Send Well

When my husband first told me he felt called to church planting, I had no idea what that meant. Does it mean we move every few years, helping new churches get started like Paul did as an apostle? (I was fond of reminding him that Paul wasn’t married with toddlers in tow.) Or could it mean that we simply coach new church plants from our home church, keeping our family in one spot? Are we the ones sending … or being sent? The past decade or so has answered “yes” to all of those questions. We have physically moved twice to help new church plants get started. My husband loves this part of his calling: building something from the ground up. For the most part, I have enjoyed it, too. Even with the hassle of relocating the family, it’s exciting to be a part of a new adventure, something new you sense God wants to do.

Recently, however, the church plant we have served for six years is readying itself to plant another church. Having been sent, we are now discovering what it feels like to be on the “sending” end. It’s certainly exciting as the scent of a new adventure swirls in the air again, but it’s a little sobering, too. This time we are not the ones packing our bags. We’re the ones standing in the driveway, waving goodbye. 

Jesus sent them out

In Mark chapter 3, we find Jesus in the thick of his early ministry. The religious leaders plot to destroy him. The local crowds follow him, harassing him, in their desperation to receive healing. One night he couldn't even get into his own house to have supper because of the people surrounding him and demanding his attention.

Of course, Jesus would want to choose some friends to be close to him. Of course, he would want a small group of people around him who understood his mission and could help him accomplish it. These same friends could help him fend off the pressing crowds and protect him from being crushed by them. They could help him find food and lodging and assist with day-to-day life. Later, they are the ones he would turn to when his life is in danger.

So he called these friends by name and invited them to live life closely with him. We see the names of the twelve disciples in Mark 3: 16-19. Though Jesus did interact with the crowds, he poured himself more intentionally into a few. A handful of guys who were committed to following him and helping him. Companions. Friends. "And he appointed the twelve (whom he also named apostles) so that they might be with him ..." (Mark 3:14).

But wait. Jesus didn't call his disciples to be with him just so he could have some buddies for support and companionship. Surely that was part of it, but it was much, much more.  I cut off the remainder of the verse earlier. Here's the whole thing: "And he appointed the twelve (whom he also named apostles) so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons" (3:14-15, italics added).

Jesus knew his mission depended on the sending. He didn’t gather the twelve for the comfort of having friends he could do life with. He gathered the twelve in order to send them out to preach with authority. To change the world. To push back evil. To transform hearts so that the kingdom could expand.

My struggle to send

I like the gathering part of discipleship. Invite people in, focus on a few, fill their mugs again and again with freshly brewed tea as we talk about life and what we're learning. I like the "so that they might be with him" part.

Honestly, the "sending" is the part of discipleship I don't particularly like. Gather them in and then "send them out."  Focus on a few so they can go and do likewise. Fill all those mugs so that the people sitting around the table can go and pour themselves out for other people who do not yet know Jesus.  I know this is what it's all about. Reproduction. Multiplication. Growing the kingdom. Making disciples.

But I’m learning that sending well is hard to do. It’s hard to let people go -- to send them on new adventures while we regroup and start over. This is what we do as people committed to discipleship. We do what Jesus did. We gather disciples in, invest in them deeply, and then send them out to make more disciples. We wave goodbye.

Any parent of a teenager knows that this is difficult to do well. My oldest is beginning to look at colleges. The "sending out" is coming soon. My husband and I have spent nearly seventeen years investing in him and discipling him, but soon it will be time to let go. To send him on to whatever adventure God has next for him. Sending involves loss. We suffer personal loss, but we trust in great kingdom gain.

Mary’s struggle to send

Maybe that's a little of what Mary was feeling when she gathered up her family and went down to Capernaum to see what in the world her oldest son was up to (see Mark 3:21, 31-35). I'm sure she wanted to grab Jesus by the collar and drag him back home just like any self-respecting mom would want to do. Even Mary apparently hadn't grasped the fullness of the big truth: she had raised Jesus in order to send him out. Maybe she sensed that sending him out would result in his death. In her loss.

I'm sure that in the following years she began to grasp that hard truth. And since we don't have evidence of her continuing to follow Jesus around begging him to come home, she probably did the hard work of letting him go. She knew it was the right thing to do.  The kingdom of God depended, in part, upon Mary sending Jesus out well. Though she grieved deeply at the foot of his cross a few years later, I hope she had the sense of the great gain that had been purchased by her son’s sacrifice. Mary's sacrifice as a mother is a part of that redemptive story.

Striving to send well

A handful of women I have invested in on a weekly basis over the last few years is planning to join the new church plant. During the next few months, they will begin to break away from our community and begin the adventure of starting something new. Realistically, we will not meet weekly anymore. It’s time for me to send them out. We will still be connected in Christ, of course, but inevitably our relationships must change. Though I feel privileged to be a part of a church that is committed to planning new churches, I’m feeling the loss involved with the sending.

Hopefully, our discipleship times together have been saturated by the gospel. Hopefully, I have modeled something worth replicating. Hopefully, these women will carry the truth of the gospel with them to people who do not yet know Jesus. Though the loss of relationship hurts, these hopes breathe life. There might even be joy mixed with the pain of sending.

Let the Gospel Prepare You

The very gospel we have been fighting to believe together will help us through this next phase of discipleship. We remember that because God had so much love for the world, he sent Jesus into that world (John 3:16). God the Father suffered loss as he sent his son to save a people who would brutally kill him. But that loss led to great gain. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection have made a way for many, many lost souls to find their way home. As I remind myself of this gospel every day, I find the strength to release and send well.

