Summer Recommendations!

I wanted to post a simple blog for recommended summer resources:

No! Mr.President

This is a repost of a blog from another church planter friend of mine:

I love the simple graphic added to the powerful message by John Piper. I pray you are convicted to pray for our president and our country. I also pray that your hope and trust is in a Sovereign God

Praying Scripture for the Glory of God!

I’m not a big liturgy guy, but I believe in praying the word of God for his glory and the good of his people. So to be transparent, I’m just gonna show you what I often pray over my me, my family, and my church

Puritians: Progressed to Death

As many of you know, Sarah and I just took a mini-vacation to Boston. I admit, we are history geeks, and that was the purpose of the vacation, plus I’ve always had this unexplainable heart and love for the North East, even though the furthest I’ve been has been NYC.  Sarah and I started our journey in Boston following the Freedom Trail which included lunch at the Union Oyster House, this was all followed by touring Rose Nichols’ House, Harvard, and Sam Adam’s Brewery. So the vacation in and of itself was great, but there is a problem when your a church planter and a lover of the big city. That problem is, when you go into a city, that you have a weird love for, you can’t look at the city as a tourist, but rather through apostolic eyes. Mix that with three different reads I had going on: The Open Secret, Christianities Dangerous Idea, and lastly in my layover in Chicago, an article that mentioned that as of 2007 and before the North West was the greatest mission field in the US, but as of 2008 the North East was now the greatest mission field in the US. All of this, plus God allowing your mind to perceive this city differently, through spiritual eyes, to see the spiritual emptiness or darkness that is very present…

Sanctification is like Walking a Dog…

Okay, not really, but I think I got a beautiful picture of what sanctification looks like.

The text says in Philippians 2:12, “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling…” Sanctification is the present work of the Holy Spirit, whereby the believer is progressively being set apart from sin, and re-characterized by the Holy Spirit through the Word, to make the child “fit” to be God’s own possession.

The Effect of the Gospel, Pt. 4

This week I want to address the truth that one of the manifestations of the Gospel in our lives is that we will have a heart for the poor and marginalized. Edwards addresses a several scriptures that seems to make our care of and concern for the poor the basis for God’s judgment on the Day of the Lord. Matt 25:34–46 teaches that people will be accepted or condemned by God on the last day depending on how they treated the hungry and homeless, the marginalized and stranger, the ill, and the broken. The quest that often arises from this passage is , “How is this possible if Paul teaches that we are accepted on Christ’s work alone, not on our works?”

The Effect of the Gospel, pt. 3

Believing the Gospel Will Move Us to Give the Poor:

Last time, in Gospel & Community, pt. 2, we took widsom from Johnathan Edwards. This week we are going to go ahead and begin with Edwards again. Edwards shows us how an understanding “the rules of the gospel” or the the pattern and logic of the gospel will in affect continually moves us to love and help the poor. Edwards believes that the command to give to the poor is an implication of the teaching that all human beings are made in the image of God, he believes that the most important motivation for giving the poor is the gospel: Giving to the poor “is especially reasonable, considering our circumstances, under such a dispensation of grace as that of the gospel.” One of the key texts used by Edwards to make this case is 2 Corinthians 8:8-9. When Paul asks for financial generosity to the poor, he points to the self-emptying of Jesus, describing him as becoming poor for us, both literally and spiritually, in the incarnation and on the cross.

The Effect of the Gospel, pt. 2

What is the Gospel?

Before we can talk about its effect, I think we need to begin to address what the Gospel is, and how it is to affect our ministry/life if we are to create a community around this very gospel that will also shape it.

So, first the gospel is the message of the entire Bible and centers on the person and work of Jesus Christ, and tells us that sin is an offense against God and that salvation from sin and to God and his mission is the work of God, not man or will. Once we get this basic foundation, we can then begin to understand that the gospel is passed on to us by Jesus’ disciples, not as some sort of advice or philosophy on how to find God, but rather good-news of what God has already done in history to save us. The realization of these two truths results in us wrestling with the truth that the Gospel must be and is transforming to us on a personal level as it must be personally relied upon, while at the same time it is for the transformation of every culture on earth. So in summary the gospel is the truth of our depravity, God’s response of love through the work and person of Jesus Christ in his birth, life, death, and resurrection. Second it is not a list of to-do’s but rather the exciting message that it is to be proclaimed, and third, just like any activist, when we fully believe in a message with all our heart and soul, it dramatically changes us, but also moves us to be activists of that message in our world!

The Effect of the Gospel, Pt. 1

I was asked a question last night that began a domino of thoughts. I was in the car with some relatives of mine. They were asking me about the church plant I am involved in. After my description of the church they said, “so you have a discipleship church not an evangelism church?” They were able to make that assumption because to them evangelism was tied to ‘light-cameras-action,’ and anything outside of the ‘impressive’ must be discipleship. I didn’t respond, I sat in silence, pondering to myself, “Did there have to be a difference?” “Does a church have to be one or the other?” “Didn’t Jesus tell his disciples to go into the cities without hardly anything?” Didn’t Jesus know it took big shows to ‘evangelize?’ Maybe that’s why he only ended up with 120 waiting in the upper room, Jesus just didn’t get it? But the scriptures tell us God’s power for salvation is the gospel. It doesn’t say if we make it unrecognizable and trick people that it can change people, it says, that the gospel is! Maybe this is why churches have really been on a decline. In Luke when the seed of the gospel is planted, when it is received in the right soil, it grows, and bears fruit. So if the gospel is the power salvation, rather than lights-camera-action, and it is the gospel that produces fruit in a life (discipleship), is it really possible that the two can be separated?

Being a Missional Person, pt. 8

A Missional Person, pt. 8

Today I write my last installment on what it means to be a missional person. Today it seems, ‘missional’ is really the big ‘it’ word. Infact you can’t really pick up a book today that has something to do with church planting or serving the marginalized in socieity that you won’t find the word ‘missional’. I am convinced that half the people, if not more, that use this new, cool, it word don’t have a clue what it means, it seems that if you look around, the life of missional doesn’t so much rest upon the person, mission, and words of Jesus but on the embroidered shirts, $100 jeans, and hair cuts that you a pay $150 a pop for. That bugs me, a lot, because the truth is, when we see the word, ‘missional’ attached to these hip-styles, a certain lingo, or a denomination, then missional becomes some exclusive club that can only be intered if you are rich enough, poor enough, educated enough, uneducated enough, can talk a certain way, dress a certain way, and some where along the way, we forget what the whole thing was supposed to be.