I hate death. Early that grim morning my wife died I told my closest friend and confidant: “I wish I was more fluent in profanity; I have a few choice words for the devil.” “Until death parts us” Jane and I pledged each other one bright September day more than fifty years ago. True, there
Read more
Pastoral Leadership: An Interview with Harold Senkbeil and Lucas Woodford
Pastors are entrusted with the care of a flock by the Good Shepherd and are called to be faithful to this task. But pastoring seems to be getting more and more difficult. In Pastoral Leadership: For the Care of Souls, Harold L. Senkbeil and Lucas V. Woodford present a set of practical tools for church
Read more
Pastors, Band Together to Strengthen One Another
In this excerpt from Small Preaching: 25 Little Things You Can Do Now to Make You a Better Preacher, Jonathan Pennington encourages pastors to form strong bonds with fellow pastors to strengthen one another. On October 25, 1415, Saint Crispin’s Day, English King Henry V stood before his army of roughly 9,000 near the village
Read more
The Lexham Ministry Guides: An Interview with Harold Senkbeil and Todd Hains
The Lexham Ministry Guides offer practical, proven wisdom for the church. Edited by Harold L. Senkbeil, these books will help you better serve the Savior’s sheep and lambs with confidence. In this interview with Senkbeil and Lexham Academic Editor Todd Hains, we discuss the vision for this series and how it stands out against other
Read more
Stewardship: An Interview with Nathan Meador
Stewardship of time, talents, and treasure isn’t just about sustaining the material of the church. It’s about guiding those resources in service of the church’s primary mission: proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ. In Stewardship: For the Care of Souls, Nathan Meador and Heath R. Curtis present a practical theology of stewardship focused on
Read more
A Fresh, Biblical Focus on Stewardship
In this excerpt from Stewardship: For the Care of Souls, Nathan Meador and Heath Curtis present a practical theology of stewardship rooted in our shared identity as image bearers established in Genesis. This is yet another book about stewardship; however, this is not just another book on stewardship. Most books on stewardship focus on money
Read more
Funerals: An Interview with Tim Perry
Fear of death affects us all, and so pastors have significant hurdles to overcome. What Christians need today is a renewed vision of the traditional Christian funeral liturgy. In Funerals: For the Care of Souls, Tim Perry recovers the rich theology inherent to the Christian funeral: communion with the saints in death, peace in forgiveness,
Read more
Recovering the Christian Way of Death
In this excerpt from Funerals: For the Care of Souls, Tim Perry examines the dysfunctional relationship we have with death and how we can recover a Christian imagination of death. “Remember that you will die.” It was a phrase a slave was said to have whispered into the ear of a victorious Roman general as
Read more
Practical Wisdom for the Care of Souls
In his preface to the brand-new Lexham Ministry Guides, Harold L. Senkbeil describes the care-filled and practical wisdom that can be found in this series. What’s old is new again. The church in ages past has focused her mission through every changing era on one unchanging, Spirit-given task: the care of souls in Jesus’ name.
Read more
Why Is It Important to Preach on Racial Justice?
In this excerpt from the foreword to Ministers of Reconciliation, Russell Moore explains why pastors should not shy away from addressing matters of racial justice and reconciliation from the pulpit. Several years ago, reading a Baylor University Press compilation of sermons and speeches from the Jim Crow era, I was struck by one from a
Read more