Now as I fill the kettle and brew the tea, I remind myself -- the reason I invite people to sit around my table for discipleship is not so that I can gather a group of like-minded people together to live life with. It’s so I can invest the gospel in them, and send them out to do the same with others. It's hard, yes. But it's not about my comfort or my aversion to loss. It's about more and more people being gathered into the kingdom. So let’s enjoy the time around the table together. But let’s also remind ourselves why we’re sitting there: so that many, many more might join us at that heavenly table. Enjoy being together, but don't forget to prepare your heart to enjoy the sending.

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Lindsay Powell Fooshee is married to John, a pastor at Redeemer Community Church and church planter with Acts 29. They are raising 3 great kids in East Tennessee. Lindsay holds an M.A. in Christian Thought from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and blogs regularly at Kitchen Stool.

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To read more about sending out disciples, check out Proclaiming Jesus by Tony Merida.

For more free articles about gospel centered discipleship, check out Is Disciple A Verb also by Lindsay Fooshee and What is Missional Culture & Why Does It Matter? by JR Woodward.

Creature of the Word Giveaway

 

Matt Chandler, Josh Patterson, and Eric Geiger have written a new book from B&H Publishing entitled Creature of the Word. The book essentially speaks to becoming a Jesus-centered church. I was blessed to receive an advanced copy and can honestly say that it is a very unique contribution to the conversation.

Additionally, there will be a live simulcast on October 23 where each author will be teaching a particular topic from the book followed by a Q&A session. (If you are unable to attend/watch this event, we will be live-blogging it HERE!)

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B&H was not only kind enough to send me a copy and a ticket to the event, but they've given us 3 FREE BOOKS and 3 FREE SIMULCAST TICKETS to give to you!

The Goods

There will be three winners who will each get a copy of the book and a simulcast ticket.

Rules of Engagement

Here's how to enter:

• Follow us on Twitter and retweet our tweet about the giveaway
• "Like" us on Facebook and share our post about the giveaway

***Contest ends October 16 at 5:59 p.m. CST***

Psalm 127 & 3 ways to live

Last week I got our bicycle pump out of the shed to fill the tires on our baby stroller, and our four-year-old Samuel wanted to help. He commandeered the bicycle pump, and when I tried to teach him how to use it, he said, ‘No Daddy, I don’t need your help!’ It struck me as insanely irrational of my son to refuse the help of someone who is nine times his age and knows much better than he how to do the job. And then I realized I have often acted just this way toward God.

God does nothing & we do everything

Professing belief in God, I have often lived as a practical atheist. Functionally, I have adopted the motto of the convinced atheist: ‘God does nothing and we do everything.’ In fact, not long ago, I suddenly realized I had not prayed once about the thorny problem I had spent hours fretting and stewing over. Ouch. Faced with a challenge, I had instinctively turned to myself rather than to God.

Solomon seeks to undercut this way of living in Psalm 127:1. ‘Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.’ The key word there is ‘vain.’ (It’s used three times in verses 1-2.) Life without God is fruitless. You might be able to build the house or guard the city - there are, after all, excellent atheist architects - but if you have a big house and a safe city and no God, it’s ultimately in vain.

God does everything & we do nothing

Practical atheism is a big mistake. But so is an opposite error into which we sometimes fall. The motto for this way of living is: ‘God does everything and we do nothing.’ There came a point last week (as Samuel struggled manfully but ineffectually with the bicycle pump) when I finally stepped in and began helping. After a few moments Samuel skipped off to do something more interesting. He figured I was doing everything, so he could do nothing.

We live this way, too, don’t we? Sometimes we wrap our laziness in spiritual garb. We say, ‘I’ll pray for you,’ instead of offering practical help that will cost us something. We might even be tempted to see justification for passivity and inactivity in Psalms 127. After all, Solomon says, ‘It is vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil…’ (verse 2).

But of course, Solomon isn’t minimizing the importance of healthy work (as we see clearly in Psalm 128:2). Instead, he’s speaking of the fruitlessness of painful, anxious, godless labor. Psalm 127 is no advocate for passivity or laziness. As John Calvin says, ‘It is not the will of the Lord that we should be like blocks of wood, or that we should keep our arms folded without doing anything; but that we should apply to use all the talents and advantages which [God] has conferred upon us.’

God does everything & we do something

Here’s a more biblical way to express the role God plays and the role we play: God does everything and we do something. The key to seeing this is noticing the two remarkable verbal parallels in Psalm 127.1: God ‘builds’ the house and laborers ‘build’ the house. The LORD ‘guards’ the city and those ‘guarding’ watch over the city. Does God build or do we build? Yes! Does God guard or do we guard? Yes!

After my son Samuel ran off to do something more interesting, I allowed our two-year old daughter Annie to take a turn with the bicycle pump. She placed her little hand on the pump handle, and I placed my big hand over her little hand, and we pumped together. She was pumping and I was pumping at the same time.

