Some bits and pieces that caught my eye….

• How to pray during sermon preparation

• One pastor writes to another about cultivating a passion for evangelism in the local church

• Christopher Ash writes persuasively about the need for assembly as a church. But he also identifies,  near the end of his article, the reasons why a preacher often feels ‘low’ after a Sunday.

“He typically feels low because (a) a number of people were not there who should have been there, (b) there was pretty obvious evidence of sin in those who were there, including himself, (c) the singing wasn’t great (or perhaps it was great, but he knows it was superficial), (d) he didn’t preach very well, and (e) the whole thing felt humdrum, ordinary, and insignificant. Indeed, he would agree with his kind but skeptical neighbor who wonders why he wastes his energies in preaching and being a pastor.”

However, much to my encouragement, Ash ends with these words:

But—and this is huge—if the pastor is preaching faithfully, and the Spirit of God is doing a long-term persevering work of sanctification by bringing the word home with full conviction, then in that oh-so-imperfect gathering we find the seeds of the new creation. The seeds are planted by the gospel of grace he has preached. One day the little forgivenesses, the unseen forbearance, the unimpressive kindnesses, the growing love of very different people, in that little local church, will metamorphose into being a part of a remade creation. And his woefully weak and pathetic preaching will then be seen to have been a significant part of the agency God has used, along with his people’s prayers, to effect this miraculous change.

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