Many churches will support the men and women that they send to college. But few churches are able to find anywhere near £40-£75,000. It is hard to get accurate figures on the amount of support the average student gets from his sending church, but it is often just a few thousand pounds – sometimes less. For many churches even a few thousand pounds is still a considerable sacrifice – but it leaves the student with a lot of money to find.
That means that many students are going into debt in order to fund their training. Many others are forced to ask their wives to work (sometimes full-time) during the training period, perhaps when they would like their wives to train with them. Others spend years employed in secular work, simply saving up the money that they will require. Still others don’t go to college at all, or take a much shorter course than they really need. Can this really be right?
Continue reading ‘Funding theological training: the options’
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It costs £5.7 million pounds to train a fast jet RAF pilot. It costs almost £250,000 to train a doctor, a similar figure for a dentist. Financial consultants KPMG spend around £92,000 training each graduate they employ. It even costs up to £30,000 to train a guide dog for the blind.
On the other hand, a student training at WEST (Wales Evangelical School of Theology) will pay just over £15,000 for three years full-time training. Donations to the college contribute perhaps another £7,500 per student. Students at LTS (London Theological Seminary), studying on a shorter, two-year course, pay fees of just under £7,000, with gifts adding approximately £3,500.
There is an obvious question, isn’t there? How does it cost less to train a man over three years for the pastoral ministry, than it does to train a dog for a little over a year and a half? And how do you train a pastor, missionary or evangelist for a tenth of what it costs to train a doctor?
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Taking a holiday is something most of us have become so accustomed to doing, that few of us examine the Scriptures to find out what God has to say on the matter. Most of us would presumably accept that a holiday spent in the nightclubs of Kavos, Magalluf or Ibiza is not one that Christians ought to be considering. But whilst it’s relatively easy to see at least some things that we ought not be doing, let’s be more positive. What’s the best way that we can spend a holiday?
The Short, Giving Holiday
In most English Bibles the word ‘holiday’ only in the book of Esther (8:17, 9:19 and 9:22). Holiday here is a translation of the Hebrew ywm ṭwb, which literally means “good day” (hence the NIV a “day of joy”). The Bible tells us that Mordecai wrote to the Jews, encouraging them “to observe the days as days of feasting and joy and giving presents of food to one another and gifts to the poor”. So maybe that’s one type of holiday – and for many of us, Christmas Day will unknowingly follow this pattern of a day of joy. It will be a day when we remember the incredible way that the Lord rescued us, and we celebrate that with feasting and joy and the giving of presents to one another. Many will also invite others into their home, or donate gifts to charity at Christmas time.
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Several people have recently asked me what process I go through in sermon preparation, so I thought I’d share it here. This is a far longer post than normal, but perhaps other preachers (particularly younger men) might find it useful.
There are five steps that are important to me:
- Divide: Firstly, I decide how many verses should I preach on by looking for divisions at the beginning and end of the passage. I’m looking for a natural unit in the passage that has plenty to say. With compact historical literature (like 2 Kings or Chronicles) it’s usually a story. With other narrative literature (e.g. the Pentateuch, or the Gospels) it’s usually a scene. With epistles its usually a large paragraph. With prophetic books its usually a complete oracle or sermon.
- Dissect: Then I split up, or dissect the passage by determine the main point of the passage, and the sub-points which serve it. This is strongly related to the first step. If the ‘division’ I’ve chosen has more than one main point, it’s too long. But it must have a few sub-points that feed the main point. If it hasn’t, it’s too short.
- Discover: Next I try to carefully exegete each point to discover the original meaning and principles. It means understanding both the meaning to the original hearers/readers, and the timeless principles that flow from it. When dealing with the Old Testament I look at the first step (the original meaning) purely from an Old Testament perspective, but the second step (the timeless principles) through a New Testament lens. There must be an inarguable link between these two steps. Every member of the congregation must be able to see how I got from (a) What the Bible said, to (b) What the Bible means. If they can’t, there’s no power in the message - it’s man’s words, not God’s Word.
- Digest: Fourth, I think and pray through each principle to determine the application, to me, and try to digest the truth. If I haven’t taken this truth on board myself, I can’t preach it. This is where a lot of the prayer comes.
- Disseminate: Finally, all of this needs to go in a form which can be passed on. In other words, the sermon can now be written. I pass this teaching on to my congregation, they need to apply it to themselves and be able to pass it on to others. This means short points made easy to understand and apply. To maximise the impact, the application needs to be focussed, not vague, but it also must apply to the whole congregation, not just one or two. I’ll want my sermon to have an introduction, a few points, and a conclusion. Within each point I’ll want teaching, illustration and application. The whole thing must be very tightly linked to the text of the Bible – if it’s not, it’s my words not God’s Word.
Continue reading ‘How I prepare a sermon’
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Every baby starts life as a little savage. He is completely selfish and self-centered. He wants what he wants when he wants it: his bottle, his mother’s attention, his playmate’s toys, his uncle’s watch, or whatever. Deny him these and he seethes with rage and aggressiveness which would be murderous were he not so helpless. He’s dirty, he has no morals, no knowledge, no developed skills. This means that all children, not just certain children but all children, are born delinquent. If permitted to continue in their self-centered world of infancy, given free rein to their impulsive actions to satisfy each want, every child would grow up a criminal, a thief, a killer, a rapist.
You might think that’s a strange quotation with which to start a post about children. But it’s here to help to us understand how much society has changed and how much we’ve lost our perspective. This particular quote is from the Minnesota Crime Commission, and was published in 1926. It’s virtually impossible to imagine any government agency saying anything similar today. But that excerpt accurately reflects what the Bible says about original sin and the responsibility of parents and society to love, teach and discipline.
Continue reading ‘The Bible and Children’
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This is an old post. Please refer to the dedicated
Sermon Browser page for the most up to date information.
Several weeks ago I mentioned that I was developing a plug-in to allow you to upload sermons into your Wordpress blog. I’m delighted to say that the beta version of this plugin is now available for you to download.
As with all beta software, the normal caveats apply. The software isn’t fully tested, and may cause you problems. In particular, the database format may change between now and the release version, which could mean that any sermons you enter into the database would have to be re-entered later.
If you want to see what the plug-in would look like on your site, you can view it here on this test site. (The site has not yet been launched, and is still in beta itself!)
Continue reading ‘SermonBrowser beta now available’
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I’m currently in the process of developing a Wordpress sermon plug-in. I’m trying to make it so that churches with Wordpress enabled blogs can simply upload sermons to their website, where they can be searched, listened to, and downloaded. There is already one plugin that can do this (WpSermons), but that doesn’t have all the functionality I need, so I’m working with a coder to have one written from scratch.
My question is: what sort of functionality would you like from a Wordpress sermon plug-in? I can’t promise to include any suggestion you make, but it might well be possible if you make a suggestion this early in the coding process.
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