You Lift Me Up, Overcoming Ministry Challenges
It happens little by little. . . Even in the context of a very faithful ministry, a pastor may be at risk of a gradual-but ultimately debilitating-downfall.
Al Martin speaks from years of experience as he guides pastors to identify warning signs of dangerous paths:
* Backsliding-a spiritual decline manifested first in the prayer closet.
* Burnout-erosion of one's mental, emotional, psychological, and physical resiliency and buoyancy.
* Washout-the loss of credibility among the people.
Publisher: Christian Focus
Type: Paperback
ISBN: 9781781912270
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Albert N. Martin served as pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey, for more than forty years and he taught Pastoral Theology in the Trinity Ministerial Academy for twenty years. Esteemed by leading theologians and pastors, his preaching is the subject of a book, My Heart for Thy Cause (ISBN 978-1-85792-716-0).
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How thrilling was Albert Martin's arrival on the scene in England in the late 60s. He seemed to have taken all that was the very best of evangelical preaching from the Puritans, and the preachers of the Evangelical Awakening, from M'Cheyne in Scotland and from Princeton in New Jersey, from Ryle and Spurgeon, from auditing the classes of John Murray at Westminster Seminary, and he mined all this rich seam of experiential Calvinism and he brought out jewels. He preached to the mind, affections and consciences of his hearers and impacted them so that in the succeeding years as he returned to our conferences the numbers increased. God's blessing was on him and on us. What we experienced in England was also replicated in the USA. Now in retirement from the pastorate this substantial work has appeared. It is on a theme familiar enough to the Puritans, on ministerial credibility and backsliding. How discerning and searching our fathers were in analysing the marks of such declension and the means of ministerial revival. May this be the first of a number of books to come from Albert Martin to the good of the whole church, especially its servants the preachers. Geoff Thomas, Conference Speaker and author, Aberystwyth, Wales