What Is Your Line In The Sand?
I am not certain what it means but pastors resort to military analogies with surprising frequency. One of them is the metaphor of “dying on a hill.” The image is that of a marine charging up a hill or...
View ArticleOf Empires, 180s, And The Communion Of The Saints
A friend and I were talking recently about a mutual friend, who had been a pastor and a strong advocate for the Reformation doctrines of sola scriptura (according to Scripture alone), sola gratia (by...
View ArticleOffice Hours: Where Are They Now? Bill Godfrey
The primary mission of Westminster Seminary California is to prepare men for pastoral ministry. This is has been our primary mission since 1980. We have graduated more than eleven hundred students....
View ArticleOffice Hours: Zack Eswine On Pastoral Ministry According To Ecclesiastes
Any honest graduate of law school, med school, or seminary will tell you two things a) that he wishes he had paid attention in school and b) there is a lot about life as a physician, lawyer, or...
View ArticleOffice Hours: Where Are They Now? With Chuck Tedrick
In 2009 one the first Office Hours episodes featured an interview with some current students, one of whom was Chuck Tedrick. Since that time, Chuck has graduated and has been serving as the minister of...
View ArticleOffice Hours: Where Are They Now? Zach Keele
At Westminster Seminary California our primary mission is to prepare men for pastoral ministry. This is has been our primary mission since 1980. We have graduated more than eleven hundred About 70% of...
View ArticleMinistry Is Not Mastery
There are myriad temptations in ministry. One persistent temptation is to stop ministering and start mastering. There are many reasons mastering is tempting. All congregations are non-profit...
View ArticleOffice Hours: Where Are They Now? Jared Beaird
Students come to Westminster Seminary California from across the globe and from a wide variety of backgrounds. Even though they usually graduate affirming Reformed theology they do not always begin...
View ArticlePastors, The Graham Rule, And Wisdom
It was announced this week that another pastor was recently removed from ministry. It has happened before and, sadly, it will happen again. As I write, a series of cases are running through my mind but...
View ArticleNew In Print: Advice To Young Preachers
“Advice to Young Preachers” appears in the Summer issue of Expositor, a publication of Steve Lawson’s OnePassion Ministries.
View ArticlePastoral Ministry Is For Turtles
This, of course, is not the world we live in. We live in the age of instant. We want our WiFi to fly, our coffee ready, our music streaming, our shopping at the speed of Prime, and our social media and...
View ArticleIs Your Pastor A Sex Therapist?
If you want to build an audience, talk relationships. It really works. Spiritual gurus have built their empires addressing the subject. After all, who doesn’t need help to improve their marriage?...
View ArticleResources On Online Pastoral Education
The internet has created a new world of possibilities for education. Seminaries and theological colleges have seized upon the potential of the internet by offering online courses and online degrees....
View ArticleOffice Hours: With Carl Trueman “And Miles To Go Before I Sleep”
Carl Trueman has been a university professor, seminary professor, a visiting professor at Princeton University, and a bi-vocational pastor. He is now Professor of Biblical and Religious Studies at...
View ArticleChoose Your Metaphors Carefully: The Church Is A Pasture Not A Business
35 years ago, when I began seminary, the “church growth” movement was hitting its stride. In a course taught by an adjunct professor with a Harvard MBA we were taught how be efficient just the way...
View ArticleHas God Really Said? Discussing Female Pastors With Janet Mefferd
Americans are We live in a revolutionary age. We are in the midst of a third modern sexual revolution. In April I sketched this history briefly in another article. One aspect of that revolution is what...
View ArticleRevoice, Nashville, And The Therapeutic Revolution
More than 50 years ago Philip Rieff alerted us to what has been called the “therapeutic revolution.” The West did not pay attention and now our broader culture is awash in therapeutic categories and...
View ArticleWhat Pastors Should Tell Their Wives
A few years ago I wrote an article on what pastors should not tell their wives. In it I argued that there is much that it said behind closed doors, in elder meetings (e.g.,consistory or session...
View ArticleHeidelcast 142: When Pastors Abuse
I am interrupting the series on the doctrine of God (again), I Am that I Am, to talk about a recurring problem in the church: abuse of the sheep by the shepherd. Recently Julie Roys featured audio from...
View ArticleEditorial Note Regarding The “Shepherds” Post
A member of the Presbytery of the Southeast (OPC), who is also a member of the committee, called to ask me to remove the quotation of Rev. Mahaffy’s post. He argues that though the words quoted were...
View ArticleAdvice To Young Preachers
Time was that church historians also taught church polity and what is sometimes called pastoral theology. This was, I suppose, because we used to recognize that the study of the history of the practice...
View ArticleWhat Does A Pastor Do?
This week I was chatting with someone who curiously asked me: “What does a pastor do?” Unsurprisingly, it’s a question I get from people inside and outside of the church. Sometimes it’s asked with a...
View ArticleOffice Hours: Three Graduates Going To Serve The Lord
As the man said about the Grateful Dead, academic year 2020-21 has been a “long, strange, trip.” For part of the year we have been online only and for part of the year we have been in hybrid mode, with...
View ArticleA Useful Test For Evaluating Sermons And Ministry: If A Sermon May Be...
Years ago I remember hearing an elder say that if my sermon could be accepted in a Jewish synagogue then it is not a distinctively Christian sermon. I’ve thought a lot about that over the years. What...
