices will be made, etc.), can He change the outcome?
• What is the purpose of prayer?
• Can our prayers for someone's salvation actually make a difference? In a way, I don't want my ...

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How to Make Wise Decisions, Part 2

Perhaps you've seen the old classic film "Tom, Dick and Harry." It's a humorous story in which Ginger Rogers plays a young woman faced with the difficult choice of deciding which of three suitors to marry.  Will she marry her old beau Tom, the dashing and handsome Dick, or romantic and charming Harry? She finds each attractive, but the telltale sign of the right match, as far as she is concerned, is whether she hears bells tolling when she is kissed!  That reminds me of how many believers put the weight of their choices on unreliable feelings and ...

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Pitfalls of Electronic Pastoring

E-mail has its blessings. It is fast and efficient—a speedy way to send memos, set appointments, and make announcements. Our church is trying to make use of e-mail in positive ways. Three e-mail lists facilitate the schedule of the worship team, prayer requests and announcements for body life, and keeping up with sermon notes.

But e-mail also has its curses . . . because fast and efficient are two words you don’t want to describe your shepherding. Hurting sheep need to hear the voice and feel the touch of the shepherd. Straying sheep need the same. The temptation to solve problems ...

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Tending the Soil

I was disillusioned with ministry. Two years into my pastorate of a small church, our leaders agreed to hold a weekend conference with a well known author and speaker. We promoted the event to our congregation and to area churches. We stocked our book table with this author's books. Hoping for a huge crowd for the Friday night and Saturday morning sessions, I was frustrated, embarrassed, and maybe a bit angry when only 30 or so people came. On vacation a week later, I came across these insightful and convicting words from Eugene Peterson: Congregation is the topsoil in ...

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Embracing Community

If you have read the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament, also called Torah), then you know that, short of death, the most severe consequence for uncleanness or sin was banishment from the community. For example, the book of Leviticus mandated that a person with leprosy had to live outside the camp: The leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, "Unclean, unclean." He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is ...

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