(Some wisdom from my coauthor, Cap’n Dave, taken from our rough draft of “Redeeming Church Conflict’s” Chapter 10—“Authoritative Leadership” …) “First Peter 5 verses 1-3 call elders to be shepherd leaders who care for the flock entrusted to them by God. Verse 3 tells elders to ‘be examples to the flock.’ The question naturally follows, examples of what? The short answer is to be examples of holiness. That means they are to reflect the character qualities set forth in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. Furthermore, the list of the fruit of the Spirit set forth in Galatians 5:22-23 provides additional guidance of what practical holy living looks like. God’s…

I remember when I first heard a woman in my church explain to her children how to do spiritual battle—that their “swords” were actually their memory verses. She reminded them of how Christian battled Apollyon in the children’s version of Pilgrim’s Progress they were reading. And years later, that image still sticks in my mind. (As I assume it does in theirs too.) This post by Kevin DeYoung was a great reminder of these truths: Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices Let me tempt you to read the entire entry by quoting just a few lines: “Satan is an accuser and a deceiver. In both cases his weapons are words, which is…

Dave Edling and I heard great news from Baker Books yesterday: their acquisitions and publications board has accepted our book proposal (“Redeeming Church Conflicts”) for publication (!). The details are still to be worked out, but it looks like we really need to hunker down and write this thing now. THANKS for your prayers and your encouragement too! Happy Thursday,  Tara B.  

Kevin DeYoung hits it out of the park with this post: Advice for Theological Students and Young Pastors The only clarification I would add is to remove the word “young” because it is so applicable to ALL pastors. I can’t tell you how many examples Dave and I have in our (still-in-process) book on “Redeeming Church Conflicts” that involve even seasoned pastors and could have been avoided (or dealt with much earlier and without the help of a conciliation team) if the pastors had followed even just a few of these 20 pieces of advice. Here are my favorites from Pastor DeYoung’s list: “2. Beware of closing your heart to…

Just in case you’re not in the mood to read another (long) entry re: my repenting of sin and unbelief (I’m seriously thinking about deleting my previous entry. I used to just journal privately, you know?) … Here’s a relatively quick, but meaty and substantive read that I think will bless you, especially if you never knew this about C.S. Lewis: C.S. Lewis, Reluctant Churchman