Category: Ministry
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Get up (or sit down) and eat!
As I am sure is the case with many clergy-type folks, Sunday mornings are incredibly draining for me. When I deliver a sermon, I am not just giving a lecture, or a talk. I am pouring my whole being, my whole spirit, my whole emotional self, often times my whole being into the preaching moment. …
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Blogging and Ministry
So I’ve been blogging regularly for about a month. While I sought to post everyday, that has not yet happened. This is about the time when I begin wondering if my little blog really matters that much. I began this blog as a space to share some of my reflections and “left over thoughts” that…
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On Being a Doubter-Sensitive Church
I had a conversation with someone the other day on the sidewalk in front of church. I was picking up some trash that always blows into our bushes from the park across the street. A person stopped and asked me some questions about our church, which I answered. I told him about our Saturday morning…
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Water From the Rock
It is a privilege to preach every Sunday. It is an opportunity that not everyone has. My community has entrusted me to faithfully exegete and interpret the sacred scriptures. It is truly a humbling privilege and responsibility, and it certainly is not one that I take lightly. However, after preaching almost every week for the…
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Ministry is terrific…or is it terrible?
There is someone who would often ask me, “so how was work with God today?” This was of course referring to the fact that I am a pastor and with the assumption that I get the ability to spend every day in some kind of special divine fellowship. This is true insofar as we all,…
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My Un-Cool Church
I enjoy reading the blog of Rachel Held Evans (rachelheldevans.com), and I was particularly impacted by this post: http://rachelheldevans.com/blessed-are-the-uncool Her basic argument is that our churches should be the places where everyone is welcome, people who have a lot of money as well as people who live on the street, people who have physical or…
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Pastoral Imagination
One thing, I will call it a spiritual discipline, that I am working on practicing is that of imagination. In order for me to minister effectively and to be an effective pastor, I need to have a vivid imagination when I view my world. It is very easy to look around my church and see…
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The Most Important Task of a Minister (Part Two)
In part one, I looked at the function and role of a minister by looking at the Book of Church Order, the Liturgy of the Reformed Church in America, the Belgic Confession, and the Ecclesiastical Ordinances of the church in Geneva, Switzerland. The two tasks that continued to recur in each document are preaching of…
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The Most Important Task of a Minister (Part One)
I, of course, speak from a Reformed context where “Minister” is an office, not a role and where pastors are ordained Ministers of Word and Sacrament. However, not all Ministers are pastors of churches, some are in other specialized ministries (i.e. chaplaincy, counseling…), and therefore I use the broader term of Minister. Ever since I…
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Why a Reformed Presence is Important in the City
I am a Reformed minister through-and-through, and I feel very strongly about the Reformed theology. I do not think Reformed theology is the only way of being a Christian, I simply think that it is a good way. I think that is Biblically sound, and I think that it speaks to our world in a…
Matthew van Maastricht 