Darryl Dash's Blog, page 75

Radically Ordinary Hospitality

It’s there, right in the middle of the character qualifications of eldership:

Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable… (1 Timothy 3:2)

He must not be arrogant or quick-tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy for gain, but hospitable, a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined. (Titus 1:7-8)

The word hospitable isn’t hard to understand. It means “to be disposed to treat guests and str...

Saturday Links

Curated links for your weekend reading:

‘Yesterday’ and the Forgotten Gospel

Let’s play the song, brethren. Every week. Every day. Again and again. Those who’ve never heard will be amazed, and those who have forgotten will be refreshed.

Recovering the Priority of Personal Holiness

Many ministers are often nowadays more concerned with visual growth and success than with cultivating personal purity.

7 Key Concepts for Biblical Preaching

Identify the big idea from Haddon Robinson Discern the fal...

The Brokenhearted Pastor

I thought I could pastor without it. No more. If you’re a pastor, you’re going to have to learn pastor sometimes with a broken heart.

I remember meeting a congregation member in the aisles of Costco. I spoke of the funeral service I had just led for a dear old saint in our church. I described how hard it was to bury her. “It never occurred to me that you would feel that way,” she said. It had never occurred to her that pastors who read Scriptures at gravesides are reminding themselves, as wel...

Saturday Links

Curated links for your weekend reading:

8 Ways to Battle ‘Comfort Idolatry’

One of Christianity’s greatest idolatries today is also one of the most subtle and insidious: the idolatry of comfort.

Here are eight additional ways a churchgoing Christian can proactively attack, or preventatively avoid, comfort idolatry in the Christian life.

Modern Research About Happiness Repeatedly Parallels Biblical Principles

People can borrow certain values from a Christian worldview, but without faith in Chr...

You Can’t Be Present and Busy

I rushed to a conference last week. I was leading a workshop the next day and didn’t want to be that guy: the guy who only shows up for his workshop but skips everything else. Truthfully, though, I didn’t have the time. I wished I could have skipped the evening and stayed at home.

But I was there and started to listen. It turns out that I needed to hear what the main speaker, Karen Reed, had to say.

Reed spoke about her ministry in East Vancouver. She spoke about living faithfully in a commun...

Saturday Links

Curated links for your weekend reading:

The Ministry of Presence

The local church doesn’t need people of outsized talents or rare abilities as much as it needs normal people with full-out commitment. Your church and my church can thrive only when there is a dedicated core who make it their mission to be there, to make their main ministry the ministry of presence.

Four Contemporary Threats to Scripture’s Sufficiency

I’m suggesting that it’s possible for us to be so focused on the speck in the...

Time to Rewrite Our Leadership Playbook

I’m blown away by Paul’s honesty in 2 Corinthians.

People in Corinth expected leaders to look successful. They didn’t have a category for someone like Paul. Weakness wasn’t in their leadership vocabulary.

Paul refused to play that game. Just as Jesus taught his disciples about a Messiah who suffers, Paul teaches the Corinthians (and us) about Christian leaders who struggle. He lists his sufferings (2 Corinthians 11:23-28). He boasts not in his strengths but his weaknesses (2 Corinthians 11:30...

Saturday Links

Curated links for your weekend reading:

Why Small Things Are Often The Greatest Things

We don’t need to “go big” for God to have an eternal impact. In fact, that may be what’s getting in the way.

Pastor, Prepare Yourself—and Your People—to Suffer

Church planting is not for the faint of heart. Therefore, church planters must not only anticipate hardship—they must prepare themselves and their people for it.

Depressed

You are not alone in suffering, should not be shamed by it, and that one day y...

To Know the Love of Christ

What do you pray for your church?

I find Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians interesting:

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and l...

Saturday Links

Curated links for your weekend reading:

This One Simple Trick Makes Everything Faster and Easier

Here it is, tested, effective and worthwhile:

Stop chasing shortcuts.

An Elevator Pitch for Church Membership

Is church membership in the Bible? Show me a Christian in the Bible (other than the Ethiopian eunuch, who is in the middle of a desert) who is not committed to a local church.

The Importance of Theological Education

I’m increasingly convinced that there’s something peculiar to our “cultural...