John Ortberg
John Ortberg
John Ortberg, Jr.is an evangelical Christian author, speaker, and senior pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in Menlo Park, California, an evangelical church with more than 4,000 members. Ortberg has published many books including the 2008 ECPA Christian Book Award winner When the Game is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box, and the 2002 Christianity Today Book Award winner If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat. Another of his publications,...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionClergyman
Date of Birth5 May 1957
CountryUnited States of America
Tithing is like training wheels when it comes to giving. It's intended to help you get started, but not recommended for the Tour de France.
Tithing is considerably less popular than words like generosity or sharing.
Tithing is a bad ceiling but an excellent floor.
Those of us who preach the Scriptures, along with being nourished by it ourselves, have to figure out along with our congregations how we can incarnate the gospel in our community, or we will preach to a religious ghetto.
Although the church has often been far too slow to follow his lead, Jesus' insistence that women, as well as men, bear the full image of God has had a way of sparking reform movements across the centuries.
This much I have learned: human beings come with very different sets of wiring, different interests, different temperaments, different learning styles, different gifts, different temptations. These differences are tremendously important in the spiritual formation of human beings.
As a preacher who is fully human, and clearly not divine, I can't speak as Jesus did. But I do seek to speak truth that carries weight and authority. All of us who preach the gospel aspire to speak under the authority of Jesus.
As a preacher, my charge is to proclaim the message of the Scriptures. To help the people in my congregation become a people of the book. I love getting to do this.
Authority can be faked. That's why impersonating a police officer is a crime. Sometimes the outward appearances of authority can be deceiving.
Authentic spiritual authority is what puts you in touch with reality.
The most important criterion is this: hire someone whose character and humility and attitude you would like to have reproduced in your church and in yourself.
Actually, my character needs to be questioned. On a regular basis. By people who know and love me.
Jesus viewed his own destiny - to be glorified in and through death - as an expression of a kind of cosmic principle: the pathway to life runs through death.
Jesus' life as a foot-washing servant would eventually lead to the adoption of humility as a widely admired virtue.