Proclaimer Blog
EMA Books (6)
For the next few days, we want to replay the EMA stage recommendations in terms of books, particularly for those who were not able to make it. These are not all the books our BookPanel liked – that would be too long a list – but instead those we wanted to particularly identify as being worthy of some reading time. In each case, there is a very brief review, but the main purpose of the posts is to highlight the titles.
Here’s a recommendation which is completely different. It’s The Gospel Coalition and Good Book Company small group resource The Gospel Shaped Church, in particular Gospel Shaped Worship. Some of us (not all, I know!) struggle for small group material. It’s not uncommon to find that our small group leaders are not the best Bible teachers. This resource is a great help. I’m not sure I would use them all the time (I think some live, local teaching is really important). However, I reviewed the whole of this one DVD in the series and loved it. Jared Wilson is a clear teacher and the accompanying material is first class. I think in most groups each one week study could actually be split over two weeks such is the richness there. This isn’t cheap, so do some homework first. But here is a clip for the series and online you can watch the first teaching slot for free (here).
Proclaimer Blog
EMA Books (5)
For the next few days, we want to replay the EMA stage recommendations in terms of books, particularly for those who were not able to make it. These are not all the books our BookPanel liked – that would be too long a list – but instead those we wanted to particularly identify as being worthy of some reading time. In each case, there is a very brief review, but the main purpose of the posts is to highlight the titles.
The EMA is a conference for preachers of all different stages and abilities. Above all, our great desire is that preachers might progress (1 Tim 4.15). Here’s a book which will help. Unashamed Workmen is a collection of essays by well known preachers (including David Jackman, Peter Adam, Josh Moody, Iain Duguid) each highlighting one aspect of their preparation and then modelling it in a sermon. As with all multi-volume books, some contributions are stronger than others – but, interestingly, you view on which may depend on your stage of ministry. I think there is something here for every preacher, even in a ministry of reminder, and this is possibly a useful book to give preaching teams or those just starting out. I liked it a lot. It made me remember why the hard work of preparation is worthwhile as we serve our congregations.
Proclaimer Blog
EMA Books (4)
For the next few days, we want to replay the EMA stage recommendations in terms of books, particularly for those who were not able to make it. These are not all the books our BookPanel liked – that would be too long a list – but instead those we wanted to particularly identify as being worthy of some reading time. In each case, there is a very brief review, but the main purpose of the posts is to highlight the titles.
All of us, I expect, sometimes (often?) struggle with application. With our long standing focused on exegesis, this remains one of the weak points of our preaching. I’m pretty sure about that. So, a book which challenges us and helps us in equal measure is to be welcome, and that’s what Chris Green’s Cutting to the heart does. Be warned, this isn’t a simple “do this, do that” volume. I guess many of us would like that. But actually application, as Chris shows, is a more complex and nuanced business than that, and so this is a primarily a book about principles rather than presenting, say, a seven step approach. In other words, it rewards some careful reading. I think this is what we need: a thoughtful and deep book about application, primarily because our congregations will soon see through superficial application. This, then, is a book to read relatively slowly and carefully. In fact, I think (having read it once) I would now like to read it again in a group with some other preachers. Any takers?
Proclaimer Blog
EMA Books (3)
For the next few days, we want to replay the EMA stage recommendations in terms of books, particularly for those who were not able to make it. These are not all the books our BookPanel liked – that would be too long a list – but instead those we wanted to particularly identify as being worthy of some reading time. In each case, there is a very brief review, but the main purpose of the posts is to highlight the titles.
Our Teaching series is now about 14 volumes strong. The latest is Bob Fyall’s Teaching 1 Kings. This was a joy to edit. Bob has a great ability to get into the narrative texts and help us see how things work – moreover, his applications are particularly rich, avoiding the same kind of “don’t we need a better king” in every passage, whilst still retaining his Christological focus. These volumes are not full commentaries; nevertheless, they are really very useful for preachers and Bible group leaders. Bob is already well under way with Teaching 2 Kings, and this looks like being a strong set. As one of Bob’s colleagues remarked to be recently, this is Bob’s speciality, he knows his stuff. And with this short volume, you will get a useful insight too.
