The Resurgence

11 Gospel-Centered Ways to Love Your City

Tim Gaydos — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Jesus calls us to “go and make disciples” and to love our city so that we might clearly communicate the gospel and see more people come to know him. But what does this look like practically? What does it mean to love our city? Here are 11 practical, gospel-centered ways you can love your city.

1. Reach out to “the least of these” in your city.

Who are the downtrodden, forgotten, or underserved people in your city? Start a mercy ministry to reach out to these groups. Create a transition plan for homeless people from shelters into community. Jesus tells us that whatever we do for the least of these, we do for him.

2. Get involved civically.

Set up a meeting with your mayor or city council members and find out specifically what your city needs. Then rally your church or Community Group to help meet those needs. Start attending your neighborhood association meetings and volunteering your time to make your city better.

3. Throw parties and invite your neighbors.

This could be anything from a get-together in your apartment to a full-scale neighborhood block party. The transient nature of many cities can lead to neighbors barely knowing one another. Sometimes all it takes is to initiate by invitation!

4. Take care of your city’s environment.

Pick a block or neighborhood and clean it up! Own it and take care of it. Organize a Green & Clean event to rally your church and keep your city sparkling.

5. Stay put.

Most cities have a sort of “revolving door” as people move in and out. This is one reason why in places like Seattle most people put little effort into trying to get to know their neighbors. So dig in, stay put, and make an effort to develop your relationships.

6. Give a gift of artistry.

Get your artists together and create a mural that blesses the city. Open your building to your city’s artwalk.

7. Be a positive presence, not a negative one.

Create a city or neighborhood blog that tells stories of hope and progress in your city. Focus on what’s working instead of complaining about what’s not working. Be a part of finding solutions to the problems your city faces.

8. Participate in and help plan and execute your city’s events and festivals.

Seriously, it’s ok to have fun. Enjoying your city and investing in its happiness is a great way to show you love it.

9. Start ministries that address your city’s specific felt or unseen needs.

Rescue girls out of slavery in sex trafficking. Connect your business people with a business ministry that helps them connect and share life together in a way they may not otherwise have the opportunity to.

10. Leaders are readers.

Get a newspaper subscription so that you can keep up with current events. Read up on your city’s history to understand how it started and what historical and cultural forces shaped it into the city it is today. Knowing your city’s past enables you to speak boldly to its context and mindset, because your city’s history shapes its present more than you can possibly imagine.

11. Pray for your city.

We can often forget that God really does listen to our prayers, and that he wants to hear from us. Not only does he hear us, but he acts. Pray that God would change your city. Pray that he would save its citizens. Pray that he would give wisdom to its leaders. Remember that your city’s well-being is your well-being.

This post originally appeared on the Mars Hill Church Downtown Seattle site.

Sex-Trafficking at the Super Bowl

Justin Holcomb — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

On February 5, 2012, over 100 million people will watch Super Bowl XLVI.

Few of them will know about the horrific crimes that will be committed during and around the event in Indianapolis.

The Super Bowl is the most-watched program on TV every year. But many people don’t know about its dark underside: the Super Bowl, like other large sporting events, is a magnet for sex trafficking and child prostitution. It is possibly the largest sex trafficking event in the US. As more than 100,000 football fans descend on Indianapolis, sex traffickers and pimps will also arrive in droves to take advantage of the demand. The event is actually near the Detroit-Toledo corridor, which has one of the highest incidences of trafficking in the country.

What Is Human Trafficking?

Human trafficking is modern-day slavery and the fastest-growing criminal industry in the world. It is the recruitment, transportation, harboring, or taking of people by means of threat, force, coercion, abduction, fraud, or deception for the purpose of exploiting them.

The United Nations estimates that 2.5 million people are trafficked annually. The U.S. State Department estimates an even higher number: about 12.3 million adults and children "in forced labor, bonded labor, and forced prostitution around the world." It deprives people of their human rights and freedoms, it is a global health risk, and it fuels organized crime. Victims of trafficking are forced or coerced into labor or sexual exploitation. Sex trafficking is one of the most profitable forms of trafficking and involves many kinds of sexual exploitation, such as prostitution, pornography, bride trafficking, and the commercial sexual abuse of children. According to the United Nations, sex trafficking brings in an estimated $32 billion a year worldwide. In the U.S., sex trafficking brings in $9.5 billion annually.

Trafficking in the United States

The United States is a destination country for international trafficking: foreign women and children are transported into the United States for purposes of sexual and labor exploitation. The U.S. State Department estimates that approximately eighteen thousand foreign nationals are trafficked annually into the United States.

Victims are brought to the United States from Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Africa. Most women and children brought to the United States find themselves forced to work in massage parlors, commercial or residential brothels, escort services, and strip clubs.

Sex trafficking also happens to United States citizens residing within U.S. borders. The Department of Justice estimates that more than 250,000 American children are at risk for trafficking into the sex industry annually. The average age of girls who enter into street prostitution is between 12 and 14 years old.

Traffickers coerce women and children to enter the commercial sex industry through a variety of recruitment techniques in strip clubs, street-based prostitution, and escort services.

From Victim to Slave

Domestic sex traffickers particularly target vulnerable young girls, such as runaway, homeless, and foster care children. In the United States, the average age of entry into prostitution is 13. Incest and other forms of abuse often drive children to run away from home, making them vulnerable to the slick tactics of sex traffickers.

The pimp seduces a recruit with the lure of love, protection, wealth, designer clothes, fancy cars, and exclusive nightclubs. Pimps move from city to city looking for children and young women who are easy prey, those who are alone, desperate, and alienated. Once a pimp moves a victim from her hometown into a strange city, the pimp can easily force her to work as a prostitute. Thousands of children and women are victimized in this way every year.

Super Bowl

Large sporting events like the Super Bowl are prime targets for sex traffickers because of the high demand generated by thousands of men pouring into an area for a weekend of fun. The 2010 Super Bowl saw an estimated 10,000 sex workers brought into Miami. Despite efforts to crack down on sex trafficking at the 2011 Super Bowl in Dallas, there was still a tremendous number of women and children sexually exploited. In the past, attempted crackdowns by law enforcement have misfired by treating prostitutes as criminals to be locked up rather than victims to be rescued, but new efforts are gaining traction: a bill moving through the Indiana legislature aims to toughen the state’s sex-trafficking law before the Super Bowl.

Human trafficking Is an Attack on God

Human trafficking is a sin against the victim and a sin against God. Evil is anti-creation, anti-life, and the force that seeks to oppose, deface, and destroy God, his good world, and his image bearers. Simply put, when someone defaces a human being—God’s image bearer—it is ultimately an attack against God himself.

The victim’s experience of trafficking is not ignored by God or minimized by the Bible, and it is not outside of the scope of healing and hope found in redemption. God’s response to evil and violence is redemption, renewal, and re-creation because of the gospel of Christ. And that should be the church’s message.

Christians and churches need to be awakened to the modern-day slavery occurring in our cities. Convinced of the problem? Here are some practical ways you can make a difference:

6 Ways You Can Fight Human Trafficking

Get informed and inform others. A recommended reading list can be found here.
Read Rid of My Disgrace to learn about the effects of sexual assault and sex trafficking and the hope and healing for victims found in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
Support organizations fighting trafficking:

Get involved
Be an informed consumer
Join a local or state anti-trafficking group

Justin Holcomb is a pastor at Mars Hill Church, the Executive Director of the Resurgence, and the co-author with his wife, Lindsey, of Rid of My Disgrace: Hope and Healing for Victims of Sexual Assault. He and Lindsey started Mosaic, a non-profit that serves those suffering in Sudan and Uganda. Justin also serves on the board of REST (Real Escape from the Sex Trade).

Do You Want to Make a Point or Make a Difference?

Mark Driscoll — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:00:00 -0800

This content is for those that have signed up for Leadership Coaching with Pastor Mark.
Please sign in at http://theresurgence.com/.

What Does God Think about Productivity and Project Management?

Mike Anderson — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Our faith leads us to good works, according to the book of James.

The Bible has a bit of wisdom for us as we set off on the various works that God has given us. You might have a vision for taking on a huge calling like making a big financial decision for your family, planting a church, starting a new ministry, or even taking on a big project at your job. Each of these things is a project, and Jesus has some wisdom to give us about approaching big tasks.

Project (n): a set of tasks that will lead to a desired result

Make no mistake—God calls his people to work hard and work smart to steward the gifts he's given. The book of Proverbs is clear that wisdom is essential to any Christian, so let's see what wisdom God has for us regarding project management.

Start by planning

Prepare your work outside; get everything ready for yourself in the field, and after that build your house.” Proverbs 24:27

Imagine you're going to build a house. You head to the hardware store, buy some wood and nails and cement, and just start nailing. Are you going to build a house like that? Probably not.

If you were wise, you'd start with drawing blueprints, running them by an engineer, creating a budget, and ordering the right amount of wood, nails, and cement. Jesus actually references a set of questions that you should ask yourself when starting work on a big project.

What does Jesus say about work?

Jesus is telling the disciples that discipleship is hard work and it's going to take everything they've got. He actually uses the project management of a tower and of rallying an army as examples. Jesus thinks that good project management is so obvious that he can use it as an illustration—which is awesome.

For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him." Luke 14:28–29

Now scope it out

Before starting any big project you need to decide what you want the outcome to be. If it were a tower, then you'd think about things like the height, square-footage, and environmental factors. If you were going to start a ministry you'd think about the number of volunteers, amount of space, and method of communicating to the people.

Scope is just one of the things that are required in order for your project to be successful.

An example of scope is the new marshill.com that we recently developed. We said that it had to:

work on mobile devices and large screens
be clean and easy to navigate
focus on connecting people to Jesus, Sunday services, and Community Groups
allow people to watch sermons easily
give people an easy way to donate
provide an easy way for users to see what's new

What are you trying to do and what needs to happen to make it work?

Count the cost

Before starting any project you've got know what it's going to cost. How much money will be required to pull it off?

The best kinds of projects are the ones that are successful, the second best are the kinds that never start. Figuring out if you have (or can get) enough resources to finish the project is essential to the project’s success.

How much will it cost to do what you're trying to do? Can you get that money?

Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace." Luke 14:31–32

Labor costs

In addition to money, you've got to ask if you have enough people to take on the task. Money can help bring on more people, but you can also bring on people by pitching a winsome and compelling vision and asking them to volunteer.

Do you have the people to take on the task?

All in good time

This king has a timeline he's working against—an army is marching right toward him. He's got to ask himself if he has the time to pull off a victory with the resources he has.

Do you have enough time to reasonably accomplish the task?

. . . also that everyone should . . . take pleasure in all his toil—this is God's gift to man.” Ecclesiastes 3:13

We want to see Jesus-loving men and women working hard. We're going to be adding more content that equips you to take on the calling God's given you. We want to see thousands of churches planted, ministries started, and great businesses built to help fuel the spread of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

For more discussion on management and productivity, check out Mike’s blog.

10 Ways to Love Your Kids

Rachel Jankovic — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

1) Eagerly, humbly submit to the Word of God.

When you sin in front of your children, confess it. When you assert your authority over them, your children should clearly see the authority that you are submitting to. Your submission to God is your qualification to teach them. Let them see it, and they will know that you aren’t a petty tyrant.

2) Don’t pigeonhole your children.

Seemingly harmless things like calling your children “the artistic one,” “the athletic one,” or “the loving one” can make your children feel like their value to you is tied up in one characteristic. It can further invite sibling rivalry and resentments. Moreover, sets you up to stop trying to learn about them, as you begin to interpret everything through that expectation and sets them up to think that that's the only part of them you appreciate.

3) Discipline biblically.

When you discipline, make sure it has a biblical category. A godly parent can't discipline for “being annoying,” “making a mess,” or “squirming.” Instead, look to correct disobeying, lying, or something that you can support with Scripture, Proverbs and Ephesians in particular. If there isn’t a biblical principle and name behind it, don’t discipline for it.

4) Set clear expectations.

Explain to your children in advance what you expect from them and what they can expect from you. Make sure they understand. This will greatly aid you in #3, as well as giving them the security of knowing what you want.

5) Recognize obedience.

Talk to your children when you aren’t correcting them. Talk about the things they do right. Tell them about specific things that you love about them. Let them know that you know them, that you think of them, and that you enjoy them.

6) Listen to the whole story first.

With little kids you actually might have to take some time to get the story out. Don’t try to hustle past your children in an effort to quickly discipline them. The discipline is for their benefit, not yours. Make sure that they understand and that they know you are interacting with them.