But although we were both pumping, it was clear our contributions were not equal. If Annie had stopped pumping, I would have continued pumping. If I had stopped pumping, Annie couldn’t have continued on her own. Here’s a crucial truth to realize: we do not contribute equally with God. Our relationship with God is assymetrical. It is true to say that, ‘Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.’ But it is never true to say, ‘Unless those who labor build the house, the Lord builds in vain.’ That is heresy. God graciously uses us to accomplish his purposes in the world, but he never needs us. William Carey, the 19^th century Baptist missionary to India and father of the modern missionary movement, got it just right when he said, ‘Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God.’ The order of those two sentences is crucial. The asymmetry of God’s contribution and ours is the reason we give God all the glory when things we’ve worked hard to accomplish go well. As Solomon says elsewhere, ‘The horse is prepared for the day of battle, but victory belongs to the LORD’ (Proverbs 21:31).

God does everything, and we do something. Solomon concludes Psalm 127 by illustrating this truth in vv 3-5. Where do children come from? Well, of course the readers of Psalm 127 know that mommy and daddy play a part in the procreation of the children. (There’s been only one virgin birth in history.) But there’s a deeper answer to the question. Children are given to parents by God (verse 3). Parents who have tried unsuccessfully month after month to conceive children know they cannot simply decide to have children. God must open the womb, as he is often said to do in the Scriptures. Where do children come from? God does everything and we do something.

As Christians, we’re called to be more active and full of good works than the world. But we’re also called to be more reliant, more humble, and more aware of our need for help than the world. We are therefore to give all the glory to God when he causes our efforts to succeed. Let’s not live like practical atheists (‘God does nothing and we do everything’) or passive slackers (‘God does everything and we do nothing’). Instead, let’s live like prayerful activists. God does everything and we do something.

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Stephen Witmer (PhD, University of Cambridge) is the pastor of Pepperell Christian Fellowship in Pepperell, Massachusetts and an Adjunct Professor of New Testament at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He has written for Themelios, Reformation 21, Bible Study Magazine and the Gospel Coalition website, and is the author of The Good Book Guide to Jonah and Restlessly Patient: How to Live in Light of Your Future (forthcoming).

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For more on living in Christ, check-out the free edition of Winfield Bevin's book Grow: Reproducing Through Organic Discipleship available at Exponential.

For more resources on how the gospel changes our relationships & responsibilities, see: Relationships First: Reasons it's Difficult to Share Our Faith by Jonathan Dodson & Messy Discipleship by Jake Chambers.

Toward a Well-Rounded Sermon

*Editor's Note: This was #3 on our Top Posts of 2012. _

There are plenty of great resources explaining the best way to preach a sermon. One can find many books, articles, podcasts, and more to help with sermon preparation and delivery. In fact, we have a great conversation and an in-depth series on preaching on this blog that more than cover all the bases.

As I've preached many times and coached others, I typically come back around to a few major points. My hope is that these practical tips add another helpful wrinkle to the topic:

1. Be faithful to the text - Often times, God will draw you toward a particular passsage of Scripture. Own it. Let your study of the text bring out the truth in it. I have been guilty of forming an opinion about a text despite the text itself. Be careful. Extra study may challenge your opinion, but it will cause a deeper appreciation for the passage. Do not make the mistake that I have made several times by milking the verses to fit a particular illustration or point that you want to make. People will notice if you're stretching the truth to make a point. Even if it isn't as "exciting" as you had hoped, God did not waste a word. Pay attention to context and flow. Trust God with the results; you be faithful in preparation.

2. Make Christ the hero - If your sermon lacks Jesus, you're doing it wrong. Of course, there is ample Scripture that seems totally unrelated to Jesus, but he is the culmination of it as he explained to two people on the road to Emmaus. Again, don't stretch the text, but be aware of how the gospel either applies or enhances the practicality of the message. At the very least, end each sermon challenging your audience to trust Christ for whatever practical application is needed.

3. Think about the lost - No matter the venue, there is a chance that people who don't know Jesus will be present. Plan for that. Ask yourself the question time and again, "If this is the first time that someone heard about Jesus, would I answer the initial questions that will arise from this message?" We too often speak as though everyone listening is aware of the Christian "lingo" and references. Tim Keller argues, “If you don’t preach like there’s lost people present, there won’t  ever be any.” Even if your audience is 100% regenerate, you can strategically build apologetics into their minds by making logical points and answering questions within the message itself.

These may seem like very basic and obvious pointers, but they are neglected every Sunday from the pulpit. If nothing else, apply these techniques to your preparation to make a more well-rounded sermon.

The Implications of Obeying God

Editor's Note: This is a repost of The Implications of God. It appears at GCD with the author's permission. ---

Face in my hands. Elbows on the table. My husband is sitting across from me at our lovely unsuspecting Italian restaurant. He pushes in close, but I don't have words to define the tears hitting the table. He knows. More than two years ago we prayed a prayer  -- God, we will do anything -- and its repercussions are everywhere.

Our anythings seem to be costing us everything. Nothing about our previously sane lives are the same. In the last year we have given up all control, and God has taken us up on those simple and naive little words.

Anything Means Anything

Since we prayed that prayer, God has led us to adopt a three-and-half-year-old little boy from Rwanda, making us a family of six. We sold our house, merged our church with another local church, turned over leadership and our previous roles to others, and for the past year, we have been writing and living three book publication projects -- but that isn't everything. So, we are tired and empty.

My husband moves in even closer to me at the table. Ironically, I'm leaving the next day to be interviewed about the book that is honestly the cause of all of it … all the anythings. Yet, I can't remember why we are doing any of it. I'm so tired and unsure of myself and worst of all, God feels far, far away.

