Featured Articles on Trans·formed This Week
Pastor As Priest. As a Baptist, I especially enjoyed learning about how the reformers railed against the inappropriate practices of the Catholic Church, including problems related to priesthood. As one who holds firmly to the tenet of “priesthood of all believers” it might sound odd that I would promote the notion of pastors as priests. But I do believe all pastors have a priestly function (alongside a prophetic and a kingly).
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Mary’s Mentor. Who would have guessed that the pain Elizabeth endured most of her life would prepare her so well to mentor the mother of the promised Messiah? Elizabeth all her married life knew only too well the disgrace of not having a son. Mary not yet married was about to experience the shame of having a son.
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End of Term Reflections. Here’s one I found myself asking. With so many creative ministries, where do you draw the line at what truly constitutes ministry? We can do lots of things in the name of Jesus and call it ministry. Are we doing a disservice to the body of Christ by continually creating new ministries? What I mean by this is this: are we bleeding the local church to death by funding so many present ministries? Could we take a break from launching a new church, a new site, a new parachurch ministry devoted to reaching…?
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Other Posts of Interest from around the Web
- The Gospel According to Christopher. “Well, I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.”
- Avoiding Trinity. I remember being told not to start sharing Jesus with a Muslim from John’s gospel, because John begins heavy on the Trinity. And we surely we want to find common ground before we get onto such complexity. It betrays two assumptions.
- More Gospel-centered Than Thou. I read all this and wonder. I wonder if, from my limited perspective, we are experiencing the work of the devil. I wonder if Satan, the master of jiu jitsu of the soul, is not doing what he always does — pushing us to extremes.
- Raising Kids the World Will Hate. I have a strong, and certainly not uncommon, desire for my child to be validated by the love of other people. Most parents want their son or daughter to be a lovable person, and it’s that desire that makes John 15:19 so important and so transformative when it comes to the way we prepare our children for the future. Christ tells His disciples, “If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.”
- What You Don’t Like About Your Church (and why that’s good). It’s good that you’re involved with a local body of believers with whom you have disagreements and varying preferences. Why? Because that is the whole idea of God calling out and gathering together His local body. We come together, not because we agree on everything and have the same preferences, but because, despite our disagreements, we are united in Christ.
- The Seven People Americans Trust More Than Their Pastor. Who do people regard as the most honest and ethical person in their lives? New data from Gallup indicates that, for most Americans, the answer is not a pastor or clergyman; it’s a nurse or pharmacist.
About Marc Cortez
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