All the audio for the Together for the Gospel conference is now available here.

Andy Naselli has kindly placed the links to the audio in chronological order.

Two recent articles for pastors considering a personal blog…

• 6 Reasons Pastors Should Blog at the Desiring God Blog
• The Blogging Pastor at The Baptist Bulletin

I have a new resource of challenge and encouragement for pastors to share with you — C.J. Mahaney, Jeff Purswell, and Joshua Harris have begun a new podcast. Go check out the Leadership Interview Series and subscribe to the RSS feed to get updates. The first podcast is on the topic of The Pastor and His Reading - find the show notes here and get the mp3 here.

Update: Here’s the piece on the T4G blog that refers to John Stott’s time allotments for reading and study apart from study for sermon preparation.

I just read a piece on C.J. Mahaney’s blog, which quotes C.J., Jeff Purswell, and Mike Bullmore and touches on so many areas that challenge and encourage me — a pastor’s abilities, calling, preaching effectiveness, and use of time. I think many pastor’s deal with challenges in these areas, so I share it with all who will hear me and go read this post.

For those reading who are not pastors you can read and learn how to encourage and pray for your pastor as he schedules his time and prepares to preach God’s Word, a very precious privilege, week in and week out.

When I finish my breakfast it’s back to my own studies, because Sunday ’s a comin’.

Go read: Counsel for Discouraged, Average Preachers

Registration has been opened for the 2nd Annual Bible Conference and Pastor’s Seminar at West Cannon Baptist Church, February 25-27, 2008.

Get more details here. Speakers for the conference will be Dr. Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., Dr. Steven J. Lawson, Dr. James Grier.

It has, for the last few years, been my heart’s desire to bring great glory to the name of Jesus. But I’m more and more aware that my speech, thoughts, attitudes and actions often fall very short of giving glory to God in all things. The proper choosing of this one true purpose for living, to give God glory and glorify God in all things, is the purpose for which the follower of Christ should live all their life. That’s why I’m so thankful for fresh reminders of where my one true desire should be centered. This morning I read the following from Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening:

—Read the Rest of the Entry…

Does your appearance help or hinder the Gospel? Mike McKinley writes at 9 Marks for those of us who would seek to reach the culture by being much like the culture — Contemplating Cool.

Some selected quotes:

• if the Lord called you to shepherd sixty uncool saints until they were safely home, with no spectacular revival or ministry explosion, would you consider that beneath you? Would it seem unworthy of your gifts and a waste of your life? If so, you are being motivated by pride.
• Much of being a pastor is profoundly uncool.
• There is a real danger in becoming so puffed-up over our freedom in Christ to wear black t-shirts that we begin to look down on the Ned Flanders-style Christians who love the Lord and have served him faithfully for years. In fact, it may be that the Lord is more pleased with their humble walk (though not as sophisticated) than he is with yours.
• With a few exceptions, Christians who try to be cool are terrible at it.
• Being like the culture can make it hard to see the gospel.

Just in case you think this applies only to pastors — it doesn’t.

Carl Trueman on the gift of baldness and the priorities of a minister:

The priority of the minister is not to be hip or cool. It is not even to `connect with the kids.’ It is to immerse himself in the word, to know the gospel inside out, and to communicate that gospel with care, clarity, love, and force. OK, my criticism of the hair obsession and vanity of so many ministers is overstated; and they are scarcely the only Christians with skewed priorities. We all know Christians who are more concerned about where children are educated than the doctrine of the Trinity, or who are more passionate about Bible translations than guarding their tongues from malicious gossip. But the point of priorities is basic and important: don’t let your mid-life crisis determine the way you think about the gospel and the church. A hairstyle which tries to hide the ageing process is one thing, ridiculous but harmless; a theological agenda which mimics the world’s obsession with locating wisdom in the very sector of society with least experience of, and perspective on, everything is far more serious and potentially damaging. Let’s hope that the hairstyles of the forty-something clergy with soul patches are not sacramental: outward signs of inward spiritual realities. As to my brothers who are follicle-challenged but who faithfully study, pray and preach the gospel week by week, Be bald, be strong, for the Lord your God is with you.

I suggest you go read the whole thing.

Good news for Bible study geeks using Macs — Logos Bible Software for the Mac is getting closer. Check out the quicktime movie of an early alpha released recently — looking good: High Resolution (33 MB, no sound) - Low Resolution (18 MB, no sound)

George Orwell: 12 Writing Tips

Dan Phillips gives a powerful admonition to all of us in the church about “being there” for the long haul for those who grieve: Brothers, sisters — don’t drop the ball

A great resource for pastors — 20 Years of Pastors Conference Audio from Desiring God. (via: DG blog)

Great encouragement for Pastors here via video from John Piper Q&A at the ReFocus Conference.

I was privileged to attend the Declaring His Glory conference with my oldest son late in March. This was a great opportunity not too far from home to hear some wonderful speakers and challenging messages.

The audio is now available on the West Cannon Baptist Church website. Speakers were Jerry Bridges, Gary Gilley, James Grier, Dwight Peterson and Doug Crawford.

The Greatness of God
Jerry Bridges
MP3 (42 minutes, 9.7 MB)

The Holiness of God
Jerry Bridges
MP3 (33 minutes, 7.6 MB)

The Man of God
Doug Crawford
MP3 (67 minutes, 15.4 MB)

The Abundance and Delights of God
Gary Gilley
MP3 (36 minutes, 8.2 MB)

See! I Make All Things New
James Grier
MP3 (42 minutes, 9.5 MB)

A Faithful Steward
Gary Gilley
MP3 (48 minutes, 11.2 MB)

The Emergent Church
Gary Gilley
MP3 (53 minutes, 12.2 MB)

A Pure Vessel
Jerry Bridges
MP3 (50 minutes, 11.4 MB)

Our Greatest Need
Dwight Peterson
MP3 (51 minutes, 11.8 MB)

To download these to your computer:
PC users should right click and “Save link as”
Mac users click and hold and “Download link to disk”

Al Mohler’s recent Southern Seminary Convocation message is well worth your time.

Grab the MP3 (or click the play button bellow) — “Determined to Know Nothing Except Jesus Christ, and Him Crucified? A Crucial Question for Christian Ministry” (1 Corinthians 2:1-5)

Speaking of Al Mohler, TIME interviews him on his faith in the face of a recent serious health concern.

If you use Microsoft Word for your sermon or Bible study preparation it’s likely you know the frustration of trying to spell-check and having all those Bible names pop up as misspelled. traviscarden.com has Bible language spell-check dictionaries available to solve that problem. (from Tim Challies)

Joshua Sowin shares A Guide to Writing Well which he “mainly distilled from On Writing Well by William Zinsser and The Elements of Style by Strunk and White.”

I read Zinsser’s book about a year ago and loved it. Both books should be close by–along with this guide–for those who write just about anything.

From: Justin Taylor

Reading a Spurgeon biography last night and came on this quote. Spurgeon once commented…

“I was reading some time ago,” he said on one occasion, “an article in a newspaper, very much in my praise. It always makes me feel sad—so sad that I could cry—if ever I see anything praising me; it breaks my heart; I feel I do not deserve it, and then I say, ‘Now I must try to be better, so that I may deserve it.’ If the world abuses me, I am a match for that; I begin to like it. It may fire all its big guns at me and I will not return a solitary shot, but just store them up, and grow rich upon the old iron.”

From: Charles Haddon Spurgeon, A Biography, By W. Y. Fullerton, Chapter 5