Leadership

Want to Be a Pastor? Be Someone Worth Imitating.
By Bobby Jamieson | 09.08.2021To be a pastor is to live your life in public. Even when you’re off, you’re on. If you want to be a pastor, get ready to be watched, and start setting an example worth watching.

Book Review: The Pastor’s Soul, by Brian Croft
Review by Josh Vincent | 08.26.2021Croft and Savastio remind pastors of a simple but essential truth: Pastor, care for your soul.

Why the Ordinary Means of Grace Must Be Central in Our Gatherings
By David Strain | 9Marks Journal: The Ordinary Means of Grace—Or, Don’t Do Weird Stuff | 07.26.2021When we gather, let’s not mess around with our own homespun techniques. In faith, let us read the Word, preach the Word, pray the Word, sing the Word, and see and taste and touch the Word.

Book Review: Bavinck, by James Eglinton
Review by Shane Walker | 07.01.2021James Eglinton has written an important, elegant, and scholarly introduction to Bavinck’s life and thought.

Finding Elders in Immigrant Churches
By Luis Cardenas | 06.16.2021As pastors faithfully shepherd those in their care and train new leaders, Christ will continue to make sure his church is supplied with more leaders who are eager to equip the saints for the work of ministry.

What’s in the Water?: Baptism as a Sign of Addition (Part 3)
By Trent Hunter | 06.11.2021The Word led to baptism, which led to a defined worshiping community, and as people were baptized, they were “added” to that community. That’s what Luke is teaching us.

Five Reasons to Pastor an Old Church, Even With All Its Problems
By Marc Minter | 06.02.2021Starting a new church is exciting, especially when compared to taking an established church with all its problems.

What’s in the Water? — Combatting Superstition and Sentimentalism with Scripture (Part 1)
By Trent Hunter | 05.26.2021If we’re going to get baptism right, we need our thinking and practice shaped by Scripture. That’s why at my church our elders recently entered a study about baptism.

Our Church Wants a Plurality of Elders, But We Don’t Know Where to Start
By Dave Harvey | 05.17.2021Transitioning to a plurality of elders is an urgent topic—for both planters and pastors who don’t yet have this structure. Why? Because the quality of your elder plurality determines in large part the health of your church. It really is that important.

When You Long for Friends: A Meditation for Elders’ Wives
By Megan Hill | 04.30.2021In your time as an elder’s wife, you will doubtless experience times of loneliness. You can take encouragement from the example of Paul that a desire for friends is a good desire.

Prepare to Hear God’s Word
By 9Marks | 9Marks Journal: How to Build Up Your Church: A Guidebook for Members | 03.30.2021How can you best prepare to hear God’s word on the Lord’s Day? Here are four suggestions.

20 Tweet-sized Lessons for the Chairman of the Elders
By Isaac Adams | 03.22.2021While an elders meeting isn’t a worship service, I pray these lessons will help your elders do all things “decently and in order” (1 Corinthians 14:40).

Book Review: Pastors and Their Critics, by Joel Beeke and Nick Thompson
Review by Mark Redfern | 03.18.2021Handling criticism is not first a matter of skill, but a matter of the heart.

Not Gathering with the Church Hurts You Spiritually
By Jonathan Leeman | 03.05.2021Pandemic-weary pastor, gently encourage your pandemic-weary congregation to gather as soon as they can.

Book Review: The Man of God: Volume 3, by Albert Martin
Review by Alex Hong | 02.25.2021We would have healthier pastors and churches if every pastor read, listened, and applied the principles laid out in Martin’s pastoral trilogy.