View ArticleOffice Hours: Pastoring During The Pandemic
In the best of times pastoral ministry is a challenging vocation. After all, one of the first duties of a faithful minister is to announce bad news in public. Pastors are among the first to hear when...
View ArticleReview: Grant Macaskill, Autism and the Church: Bible, Theology, and...
Since first being credentialed by a presbytery in 2014, several topics have occupied my thoughts for extended periods of time regarding how best to preach and to pastor people wrestling with difficult...
View ArticleBrothers, The Time Is Now
In 1643, George Gillespie traveled to London as one of the eleven Scots chosen to participate in the Westminster Assembly. Initially tasked by Parliament to revise the 39 Articles of the Church of...
View ArticleAn Emerging Pastoral Problem? Teens And Masks
Who knows what the social and spiritual outcome of the Covid regime will be but this morning I happened to hear a segment on a syndicated talk show (The Armstrong and Getty Show) in which they read an...
View ArticleA Pastor’s Public Persona
In many ways, the pastor lives his life in front of his people. Apart from mega-church pastors who might choose to isolate themselves from the people they shepherd (which notably does not apply across...
View ArticleParachurch Or Pastoring? (Part 1)
The church has a mission and purpose, received directly from Christ’s appointment. Despite her imperfections, Scripture does not seem to suggest that Jesus thought the church would need support from...
View ArticleJustin Holcomb To Speak On “Abuse, Healing, And The Church” At Christ...
Jesus is the Great Physician, and the church is his hospital. It is a place for sinners—and those who have been wounded by the sins of others—to heal. Justin Holcomb describes in his speaking and...
View ArticleReview: Coleman and Rester, Eds., Faith in the Time of Plague
The past two-and-a-half years of COVID-19 fears, restrictions, and dissensions have led to strenuous circumstances for many professions and vocations. The callings of pastors and ministers have been no...
View ArticleA Gospel-Double-Decker Not A Law-Sandwich
We were walking out of chapel after our weekly prayer group and a student said to me, about a sermon he had recently heard, “It was a law-sandwich.” That might not have been the first time I had ever...
View ArticleWanted: Gifted Young Men For Pastoral Ministry
The confessional Presbyterian and Reformed churches are facing a challenge that I have not seen since I first joined St John Reformed Church over 40 years ago: a shortage of pastors. For decades, there...
View ArticleWatch This: Joel Kim With Chris Gordon On How To Prepare The Next Generation...
Joel Kim and Chris Gordon talk about how to prepare pastors. Continue reading →
View ArticleWatch This: Joel Kim With Chris Gordon On AGR Regarding The Shortage Of...
What happens if we run out of pastors? Continue reading →
View ArticleSaints Their Watch Are Keeping: Or, Why I Am Encouraged About the PCA going...
I have been asked to offer my thoughts as to why I, as a self-described “confessionalist” at the more conservative end of the spectrum of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), am encouraged by the...
View ArticleHow Not To Train Pastors (Part 3)
I wrote this and “How Not To Train Pastors (Part 1)” and “How Not To Train Pastors (Part 2)” near the very beginning of the Heidelblog in 2007. This portion of the essay began as a response to a...
View ArticleHow Not To Train Pastors (Part 2)
I wrote this and How Not To Train Pastors (Part 1) near the very beginning of the Heidelblog in 2007. As high-speed internet service was becoming more widespread, online education was beginning to...
View ArticleA Resource For Churches Dealing With Abuse
I hate talking about abuse. I hate writing about it. However, as long as it’s happening, we must continue to face up to it. The church that puts its head in the sand is doing irreparable damage to its...
View ArticleReview: Bully Pulpit: Confronting the Problem of Spiritual Abuse in the...
Michael Kruger has written a gem of a book, addressing one of the most prominent issues troubling the church today. Increasingly, we are faced with stories about pastors who misuse their position of...
View ArticleAbuse, Burnout, and the Pastoral Remit
Pastoral character, responsibility, accountability, and confessionalism have weighed heavily on my mind and heart for the past several years. We must by now be tired of the proliferation of scandals...
View ArticleA Sociological Note To Pastors About Boys
Today, undergraduate enrollment has flipped—female enrollment is at 58 percent. Women are awarded 53 percent of PhDs, and they make up the majority of law students. Whole professions, like psychology...
View ArticleWe Are Not Professionals But Ought To Be True Confessionals
I recently wrote a book review about a volume by an author whose works usually prompt me to significant disagreement, but, in this case, whether because of a change of his mind or coincidence of the...
View ArticleSocial Media and Pastoral Ministry
If I may, I’d like to begin by voicing a concern. What I’m about to attempt is to outline some of the benefits and dangers of social media for pastors as well as a few suggested guardrails that might...
View ArticleWolfish Benefits
I finished The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill last week (I know, I’m behind on the times, please bear with me), and the reformed world is currently re-embroiled in staving off Federal Vision for a second...
View ArticleHe Is A Pastor, Not A Priest
One of the great temptations that reporters face, especially as they become famous (or notorious), is the temptation to think that they are part of the story or that they are in charge of the story. In...
View ArticleShe Is Not A Pastor
In this space I have written several essays attempting to help Christians think biblically, in light of the Reformed confession of the faith, about the institution of the church and about the office of...
View ArticleWhy Pastors Need A Seminary Education
Over the years many things have changed at Westminster Seminary California (WSC). In the most important ways, however, the seminary has not changed. We still believe the Bible to be the inspired,...
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