Tag Archives: Ministry

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Does The Bible Have A Central Theme?

Finding The Threads That Run Through The Bible

Reading the Bible daily has long been a habit of mine, and as a minister, I spend a lot of time in deeper study as well. Over the years, I have picked up several threads that seem to run through the Bible consistently. But is there one single grand central theme? I think there is.

Central Theme of Scripture

I have posed this question to several different people over the last several months, and have come up with a variety of answers. Some have suggested that each book of the Bible has a distinct and independent theme. I can’t argue with that, although I feel that it is an incomplete answer. Others have been more vague, and said that the theme that runs through the entire Bible is simply Jesus. That, too, is correct, although it is overly simplistic, in my opinion.

So is there a central theme? And if there is, what is it?

The Bible is a very interesting and complex piece of literature. Comprised of sixty-six different books, and more than forty different authors, it has been compiled over a time span of centuries, from the earliest books written until the final pieces were completed shortly after the lives of Jesus, the apostles, and their contemporaries. With such a span of time and people, how can there possibly be a consistent theme?

The answer to that is simple. While the involvement of several human components stretched over time, the inspiration of it all was one source: the Holy Spirit. God was intimately involved in the writing of Scripture, so much so that one could say that, ultimately, the author of all Scripture is God himself.

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Coming Home For Christmas

Celebrating The Birth Of Christ In A New Location

I have moved several times throughout my life, mostly ministry related. It always takes some time to get settled in and acclimated to a new place. But this move has been a little bit different.

Coming Home For Christmas

I don’t really know what it is. It could be that the ages of some of our kids are older. Maybe it is because my wife and I are older. Perhaps it’s the home repair issues we have had to deal with, or the car accident that occurred shortly after we moved. Or, it could be the proximity to the holiday season. Whatever the case, I feel like we just haven’t gained our equilibrium after the move to Sedalia.

I’m not sure what is causing this (actually, I think I do. More on that in a minute). We just seem to be slow in getting settled in. Boxes are still not unpacked. Stuff still hasn’t been put away or hung on the walls. We just feel out of sorts.

During this transition, and in the weeks leading up to it, I felt the leading of God like never before. So I am absolutely certain that he has been right in the midst of this. Which leads me to believe that the unsettled feelings we have been experiencing are an attack by the enemy to discourage us and keep us off balance. The enemy is keeping us from making this house a new home.

As a result, I have been doing some studies through the Bible on people who have moved, such as Abram, who left home for an entirely new country. Or Jesus himself, who moved from Nazareth to establish his home base in Capernaum. What was home like for people such as these? How did they rely upon the Father fully during such times of upheaval? What does the Bible have to say about the concept of home?

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The Indescribable Peace Of God

How God Meets Us Where We Are With What We Need

The past several weeks have been a whirlwind of busy activity, stress, and feelings of being overwhelmed. But in the midst of it all, there is a simple peace that pervades.

Peace of God

By now, you have probably noticed that things have been pretty quiet around here for the past couple of months. That is because we have moved, and life has been extraordinarily busy.

At the end of October, I concluded my ministry with the Cabool Christian Church in Cabool, Missouri, and began a new ministry with the Parkview Christian Church in Sedalia, Missouri, which is about three hours north of Cabool.

We packed up the house, got it ready to sell (which is an incredible story of its own), and made the transition to Sedalia. All in all, this took about two months, from the announcement of my resignation, to the day of the move. So far, we have been in our new location for almost three weeks, and getting settled in has been quite hectic.

So far, we have dealt with a plumbing issue, a furnace issue, and are in the middle of a roof issue. And we have boxes to unpack, lots of boxes. And the garage is full of all the stuff that we don’t have a place for yet. And we have been regular customers at Lowe’s and Menards as we go pick up the supplies that we need for various projects getting the house in line with our needs. I think I’m on a first name basis with several of the employees there.

We have unpacked the office, got the kids enrolled in school, experienced an early snow, provided a ton of boxes for the recycling truck to pick up, managed to fit all of our furniture into a smaller house, and are working on really getting settled in. I’m not sure this house feels like a home yet, but I think we’re getting there.

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Measuring Life By The Homes We Have Loved

How A House Becomes A Home

Every now and then. I think about how life can be measured by different things, and recently, I have been measuring my life by the homes I have lived in.

Home

We are just a few weeks away from saying goodbye to a house that has been a good home for our family, and moving into a new building that I hope will quickly take on the characteristics of home.

