You are here: Home / Archives for Pastoral

By 3 Comments

How To Resolve Marital Problems

Currently, me and my wife is attending a bi-monthly seminar on “Fireproofing Your Marriage”. So far, we are really enjoying discussing things about marital relationship within the couple’s group of our Church. Each partner in the group is also trying to work on our daily task, “The Love Dare”.

Today’s reading is a very useful tool in resolving marital conflicts. I believe each couple should try to take note of this post since this has been a great treasure in most successful marriages. And I do agree to what the author says about marital conflicts and problems. I quote this post from “The Love Dare” book by Kendrick.

The post is all about the boundaries in dealing with conflicts. Before I forget, I suggest that you print this post or at least bookmark this page so that you will be able to go back here if in case you will be needing this post in the future.

Filed Under: Featured, Morality/Immorality, Pastoral, Primary, Reviews Tagged With: , , , ,

By 10 Comments

Why Alcohol Drinking Is Not For Christians

Alcohol Drinking Is Not Good For Our Lives

This is one of the most common heated debates inside Christian communities. This is because there are many Christians who still drink alcoholic beverages even after several years of being a Christian.
The main issues raised were the following:

* Is alcohol drinking forbidden in the Bible?
* Is alcohol drinking an immoral practice?
* Is alcohol drinking encouraged in the Bible?
* Moderate drinking is a healthy practice as long as you do not get drunk.

Many of those Christians who used to drink uses the following issues above to defend that alcohol drinking is completely allowable and it is only “us” who forbid it to do. Plus quoting the incident in the wedding of Cana where Jesus turned water into wine.

But why is it that many Evangelical Churches forbid or at least impose a “no alcohol drinking” policy among its members?

Now, let’s go to the main discussion of the issues raised.
Is Alcohol Drinking Forbidden In The Bible?

The answer of course is no. The fact is, most people in the Bible drink at least a wine coming from grapes. One thing is clear about the limitations in drinking, and it is found in Ephesians 5:18. “Do not get drunk.” This is why most Christians that still drink alcoholic beverages hold this very strongly. As long as they don’t get drunk.

Filed Under: Discipline, Featured, Morality/Immorality, Pastoral Tagged With: , , ,

By 58 Comments

King James Version Bible Against New International Version Bible

KJV Bible versus NIV Bible, Which One is The Best?

I was deeply intrigued upon reading this article concerning the issues against New International Version. For so long, I have found NIV to be a Bible that is very much easy to understand especially that English is not my first language. I have been using New International Version for so long that I have made so many notes within my Bible.

However, just yesterday, a friend of mine forwarded this very intriguing article that I found to be a MUST to read especially if you are a pastor, a Bible interpreter, or a worker. I am not so skeptic against Bible translations. But I think this article is worth my time to read. And I found it very helpful to take note of the things that I need to look at a Bible Interpreter.

By far, as I have remember in my training which includes Bible history, background and some glimpse (not detailed) about these codexes like Textus Receptus, Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, its just, its the only available manuscripts out the there that can be a reference for the newer translations.

Now, to set up the reliability issue, let’s put it in this way, Dr. William Grady is a scholar who have his personal opinion about the validity and reliability of Textus Receptus. But how about the opinion of other Bible scholars who would say Vaticanus and Sinaiticus are more reliable? Which scholars are more reliable then if they have the same degree?

By the way, Dr. William Grady is the author of Final Authority: A Christian’s Guide to the King James Bible to which I really wish I could get my hand on this very intriguing book.

Furthermore, I am not so sold out to say that KJV is the “ONLY” true and authoritative translation of the Scripture for the main reason of its historical background. I believe I have already said this several times in preaching. King James is homosexual. To avoid having conflicts with Puritants (which we know one of the major group reformers) he granted them the authority to translate this new English version that came to be known as KJV. This simply means that it was born out of King James’ personal interest. But in fairness, I would certainly admit that King James Version of the Bible is really the finest by far.

Filed Under: Doctrines and Theology, For Pastors Only, Preaching, Theology Tagged With: , , , , , ,

By Leave a Comment

A Call For Prayer For Filipinos

Christians Were Also Victims of Typhoon Ondoy

For the last few days of following the news, I could not help but to let tears fall from my eyes seeing my fellow Filipinos suffering from the catastrophic effect of the Typhoon Ondoy. There were already close to 100 death toll and still unknown total numbers of missing people.

