I admit to becoming increasingly aware of envy, and it is ugly. And I’ve started to notice a pattern, which you might recognise, and maybe a way through.
Category: pastors
A book of wonderful treasures
The idea of the Pastors’ Book Group is that we all read the same book, and then meet up to discuss it over lunch. so what are we reading next, I hear you ask…
Jesus showed us that it is normal for pastors to cry at a funeral, no matter how strongly we believe in the resurrection.
Pastors can feel approved of by God when things go ‘well’, and sidelined by God when things go low or slow. There’s an old song with a solution.
Cal Newport helps us see how to restrict ‘shallow work’ and its distractions, to work productively, and at depth.
Several times recently I’ve seen Christians caught out by video clips on the web , saying things which were, with hindsight, not what they should really have said. How can we minimise the risk of this happening to us?
Churches, like any human organisation, cannot operate long-term as shapeless, improvised groupings. And even though an occasional New Testament scholar will suggest that the first few decades of the church had an exciting, free-form style, which only much later hardened into a hierarchy, when we turn to the New Testament, we can see that the experience of the very first Christians was much more complex.
Do you have a passion to see the lost found, and the found built up? Do you have a desire to see the gospel understood, churches planted, men and women converted, children growing in their faith, and for you to be playing a part in that for the rest of your life? Do you treasure your time in God’s Word, and love to see it opened among his people so they are dazzled by his wonder? Then you’ve identified what he means to aspire and desire this noble task.
They say that one of the dangers of social media, is that you only see other people’s edited highlights: the perfect holiday sunset, the perfect romantic meal. And as a result we become dissatisfied and envious of other people’s perfect lives. We don’t see that out of sight of the perfect sunset was the half
