My Big Announcement

A hundred years ago, when I was in my first round of pastoral training, the founder of the institute said something that stuck in my craw.

He said, "If you can do something else other than pastoral ministry, do it."

At the time, I thought it an awfully cynical remark. He seemed to be putting down the ministry, or suggesting that pastors were people who were inept at everything else and just couldn't get a "real job." Either way, I discounted it. I was caught up in a view of pastoral ministry that unconsciously cherished many bright misconceptions about what it involved and promised.

But I remembered what he said, because it bothered me.

And now, some thirty-plus years later, it still bothers me... but now I think I agree. I see it as related to 1 Timothy 3:1 — "The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task." The two Greek words translated "aspires" and "desires" (ὀρέγεται, ἐπιθυμεῖ; oregetai, epithumei) combine to depict someone with a strong drive, almost a compulsion.

So I've come to see that statement differently. I think his point wasn't that pastoral ministry is a lousy job; nor that pastors can't get "real work" (he himself was a full-time High School teacher at one point in his ministry). His point was: if you can stand doing something other than being a pastor, if you're not driven to do pastoral ministry, if it's just another job — then by all means do something else.

Which brings us to your humble servant: me.

For the past decade-plus I've primarily done-something-else. Family circumstances required that I switch gears as 1998 dawned, and I was soon providentially enabled to do some crash-training in IT and get a couple of really nice jobs in the industry.

But my heart has always yearned towards the ministry of the Word. I've just looked for ways of doing it, no matter what else I was doing: filling pulpits every chance I'm given, doing a web site, blogging, email correspondence, men's fellowship at church, conferences. All that has been a great blessing to me. But rather than satisfying my yearning to minister the Word, it has only increased my desire to be devoted to the Word full-time.

I have a great job from almost any angle: great manager, great co-workers, good work-environment, terrific benefits, nice salary, and startlingly good bonuses. I don't take it for granted, I'm grateful to God for it and how it's met our needs — and my heart just isn't in it.

By contrast, the more I fellowship with pastors, the more I've had the opportunity to encourage and help them via blogging and email, the more I'm exposed to the state and need of the church today, and the more I grow in the Lord, the more the compulsion has grown. It isn't so much what I want to do as it is what I need to do in the service of the Lord.

So after long conversations with my dear wife, coupled with hours of praying and thinking and weighing and internally debating and working it through, I've made the Big Decision:

I am seeking full-time ministry of the Word, in earnest. My hat's in the ring.

(Perhaps your reaction will be like my beloved oldest child's, as reported to me by Valerie, which amounted to, "Well, duh.")

All this to say, please pray for me and my family. And if you know of any opportunities, the answer is "Yes, I'm interested."

To be specific:

1. Pray for God to guide our thinking, and to open doors
2. Pray that God will put us together with a group of believers who (A) will be well-served by the gifts God has given me, and (B) can provide what is needed to support and make a home for my family.
3. Let any seeking bodies know of my availability. We are willing to relocate and, while we have preferences, aren't ruling anything out offhand — as long as #2 obtains.

Acts 20:24 — 2 Timothy 4:1-5 — Jeremiah 20:9 — 1 Corinthians 9:16

UPDATE: I have a growing list of posts and post-ideas on tap, but plan to leave this one at the top through the rest of the week. Hope you understand! Thanks to all of you who've been encouraging to me, to you who have sent me suggestions and alerted me to openings, to you who have made my family a matter for prayer in your families and churches. I'll keep you posted.

American readers in particular: as you enjoy your political freedom today...

...never forget: freedom costs. We live free because others died to purchase and protect our freedom.

M'man Frank says it well with pictures.

Reminder: how the LSM will report the election

In the interests of saving everyone time, so you can spend more time reading the Bible and other profitable and related literature: here's the news for the next 5+ months as the LSM (Lamestream Media) will report it:

NO MATTER WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS...

1. The GOP will be depicted as a smoking ruin of hopelessly fractured chaos and misery. Look for words like "rising chorus [with a negative]," "dismay," "trying to," "disheartened," "discouraged," "disappointed," "divided," "defensive," "dwindling," and such.
2. If the GOP candidate scores any direct hits, words such as "blasted," "attacked," and "lashed out" will be employed. Any Democratic response will be reported with an air of injured, but vastly superior, dignity — as if Junior had simply thrown a tantrum, suffered an embarrassing seizure, or launched a baffling, unwarranted, and vicious attack.
   
3. If Obama is the Democratic candidate, it will be hinted that the only possible reason for not supporting him is racism.
4. If Hillary! is the Democratic candidate, it will be hinted that the only possible reason for not supporting her is misogyny.
   
5. Many creative ways will be found to suggest that McCain (of whom, I remind you, I am no great fan) is senile, delusional, and dangerous.
   
