Darryl Dash's Blog, page 21

Saturday Links

Curated links for your weekend reading:

Don’t Confuse Secondary or Tertiary With Unimportant

The truth is, there are lots of tertiary things that will have a significant impact on your church.

Your Elders Will Fail You

My elders have fumbled and failed at times. Your elders will too. That does not mean we sweep things under the rug or excuse sin. But we can show grace.

25 Questions a Christian Woman Should Ask Herself When a Man Starts to Show Interest

Here’s a list of 25 questions we sometimes share ...

The First Step to Sin

Researchers invited one hundred people to participate in a study. They put participants in pairs. The task: to guess how many coins were in a series of jars. One participant would be shown large images, while the other would see only small, fuzzy images. The person who’d seen the large images would help the person who saw the small, fuzzy images to make good guesses.

The more accurate the guess by the person who had seen only the small, fuzzy image, the more both participants would receive.

They p...

The Greatness of Jesus Applied at Church (Hebrews 13:7-19)

Big Idea: Jesus calls churches to follow godly leaders, guard their teaching, and suffer like Jesus.

What is the greatest threat to this church?

Years ago, Francis Schaeffer said:

The central problem of our age is not liberalism or modernism, nor the old Roman Catholicism or the new Roman Catholicism, nor the threat of communism, nor even the threat of rationalism and the monolithic consensus which surrounds us. All these are dangerous but not the primary threat. The real problem is this: the churc...

Saturday Links

Curated links for your weekend reading:

The Case for Holy Obstinacy

An often overlooked element of Christian witness is holy stubbornness—the unbending refusal to go along with what the world says, no matter the cultural pressures or ramifications.

7 Tips for Reading the Book of Revelation

As I’ve grown as a reader of Revelation, I’ve found the seven suggestions below invaluable.

In a Scrolling World, Are We Numb to the Resurrection’s Shock?

Why are we numb to the resurrection’s shock and seemingly bo...

A Jewish Rabbi, Emotional Sabotage, and Non-Anxious Pastoral Ministry

I met with a friend for lunch. When I mentioned the difficulties I encountered in ministry, he emphasized the significance of maintaining a non-anxious presence.

"What does it mean to have a non-anxious presence?" I asked. “Tell me more.”

It turns out he’d been reading Edwin Friedman’s book A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix. In fact, he said it was the best leadership book he’d read. I picked up the book too and found it to be a helpful resource for pastoral ministry.

The B...

Suffering Leads to Glory (Psalm 22:22-31)

Big Idea: The resurrection means that Jesus is vindicated, you are included, and that God’s church will keep growing.

If you were here last week, you know that the first part of Psalm 22 is anything but happy. Psalm 22 is the cry of a righteous person who is suffering for no fault of their own. It is intense. The psalmist feels abandoned and ignored by God, and taunted and despised by people. It’s a heartbreaking cry for God to listen. After describing his anguish, the psalmist cries out:

But you,...

Saturday Links

Curated links for your weekend reading:

The Christian’s Hope Isn’t Complete without a Bodily Resurrection

The future will be bodily glory. Our future will be bodily life. And therefore, Christians have this kind of hope to help them persevere.

How (and How Not) to Fight Sin

How should we fight sin and temptation?

An Open Letter to the Church Member Hurt by Their Local Church

Every church family hurts people one way or another. What the Lord has done is to arm us with wise, Christ-honoring habits of re...

Every Pastor I Know Struggles With One of These

Every pastor I know struggles with one of two temptations.

The first temptation is a poor work ethic.

One pastor I knew was paid full-time, but told me that he had found a way to do his job in about four hours, including worship services. He told me that he parked the car in the church parking lot, turned on the lights of his office, and took a bus to watch movies during the day.

That pastor may have been a little extreme, but I’ve met other lazy pastors: ones who are unaccountable with their time ...

Saturday Links

Curated links for your weekend reading:

Preachers, Aspire to Be Relentlessly Interesting

I want it to be hard for a listener not to pay attention, because the sermon is so interesting it continues to pull them back toward the text.

Pastoring is Tortoise Work: A Lesson for the Young and Aspiring

Alongside your study of Scripture, theology, preaching, and ministry methods, befriend patience also.

Six Responsibilities for the Elders of Every Church

What is the job description of an elder or of an elder’s...

Buddy’s Rescue

Buddy was the rescue dog I wasn’t sure I wanted.

It was my idea. I sent my family to the pound to see if they had any black labs. I figured they wouldn’t, but they did — a Labrador-retriever, to be precise. Buddy came home to join our elderly lapdog who was nearing her end.

It didn’t take long for us to regret bringing Buddy home.

I don’t know what happened to Buddy before we got him, but he made life difficult. He scratched up doors. He broke through cages. He destroyed our carpet and part of a co...