There are a couple of new Kindle deals from yesterday and today.

(Yesterday on the blog: The Thing About Light and Momentary)
Questions Your Church Should Ask a Missionary Candidate
“For churches, selecting which missionaries to support can be difficult. Missions committees and elder boards are often overwhelmed with requests from prospective partners. How should they sift through these opportunities and decide which ministries to prioritize?” Here’s a list of good questions to ask.
5 Reasons Why We Should Not Stop Using Male Pronouns for God
“It is right to believe that God is transcendent: God is not a man. Even little children learn in the catechism that ‘God is a Spirit and has not a body like men.’ And certainly, in Scripture God’s character and actions are sometimes described using feminine imagery (cf. Isa 49:15). But none of that means we should abandon male pronouns for God.”
Q and A with Alistair Begg
If you enjoy Q&A sessions, you might like to watch this one with Alistair Begg from the recent Basics Conference.
3 Ways to Live Humbly Online
A little bit more humility wouldn’t hurt any of us, would it?
How to Make the Case against Abortion in Less Than a Minute
With abortion back on everyone’s mind, this would be a good time to refresh yourself on how to make the case against it.
The Ordinary Christian Life in Retirement
“What is an ‘ordinary Christian life’ for a retiree? Is living an ‘ordinary’ life a good thing? Doesn’t God want us to live extraordinary lives—with exceptional experiences and accomplishments? Isn’t that what most people retire for?” Chris Cagle thinks it through.
Flashback: Each Man Before the Mob
We should be happier if a man follows a different path than we do while heeding his conscience than if he imitates us while violating it. We should affirm him in making a decision that is different from our own, as long as that decision is consistent with his conscience.

Human love was never intended to be our living water. Instead, it can be an addictive drug that is never enough. True freedom comes when you love God more than all else. —Ed Welch

This week the blog is sponsored by Desiring God and the post is written by David Mathis.

Some doomsdayers might say the church has a leadership crisis.
Perhaps a previous generation gave its presidents (and pastors) too much benefit of the doubt. But it that still our temptation today? Our criticisms of recognized leaders, cynicism toward them, conflicts with them, and controversies about them fill our feeds, queues, and real-life conversations. Are we becoming a society of discontents trying to take it to the man?
Whether in the world or in the church, both a fascination with and a negative mood toward our leaders and celebrities (we’re increasingly unable to draw clear lines between them) pervades our age. Many today are confused, and for good reason. Stories of use and abuse abound, and multiply, with the aid of our technologies.
While our list of what to beware grows longer and longer, do we have any corresponding list of (more positively) what to look for, and pray for, in our leaders?

No Confusion from Christ
For Christians, we have our conflicts and controversies to grieve and address, but the risen Christ has not left us to confusion for what to expect, pray for, and hold our leaders to account for. Scripture has a lot to say about our current crisis.
To my count, 1 Timothy 3 provides fifteen requirements for pastor-elders — the lead or teaching office in the church. Another list (again I count fifteen) comes just pages later in Titus 1, with most of them mapping on precisely to the first list. Added to that, we have, among others, 1 Peter 5:1–5; 2 Timothy 2:22–26; Hebrews 13:7 and 17; and the words of Christ in Mark 10:42–45.
Jesus has not left us without clarity.

Paul Really Knew
For more than a decade now, I’ve given unusual time and attention to lingering over the pastor-elder qualifications. Not only am I a pastor seeking to regularly rehearse what Christ requires of me (and grow, with his help, in these graces), but since 2012 I’ve been assigned “the eldership class” at Bethlehem Seminary. This class is typically a cohort of 15–16 seminarians, training to be vocational pastor-elders.
Over time, we’ve found the lists of 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 to be worthy of far more than a brief review or a single session of focus. In fact, in seeking to present to the class and explain what Scripture teaches, and what I’ve learned to be significant in pastoral ministry, I’ve found again and again that essentially all the relevant practical issues in preparing for eldership pair with one or more of the traits Paul lists in 1 Timothy 3 or Titus 1.
Imagine that. Paul really knew what he was talking about — not just as a list of prerequisites to become an elder but as a catalog of the kind of virtues that elders need day in and day out to be healthy, effective elders in the long haul for the joy of the church.

