Latest Ideas

• Nathan Walter
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• 22 May 2014

My first ever sermon was in a series on the Apostle’s Creed. The line I was given to preach was ‘suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and buried; he descended into hell’. I still remember my reaction when I heard the news. On one hand relief and excitement,

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• Timothy Raymond
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• 20 May 2014

After introducing this miniseries, in my last post I talked about some of the factors which the Lord used to awaken me to the reality that God never intended the sermon to carry the weight of the entire work of pastoral ministry. I thoroughly believe that Sunday sermons are wonderful

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• Hannah Ploegstra
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• 29 April 2014

I suspect that we underestimate the burden of sin on our relationships with one another. Some aspects of this burden are obvious; when we are in seasons of strife with brothers and sisters in Christ, the weight of sin is undeniable. Bitterness between brothers drags us down in our fellowship

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• Chris Drombetta
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• 24 April 2014

Making disciples is hard work. It’s supposed to be. Nudging people forward toward maturity in Christ is a battle of the heart, mind, schedule, and growing list of priorities in the lives of our people. Paul affirms this for us in his letter to the Colossians. "Him we proclaim, warning

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• Ben Pfahlert
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• 22 April 2014

Gospel Patrons is an awesome book about a rarely addressed topic. I have never read a book about gospel patronage before, which is curious in light of the fact that Phoebe, who is mentioned in the last few chapters of Romans, is indeed called a “patron”. John Rinehart, a

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• Timothy Raymond
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• 21 February 2014

In my last post, I introduced this mini-series and tried to describe some of the pitfalls which can occur when a pastor attempts to do all (or nearly all) his ministry through his Sunday sermon. Like I said there, Sunday sermons are wonderful and essential and life-giving and edifying, but

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• Chris Green
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• 20 February 2014

WAVE is extraordinary—and as far as I know, unique. At least in London. And I should underline that as the new pastor of this church I take absolutely no credit for what I’m about to tell you. WAVE stands for We’re All Valued Equally, and it’s an unusual church.

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• Chris Braga
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• 4 February 2014

Christian leadership involves a lot of words: sermons preached, Bible studies led, meetings with individuals, families and teams. Words are the pastor’s tools of trade. It makes a lot of sense since words are of crucial importance to Christian people—after all we trust a God who speaks! It means that fundamental to Christian spiritually is

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• Tony Payne
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• 30 January 2014

Over the past couple of months, pastors and church leadership teams in many parts of the world have been reviewing the year just past, and dreaming and scheming about the year to come. And there is always so much to work on. Perhaps you and your team have been be

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• Timothy Raymond
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• 24 January 2014

One of the most important and yet contested points in The Trellis and the Vine is a certain little claim made in chapter 8. The title of the chapter says it all: “Why Sunday Sermons are Necessary But Not Sufficient”. The authors’ point is fairly straightforward and simple. Sunday sermons

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