Marks of Maturity in the Ministry (Part 3)

Dictatorship or leadership. A sixth mark of maturity is this: distinguishing between dictatorship and leadership. Churches rise or fall on leadership. Certainly it is true that all believers are one in Christ; but it is also true that God has set some believers over the local church as spiritual leaders. The church is an organism; […]

D Is For Dictionary

Serious study takes time and is hard work. When sports writer Red Smith was asked how he kept turning out his excellent newspaper columns, he replied, “You just sit down at your typewriter and open a vein.” Substitute “sermon” for “newspaper column” and “computer” or “desk” for “typewriter” and you have today’s preacher. Maybe the […]

Eutychus: Sacred Alliterature

The massive advertising campaign for the Ryrie Study Bible has, unfortunately, taken away the attention of the evangelical public from The New Amazing Sermon Bible, known to the trade as the NASB. Published by Alliteration Press, this new edition of the Bible is exactly what the sermonizer needs. Let me describe its many features. Instead […]

Eutychus: Priming the Preacher

The most valuable lesson I learned in seminary was imparted to me by a professor who stole the idea from John Henry Jowett at an unguarded moment when Jowett was combing his moustache and not paying attention. “If you have trouble getting a sermon from a text,” he advised, “just try to imagine how some […]

Marks of Maturity in the Ministry (Part 2)

Popularity or success. This leads to a third mark of maturity: knowing the difference between popularity and success. Barabbas was popular but hardly a success. Popularity is a passing thing; success is permanent. (Of course sin can transform a successful pastor into a failure; but the work of an obedient man continues to help others.) […]

Marks of Maturity in the Ministry (Part 1)

The work that the pastor does cannot be separated from the life that he lives. A man may be a successful surgeon and, at the same time, a compulsive gambler; or he may teach algebra with great success and get drunk every weekend. But the man in the ministry reproduces after his kind. This is […]

The Glory of Separation (Part 1)

In an earlier chapter we noted that from the Greek word for “transfigure” comes our English word “metamorphosis.” It means “a change on the outside that comes from the inside.” When that little larva forms its cocoon and waits, nature performs a marvelous miracle. God made it that way. The creature that emerges is a […]

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