6. The Democrats will be painted as united, purposeful, calm, in-control, mature, on-the-offense, brilliant, inevitable, and supported by every leader and expert in (and out of) Christendom.
7. The media, in spite of its boasted resourcefulness, will find itself unable to locate any respected experts to laud any GOP candidate proposals, nor criticize the opposition's specifics nor philosophy; but they will have more experts favoring the opposition than the city dump has rats.
   
8. Polls will be created and slanted to show the GOP headed for a huge waterfall.

If Republicans actually win, their success will be cast in suspicious light, the motives (or intelligence) of voters will be impugned — or it will be hinted that the process itself was suspect. It will be lamented that the country clearly has not yet healed itself of racism or misogyny, depending on which candidate the Dems finally anoint.

There. You heard it here, first. Now you have a "time incentive package."

What will you do with it?

UPDATE: oh yes, one more pair:

1. When the Dem candidate speaks, particularly in criticizing his GOP opponent, the LSM will simply report it, without critical analysis
2. When the GOP candidate speaks, its reporting will be embedded in analysis, criticism, and mind-reading. ("In an attempt to still criticism, McCain said...."; "Hoping to raise the crushed spirits of his disheartened supporters, McCain lashed out at ___, saying...."; "McCain claimed _____. Twenty-seven Nobel Peace Prize winning scientists/economists/hairdressers issued a blistering analysis which stated ____"; etc.)
   

Alford and Piper: quick question

I know I heard (or read) John Piper saying something to the effect that Henry Alford was his favorite, most-used single commentator on the Greek text. But I can't source it. I fear it may have been in a panel session on a conference.

Anyone help me out on that?

[UPDATE: Phil Gons found the quotation, thanks to the suggestion by Pilgrim Mommy. It was after Piper's lecture on John Owen. Piper says:

When I’m stumped with a . . . grammatical or syntactical or logical flow [question] in Paul, I go to Henry Alford. Henry Alford mostly answers—he . . . comes closer more consistently than any other human commentator to asking my kinds of questions. (John Piper, “John Owen: The Chief Design of My Life—Mortification and Universal Holiness,” 1:30:11–1:30:31).

Now that Phil found the quotation, I remember agreeing with Piper: Alford asks my kind of questions, too.]

Christian parent forum: raising boys

Breaking news: boys and girls are different! Bible-believing Christians knew it all along, but the world has just recently muzzily woken up to the fact.. though they haven't done much with it.

This is "open-mike" for Biblically-oriented Christian parents of more than one boy.

1. If you have boys and girls, how is raising boys different?
2. How do your boys relate to one another? Partners, competitors, combatants?
3. What are the special challenges of raising boys?
4. How have you met those challenges?
5. Is squabbling rare, occasional, or constant? How do you deal with it?
6. What do you most regret?
7. What do you wish you'd figured out earlier?

Have at it.

Quick word on Prince Caspian

See it.

While I like the first book better than the second, I like the second movie better than the first.

I'm fomenting a fuller review that may replace this post, so no comments or questions yet.

It is a bit more violent, and there's talk. So (to pluck an age) 5-6 may be too young. My 8yob, who isn't a lover of talky movies, loved it.

Perfect? Nah. Quibbles? Yep.

Liked it a lot and see it again? Yep; tonight, if I can.

As surprised as anybody (— except, perhaps, my high school teachers)

You paid attention during 97% of high school!

85-100% You must be an autodidact, because American high schools don't get scores that high! Good show, old chap!

Do you deserve your high school diploma?
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The truth is, I was an inattentive and notional high-school student until my senior year, when the Lord saved me and everything changed. I've often wished I could go back and pay better attention... starting in about fourth grade!

Atheist ideas have consequences, too

I want to check this out further, but evidently my alma mater Biola University hosted a debate between Princeton's Dr. Pete Singer and Dinesh D'Souza on atheism.

I'm curious about it because my impression is that D'Souza, whatever his other strengths, is not a spokesman for evangelical Christianity. His essay strikes me as being pretty self-congratulatory, which isn't the first time his writing has made that impression on me.

That aside, he makes the absolutely correct connection between Singer's atheism and his monstrous ethics, his advocacy of infanticide, his devaluation of human life that doesn't meet his criteria for usefulness. Singer (reportedly) doesn't want a connection made between his atheism and those positions. But, of course, there is a connection — because ideas have consequences.

This is modern atheism. Its currency is deep denial.

Modern atheism wants to affirm the butt end of the rope heartily, while denying its inexorable and necessary connection to the noose at the other terminus.

Islam: ideas have consequences

This post could have many titles:

Iraq: was it worth it?
Iraq: our soldiers died for this?
Iraq: I told you so

Who is this girl?


She is — or was — seventeen-year-old Rand Abdel-Qater. Now she's a statistic, a sad statistic: another victim of the way the Islamic religion is being practiced across the Middle East.

