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Do we love God and others enough to drop the pretense and just be ourselves? Only the gospel simultaneously provides the humility and the confidence the pastor needs to be his real self. The pastorate is no place for image-managing, for worrying about our own PR. In any event, if everybody likes you, something’s wrong, and if everybody hates you, s

Jared C. Wilson , Mike Ayers (Foreword) • The Pastor's Justification

The justified pastor—the man justified by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone to God’s glory alone, who happens to be a pastor—when taken on his good day or bad day, ministry high or ministry low, will be received with gladness and welcome. Clothed in the righteousness of him in whom you trust, how can you be turned away? You will not b

Jared C. Wilson , Mike Ayers (Foreword) • The Pastor's Justification

For a wise articulation of this point, see Michael Horton, Ordinary: Sustainable Faith in a Radical, Restless World (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014).

James K. A. Smith • You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit

It is the converted, baptized, ordained Augustine who confesses, “Onus mihi, oneri mihi sum”: “I am a burden to myself.”

James K. A. Smith • On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts

You might think of Augustine as offering a hitchhiker’s guide to the cosmos for wandering hearts.

James K. A. Smith • On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts

Joy, for Augustine, is characterized by a quietude that is the opposite of anxiety—the exhale of someone who has been holding her breath out of fear or worry or insecurity. It is the blissful rest of someone who realizes she no longer has to perform; she is loved. We find joy in the grace of God precisely because he is the one we don’t have to prov

James K. A. Smith • On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts

I grew up believing what all modern people are taught: that freedom meant lack of constraint. Orthodoxy taught me that this freedom was no freedom at all, but enslavement to the passions: a neat description of the first thirty years of my life. True freedom, it turns out, is to give up your will and follow God’s. To deny yourself. To let it come. I... See more

We are merely and forever inside of the divine flow, just like Isaiah’s “rain and snow.” Forgiveness is not some churchy technique or formula. Forgiveness is constant from God’s side, which should become a calm, joyous certainty on our side. Mercy received will be mercy passed on, and “will not return to me empty, until it has succeeded in what it

Richard Rohr • Wondrous Encounters : Scripture for Lent

Perhaps this is what pastoral ministry is supposed to look like? Maybe applying the gospel to those in the holes they keep falling into is the mission. Or part of it, anyway. Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23), so we should expect that every day feels like death an