I read a blog by Brian Croft the other day who asked some questions concerning our assumptions on decline that got me thinking. Like him the more I hear the push “to overcome” the “plateau or decline” the more I pause and think of scenarios where a church’s decline in numbers is not necessarily a… Read More Decline and…
2013 is the year the Episcopal Church, well, The Diocese of New Jersey anyway, has discovered reading the Bible. I was thrilled to hear the presentation in our minister’s meeting of last September because the reading and particularly the hearing of the Bible preached is God’s primary means of grace. The cycle of local ministry… Read More Robert M. McCheyne and The B-I-B, L-E
“Sometimes we hear it said that ten minutes on your knees will give you a truer, deeper, more operative knowledge of God than ten hours over your books. ‘What!’ is the appropriate response, ‘than ten hours over your books on your knees?’ Why should you turn from God when you turn from your books, or… Read More Godly Learning
The third phase in the renewal of my prayer life was how the past met the present. It was the way in which all I had been taught yet never valued in bible college and Westminster Seminary, I suddenly understood. I understood the “why” of the gospel. I understood grace. It all became real to… Read More This Praying Life, Phase 3
If you’ve read my posts you will know that at the end of November John Owen arrived at 501 Green. I was just reading the sermons in volume nine of The Works of John Owen, “Sermons to the Church” and spotted this. Across the centuries, the “prince of the English divines” describes the same experience… Read More John Owen on Preaching
It’s the end of November. After many years waiting the great Puritan theologian John Owen finally moves into 501 Green. Got an amazing Christmas deal from Banner of Truth this year. I’ve picked up and put down the set at the Banner’s Ministers Conference each May, not quite being able to persuade myself that the… Read More The Blessing of Being a Reformed Protestant
About six years ago we started to record my sermons to include in our homebound ministry, “HomeTouch” so that our members who could no longer make it to church were never cut off from church family life and gospel preaching. It was about three years later that we started to think about uploading the recordings to… Read More New name, new addition
My return to a life of prayer started slowly in the beginnings of my conviction of sin and culminating in my conversion in 2007-08. When I say, “I started slowly,” I mean my understanding of what prayer truly is. What is prayer? Prayer is the act of forging a connection between two specific points: our… Read More This Praying Life, Phase 1
When you grow older in the Christian life you are regularly knocked down in the dust astounded and amazed, only to rise up in doxology and praise as you see glimpses of God’s footsteps pressed upon you through the path of your life. The fullness of God’s ways are way past our ability to trace.… Read More He Plants His Footsteps in the Sea
I was asked the last week if would consider returning to the congregational development committee of our diocese which has left me thinking quite a bit if I would be able to serve the Lord there faithfully. What I have learned in my years off the committee is that a reformation of doctrine, a return… Read More Turning Around the Mainline
The Vicar's Garden 