A pastor’s work is directing worship in traffic.

The primary educational task as a pastor is to teach people to pray.

Pastoral work I have learned is that aspect of Christian ministry that specializes in the ordinary.

If pastoral work is to represent the gospel & the develop the life of faith, it must learn to be at him in the everyday things of life.

If a pastor has little patience for small talk then he’ll have little patience for most of the things of the kingdom.

On Sundays, preach the art of thunder. But when you descend to the people on the plain, learn the art of small talk.

Assuming the early church had the same percentage of sinners in it as your church (100%), it would be a mistake to envy it.

Most people are dominated by a sense of self not a sense of God.

Pastoral work is not merely a matter of putting plastic flowers in people’s drab lives — a well intentioned attempt to brighten a bad scene.

Pastors, don’t respond to appalling conditions around us in terms that only make sense to those appalled, but to God.

A Christian believes everything, especially everything that looks like wreckage, is material God is using to make a praising life.

Christians believe that the most significant thing that happens is that we are no longer dismembered but remembered into the body of Christ.

Pastor, you are not a minister of people’s changing desires, but you are a minister of Word and Sacrament.

North American culture does not offer conditions in which to live vocationally as a pastor. We are pressured to be religious entrepreneurs.

Give the loss of cultural and ecclesiastical consensus on how to be a pastor, none of us is sure of what we are doing much of the time.

Rather than being known for “getting things done” pastors should be known for “what’s going on right now” between men and women and God.

I have found that the pastor’s life is a context-specific life, rather than a model or blue print.

When God called Abraham and Sarah to be our ancestors in the faith, the definitive act was to make them parents/

Pastor, you may not always be in the lions’ den, but you are always preaching to a congregations with people facing wild beasts.

No need for hurry if you’re confident in who you are in God.