Blogging....A New Habit Forming!

I want to begin by stating how excited I am to be the Pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Southaven, MS. I have never had a desire to blog…I enjoy reading other people’s blogs, I enjoy reading our family blog (my wife does such a fantastic job at using it to keep friends and family updated), but with all I have to do as a pastor I really thought of it as a burden to my time. I recently came across an excellent article by John Piper on “Six Reasons Why Pastor’s Should Blog.” As I read that article it rang so true in my heart that I saw clearly the value of spending some time during the week blogging. I wanted to share a some of the reasons that resonated with me as I read Bro. Piper’s article. I will only share the top three but you can read about all six in their entirety at the link below. http://www.desiringgod.org/Blog/1156_6_reasons_pastors_should_blog/

• The first point that really got my attention was that as I pastor I should blog to teach. As I thought about how many hours of study goes into a sermon and all I can give our congregation is 40-45 minutes (okay that may be an understatement) on Sundays. I realized that this is an opportunity to flesh out some of the other things I really need to say from the Word to our people. My prayer is that at times this blog give our people at Trinity nutrients throughout the week, to bolster what they heard on Sunday. This will give me an opportunity to clarify something that I may not have made clear Sunday, or something that I was going so fast you missed. Either way, I want to encourage our members especially to keep an eye on this blog. You can leave me comments or ask questions through email or by responding on this blog…

• The second point that served as a major catalyst was the opportunity to use this as a place to give recommendations. In my life there have been some very dear friends to me that I have never even met. Some of these friends are with Jesus now and I will only meet them when I get to glory. But there are some men who have written books that God has used to encourage, convict and teach me some great spiritual truths. We as God’s people must be readers if we are going to grow, but we must not only be readers we must be thinking readers. There is a minister I know that reads often but he reads without filtering it through the Word of God and it breeds confusion in his life. We must remember that as we read books that they all must line up with THE BOOK. This blog will give me a chance to share with some of you some wonderful books that can enhance your walk with God. It will also be a chance for me to point you to some wonderful web-sites.

• Finally, I will blog to “be known”. I don’t me to be known in a famous way, after all everyone has a blog. I am blogging because it gives our congregation another way to know me. Our Church at Trinity is a pretty large church, it will be very difficult for some people to know me outside the pulpit. But between this blog and our family blog they will be able to know me at another level. I want you to see me, my heart and our family – to be able to know who we are – inside and outside of Church you will find us the same…like it or not!

In short, I can’t promise you incredible writing, I can’t promise you awe inspiring moments, but I can promise you that I will be honored for you to watch this blog and I pray it will accomplish it’s purpose. I look forward to seeing many of you Sunday!

Bro. Chad Everson
Pastor, Trinity Baptist Church

Welcome to Holding to Truth!

Welcome to my blog! It is my prayer that this blog encourages, challenges, and inspires you to be a man/woman of The Book. The purpose of this blog as you will see in my next post is primarily for the members of Trinity Baptist Church. I have only been the Pastor of this dear church for about a month. But my desire is to use every tool available to enhance their walk with God and love for the Word. Let me begin by stating how I came up with this name. I battled for some time as to what to name this. I wanted something that would capsulate my ultimate desire for this blog, so I played with long names and short names and still nothing seemed to fit. One name that I thought of was based in a quote by one of my favorite preachers of all time. The great London preacher Charles Spurgeon, read the outstanding book The Pilgrim’s Progress every year. He had great admiration for John Bunyan, as all lovers of Christian literature should. When Spurgeon spoke of Bunyan he said:
He had studied our Authorized Version…til his whole being was saturated with Scripture; and though his writings are charmingly full of poetry, yet he cannot give us his Pilgrim’s Progress---that sweetest of all prose poems---without continually making us feel and say, “Why, this man in a living Bible! Prick him anywhere; and you will find that his blood is Bibline, the very essence of the Bible flows from him. He cannot speak without quoting a text, for his soul is full of the Word of God.
Now I must confess that I can not say this of myself, nor would anyone else, but oh it is the desire of my soul! I want to know Him more, so I better know His Word more. My favorite chapter in all the Bible is Psalm 119. It tells us such great truths about what the Word does in our lives. In verse 7 I am reminded that I can’t even praise Him rightly if I do not know His Word. So while this blog may share much of my life, I hope throughout this blog you see in the words a “bibline” theme. I desire for each of us to hold to the Truth - with diligence and desperation! I look forward to the days ahead as God sanctifies us together through His Word. It will be an honor to have you read this blog as we walk through this journey together.

Bro. Chad Everson
Pastor, Trinity Baptist Church