Category Archives: Pastors

Help for Today’s Pastors #7
Encouragement for New Converts

Pastors

donnellyEdward Donnelly

This is a subject that I have been treating at this conference for some years, working through the Epistles of Paul. The only ones left, after today, are Philippians and 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. So, if we’re spared, you’ve got an idea of what we’ll be looking at, God-willing, this time next year. For the benefit of those of you who are new to the conference, these are not expositions of the Epistles, nor are they overviews or surveys of the Epistles. We are treating them as pastoral documents. Paul is a pastor, these are his flock. How does he shepherd them? How does he advise them in their different situations? What can we learn about pastoring people from the example of the Apostle?
Continue reading Help for Today’s Pastors #7
Encouragement for New Converts →

Print Friendly

Help for Today’s Pastors #6
Study of the 2nd Epistle to the Corinthians

Pastors

donnellyEdward Donnelly

I’ve been a pastor for 35 years, this week. Over the years I’ve had a number of men seated in our front room, often with their wives. Many of them have wept, their wives have invariably wept. Their faces have been white, their hands have been shaking, their confidence has been shot to pieces, they’re not sleeping properly, and they’re on the verge of quitting. These are not wimps or weaklings, these are strong men who have been ground down by problems, and, I think in every single case I can remember, within their own churches; not from the world, not from the outside, but from their own people. I’m seeing more of such men, not less.
Continue reading Help for Today’s Pastors #6
Study of the 2nd Epistle to the Corinthians →

Print Friendly

The Priority of Prayer

Pastors, Prayer

Alan Dunn

The Puritan Samuel Chadwick says,

“Satan dreads nothing but prayer. Activities are multiplied that prayer may be ousted and organizations are increased that prayer may have no chance. The one concern of the devil is to keep the saints from praying. He fears nothing from prayer-less studies, prayer-less work, prayer-less religion. He laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom, but trembles when we pray.”

We’ve looked in our last hour at the priority of preaching. In this hour I want to survey the priority of prayer considering both congregational prayer as well as pastoral intercessory prayer.

CONGREGATIONAL PRAYER

Let’s look first then at the priority of church prayer meetings. Now it traditionally has been the practice of evangelical churches in the United States to meet on Wednesday nights for prayer. Sadly we’re seeing a day when many American churches are discontinuing this practice and no longer having a midweek meeting that is devoted solely to prayer. Now, I’m not saying that a church has to meet on a Wednesday night. I’m even willing to say that a church does not have to have a meeting specifically for prayer, although there is biblical precedent for that and good reason for that and biblical reason for that, but I am saying that the church is given the assignment of corporate prayer and the pastor, as shepherd of the flock, must guide the people of God into this assigned responsibility. We must make corporate prayer a priority of the church so that the church accomplishes her duties in relation to her Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

Continue reading The Priority of Prayer →

Print Friendly

The Priority of Shepherding God’s Flock

Pastors

Alan Dunn

We’re going to consider the priority of shepherding God’s flock.

We need to be the best preachers that we can be, and through the public ministry of the Word of God, endeavor to feed the sheep with the truth of the Word.

Indeed in Jeremiah 3:15, the Lord promises,

Then I will give you shepherds after My own heart who will feed you on knowledge and understanding.

The shepherd is one who feeds the flock of God with the food of the Scripture, but the pastor is more than a public speaker, and his ministry of the Word of God goes beyond preaching in the pulpit. He is a shepherd, and he is concerned that each individual sheep in His flock receives the nourishment of God’s Word personally and specifically.

Continue reading The Priority of Shepherding God’s Flock →

Print Friendly

The Pastor’s Care of His Family

Pastors

Alan Dunn

Brethren, let’s begin together asking for God’s grace and help as we continue in our study of His word. Our gracious God and our Father, we pray now that you would give to us the Holy Spirit; we pray that we would be instructed from your word as to how to be men of God, men who are godly, men who are Christian men in our homes, that we might be instruments in your hand, that we might be servants in your household, that we might be ministers of the new covenant, that we might be effectual in our efforts to advance your kingdom, that we might be fruitful and bring glory and praise to Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray, Amen.

