Credo’s Cache

Each week we will be highlighting important resources. Check back each Friday to see what we have dug up for you. From this week’s cache:

1. Multiplying Disciples in Bivocational Ministry: By Nick Abraham – Abraham says: “For those pastors, being bivocational was not a choice instead of full-time vocational ministry, it was the norm and more or less required of those called to ministry. Today, there are still many pastors required to be bivocational because they live in a rural area, are church planters, or are pastoring a smaller church that couldn’t fully support them otherwise.”

2. Depression and Common Grace: By Jared Wilson – Wilson notes: “Jesus may heal any of us without ordinary means—and I do believe he heals today by purely Spiritual means, what most of us would call a miracle—but this kind of healing is not normative. And that’s all right. Medicine is not a mandate for the depressed person. But neither is it off limits. It can be, properly prescribed and taken, a gift of common grace. Likewise, seeking help from a pastoral counselor or Christian psychologist is nothing to be ashamed of.”

3. Talking About “Man-Boys”: By Paul Maxwell – Maxwell says: “At a level, the tone we use to speak about young Christian men today would be self-evidently disrespectful in another context. And to state the obvious, it cuts the deepest when coming from our single female counterparts. There are a slew of legitimate reasons why a single Christian woman would be tempted to rag on immature men.”

4. God Does Not View Your Labors as “Filthy Rags”: By Michael Kruger – Kruger says: “What a refreshment to our souls to know that our Father in heaven actually delights in these labors! It is like salve on our blisters and a balm to our aching muscles to know that he is pleased with the faith-driven works of his children.”

5. G.K. Chesterton on the Paradox of Christian Exile: By Joseph Sunde – Sunde notes: “We are called to love, to serve, to sacrifice, and to obey, and to do so as broken people in a world filled with others like us, struggling within and across an imperfect web of broken relationships. Here, in our role as exiles, we can hope and trust in the good news and redemptive work of Jesus Christ, and only here can we point the way home.”

Matt Manry is the Assistant Pastor at Life Bible Church in Canton, Georgia. He is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Religion at Reformed Theological Seminary and a Masters of Arts in Christian and Classical Studies from Knox Theological Seminary. He blogs regularly at gospelglory.net.