7 Tips for My Younger Preacher Self

One of my fellow elders teaches at a local seminary. He sometimes invites me to speak to his students from a pastor's perspective about sermon preparation, preaching, and church ministry. During a recent lecture, one of the students asked me, "If you could go back and give advice to yourself as a beginning preacher, what would you say?"

I've been preaching now for more than 15 years. I don't know if that's enough time to make me a Jedi Knight preacher who's fit to train newbies. But it does feel long enough to think of what advice I would give to myself if I could go back in time.

Here are seven suggestions for new preachers based on self-reflection, as well as from observing new preachers over the past decade and a half.

1. Preach the Word

This first word of advice should go without saying, which probably means we need to say it a lot: preach the Word. Commit at the outset of your ministry to expository preaching. What is expository preaching? It's when the preacher makes the point of the text to be the point of his sermon, which is then applied to the congregation.    Continue at Jeramie Rinne

Elders—The Church’s Lead Disciple-Makers

[Ed. Note: For more articles like this, check out the latest 9Marks Journal on Discipling in the Church.]

Are you an elder in your church? Then you should be one of the church’s lead disciplers. You knew that this was a key part of an elder’s job description, right?

Let me back up just to make sure it is clear. If I had to pick one image to best explain an elder’s job in the local church, the choice would be a no-brainer: the New Testament predominantly portrays elders as shepherds. Both Paul and Peter urged elders to shepherd their flocks (Acts 20:28-31; 1 Pet. 5:1-4). The writer of Hebrews called believers to submit to their leaders who “keep watch” over them “as men who must give an account” (Heb. 13:17). Peter said that elders serve as under-shepherds of the Chief Shepherd (1 Pet. 5:4). Many of an elder’s duties—including teaching the Word, guarding against heresy, modeling godliness, pursuing wayward believers, overseeing church affairs, and praying for members—can be summed up within the simple picture of a shepherd tending sheep.

But what’s the goal of shepherding?

Elders shepherd church members in order to help those members grow up in Christ. Elders tend the flock in such a way that believers develop from spiritual infancy to full-grown Christ-likeness. Overseers labor in hope that the sheep will move beyond a needy, self-focused, toddler Christianity to an adulthood of serving Jesus and leading others to Jesus.

Paul identified Christian maturity as the reason Jesus gave various leaders to the church, including pastors (i.e., shepherds):

It was he who gave some to be…pastors and teachers to prepare God’s people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. (Eph. 4:11-13)   Continue at Jeramie Rinne

Vacation for Pastors Who Won't Take One

Vacation? Rest? What a selfish question! How could a pastor even think of taking a break from the pulpit? 

There are too many people without the gospel, too many pressing needs in the church, and, most importantly, too many emails. What kind of pastor would put his own relaxation over laboring for the salvation and sanctification of eternal souls?

Okay, I'm being facetious.

Well, sort of.

I doubt many pastors would say those things aloud. And yet my experience has been that we pastors don't always do vacations or rest very well. We often do not use up all of our allotted vacation time, nor do we plan ahead well for breaks. We check church emails on our days off and squeeze in a call or two, or six. It's possible to be a lazy pastor who abuses rest and clocks in the bare minimum to keep his job. But I have found the opposite problem to be far more common.

So for all the pastors who scoff at days off, come let us and reason together about how we should approach vacations and our preaching schedule.  Continue at Jeramie Rinne