by Bret Capranica | Mar 6, 2014 | Featured Articles, Pastoral Ministry, Preaching
Carefully Think Read Matthew 13:44-52 List the parables described here. What are the similarities between each of the parables? What are the differences? What is the emphasis of the first two parables that do not have a stated explanation? What is the emphasis of the thrid parable that is explained? What are the new and old things that Jesus is referring to in the last parable (vv 51-52)? How is this final parable (vv 51-52) a good summary of the three parables before it? Of all the parables in chapter 13? Prayerfully Meditate How do you see your participation in God’s kingdom similar to the man who found the hidden treasure and the merchant who discovered the valuable pearl? The disciples could identify themselves with the parables (v 51). How do you personally identifiy with each of these parables? What is it about the kingdom of God that you find overwhelmingly, joyfully, compelling that you would give up everything to have it? How do you cultivate and maintain such a compelling joy in the things related to God’s kingdom? Intentionally Act Do you find anything in your life distracting you from the deepest joy in the kingdom of God? How can you focus your heart on the kingdom this week? What will you do? How will you respond? How could you use this passage as a means to encourage someone else? Who would that be in your life? Make plans in your heart and schedule to do that this week. Pray for those who will be in attendance Sunday do not love God’s kingdom like the man who finds...
by Bret Capranica | Mar 5, 2014 | Pastoral Ministry
Here are a few more notable quotes from Scott M. Manetsch’s book, Calvin’s Company of Pastors: Pastoral Care and the Emerging Reformed Church, 1536-1609. On Church Discipline Calvin insisted that the power of the keys did not give the church the authority to pronounce damnation or salvation – that decision belonged to God alone. Instead, the church’s discipline was always provisional, intended to rescue the wayward in a spirit of mildness and gentleness. In this way, Calvin averred, reformed excommunication was to be distinguished from the Catholic pronouncement of anathema, for whereas the latter “condemns and consigns a man to eternal destruction,” the former warns the sinner of future condemnation and “calls him back to salvation 188-189. Calvin, Beza, and their colleagues believed that ministers exercised the power of the keys in three primary ways. First, the spiritual authority to ‘bind and loose’ was exercised in a general way when ministers preached the gospel in their sermons, announcing God’s righteous judgment upon the wicked and God’s promise of salvation to those who turned to Christ in repentance and faith. Second, the power of the keys was employed more particularly when pastors and lay elders conducted annual household visitations to examine the character and doctrine of church members, or when they admonished sinners in private conferences. Finally, ministers and elders employed the power of the keys through the ministry of the Consistory as they confronted people who were guilty of moral failure and excommunicated from the Lord’s Table those who refused to repent of their error. . . . The power of the keys needed to be exercised with wisdom...
by Bret Capranica | Mar 3, 2014 | Christian Living, Featured Articles
From the outset, let me again say, discipleship is more than a meeting. It is living all of life in devotion to Christ. A meeting isn’t sufficient and doesn’t necessarily guarantee discipleship. However, I find that being intentional about pursuing Christ with two or three other people is a very helpful tool to keeping myself sharp and push myself and others to be intentional about our pursuit of the Lord. If you were to begin meeting with another person or a small group of a few people to encourage and deepen your fellowship with Christ, what would you do in that time together? What would guide your conversation and make it most helpful? You could simply keep it organic and spontaneous. I just haven’t found that to be the most helpful in the long run. Over the next few posts, I will expand on each of these and suggest some practical ways to go about each of them. For now, here is a brief suggestion of how you could arrange an hour together, assuming there are three people meeting together. Obviously you can arrange this differently with different elements and times of which you engage. I’m simply suggesting a practical way to get started if you aren’t doing anything currently. I suggest that each week, you take turns each leading one of these areas: Discuss what you are reading in Scripture or a specific book you are reading together and how it is specifically challenging and shaping you. (20 minutes) Review Scripture you are memorizing together (15 minutes). Discuss your application of a key question you were all asking...
by Bret Capranica | Feb 26, 2014 | Personal
Last week I listed a number of quotations from Scott M Manetsch’s book, Calvin’s Company of Pastors on ministry and life during and just after John Calvin’s life. Here are a few more on the subject of how preaching was practiced and received in Geneva during the era of the Reformation: The Ministry of the Word …the pulpit stood at the epicenter of controversy and change in reformed Geneva. In the minds of Geneva’s ministers, the proclamation of the Scripture was God’s dynamic instrument for bringing about personal spiritual regeneration, the reformation of the church, and the transformation of society according to the righteousness of Christ. 146 Preaching in Calvin’s Geneva What was noteworthy . . . was not that Protestant leaders like Luther, Zwingli, or Calvin championed Christian preaching per se, but that they viewed the proclamation of the Word of God as the minister’s primary duty and restructured parish life in view of this priority. 148 The Ecclesiastical Ordinances (1541) envisioned that a pastoral staff of five men and three assistants would preach at least twenty sermons in the city each week. 148 The preacher was not the proprietor of a pulpit or the captain of his congregation: it was Christ who presided over his church through the Word. At least in theory, ministers of the Christian gospel were interchangeable. 150 For most of his career in Geneva, Calvin preached once or twice on Sundays, and every day of the week on alternate weeks, a schedule that demanded around eighteen to twenty sermons per month, or two hundred fifty sermons per year. In all, Calvin probably...
by Bret Capranica | Feb 24, 2014 | Christian Living, Featured Articles
Last week I suggested a few bullet points of how you could practically serve another brother or sister (or group of people) in deepening your discipleship in Christ. One of the suggestions was to ask specific application questions of one another. Discipleship is more than a meeting. Accountability questions can be dodged and become legalistic. I’m certainly not suggesting they be used in such ways. Use them to simply stimulate each other’s thinking about how to apply the Bible more fervently, specifically, and intentionally to daily life. Recently, the way I have used these questions is to have someone choose a question for the group to think on through the week. When we get back together, we start off by talking about how we lived out (or perhaps did not) the application of the question. It has proved to be a helpful stimulus for me and others. Some of these questions were taken from a list one of our elders found online, and some of the questions were developed by a good friend who used questions he was asking himself after listening to various sermons at church. They are a random list given in no specific order. Here are some of those questions: In what ways am I consciously or unconsciously creating the impression that I am better than I really am? How am I a slave to dress, friends, work, or habits? How did the Bible live in me today? Am I enjoying prayer? Why/Why not? How so? Am I defeated in any part of my life? How, why, in what ways? How do I spend my spare...
