Sublime

This included responding specifically to Jesus’s commands (giving us baptism and the Lord’s Supper, for example), but it also included careful selection, reappropriation, and reorientation of formative cultural practices into the repertoire of kingdom-indexed liturgy.

Jesus Christ alone is the hope, treasure, joy, and purpose of pastoral ministry. Not church growth, not church planting, not church success, not church business, not church programs, not church activities, not church popularity. Let everything be a means to this end: the treasuring of Christ and the enjoying of his glory.

Sometimes doubting your doubts is the beginning of wisdom.

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,

Andy Stanley, Johnny Carson, Howard Hendricks, Ronald Reagan, Billy Graham,

The long and short of it appears to be that an entire ministerial enterprise dedicated to meeting felt needs, supplying biblical advice, and providing top-notch production values has quietly become a huge success at drawing crowds but a huge failure at what the Bible actually calls the church to do.