Choosing elders 4

Look for men whose lives exhibit the spirit of, as well as an intellectual grasp of, sound doctrine. Orthodoxy with approachability is a great desideratum in an elder (approachability being the very least that "hospitable" means; Tit. 1:8)...
Avoid appointing those who would commit to loving the flock if they were asked to be elders. Better by far to have men who love the sheep than men who love being shepherds (the former will become the latter, but not vice-versa)...

Sinclair Ferguson, 9Marks Feb.07

Choosing elders 3

In either context, I look for proven faithfulness, particularly in discipling one's own family. This does not mean that single men cannot be elders, but a married man must be modeling, teaching, and training his own family. Properly managing one's own household is a prerequisite for serving as an elder in church. If a man is not discipling his wife and children, I would not suggest recognizing him as an elder, regardless of how fruitful his ministry might be in other arenas.

Ed Roberts (pseudoname), 9Marks Feb.07

Choosing elders 2

If I’ve learned anything "the hard way" over the years, it is that the best way to identify potential elders is in the normal flow of church life. They are evident by their response to what’s being taught; by their willingness to serve; by the abundance of spiritual fruit in their lives; and by the many ways their giftedness is manifest in the church before they are ever singled out for leadership.

John MacArthur, 9Marks email Feb.07

Choosing elders

One of the lessons I’ve learned and re-learned in more than one church is the danger of selecting a man to serve as elder who has a history of protracted, repeated, and/or unresolved conflict. On more than one occasion I have overlooked conflict in a man’s life, reasoning either that it was justified by the circumstances, a function of immaturity that has been outgrown, or foisted upon him as the innocent party.

The fact is, however, that even when circumstances or theology vindicate his side of the conflict, a man can still be a quarrelsome man. This may demonstrate itself in a lack of gentleness, a propensity to taking rigid positions when none are required, an inability to lose graciously, or simply an over-love of debate. Whatever the form it takes, quarrelsomeness is a serious impediment to effective service as an elder; unchecked it is a clear disqualification (1 Tim. 3:3).

Michael Lawrence, 9Marks email Feb.07

Prodigal love

Commenting on the 'moral influence' model of the atonement, Stott mentions that proponent sof the theory who reject SA, claim that some parables show salvation without reference to any kind of propitiatory sacrifice. Then he says:

So in his book The Cross and the Prodigal Dr Bailey, who has for many years taught New Testament at the Near East School of Theology in Beirut, takes a fresh look at Luke 15 ‘through the eyes of Middle Eastern peasants’. He explains that the whole village would know that the returning prodigal was in disgrace, and that punishment of some kind was inevitable, if only to preserve the father’s honour. But the father bears the suffering instead of inflicting it. Although ‘a man of his age and position always walks in a slow, dignified fashion’, and although ‘he has not run anywhere for any purpose for 40 years’, he yet ‘races’ down the road like a teenager to welcome his home-coming son. Thus risking the ridicule of the street urchins, ‘he takes upon himself the shame and humiliation due to the prodigal’. ‘In this parable’, Kenneth Bailey continues, ‘we have a father who leaves the comfort and security of his home and exposes himself in a humiliating fashion in the village street. The coming down and going out to his boy hints at the incarnation. The humiliating spectacle in the village street hints at the meaning of the cross’ (pp. 54—55). Thus ‘the cross and the incarnation are implicitly yet dramatically present in the story’, for ‘the suffering of the cross was not primarily the physical torture but rather the agony of rejected love’. What was essential for the prodigal’s reconciliation was a ‘physical demonstration of selfemptying love in suffering . . . . Is not this the story of the way of God with man on Golgotha?’

The Cross and the Prodigal (pp. 56—57).
Quoted in The Cross of Christ, by John Stott.

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Turkey Mourned as Model Member
Lambs United Methodist Church, Wales Township, Michigan, held a moment of silence last week to honour one of their model members — a wild turkey. The Rev. James Huff, pastor of the church, said the turkey regularly attended Sunday services and greeted people as they arrived. "He would kind of wait for me to come in," Huff told the Times Herald of Port Huron. "He knew when I got there. Service was about to begin, and then he would sit on one lady's car until we were done."

Area residents reported that the turkey died last week after it was hit by a car on a road near the St. Clair County church. Congregation members immediately noticed that the fowl was absent, since he never missed a service.

Cooke on TV

Television is a gorgeous girl led astray early in life by a travelling salseman. She is taken round the country as a come-on for his detergent...

