Our labours are not in vain in the Lord. What God sees us doing in secret will one day be rewarded openly. The trials and struggles we now go through – seemingly alone and unnoticed – are fully known by our heavenly father. Perhaps you are in a world of pain, and it seems like no one else knows anything about it. Well, hang in there: God knows all about it.

OK, so I am easily triggered – triggered in getting inspiration for an article that is. It does not take much for me to get an idea for a new piece. It might be something I just read, or saw on tele, or heard about somewhere. And often a number of things will coalesce at the same time, and lead me to write a new article.
This happened again yesterday. I was thinking about how often I am dealing with the grief of losing my wife, and praying that God would give me grace to keep on keeping on. At the same time I was working on a new article which related to this. And I also came upon something while flicking channels on the TV that further brought things into alignment. These various bits and pieces all came together, and so I posted this on the social media last night:
Writing a piece on Augustine and his Confessions, I am struck again by his honesty – ‘warts and all’ – as he discussed his journey. That spurred me on to reject the modern Christian tendency to only run with ‘positive’ and ‘uplifting’ stories, but to be real with where we are at. In that regard, and to be honest, over the past 3 months, I often tell the Lord I am ready to go home. I was going to post that, but then I came upon a TV show in which a guy mentioned his dad passing away some years ago by suicide. That reminded me to offset any self-pity and selfishness I might have with awareness of my responsibilities to others. Of course I have 3 sons and a dog and cat that need my attention. And oddly enough even some folks I have never met have some interaction with me (at least online), and I am perhaps indirectly responsible for them and their welfare. So I need to keep going and ignore somewhat the despair and grief that can easily overwhelm me.
Let me unpack all this a bit further. As to Augustine, I had just penned a piece on Aquinas, and am now soon to finish this piece on Augustine. They are part of my ‘Notable Christians’ series. Now that I am getting older, I am thinking I need to get cracking and finish off some of these articles. They are a small part of the legacy I want to leave behind.
I make no claim to being any sort of authority on folks like Aquinas or Augustine, but I do feel I can at least try to introduce some of these great believers of the past to other Christians who may know little or nothing about them. My brief introductions, coupled with recommended reading lists, might help people along the way in this regard.
As to his famous Confessions, Rowan Williams says this about them:

That is why it is so difficult to read the Confessions as an autobiography in either the ancient or the modern sense. Earlier classical and Christian writers had produced narratives of part or all of their lives: Augustine’s distinctiveness is the refusal to present a narrative that in any sense claims clarity or finality. . . . Those who have found the unity of the whole work elusive have missed the fact that he is not recording an edifying and coherent life but performing two different tasks.

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Marriages will be more difficult to secure and preserve in a culture that’s blind and rebelling against God’s designs for sexuality, identity, and the meaning of happiness. But in this cultural moment, Christian marriages become more significant, countercultural, and life-giving projects. Men’s need for marriage may never have been universally acknowledged, but way back in Eden, the Creator of the universe did indicate that it is “not good” for man to be alone. 

Jane Austen’s famous novel Pride and Prejudice opens with the memorable words, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” Over 200 years later, readers still disagree over whether Austen intended the line ironically or sarcastically. But while the politics and pressures of marriage have shifted since her time, the question lingers: Do men need, or benefit from, marriage?
For years, radical feminists have argued that marriage is a prison for women. But, more recently, right-wing online influencers have been arguing that marriage is “objectively a bad deal“ for men—so risky and inconvenient that they’d be better off avoiding it entirely.
But is marriage a bad deal for men? Perhaps the greatest risk to a marriage-minded man is the possibility that the entire marital agreement falls apart in a divorce. Research indicates that women initiate nearly 70 percent of divorces in America and generally do so for superficial and transient reasons.
After the introduction of state no-fault divorce laws in the 1970s, divorce rates skyrocketed. As political science professor Scott Yenor notes, the “bold policy change, disguised as a bureaucratic adjustment, ended the idea of marriage as an enforceable contract.” Children, women, and men have all suffered. For children of divorce, the fallout manifests in increased poverty, suicide, depression, drug use, and crime. Women, some family law attorneys argue, actually fare worse than men financially in divorce proceedings.
But the disaffected right argues that men get the worst of it all. Indeed, when judges have discretion, they tend to favor women in custodial settlements. U.S. Census data indicates that men are the custodial parent only 20 percent of the time—a reality that poses profound harm and grief to some of the divorced fathers in question.
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When God’s good design for men and women is so under attack in our day, why would anyone who embraces that design deliberately add to the confusion by using such a loaded term for female ministry personnel? 

Our church is complementarian, which means that we value and embrace the God-given differences between men and women, including the various roles He’s given to each. Christ-like husbands are to lead their homes (Eph 5:22), Christ-like men are to oversee churches (1 Tim 2:12-3:7), and none of this is a bad thing.
Among complementarians—who all agree that the office of overseer/elder is restricted to men—there are some who argue that we should be free to use the title “pastor” for women. They argue that “pastor” is a spiritual gift, distinct from the office of elder/overseer, and nothing in Scripture restricts this gift to men. If a woman is involved in a biblically-legitimate ministry that involves shepherding care, then we can, or perhaps even should, call her a pastor.
I respectfully disagree. I submit that using the title “pastor” to refer to a woman is a significant mistake for four overlapping reasons.
1. It Works Against the New Testament Pattern
The word “pastor” just means “shepherd.” As a noun and a verb, the word is used in the New Testament in three contexts, referring to 1) literal shepherds, 2) the Lord Jesus, and 3) church leaders.
In this final and third context, “shepherd” (or “pastor”) is used as a noun only once, where Ephesians 4:11 speaks of “shepherds” being given to the church by the Lord. As a verb (“to shepherd”), it’s used once as a command addressed to Peter (John 21:16), once to speak of the self-serving “pastoring” of false teachers (Jude 12, translated “feed”), and twice in addresses to church elders/overseers.
In Acts 20:28, the first of these final two uses, the elders of the Ephesian church were summoned by Paul and charged to “pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for (lit. shepherd) the church of God.” The second use is in 1 Peter 5:2, where the elders were instructed to “shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight.”
Notice that, other than Peter the apostle, there is only one group of people in the New Testament who are told to “shepherd” (or “pastor”) others: the elders/overseers of a church. Put another way, if we were to ask the question, “according to the Scriptures, who is responsible for shepherding God’s people?”, the only answer we would come up with is “the elders/overseers.” Those attempting to apply the word “pastor” beyond elders and overseers do so without Biblical warrant.
2. It Misunderstands Ephesians 4:11
Sam Storms is a complementarian who believes women can be called “pastor.” One of the grounds for his argument is that Ephesians 4:11 describes pastoring as a spiritual gift, not an office. On the basis of that one verse, he argues that “‘pastoring’ is a spiritual gift that may be found in numerous individuals of both genders who do not yet (or never will), for a variety of reason, qualify as Elders,” and that “pastoring is a gifting that is to be exercised by those who hold the office of Elder. But nowhere does the NT assert that Elders/Bishops/Overseers are the only ones who can function as pastors.”1
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