The Plodding Preacher

“People can pick up skills relatively quickly, but character isn’t something you just pick up. Character is often forged over a long period of time and over multiple experiences, and it only changes with great and sustained effort. It can and does change, but it’s much harder to change your character than it is to learn skills.” ( Wisdom in Leadership , 48 Craig Hamilton)

Mainline Protestants have been casting away traditional Christian teachings with great abandon.  Pastors can now be female, gay, rejecters of Christ’s deity, atonement, and resurrection, etc., etc.  One wonders if, in liberal Protestantism, there is   any minimum religious belief that is necessary in a pastor.  Or in a Christian or a member of the church.  For example, does a pastor (or Christian, or church member),  have to believe in God? The United Church of Canada is having to make a decision about this, as it reviews the case of one of its ministers, Greta Vosper, who is an atheist and who teaches atheism from her pulpit. PREDICTION:  Pastors in the United Church will not be required to believe in God.  Nor will church members.  Christians may be atheists.  And atheists will be considered Christians.  To their great annoyance.  by Gene Veith Here is the link to the original article: From Ashifa Kassam,   Atheist pastor sparks debate by ‘irritating the church into the 21st

Every time a liberal comes up with a solution to a problem there are unintended consequences that he either does not anticipate or chooses to ignore.  This little graphic from Doug Wilson captures the latest quite nicely.

I personally have no problem with recycling or green energy.  Let's save the whales and the polar bears and the red-bellied South African newt (I made that last one up).  Let's be more careful with how we use the resources at our disposal, keeping future generations in mind. My problem this earth day is with none of those things.  My problem lies with the fact that earth day has become worship the earth day.  The media speaks of the earth as though it were a person.  We can't say a fetus in the womb is a person, but we can believe that a planet is.  The language used is reverential and solemn (like what you once would have heard in church).  We have exchanged the worship of God who created the earth for the worship of the earth itself. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for aa lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator,

A wonderful list of ideas from Megan at the blog Sunday Women . 1. Show up for worship.  2. Sing. Heartily.  3. Say “Amen.” (I’m looking at you, fellow-Presbyterians.) 4. Pray for church members.  5. Pray with church members.  6. Let them pray for you.  7. Weep.  8. Rejoice.  9. Learn people’s names.  10. Introduce yourself so they can learn yours.  11. Use your gifts. 12. Say “hi” to the children.  13. Teach Sunday school.  14. Volunteer for the nursery.  15. Send a thank you note.  16. Love Christ.  17. Lead a Bible study.  18. Put your tithe in the offering plate.  19. Bring your children for baptism.  20. Take and eat of the Lord’s Table.  21. Forgive.  22. Speak well of your elders. 23. Do what your pastor preaches.  24. Invite another family over for lunch. (Sandwiches and chips are just fine.) 25. Sit in a different pew.  26. Sit in a different pew closer to the front.  27. Introduce people to each other.  28. Don’t complain about the attendance. Or

Your marriage is not primarily for yourself, but for the glory of God. Marriage is to display the oneness and love of Christ and his church for each other. Our marriages are to be “snapshots” of how Jesus loves his bride and how the church loves Jesus. And as Jesus did all for his Father’s glory, so we should seek to glorify God through our marriages. So if you have a conflict, don’t make your goal to win the argument, but ask yourself what will bring God the most glory. Will it glorify God most for me to be angry at my spouse or to seek to work through our conflict, ask forgiveness and forgive? Will it most glorify God for me to seek to fulfill my own desires or if I lay down my life to serve my spouse? Mark Altrogge From the article " 4 of the Best Pieces of Marital Advice I've Ever Heard ."

Archeaological Discovery Sheds New Light on Mary Magdalene A Faith Rooted in History BY   ERIC METAXAS A real biblical site, a real woman, and a real faith, all rooted in history. That's what we learn from the archaeological dig at Magdala. If there were a prize for the least-understood yet incredibly-important person in the Bible, it would probably go to Mary Magdalene. I suspect that more people "know" that she was a prostitute — which is based on a misreading of Luke, chapters 7 and 8 — than the fact that she was the first witness to the Lord's resurrection. Recent archaeological discoveries are shedding a much-needed light on the life and times of this vital biblical character. Ten years ago, the Pontifical Institute Notre Dame Jerusalem Center decided to build some guest houses in the Galilee region. The site they choose was near the Israeli town of Migdal and the former site of an Arab town called Al-Majdal. As the names suggest, the area was as

