Notable Voices and the Week in Review: July 29, 2017
Seven Dangers in the Last Few Years of Your Ministry
Seven Personalities of Sick Churches – Rainer on Leadership #348
The Top Ten Surprises New Pastors Have
Five Reasons to Consider Online Registration Forms for Guests
Keeping an Inner City Church in the Inner City – Rainer on Leadership #349
Pastors, We Need To Stop Expecting Worship Leaders To Do Our Job For Us — Karl Vaters
If your church is relying on the choir or worship team for your theology, you’re looking in the wrong place. Sure, a great song can teach or reinforce good theology, and songs with bad theology should be abandoned, but teaching theology is not the primary mandate of the worship leader.
Why Sermon Preparation Is Not Devotional Time — Sam Rainer
Sermon preparation is not—and should not—be used as devotion time. Sermon writing is devotional to an extent. Both involve prayer. Both elevate Scripture. Both require the work of the Holy Spirit. But they are different.
4 Painful Results of Insecure Leadership — Eric Geiger
Insecurity must not be confused with humility. Insecurity, like pride, is a focus on your self. Humility comes when you have a proper view of yourself in light of the Lord who is holy and above all. Humility comes from understanding that we are not God but we are loved by Him. When leaders lead in an insecure posture they don’t lead effectively. In fact, insecure leaders can damage the organization or ministry they are leading in at least four ways:
The Pastor as a Church Member — Jared Sparks
It is imperative – the pastor must have an identity in Christ if he is to embrace being a shepherd and a sheep. Pastor Paul does this well. The characteristics of the Philippian church reflect this truth about him. The Macedonian churches were taken care of by Paul and they, in turn, gave back. Paul lived as a shepherd and a sheep.
5 Passages Your Pastor Wishes You’d Stop Taking out of Context — Kyle Rohane
This isn’t surprising to most church leaders, who often see verses plucked from their homes to serve other purposes. To better understand these tricky situations, I asked several pastors to share the misused passages that make their skin crawl and how people in ministry can model healthy biblical interpretation.
A Brief History of the Altar Call — Thomas Kidd
By the mid-20th century, altar calls had become a staple of evangelical and Baptist life in America, especially in the South. Many evangelical and Reformed-leaning churches in recent years have stopped doing altar calls, for a variety of reasons. Critics of altar calls have pointed out that they have no strong biblical basis, and that they were part of the “New Measures” introduced by Charles Finney in the later stages of the Second Great Awakening.
