Pastor John in 2002:

The following guidelines are intended to guide a pastor or elder or director in writing recommendations that will help the Leadership (and, if appropriate, the congregation) understand, approve, and act on significant suggested courses of action.

I don’t mean that all these guidelines must be followed for every decision the Leadership must make. They apply to more major proposals — the kind that will be costly, or will affect many people in important ways, or may seem to the Leadership different from an assumed path. In these cases, thorough, careful, Biblical persuasion is needed. The assumption behind these guidelines is that at every point truth is paramount.

Eig

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Together for the Underestimated Gospel, April 10-12, 2012, in Louisville, KY.

Is it hero worship or holy emulation? What are the dynamics that factor into the differences between true-hearted appreciation and unhealthy veneration?

The issue of a "celebrity" status among evangelical pastors has been the topic of some recent discussion. This new episode of Theology Refresh — a podcast for pastors hosted by David Mathis — interviews John Piper on how he has thought through this important subject.

Stream or download the interview.

[Subscribe to Theology Refresh through iTunes.]

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Recent Theology Refresh podcasts —

• Paul Miller on the Doctrine of Prayer
• Jerry Rankin on the Great Commission
• John Piper on the Gospel and Sanctification (Part 2)

In his book, Never Walk Away, Crawford Loritts shares about the formidable impact his father made on his life:

To my knowledge, my father never read any articles or books on the family. He certainly didn't attend any family seminars that talked about the priority of home, but somewhere along the line he gained a commitment to the priority of home and his family. He never treated family matters like rocket science. He never sat down and lectured me about the intricacies of family relationships and the strategies behind being a dad and husband. He just modeled it. . . .

Availability. That's the keyword: availability. Although Pop worked long hours and wasn't home evenings during the week, …

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In the fall of 1974 John Piper stepped into a classroom at Bethel College to teach New Testament as a one-year sabbatical replacement. Over the next six years he followed the calling to be a professor: teaching Greek and several New Testament classes, publishing his dissertation in the SNTS Monograph Series, and churning out many scholarly journal articles. In his own words, "these were heady days where I stretched my academic wings" (The Pastor as Scholar, 43).

God soon directed Pastor John down a different course. Pursuing the unshakable desire to preach the Word, he became the pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in June of 1980 and has been there ever since.

But he did do a lot of w…

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Doug Wilson will address the topic of "father hunger" and what that means for leadership in the family and the church at our 2012 Conference for Pastors (Jan 30 - Feb 1). Registration is now open.

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Recent posts for the 2012 Conference for Pastors —

• "Old, Settled, and Reformed" Is Coming at You Like a Freight Train (Doug Wilson)
• Announcing Our 2012 Conference for Pastors

John Piper:

The reason God decreed that the gospel would obtain people from every tribe and people and nation is that the aim of the gospel is the glorification of his grace and this ingathering of diverse peoples into one Christ-exalting, unified people who would glorify the power and beauty of his grace more than if he had done things another way. There is a strong confirmation of this in noticing that several texts which command the pursuit of all ethnic groups are explicit that this pursuit is for the glory of Christ.

For example, in Romans 1:5, Paul says that his apostleship was given "to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of [Christ's] name among all the nations." In…

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John Murray:

If there is still sin to any degree in one who is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, then there is tension, yes, contradiction, within the heart of that person.

Indeed, the more sanctified the person is, the more conformed he is to the image of his Saviour, the more he must recoil against every lack of conformity to the holiness of God.

The deeper his apprehension of the Majesty of God, the greater the intensity of his love to God, the more persistent his yearning for the attainment of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, the more cautious will he be of the gravity of the sin which remains and the more poignant will be his detestation of it.

Redemption Accompli…

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In a recent CNN article, William J. Bennet describes the pathetic situation of men in the United States.

Addressing the church, Darrin Patrick writes:

We live in a world full of males who have prolonged their adolescence. They are neither boys nor men. They live, suspended as it were, between childhood and adulthood, between growing up and being grown-ups. Let's call this kind of male Ban, a hybrid of both boy and man.

Ban is juvenile because there has been an entire niche created for him to live in the lusts of youth. The accompanying culture not only tolerates this behavior but encourages it and endorses it. (Consider magazines like Maxim or movies like Wedding Crashers.) This kind of…

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Lloyd-Jones writes,

Prayer should be going on throughout the day. Prayer need not of necessity be long; it can be brief, just an ejaculation at times is a true prayer. That is, surely. what the Apostle Paul means in his exhortation in 1 Thessalonians 5:17. "Pray without ceasing." . . . As you are walking along a road, or while you are working in your study, you turn frequently to God in prayer. (Preaching and Preachers, 170).

Paul Miller would agree: "We pray not out of discipline, but out of desperation."

In this 12-minute episode of Theology Refresh, Paul talks with David Mathis about the essence of prayer in the life of a pastor.

Stream or download the interview.

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