• How can we have an effective pastorate? • How can our ministries, our preaching, support church health? • How can we be faithful in our ministries? There is a parable for young preachers in Walt Disney's Dumbo, the little circus elephant that Continue Reading
April 30, 2013
The Power to Pastor
Ministry demands an enormous reservoir of physical, spiritual, and mental energy. Where does yours comes from? The energy to minister comes from many places. Not all of them are good. We can minister out of ambition, or self inflated estimation of our Continue Reading
April 4, 2013
A Call To Repent And Believe In Jesus Christ
Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord (Acts 3.19) Not too long ago I saw a bumper sticker that announced, “Jesus is the Answer.” The driver (who was speeding in fact) was Continue Reading
March 12, 2013
Difficult but Necessary: Relinquishing Leadership in Winter to Renew in Another Season of Ministry
March 11, 2013 Dearly Beloved in the Lord: I greet you in the name of our God and Savior Jesus Christ. I write you to also make an announcement that must come on the heels of a series of providences that both surprised me and have tried me—body and Continue Reading
March 2, 2013
Walking the Tight Rope Between Reserve Chaplaincy and the Pastorate
I trust the following question and answer about chaplain ministry and the local pastorate will provide some opportunity for prayerful reflection by those considering the call. Dear Dr. Milton: May I ask you a question about the chaplaincy? The biggest Continue Reading
February 24, 2013
Considering a Call Amidst the Clamor of Bigger is Better
Dear Students of the Pastoral Ministry: Charles Haddon Spurgeon had it right when he commented on Zechariah 4:10: "It is a very great folly to despise 'the day of small things,' for it is usually God’s way to begin His great works with small Continue Reading
January 6, 2013
The Shadow of a Godly Pastor: Oh How We Need An Anointed Ministry Today!
Our people need to sit beneath the shadow of a godly pastor. "So that they even carried out the sick into the streets and laid them on cots and mats, that as Peter came by at least his shadow might fall on some of them" (Acts 5.15 ESV). I was preaching at Continue Reading
November 22, 2012 Leave a Comment
A Divine Recipe for a Transformative Thanksgiving: An Exposition of Psalm 100
I want to bring you a message taken from the Psalms that forms the core of our hymnody—the old 100th—“A Psalm of praise.” But the Hebrew word for Praise here, is the same word that is later translated “Thanksgiving.” It is the Hebrew word Continue Reading
November 10, 2012
The Last Lion and Veteran’s Day
Veteran's Day and the release of the last installment of the late William Manchester's sweeping epic-multivolume-series on Sir Winston Churchill has caused me to reflect on the old Lion of Britain. The last of Manchester's magnus opus was an unfinished Continue Reading
Being a Pastor and Speaking Out in Today’s Culture
A pastor I know recently told me that he was criticized for being “too political.” He has heard such an indictment all his ministry, he said. Today he leads a major ministry in America and battles daily for the rights of pastors to speak so that Continue Reading