What Kind of Men?
Semester after semester, we have found much life, much to learn, much to say, much to discuss, and much to apply in these elder qualifications. For one, the graces mentioned here are not devoid of reference elsewhere in Scripture. Rather, in most cases, the Bible, from Old Testament to New, has much to say about these traits.
In studying these traits — and local-church leadership through them — I’ve come to organize the class (and now the book Workers for Your Joy) under three main headings: humbled, whole, and honorable. Or we might say, the devotional life (before God), the private life (before those who know us best), and the public life (before the watching church and world).
My hope is that such a study will be helpful, first and foremost, for current pastor-elders and especially for young men aspiring to the work. Under God, I’d love to see a new generation of pastors rise-and-fall proof their ministries, under God, long before the crises come.
But I also hope that congregants — church members — might enjoy finding new clarity about what they can expect in their pastors and hold them to. What does Christ call Christian leaders to be?
Christ has not left us without clarity. Christian leadership exists for the joy of the church. Such a vision may turn some of our churches upside down, first for pastors and then for the people. That’s the vision I hope to impart, and linger in, in Workers for Your Joy.

This week’s post is sponsored by The Master’s Academy International (TMAI), a global network of pastoral training centers that specialize in expository preaching. They invite you to sign up for their 2023 International Symposium on March 7th in Los Angeles, California.

We sometimes hear that a mature church will be “all in” when it comes to missions, but we rarely define what that engagement can look like for every member of our church. 
In 2023, with an ever-growing wealth of technology at our fingertips and an abundance of Christian expertise in many sectors of society, the question of how whole churches can support missions requires a careful answer.
As an extension of pastors preaching God’s heart for the nations and how to reach them, is there also a way for them to train our business professionals, schoolteachers, musicians, and others to leverage even their vocational skills for the good of the global church? Is there more to supporting missions than sending money and men? 
We believe the answer to these questions is yes. And if you’re looking to shepherd your church towards greater maturity and missions-mindedness, we want to help you capture a vision for how to do that with all hands on deck. This is why you’re invited to join us at the 2023 International Symposium on March 7th, where we’ll enjoy keynote messages from John MacArthur, Conrad Mbewe, and Paul Washer. 
While “missions proper” will always remain the work of sending pastors and planting churches, “missions support” can get much more dynamic than sending dollars. In fact, we’ve seen our own support network exploring creative ways to help local churches advance the word, and in doing this, they are following a godward trajectory of thinking that was recovered in the Reformation.

What the Reformation Recovered for Us
Prior to the Reformation, it was easy to embrace a sharp divide between “sacred” and “secular” aspects of life. Priests were privileged to do “sacred work” while the 9:00-5:00 labors of the common churchman could be considered “secular.” In this thinking, the everyday work of Christians was easily distinguished from the holy purposes of God.
But when the Reformers recovered their Bibles, they also recovered biblical insights that could repair that disconnect and show us how the Lordship of Christ graciously governs everything we do. The Reformers reclaimed a clear commitment to the priesthood of all believers (Rev 1:6) and spoke about how every Christian’s work is sacred unto the Lord (1 Cor 10:31; Eph 6:5–9). In teaching this, God’s word helps us understand that what we do from Monday to Saturday matters in the grand purposes of God.
And yet, even today, it seems there are dots left to connect when it comes to how the gifts of every church member can integrate with the Great Commission.

Where the Bible Reforms Us Further
Despite the biblical perspectives recovered in the Reformation, it’s still easy to slip into the belief that if we aren’t missionaries, then our role in the Great Commission doesn’t extend far beyond our checkbooks.
And while financial support of missionaries is entirely biblical (2 Cor 8:1–4; 3 John 8), we would do well to realize that, as it was in the Bible, our wealth involves more than our money (cf. Deut 8:11–18). And this means that our support can involve more than a check.
Because of this, we want to help churches expand beyond a one-dimensional view of supporting missions and grow into a deeper, more holistic mobilization of the church body.
Whatever your skillset and stewardship, it’s no accident that you have your gifts at this time in church history. You need only to consider how you can employ your gifts in the service of God’s word around the world.
To help your church become more missions-minded, join us Tuesday, March 7.