7) Honor your spouse in front of them.

Show love to each other in front of your children. Don't be short, snarky, or snide with each other in their presence (or out of it for that matter). Children need to see Mom and Dad as one. Parents in fellowship with each other is one of the most basic elements for a secure home.

8) Don’t change your behavior toward your children in public.

Don’t correct them for things just because someone is watching. Security for a child means knowing that their parent is for them, and that when one of them corrects the child, it is for his or her benefit, and not so that others will think the parents have it all together.

9) Don’t take your children’s sins as a personal insult.

Never discipline with a break in fellowship. Don’t be “mad” at your children. Be anxious to have things reconciled.

10) Forgive. For real.

If breaking the window has been forgiven, act like it. Forget it. Do not hold past incidents over your children, especially if you've told them you've forgiven them. Let it go all the way, every time, “as far as the east is from the west” (Psalm 103:12).

When a Small Church Staff Is Better

Craig Groeschel — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:00:00 -0800

Most church leaders believe that if they had more staff members, they could get more done.

While that’s occasionally true, it’s often not.

I’ve found that a smaller staff is often better than a larger one.

Based on my experience, when LifeChurch (or a specific campus or team) is slightly overstaffed, forward progress generally slows. When we are slightly understaffed, we usually take more ground.

Here are my theories on why smaller is often better when it comes to staff:

When you have more staff members, the roles are often clearly defined and can lead to “that’s not my job” mindsets. Smaller staff teams are forced to work together and innovate creating unity and a spirit of collaboration.
Bigger staffs take more time and energy to manage. Smaller staffs move quickly.
When more money goes to pay staff, less money goes to expand the ministry.
When more people are paid, it’s easier to stop building volunteer leaders, which eventually weakens the foundation of the church.
A larger team might unconsciously not work as hard as they would otherwise.

Obviously there are exceptions and being grossly understaffed for a long period of time is not healthy.

Still, given the choice between slightly more than we need and slightly less than (we think) we need, I’m choosing the leaner staff every time.

Craig Groeschel is the founding and senior pastor of LifeChurch.tv. This post is adapted from his post on the church's blog, Swerve.

A Father’s Covenant

Hilary Tompkins — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

“I want my children to know that when they call, their father will answer.”

It took years for our children to sleep through the night. We had many conversations about letting them “cry it out.” It was during one of these discussions that my husband said these words. He made a covenant with our children: he would come when they called.

Did our children agree and concur? No, they were babies. Did they sign on the dotted line, accept the terms of the covenant, and agree to call at a certain decibel level, confirming that they could count on his answer under specific circumstances? Did they suggest a liability clause should he not answer? Of course not. They were helpless children, confined to their cribs, unable to hold him to his promise.

They only knew experientially that their father answered their frantic midnight calls—and every other call, too. They expected it, trusted it, and counted on his faithful response to their need. They even took it for granted. When we shut the door of their rooms at night, they knew that when they called that door would open and their daddy would walk through it. Nothing they did could change this—he would keep his covenant with them.

Our heavenly Father is a covenant-keeping God.

In Genesis 6, he initiates a covenant with Noah. “I will establish my covenant with you.” (v. 18) He gave Noah specific instructions about ark building and occupancy and then “the Lord shut him in.” (7:16)

In Genesis 9, the word covenant is used seven times, each time God is saying some version of “this is my covenant with you, Noah, and here’s how I’m going to uphold it.” Not once does Noah say, “So, what about that covenant?” He doesn’t have to—God keeps reminding him in both word and deed, giving a rainbow as a beautiful reminder.

But God doesn’t stop there: he makes a covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and with Israel and his children. The entire Old Testament is his-story of relationship with his covenant people. He comes when they call, over and over again. He sticks around, even when they reject him.

In Jesus, he makes a new covenant with you and me. Jesus is the guarantor of a better covenant. (Hebrews 7:22, 9:15) It’s sealed in his blood and had nothing to do with our good works.

We’re saved this way, says Titus 3:4–7:

· According to God’s mercy

· By the washing of regeneration

· By the renewal of the Holy Spirit who is poured out on us through Jesus

· We are justified by grace

· We’re made heirs

· We’re given hope of eternal life

Yep, pretty sure that there’s nothing on that list that I do.

In the same way our children couldn’t change the covenant their daddy initiated with them, we can’t add to or take away from the covenant God makes with us. It’s not our covenant to break.

We can’t take a pair of scissors and cut the rope that binds us to him in covenant love and commitment. We can’t tie ourselves back on because we were never able to remove ourselves in the first place. When you’re tempted to believe you’re that powerful, remember the baby in the crib, calling out in the night and waiting for Dad to answer.

God’s covenant with us is his to keep and uphold—this is our hope.

So let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful (Hebrews 10:23) to hear your call and answer like the covenant-keeping Father he is.

Hilary Tompkins is the director of women’s ministry at Mars Hill Church. Her husband, Steve, is the lead pastor of Mars Hill Shoreline.

“These Are Your Grandbabies!”

Bob Kellemen — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Sister Ellen Barney is the first lady (i.e. senior pastor’s wife) of a predominantly African-American megachurch near Baltimore, Maryland. For over a decade she has equipped over 1,000 women in her Life Encouragers and Disciplers ministry.

They do it up big! Their graduation ceremonies are better than many colleges. I remember the first time Sister Ellen invited me to be their commencement speaker. As she introduced me, she looked over the crowd of over 50 graduates, looked at me, and said, “These are your grandbabies, Dr. Kellemen! You trained me, and I trained them!” Now, years later, as Sister Ellen has trained trainers who train others, she tells me, “Dr. Kellemen, these are your great-great-grandbabies!”

The Ministry Mindset Shift That Changes Everything

Do you want to be a spiritual grandparent, someone who disciples disciple makers? It requires a ministry mindset shift implanted by the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 4:11–16.

“And he gave . . . the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.” Ephesians 4:11–12

Christ’s grand plan for his church is for pastors/teachers to focus on equipping every member to do the work of the ministry. In the context of Ephesians 4:11–16, that work is nothing less than making disciple makers through the personal ministry of the Word.

When leaders and members fulfill their purposes together the body of Christ builds itself up in two specific, cohesive ways: doctrinal unity and spiritual maturity (Ephesians 4:12–13). When a congregation knows the truth not just academically, but personally, their love abounds in knowledge and depth of insight (Philippians 1:9–11).

Speaking the Truth in Love

We often miss the vital real-life, how-to application of the every-member-making-disciples idea that Paul embeds in Ephesians 4. How does the church come to unity and maturity? Exactly what are pastors equipping people to do? Specifically how do members do the work of the ministry?

Paul answers: by “speaking the truth in love,” we grow up in Christ (Ephesians 4:15). Every word in this passage funnels toward this remarkable phrase “speaking the truth in love.”

Christ’s grand plan for his church is for every member to be a disciple maker by speaking and living gospel truth to one another in love.

Paul selects an unusual Greek word, alētheuontes, that we often translate as “speaking the truth.” Actually, we should translate it both as speaking and living the truth. We might even coin the phrase “truthing.”

Paul likely had Psalm 15 in mind where the psalmist asks the Lord, “Who shall dwell on your holy hill?” He answers (emphasis, mine): “He who walks blamelessly and does what is right and speaks truth in his heart” (Psalm 15:2). Who can serve in God’s sanctuary, the church—the one who embodies the truth in relationships.

The word for “truthing” that Paul uses means transparent, truthfulness, genuine, authentic, reliable, sincere. It describes the person who ministers from a heart of integrity and Christ-like, grace-oriented love. It paints a picture of the person whose relational style is transparent and trustworthy.

The tense and context indicate that the body of Christ should continually, actively, and collectively be embodying truth in love as it walks together in intimate, vulnerable connection. In one word, Paul combines content, character, and competence shared in community (cf. Romans 15:14).

While the word means more than speaking, it does not mean less than speaking. While it means more than sheer factual content, it does not mean less than the gospel fully applied.

Paul uses the identical word in Galatians 4:16. There he is clearly speaking of preaching, teaching, and communicating the truth of the gospel of Christ’s grace (salvation) applied to daily growth in Christ (progressive sanctification).

Every Christian Makes Disciples

Combine Galatians 4:16 with Ephesians 4:16, both in context, and we find an amazing description of gospel-centered biblical counseling, the personal ministry of the Word. Speaking the truth in love involves communicating gospel truth about grace-focused sanctification in word, thought, and action through one-another relationships that have integrity, genuineness, authenticity, transparency, and reliability, done in love to promote the unity and maturity of the body of Christ for the ultimate purpose of displaying the glory of Christ’s grace.

The normal agenda and priority of every Christian is to make disciple makers. Christ’s training strategy for disciple-making involves pastors and teachers equipping every member to embody the truth in love through the personal ministry of the Word (biblical counseling).

What happens when leaders focus their calling on equipping God’s people to make disciple makers through the personal ministry of the Word by speaking and living the truth in love? Paul shows us in Ephesians 4:16: the body in robust health grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work. In other words, we birth spiritual grandbabies.

This post was adapted from material in Dr. Kellemen’s book, Equipping Counselors for Your Church.

4 Quick Questions about Studying the Bible

Justin Holcomb — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Bible Study Magazine: What is your personal Bible study method?

Justin Holcomb: I prefer to go through the books consecutively, which helps me focus on the message of each book. Reading book by book helps me understand how the text fits together. This way, I’m able to follow the Bible’s themes and ideas from beginning to end. I also don’t want to overlook details. Reading one book at a time helps me get into the texture of each passage and helps me locate themes that repeat.

BSM: What is your approach to reading the Bible?

JH: I think the big idea is: What is the Bible? Is it a to-do manual? Is it just a classic text? Do we read it so that we can find a few commands that we should follow, or is it saying something else?

Since I think the big idea of the Bible is “God saves sinners,” that is the theme I’m generally looking for. When I teach the Bible, I want people to be looking for what God has said about Himself, while also being fully aware of who we are or can be: redeemed sinners.

BSM: How did you teach chaplains in Sudan to study the Bible?

JH: In Sudan, we taught army chaplains who served without weapons on the front lines. They ministered to the southern army, northern prisoners of war and Sudanese civilians. In this instance, biblical literacy was our main concern. After visiting Sudan for the first time, I realized that these chaplains loved Jesus and they loved the Bible—but they didn’t have Bible training or resources, so they didn’t know it that well.

We went through the entire Bible and taught them how it all hangs together—dates, biblical writers, basic structure. They had such an eagerness to learn.

BSM: Currently, you’re teaching the Bible in several different contexts. What is your role at Mars Hill Church and at Reformed Theological Seminary?

JH: At Mars Hill, I am involved in leadership and ministry development. I help pastors develop sermons through preaching labs. I want to make sure our pastors are teaching with their eyes fixed on holiness and the grace of God. I have them ask themselves: Am I giving each person the good message of “repent and believe the gospel,” or am I giving them heaving burdens that they can’t carry?

With my seminary students, I focus on a “gospel-centered” hermeneutic. I want them to see the weight of the holiness of God and the response of repentance. I want them to understand their continual dependence on the grace of God and the message of the Bible, both for themselves and for the people they’re going to be leading and evangelizing.

Justin Holcomb is featured in the current January/February 2012 issue of Bible Study Magazine. This Q&A is available on their site where he talks with the magazine about studying the Bible and equipping leaders.

Sex, Marriage, & Fairytales

Resurgence — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:00:00 -0800

We posted a video from Jeff Bethke a couple weeks ago, and we wanted to follow up with this one as he addresses many of the ideas behind Pastor Mark and Grace Driscoll's book, Real Marriage. Here's the inspiration behind this Spoken Word.

For more on marriage check out Real Marriage by Pastor Mark and Grace along with the Real Marriage Tour

Owning vs. Renting Your Community

Brad House — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:00:00 -0800

"It’s a rental."

It was a perfect day for the beach, and my new bride and I had the top down in a fun but gutless Mustang. We had left the main track miles ago and were tearing down a dirt road riddled with potholes. My faith in the directions our host had given us was waning, but I was still having a good time. There was a sign saying something about four-wheel drive a few clicks back, but I didn’t bother getting the details. My wife began to get nervous about our adventure and asked if we should be taking a Mustang on a road like this. Without hesitation, I uttered those three little words that put our minds at ease and that have been used by most of us at one time or another to justify the reckless disregard for vehicle degradation: “It’s a rental.”

It’s amazing how differently we treat things that we own versus those that we rent. Ownership gives us a sense of responsibility and care. It is ours and in some way it reflects who we are, so we take care of it.