Proclaimer Blog
EMA Books (2)
For the next few days, we want to replay the EMA stage recommendations in terms of books, particularly for those who were not able to make it. These are not all the books our BookPanel liked – that would be too long a list – but instead those we wanted to particularly identify as being worthy of some reading time. In each case, there is a very brief review, but the main purpose of the posts is to highlight the titles.
Chris Brauns’ Unpacking Forgiveness is really helpful reading for pastors. You don’t have to be in ministry long to realise we live in a very messy world and there are two particular touch points for us to address. First, we need to understand forgiveness for ourselves. Ministry is a front line business, and we are constantly under attack, some of those attacks showing themselves in even from within the church. If we cannot forgive others and know precisely what that means, then we will find ministry a long, painful and ultimately deadly road. But there is more for us. As we preach to others and counsel them we need to be able to help others forgive. The two are not disconnected, of course: if we cannot forgive ourselves, we are unlikely to be able to help others do the same. Chris’ book is a real help. You may find, reading this book, that even your view of what forgiveness actually is, is challenged. And that may be no bad thing. This is, at times, convicting and uncomfortable reading, as books which realign our radars often are, but it is worth it.
Proclaimer Blog
Carrie Sandom joins PT as Director of Women’s Ministry
The Proclamation Trust are delighted to announce the appointment of Carrie Sandom as Director of Women’s Ministry. Carrie will work part time for the Trust alongside her existing role of women’s worker at St John’s Church in Tunbridge Wells. This appointment will formalise much of the work Carrie is already doing in leading our Women in Ministry work, including conferences and PT Cornhill. It will also allow her time to help promote complementary women’s ministry across the UK.
It is encouraging to see an increasing number of churches considering the appropriate roles for women teaching women, but many need help to see how these kinds of roles fit within existing church structures so that our complementarian principles are not compromised. Carrie is well placed in experience and time to help serve in this way.
Carrie will work with our existing team of directors, including Adrian Reynolds (Director of Ministry), Tim Ward (Acting Director, PT Cornhill) and Neil Watkinson (International Director). Please join me and the other Trustees in praying for a fruitful ministry.
Proclaimer Blog
EMA Books (1)
For the next few days, we want to replay the EMA stage recommendations in terms of books, particularly for those who were not able to make it. These are not all the books our Book Panel liked – that would be too long a list – but instead those we wanted to particularly identify as being worthy of some reading time. In each case, there is a very brief review, but the main purpose of the posts is to highlight the titles.
Tim Keller’s book on prayer (not quite his latest, that’s on preaching), is perhaps his best book. There is an honesty about the struggle that prayer sometimes is, together with a deep appreciation of Scripture (something some critics have said is absent from other titles). It makes this a strong help. In one sense, there is nothing brand new. Keller is bringing wisdom from other writers together and applying it to himself (and to his readers). You could read a dozen or so books on prayer and get the same. But the sifting and ordering that Keller has done I found remarkably useful. There is a very strong theme of getting the balance right in prayer. Prayer is an intimate communion with the living God(something recent titles have done well to stress) but this aspect of prayer must not be overstated at the expense of the nature of prayer in terms of the children of the Father casting themselves on God for their daily bread. A good read (by which I mean a genuinely helpful read), and would make a great gift to others.
Proclaimer Blog
A pastor’s wife’s tale
One book I return to often is Garrison Keillor’s Leaving Home, his whimsical tales of life in a mythical Minnesotan town called Lake Wobegon. One story I’ve just re-read focuses on Judy Ingqvist, wife of Lutheran pastor, Dave. I’m not Lutheran, but this particular excerpt did make me think of the talks I’ll soon be delivering at the PT Summer Wives Conference. And it might give a married pastor pause to think about how things actually are for his wife right now.
