As happens every so often, I have decided to move this blog to a new home. Where? … to Substack. Why? Well, for one thing everyone seems to be doing it. For another, it’s cheaper! That is, it is free for me.

And it’ll be free for you too if you want to continue to follow me.

Where is it? The web address is stephendancer.substack.com

If you have been following this blog for the last few years, you will have realised that I post very infrequently. My recent rate has been about once a year. So if that is too much for you, don’t sign up! 🙂 I’d like to think that my rate of writing on the substack will improve – rather like one’s enthusiasm for decorating a new house occupies the owner for a time. Maybe the same will happen here with my DIY – eventually the zeal dies away. Maybe not. It depends…

What will I write about? Mostly this and that about things that occur to me in the life of a minister of the gospel. Some Bible thoughts, ministry thoughts, news updates. A lot of it will be for a my own sanity and to organise some thoughts. If you are interested in that, then do sign up.

Willie Still points out how the task of a minister can be simply stated: he is a “feeder of souls by means of the Word of God”. However to be this, it involves the totality of the minister’s life. As I said, simply stated, yet profound in its implications. He goes on:

[We] must learn to live with our indwelling Saviour comfortably, happily and consistently, even if painfully. For if Christ, as far as we are concerned is only a cloak, or a robe which we put on when on duty but is not a life that we live with him in all the ordinariness of our daily lives (and ordinariness, let us not doubt, is something which Jesus loves very much) then something is far wrong. People will immediately see that and sense that the cloak does not quite fit and is sometimes discarded. In our public reading of the Word, for example, at best they will separate us from Christ and choose him: at worst, they may reject him as not having the ability to conquer and possess the preacher. They will assume that Christ is not worth having because he is not able to do a satisfactory work in or for the preacher. They will therefore turn away from the Lord, regarding him as but an empty name.
– Dying to Live, William Still (CFP, 1991), p.134.