Tag Archives: Pastoring

Only Fire Kindles Fire

Posted on by under Phillips Brooks

Nothing but fire kindles fire. To know in one’s whole nature what it is to live by Christ; to be His, not our own; to be so occupied with gratitude for what He did for us and for what He continually is to us that His will and His glory shall be the sole desires of our life . . . that is the first necessity of the preacher.

Phillips Brooks, Lectures on Preaching, originally published in 1877. Republished in 1989 by Kregel under the title The Joy of Preaching. As cited in “The Priority of Prayer in Preaching” by James Rosscup, The Masters Seminary Journal, Spring 1991.

The Monday Morning Pastor’s “Hangover”

Posted on by under D. Martin Lloyd-Jones

Pastor, as you reflect on yesterday’s sermon and ministry, don’t beat yourself up because you didn’t say what you wanted, or because you said something you shouldn’t have said (or in the wrong tone), or because your sermon didn’t do the text and its subject justice. God can take the five loaves and two fishes of your sermon and multiply it in ways you can never imagine. You aren’t the only one who feels poorly about your sermon. I feel that way too. Listen to the words of one of the greatest expositors of the 20th century:

“I can say quite honestly that I would not cross the road to listen to myself preaching.”

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers, p. 4

 

Pastoral Prayer

Posted on by under R. L. Dabney

I deem that the minister is as much bound to prepare himself for praying in public as for preaching. The negligence with which many preachers leave their prayers to accident, while they lay out all their strength on their sermons is most painfully suggestive of unbelief toward God and indifference to the edification of their brethren.

R. L. Dabney (1820-1898)

The Essential Element to Church Health and Success

Posted on by under J. C. Ryle

A preaching ministry is absolutely essential to the health and prosperity of a visible church. The pulpit is the place where the chief victories of the Gospel have always been won, and no Church has ever done much for the advancement of true religion in which the pulpit has been neglected. Would we know whether a minister is a truly apostolical man? If he is, he will give the best of his attention to his sermons. He will labor and pray to make his preaching effective, and he will tell his congregation that he looks to preaching for the chief results on souls. The minister who exalts the sacraments, or forms of the Church, above preaching, may be a zealous, earnest, conscientious, and respectable minister; but his zeal is not according to knowledge. He is not a follower of the apostles.

J. C. Ryle (1816-1900)