I have frequently observed that if we were to understand the way authority works in the Kingdom of God, we would have less arguments about who gets what title. Maybe we’d drop as many titles as possible. Dave Black comments on this, and quotes Markus Barth today. I think he has a point.
Since I’ve been talking about churches and leadership, I thought it would be useful to point to this article on UMC.org: Local church pastors on the rise. As usual, I think we’re behind. My personal belief is that the whole system of education we’re using, including degrees is well past its prime. If we made…
I’ve been exchanging thoughts with Dave Black about the pastoral role and biblical languages, including textual criticism. One of my difficulties here is that I am more likely dealing with people on a day to day basis who are not well acquainted with their English Bibles, and thus it’s a bit harder to talk about…
Mostly, this is a link to Allan Bevere’s post, which builds on Michael Bird’s post. I’m one of those parishioners who would like to hear more sermons from well-educated theologians. Even if the circumstances are different (see comments to Allan’s post), I, like John Wesley, have but a lowly MA. But there are several things…
Dave Black warns us today against the cult of the speaker. (With permission I’ve extracted the relevant portion as a post at JesusParadigm.com since Dave’s blog doesn’t allow linking to a specific post.) Considering what we’ve heard recently about megachurches creating satellite campuses that receive the message from the senior pastor on the main campus…
There are many days when the United Methodist Church discourages me, and I wrote a post yesterday with that sort of feeling. But there are two things that regularly encourage me: Encountering vital small congregations, and meeting some of our young pastors. Via another young pastor, Geoffrey Lentz, who is doing wonderful things at First…
You can find the full context at The Jesus Paradigm (extracted from Dave Black Online). But here’s just the question itself: When will appeals for vocations to the ministry end? And when, in their place, will the church encourage all of its members to seek God’s will for the area of ministry in which they…
