by Bret Capranica | Mar 30, 2010 | Featured Articles, Ordinary Pastor, Pastoral Ministry
Pastors (well, many if not most of them) do love to study, read, write, and pray. The location and set-up of their space for such ministries becomes a fairly important issue, the longer ministries goes on. What goes in to making a pastor’s study an effective place to work? A place that is relatively quiet. I don’t know any ordinary pastors who can have a completely quiet place to study or work, but relative quiet is something essential for considerable thought and consistency of work. I don’t study at my church office because it is rarely quiet and not the best set-up for significant study. You would think that a house of two toddlers and two infants might be more noisy, but in reality, it’s not really all that bad, so at this time my home office is the best place for me to do significant study. My church office is set up and designed more for administration and meetings. My home study, however, was put together with reading and study in mind. The furniture and arrangement are all set up for study. A desk that you can spread out on. I have a desk in my home study that I’ve had for over twenty years. It is very large, allowing me to stack books, spread out papers, and arrange my study tools exactly how I desire them. I use two flat screen computer monitors for my virtual desktop giving me a significant amount of screen surface area. I keep a coaster, a phone connected to my office system (VoIP), and a small lamp. That’s it. The space is...
by Bret Capranica | Mar 30, 2010 | Ecclesiology, The Gospel
9Marks is putting out some phenomenal material from their small army of excellent writers. Two books I am especially looking forward to reading and using in future are Jonathan Leeman’s The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love and Greg Gilbert’s What is the Gospel? Here’s two interviews and links to purchase the book: Jonathan Leeman: The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love Greg Gilbert: What Is the...
by Bret Capranica | Mar 29, 2010 | Culture
Watch this video to the end: HT: Denny...
by Bret Capranica | Mar 27, 2010 | Twitter
About to leave for foster parent training. Gonna find the pony and take carr of my couple. Don't ask. I've done this one 4 times now. # We found the pony, worked on our couple, came home, and put the kids to bed. Met a great couple today and look forward to future fellowship. # I just heard @thecapvilla say, and I quote, "I like Twitter." Hell just froze over. in reply to thecapvilla # A faithful bro. in our church met his faithful Savior this morning. Praying for his widow-preparing my heart for the day. # RT @JohnPiper: In order to spend an hour in prayer asking God to do things in the world, you need an hour's worth of longings for the world. # Grateful for grace shown through the cross. Praying for humility and seeing ways God is answering. # Looking forward to one of our interns bringing the Word to us tonight. I love these guys and the sanctifying effect they have on me. # Thankful for Erik and his humble, zealous preaching of God's Word. Thankful for each of the interns we have-so thankful. # So far, quiet morning around the house; yet intense activity in the study: coffee, thinking, praying, reading. # Finished a day of admin and prep for teaching tomorrow. Time to play with mom and the kids! # What do you do when you can't sleep? I'm gonna just get the day started. Maybe a mid morning power nap?? # Enjoyed teaching my final MIT class for this round. Came home to discover no hot water. The hunt to find...
by Bret Capranica | Mar 26, 2010 | Preaching, The Gospel
How significant is the cross of Christ in my regular preaching? The following quote brings a great conviction and I pray an even greater intentionality and change: This distinction between an “objective” and subjective” understanding of the atonement needs to be made clear in every generation. According to Dr. Douglas Johnson, the first general secretary of the IVF, this discovery was the turning point in the ministry of Dr. Martyn Lloyd Jones, who occupied an unrivaled position of evangelical leadership in the decades following the Second World War. He confided in several friends that “a fundamental change took place in his outlook and preaching in the year 1929.” he had, of course, emphasized from the beginning of his ministry the indispensable necessity of hte new birth. But after preaching one night in Bridgend, South Wales, the minister challenged him that “the cross and the work of Christ” appeared to have little place in his preaching. He went “at once to his favourite secondhand bookshop and asked the proprietor for the two standard books on the Atonement. The bookselller produced R. W. Dales’ The Atonement (1875) and James Denney’s The Death of Christ (1903). On his return home he gave himself to study, declining both lunch and tea, and causing his wife such anxiety that she telephoned her brother to see whether a doctor should be called. But when he later emerged, he claimed to have found “the real heart of the gospel and the key to the inner meaning of the Christian faith.” So the content of his preaching changed, and with this its impact. As he himself put it, the basic question was not Anselm’s “why did God become man?” but...