My husband whispers, “It’s been a hard year.” And strangely, it is comforting to admit that following God is hard. I ask myself, "Would I take it back?"

Because of The Gospel

God’s very existence demands these words from us -- I will do anything. If we find ourselves at the feet of a God who made us and set us in our time and space on this planet, which He spoke into being, what other life are we to lead than the one He wrote for us? And if it costs us everything (for the little while we live on this planet) -- comfort and approval and control and ease -- how will we answer?

Jesus did this. He lived all-in, with one foot in heaven and one on this earth. With eternity clear in His mind He said, “For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me." (John 6:38)

The implications of knowing His Father was simply to obey Him.

What Obeying Looks Like

The implications of obeying God for us are the same: keep our heads down and listen and do what He says, even if it leads to crying over our pasta sometimes.

And He will probably say things like:

• “Give the lunch you just got from the Chick-fil-A drive-thru to the woman with the cardboard sign outside your car window.”
• “Ease up on your kids -- I am not this hard on you, and I am God.”
• “Get rid of what you don’t need and don’t keep chasing stuff because you won’t be here long.”
• “Encourage and remind each other that I am real, and that I’m worth it. I promise.”
• “Come back to me everyday. I’m really here. I really see you.”

My husband and I aren't going to take it back. I would rather have nights that hurt than disobey. And underneath all the hard is a life that I wouldn't trade anyway. I love my anythings -- even the hardest ones.

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Jennie Allen’s passion is to communicate a bigger God through writing and teaching. She serves in ministry alongside her husband, Zac. They have four children and live in Austin, Texas. Jennie’s blog can be found at www.JennieAllen.com.

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To go deeper into the Gospel, read Unbelievable Gospel by Jonathan Dodson.

For more free articles about Gospel identity, check out The Love of Our Father by Jake Chambers and Spiritual Strength Training Parts One and Two by David Murray.

What the Prosperity Gospel Does to the Gospel

*Editor's Note: This was #1 on our Top Posts of 2012.

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I was reminded recently by a local TV preacher (asking for money in exchange for prayers, of course) how badly the "prosperity gospel" distorts the gospel of Christ. Here are three major things that I think the prosperity gospel does:

1. Cheapens Grace

The gospel of Jesus Christ is built upon the fact that God’s wrath needed to be satisfied by the shedding of blood in order for sinners to be taken out from under this wrath. Jesus did not have your material wealth in mind when he died on the cross. No, Jesus had your eternal soul in mind. Your wealth on earth is judged by others, but your soul is judged by God. Grace is poured out because you are born in spiritual poverty with no hope, not because your 401k is lower than you’d like. Paul proclaims that we are more than conquerors in Christ. What more do we really need?

2. Glorifies Materialism

One of the grossest sins in America is the infatuation with money and reputation. I live in Dallas where everyone is in debt up to their eyeballs in order to be seen as one of the North Dallas elites. It doesn’t matter that you make $35,000 per year as long as people think you make $200,000. It’s a scary place to be to think that God wants your wealth because he is ultimately concerned with your renown and happiness. There is a reason that faithful believers in the Bible struggled at one point or another by earthly standards – God was teaching them to refocus their standards according to his. Wealth is not sinful in and of itself, but should never be sought as though you deserve it.

3. Elevates Moralism

It is pretty clear in any prosperity sermon that you are blessed if you are wealthy. A key phrase for a prosperity preacher is, “Are you broke? Does your car need new tires? Did you only get peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch this week? It’s because you haven’t unlocked God’s ultimate plan for you!” He (or she) proceeds to tell you that if you do this and that, God will bless you. What is this blessing? MONEY. Duh. What more could you need to be happy? Forget reckless abandon for Christ and his Kingdom, as long as you got Chili’s instead of tuna salad this week. God’s blessing is him. You get HIM with no stipulations.

From We to Me?

In a recent CNN.com article Alan Miller took issue with the rising trend of young adults in America embracing a sort of generic spirituality, while eschewing more formal, organized forms of religion. Citing solid research and referencing popular books, Miller suggests that this movement is thoroughly entrenched in American life, but that it is also a “cop-out” and should be rejected. In spite of that, the “spiritual but not religious movement” continues to grow in popularity and, at least to some degree, seems to be a backlash against the excesses and inappropriate behavior that some religious organizations have embraced or engaged in, historically. Christianity is probably the most substantial segment of American religion to feel the weight of this rejection on the part of younger generations. Statistics constantly remind us that the younger the generation, the quicker they are leaving our organized faith behind.

If we are going to be honest about it, we have to admit that our Christian movements have, at times, fed the disenchantment through horrible behavior. Looking back through history to the crusades of the Catholic church, to the more recent examples of pedophilia among the Catholic church’s clergy, and even the rampant racism that used to dominate my own tribe, Southern Baptists, racism which has been publicly relegated to the trash heap in the last few years, but which still has a comfortable seat at the table in too many churches, it is easy to see why many would want nothing to do with it.

I want to suggest one biblical example, however, that indicates that rejection of the corporate expression of the church in the face of this kind of sin is not nearly as helpful to our spiritual condition as many might think it to be.

We live in America. The home of independent, “pull yourself up by your bootstraps”, self-success often best described by the famous Frank Sinatra song, “My Way“. We love the strong, able hero who can take on the world by themselves and succeed in the American ethic. Because of this ethos, we have so individualized every aspect of our culture, that we have also individualized our worship. We can worship God, and never be involved in organized worship. We do not need others to rightly honor him. But, is this what scripture indicates? See for yourself.