We are not talking about remote places, we are talking about the capital city of the Philippines, Manila along with surrounding metro provinces like Rizal, Bulacan, Pampanga, Cavite, etc.

Typhoon Ondoy already have damaged about Php95M worth of crops in Calabarzon alone (Inquirer). Hundreds of millions in damaging properties like vehicles, houses, appliances, etc. Thousands were in evacuation areas. Hundreds of people were now getting sick.

My dearest brethrens, I encourage you all to pray for the Filipno people. We are in the midst of crisis.

We have lots of Christian brothers who were also affected by typhoon Ondoy. And worst, there is another typhoon threatening the Philippines within two to three days. Pray that God will intervene on these catastrophic event. May God save the Philippines.

Filed Under: Lighthouse Updates, Missions Tagged With: , , , ,

By Leave a Comment

The Perfect Pastor

The Perfect Pastor (Male and/or female) is a humorous sermon illustration about a Church looking for a perfect pastor.

* The perfect pastor preaches exactly 10 minutes.
* He condemns sin roundly but never hurts anyone’s feelings.
* He works from 8 AM until midnight and is also the church janitor.
* The perfect pastor makes $40 a week, wears good clothes, drives a good car, buys good books, and donates $30 a week to the church.
* He is 29 years old and has 40 years experience.
* Above all, he/she is handsome/pretty.
* The perfect pastor has a burning desire to work with teenagers, and he spends most of his time with the senior citizens.
* He smiles all the time with a straight face because he has a sense of humor that keeps him seriously dedicated to his church.
* He makes 15 home visits a day and is always in his office to be handy when needed.

Filed Under: Illustration, Practical Jokes Tagged With: , ,

By Leave a Comment

Ministry Website

Ministry Website For Your Church and Ministry

For a couple of weeks now, I haven’t updated “The Disicplers” that much except the daily devotional “Morning Manna”. This is because I have been working on a project website, the home of the Morning Manna. It’s the website of my dear friend Tom Smith, Morning Manna’s author.

The website’s concept is all about Tom’s ministry called “Back To Bethel”. It is more likely a portfolio of his ministry. It has the collection of Morning Manna posts, poems, sermons, and even audio clips of his album.

It was kinda exciting because this is my first time to use one of the well known “website making” platform on the net.

Working on it allowed me to finally evaluate the capability of my dream web hosting company. It did gives you a lot of options if you own an account with them. Even if you have no experience at all in making websites, their platform is already enough for you to build such a powerful website.

They provides you with all the tools that you need in building a highly-focused, content rich website.

Here’s the downside that I have seen with the platform that I am using, if you are only up to blogging, you will be disappointed with their platform because it really lacks some flexibility with the looks and archiving. This company only focuses on website making. I just wonder if time will come that they will try to improve their blogging platform for more professional look as my blog.

Filed Under: Featured, For Pastors Only, FREEBIES Tagged With: , ,

By Leave a Comment

A True Pastoral Work Part 2

Text: 1 Corinthians 3:1-17

Feed The Sheep
The word “pastor” originally means shepherd, the one who has the care of flocks and herds. He is someone who feeds and pasture the flocks.

As we already have discussed, pastoring is not an easy task. The primary goal of a pastor is to impart God’s word, that is to feed the flock. However in the passage, we can see here that Paul is pointing out that the spiritual food that he is giving to the Corinthian Church is only milk. He pointed out that many of them were worldly (other translations used the word “carnal”).

According to Paul, jealousy and quarreling within the church is a form of immaturity. What are they quarelling about? They are quarelling about who is their discipler. They have their own favorite workers. Some follow Paul, some Apollos, while others say they follow Cephas (1 Cor. 1:12). And probably they were trying to compare their teachers (pastors).

The truth is, such arguments are useless and only promotes division inside the church. It is a form of carnality, a form of worldliness and a sign of immaturity. Why? It is because they are now out of focus. Their church leaders like Apollos, Cephas, and Paul are there to serve, to feed the sheep. This is their primary task and all of them comes from the same source. Their teachers have the same spirit, the same teachings, and the same doctrines.

Apostles are to impart God’s message to the sheep. They are to share what God is telling them in accordance to the Scripture. Similarly in our time, there is no need to compare the past from the present for pastors do the same thing. That is to feed the sheep.

Filed Under: For Pastors Only, Pastoral, Sermon Outlines Tagged With: , , ,
« Older Posts
Newer Posts »