Sublime

He does not make life better. He is life.

So while a pastor need not be a scholar, he ought to be a man of doctrine.

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

A pastor not interested in theology is like a computer programmer not interested in technology.

As Western culture increases its speed in the race away from Christendom, as hostility to orthodox and evangelical Christianity increases and becomes increasingly legislated, we will eventually see a separation of the men from the boys. Which pastors will cave to worldly wisdom in fear for their own livelihoods and comfort, and which will fear God,

We labor in God’s glory for the joy of our people. Everything else is ear-tickling, wheel-spinning, vomit-inducing messing around.

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

But if we really understood what “to God alone be the glory” means, it might solve a lot of the sinfulness and dysfunction in the evangelical church.