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. (Romans 12:1 ESV)

I want to call your attention to one small detail in this passage, one which various translations have unfortunately missed. Notice the plural use of the word “bodies”, particularly when contrasted with the singular use of the word “sacrifice”. If you were to read a different translation, say for instance the NIV, you would see both bodies and sacrifice as plural forms. Unfortunately, the NIV translators, among others, simply got it wrong. Bodies is intended to be plural, while sacrifice is intended to be singular. Why? Simply put, God’s design for our worship; for our sacrifice, is for each of us to come together, as individuals, and for us to form one corporate act of sacrifice; of worship, to honor Him. Simply put, God has designed us so that we need each other. Put another way, the corporate church is God’s design, not ours.

The corporate nature of the body of Christ can be foreign in such an individualized culture, but it is so imperative in the Christian community. It is on this foundation that activities of the church such as church discipline, communion, baptism and more are built upon. It is because we have lost this corporate element in many of our churches that some of these activities have fallen in to disrepair, or disuse all together. Sadly we do not understand the biblical nature of the church which means we can quickly abandon the biblical practices of the church. We must resist this encroaching individualization of the body of Christ.

Yes, the organized church has made horrific errors. Yes, she has failed time and time again. Yes, there is need for great renewal and reform in many corners of, particularly, the Christian church. However, abandoning the church is not the answer. The church needs you, but maybe more specific to your life, you need the church.

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Cross-posted from Micah's personal blog.

Wes Anderson, The Brilliance of Telling the Same Story a Thousand Ways, & the Church

“He's got one trick to last a lifetime, but that's all a pony needs."-- Paul Simon

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In preaching the Gospel, we are essentially telling the same story a thousand different ways. Movie-maker Wes Anderson seems to understand this concept.

Moonrise Kingdom, Anderson's most recent movie, tells a beautiful story. It's a story of very different people who, oddly enough, have something central in common – they are all broken people who feel cast off, confused, and unwanted. The privileged 12-year-old Suzie Bishop, who lives in an idyllic New England home with her attorney parents and three younger brothers, would seem to have nothing in common with Sam Shakusky, an orphan and recently resigned Khaki Scout, who has been traipsed from one boys home to another many times over the course of his young life.

Suzie's attorney parents – Walt and Laura Bishop - far from feeling grounded and accomplished with their giant home, boat, four children, and successful law practice, are painfully aware that they don’t have what it takes to be the parents their kids need them to be, nor the spouses they need to be for one another.

Laura is having an affair with Captain Sharp. As upset as her husband is when he finds out, he can barely react because he knows their marriage is not working. Scout Master Ward, whose job it is to keep all of his Khaki Scouts safe and productive, is shocked to discover Sam has run away, and even more surprised to find out he’s an orphan. Why hadn't Sam said anything?

The gnawing uncertainties of life are lifted in the unifying pursuit of bringing Suzy and Sam back to where they belong safely. It is not perfect -- people get stabbed with left-handed scissors and dogs get impaled with arrows. But this is not to be judged, just accepted.

"Was he a good dog?” runaway Suzie asks her companion, Sam, as they stand over the corpse of Snoopy, the accidentally arrow-pierced pooch.

"Who's to say," Sam intones, with the detached timber of a yogi.

The Story of Hope

As characters begin to bear with one another and learn to rely on one another, things change. Families are created or reunited. Couples form meaningful relationships.  Kids learn to help other kids, and bullies are overthrown. Each finds a sense of purpose and community when they accept themselves and one another.

The baseline plot won't come as a surprise if you are a Wes Anderson fan. He has the same message in almost every film. It's in the Tenebaum household, among the brothers seeking to mend a family in Darjeeling Ltd.; and among the animals Anderson takes on in Roald Dahl's The Fantastic Mr. Fox.

It is a message that resonates with me: In a broken world, where things aren't right, love somehow makes it beautiful. People are still broken and, at times, outlandish -- but beautiful.

The Gospel Story and the Church

The reason the Gospel story can be told a thousand different ways is because of its depth. The Gospel tells us the core of orthodoxy, the kerygma of Jesus, the fundamentals of the faith, the statements of the Apostle's Creed – it is the eternality of the Gospel. When Peter declares that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matt:16), Jesus responds, “Blessed are you, Peter son of John, for flesh and blood did not reveal this to you but my Father in Heaven.” The Divine mysteriously interacts with creation and that which is eternal and unseen is made known to mere humans.

The Gospel also tells the story of pilgrimage. It speaks of how we must work out our salvation with fear and trembling. But God doesn't leave us alone in this. First, He is with us. God works within us both to will and to work for His good pleasure (Phil 2:12-13). We have God Himself with us, but we also have His reflections, His people. The other pilgrims are with us.

A pilgrim differs from a hermit. The hermit isolates, while the pilgrim triangulates. The pilgrim heads to a fixed point -- Jesus -- and finds along the way other pilgrims. They come from different places, but join their journeys because they have a common destination. The Church is the gathering of broken people who have encountered Jesus and are journeying together with Him towards home.

The Gospel also tells the story of ambassadors from another kingdom. It tells of how we have become a people unique to God among all the peoples on the earth. It tells us we are a royal priesthood. We are to serve the world around us. The Gospel, through the revelation of God, transforms us so that we demonstrate life in Christ -- in word and deed -- to the community around us. Mission and evangelism are part of the story of this same gospel.

