Sublime

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

Our churches are occupied by sinners of all kinds. If the gospel is regularly being preached in your church, you will eventually become a magnet for the messiest kinds of sinners. The kind of people Jesus attracted. The kind of people church people often fear messing up their tidy church. Those are the kinds of people pastors must stay tuned in to

This is the pastoral posture we are exhorted to in 1 Peter 5:3: “not domineering.” There are lots of ways pastors become domineering over those in their charge, but the first step is usually to remove oneself more and more from them. When the local church body stops being “the flock of God that is among you,” it becomes much easier to treat them as

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.