9Marks eJournal 8, 5 (September-October 2011) on the Pastor and his Staff (Part 2)

The latest issue of the 9Marks eJournal, available as a pdf here, contains Part 2 of their treatment of ‘the Pastor and his Staff’.

In the Editor’s Note, Jonathan Leeman writes:

‘It’s easy to overlook the importance of wise management in the life of the church. But pick up your Bible and read 1 Kings 3 to 5. God gives Solomon wisdom, and the next thing you know, Solomon is doing everything from studying hyssop to getting foreign kings to help him build the house of the Lord. All the while every citizen lives peacefully under his own vine and fig tree. The point? Among other things, wisdom is a God-given skill for the work of ordering, building, and prospering the affairs of his kingdom.

‘The local church’s central work, 9Marks believes, is a prophetic one – proclaiming the Word of our Priest and King. But should God provide, you should want to build a big platform for that Word, and to set it in a teacher’s lectern, and to sit it in a counselor’s chair, and to give it a piano, and to send it out the doors and overseas, and to do everything you can to let that Word reverberate through your church and beyond.

‘But doing all this takes the wisdom of Solomon, so to speak. It takes skill in wisely discipling people and sometimes even hiring them to facilitate the work of the church.’