2 ears and 1 mouth = listening more

A quote from Epictetus that I’ve heard many times:
We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.
It leads to something interesting questions:
How can you use this quote to improve your pastoral care?
How can your team use this quote to improve the atmosphere at youth events?
Is this [...]

Tuesday: Theology and Ministry from around the Web

Here is this week’s round up of theological and ministry related wanderings:

Interesting post over at Out of Ur: The Emerging Synagogue?  Apparently Christians aren’t the only ones feeling the urge to emerge.
Justin Taylor highlighted this advice from John Piper on humility.  Check out this line as a sample quote: “be more amazed that you’re saved than that [...]

Theology catch up

Here are some interesting posts on theology and ministry from around the web in the last few days:
Desiring God has now posted new audio and video of John Piper’s 5-hour seminar exegetically unpacking the theology of the 5 points of Calvinism.
Andy Jackson offers 10 biblical guidelines on how Christians can engage in politics without “losing [...]

Your calling to minister to children

Dave Roberts linked to a famous and very poetic prayer that has gone around the world. In recent times a version of it has been created for those who work with children.

I am a minister. I minister to the largest mission field in the world. I minister to children.

My calling is sure. My challenge is [...]

Managing urgency to do your calling

Seth Godin has a great post on managing urgency, he highlights how if we spend our whole time dealing with the urgent then the long-term never happens.  That means our job becomes putting out fires, being reactive, not proactive, and therefore we miss our calling. 
Alongside us as individuals this also happens to our ministry as [...]

Protect yourself against “Energy Vampires”, those who drain us

We all have those people who we avoid if we see them coming.  We avoid them because we know as soon as they see us we will be in a 30 minute conversation full of their drama, bitterness and emotions.  We know after the 30 minutes we will be useless, we will have emptied ourselves [...]

Empowering and visioning volunteers in team meetings

Over the next two weeks we are hosting some of our termly volunteer team get togethers.  My big thoughts for this set of meetings centre on vision and empowering.  Over the last few months we have been trying to release leaders in our teams to feel more empowered, to be using them to their full potential.  [...]

Things to ask a church when considering a pastorate

Matt Schmucker lists some helpful things to ask when considering a church to pastor over at Church Matters.

Trusting in our own ability

Thabiti posted a great post on Trusting in Our Own Ability, here a few snippets:

In 1651 ministers in Scotland were moved to publish an acknowledgement of the sins of the ministry. They’d determined that through neglect of their own Christian lives and ministries they were partly to blame for the problems of Scotland at the [...]