word | spirit | world | church
The Church isn’t in a hurry. Neither should Christians be. You can apply this in so many directions in our hurried world, but I’d like to think about our questions. Questions require time. Fast answers are usually trite ones. Some intellectual curiosities can be settled quickly by a swift Google, but real questions can’t be.… Continue reading Slow down
The challenge I didn’t describe in my previous piece of developing leaders, and especially those nearest to my own heart—Ephesians 4 teachers, doctors of the church, pastor-theologians, or whatever you want to call them—was the challenge of recognising them. How do you recognise those that you should invest time and energy into and ‘develop’ in… Continue reading Recognising Leaders
You work for five minutes in a business environment and you’ll end up talking about metrics. You will have a key measure of success and it will drive your behaviours. That measure will determine what you’re aiming for because it will determine what good looks like. You’ll do your best to achieve it. It’s the… Continue reading What is Success?
There are two church leadership offices described in the Bible, the elder and the deacon. Deacons provide material (or operational) support to elders, and the only character qualification that’s distinctive between the two offices is that elders need to be able to ‘teach.’ That tells you something about the distinct thing that elders do. However,… Continue reading Pastor vs Elder vs Bishop
This is a guest post from Aaron Stead, responding to my post about a Theological Vision for Ministry, which was inspired by the book Ancient Wisdom for the Care of Souls. Aaron is studying for an MTh with Union School of Theology. Some time ago I was talking to a vicar who after 50 years… Continue reading Against Executive Pastors
In my review of the year, I mentioned Edwin Friedman’s A Failure of Nerve. It’s a strange book, about the science of leadership. The book is terribly written and probably needs a modern explainer writing. This post is an attempt not to summarise it but to highlight some things that stood out to me. These… Continue reading 7 Leadership Lessons from Friedman
I recently read Ancient Wisdom for the Care of Souls. It’s a wonderful book and should be widely read by Pastors and Elders in all kinds of churches. The book is trying to plumb the wisdom of the Church Fathers for pastoral ministry, exploring what an elder in a church is and what they do… Continue reading A Theological Vision for Ministry
“In order to arrive at what you do not know, you must go by a way … of ignorance” says Eliot in East Coker. Commenting on this, Matthew Lee Anderson says, “It is a truth that is easy to write, but difficult to live out. Yet we can only learn when we are free to… Continue reading Learning not to know
Your church shouldn’t be too easy to join. This is probably counter-intuitive to many, we spend such a lot of time trying to remove barriers to welcome people into church and often in really helpful ways, but let me try and show you my thinking. Nor is this a bait-and-switch where I’ll end by saying… Continue reading Don’t be too easy to join
In a previous post I explored the third commandment to see what it means to bear the name of God and how it applies to us. We live in a moment that needs to understand this—to name yourself is an act of rebellion against God, I argued. It certainly can be an act of rebellion… Continue reading On Names and Naming Again
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