Why I Wrote “Discipling the Flock”
Having been in local church ministry for close to 30 years, I’m more and more convinced of how much God’s people need comprehensive soul care, which is provided through both public and personal ministry. So, related to that conviction, here are three reasons I was compelled to write Discipling the Flock: A Call to Faithful Shepherding.
1) There is an unbiblical dichotomy in many churches.
Today, there exists an unfortunate separation of the personal ministry of the Word of God from its public preaching. So what I’m calling for in this book is for shepherds to embrace the importance of both preaching and counseling. God wants His men to be both tenacious and tender: tenacious in their study and preaching of the whole counsel of God and tender in their application of its promises and demands to the lives of God’s sheep through personal, pastoral ministry. This conviction also includes actively equipping the members of the body to counsel one another. This theology of inter-personal discipleship is thoroughly defended in a companion book, Counseling One Another, which presents the role every believer has in the work of making disciples. However, the focus of this smaller book is on the key part that pastors and elders have in the discipleship process.
For the other two reasons, continue reading here.
