Darryl Dash's Blog, page 72
February 2, 2020
Saturday Links
Curated links for your weekend reading:
Identifying Your Primary Story: 6 Diagnostic Questions
Trevin is doing a great job with this series of posts.
Here are a few questions intended to help you see if a story other than the Scriptural one has grown dominant in your imagination.
Eight Tips for Veteran Preachers
I find myself at a different stage of life and ministry, with a different set of concerns and observations than when I was a beginner preacher. Today, as a more veteran preacher, I...
January 28, 2020
Superhuman: A Review for Pastors
Email overwhelms me.
I’ve tried everything. I tried asking an assistant to process my emails. I’ve used plugins. I’ve tried batching my emails. Up until now, nothing has worked.
This bothers me. I don’t want to spend my life reacting to emails, but as one of my friends (a pastor) points out, it’s reasonable for people to expect a response, ordinarily, to their emails within 24 hours. Jen Pollock Michel wrote about answering emails recently: “answering texts, emails, and direct-contact...
January 25, 2020
Saturday Links
Curated links for your weekend reading:
Planting Churches with a Lasting Gospel Legacy
Here are four suggestions for planting churches with a lasting gospel legacy.
Should Missionaries Expect Rapid Growth?
Strategies promoting rapid growth are sometimes built on faulty assumptions that create unhealthy expectations.
The Problem of Having No Defined Membership
I want to look at the problems that ensue if we don’t have meaningful membership.
If there is one area in which...
January 21, 2020
It’s Not Up to You
“You’re just the kind of pastor this church needs,” we hear. “With your gifts I can’t see how this church won’t double in the next few years.”
As pastors, we love to hear this. Our gifts will make the difference. We have what it takes. Our personality, our leadership abilities will make a difference.
The most effective lies contain some truth. God chooses to use people, and God seems to use some pastors in more visible ways than others.
But it’s still a lie. It’s not up to you. You don’t have...
January 18, 2020
Saturday Links
Curated links for your weekend reading:
A major new EFC survey suggests half of Canadians are either agnostic, atheist or unreligious. And only a tenth attend religious services weekly. How will the church respond?
What churches and pastors need more than anything else is a great big vision of a great big God.
This Leftie Is Right About Church
In a fascinating article in The Canberra Times, climate activist, Michael Bones, writes about how progressives need...
January 14, 2020
The Word of God Is Not Bound
Paul sits in prison. Prison was familiar to Paul, and conditions varied from the relative comfort of house arrest to much harsher conditions.
This time is not good. Paul sits in Rome surrounded by soldiers of the elite Praetorian Guard. He expects that he will soon be executed by the government. He has no freedom and no future.
In that context, Paul writes: “Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel, for which I am suffering, bound with...
January 11, 2020
Saturday Links
Curated links for your weekend reading:
Sex outside of marriage isn’t new (Abraham), but due to certain technological advances—birth control, condoms, legal and “safe” and cheap abortions—consequence-free sex basically is.
Why You Need Sermons That Don’t Directly Apply to You
How do you listen to a sermon that’s not about you? How can you benefit from a talk on anxiety if you’re not worried, marriage if you’re not married, or depression if you’re not down?
January 7, 2020
Adorning the Dark
This book should have been on my list of best books of 2019, but I finished it in the last hours of the year, too late to include on my list.
It was one of my last mistakes of 2019, and one of the first I’m fixing this year.
Andrew Peterson is someone you should know. His music — Is He Worthy? or His Heart Beats or the Behold the Lamb of God album, for instance — is a gift to the church. He’s also a writer, and I hear he draws too.
[image error]He’s written Adorning the Dark as both a memoir and a...
January 4, 2020
Saturday Links
Curated links for your weekend reading:
What we do each morning in the first fifteen to thirty minutes of our day is doubly revealing: it reveals both where our treasures really lie, as well as the trajectory of desires and decisions that will direct the day and, over time, our life.
You don’t need to be a professional book reviewer to read a lot of books. And you don’t need to be brilliant either. But you do need to be purposeful and consistent....
December 31, 2019
Top Posts of 2019
Here, in order of traffic from highest to lowest, are a couple of lists of the top posts I’ve written over the past year.
Note: If you haven’t already done so, please sign up for my email list, or subscribe to the feed for DashHouse (RSS) or my column at TGC Canada (RSS).
Top Posts at DashHouseThe Kind of Man I’d Like to Become
I suppose I’ve always had dreams about becoming a certain kind of man. They used to be dreams about accomplishment.
Increasingly as I get older I have a different set...
