What Those in Chronic Pain Wished You Knew, Pt 2
If you missed the part 1 of this article that explains what isn’t helpful to those in chronic pain, be sure to go read it first! What We Actually Desire: A good friend of mine shared with me that she…
Tag Ministry
What Those in Chronic Pain Wished You Knew, Pt 1
You would never know it from looking at me, but I have lived with some level of pain more days than not for the last five and a half years. Culturally, 2020 was a year of COVID lockdowns, unemployment, riots,…
Have a Ministry of Small Things
It has attained the status of a Christian motto: “Attempt great things for God.” Some people are surprised to learn that these words aren’t in the Bible but were spoken by the pioneering missionary William Carey. As disciples of Christ,…
The Ministry of Presence
Chaplain Mike Gilson in the Spiritual Care Service unit of San Diego’s Kaiser Permanente Zion Medical Center shared about his visits with a Vietnamese patient and husband who both spoke little English. The wife had terminal cancer, but later on…
The Art of Getting Out of the Way
There’s an old trope that gets applied to a lot of different subjects, “It’s both an art and a science.” Whether the skill in question is drilling wells, acting, or writing fiction, this is a way of conveying that there…
Is It Only About Trust?
Recently, my friend Adam Parker wrote a helpful article reminding us that a pastor is not an hourly employee. In his article, Adam describes how the work of pastoral ministry is difficult to quantify and more time in the office…
The Pastor as Hourly Employee?
One of my favorite things is getting together with other pastors and asking them how their ministry is going. Most of the time a pastor will say that things are going great, and then he will share some of the…
When to Speak Out? A Pastor’s Engagement with Current Issues
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven. . . .a time to keep silence, and a time to speak. (Ecclesiastes 3:1,7) A pastoral colleague recently bemoaned, “It feels like I get hammered if I…
City-to-City Evangelism
Many of us who grew up in the D. James Kennedy era of Evangelism Explosion embraced the idea that spiritually mature Christians should be involved in formal and methodical one-on-one evangelism. The same is true of those who were influenced…
The Disease of Ambition
Herman Melville’s Moby Dick is an intense and rather gothic tale of seaman Ishmael’s experience whaling under captain Ahab. It’s a well-known story of obsession, revenge, mania, and ruin–the typically edifying material or a great American novel. As everyone familiar…