At one time or another, a pastor will likely be confronted by a church member curious about becoming a missionary. Some may be uncertain but still trying to discern their calling. Others may be more assured but want direction on a field of ministry. In these situations, it is the business of the church’s leadership…
I first encountered J. C. Ryle’s Holiness during my M.Div. studies. I was taking a class on sanctification and students were offered extra credit for reading and reviewing that book, which was written by some Anglican bishop I had never heard of. One afternoon, I picked the book up on the way to the gym…
Not only must Planned Parenthood be stopped, but all the murder of unborn human persons must also be stopped.
Praying the Bible means talking to God about what comes to mind as you read the Bible.
How long should a sermon be? As a preaching professor and a pastor, I’ve asked and been asked that question a hundred times. You can preach as long as you hold their attention.
I have seen the story unfold so many times I could tell it in my sleep. A young pastor walks into established church and tries to change the church’s structure and culture on the first day. Instead of getting to know the people, the culture, and his neighbors, he goes full bore after a checklist…
Today — January 11, 2016 — John Piper turns 70. I ‘met’ John Piper in 2000 when I was 19 years old and my summer mission trip leader had us read The Pleasures of God together. I was transfixed, and transformed. Never had I encountered such an explicitly God-centered worldview or such compellingly clear theological…
The best approach for a pastor when entering a dysfunctional, dying congregation is to simply be a pastor to those people.
Editor’s note: This article is excerpted from “The Five Pillars of the Insiders: A Collective Response to Understanding Insider Movements.” The entire response is available at the blog of the Jenkins Center for the Christian Understanding of Islam. The long-awaited volume Understanding Insider Movements has finally been released. It defines an “insider” as “a person…
It was the first of March, 1985. I remember where I was sitting when it happened. I was pastor of a church in the western suburbs of Chicago. A guest preacher was speaking at a series of meetings at our church. He was teaching on the prayers of the apostle Paul found in his New…
One of the great privileges we have at Southern Seminary is the opportunity to hear God’s word proclaimed from some of the top evangelical scholars, pastors, and leaders in our bi-weekly chapel service. Thankfully, you don’t have to be on campus to be a beneficiary of this blessing. Every week during the semester, our chapel services…
The birth of Christ was the decisive turning point in the salvation history, ushering in the multi-ethnic gospel community called the church.
Video continues to be one of the fastest growing forms of content on the internet. While the power of video has long been realized, the opportunity to share these stories with a wide audience is still a relatively new phenomenon. At Southern Seminary, we believe that video continues to be one of the most powerful…
At the end of another year we want to pause and thank you for taking the time to read The Southern Blog. Our prayer is that content produced would equip you for more faithful service. This year saw a new record for pageviews on Southern Blog content as well as the most read post in…
Many of us struggle to make conversation at Christmas gatherings, whether church events, work-related parties, neighborhood drop-ins, or annual family occasions. Sometimes our difficulty lies in having to chat with people we rarely see or have never met. At other times we simply don’t know what to say to those with whom we feel little…
In any conversation between a Christian and a Muslim, one of the first disputed topics is the authenticity of the Bible. Usually Christians are told they have a falsified or corrupted Bible, or that the Bible they possess today is not actually the authentic and inspired text—it was altered and replaced by a forged one.…
“There cannot be a surer rule, nor a stronger exhortation to the observance of it, than when we are taught that all the endowments which we possess are divine deposits entrusted to us for the very purpose of being distributed for the good of our neighbor.” — John Calvin Even if you haven’t looked at a…
We all have those TV shows that define our childhood – shows that captured our little minds and imaginations. For me, it was Sesame Street (don’t laugh; some of you watched Barney), Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, and Dukes of Hazzard. While I have no interest in these shows now, I look upon them with a sense…
