Blog

Donna and I just watched a documentary film called Titan, about the ill-fated deep-sea submarine of that name in which five people lost their lives on June 18, 2023.  The key figure in the story was visionary entrepreneur Stoddard Rush. As with so many great dreamers before him, Rush was brilliant, charming, passionate, fiercely devoted […]

A few months back I did a lot of studying and thinking about what church revitalization actually is. It’s not a “Bible” term of course, but it’s derived from an important Biblical concept: the teaching, quite simply and astonishingly, is that the one and only triune God Himself indwells His people, and in, what we […]

If you’re not a pastor, you may have been surprised by my title.  “What?  Pastors, frustrated or angry?  He must mean, ‘frustrated by their golf games, their cars, their lawns or even their kids’ but surely he can’t mean ‘frustrated by their churches or their ministries!’” But frustrated by their churches or ministries is exactly […]

Nowadays, just about everybody knows that churches should have an outward focus.  The average evangelical church member has heard the term enough times to know that, when cast as a “Sunday School question,” as in, “Does your church have an outward focus?” the orthodox answer is “yes.” I’m realizing that if I really want to […]

I have the privilege today of writing about a very good movement within the American Evangelical world.  With all our issues, there are also some healthy trends in Christianity in the US today, and here’s one of them: A whole new (and old) attitude toward small churches. By “small” I also mean “average,” as the […]

Pastoral terms are too short.  The average tenure of three to five years1 is not working well for anyone. There are, of course, no Bible verses that say that this is too short, for the pastorate as we know it today was not yet commonly practiced when the New Testament was completed. So I’m not […]

Pastor abuse is a serious problem, but there’s nothing new about it. Old Testament prophets – spokespersons for God – and even Old Testament-era Jewish kings, who were shepherds (“pastors,” in Latin) of God’s people, endured harsh treatment at the hands of those who should have respected them. Mocked, thrown in pits, beaten, stoned and […]

I’ve mentioned before that my wife and I are fans of airline disaster podcasts, particularly, the Mentour Pilot, Petter Hornfeldt.  Petter’s great stories have frequently highlighted the importance of the monitoring pilot. Before they get into the cockpit, the commercial airliner’s captain and co-captain make a decision regarding which one of them, on this particular […]

Over the past three weeks I’ve shared fourteen ways in which we might move towards solving our pastor shortage in the evangelical world. While I’ve done some bemoaning of our situation, your responses have been encouraging.  I have not felt like a “voice crying in the wilderness.” I’ve found that many of you share my […]

Over the past three weeks I’ve shared fourteen ways in which we might move towards solving our pastor shortage in the evangelical world. While I’ve done some bemoaning of our situation, your responses have been encouraging.  I have not felt like a “voice crying in the wilderness.” I’ve found that many of you share my […]

For the past two weeks (see 15 Ways To Solve Our Pastor Shortage, Part One and 15 Ways To Solve Our Pastor Shortage, Part Two) I’ve been bemoaning our evangelical pastor shortage.  Like most of my readers, I didn’t much care about theologically liberal churches suffering their pastor shortage, but now that it’s closer to […]

The idea of a “pastor shortage” is a perplexing and troubling concept for us evangelicals.  We don’t mind the idea of a pastor shortage among the other varieties of Christians; after all, they’re wrong (to varying degrees) and deserve to have pastor shortages!  But it shouldn’t be happening in our camp. And I agree.  It […]