...for every shining hour there are days and weeks of dross...

He stated that networks trimmed content according to

Moron's Law: that what is most popular is also best...bad tatse and complacency sell goods.

From the biography by Nick Clarke (quotations date from the early 1960s)

a Kempis 15

And I - miserable and most worthless of men - how shall I bring Thee into my house, I who can hardly even spend half an hour properly in prayer? And would that for once I could spend half an hour rightly!

...Alas how little it is that I do, how short a time do I spend in preparing myself for Communion! Seldom am I wholly recollected, very seldom entirely free from distraction.

Yet surely in the life-giving presence of Deity no unbecoming thought should arise; nor should any creature occupy my mind; for it is not an angel, but the Lord of Angels, Whom I am going to receive as my Guest.

Book 4, ch.1

Trees

Until this morning, the end of our road was marked by two huge willow trees. Every year I watch as they turn from a mass of bare, brown , spindles into a feathery green haze. Then I know spring has come.

When I got home an hour ago, I found the council had started taking them down. A few years back I discovered one or two residents who live by the trees wanted them removed because they didn't like sweeping up the fallen leaves in the autumn. Maybe this is why the council are removing them.

This might sound too sentimental - I know not everyone loves trees like I do - but this situation has saddened me. These are two beautiful trees that have grown there for well over 50 years. And simply because some people who have since moved in don't like them, the local authority has decided to kill them. To me, something is very wrong with this; and it certainly suggests that people think they are at the centre of the universe. These willows have taken decades to grow into majestic structures that will outlast all the residents in this street - but they mess up some paths for a couple of weeks a year - so down they come. Convenience over history and wonder.

Having said all of this, my depressed reaction created some questions for me personally. I still maintain it's completely stupid to cut them down - but also, how can I get so upset over trees, when I am not sure I think so deeply about the people in this area who, every day, come to the end of their lives without receiving forgiveness of sin, and so go away to judgement forever. Does that make me like Jonah? Distressed at the loss of his plant, but not so distressed over the final destruction of Nineveh.

It also alerted me to something else. Have I forgotten that this world is temporary, that I will see much more destruction before I die, and that a new earth which is also heaven awaits God's people? Wilful destruction of beauty is an ancient component of life in a fallen world. Do I look to the next world? If there is a new earth, then I assume it will be of infinite beauty, the fulfilment of the shadows of beauty we see in this present creation. Whilst this would be rather pathetic as the centre of my hope, there will be trees there. I will dwell with God in a perfect creation. Maybe I will see a seed planted, and watch a tree grow; and a thousand years later both I and the tree will still be there. And how big is a tree which grows unhindered for a thousand years? Or fifty thousand years?

Lewis on 'simple' faith

It is no good asking for a simple religion. After all, real things aren't simple. They look simple, but they're not. The table I'm sitting at looks simple: but ask a scientist to tell you what it's really made of—all about the atoms and how the light waves rebound from them and hit my eye and what they do to the optic nerve and what it does to my brain—and, of course, you will find what we call "seeing a table" lands you in mysteries and complications which you can hardly get to the end of. …

Reality, in fact, is always something you couldn't have guessed. That's one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It's a religion you couldn't have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we'd always expected, I'd feel we were making it up. But, in fact, it's not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have. So let's leave behind all these boys' philosophies—these over-simple answers

CS Lewis

Where you are

Indeed, the great point for our comfort in life is to have a well-grounded persuasion that we are where, all things considered, we ought to be. Then it is no great matter whether we are in public or in private life, in a city or a village, in a palace or a cottage. The promise, 'My grace is sufficient for thee,' is necessary to support us in the smoothest scenes, and is equally able to support us in the most difficult.

Happy the man who has a deep impression of our Lord's words, 'Without Me you can do nothing'—who feels with the Apostle … likewise a heartfelt dependence upon the Saviour.

He is always near. He knows our wants, our dangers, our feelings, and our fears. By looking to him we are made strong out of weakness. With his wisdom for our guide, his power for our protection and his fullness for our supply, we shall be able to 'withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand.

May the Lord bless you. May he be your sun and shield, and fill you with all joy and peace in believing.

Newton to Wilberforce, following the 1796 defeat of the Abolition Bill.