The Ingqvists bought their tickets to Florida two months ago, Pastor Dave and Judy; at least that’s what she said. They’ve missed the Annual Ministers’ Retreat three years in a row because the civilian leadership at church can’t see why their minister and his wife should cavort in the tropics in January. She can see about three reasons, but she can’t tell the Board because it’s more than they want to know about a minister: it’s hard work to stand up and say what people don’t really believe but want to think they do; and it’s tough when a man of faith suffers from depression in a town where nice people are expected to be upbeat. For a few days on Captiva Island, at the Chateau Suzanne, around the blue kidney-bean-shaped pool, cool aquamarine in a forest of deep green and fabulous birds of brilliant plumage, some pale plump Lutherans will sit in the sun like lumps of bread dough and say forbidden things. Oh, the luxury of truth when you come from a town of storytellers! The luxury of sitting in sunlight, clasping a gin-and-tonic, wearing two articles of clothing that allow the world to reasonably assume you are a woman, lighting up one of your ten annual cigarettes, and saying openly to other ministers’ wives, “It has been hard this year.”
Of course there’s no pool like that at Hothorpe Hall, and I’m ignoring his comment about sun-bathing American Lutherans! But I’m guessing a number of women at the Conference will gain some relief from simply telling another woman, “It has been hard this year.”
Proclaimer Blog
Don’t try to be relevant!
I recently preached at a friend’s church on a text he assigned me: Jude 17-25, at the end of a short series in the church on Jude.
The big thing that struck is how remarkably similar our situation in the UK right now is to the situation Jude was addressing, right down to specific details:
• Some ungodly people have got into the church and are teaching believers that they can go lax on morality, especially sexual immorality (vs.4 & 7).
• Some believers seem to be shaken by this, and are beginning to wonder whether the apostles were really the ones led by the Spirit, or whether this new teaching is actually Spirit-inspired (v.17).
That would not have seemed as obviously relevant to the times in the UK fifty years ago as it does today.
Jude’s pastoral response is just as specific. Although the verses in question aren’t the easiest to interpret, most likely he tells believers how to relate to three kinds of people in this situation:
• v.22: believers who are beginning to wonder if the apostles had it right after all (“My daughter is so happy with her same-sex married partner; can it be so wrong after all?)
• v.23a: church-members who have gone a step further and are taking serious steps into immorality (“I’ve decided that God won’t mind if I have an affair; I’m really lonely, and my marriage is dying anyway”)
• v.23b: the very teachers of the immorality themselves, and their followers.
This reminds us of a crucial truth about the relevance of Scripture, that all of us need to stay convinced of:
Relevance in preaching is like happiness. The people who most keenly seek after it for its own sake never really find it.
The preacher who is desperate to be relevant is usually embarrassingly outmoded before he even stands up to speak.
But the preacher who gives himself to the task set before him – to listen to this text in its own right, to ask first of all what God was doing in it back there and then – will discover extraordinary relevance to the details of our lives. Be brave enough to dig down deep enough into Scripture, and then suddenly a really powerful spark will jump across the gap between then and now.
Proclaimer Blog
The next EMA
It might seem a bit soon to start talking about the next EMA, given that this year’s is only two thirds through. But most of us find that if we don’t plan dates ahead, it just gets too difficult to do things the nearer the time. Our diaries necessarily get crowded.
The EMA for 2016 is entitled Leaders Who Last. Our aim is to help people see that, at every level of experience, we have to invest to ensure we stay the course. This is no certainty for any of us. In fact, all of us probably know someone who has fallen away from ministry. They may have grown tired and given up. They may have fallen morally. They may have simply believed there are better things for them to be doing. As I scan my list of friends in ministry, even at my tender age, the stats are rather sobering.
Those of us who have been in ministry some time tend to be a bit blue about this. But there is another danger – those who are gung ho. There is a kind of Christian ministry which is accompanied by an invincibility. “We will withstand anything” the mantra goes.
So, for next year, we want to plan the EMA to help everyone (those starting out, those in the middle years, those near the finishing line) to be Leaders Who Last. We’ve yet to finalise the speakers, but those already confirmed include Don Carson (with particular reference to the experience of his father, of course), Simon Manchester, Dan Steel, Tim Ward and Robin Weekes. There will be seminar streams aimed at different stages of ministry, and expositions from those in different stages – someone just starting out and so on.
Above all, we’re praying and planning for an encouraging time which will be honest about the hardships and dangers, but optimistic about the gospel work of God to sustain and bless. The dates are 21-23 June 2016. Why not put it in your diary now?