{"id":608,"date":"2013-02-20T11:09:41","date_gmt":"2013-02-20T16:09:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/?p=608"},"modified":"2013-02-20T11:09:41","modified_gmt":"2013-02-20T16:09:41","slug":"howard-hendricks-1924-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/2013\/02\/20\/howard-hendricks-1924-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Howard Hendricks, 1924-2013"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Howard Hendricks, for 60 years a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, is now with his beloved Lord, seeing Him face to face.\u00a0 As stated in <a title=\"Howard Hendricks \" href=\"http:\/\/www.dts.edu\/read\/howard-hendricks-prof\" target=\"_blank\">this portrait at the Dallas Seminary site<\/a>, Hendricks &#8220;directly or indirectly touched millions of lives in the evangelical community and beyond.&#8221; I am one of those.<\/p>\n<p>A master storyteller and illustrator, here is the Hendricks story that has stuck with me more than any other (I used this story to open <a title=\"The Effective Priest: A sermon on Leviticus 8 and 9\" href=\"http:\/\/www.expository.org\/levitpriest3.htm\" target=\"_blank\">a sermon from Leviticus in 1998<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Early this year a long-time friend phoned Howard Hendricks, Professor at Dallas Theological Seminary. It seems that this friend was moving to the Dallas area and wanted Howard\u2019s recommendation for a church to attend. &#8220;Well, tell me, what kind of church are you looking for?&#8221; asked Howard. The friend laid out a long series of requirements, including the theological position of the church, the quality of personal relationships, and the absence of cliques and groups. Howard responded, &#8220;Friend, you\u2019re looking for a perfect church. I don\u2019t know of a church like that, but if you find one . . . don\u2019t join it. You\u2019ll ruin it!&#8221; Howard went on to tell his friend, &#8220;Do you have people in your church? Well, if you\u2019ve got people, you\u2019ve got problems.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But Hendricks&#8217; primary impact on me was indirect. He and Ray Stedman were at Dallas Seminary together and became lifelong friends, hammering out together theological issues and, particularly, philosophy of ministry issues. Ray was my pastor at Peninsula Bible Church in Palo Alto at a particularly formative time, and one of the most influential pastors and preachers in my life. You can read about the relationship of Stedman and Hendricks at these links (<a title=\"Stedman bio ch 4\" href=\"http:\/\/www.raystedman.org\/about-ray-stedman\/equipped-for-every-good-work\" target=\"_blank\">first<\/a>, <a title=\"Stedman bio ch 5\" href=\"http:\/\/www.raystedman.org\/about-ray-stedman\/laying-a-foundation\" target=\"_blank\">second<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>So please join me in thanking God:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Father God, thank You for the faithful ministry of Howard Hendricks. Thank You that You take ordinary men and use them to accomplish extraordinary tasks. May Your work through him continue to multiply to Your glory, in Charlotte and throughout the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Howard Hendricks, for 60 years a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, is now with his beloved Lord, seeing Him face to face.\u00a0 As stated in this portrait at the Dallas&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}