pastoral ministry

With a double emphasis the Apostle makes his point negatively and positively — a shepherd needs to volunteer himself for his work and not simply be forced by arm-twisting.

The voice on the other end of the phone sounded hollow and unhappy as he expressed to me his fatigue in the ministry: "I imagine I feel about my congregation how Jonah felt about Nineveh.”

Faithfulness in the ministry requires pastors to bear the cross of impartiality — to cherish the relationships necessary for the work but to lean in no man’s direction.

A number of things of late have prompted me to write this piece - the latest was meeting a friend who I hadn't seen for some time, to whom I had

“What does a pastor do?” Unsurprisingly, it’s a question I get a lot from people inside and outside of the church. Sometimes it’s asked with a note of interested inquisitiveness, and other times with a hint of jaded cynicism.

“When God asks us to do anything … we need to know that there is a God in heaven and that He is a God who is mighty active upon the earth.” These were