An Eternal Story

We tell this story:

"God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)

We tell it in pulpits, at our family table, where we work. It is in how we work, why we work. We tell it in our leisure time. We tell it to our spouse. We tell it to ourselves.

Take time to hear the gospel again. Tell the story so well that you want to hear it again and again. A good message lives in many constructs, and has many iterations. As we live and breath, the Gospel continues.

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Ed Marcelle is Lead Pastor of Terra Nova Church in Troy, N.Y., and Northeast Regional Coordinator for the Acts 29 Network. Marcelle holds a Master of Arts in Biblical Studies from Dallas Theological Seminary. He and his wife Diane have four children: Alfonso, Isaiah, Bethany, and Abigail. 

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To go deeper in to the Gospel, read Unbelievable Gospel by Jonathan Dodson.

For more free articles about telling the Gospel story checkout Behold the Beauty by Jason Garwood, and A Story of Gospel Community by Seth McBee.

The Trinity & God the Father

Editor's Note: This is a repost of WDA's Knowing God Pocket Principle 4. It appears at GCD with the author's permission. ---

Most of us can’t remember being a baby. But we all were, even if there is no hard evidence, such as those embarrassing photos parents often bring out at holidays. As babies, we form critical ideas about ourselves and the world around us. Sociologists and psychologists tell us that one of the most basic ideas we develop is the understanding that we are distinct, separate from the world around us. We are different from everyone else, even our parents. Our hands are our hands, not somebody else’s. There is an “us” and there is a “not us.”

This concept of being distinct and separate is also true of God. He is different from His creation.

God is different from us and all the universe. Nothing can quite compare to Him nor entirely explain Him. In order to develop a true relationship with God we need to understand this. We must realize that “God Is Who He Is” (Exodus 3:14). To understand who God is, we must understand what He has said about Himself.

God reveals aspects of His character and rule through the natural world. The amazing complexity, order, beauty, and grandeur of the physical world tell us something of God's majesty. But He especially tells us about Himself through Scripture. One unique way that God has revealed Himself in the Bible involves His three-in-one nature. The Church calls this three-person aspect of God: “The Trinity.” Admittedly this is a difficult concept to grasp, but it is central to understanding Him. We can know God more fully by studying how He has revealed Himself through each person of the Trinity.

The Trinity

Deuteronomy 6:4 declares, “The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!” The Scriptures are very clear, there is only one God. Yet He exists in three eternal and equal persons who are the same in essence, but uniquely distinct from one another. The Scriptures place the three persons of the Trinity together as equals: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19; I Peter 1:2, I Corinthians 12:4-6; II Corinthians 13:14).

The Trinity is a great mystery to us. We cannot fully understand how God can be one God and three persons, because we have no complete and exact comparison for this concept. Many things about our infinite God are hard to understand from our finite, human vantage point (cf. Isaiah 55: 8-9). Yet we can define and believe this because the Bible teaches it. Just as we do not have to understand electricity in order to believe it exists and to use it, so the Trinity exists despite our inability to fully comprehend this truth.

The persons of the Trinity relate to each other in a living and vital way.

Consider water. It is one substance (H20), but exists in three forms: liquid (water), gas (steam), and solid (ice). Perhaps it is helpful to note that in a similar way, God is one being who is expressed in the three persons of the Trinity. Unlike H2O, however, the persons of the Trinity relate to each other in a living and vital way. Generally speaking, within the Trinity, God exhibits three roles: God the Father initiates and plans, God the Son executes the plans, and God the Holy Spirit applies the plans to believers. Within the Trinity, unity is brought about by the Son submitting to the Father and the Holy Spirit submitting to the Son and the Father. God the Father has, in turn, given all authority to the Son to carry out the divine plans.

God the Father

As the first person of the Trinity, God the Father, shows His fatherly relationship toward both believers and non-believers through Creation and His common goodness to all the world. The Scriptures say that God the Father causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust. He provides for the animals and the fields, for the people of His Kingdom and even the people who oppose Him (Matthew 5:45, 6:25-33, 7:9- 11; Luke 6:35; Hebrews 12).

Furthermore, God the Father demonstrates that He has a unique relationship with believers. God draws us to Himself, graciously bringing us into His family as children (John 6:44, 1:12; I John 3:1). Indeed, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, so that we may truly call Him, “Abba! Father!” (Romans 8:15-16; Galatians 4:6- 7). It is a great and humbling mystery to be called children of the Living God and to be made co-heirs with Jesus Christ the Son (Romans 8:17).

This adoption by God the Father leads to special privileges and responsibilities for His children. In Ephesians 1:3- 14, we see that God the Father freely forgives us and provides every good thing we need. He has special intentions for us—to be holy and blameless—and has revealed His plan to us in Scripture. As a perfect Father, He has assured us of our place in His love by giving us the Holy Spirit as a guarantee of our inheritance as His children. With all the joy and security of beloved children, we have free access to God the Father through faith (Ephesians 3:12).

Likewise, God the Father has endowed His children with responsibilities such as obeying His Word (John 14:21) and representing Him as messengers of reconciliation to the world (II Corinthians 5:20). As members of His family, we are to be a part of His church and to respond to Him in praise and worship (Hebrews 10:24-25; I Peter 2:9).

