Proclaimer Blog
Autumn ministers
One of the ways we can persevere is by getting continual help. Personally I find this one of the hardest things to do. To get help in any area of life seems to be some kind of admission that I’m not the man (or pastor, or preacher) that I ought to be. But such a desire to grow is central to the Christian faith and central to ministry. And that’s why we persevere with our preaching conferences. If anyone ever says to me, “Oh, I’m past that” or “I don’t need that anymore” then I worry. Not that somehow PT’s ministry might suffer, I’m not that introspective. We’re one amongst a number.
But if that is the attitude of a pastor, then heaven help his congregation. Especially, may I say, when it comes to preaching and prayer. I can’t really help you with the latter, but we can certainly help one another with the former. The best preachers I know are not lazy nor content. They are the ones that keep striving and working. They are the ones that lay themselves open to challenge and growth in the right context.
And our preaching conferences are a good context. All of which leads me to say, why not make it along to our Autumn preaching conference. It’s not just about preaching, by the way. Preaching happens in a context – both in church life and in the personal life of the preacher, and we address both of these.
But preaching is a discipline too. We’ve managed to persuade Richard Pratt to come and he will be teaching on Joshua. Indeed, our whole focus will be on OT narrative and I will do some teaching on that using Ezra as a springboard. These are really important topics, and Richard is fine preacher and expert. Make use of him! We’ll be asking him – as part of what he does – to especially address how the preacher deals with that vexed question of divine warfare and destruction. Increasingly that’s becoming an apologetic question we need to have careful answers to.
See you there. You can book here.