Continue reading The Pastor’s Care of His Family →

Print Friendly

The Pastor’s Care of Himself

Pastors

Alan Dunn

Today in our first hour we’re going to consider the pastor’s care for himself, how we are to make a priority of our own spiritual life in particular. And then in our second hour, the pastor’s care for his family as we will consider our responsibilities to our wives and to our children. And then in our other meetings that I will be ministering in, we are going to look at the whole matter of biblically regulated worship. No doubt one of our priorities in the pastoral ministry is to guide the people of God into the presence of God in biblically regulated worship. And so we’ll consider that subject as well this week. Now, each of these priorities are so important and could be opened up to such an extent, that many sermons could be preached on each one of these subjects. So we’re only going to survey them, but we’re going to survey them with the realization that we have a very serious calling, that our ministries and our lives as pastors are very serious things in light of the coming judgment of Jesus Christ.

Continue reading The Pastor’s Care of Himself →

Print Friendly

Help for Today’s Pastors Part V

Pastors

Edward Donnelly

All of Paul’s letters are pastoral letters. They are all written by a pastor to churches in specific contexts. What can we learn as pastors for our work from the way Paul the pastor does his work? I would like for us to look at Paul’s letter to the Galatians. The theme that we are going to look at I have entitled “Contending for the Gospel.”

Contending for the Gospel

We are gospel ministers. Paul writes to the Romans saying that he and we have been “set apart for the gospel of God” (Rom. 1:1). He says to the Thessalonians, “we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel” (1 Thess. 2:4). And as gospel ministers there is no book of the Bible more vital than Paul’s letter to the Galatians. The commentators fall over themselves in trying to describe it in exalted and graphic terms. It has been called the “Magna Carta of religious freedom”: the Christian declaration of independence, the battle cry of the Reformation. Luther said, “The epistle to the Galatians is my epistle; to it I am as it were in wedlock. It is my Katherine.” John Bunyan wrote that Luther’s commentary on Galatians was his favorite book, next to the Bible.

Continue reading Help for Today’s Pastors Part V →

Print Friendly

Help for Today’s Pastors Part IV

Pastors

Edward Donnelly

Reconciling Believers

Let us come to Philemon. Our subject this morning: reconciling believers. This is of course the shortest of all Paul’s letters, 335 words in Greek. I find it intensely depressing that a new commentary on Philemon has just been published which is apparently over 560 pages. This is evangelical scholarship gone mad. I mean that brethren. That strikes me as quite absurd. Paul was satisfied with 335 words.

He must have written many letters like this. Perhaps dozens or hundreds of letters like this were written by the apostle. This is the one the Holy Spirit has chosen to place within the Scripture. It is often neglected because it is so small. Lenski says, “It is the loveliest epistle written by Paul.”1 Rabbi Duncan said, “It is the most gentlemanly letter ever written.”

Continue reading Help for Today’s Pastors Part IV →

Print Friendly

Help for Today’s Pastors Part III

Pastors

Edward Donnelly

We speak of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus as the pastoral epistles, but all of Paul’s epistles are pastoral epistles. He always writes as a pastor to the people of God, and he is always pastoring them. All his theology is pastoral theology.

Living in the “Not Yet”

If you can keep this title central in your minds I think this will give us the theme to hold us through the inevitable passage of a great deal of material: Living in the “not yet.” That’s what we need to teach our people. Paul once wrote of “my deep concern for all the churches” (2 Cor. 11:28), and certainly with respect to Corinth that was no empty phrase. Paul had given nearly two years of his life to building this church, and it was now causing him deep concern. The basic problem was that some of the members were being too influenced by the surrounding culture. Now that’s a problem with which we immediately identify: the culture from which they had come and the culture in which they still lived. Corinth has been described as “the Vanity Fair of the Roman Empire.” And that city in which they lived was having its impact upon some of these Christians.

Continue reading Help for Today’s Pastors Part III →

Print Friendly

Help for Today’s Pastors Part II
Colossians

Pastors

Edward Donnelly

We turn in this second hour to Colossians, one of Paul’s shortest letters written from prison in Rome to the young church in Asia minor. The founder and the pastor of the church, Epaphras, has visited Paul in Rome and he has told the Apostle that there is much in the church for which to be thankful, but these new Christians are threatened by danger, potentially by a very serious danger, and the young pastor needs help from the wisdom and insight of the senior man. This is Paul the Apostle’s response to Epaphras’s account of the situation in the church which he serves. This brings us to the famous question of the Colossian heresy. What was it? Scores of trees have been felled to produce paper to discuss the Colossian heresy. Peter O’Brien in his recent magisterial commentary on Colossians tells us that forty-four separate suggestions have been made as to what this heresy is.

Continue reading Help for Today’s Pastors Part II
Colossians →

Print Friendly