This adoption by God the Father leads to special privileges and responsibilities for His children.

As we study who God is, we come to understand more of His character and His nature. Through the Scripture, we learn that God is both transcendent (beyond our understanding) in the mystery of His Trinity, and He is immanent (totally accessible) as our heavenly Father. With whole hearts we can call on Him as Lord and Father!

Summary of The Trinity & God the Father

• It is important to understand what God has revealed about Himself in Scripture.
• God is a Trinity, existing in three eternal and equal persons who are one God.
• Although the Trinity cannot be fully understood, the Bible teaches us to believe.
• God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit fulfill different roles.
• God the Father is the first person of the Trinity.
• As His children, we have special privileges and responsibilities.

Application Suggestions

• Meditate on and appreciate the transcendence and immanence of God.
• Meditate on Ephesians 1 and 2 in order to appreciate the privileges God has given to you.
• Meditate on I Peter 2:9-10 and appreciate the high calling God has given to you by entrusting you with significant responsibilities.

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Robert D. (Bob) Dukes is the President and Executive Director of Worldwide Discipleship Association (WDA) headquartered in Fayetteville, Georgia. He serves as a founding member of The Steering Committee for The Pierce Center for Disciple Building at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Boston, MA.

* Order the Knowing God Pocket Principle Bundle at the WDA Store. 

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For more resources on digging deeper into the truth and mystery of the Trinity, check out The Holy Spirit, by Winfield Bevins.

For more free articles on living out the Trinity in a gospel centered community, read: The Harmony of Community, by Greg Wilson, and Confession Is the New Innocence, by Hayley and Michael DiMarco.

Mission New England (Part 2)

Josh Cousineau is church planter of Redemption Hill, located in Auburn, Maine, and core team member of the Gospel Alliance New England. He enjoys spending time with his high school sweetheart – now his bride since 2002 – and their three children. Josh blogs at JoshCousineau.com.  

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In my first post I talked a little bit about the culture of the Northeast, especially New England. In this post I wanted to put forth a couple thoughts on the 'how' of mission. The question begs to be asked, 'If people do not know their need for a Savior, how do you reach them?' The short and simple is that it has to be a work of the Spirit. If He is not living and active in New England, or anywhere for that matter, then there is no hope and no point to our efforts. But the glorious truth is that the Spirit is at work, especially in the hearts of those who do not know they even have a need for Him.

Preach Jesus - The number one thing our churches must do in any culture, especially one who doesn't know anything about Jesus, is to preach the real Jesus. We need to stay far away from the 'your best life now' Jesus. The Jesus of the Bible will be the only one who can reveal people's need for healing from the brokenness that is this world.

Preach Truth - We need to not waver or wallow in our view of firm Biblical doctrine. Many people will 'water down' things that are clear in the Bible under the name of 'reaching out' to the lost. While this could be considered noble, it misses the point. What is needed in a world full of people who claim truth, is a people who's lives point to an ultimate, life-changing truth.

Be Real - Fakeness has struck many blows to the church. What is needed now is not more hypocrisy, but transparency. People need to hear about how we have failed, how we have messed up, how we have been about us or about an agenda and not about what Jesus was about. We need to confess our sins to those in our midst and show them how we turn to Jesus! Only in our real, brokenness will the world be freed to be broken.

Be Normal - All those things listed above are not to be done on Sunday during an hour-long service, but in our daily, normal lives. We need to be real at our 9-5, when we drop our children off at day-care or school, when we go on a date with our spouse, or sit and play catch at the local park. We also need to preach truth in our dealings with our boss and co-workers. We need to show that the truth we believe in is not simply a good, morally upright set of beliefs, but something that has changed us from the inside out. We need to be people that will hold firm to the truth of the Scriptures and be willing to take it on chin if need be.

Church in New England will never penetrate the culture by meeting for an hour each week, even if it is the greatest show in town. What we will do when we have the greatest show in town is draw people away from the other shows and have them join ours. This drawing is not true conversion, but transplant growth. No matter how great our show is, people that are not interested in watching the show will never attend.

Think of it this way. I don't play disk golf. So if a new course was to open and be the best in town, or even the region, or the world, it would not entice me in the least to go try my hand at it. The most it will do is draw people from the other 3 or 4 disk golf courses around my area. This makes total sense in the setting of something we do not like to do, or care to do. Yet we are baffled when we try it with church and it doesn't work. Here is the reason; you and I love the church. If you are spending time reading this blog, then you love the church. You are the disk golfer who is at the ribbon cutting for the new course. Just replace 'disk golf' with church, and you get the picture.

Yet we, in New England, live in a world that couldn't care less about church, so no matter how much we tell them it is amazing in our advertising, or no matter how 'cutting edge' we think we are, the only people wowed by it are those who are already playing church.

This is where things need to change. We need to take Ephesians 4 and live it out. We need to be pastors and ministers who equip our people to preach Jesus, be real, and stand firm on the truth of what Jesus has done for them.

(Photo courtesy: TGC)

Mission New England (Part 1)

Josh Cousineau is church planter of Redemption Hill, located in Auburn, Maine, and core team member of the Gospel Alliance New England. He enjoys spending time with his high school sweetheart – now his bride since 2002 – and their three children. Josh blogs at JoshCousineau.com.  

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I have heard stories about people who live in the Bible Belt and how everyone down there is a 'Christian.' I have visited the South and been blown away by how many church buildings there are, and how big they are. I grew up in the Northeast and this is my home. I love it, but it is a little (ok a lot) different than what I hear the South is like.