Writing & Speaking

[Journalistic writing]...is a matter of falling back on purely literary habits - the sentence composed on the reliable architectural principles of the right noun, a couple of odd or 'sensitive' adjectives, the clauses disposed and balanced according to foot rule. Writing for talking is no less than abandoning architecture altogether and trying to imitate the movement of a bird or river.
Alistair Cooke, quoted in The Biography by Nick Clarke. (303)

Prayer

When we pray we are at our strongest; because we have surrendered the false notion that we are facing a problem as God, and instead finding the blessing of facing it under God.

Peter Brain

Kingsley on misery

If you want to be miserable, think about yourself, about what you want, what you like, what respect people ought to pay you and what people think of you.

Charles Kingsley

Unhurried

One fruit of rest and refreshment is the ability to be unhurried. This wonderful characteristic communicates a welcome to church members that hurried pastors can often forfeit. Thus more will be achieved, since people will feel comfortable about coming to see the pastor.

Peter Brain, p.232.

Perfect Pastor

When a pastor believes that it is his task to do everything perfectly, everyone is in trouble. It is made doubly difficult when the church expects their pastor to be perfect.

Peter Brain, Going the Distance, p210-11.

More Peterson

The secularized mind is terrorized by mysteries. Thus it makes lists, labels people, assigns roles, and solves problems. But a solved life is a reduced life. These tightly buttoned-up people never take great faith risks or make convincing love talk. They deny or ignore the mysteries and diminish human existence to what can be managed, controlled, and fixed. We live in a cult of experts who explain and solve. The vast technological apparatus around us gives the impression that there is a tool for everything if we can only afford it. Pastors cast in the role of spiritual technologists are hard put to keep that role from absorbing everything else, since there are so many things that need to be and can, in fact, be fixed.

But "there are things," wrote Marianne Moore, "that are important beyond all this fiddle." The old-time guide of souls asserts the priority of the "beyond" over "this fiddle." Who is available for this work other than pastors? A few poets, perhaps; and children, always. But children are not good guides, and most of our poets have lost interest in God. That leaves pastors as guides through the mysteries. Century after century we live with our conscience, our passions, our neighbors, and our God. Any narrower view of our relationships does not match our real humanity.

If pastors become accomplices in treating every child as a problem to be figured out, every spouse as a problem to be dealt with, every clash of wills in choir or committee as a problem to be adjudicated, we abdicate our most important work, which is directing worship in the traffic, discovering the presence of the cross in the paradoxes and chaos between Sundays, calling attention to the "splendor in the ordinary," and, most of all, teaching a life of prayer to our friends and companions in the pilgrimage.

http://ctlibrary.com/13127

Life of salvation

I suggest that we tend to confuse the beginning of the faith journey with its entirety. Yes, believe in Jesus—that's the first step. Yes, invite Jesus into your heart as your personal Savior. Then, empowered by God's grace, embark on the journey of discipleship, in which you seek to love God with every fiber of your being, to love your neighbor as yourself, to live out God's moral will, and to follow Jesus where he leads you, whatever the cost.

David Gushee, Christianity Today 6/3/07

Brain on Peterson on Pastors

…it is difficult to break out of a routine long enough to put in place work practices that will contribute to renewal and refreshment…Eugene Peterson suggests we are busy because we are lazy. He explains:
I indolently let other people decide what I will do instead of resolutely deciding myself. I let people who do not understand the work of the pastor to write the agenda for my day’s work because I am too slipshod to write it for myself. But these people don’t know what a pastor is supposed to do. The pastor is a shadow figure in their minds, a marginal person connected with matters of God and good will. Anything remotely religious or somehow well-intentioned can be properly assigned to the pastor. Because these assignments to pastoral service are made sincerely, I lazily go along with them.

Going the Distance, p172

Discipling

Conversion to Christ does not isolate the convert from his or her community. It begins the conversion of that community. …Discipling is a long process—it takes generations. Christian proclamation is for the children and grandchildren of the people who hear it.

Andrew Walls

The spread of the gospel is often presented as inexorable progress outward, like an inkblot, but Walls saw that time and again the real story was of ebb and flow. The loss of Christian territory happened not just on the periphery but at the heartland. Jerusalem was the first heartland until the Romans leveled it, and the Jewish church all but ceased to exist. Then came Rome, until the northern Vandals sacked it; Constantinople, until Islam overran it; northern Europe, before Enlightenment skepticism cut its heart out. At each turning point, the gospel made a great escape, crossing over into an unknown culture just before disaster struck. History suggested that Christianity lives by this pilgrim principle.

ChristianityToday, on Walls' thoughts on church history.