Her father now boasts of "having stamped on, suffocated and then stabbed his daughter to death," with the help of his sons. He then threw her in a grave, her uncles spat on her body. And I don't really care to pass along any of the subhuman celebrations and rationalizations of these monsters.

Her crime? Immoral sex? You know they're hard on women who sleep around. No, it wasn't that. Rand died a virgin.

It was that she had feelings for a (non-Muslim) British soldier. That was enough to move her father to murder her brutally.

The police (he says) knew of it and questioned him. But he's free now, bragging that the "police congratulated him on what he had done."

And this is in Iraq. The country we liberated.

I agreed with what President Bush did, I think it makes sense on many levels, I think more free countries in the Middle East is a great thing for the world.

But my reservations are the same that I have registered once and again: the American experiment worked to the degree that it did because it was made within a Judeo-Christian framework. We fought for our liberty from oppression, and built a new society with respect to the truths of the Bible. To the degree we've held to that framework, to that degree it has been successful.

But neither of those things is true of Iraq. They did not (primarily) fight for their freedom, and it was not sought and achieved within a Biblical framework. People in general (and women in particular) are not accorded the same value within Islam that they are in Biblically-oriented societies.

The only hope I've had for Iraq has been that liberation would make Christian evangelism possible. I haven't heard of much success in that arena; but I have heard stories of American Christian soldiers having their liberties curtailed as they serve in Iraq.

There is much to pray for, regarding that sad, poor country.

We might start with Rand's mother, who left her husband in horror for his crime. Pray that she not become a "moderate" Muslim, nor an atheist. Pray that someone tells her of the truth of Jesus Christ.

And pray she lives long enough to hear it.

NOTE: rule 4 will be enforced.

Obama news question

Give me your first impression.

When you see this title —

Racism alarms Obama's backers

— what do you think the article is going to be about? Now click.

Surprised? I was. But I shouldn't have been.

All right, that's just wrong

I exist in Sacramento. Just checked the weather forecast, for this delightful second week of April [correction: May, thanks so much to Staci for the correction < /dripping sarcastovoice >]. Spring, right? Ahh, springtime in Sacramento. The Big Tomato. Should be lovely. Right? Trees, rivers, idiots gamboling everywhere....

One hundred degrees! 1-0-0! Fahrenheit!

How's that sound to you? Sounds nasty to me. Sounds like a Bad Sign.

My first thought is, "There should be a law." The reason that's my first thought is because, when the weather heats up, I always think of the stupidest thing I have ever heard a politician say.

That distinction goes, unsurprisingly, to Al Gore.

This goes back to the dark years of The Nameless One's reign of error in the White House. The Nameless One had a Republican congress. And sometime during that period, in the summer, among the many inane, insane, barking-mad ankle-biting idiotic things that poured out of Al Gore's mouth was something like this:

"It's hot out there — sweltering! People are suffering! And the Republican Congress is doing nothing!"

I blinked. Had I heard him right? Surely not. Oh, but I had.

Now, if you ever entertained any doubts about the viselike grip of liberal braindeadness on the American mainstream media, the fact that Gore survived that remark, unremarked, should have ended all doubt. Imagine a Republican suggesting that the Democrats were morally culpable for not outlawing hot weather.

His next public words would have been, "Would you like fries with that?"

So now every time the weather exceeds optimal temperature (77 degrees), in honor of that eminent sage Al Gore and in the spirit of modern America...

...I blame Congress.

Facebook

First, I dissed it.

Now I'm on it.

So, tell me again... what am I supposed to do with it? That feels adult and, you know, point-y?

You need a chuckle

Here it is:

See more — with a festive feel! — over at Pyromaniacs.

If Obama were Republican, or the AP even-handed...

...the story that begins this way:

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - Barack Obama scolded Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton on Sunday for saying that the United States would "totally obliterate" Iran if it attacks Israel, and likened her to President Bush. Clinton stood by her comment.

...would instead begin this way:

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - Hoping to shift attention away from his two-decade association with a racist pastor, Barack Obama scolded Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton on Sunday for saying that the United States would "totally obliterate" Iran if it attacks Israel, and likened her to President Bush. Clinton stood by her comment.

And, as a bonus, if Hillary! were conservative, it would end thus:

Clinton refused to respond to the criticism.

(Somewhat similar earlier observation)

Penal, substitutionary atonement... in Proverbs?

The Together for the Gospel conference had many lingering (good!) effects on me. One was a resolution to write even more on the titular topic.

An immediate fruit was the resolution to develop much more fully a part of one of my sermons to the good folks at Calvary Community Church in Tennessee. You can read the results over at Pyromaniacs:

Part One
Part Two

I mention it here for any visitors who come hither, but not necessarily thither.