Stopping to Think

  Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome by R. Kent Hughes My rating: 5 of 5 stars Good, wise, helpful, sane. The biblical measures of success point us back to faithfulness, rather than looking at business metrics (budgets, butts, buildings, etc.). View all my reviews

A Brief Philosophy of Ministry Biblical ministry is centered on Christ and Him crucified 1 . Without the message of reconciliation 2 offered by God 3 to sinners 4 , there is nothing for us to minister. “Christ is the center of Christianity; all else is circumference.” 5 A ministry centered on Christ will take a certain shape: namely, that of prayer and of the Word 6 . Paul asks the Ephesians to pray for him that he may speak boldly 7 , turns his every thought of the Philippians vertical in prayer 8 , and asks the Romans to join him in the struggle of prayer. 9 The same apostle commends to his protégé Timothy the preaching of the Word as a right response to the decaying nature of humanity and the sufficiency of God’s revelation in Scripture to save and transform. 10 Paul also makes clear that those called and gifted by God to minister are to do so for the purpose of building and equipping the body of Christ 11 , and such an endeavor will be futile and ultimately unsucce...

I hate when people say that their motivation behind something is, "God told me to do it." Or that they "had a peace" or they "felt God wanted them too." Not because there is anything wrong with those statements so much as most people using them come off as completely disingenuous. I want to do something and don't want you to question my actions or motives, thus I will claim God's leading. Who are you to question God? Now that I that out there, I want to tell you why we're moving. Because God said to. Not written in a book, or in an audible voice. But there is no doubt in my mind that God wants us to move to Iowa. The question you may ask is, why is that important? It is important if for no other reason than that people don't think my wife is dragging me away from Idaho. Three years ago, when we were in that long-distance dating, trying to figure out where this thing is going stage, I had full intent to move to Iowa. It was prett obvio...

Here is the post I promised at the end of the last one.  What I want to discuss is how do the five points I drew from Romans 1:1-7, relate to youth ministry.  Honestly, I believe they relate to all ministry this way, I simply am going talk in youth ministry terms because that was the initial spur behind me looking into this text. Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace to you an...

I ought to be in bed right now, being as I have a presentation to do in the morning, but alas, I am suffering some insomnia.  So, I will share with you all something of what I will be talking about tomorrow morning at the Rocky Mountain Bible Mission's Shepherd's Conference here in Missoula.  Wayne and I are splitting a session, sharing with people something of our philosophy of youth ministry.  Youth Ministry takes a lot of shots from more conservative, reformed, and rural people (not because any of those are necessarily connected or related).  Much of this, honestly, is fair criticism.  I recently read the book "Giving up Gimmicks: Reclaiming Youth Ministry From an Entertainment Culture" by Brian Cosby.  Excellent book, if you can get past a little Presbyterianism.  I wasn't quite sure how infant baptism worked into youth ministry, but anyway.  The gist of his book was that youth ministries cannot be divorced from the local church.  N...