Over the years, we have had several homes. Some have been houses that we simply lived in for a time. Others have developed that special quality that makes the building into something special. Some have become home.

I suspect that there is a lot more to this than just the physical buildings that we live in, those special qualities that make it meaningful. I suspect that it has to do as much with the community, and the friendships that we have developed, and the relationships between our own family members as we have lived, laughed and loved together inside these walls. Those are the things that make a building something special in our lives.

For instance, this is the building where my youngest daughter took her first steps, where my boys lost their teeth, where my daughters introduced their first boyfriends to their mother and me. This is a place where I can see the ghostly memories of small children digging holes in the back yard, of older children riding bikes, of sitting around a campfire or swinging on the playset.

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Following God Into The Unexpected

Where God Leads We Must Follow

Sometimes God does things that catch you completely by surprise. When times like that happen, what do you do? You follow, of course.

Sedalia, Missouri

That is exactly what has happened to us over the last few months. God has caught me completely off guard with something that seemingly came out of the blue. And as crazy as it seems, and as hesitant as I have been through the process, I really have no other choice but to follow and trust his leading.

A few months ago, I would have told you that we were in a position in our lives that was long term, and right in the center of God’s will for my family and for my ministry. Little did I know that he had something new and different in store.

Last spring, someone emailed me a link to a church seeking a new minister, thinking I might be a good fit. I immediately deleted it, and gave it no thought at all. But a few months later, during the early part of summer, I received a call from a good friend who attends this church, who also thought that I might be a good fit for this ministry. Now we have had two instances of God bringing this to my attention. Was I supposed to pursue this?

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Book Review – Invitation To Philippians by Donald R. Sunukjian

Invitation To Philippians As a minister, I am always on the lookout for great preaching resources. Sometimes I find some incredible tools and helpful books that enable me to improve my preaching abilities. Other times, the books I find are not all that great. This book lands somewhere in the middle of that spectrum.

Invitation To Philippians, by Donald R. Sunukjian, is a part of the Biblical Preaching For The Contemporary Church series. This is a series that provides resources for the church of today, and for ministers as they strive to be relevant.

The struggle to be relevant has always been a difficult one. If you become to culturally relevant, you run the risk of compromising the message. Or you miss the chance to relevant entirely. That was my feeling as I read this book. Really, each chapter is a sermon, and it covers the entire letter of Paul to the Philippians. But in my opinion, they are bland. They lack something that would give them the power needed to be great sermons.

As I read through this book, I decided that this is much more useful in a illustrative role, rather than as sermons, or even as commentary on the passages.

Don’t get me wrong. There are some useful gems hidden in these pages. But as a preaching resource, this is mediocre, at best. I’m sure that the author is much more engaging in person, since he is a professor of preaching. However, this resource leaves something to be desired.

There are better resources out there.

Question: If you preach, what passages are your favorites to preach on? Is Philippians one of them? You can leave a comment by clicking here.

If you are interested in reading Invitation To Philippians, from the Biblical Preaching For The Contemporary Church, by Donald R. Sunukjian, you can purchase it at Amazon.com in print or for Kindle.

I received this book free from Cross Focused Media as part of their Cross Focused Reviews blogger review program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

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Book Review – Persuasive Preaching by R. Larry Overstreet

Persuasive PreachingAbout a year and a half ago, I entered the preaching ministry full time. The previous two decades, and more, were spent in youth ministry, primarily to teens. In that capacity, I taught a lot. But I really didn’t have much of an opportunity to preach frequently. In all, I only filled the pulpit to preach a handful of times each year.

All that changed when I accepted the position as lead minister at my current church. In this new role, part of my primary priorities include preaching on a weekly basis. I was a bit nervous about making that change, since this isn’t something I was all that familiar with. But the change has been just what was needed, and it was obviously God’s leading for this change in ministry to occur.

However, I immediately realized my need to study more on the subject of preaching. It has been years since my homiletics courses in Bible college, and though I was adept at teaching teenagers, preaching to the whole church seemed to be a whole new league of its own. I immediately pulled out many of my old preaching books from those college courses and brushed up on style, preparation, and delivery, knowing that much of the content in these books, while helpful, was dated. So I began looking for other, newer material.

And I had a hard time finding anything really good, until I picked up a copy of Persuasive Preaching by R. Larry Overstreet. Persuasive Preaching was the shot in the arm that I needed to read to help me focus my attention on the areas of preaching that are the priority.