From One Degree to Another

Phil Auxier's Blog

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On the Elders…

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There have been some good resources emerge lately on Elders, Deacons and Church Leadership.  Thought I’d connect to those here.  Even if you are casually involved in church life, you would do well to listen in / read up on some of these things, so that you can better pray for / support your local church leaders.

Andy Davis wrote a great post on how to lead elders meetings.  We follow a pretty strict model of taking time for prayer, discussing something devotionally oriented to help us in our work, and then talking “church business.”  Andy’s article helped get some ideas going on making these meetings more helpful.

A recent 9Marks interview discussed Thabiti’s new book Finding Faithful Elders and Deacons.  This, also, had much to commend to the local church leadership and the church at large, helping us think and consider the long term leadership plans of the church.  I’m hoping to get all of our elders and deacons to listen in on this.

We have huge work to do, but it is a joy.  Therefore, receive these tools as opportunities from God to more faithfully serve Him.

Learning To Pray (Again)

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As a church, we’ve spent a great deal of time over the past few months thinking about prayer and what that means for us. Today, I was encouraged to read a post by Thabiti entitled Learning to Pray…Again. I would commend the post to you because he gets to some core struggles we all face (not praying enough, thinking we don’t pray well, etc.) and offers some wise and godly encouragement. Here’s his conclusion:

I’m learning to pray this way again. I suspect that once I’ve “learned” this time, the Lord will teach me yet more.

Why not head over and check out this post and learn to pray…again, yourself.

Pastors Need Heart Work Too…

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My life really resonated with Thabiti’s recent post on Pride and Preaching. Here’s an excerpt…

oh! how often the heart craves to hear that good report, that positive appraisal of “our” sermon and preaching. And, oh! how often we want to preach for God’s glory and all the while “be known” for preaching for God’s glory. Pride is sneaky, and the preacher is as vulnerable to it as everyone else.

These are great words and counsel. Too often we can forget that before we can boldly thunder God’s Word, we must humbly receive the correction that Word thunders in us. Pray that I would model this kind of humility for the people God’s entrusted to me.