The Barnabas Blog

I am going to take a break for a day or two from the discipline of study series although I have several more men lined up who are going to share some of the things they are doing. I should have blogged this book review long before now. However, maybe coming at you a bit later will save you a few bucks by getting a used copy. Jeffrey Toobin is an author that I ended up finding because I judged a book by its cover. I went into Barnes & Noble and picked up his latest book, The Nine—Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, shortly after it was published. My curiosity about this book stemmed from some reading that I did on Associate Justice Clarence Thomas a few years ago. Toobin, even though a left-leaning writer, put together an outstanding book concerning the U.S. Supreme Court. The book starts out with a very brief but provocative description of the steps of the new Supreme Court building. For those who are willing to contemplate the steps and where they led, it has the ...

Rolling along on with this series on the discipline of study and I must say that this series has taken on a life of its own and is beginning to roar like a lion. I have been incredibly motivated by the previous men I have been able to share some time with who were kind enough to tell me how they put things together. The first post was simply on the importance of having a life of study, the second post was on the unique way that Jeff Arnold does things, and the third post was about Scott Graham who was kind enough to share with me some things that he does concerning study and preaching. I trust that this post today will also be helpful as well as motivating to you who are week-in and week-out preparing your heart and mind to preach the Word. Ben Weeks is a man I wish I would have met 15 years ago. However, it was not in God’s timing that I meet him until October 2006. I had heard him preach once via cassette tape that my cousin, John Padgett, had given to me from a men’s confere...

I am continuing along with a thought from last week about the importance of study in the preacher’s life. After the initial post, I took the occasion to get into the world of Brother Jeff Arnold and give some of the details that I was aware of in his study patterns and how preaching took shape for him. Apparently from the response in phone calls, comments on the blog, and e-mails, you were encouraged by knowing what he did. So with that in mind, I made a few phone calls to some friends of mine and sent out a few e-mails requesting them to consider telling me how they put things together. This morning I had the good occasion to spend a bit of time with Pastor Scott Graham of The Sanctuary in St. Louis, Missouri. He was very willing to open up to me some of the routines he goes through in the process of preaching. He said that years ago he read a Max Lucado book in which the author mentioned something about thinking about the “white spaces” in Scripture. Those are the spots betwe...

I will pick back up with the process in the discipline of study in a few posts. But today, I would like to share some thoughts with you about some men whom I have grown to know and love over the last few years. They are preachers par excellence and have become known for their abilities to strike fire with the Word. One of those men is Jeff Arnold. Powerful, provoking, sometimes controversial, sometimes misunderstood but always with an ability to form a connection with the congregation to whom he is preaching to. A number of his messages are located on Faithbuilder , a site of multiple MP3’s available to listen on-line or to download. You owe it to yourself to listen to the 27 messages that he did on the life of Abraham called “In the Steps of That Faith.” A little over three years ago, a window of opportunity opened up for me to become a friend of his. I went down to Gainesville to one of his “studies” although at the time I did not know that was what it was. I was taken th...

Last week, after the blog on “The Challenges of Preaching the Word ” I had a couple of things happen that has helped create this idea for this particular blog. First, I had a pastor (David Bethel) to send me an e-mail basically discussing the sometimes ups and downs of disciplined study. He admitted that there were some weeks that all seemed to flow well and then there were other weeks of poor study due to the demands of the unexpected of pastoral work. Secondly, one of our members was in the hospital for close to a week and in addition to seeing her, I went down to the Radiology Department and saw quite a number of people that I used to work with. One of those days, I ran into one of the physicians (Sibley Turner, M.D.) that I used to work with and had a good time reconnecting with him. While I did not work with him as much as with some of the other radiologists, his partners almost to a man had told me numerous times that he had the sharpest mind of their group. So between this...

How many times have you heard the statement: “Don’t preach to me!”? How many times have you heard someone prior to giving some sort of instruction say, “I don’t mean to preach to you!”? Our generation at large has a low regard for preaching. Righteous instruction is often looked upon with disdain as “controlling” and “manipulative.” I recently ran across a conference message by D. A. Carson concerning this challenge of preaching the Word in our generation. While I do not find complete agreement with all Carson considers, he had some very worthy points to mention in his address. I took his list and then expanded on some of the points. Decline of spiritual life and activity in the churches is commonly accompanied by lifeless, formal unfruitful preaching. . . the great revivals of Christian history can be directly traced to the work of the pulpit and in their progress they have rendered and developed a high order of preaching. . . . preaching can stimulate revival under God and be...

Several years ago, E. E. Jolley pulled his famous line on me. “This page is worth the price of this book! If you don’t get something out of it, send it back to me and I will give you a refund.” In his hand, he was holding the second volume of the abridged “The Christian in Complete Armor.” Needless to say, I bought the little three volume set of paperbacks and have gotten my $27 worth out of them a long time ago. My paperback collection has become tattered, dog-eared, and marked up over the years and I have gotten a lot of inspiration for preaching from it. There are some very good things concerning Lot and his relationship with Sodom and Gomorrah. The abridged books contain much food for thought that will provoke your thinking. Following are some quotes that may whet your appetite for considering this book for your own library. Of Satan ‘s Subtlety to choose out the most advantageous Seasons for tempting. . . 1. The first season he takes to tempt in is, when newly converted. ...