If We Own It, We Treat It Well

For several years I drove an old Buick Park Avenue that my wife and I had bought from her grandfather. It was hot beige with beige interior. Not exactly the ride of choice for a young man, but it was mine. It was not nearly as nice as the gutless Mustang we rented on our honeymoon, yet I treated it much better. My treatment of a car reflects my level of ownership more than it reflects the value of the car itself.

In the same way, when it comes to the mission of the church, our responses reflect our ownership more than any other aspect of the mission.

Our churches may have a clear, innovative, Holy Spirit-inspired vision for how God is calling us to proclaim his kingdom (Luke 9:60), but if we collectively have no ownership of that mission, we will be hard pressed to achieve anything. God is not limited in accomplishing his plans by our lack of ownership, but he has chosen, for his glory and our joy, to employ us in his work, and I don’t want to miss out on that.

If We Own It, We Become Passionate

Now, if owning a car makes you more careful when driving it, owning an idea makes you more passionate when sharing it. To test this theory, go to your favorite coffee shop or pancake house and offer your opinion on the most recent presidential election. You will soon discover who owns the vision and ideologies that each candidate represented. You will also get a pretty clear idea who was not impressed with either candidate, at least not to the point of owning their ideals.

The folks who own the vision of their candidate can articulate it well and are intent on convincing others of the merits of their position. They may have attended rallies and bought bumper stickers and undoubtedly had a lawn sign. Ownership and passion for those ideals drove them to live differently, to join the cause. Those who did not own the vision of any particular candidate will most likely finish quietly eating their pancakes. They couldn’t care less and probably will not have a strong opinion until they are personally affected, in a positive or negative manner, by those ideas. They don’t own them and therefore have no passion for them.

Do You Own the Mission?

The same principle applies to your ownership of the mission within the church. Ownership inspires passion and leads to action. Yet, for the Christian ownership does not come from believing in a good idea but from faith in the good news. Our ability to own comes from the fact that we are owned by Christ (Ephesians 1:13–14). We inherit ownership from our Father.

We don’t need to manufacture ownership as much as we need to awaken the church to the reality that this is our mission.

It is already ours; we need only to exercise that ownership.

So what is the mission of your church? Can you articulate it? Does it instill passion in you that causes you to live your life differently? How about the rest of your church? Do your church members display passion and ownership of the mission or do they just finish their pancakes?

Tweets:

We treat a car we own with a lot more care than we do a rental. Are you renting or owning your church’s mission?
Ownership inspires passion, which leads to action. #community
God has chosen, for his glory and our joy, to employ us in his work. Don’t miss out on that. #community

Adapted from Community: Taking Your Small Groups Off Life Support.

How the Trinity Relates to Marriage

Bruce Ware — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Three persons in one God may seem like a metaphysical head-scratcher, but far from being an esoteric theological concept, the relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit has numerous implications to daily life since we are each made in God's image. This lecture by Southern Seminary professor Dr. Bruce Ware, given at Mars Hill West Seattle, looks at how the Trinity applies to marriage specifically.

For more on marriage, check out Pastor Mark's and Grace Driscoll latest book Real Marriage

Naturalism, Knowledge, and History

Justin Holcomb — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 12:00:00 -0800

Naturalism, the philosophical worldview that everything arises from nature and nothing exists beyond it, meaning there’s no such thing as the spiritual realm. However, this view ultimately leaves one with no justification for trusting one’s own rational faculties, and in so doing, erodes its own credentials. Ronald Nash argues that Naturalism cannot support the common assumption that human rationality corresponds to the objective world:

Naturalism gives us no reason at all to suppose that our reasoning is valid. Only conscious minds can have plans or purposes, so [given Naturalism] there is no plan or purpose that will ensure that our reasoning will attain truth. Forces that are without our mind might happen to give us powers of valid reasoning, but they equally might happen to give us defective or invalid reasoning powers. And there is no reason to suppose that they would give us powers of valid reasoning rather than defective powers. . . . . If I pose a mathematical problem and throw some dice, the dice may happen to fall into a pattern which gives the answer to my problem. But there is no reason to suppose that they will. Now in the Chance view, all our thoughts are the result of processes as random as a throw of dice. In the Determinist view, all our thoughts result from processes that have as little relation to our minds as the growth of a tree. . . .

Naturalism’s major problem, then, is explaining how mindless forces give rise to minds, knowledge, and sound reasoning. But every Naturalist wants others to think that his Naturalism is a consequence of his sound reasoning. (pp. 258–259)

Naturalism is self-referentially absurd and is unable to make sense of rationality, a necessary precondition for conducting historical inquiry.

Naturalism Can’t Provide Reliable Historical Knowledge

Naturalism is unable to make sense of any of the epistemological ingredients essential for historical knowledge. Two of those ingredients—the uniformity of nature and the principle of induction—illustrate the point.

Historical inquiry would prove impossible if one were forbidden to assume that nature remains uniform over time and that one may accurately induce a generalization about an entire class of objects from a relatively small set, provided one exercises due caution in so extrapolating. Historians do so when they assume that evidence from the past can accurately reflect it to our minds under present conditions.

They further assume—and must assume in order to do history—that humans share a common nature, that time runs in one direction only, and that the objective world is both real and intelligible.

Yet, given a Naturalistic world-view, one cannot give an account for such necessary assumptions. Why should time not run in cycles in a dynamic world, as many ancients supposed? What warrants the assumption that universals permeate the universe in a materialistic evolving cosmos? What guarantee is there that the past resembles the future, or that the present is analogous to the past, and why does the flowing evolutionary process not destroy such an analogy? Why should historical investigation even have value, as something more than a waste of time? Ultimately, the Naturalist cannot provide a coherent answer to these questions. The Naturalistic worldview lacks explanatory power. Moreover, it cannot provide an internally coherent account for the things one needs to conduct any sort of intelligible activity.

Theism Explains What Naturalism Can’t

A theist, however, can. The theist can account for the validity of induction by acknowledging the universals built into the cosmos by the Creator. The theist can also account for the belief that the future will resemble the past because the Sustainer is faithful and does not change (Malachi 3:6, Hebrews 13:8). The theistic worldview offers a ready explanandum for the intelligibility of human experience. I. Howard Marshall notes the arbitrary character of historical investigation on the Naturalistic view (emphasis, mine):

. . . all historical study involves elements of imagination and faith in that the historian, possessed of only partial and sometimes enigmatic evidence, has to exercise a measure of faith in the reliability of the evidence, the validity of historical study, and the possibility of constructing a model which will account satisfactorily for the evidence. Unless the historian is prepared to take some leaps in the dark, he will not be able to make any progress at all.

The final refutation of a Naturalistic view of history, then, derives from the fact that, without the theistic worldview (as opposed to the Naturalistic worldview), one cannot make sense of the necessary preconditions for the historical knowledge of anything.

7 Things That Worship Is

Perry Noble — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

1. Repentance

Where there is no repentance, there may be an emotional experience, but it’s not worship! Worship does not become worship until it changes the way we live!

2. Intellectual

We are called to worship the Lord with our minds by renewing them and fixing them on him. (Colossians 3:1–2)

3. Intentional

No one accidentally follows Christ. If we are going to worship him, it will be done purposefully!

4. Relational

Worship affects every relationship we have. It is impossible to be a fully devoted worshiper of Christ while being a jerk to your wife or trying to take advantage of the opposite sex.

5. Financial

Until following Christ has affected our finances in a sacrificial way, chances are, we are not followers of Christ with our whole heart. Would you like to see the primary object of your worship? Look at how you spend your money, “for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21).

6. Unconditional

Worship is consistent, 24/7, not situational or just when I feel good or God is giving me all that I want. If we worship only when things are good then we do not worship God, we worship a genie!

7. Emotional

Worship is overwhelming when we realize that Jesus has rescued us while we were deeply entrenched in sin, when we realize how helpless we are and how incredible he is. (The reality of Romans 5:8 blows me away!)

Adapted from Perry Noble’s blog.

This Entire Thing Has Nothing to Do with Pastor Tullian

Tullian Tchividjian — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:00:00 -0800

ReLit Manager and Mars Hill Pastor Matt Johnson had the opportunity to talk with Tullian Tchividjian about his new book, Jesus + Nothing = Everything. We didn’t want you to miss anything in this great interview, so we’ve broken it down into three posts.

In the first post, Matt talked with Tullian about the challenges he faced in 2009 that sparked his book. Below is the second installment in which Pastor Tullian talks about idolatry, brokenness, and how he has no reputation to protect.

Idols Aren’t (Just) Wooden Statues

Matt: You know one of the things that really stood out to me as you were talking is this concept of idolatry. In our own contemporary times, how do you bridge that conceptually? And what were the things that you would term as idolatry in your own life during that time? What did God reveal to you?

Tullian: Often when we think of idols we think of wooden statues that people in far off lands bow down to. Yet the Bible makes it really clear that an idol is anything you are depending on other than Jesus to make your life worth living.

In the crucible of pain and suffering, idols were being revealed to me. God was showing me all of the things I was trusting in to make me feel important and secure and to make me feel like I mattered. He pried my hands open and forced me to let go of the things I didn’t even realize I was depending on. And it was during that time that I really thought I can’t take anymore.

How do I forgive these people? How do I go through life without being bitter and vengeful?

My best friend, my closest confidante and adviser, my dad, is dying in a hospital, the church seems to be falling apart, people are out to get me . . . everything just seemed in complete disarray. I didn’t know what was right, what was wrong, what was true, what was false. Rumors were going out like crazy, things were being said about me that weren’t true. People were knowingly believing and spreading lies and not caring, and I had never experienced anything like that from Christians and certainly anything like that from inside the church. So I was just being left to thresh. God was breaking my legs and stripping me down to what seemed like nothing. As I say in the book, it’s only when you come to the end of yourself that you come to the beginning of God’s amazing grace. And when we look back over the course of our lives, it is during those very times when we are absolutely at the end of ourselves that God teaches us grace.

One of the things I had to deal with during the aftermath was how do I forgive these people? How do I go through life without being bitter and vengeful?

It’s only when you come to terms with your own sin and your own brokenness that God can give you the kind of compassion that you need for people who sin against you.

After six months they called for a congregational meeting to have me removed and when that failed, they left the church. It has been a little over two years now and they’ve since started their own church. In a sense, a lot of the problems at the church ended when they left. We started to heal and we started to rebuild and since that time God has launched a gospel riot, and we’re just riding the wave and having a blast. But in the aftermath, I had ask, “how do I deal with the desire to not go out and get these people?” (laughs) I mean, how do I deal with the hurt and how do I deal with my children who saw Christians behaving badly and how do I comfort my wife who doesn’t want to be a pastor’s wife anymore? I was dealing with all of those things afterwards, and the gospel visited me then too.

It’s only when you come to terms with your own sin and your own brokenness that God can give you the kind of compassion that you need for people who sin against you. During those times, God teaches you that anything that has been done to you or is said about you is nothing greater than anything you have done or said about others. God’s law crushed me, and it was God’s gospel that was rebuilding me. So I came to a much greater sense of my own sin and need. My own fallen-ness and brokenness and Christ’s sufficiency and his cleansing blood which covers all of my mistakes and all of my bad motives.

I wanted the whole church to know how the gospel saved me 18 years after I became a Christian.

What I tell people all the time is Christian people need to hear much more about what Christ has already done than what they need to do. And what we discover, and what I discovered during that time, was you actually do and love more, not when you’re told to do and told to love, but when you come to greater grips with what Christ has done for you and the unconditional love he bestowed on you. When that really grips your heart, forgiveness and compassion and sympathy and all of those things begin to show up in your life.

It’s like C.S. Lewis said, “you never find first things by pursuing things secondary, and you always get the good stuff when you pursue Jesus.” Peter only began to sink when he took his eyes off of Jesus to look down on the water and see how he was performing (Matthew 14:29–30). So I was just radically gripped by Christ’s finished work for me. And that really became the impetus for the book. I felt like I wanted the whole church to know what happened to me and how the gospel saved me 18 years after I became a Christian. And how the ongoing now power of the gospel is the only thing that can sustain us.

The Power of the Gospel Is Now

Matt: Yeah, I love that. It’s just getting back to the basics of gospel centrality and that phrase you use, “now power of the gospel,” what do you mean by that?

Tullian: I mean what Christ accomplished for us with his life by his death and his resurrection is powerful in my life now. When a lot of people think about the gospel, they think once God saves us, he moves us beyond the gospel and moves us into deeper theological territory. Yet the Bible makes it clear that God never moves us beyond the gospel. After he saves us, he moves us more deeply into the gospel and we never move beyond that. I don’t care how long you’ve been a Christian, you never move beyond your daily need for Christ’s finished work on your behalf.

All theology is simply an outworking of the gospel in our daily lives.

The challenge of the Christian life becomes, “How do I connect what Christ has already accomplished for me in the context of conflict, frustration, anger, temptation? How does Christ’s finished work empower me now to say no to the things that God hates and to say yes to the things that God loves? Where does the power come from to be sustained in the moment?” It comes from what Christ has accomplished for us.

All theology is simply an outworking of the gospel in our daily lives. So when I talk about the now power of the gospel, that’s what I mean. I’m talking about how the gospel and Christ’s finished work, in particular, impact the way I live. Impact my relationships. Impact me as a father dealing with my teenagers. Impact me as a husband dealing with my wife, a leader dealing with my staff, and a pastor dealing with his congregants.

You Are Free to Live the Christian Life

Matt: Yes. It seems like it’s less an issue of, “Here are the steps I need to do to be a good Christian and keep my nose clean,” but when you’re captured by the beauty of the gospel and what Jesus has accomplished, you’re actually freer to live out the Christian life rather than being tied down and having fear of other people or whatever.

Tullian: Exactly. I think when most people think about Christian growth or what it means to progress in the Christian life—they would never say it this way—but the implication is we needed Jesus a lot for justification and we need him less for sanctification.

Christian growth, the way many people think about it, is we are becoming stronger and stronger, we’re becoming more and more competent, and yet the Bible makes it pretty clear, certainly Paul does, when he says he’s accomplished more than any of us could ever do for Jesus, and yet at the end of his life he says, “I’m the worst guy I know” (1 Corinthians 15:9). This signals to me that Christian growth and progress in the Christian life is not, I’m becoming stronger and stronger, it’s I’m becoming more aware of just how weak I am.

I am free—absolutely free—to say from the rooftops I am the worst guy I know, Jesus paid it all,” says Paul.

It’s not that I’m becoming more and more competent, it’s that I’m growing in my realization of how incompetent, how dependent I am on Christ. He stood condemned in my place and sealed my pardon with his blood. Hallelujah! What a Savior! The Christian life is not about my transformation; it’s about Christ’s substitution. He did for me what I could never do for myself, and that’s why Paul was so free at the end of his life to say, “I’m the worst guy I know! And it’s okay for me to tell you that because, in Christ, I have no reputation to protect. I don’t need to pretend. I don’t need to put on masks and make you think that I’m something I’m not. I am free—absolutely free—to say from the rooftops I am the worst guy I know, Jesus paid it all.”

I already possess everything in him. It’s about him; he’s the hero of the story, I’m not. This entire thing has nothing to do with me and it has everything to do with him. And when we rest in that, our hearts are gripped by it and our lives are totally changed and transformed because we’re no longer thinking about our transformation—we’re thinking about Christ’s substitution.

The How and Why of Worship

Donald Zimmerman — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Any healthy forest has trees of different sizes.

Seedlings from decades past eventually grow tall and help the legacy of the forest live on by dispersing seeds of their own. If the distribution of new life stops, the forest has begun to die.

Strategies, methods, beliefs, and target audience make up a local church’s culture or DNA. Shelves of leadership books address the importance of having the right DNA in your organization. Worship ministry is no different.

DNA can encompass the “why” and the “how” of ministry. Some how-DNA will change with time such as music styles or methods. Other why-DNA will remain constant such as the centrality of Jesus (Galatians 1:6–9). Even though how-DNA may change, it’s still essential to define and defend what you want it to be now.

Replicators, not receivers

The worship stage is an essential platform for communicating DNA to the church, so teach those on stage to be replicators (think big trees) of your DNA, not just receivers of it (seedlings). Replicators are those who don’t just get the task done, but explain the vision behind what’s happening adding leadership momentum and coverage. Replicators lead their sphere of influence in seeing the greatness of Christ by doing what God has called your church to do.

Vision leaks (every 30 days according to some leadership gurus) so rain vision continually. People forget the why of your ministry long before they forget how to meet the expectations. Without why-DNA, leaders are left with the imperative to obey but without the truth that empowers obedience (2 Peter 1:3). This is dangerous to the soul and the ministry.

Fresh vision rooted in the gospel helps minimize attrition and collapses.

If you don’t create and manage your church’s DNA, you’ll waste valuable energy redirecting and repairing rather than progressing.

Here are some tips on how to create and maintain healthy DNA in your worship ministry:

1. Decide which hills you will die on.

What doctrines and philosophies are non-negotiable? Don’t drench your worship volunteers with different vision each week. Land on the core things you want them to live and breathe. Be careful of assessing participation in some areas but not others (e.g. valuing a band member’s musical abilities while overlooking a lack of a servant-like heart).

2. Start at the front door.

Make sure volunteers understand what’s important to you from the very start.

Whether you have a formal audition process or not, make sure everyone in the forest you oversee knows the DNA. Anyone putting roots down needs to be briefed with a chance to ask questions.

3. Create touchpoints that make sense.

Establish a system of touchpoints (meetings, hang-outs, videos, emails, blogs, etc.) between you and key leaders at regular intervals where you intentionally include DNA conversations (see worksheet below). Every system has a shelf life, so ask trusted leaders when a system needs patching, and when it needs an overhaul. Keller’s article on how communication is affected by church size is pertinent here.

4. Assess current leaders.

If you hear someone say something on stage or in a conversation that doesn’t reflect your DNA, pull them aside privately and help them understand why what they said may lead to confusion. Ask them to repeat back the “why-DNA” and “how-DNA” in their own words.

5. Call the fire department before the forest burns down.

Many people won’t confess that they have lost sight of the vision or that they are wrestling with sin until something explodes because of a lack of understanding of the gospel (Proverbs 28:13). Frequently invite everyone in the forest you oversee to say something when smoke appears, and teach them what smoke looks like (loss of traction in victory over sin, burnout, and relational breakdowns).

6. Don’t make DNA a weapon.

Your church’s DNA is likely a mix of biblical mandates, opinions, and specific callings for your church body. Don’t encourage (explicitly or implicitly) the bashing of other camps that do things differently. Good things are happening that aren’t your things, and that’s ok.

7. Be a replicator yourself.

If your leaders don’t understand their role or can’t articulate why you do things the way you do them then you haven’t done your job. Pray for God’s leading in establishing your church’s DNA. Invite the Spirit to lead changes to methods when needed. Work hard at equipping and caring for the whole forest, new seedlings and established trees alike.

Download the Resource

This is a downloadable PDF that includes an outline for leading a meeting or conversation covering DNA issues and a worksheet for developing your ability to connect how-DNA to why-DNA. Customize the resources to fit your context and address the DNA elements most important to your ministry.

Win a Free Copy of Logos Scholar's Library

Resurgence — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:00:00 -0800

We’re giving away a free copy of Logos Bible Software Scholar's Library to one lucky winner. Entering the contest is easy.

If you haven’t already, you can purchase a copy of The New York Times #1 Best Seller, Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship, & Life Together, and give it a read.
Go to Amazon.com or BN.com and leave an honest review of the book.
Come back to this page and fill out the form below.

For instructions on how to enter by mail, see the Official Sweepstakes Rules. No purchase necessary to win. Limit 1 entry per person. All entries must be received by 11:59pm PST on Wednesday, February 8, 2012. We will contact the winner on Friday, February 10, 2012. Read Official Sweepstakes Rules.

What Pastor Mark Has to Say about Logos

Over the last 15 years, I’ve preached thousands of sermons and messages, most over an hour or more in length. Additionally, I’ve written 12 books, am working on another two books, and have penned hundreds of articles and blog posts. I’ve done all this while pastoring and growing Mars Hill Church, and most importantly, pastoring my family as husband and a dad.

A big reason why I’ve been able to preach, teach, write, and study as much as I have is due to the gift of technology. Thanks to computers, iPhones, and iPads, I’m able to do way more than could have been accomplished in the past.

And one of the best tools in my technology toolkit is Logos Bible Software, which I’ve been using for many years as an integral part of my study process. I personally know the guys over at Logos and consider them friends, and they’ve worked hard over many years to created and improve what I consider to be the best Bible software on the market in Logos. I couldn’t do my job without it.

For those unfamiliar with Logos, it’s a PC- and Mac-compatible Bible research software package that makes it easy to access thousands of books, commentaries, journal articles, lexicons, Bible translations, and more through your computer, phone, and/or tablet.

I find the product useful because I can work from anywhere, including outside or on a solitude day at a cabin, without having to pack up a U-Haul with books. Also, I can easily search both for topic or text as I research and cut and past from the thousands of resources as I write. I don’t have an exact count, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve saved thousands of hours thanks to Logos.

No matter if you’re a pastor, teacher, small group leader, or someone who loves to study the Bible (as you all should be!) I’d wholeheartedly recommend Logos as an essential tool.

What Jesus-Centered Friendship Looks Like

Justin Holcomb — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Friendship seems like such a natural part of human life that we probably don’t stop to think about what it is and where it came from. Yet understanding why God created friendship is important for understanding ourselves and God.

Friendship and the Trinity

In systematic theology, the concept of friendship arises most frequently in discussions of the Trinity. God is a Trinitarian being of three persons existing in joyful community, love, and friendship. Each member of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Spirit—loves and serves the others and work together in common purpose. It is out of this perfect community God has enjoyed from all eternity that he created us for friendship with one another and, through Jesus, makes us his friends.

Augustine on Friendship

Augustine, perhaps better than any other theologian, captures the essence of friendship in a practical, everyday manner in his work, Confessions:

To make conversation, to share a joke, to perform mutual acts of kindness, to read together well-written books, to share in trifling and in serious matters, to disagree though without animosity—just as a person debates with himself—and in the very rarity of disagreement to find the salt of normal harmony, to teach each other something or to learn from one another, to long with impatience for those absent, to welcome them with gladness on their arrival.

For Augustine, loving friendship isn’t just a feeling, but leads to concrete expressions of love: “These and other signs come from the heart of those who love and are loved and are expressed through the mouth, through the tongue, through the eyes, and a thousand gestures of delight, acting as fuel to set our minds on fire.” He recognizes the virtues of friendship to create unity as well: “Human friendship is also a nest of love and gentleness because of the unity it brings about between many souls.”

Augustine sees human friendship as pointing to a higher friendship with God. Matthew Levering writes,

As Augustine comes to appreciate... the practice of the ascent of the soul to friendship with the divine Trinity occurs through the friendship in and with Jesus Christ by the action of the Holy Spirit. This friendship takes effective shape in the community of believers, the church as the mystical Body of Christ united by her sacramental participation through the Holy Spirit in Christ’s saving work... The goal of the Trinity’s work in history, then, is to draw us into contemplative friendship with the Trinity. This contemplative friendship, Augustine is clear, cannot fully be enjoyed prior to the vision of God, eternal life. Yet in faith the first fruits have arrived.

Jesus, Friend of Sinners

Jesus Christ is the concrete expression of God’s love for us. However, Jesus Christ, completely different from us in his righteousness and holiness, brought us to the table of God’s friendship through his reconciling work.

The gospel flips normal conceptions of friendship on their heads, for typically, friendship is based on compatibility.

Jesus also turns the conventions of friendship upside down by treating others in unexpected ways. He says,

“When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just” (Luke 14:12–14).

One scholar writes:

The rule of Luke 14:12 conflicts with the conventions of antiquity by rejecting the principle of reciprocity (cf. Matthew 5:46–47). Jesus breaks down the wall of an exclusiveness of fellowship and love. In Luke 14:12 friendship and table fellowship are correlative (cf. 15:6, 9, 29). The fact that Jesus eats with publicans and sinners is the basis of the charge that he is [a friend of sinners] (7:34). In fact, he loves sinners and is loved by them, as the washing of his feet, the kiss, and the anointing show (7:37 ff.).

Friendship and Mission

Theologian Jürgen Moltmann argued that “friend” should become one of the church’s titles for Jesus alongside “prophet,” “priest,” and “king.” There should be a direct connection between Jesus’ friendship with believers and our open friendship with the rest of his body, his church.

Jesus tells his disciples, “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15). As Peter Slade writes in his book, Open Friendship in a Closed Society, “This is no easy designation. Jesus indicates the import and cost of such a statement by linking friendship with the greatest possible human love for, as Jesus explains, ‘No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends’ (John 15:13).”

We learn true friendship by looking to the example of Jesus, who gave up his life to make his enemies—us—into his friends.

15 Things to Consider about Abortion

John Piper — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Given that today is Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, here are 15 things to consider about abortion:

1. Existing fetal homicide laws make a man guilty of manslaughter if he kills the baby in a mother's womb (except in the case of abortion).

2. Fetal surgery is performed on babies in the womb to save them while another child the same age is being legally destroyed.

3. Babies can sometimes survive on their own at 23 or 24 weeks, but abortion is still legal beyond this limit.

4. Living on its own is not the criterion of human personhood, as we know from the use of respirators and dialysis.

5. Size is irrelevant to human personhood, as we know from the difference between a one-week-old and a six-year-old.

6. Developed reasoning powers are not the criterion of personhood, as we know from the capacities of three-month-old babies.

7. Infants in the womb are human beings scientifically by virtue of their genetic make up.

8. Ultrasounds have given a stunning window on the womb that shows the unborn at eight weeks sucking his thumb, recoiling from pricking, and responding to sound. All the organs are present, the brain is functioning, the heart is pumping, the liver is making blood cells, the kidneys are cleaning fluids, and there is a fingerprint. Virtually all abortions happen later than this date.

9. Justice dictates that when two legitimate rights conflict, the limitation of rights that does the least harm is the most just. Bearing a child for adoption does less harm than killing him.

10. Justice dictates that when either of two people must be inconvenienced or hurt to alleviate their united predicament, the one who bore the greater responsibility for the predicament should bear more of the inconvenience or hurt to alleviate it.

11. Justice dictates that a person may not coerce harm on another person by threatening voluntary harm on themselves.

12. The outcast, the disadvantaged, and the exploited are to be cared for in a special way, especially those with no voice of their own.

13. What is happening in the womb is the unique person-nurturing work of God, who alone has the right to give and take life.

14. There are countless clinics that offer life and hope to both mother and child (and father and parents), with care of every kind lovingly provided by people who will meet every need they can.

15. Jesus Christ can forgive all sins and will give all who trust in him the help they need to do everything that life requires.

This post is adapted from Pastor John's article on Desiring God. For more on abortion, watch a biblical theology of the issue in this sermon from Pastor Mark.

Picking the Right People

Dave Kraft — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

It is a truism that the more people you lead, the more leaders you need.

As the size of your group, organization, church or company grows, so does the need for more character-filled, Christ-centered, and competent leaders.

It is also true that a leader’s ability to identify and develop new leaders will either make or break him or her as a leader. Some leaders seem to have an intuitive ability to make good choices. Some, looking back, realize they have made very poor choices in selecting and surrounding themselves with leaders—leaders who ultimately set back the entire operation to a place where it is seriously hindered from being able to achieve its purpose. You can find everything from small groups to multinational corporations in this dilemma.

The Clean-Up Crew

The one thing a leader does not want to do is spend their time cleaning up the messes left by leaders who should have never been chosen in the first place or who should have been released “a year ago.” I spend a good deal of time praying for wisdom for myself and other leaders I work with to make good choices in future leaders with whom to share the vision.

I am currently in touch with a church that is going through a very difficult time because a promising leader is choosing to do some things that have the potential of splitting the church right down the middle, causing great harm to numerous people. The “clean-up crew” is working overtime!

You want vision-makers, not vision-breakers.

Meditating on Acts

A little while back, I meditated on Acts 1:24 where we find the early church needing to make a choice about future leadership. It says, "They prayed and said, 'You, Lord, who know the hearts of all, show which one of these two you have chosen.'" The early disciples understood two things:

God knew people’s hearts and they didn’t.
They didn’t have enough wisdom on their own to make the right choice.

I personally struggle with how they went about their choice to pick a replacement for Judas, but I admire their acknowledgement that the sovereign God knows the hearts of all leaders and their dependence on him for wisdom in making the right choice. Choosing and investing in future potential leaders is one of the most important tasks leaders face as a lot is at stake.

Getting the Ball Rolling

Picking the right leaders for your group, team, organization or church is critical for the advancement of the gospel and honoring Jesus Christ. It's also worth noting that Jesus spent an entire night in prayer before announcing his choice of the twelve (Lk 6:12).

Being dependent on the Lord is central in selecting potential and future leaders as well as seeking to be led by him and honoring him. Here are a few thoughts about selecting the right people. This is not exhaustive, but can get the ball rolling.

We need leaders who are voices not echoes.

You want to select people who are difference-makers, who bring a different perspective to the table, who are originals, and not just carbon copies of the party line. We need leaders who are voices not echoes. We desperately need people with fresh thinking and fresh perspective on old issues or issues which have us stuck in a rut. We don’t need or want “yes” men or women who merely echo what others are saying or have said. You want people who are connected in at least four ways:

1. Connected to Jesus

This is the primary and most important connection. The people you select need to have their identity in Christ and not in a role or position. They also should be growing in their intimacy with Christ through grace-filled time in scripture and prayer being foundational. Their love for Jesus should exceed love for anything else or anyone else. This sets the stage for every other connection.

2. Connected to You as the Leader

They should be people you enjoy, share chemistry with, and trust. They should bring out the best in you as a leader and want to be around you. This is not in an “I-want-to-be-close-to-the-leader-to-make-myself-feel-important” sort of way, but connected to you in an “allow-me-to-travel-with-you-and-help-you-get-to-where-you-want-to go” sort of way. They're contributors not consumers, people with proven character.

3. Connected to the Vision

Chose people who share your passion for the direction you are headed, who add to the existing team, and who bring a unique contribution that enhances the possibility of seeing that vision develop. You want vision-makers, not vision-breakers. Never invite people into the inner circle who have serious questions about your direction with the hope of helping them come around.

4. Connected to Others

Chose people who are able to influence others; those connected to others who also want to make a difference. In his excellent book, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell devotes a chapter to “The Law of the Few” where he speaks of “connectors.” It’s worth the read. Much happens in the world through a few who are well connected to lots of others. Gladwell says,

Connectors know lots of people. They are the kinds of people who know everyone. All of us know someone like this. But I don’t think that we spend a lot of time thinking about the importance of these kinds of people. I’m not sure that most of us really believe that that kind of person who knows everyone really knows everyone. But they do.

Now, I don’t think everything Gladwell says is “gospel truth,” but there is enough truth here to get me thinking about the importance of influencing the influencers and connecting with the connected.

I am more prayerful and careful about choosing people to have around me than ever before. I have seen a lot of mayhem and carnage which prevents me from moving too quickly in the leadership selection process: elders, associate staff, executive team members, etc. As a life coach for pastors around the country, I am spending more and more time discussing the fine points of making prayerful choices, taking your time, doing your homework, and not being in a big hurry. The wrong people have the potential of short circuiting your leadership effectiveness, providing migraines on a regular basis and aging you quickly. I have both experienced and witnessed it (minus the migraines).

May your leadership circle be populated with good people who bring out the best in you and your leadership and bring glory to the Lord Jesus Christ and his kingdom.

Have Dave Kraft speak at your church about Leaders Who Last.

Jesus Saves Sinners for God’s Glory

Justin Holcomb — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The Latin word sola means "alone" or "only."

The Five Solas are five Latin phrases (or slogans) that emerged during the Protestant Reformation and that summarize the Reformers' basic theological convictions on what they believed to be the essentials of the Christian life and practice.

The Five Solas are:

1. Sola Scriptura (“Scripture alone”): Scripture alone is our highest authority.

2. Sola Fide (“faith alone”): We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone.

3. Sola Gratia (“grace alone”): We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone.

4. Solus Christus (“Christ alone”): Christ alone is our Lord, Savior, and King.

5. Soli Deo Gloria (“glory to God alone”): We live for the glory of God alone.

The following is a brief explanation of each. (For further reading, on this see The Cambridge Declaration.)

Sola Scriptura

When rightly interpreted, the Bible is about Jesus Christ and his role as God and Savior. Additionally, Scripture is profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness.

Every word of the 66 books of the Bible is divinely inspired. The Holy Spirit inspired the writing of Scripture, illuminates the meaning and understanding of Scripture, and empowers obedience to Scripture.

The Scriptures alone are our only ultimate and inerrant authority for faith and practice. This doesn’t mean that the Bible is the only place where truth is found, but it does mean that everything else we learn about God and his world, and all other authorities, are subordinate to the Scriptures. The Scriptures are the sole necessary and sufficient source of our theology.

Sola Fide and Sola Gratia

We are saved solely through faith in Jesus Christ because of God’s grace and Christ’s merit alone. We are neither saved by our merits nor declared righteous by our good works. We do not deserve grace, or else it wouldn’t be grace. This means that God grants salvation not because of the good things we do, or even our faith—and despite our sin. God’s election is the unconditional and unmerited nature of his grace.

As humans, we inherited a nature that is in bondage to sin from Adam. We are born in sin. We are naturally enemies of God and lovers of evil. We needed to be made alive (regenerated) so that we could even have faith in Christ. All of this is grace that we don’t deserve. Because we didn’t earn or attain this grace, we cannot lose it.

God graciously preserves us and keeps us. When we are faithless toward him, he is still faithful.

We can only stand before God by his grace as he mercifully attributes to us the righteousness of Jesus Christ and attributes to him the consequences of our sins, which were judged on the cross. The effects of this gospel are many. According to the Heidelberg Catechism, our only comfort in life and death is this:

“That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Savior Jesus Christ; who, with his precious blood, has fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, and therefore, by his Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him.”

Ephesians 2:8–10 teaches all this clearly:

“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. ”

Solus Christus

God reveals himself to everyone everywhere through general revelation, which includes creation and conscience. In general revelation, God has made known his power and divine nature, wisdom, majesty, justice, and goodness.

God has supremely revealed himself to fallen humans through Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It’s only through special revelation, God's gracious self-revelation in Jesus, that any of us comes to a saving and transforming knowledge of God.

Jesus Christ is the only mediator between God and humanity. Because God is holy and all humans are sinful and sinners, we need a Savior who mediates between us and God. Religious rituals do not mediate between us and God—neither do the good works we do. Nobody else, except the God-man, Jesus Christ, serves as our mediator to God. There is no other name by which a person can be saved other than the name Jesus. Jesus intercedes on our behalf and his sacrifice alone is sufficient to atone for sin.

Soli Deo Gloria

We live in a culture of self-glorification. People work their whole lives to gain glory through money, fame, or achievement. Self-esteem is the highest goal. As every Little League coach now claims, “Everybody is a winner.”

Unfortunately, the reality is that everybody is a loser. And it is by God’s grace alone that we become winners. Because of this, glory belongs to God alone. God’s glory is the central motivation for saving sinners, not improving the lives of people—that is a wonderful byproduct.

God is not a means to an end—he is the means and the end.

The goal of all of life is to give glory to God alone: “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). The Westminster Catechism says the chief purpose of our life is “to glorify God and enjoy him forever.”

God’s glory and fame are to be our only and ultimate ambition.

Are You an Introvert or Extrovert?

Mark Driscoll — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 12:00:00 -0800

This content is for those that have signed up for Leadership Coaching with Pastor Mark.
Please sign in at http://theresurgence.com/.

Defining the Center

Brad House — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

I have recently noticed a trend of churches giving up on the notion that community is an essential component of church life.

Many are deciding that community is an optional experience that is helpful but not elemental to being a healthy disciple of Jesus. I think this is a significant mistake. There is no biblical support for personal, autonomous Christianity. If we want to truly make disciples who advance the gospel, we must not only see the importance of community, but we must understand it to be essential to the church.

Community is a gift of God’s grace and essential for the Christian life. Community is not a peripheral ministry. Our communities should be the most palpable expression of the gospel within the church. As culture reflects the values of its citizens, Community Groups reflect the values of the church.

If our church does not place a high value on community, then we are already disconnected from the gospel convictions related to community.

My experience has been that most churches consider community a value, but many have a hard time living out that value in a way that is visible and recognizable. The church is constantly pulled to do so many things that it can be easy to neglect or devalue Community Groups within the sea of programs churches provide.

Breathing Life Back into Your Small Group

If, however, we are going to breathe life back into the community of the church and see it function as God designed, we need to start thinking differently. Social justice, overseas missions, youth programs, food banks, sports ministries, and so on are acceptable programs, but they are not the center of God’s mission. They are support tools through which a gospel-saturated community can intentionally engage the world.

If we put all our energy into the tangential and neglect the center, we have no fertile ground where people can land and grow. I have heard such tangential ministries described as a funnel, drawing people into the church as they swirl toward the center. Ignoring the visual similarity to being flushed, the problem with a funnel is that it has a hole in the center.

Similarly, this has also been my experience when we neglect building the body of Christ. In order to breathe life back into your small group ministry, you must have a clear sense of its value and importance to your church.

You cannot hope to gain momentum and life in such a ministry while simultaneously marginalizing it through resource allocation or ministry dilution. Elevating Community Groups to the proper (and balanced) level of significance is critical for breathing life back into your small group ministry.

Tweets

In order to breathe life into your small group, you must have a clear sense of its value & importance to your church. #community
Church programs may be good and helpful support tools, but they are not central to what the church is. #community
Community is not a peripheral ministry. #community
Many churches consider community a value but have a hard time living it out in a way that is visible. #community

Adapted from Community: Taking Your Small Groups Off Life Support

The Difference between Religion and the Gospel

Resurgence — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Last week, we posted a video about religion and Jesus and wanted to follow up with some more content. Tim Keller's Gospel in Life Study Guide is incredibly helpful and expounds upon the difference of religion and the gospel. We like it so much, we made a 11 x 17 poster of it for you to download and print. The following is the excerpt from page 16:

RELIGION: I obey, therefore I’m accepted.

THE GOSPEL: I’m accepted, therefore I obey.

RELIGION: Motivation is based on fear and insecurity.

THE GOSPEL: Motivation is based on grateful joy.

RELIGION: I obey God in order to get things from God.

THE GOSPEL: I obey God to get to God, to delight and resemble him.

RELIGION: When circumstances in my life go wrong, I am angry at God or myself, since I believe, like Job’s friends that anyone who is good deserves a comfortable life.

THE GOSPEL: When circumstances in my life go wrong, I struggle but I know all my punishment fell on Jesus and that while he may allow this for my training, he will exercise his fatherly love within my trial.

RELIGION: When I am criticized, I am furious or devastated because it is critical that I think of myself as a "good person." Threats to that self-image must be destroyed at all costs.

THE GOSPEL: When I am criticized, I can take it. I struggle, but it is not critical for me to think of myself as a "good person." My identity is not built on my record or my performance, but on God’s love for me in Christ.

RELIGION: My prayer life consists largely of petition and only heats up when I am in a time of need. My main purpose in prayer is control of my environment.

THE GOSPEL: My prayer life consists of generous stretches of praise and adoration. My main purpose is fellowship with God.

RELIGION: My self-view swings between two poles: If and when I am living up to my standards, I feel confident, but then I am prone to be proud and unsympathetic to failing people. If and when I am not living up to standards, I feel insecure, inadequate, and not confident. I feel like a failure.

THE GOSPEL: My self-view is not based on a view of myself as a moral achiever. In Christ I am “simul iustus et peccator”—simultaneously sinful and yet accepted in Christ. I am so bad he had to die for me and I am so loved he was glad to die for me. This leads me to deeper and deeper humility and confidence at the same time, neither swaggering nor sniveling.

RELIGION: My identity and self-worth are based mainly on how hard I work or how moral I am, and so I must look down on those I perceive as lazy or immoral. I disdain and feel superior to "the other."

THE GOSPEL: My identity and self-worth are centered on the one who died for his enemies and who was excluded from the city for me. I am saved by sheer grace, so I can’t look down on those who believe or practice something different from me. It is only by grace that I am what I am. I have no inner need to win arguments.

RELIGION: Since I look to my own pedigree or performance for my spiritual acceptability, my heart manufactures idols. It may be my talents, my moral record, my personal discipline, my social status, etc. I absolutely have to have them so they serve as my main hope, meaning, happiness, security, and significance, regardless of what I say I believe about God.

THE GOSPEL: I have many good things in my life: family, work, spiritual disciplines, etc. But none of these good things is an ultimate end for me. None of them is something I absolutely have to have, so there is a limit to how much anxiety, bitterness, and despondency such things can inflict on me when they are threatened and lost.

Train Your Church

Craig Groeschel — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:00:00 -0800

If you don’t train your church what boundaries are appropriate, you likely won’t have many.

If you are a lead pastor, you can set the tone publicly. I’d suggest a few of the following:

Publicly communicate when your day off is. Talk about how important that day is to your family.
At appropriate times, explain the challenges of your schedule. Some people think you only work on Sundays. Explaining some of what you face will create understanding.
Create some level of screening if possible. Even if you are a solo pastor with no staff, a volunteer could help you with your email or answer phones. Many things you do daily can be handled by capable volunteers. You don’t need to know and do everything.
Be willing to “go dark” at least once a year. You might explain to the church that you’ll be away with your family and not taking calls for a week. Ask your lay leader to be in charge. I’d suggest you give a phone number to one person who has permission to contact you with only dire emergencies. You need at least one week a year to disconnect.
Don’t feel pressure to reply to emails instantly. I like all emails returned but won’t be slave to them.
Protect at least one night a week for dates or family nights. Explain that Monday or Thursday or whatever is the one night you protect. When someone asks for counseling or a wedding rehearsal on that night, don’t do it.
Be willing to say “no.” As a pastor who loves people, you’ll say “yes” to many invitations. Don’t be afraid to occasionally or often say “no.” Don’t feel pressure to give an explanation. A simple, “No, I’m sorry, but I can’t make it” is enough.

Ministry is a marathon, not a sprint. Set the boundaries that will help you go the distance. What are your thoughts?

Adapted from Craig's blog on Swerve

The Great Debate: Does God Exist?

Justin Holcomb — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

It became known as the Great Debate.

In 1985 the University of California at Irvine hosted a public debate between philosopher Greg Bahnsen and atheist Gordon Stein on the topic “Does God Exist?”

What Ensued

Stein came prepared to cut down traditional apologetic arguments for the existence of God, but the philosopher’s approach was unexpected. Bahnsen went on the offensive and presented the Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God: the God of the Bible must exist because no other worldview makes rational sense of the universe and logic, science, and morals ultimately presuppose a theistic worldview. He explained:

The transcendental proof for God’s existence is that without Him it is impossible to prove anything. The atheist worldview is irrational and cannot consistently provide the preconditions of intelligible experience, science, logic, or morality. The atheist worldview cannot allow for laws of logic, the uniformity of nature, the ability for the mind to understand the world, and moral absolutes. In that sense the atheist worldview cannot account for our debate tonight.

Remembering the debate, philosopher and theologian John Frame writes,

I was there, having driven up with several students from Westminster in Escondido. It was in a large lecture hall at U. C. Irvine, and the place was packed. The atmosphere was electric. I don’t know how many were Christians, but it was evident as the debate progressed that the audience became convinced that Bahnsen won the debate.

Borrowed Logic

Bahnsen’s approach focuses on the “presuppositional conflict of world views” between atheism and Christianity. In the debate he shows that his opponent has a precommitment to the rule that logic or reason is the only valid way to prove any statement. The atheist can’t prove this rule by using logic (that would be circular reasoning), or by any other method (that would be disproving the rule by using something other than logic). This is a presupposition, a fundamental belief held ahead of time that cannot be proved, but that grounds all your other beliefs. Bahnsen argues that the atheist is actually borrowing logic from the Christian worldview in order to make his claims.

In his book Van Til’s Apologetics, Bahnsen gives a formal definition of a presupposition:

A ‘presupposition’ is not just any assumption in an argument, but a personal commitment that is held at the most basic level of one’s network of beliefs. Presuppositions form a wide-ranging, foundational perspective (or starting point) in terms of which everything else is interpreted and evaluated. As such, presuppositions have the greatest authority in one’s thinking, being treated as one’s least negotiable beliefs and being granted the highest immunity to revision.

Presuppositions can be exposed and used to show that non-Christian worldviews are not rationally coherent:

The presuppositional apologist makes an internal critique of the non-Christian’s espoused presuppositions, showing that they destroy the very possibility of knowledge or ‘proof.’ He maintains that only Christianity is a reasonable position to hold and that unless its truth is presupposed there is no foundation for an argument that can prove anything whatsoever. Thus it is irrational to hold to anything but the truth of Scripture. The truth of Christianity is proved from the impossibility of the contrary (Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended).

The Impossibility of the Contrary

He also explains further about arguing from the impossibility of the contrary:

The unbeliever attempts to enlist logic, science, and morality in his debate against the truth of Christianity. Van Til’s apologetic answers these attempts by arguing that only the truth of Christianity can rescue the meaningfulness and cogency of logic, science, and morality. The presuppositional challenge to the unbeliever is guided by the premise that only the Christian worldview provides the philosophical preconditions necessary for man’s reasoning and knowledge in any field whatever.

This is what is meant by a ‘transcendental’ defense of Christianity. Upon analysis, all truth drives one to Christ. From beginning to end, man’s reasoning about anything whatsoever (even reasoning about reasoning itself) is unintelligible or incoherent unless the truth of the Christian Scriptures is presupposed. Any position contrary to the Christian one, therefore, must be seen as philosophically impossible. It cannot justify its beliefs or offer a worldview whose various elements comport with each other (Van Til’s Apologetics).

The Great Debate

Covenant Media Foundation has graciously given us permission to post the audio and transcript of the Great Debate. Take some time to listen to this audio or read the transcript for a great example of powerful Christian apologetics. It’s well worth it.

7 Tips for Talking with Your Neighbors about Jesus

Tim Gaydos — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 15:20:00 -0800

We met in the elevator of our condo building.

Instead of the classic stare down at the ground and avoid eye contact bit, I said hello and introduced myself. I asked him a few non-awkward, basic questions. How long have you lived here? Do you like it? Have you met any cool people?

The following week, I saw him in the lobby, and we picked up the conversation with a longer discussion revolving around the Seattle Mariners and their dim prospects for the year. I checked again to see if he was up for talking more, “If you want to watch a game at Sport, [the appropriately-named Seattle sports pub,] let me know.” He accepted, we figured out a good date and time and within a few weeks, we were grabbing a bite and watching a game together.

Breaking the Stereotype of Judgmental Jerk

It wasnʼt long before he found out I was a Christian, went to church, and loved Jesus. He said to me, “Wow, my stereotype of Christians has been blown away. Youʼre normal. You like good food and drink, you love your city and donʼt come off as a judgmental jerk.” I soon invited him to church, where he heard the gospel preached powerfully. He became a Christian and got involved in Community Groups, praise God.

For whatever reason, it’s easy for Christians to clam up and get weird when talking about their faith in the day-to-day. Here are a few tips to make bridge those inhibitions and get the conversation going:

1. Find a road that leads to Jesus.

In the course of conversation, be thinking of how Jesus intersects with the discussion, because Jesus intersects and touches everything in our culture: sports, music, art, politics. Look for bridges to introduce Jesus into the conversation. It should be just as casually or passionately as you talk about everything else.

2. Donʼt be weird and awkward.

“So...now, Iʼd like to talk with you about Jesus.” If all of a sudden you put on your "Jesus" hat and you are talking to them like a project and not a friend, then you're entering awkward territory. Now, there will be times it becomes awkward because talking about Jesus and sin can be that way, but don't let it be because you are socially weird.

3. Be winsome.

Included in that word is the word “win.” Be “winning” friends and the conversation by being engaging, friendly, and kind. For more on being winsome, check out Soul Winner by Charles Spurgeon.

4. Counter stereotypes and caricatures of Christians.

Many urban, secular folks have a particular caricature of a Christian, which is not very flattering (judgmental, harsh, the “morality police”), although many don’t personally have any Christian friends. Be gracious and talk with them, serve them, and love them.

5. Host an open house.

When my wife and I moved into a new apartment building we hosted an open house for the whole building and went over the top with really good food and wine. Dozens of our neighbors came out and it was the foundation for future gospel-centered conversations.

6. Be honest about your struggles and failings.

We all fall short. We all struggle and fail. The credit has to be given to Jesus in your life. Many non-Christians donʼt want to talk with Christians as they will feel guilty regarding their own problems.

7. Actions also communicate.

Serve your neighbors. Serve your neighborhood. Look for opportunities without being an attention-getter. Your neighbors are watching you and just as James said, faith without works is dead.

Be a Movement

Leonce Crump — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 01:00:00 -0800

Organizations? Not Interested...

A few months ago this AP story was posted on Atlanta's 11Alive news site:

Civil rights icon Andrew Young says he has little use for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organization he once worked in alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Young says that then, the SCLC was a movement and Dr. King resisted the idea of selling memberships. Infighting and allegations of mismanagement are threatening to undermine the social justice group co-founded by King in 1957.

The group is headed to court on Wednesday. Young says the fight is over an organization—not a movement—and that he is not interested in organizations but would be glad to support a movement.

“If anybody is doing anything that is a movement, or the possibility of a movement, I would be glad to support it,” said Andrew Young, in another article. “But I’m not interested in organizations.”

Neither am I.

Movements Are a Different Story

In fact, most people are not interested in organizations—but movements are a different story. When Dr. King founded the SCLC in 1957, it was a movement, a band of brothers and sisters fighting against a common enemy, injustice, and standing for a common cause: the rights of justice and equality of all men and women, as promised in our constitution.

But what happened? How did this great movement deteriorate into an organization better known for scandals involving infighting and mishandling money?

It is so easy to lose sight and become an organization instead of a movement, even within Christianity!

This happens when the vision of the visionary dies with him or her, or begins to be altered so severely that it can no longer be distinguished from the rhetoric that replaces it. Soon the vision that catalyzed the movement is relegated to writing on walls, in pamphlets, or on websites, while the trajectory of the movement changes, momentum slows, and an organization’s disintegration then becomes imminent.

Be a Movement

I am desperate for our churches to be a movement in our cities, one catalyzed by a clear, common vision, and carried by committed brothers and sisters. It is so easy to lose sight and become an organization instead of a movement, even within Christianity! Though most Christian churches are now, at least by most accounts, considered organizations, it did not begin that way.

Christianity started as a movement of men and women who were so compelled by the words of Jesus that his words overtook their lives. They dwelled on, lived, spoke, and directed every nuance of their existence by those words.

And do you know what happened? Inside of the first century after Jesus’ resurrection, Christianity grew from 12, to 120, to 3,000, to millions throughout the Roman Empire. In fact, historians like Wayne Meeks say that by AD 300 nearly half of the people living in major Roman cities were followers of Jesus.

The Vision Hasn't Left

How does this happen? Did it happen because they had incredible programs, beautiful facilities, or incredibly talented staff teams? Did it happen because they had full funding, dynamic music, and creative environments?

No, it happened because they believed so strongly in who Jesus was and his command to make disciples of all people that it permeated every facet of their lives. When the "visionary" left, his vision—a world reconciled to the God that created it—did not. That's a movement!

The question I'm left asking myself as I lead my church is this: What would it look like to catalyze a movement rather than maintain an organization? What’s your response?

For MLK Day, Desiring God is now offering Pastor John Piper's book, Bloodlines: Race, Cross, and the Christian, free to download.

You Are Not Jesus

Harvey Turner — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The gospel is news. News has to be announced, communicated, written, and delivered with words. Think of any major news story or event: the reporter doesn’t seek to act it out, but he just delivers the news.

This is why I find it so confusing when I hear people say: “We’re just trying to live the gospel” or “We’re trying to be the gospel.” There is of course the well-known quote attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, “Preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words.” I’d argue that it’s always necessary to use words, because the gospel is news.

The gospel is the good news that God sent his perfect Son Jesus Christ to live, die, and resurrect on behalf of sinners, to save their souls and reconcile them to God.

As important as it is to do good works, care for the poor, nobody becomes a Christian and enters into eternal life because we gave somebody a sandwich; They get saved because they hear the preaching of the news of Jesus.

In other words, good works without good news do no good.

Good works that adorn good news do not only earthly good but also eternal good.

Use Words to Preach the Gospel

Paul told Titus that good works have their proper place when they adorn the gospel: “… but showing all good faith, so that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior” (Titus 2:10). But to be clear, neither Paul, Jesus, nor any of the apostles never tells us that good works are the gospel. The gospel is a message that must be preached, proclaimed, and told using words.

I talk to so many people who go to the church where I pastor, and they tell me, “I’m just being really friendly and helpful. They know I am a Christian and when the want to know they will ask me.”

I ask two questions “Did you get saved because someone was nice?” and “Did you conclude from their kindness that Jesus is God, you are a sinner, Jesus died for your sin and rose from the dead as King?” The answer of course is no. They will just think you are nice. And then continue to walk in darkness.

You are not the gospel; Jesus Christ is the gospel. You are not Jesus; Jesus is God. Therefore you cannot live or show the gospel: you must proclaim it.

Insights from Charles Spurgeon's Ministry and Marriage

Mark Driscoll — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

This content is for those that have signed up for Leadership Coaching with Pastor Mark.
Please sign in at http://theresurgence.com/.

Taking Our Groups Off Life Support

Brad House — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Several years ago a longtime leader came up to me one day and told me that he was done.

He just couldn’t lead a group any longer. He said that it was draining him of energy and time and, in his words, “sucking the life out of [him].” Surprised, I asked him why it was so draining. He proceeded to describe a typical small group meeting: three hours, lots of preparations for hosting and the Bible study, awkward circles—you know the drill.

What Does a Life-Giving Group Look Like?

I asked him what it would look like for that group to be life-giving, and he painted a gripping picture of a Christ-centered community. When I asked him why he didn’t lead his group to that picture, he replied that he didn’t know he could.

Small groups will thrive when they become the place where we experience life-giving transformation.

If we are going to take our groups off life support, we are going to need permission to re-imagine what gospel-centered community looks like. We will not change the preconceived view of groups by making participation a requirement for membership or by changing the names of our programs from “ministries” to “groups.” Small groups will thrive when they become the place where we experience life-giving transformation.

The Legacy of the Church

I, along with many others, am concerned with the legacy of the church. The number of seats we fill will not determine the legacy of our churches, but the depth to which the gospel penetrates those lives.

I have no qualms about large churches so long as they are committed to seeing the gospel transform the people in them. I want to see as many lives as possible saved and transformed by Jesus. My heart and conviction are that we can and will see lives transformed through authentic, gospel-centered community that is inspired by the power and wonder of God.

We cannot be content with the status quo of today’s church.

Foundational to this work is the conviction that we were created for more, we have been redeemed for more, and we are empowered for more.

This does not mean that we need to do more, but that we are more through the reconciling work of Jesus.

I want to join the chorus of leaders calling the sleeping church to wake up and “abound in the work of the Lord” because his grace has made it possible. I endeavor to affirm community as a gift of God’s grace for the purpose of exalting the Son and making him known.

In other words, community is not about us; it is about God. Community is an instrument of worship, a weapon against sin, and a tool for evangelism—all for the exaltation of Jesus.

Tweets

Community is an instrument of worship, a weapon against sin, & a tool for evangelism—all for the exaltation of Jesus. #community
Small groups will thrive when they become the place where we experience life-giving transformation. #community
Community is not about us. It’s all about Jesus. #community

Adapted from Community: Taking Your Small Groups Off Life Support.

Jesus > Religion

Resurgence — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 10:00:00 -0800

We don't post poetry very often, but we do when it's pretty good. Check out this poem on how the gospel of Jesus is the good news that breaks us free from the chains of religion.

10 Reasons Why Your Kids Might Think You're No Fun

Doug Willson — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

You believe the heel of the loaf of bread has more nutrients in it because it is browner.
You think that kids were made for the living room and not the living room for the kids.
You believe that being a disciplinarian consists of using repeated commands in a professional, bossy voice.
You think that telling stories at the dinner table is weird.
You think that laughter at the dinner table is even weirder.
You possess a bag of carob chips, which you put into cookies made out of trail mix.
You place a high value on "teaching them a work ethic," but that value is not nearly as high as your "slave labor is great ethic."
You don't want them to know any dumb music.
You think dessert is for sissies.
You want them to learn to appreciate you without you ever appreciating them.

Originally posted on Doug Wilson’s blog.

Human Trafficking: Recommended Reading

Justin Holcomb — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 12:00:00 -0800

Today is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day.

“Trafficking” is modern-day slavery and is the fastest-growing criminal industry in the world. Human trafficking is defined as the recruitment, transportation, harboring, or taking of people by means of threat, force, coercion, abduction, fraud, or deception for the purpose of exploiting them.

Victims of trafficking are forced or coerced into labor or sexual exploitation. Labor trafficking ranges from domestic servitude and small-scale labor setups to large-scale operations such as farms, sweatshops, and major multinational corporations.

Sex trafficking is one of the most profitable forms of trafficking and involves any form of sexual exploitation, such as prostitution, pornography, bride trafficking, and the commercial sexual abuse of children.

We’ve posted on human trafficking before. To help you get informed and inform others, here is a reading list on the topic.

Human Trafficking

A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern Slavery by E. Benjamin Skinner

Benjamin Skinner, 2008

Journalist Benjamin Skinner reports on current and former slaves and slave dealers in Haiti, Sudan, Romania, India, and suburban America.

The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today

Kevin Bales and Ron Soodalter, 2009

Scholars and activists Kevin Bales and Ron Soodalter document routine coercive slave labor in domestic service, prostitution, farm labor, factories, light industry, prisons and mining operations.

Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy

Kevin Bales, 1999

Going undercover, Bales investigates contemporary slavery around the world and reveals how it is linked to the global economy.

“Trafficking in Persons Report” (free report)

U.S. Department of State (annual reports from 2001 to 2011)

This is the U.S. government’s principal diplomatic tool to engage foreign governments on human trafficking. It is also the world’s most comprehensive resource of governmental anti-human trafficking efforts.

Sex Trafficking

Sex Trafficking: The Global Market in Women and Children

Kathryn Farr, 2004

Farr looks not only at the victims but the sex trade's main players, organized crime structure, economic conditions, and role in which various militaries perpetuate its demand.

Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery

Siddhartha Kara, 2010

Kara author penetrates seedy underworlds and forced labor markets in made India, Nepal, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark, Albania, Moldova, Mexico, and the United States. He witnessed firsthand the sale of human beings into slavery, interviewed over 400 slaves, and confronted some of those who trafficked and exploited them.

The Natashas: Inside the New Global Sex Trade

Victor Malarek, 2005

A journalist reports on the most recent wave in the global sex trade and the exploitation of women and children from Eastern Europe.

Sold

Patricia McCormick, 2008

A fictional account of a 13-year old girl from Nepal who is sold to a brothel by her step-father, based on the author’s research and interview of numerous former sex slaves.

The Slave Across the Street

Theresa Flores with PeggySue Wells, 2010

Flores tells her true story about how she was enslaved as a 15-year-old in the world of sex trafficking while living in an upper-middle class suburb of Detroit.

Escape and Rescue

God in a Brothel: An Undercover Journey into Sex Trafficking and Rescue

Daniel Walker, 2011

Walker is an undercover investigator who infiltrated the multibillion-dollar global sex industry for the purpose of freeing women and children from sex trafficking. I reviewed this book for The Gospel Coalition.

Terrify No More: Young Girls Held Captive and the Daring Undercover Operation to Win Their Freedom

Gary Haugen

In a small Cambodian village outside of Phnom Pehn, little children as young as five years old were forced to live as sex slaves. Haugen writes about the efforts to rescue these young girls. His team infiltrated the ring of brothels, gathered evidence to free 37 young girls and children, and secured the arrest and conviction of several perpetrators.

Radhika’s Story

Sharon Hendry

A first-hand account of a survivor of human trafficking in India.

Abolition

Good News About Injustice

Gary Haugen

Haugen offers stories of Christians who have stood up for justice in the face of human trafficking, forced prostitution, racial and religious persecution, and torture.

Not for Sale: The Return of the Global Slave Trade—and How We Can Fight It

David Batstone

Batstone tells inspiring stories of modern-day abolitionists and their campaign to free slaves and end trafficking.

Ending Slavery: How We Free Today’s Slaves

Kevin BalesBales writes about his involvement in the antislavery movement, offers a history of slavery, and provides a guide for eliminating modern slavery.

Trying Harder to the Death of Your Faith

Ed Welch — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Hello, I am a moralistic therapeutic deist.

I really liked that phrase when I first read it, though it seemed a little clunky. It was introduced by the 2005 book, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. After listening to about 3,000 interviews, the authors suggested that evangelical teens describe their beliefs this way:

God created.
God wants us to be happy.
God waits around until we have a problem, then jumps in to help.
Good people, people who are nice, go to heaven.

In other words, they are moralistic therapeutic deists.

Adults Are Moralistic Therapeutic Deists, Too

And don’t bug these teens with religious questions for too long because they have more important things to do. They are disinterested moralistic therapeutic deists, and who wouldn’t be disinterested in such a religion?

Oh—and this is important—teens are regular people who just speak a little more blatantly than the rest of us. Poll 3,000 evangelical adults and you uncover the same basic beliefs.

To these beliefs, I add one more: “I must try harder.”

Trying Harder for the Wrong Reasons

While so many other functional beliefs immediately sound heterodox, this one sounds biblical. Who among us isn’t trying harder to love our neighbor, love God, eat better, go greener, and exercise more? And aren’t we supposed to work out our salvation and live like athletes who want to win a race?

Yet, the mantra “I must try harder,” as I have heard it used, is always doomed to fail, as it should. It can mean: “I have tried harder and it didn’t help, and maybe I should keep trying harder, but why bother?” It can mean: “I have tried harder, and it didn’t help, but I will keep trying harder because I don’t know what else to do.” Or it can mean: “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I messed up. I’ll try harder. Okay? (Now stop bothering me).”

Faith in Jesus Is Asking for Help

“I must try harder” comes from the set of beliefs in which Jesus, at most, is our (distant) coach, giving direction, encouragement, and a good tongue lashing from the sidelines while we try to compete, without much assistance, against someone clearly more skilled than we are. Victory is never really possible. We just hope to avoid an embarrassingly lopsided loss.

Life in Jesus is restless rest.

Life in Jesus, however, is restless rest, with the accent on rest. Faith, which is the primary human response to God, means that we trust him and not ourselves. More specifically, faith means, “Jesus, help!” And this is very different from a foundational belief, “I must try harder.”

Trying Harder Is Resting in Jesus

I want to try harder too, but in the right way. We need to be activists in our rest. We actively ask God to show us the way, to do what he is calling us to do, in the Spirit’s power. But the belief I hear most often is the resigned, self-reliant version of “I must try harder.”

Now is always a good time to assign ourselves a new task, such as to rest in, abide in, believe in, trust in, know, and enjoy the rescuer of our souls.

This post is adapted from the article, “What Christians Really Believe: ‘I Must Try Harder,’” posted on CCEF.

Dr. Ed Welch is an author and a counselor and faculty member at the Christian Counseling & Education Foundation.

Note to Self: Watch This Video

Joe Thorn — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 12:00:00 -0800

What does it look like to apply and preach the Bible over your life? How do you stay Jesus-centered and not self-focused? How does the gospel connect to everyday life?

In this video, Christianity.com interviews Pastor Joe Thorn to get some answers. Joe speaks into these questions in the video and explores exactly what all this looks like in his Resurgence book, Note to Self.

Joe is the author of Note to Self, a Resurgence book which expands on the importance of preaching the gospel to ourselves daily.

Jesus + Nothing = Everything

Tullian Tchividjian — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Matt Johnson, the Manager of Re:lit had the opportunity to talk with Tullian Tchividjian about his new book, Jesus + Nothing = Everything. We didn’t want you to miss anything so, we’re breaking it down into three posts. Below is the first.

Matt: Today we’re interviewing our friend Tullian Tchividjian, he’s the senior pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale Florida, and he’s also Visiting Professor of Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary and a grandson of Billy and Ruth Graham. Tullian was the founding pastor of the former New City Church that merged with Coral Ridge in April of 2009. His book Jesus + Nothing = Everything is his first book since his devastating year in the loss of his father and being called to pastor at Coral Ridge.

What is God Teaching Me?

There are a few powerful sentences in the beginning of this book that really stood out to me, and I think it will set up the context of what you went through at Coral Ridge when your churches merged, so I wanted to read that and maybe you could comment.

In the first chapter you say, “Never had I experienced something so tough. I could hardly eat, had trouble sleeping, and was continually battling nausea. I felt at the absolute end of myself. God! What in the world are you doing? I need resurrecting.” That’s a pretty powerful way to start a book. What were you experiencing? What were you recounting when you wrote that?

Tullian: As I spell out in the book, 2009 was by far the most painful year of my life. That was the year my father got sick and ended up dying, it was also the year the church I had planted 5½ years earlier, New City Church, merged with Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, which was a well-established, well-known church about 10 miles south of where New City was.

A Church Merger Under God’s Lead

Coral Ridge was founded in 1959 by Dr. D. James Kennedy. The services at Coral Ridge were televised, and Dr. Kennedy was a real pioneer when it came to radio and all of those things, so when he died in 2007, Coral Ridge approached me and asked if I would consider being their pastor. I said, “I’m humbled, I’m honored, but I’m not interested.” They came back a couple months later and asked again, and again I said, “I’m humbled, I’m honored, but I’m not interested.” Five months later they came back and that’s when we started talking about possibly merging the two churches.

A group of men from New City and a group of men from Coral Ridge and me met once a week for months and went through a meticulous due diligence process to see if a merger could work. God’s leading was unambiguous, it was very clear. So in April of 2009 – Easter Sunday to be exact – the two churches came together as one new church. There was a small but vocal minority of long-time people at Coral Ridge who opposed the merger before it happened, and then once it happened, they started to attack my leadership and the leaders around me. It created so much unrest and division inside the church and I was faced, for the very first time, with a situation that I had never been faced with before.

Public Attack and a Challenge to God

There were all sorts of things happening inside the church and there was an all out character assassination on me. Because my family is well-known and because the church is well-known, the papers and Associated Press picked up on it. It seemed like everybody in the country knew there was fighting taking place at Coral Ridge and it was a terrible, terrible time for about six months.

In the middle of that time, my family and I had to get away just to maintain some measure of sanity. We went to the southwest coast of Florida where we vacation every year and I was looking over the Gulf of Mexico one morning with my Bible opened to Colossians chapter 1 and had it out with God. I was frustrated with God. I was afraid. I was angry. I kept asking God why he had done what he had done.

It was hard enough putting this church plant that was doing remarkably well on the altar and merging it with Coral Ridge. Even if everyone at Coral Ridge had welcomed us with open arms, it would have still been difficult, and so here I was bargaining with God basically saying I had put my baby on the altar and this is what I get in return? And I finally just lashed out and said, “Just give me my old life back.”

God’s Challenge to Me

And it was through Colossians 1, which is really the birth of this book in my heart and mind, that God gently but firmly showed me it really wasn’t my old life that I wanted back but my old idols and he loved me too much to give them to me. I was just floored by the fact that I had for so long, unknowingly, depended on human approval and human acceptance to make me feel like I mattered, to validate me, to make me feel important.

For the first time in my life, human approval and human acceptance was being stripped away and God was revealing to me all the things I was depending on that were smaller than Jesus, trying to make my life worth living. It didn’t take the pain away, but it really showed me the source of my pain. It wasn’t what other people were saying about me and it wasn’t that my reputation was being soiled, it was that things were being taken away from me graciously by God. I was holding onto those more dearly than him and I was being stripped. God was breaking my legs and teaching me grace. He was teaching me the gospel. I tell people all the time, I never ever want to go through anything like that again, but I would never trade that experience for all the money in the world because of the way God taught me the gospel.

Living Out What I’d Been Preaching

It was during that time that I really rediscovered functionally the NOW power of the gospel. I had been preaching the gospel with great passion for many years. I had been preaching it with great conviction and yet it wasn’t genuinely functional until God brought me through the crucible of pain and suffering. I began rediscovering the reality and beauty and the brightness of the gospel.

Everything I needed and longed for in Christ, I already possessed.

It was during that time that God was helping me connect the dots between what I was experiencing and what Christ had already accomplished for me. And it was specifically in Colossians chapter 1, second part of verse 12-14 where Paul says you’ve already been transferred, you’ve already been qualified, you’ve already been forgiven, you’ve already been redeemed, everything you could possibly want, everything you could possibly desire, is already yours in Christ. It’s a done deal.

It Really Is Finished

Now I live my life under a banner that reads, “IT IS FINISHED”, and it is that reality gripping my heart that’s set me free in ways that I had never ever been free before and it radically changed me. I tell people all the time that my focus is singular; my passion is myopic now. I don’t care as much as I used to what other people think about me, both good and bad. I’m freer than I’ve ever been and my preaching has radically changed. Everything about me has changed. I’m still learning, obviously, and will until the day I die, but I really, really learned how the power of Christ’s finished work intersects with my daily grind in a brand new way.

Matt: That is powerful. Just to have your character maligned and be under the pressure cooker of life in that way; that would just seem like such a nightmare. It’s really interesting that in the middle of that pain and that crisis that God shows up in that way.

Next post: Tullian talks about idols.

Can God Make a Rock Even He Cannot Lift?

Jared Wilson — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 11:50:00 -0800

I remember when I first heard this bit of immature atheistic reductio ad absurdum.

I was in high school, and I didn't respond to it because the Nirvana-shirted, long-banged drama stud who said it didn't say it to me. He was laying it on his friend like it was theist kryptonite.

My answer then, steeped in C.S. Lewis as I was, would have been along the lines of the nonsense of the question as framed. It is a rhetorical and hypothetical "gotcha" with no sincerity behind it, and in any event, it is sort of like asking, "Does the number nine smell red or yellow?"

My answer today is different. My answer today would not be to skewer the nature of the question but to inject its insincerity with the sincerity of God and all the weight of the gospel.

How Much Does the World's Sin Weigh?

The truth is, God did make a weight so heavy he couldn't lift it. He did so not by building an immovable force—we did that with our sin—but by incarnating the frailty of humanity and willingly subjecting himself to the force. As one of us, yet still himself, he created the conundrum of the incarnate God, bearing a cross he both ordained yet could not carry by himself, becoming condemned in death and also victorious. And God was crushed according to the plan he himself projected from the foundation of the world.

Christ Lifts It

So, can God make a rock so heavy even he can't lift it? Yes. And he did. For three days only. And then he drop kicked it out of the mouth of the tomb.

Adapted from Jared's blog post.

God Is the Great Church Builder

Justin Holcomb — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” – Matthew 16:18

When reading this passage, most people focus on figuring out who or what the “rock” is upon which Jesus builds his church. The options are: Peter, Peter’s confession (Matt. 16:16), Jesus, or the apostles.

This is important, but there is so much more happening in this verse. Keep in mind that these are the first words out of Jesus’ mouth in response to Peter’s powerful declaration that “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

It’s Personal

Beginning with “and I tell you” gives a hint that what Jesus is about to say is very important: he is explaining the significance of him being the Christ. Jesus announces that, as the Christ, his intention and task is to build his church. And Jesus makes it personal with the first person pronouns: “I will build my church.”

This very personal pronouncement also reveals that there will be cosmic conflict involved —“the gates of hell shall not prevail against” the church Jesus is building.

Fighting Words

“The gates of hell” is a poetic expression for death and especially martyrdom (Job 38:17, Psalm 9:13). The “gates” are the aggressor and are offset against the gates of the daughter of Zion (Psalm 9:14, Psalm 87:2). It contrasts the conflict between the kingdom of God, represented by Zion, and its opposite, the kingdom of darkness.

The gates of a city in the Old Testament were not just the entrance point—they were a place where the strategy of the city itself was determined (see Ruth 4:1; 2 Sam. 15:2; 2 Sam. 18:4, 24, 33; and Psalm 127:5). The gates of hell convey the idea of the organized authority of the kingdom of darkness in an organized strategy again Jesus, his gospel, his kingdom, and his church. The demonic forces engaged in conflict with Jesus before he built his church, and they will continue to attack his church.

In addition to seeing Jesus as prophet, priest, and king, we must also see his central role as the great church builder.

In this cosmic conflict there is not a specific geographical location, as we see in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians that the church’s primary position is “in the heavenly places” (Eph. 1:3, 20, 2:6). Paul tells us the conflict takes place in the heavenly realm (Eph. 3:20, 6:12).

This theme of cosmic conflict in Matthew 16:18 sets the existence of the church within the context of the ultimate conflict in Scripture, running from Genesis 3:15 to Revelation 20. The conflict in Genesis 3:15 is a divinely inaugurated hostility, which is a promise of conflict and redemption, but also victory. From the beginning to the end of the Bible, the work of God in the building of the church is set in a conflict that will be won by God in the end (Rev. 20).

The Great Church Builder

God has always built a place for his own dwelling: Moses built the tabernacle, Solomon built the temple, and Jesus is Immanuel (“God with us”) but doesn’t stop there as he builds his church.

All of this reminds us of an aspect of Christology that we forget too much. In addition to seeing Jesus as prophet, priest, and king, we must also see his central role as the great church builder.

The church is his church and he has committed to build it, despite all the strategies of the enemy. Jesus is the great church builder, and he will not fail.

What’s the Problem with Manhood Today?

Darrin Patrick — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Desiring God recently interviewed Pastor Darrin Patrick about his Resurgence book, Church Planter, in light of their upcoming 2012 Conference for Pastors, “God, Manhood & Ministry.” In the video, Pastor Darrin, who’ll be speaking at the conference at the end of this month, talks what it biblically means to be a man and calls churches to equip the men in their midst.

From now until Wednesday, Acts 29 Pastors and readers get a big discount by using the promotional code “Acts29” when you register for the conference.