Context Clues for Remembering the War
Perhaps we have forgotten that pastoral ministry is war and that you will never live successfully in the pastorate if you live with a peacetime mentality. (Paul David Tripp in Dangerous Calling, p. 98). Forgetting where you are at can make life awkward, difficult, and frustrating. The importance of understanding the dynamics of the place where you are located is something we often times take for granted. But our setting provides enormous insight as to how we are to understand ourselves, and how to function within a particular context. In elementary school, language arts classes emphasize the...
Read MoreFailure Is An Option
Yes, you read the date correctly, it is officially twenty- six days past the deadline I gave myself to have posted my next blog. I have officially now missed my goal of twelve blogs this year. I thought of ways to make it up. I could quickly write two in this month and still meet my goal; I could list out all the justified obstacles I encountered and why I should be pardoned (this is called excuses); or just accept responsibility and move on. As much as I considered the first two, a conversation with my son has caused me to choose the third. An occasion came about where he had to meet a...
Read MoreThe Product of Community
Counselors Reflect on Dangerous Calling by Paul Tripp A Series to Care for the Care Takers of God’s People “None of us is wired to live this Christian life alone. None of us is safe living separate and unknown. Each of us, whether pastor or congregant, needs the eyes of others in order to see ourselves with clarity and accuracy. And what is this daily ministry of intervention protecting us from? The answer should sober every one of us: the grace of having our private conversations interrupted by the insight-giving ministry of others is protecting us from becoming spiritually...
Read MoreA Level Playing Field
Counselors Reflect on Dangerous Calling by Paul Tripp A Series to Care for the Care Takers of God’s People “If every pastor is, in fact, a man in the middle of his own sanctification, shouldn’t he be receiving the normal range of the ministry of the body of Christ that God has ordained for every member of the church to receive?” page 69. It seems inconceivable that the church would ever operate with a different set of rules for the pastor. But sometimes that is exactly what happens. After all, some may reason, the pastor has been to seminary and is well trained in the...
Read MoreFamily First
Counselors Reflect on Dangerous Calling by Paul Tripp A Series to Care for the Care Takers of God’s People Is it safe to assume that your pastor is loving his wife, children and extended family? (p. 79) In the last section of chapter 5 under the heading A Better, More Healthy Way, Tripp encourages and gives tips to pastors and the churches they pastor to help care for those pastors families. Pastors should regularly evaluate and measure their public ministry to others by the health of their personal ministry to his family. Pastors’ first ministry is to their wives and children. ...
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