Michael Kelley wrote this excellent article found HERE . There are those Sundays when you wake up with the resurrection on your mind. These are the days that you know – you know – that Jesus is alive, and because He lives, everything is different. You breathe in the truth of His life and the celebration boils inside you. You are compelled to sing – to shout – with the people of God. And you walk into a worship service with the song already in your soul only needing someone to give it words. There are those Sundays. And then there are the other ones. The ones where you think about having only one more day of the weekend. The ones when it’s a struggle to get the kids clean, fed, dressed, and out the door. The ones when the sun is shining brightly and the outdoors beckons. When you think about all the reasons why you deserve to just take it easy for another couple of hours. These are the days when you must absolutely, positively, go to church. That’s because when we do the very

It’s amazing how much panic one honest man can spread among a multitude of hypocrites. - Thomas Sowell

This is a wonderful reminder from author Randy Alcorn. I talked with a young woman who viewed the Christian life as one of utter dullness. She knew that following Christ was the right thing to do, but she was certain it would mean sacrificing her happiness. Where did this young woman, who was raised in a fine Christian family and church, acquire such an unbiblical notion? What are we doing—what are we missing—that leaves many of our children and our churches laboring under such false impressions? Why do we think it would be unspiritual for the Christian life to be centered on what God calls the good news of happiness ( Isaiah 52:7 )? Celebration and gladness of heart have characterized the church, including the suffering church, throughout history. Scripturally, the culture of God’s people is one of joy, happiness, gratitude, eating and drinking, singing and dancing, and making music. It’s not the people who know God who have reason to be miserable—it’s those who   don’t . Read

Science is the god of our age.  Its adherents rhapsodize about the pure truth of scientific fact.  There is no bias in its research and no fraud in its halls.  William Wilson writes a penetrating article that suggests that much of contemporary science is a house of cards waiting to be tumbled. The problem with ­science is that so much of it simply isn’t. Last summer, the Open Science Collaboration announced that it had tried to replicate one hundred published psychology experiments sampled from three of the most prestigious journals in the field. Scientific claims rest on the idea that experiments repeated under nearly identical conditions ought to yield approximately the same results, but until very recently, very few had bothered to check in a systematic way whether this was actually the case. The OSC was the biggest attempt yet to check a field’s results, and the most shocking. In many cases, they had used original experimental materials, and sometimes even performed the experimen

My wee Irish cousin Jonathan Rea conducts this choir and wrote the arrangement of the piece they are singing.

 "I t is worth noting that we are the only generation in recorded history that can list its worship style by generation." Ed Stetzer In an article found HERE

Sheep Tragi-Comedy #1,317: “The Draad Kruiper” by Eric Davis Amusing sheep stories abound. Some of my moments of more rigorous chortling have been in response to real-life sheep tragi-comedies. One of the more recent involves what is called the “Draad Kruiper,” which I heard from my good friend, Pastor Anton Van Straaten. “Draad Kruiper” is Afrikaans for, “fence crawler.” The story goes like this: There was a shepherd who owned many sheep and took good care of them in his pasture. However, not all of the sheep took a liking to the plentiful feeding provided in the grassy sheepfold. One day, the shepherd noticed that one of his sheep was missing. Being a faithful shepherd, he scanned the fold for the sheep. Missing sheep was not an uncommon thing. Now and then a renegade sheep would bolt the fold only to end up tangled in a bramble bush upside down, or worse. But this time, the shepherd did not have to go far to find the missing sheep. As he scanned the grassy yard, he no

THE GREAT PARENTAL FREAK OUT Kevin DeYoung How can parenting be this hard? It’s exhausting. It’s all consuming. It’s the worst job you’ve ever loved having. Either kids have gotten much more demanding over the years, or parents have decided to make their lives more difficult than they have to be. Most parents I know–including the two that live in my house–are often bothered, usually stressed, and always tired. No doubt, some of this is unavoidable. From running them around town, to helping with homework, to breaking up fights, to cleaning up puke, to mending broken hearts, raising kids is a lot of work. But if we are going to work hard, let’s make sure we are working hard at the right things. The average Christian parent in the West is probably more involved in the day to day demands of parenting than almost any other parents in the history of the world. And yet, these same parents are likely more worried about being terrible parents than were their parents or grandparents, l

This morning I came across this headline: "Perry Noble's Church Will Refund Your Tithe if You Don't Get Blessings in 90 Days."  In the article, a U.S. church has challenged its people to give the tithe for three months with a money-back guarantee.  If after 90 days God has not blessed the giver, the church promises to refund every penny "no questions asked."  Since Malachi 3:10 is the text used for this campaign, I can only assume that the blessing promised is material - money or wealth. Now most people are not crass enough to state this belief as openly as Perry Noble, but I find a great number of Christians seem to have his sense that you give in order to get more.  Is that really the point of our giving in church?  Is the offering some sort of spiritual investment program that guarantees a better return on our money than the banks? Here are a few random thoughts. The tithe is Old Testament.  A simple concordance search of the words tithe and tithes

Only pretribulationalists will get the joke: