A much loved and highly trusted friend spoke to me recently about ‘preacher’s tunnel vision’. He mentioned it in the context of a major preacher’s faux pas I had made in the pulpit the previous Sunday. I completely overlooked a…
To guide God’s saints in readying themselves for the reception of His preached Word each Lord’s Day, this earthen vessel shares his own weekly preparation to proclaim it to them as a model to modify and use. Prepare through Prayer…
Presbyterians put great stock in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper as an ordinary means of grace. In it, believers feed upon Christ by his Holy Spirit to the glory of God the Father. But the Lord’s Supper is not…
The first Psalm sets the stage for the entire Psalter. Its attention on the covenant God and covenant blessing and cursing, as well as its preoccupation with God’s Word as the source for our understanding, focus the entire Psalter. In…
In the Protestant family of churches, the phrase “church tradition” raises a red flag and is almost immediately rejected as an assault on the Bible’s authority. After all, sola Scriptura is a key Protestant rallying cry. At the same time,…
Some words are difficult to like. Do you know what I mean? Maybe I am not being clear. There are various reasons why we may not like this word or that. Some may be on unfriendly terms with a word…
“The preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God.” This line from the Second Helvetic Confession summarizes how we should think of the Biblical authority exercised in the pulpit. We see this concept reflected in Scripture, when…
Men and women were created in the image of God.[i] The image of God consists of true knowledge, righteousness, and holiness.[ii] In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve had true knowledge. Their minds could understand the mind of God…
Jesus thinks reading is a big deal. After all, he wrote a book. And Jesus thinks reading his book is a big deal, because, well, he is. For a blog post on the sufficiency of Scripture and biblical scholarship this…
In this final post (see part 1 and part 2 of this series), I would like to raise three challenges to the dominance of the extrovert and entrepreneurial ideals for pastoral ministry in the American church. First, the…
