Quotes from Alexander Strauch

Good shepherds love their sheep and spare no effort when leading them to green pastures and clear water.

This is in no way to imply that love ignores or condones sin. Love covers a multitude of sins, not all sins. At times, love requires exposure and discipline of sin for the welfare of an individual as well as the church. Love knows when to cover and when to expose for the purpose of redemption and restoration.

Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission, once cautioned, "Do not be so busy with the work of Christ (or anything else) that you have no strength left for praying. True prayer requires strength.

A cold, unwelcoming church contradicts the gospel message.

He who no longer sows in the study will no more reap in the pulpit.

If we expect to challenge the hearts and minds of men and women of the next generation, our hearts and minds must be challenged also. We cannot influence people for God if we are not learning, changing, and growing. Teachers who love God and love to study his Word reproduce this love in others.

If the men are supposed to be the heads of the family, they must also be the heads of the community. The community must be structured in a way that supports the pattern of the family, and the family must be structured in a way that supports the pattern of the community.

If we want to understand Christian elders and their work, we must understand the biblical imagery of shepherding. As keepers of sheep, New Testament elders are to protect, feed, lead, and care for the flock's many practical needs.

If you are going to bore people, don't bore them with the Gospel. Bore them with calculus, bore them with earth science, bore them with world history. But it is a sin to bore people with the Gospel.

You don't have to be a preacher or have years of training to use your home to love and serve people.

We are in the business of teaching and modeling obedience to God.

Helga Henry, the wife of the renowned theologian Carl F. H. Henry, reminds us that "Christian hospitality is not a matter of choice; it is not a matter of money; it is not a matter of age, social standing, sex, or personality. Christian hospitality is a matter of obedience to

John Oman warns, "unless the pulpit is the place where you are the humblest in giving God's message, it is certain to be the place where you are vainest in giving your own.

Leaders who think that growth in grace comes by knowing the Word of God without doing it will produce congregations of passive Christians which resemble human beings that eat too much and exercise too little.

Tenderness will win hearts so hardened that nothing else can move them. Truth spoken in love goes directly to the heart of the hearer and calls forth a kind response…. It overcomes prejudice and hardness.… It melts and wins where the most logical argument, the most terrible warning, and the severest threatening would produce no more impression than the falling of dew upon a block of granite.

Power is like saltwater; the more you drink the thirstier you get. The lure of power can separate the most resolute of Christians from the true nature of Christian leadership, which is service to others. It's difficult to stand on a pedestal and wash the feet of those below.

New Testament, Christianized elders are not mere representatives of the people; they are, as the passages above show, spiritually qualified shepherds who protect, lead, and teach the people. They provide spiritual care for the entire flock. They are the official shepherds of the church.

The eldership must clarify direction and beliefs for the flock. It must set goals, make decisions, give direction, correct failures, affect change, and motivate people. It must evaluate, plan, and govern. Elders, then, must be problem solvers, managers of people, planners, and thinkers.

the New Testament offers more instruction regarding elders than on other important church subjects such as the Lord's Supper, the Lord's Day, baptism, or spiritual gifts. When you consider the New Testament's characteristic avoidance of detailed regulation and church procedures (when compared to the Old Testament), the attention given to elders is amazing.

In his remarkably penetrating booklet, The Mark of the Christian, Francis Schaeffer reminds us that the real issue to be dealt with in most of our conflicts is not the issue at hand but our lack of Christlike love toward our fellow Christians: