Topic Archives: Church & Ministry

This letter was sent from Aberdeen by the late Douglas Macmillan in September 1967 to Angus Smith who was at that time a minister in Snizort, Skye. A member of the Snizort congregation was a young policeman named Archie Angus Stewart. Gravely ill, he had been taken to a hospital in Aberdeen and was visited […]

Why did John Calvin preach eight times a week in Geneva? Eight times a week! How did he make the time? Was he not writing commentaries on almost every book of the Bible? Was he not writing treatises on numerous theological and pastoral subjects? Was he not the Reformation’s premier letter writer, writing to hundreds […]

I met Patience, a young black woman from Zambia, on my recent trip to Cape Town, South Africa. She is attending the Maranatha Family Church in Masephumalele, pastored by my friend Ronni Cronje. Patience, a year or so ago, was riding with her mother on a small taxi van from Zimbabwe to South Africa when […]

What a pastor learns over the years . . . 1. The kingdom of God does not, and will not, skip a beat when I am sidelined. 2. The church is more important than I thought when I started. 3. Some of my words and actions to which I am most oblivious can be hurtful […]

Imagine an ideal setting for spiritual revival. Odds are good that the razor wire and guard towers of Angola prison, Louisiana’s infamous maximum-security penitentiary, don’t fit the bill. Yet spiritual revival is precisely what is taking place among the prison’s inmate population, most of whom are incarcerated for life. ‘Dr. John Robson [who heads the […]

In 1993 Vladimir Radzihovski was living in southern Ukraine when he was invited to join the third of the river ‘Missions to Siberia’. Passenger ships were hired to visit cities, towns and small settlements along the banks of the rivers Ob and Irtish, to preach the gospel to those who had never heard it before. […]

Being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus (Rom. 3:25). Most of us, most of the time, have little or no zeal for intentional evangelistic outreach. We will talk about what is important to us. I live in Alabama and most of the people here have no […]

What qualifies me to write on this subject? Simply the fact that I have been the pastor of Childs Hill Baptist Church in London for the last 30 years. How have I been able to do that? Firstly, I was converted when I was still only about to turn 13. Then, by the time I […]

What should a church be looking for when it seeks a pastor? This is a question that should deeply exercise not only elders but every church member. What qualities should a search committee have uppermost in their minds as they look to God to provide them with a man after his own heart? Perhaps before […]

Those who sow in tears shall reap with joyful shouting (Psa. 126:5). Read carefully. If your church does not evangelize, then it will surely perish. I say this even if you have several hundreds or thousands of members and are presently a vibrant, fast growing church. We all know of churches that fifty or one […]

Who is sufficient for the task of spiritual leadership? The man who leads Christ’s flock needs at least two rare qualities: a compassionate heart, and also nerves of steel. No one is well equipped to guide the saints of God on earth unless he has two seemingly contradictory sides to his character. He needs to […]

At the Banner’s 2013 U.S. Ministers’ Conference, Paul Wolfe shared with us one of the most important lessons he has learned in his 12 years of pastoral ministry.

One of the great mistakes Christians make with regards to the Christian Sabbath is viewing it as a prison or hindrance. In fact, God has given it to us to bless us. In Isaiah 58:14, God promises three things in connection with the faithful observance of his day: increased delight in him, spiritual victory, and […]

New Testament Worship That which is special, that which is our best, that which is sacrificial: We may be tempted to think such standards made sense in the context of Israel’s ancient worship but have little to do with us. After all, none of us shows up at church on Sunday morning bearing sacrifices. Or […]

One of the many temptations confronting the minister of the gospel in this generation is to become involved in unnecessary administrative church work. Once involved, the demands tend to increase, often resulting in a degree of deterioration in the quality of his pulpit ministry. Books which encourage such involvement are pouring from the press, lauding […]

What we put on may be more important than we think. The so-called ‘worship wars’ of recent years may have produced a winner. Many congregations remain divided between traditional and contemporary styles, but in most places the contemporary appears to have gained the upper hand. What’s more, our worship services have become increasingly relaxed and informal […]

‘No man in his time spake with such evidence and power of the Spirit . . . many of his hearers thought no man since the apostles spoke with such power.’ (John Livingston) Whilst he was in the ministry at Edinburgh, he shined as a great light through the whole land, the power and efficacy […]

For our gospel did not come in word only, but in power, and in the Holy Spirit, and with full conviction (1 Thessalonians 1:5). No one took the preaching of Jesus in a casual, ambivalent manner. They either loved it or hated it, were drawn to him or repulsed by him. The same was true […]

The present state of the Church of Scotland should be a cause for Christians everywhere to cry to God for mercy. For a professing Christian church to pass legislation that permits a congregation to call a minister (man or woman!) who is in a same-sex relationship is a theological scandal and a moral monstrosity. No […]

My nickname is ‘Typicus’ which stands for ‘typical’ because I am typical of thousands of pastors around world. I live in a remote area of Malawi. I pastor five churches of about thirty people each. I have a growing family, so there is no way that I can leave home and study in a seminary […]

The love of Christ controls me (2 Corinthians 5:14). How did the Apostle Paul do it? How did he maintain his zeal for the kingdom of God? After his conversion experience on the road to Damascus, he found out from Ananias, to whom Jesus had spoken, that he would suffer greatly for the sake of preaching […]

Agrippa replied to Paul, ‘In a short time you will persuade me to become a Christian’ (Acts 26:28). Jean Jacques Rousseau, one of the two greatest and most influential writers of the 18th century Enlightenment (the other being Francois-Marie Voltaire), the one who ushered in the Romantic period of literature with his Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse, […]

An address (possibly by Simeon Burns) to the church of Christ meeting in the Particular Baptist Chapel, Lower Gornal, near Dudley, many years ago. The whole address is in scriptural language, sometimes quoted exactly, sometimes just the substance — so quotations marks have been omitted as in the original. Beloved in the Lord Jesus Christ, […]

How do you preach on a ‘God-less’ chapter of Scripture? To my shame I confess that I often don’t, I just skip on to the next chapter. But Ian Hamilton, minister of Cambridge Presbyterian Church, showed how to do it on Sunday 28 April in a sermon on 1 Samuel 27:1-28:2. In brief, you wrestle […]

Rev. John Macpherson, former Free Church minister in Dornoch and London, and missionary in Peru, reflects on the influence of Bonar’s Memoir and Remains of Robert Murray M’Cheyne on his life and ministry. I had the inestimable privilege of being brought to faith in Christ while I was young, about 14-15 years of age. Although […]