I remember one trip to Alabama where I met with a Southern Baptist pastor for breakfast. When we were at the local breakfast joint, he started to pray for our food. There was nothing special about his prayer, nothing that stood out to me as unusual. During the prayer the waitress came to the table. Now, I don't know if you are like me, but this seems to happen often when I am out with my family or friends for a meal. We pray and almost like clockwork, the waiter or waitress walks up to see how our food is. This is what stood out to me. Not that she walked towards us during our prayer; that was normal. The strange thing was that the waitress stood about five feet from the table, bowed her head, and waited for us to be done praying. This would never happen where I live. More often than not they just walk up and ask you their question. It is not that they are intentionally interrupting your time of prayer, it is that they don't even know or notice what you are doing. In the Northeast, people don't pray before meals.

It is not that those who serve us in the Northeast are slow to notice that we are eating and those in the South are that quick. It is that the thought of praying before a meal is not normal to those who call the Northeast home. Not only do people not pray before meals, but the 'Christian-culture' that so many of us have grown up in and are used to, is non-existent in the majority of people's daily lives.

Gospel-Depleted Culture

To say that we (those who live in the Northeast, especially New England) are in the midst of a gospel-depleted culture would be an understatement. I could throw around statistics about how dry it is up here, but who really cares about statistics. I would much rather talk about real life stories of real people, with a real eternity looming on their horizon. I could point to a local coffee shop where the people who work there are all about spirituality, but this spirituality has nothing to do with biblical worldview. It is actually fully opposed to those beliefs. I could talk about a guy who told me he could not believe in a church that has rooms full of gold and does not care about the poor or the down and out. I am not sure, but my church doesn't have rooms full of gold. The church he was talking about is the Vatican. His view of Christianly and the Church is based only off of what he knows about the Roman Catholic church, not my little church plant, or any other church I know of. I could tell story after story about students, parents, and teachers who do not see an issue with premarital sex, as long as you use protection.

In the Northeast, Christian is more likely to be found on the lips of someone making a derogatory comment, than someone talking about the hope which they live their lives by. Jesus is about as far back in people's minds as who won the medal count in the 2008 Olympics. Not only do the vast majority of people not know about Jesus, they don't even care that they don't know about Him. It is not relevant for them, so therefore there is no need.  See, it is not that they have turned their backs on the family religion, or let their parents down by bailing on the Easter service this year, or the Thanksgiving Eve prayer service. Their parents probably didn't go to church much in the first place, so they don't really care. You would have to go back to grandma, or even great-grandma before you would find someone who actually had a 'Christian-Rhythm' to their life. This is just how life is, and there is nothing one can do about it.

There is Hope

In the midst of this darkness, I find hope. The pastors I talk to have a joyful expectancy upon their lips. Student ministers are eager to pour their lives out for the next generation. To be honest I would rather work with people who don't have a care in the world about God, the Bible, the Church, or Jesus. Because what I find is when these people come face-to-face with the gospel, it changes everything. They are more like the prodigal son who 'comes to his sense (Lk. 15.17 NIV) that living as a servant with his father is better than the life he has now, eating pig slops, than the elder brother who sits by ticked that his sinner brother got back into the family (Lk. 15.28).

No matter if the waitress comprehends that people will pray before a meal or not, the gospel is still the same. That is our only hope. Not that she would see us praying and think, 'oh, I need to be considerate and wait.' No, our only hope is that Jesus is in the business of bringing people to Himself, lost, sick people. People who don't know they are lost or sick. People who think they have it all together. This is what Jesus came to do, and as a pastor and missionary, this is what I cling to. Jesus came to save the sinners.

(Photo courtesy: TGC)

The Love of Our Father

I love the mornings when my boy Ezra wakes up and he just wants to snuggle. He is a year and a half old, twenty some pounds of dynamite and energy. He seldom wants to snuggle. But some mornings he does. I love getting to hold my son and telling him I love him.

And I do love him. I adore him. I am crazy about him and love being his daddy. And he adores me. He loves to wrestle, play, and tell me about the “capuchin” monkeys at the zoo. And he loves to cheer on his daddy. One day I was beating my friend Dustin at backyard soccer, and Ezra was on the trampoline jumping and watching. After I scored an epic goal, Ezra ran to the edge of the trampoline and put out his arms. I ran over to him thinking he wanted down. Instead he just wanted to give me a hug and yell, “Go Daddy!” It was awesome.

I remember the first night I brought Ezra home and it felt like my heart had exploded. I wept with joy and love. Lindsey and I both felt like Will Ferrell in Elf after his first date with Zoey Deschanel. All we could say was, “I am in love, I am in love, and I don’t care who knows it.”

ABBA FATHER – DADDY GOD

Ezra and I have a real relationship. I am his daddy, and he is my boy. That means something. It is a gift, and it is a blessing. Some will read this and be sad they don’t have kids, and some might read this and be sad they had a crappy dad or no dad at all. That is sad and is part of the curse of the fall. We were created to love and be loved. Sin has come into the world and separated us from God and one another. Sin is a relationship destroyer. But God is love. Christ proves his love for us through his death on the cross, and brings us back into perfect relationship back with our heavenly Father.

Our God is a Daddy. He reveals himself as Abba Father. One whose arms we can rest in. One whom we can watch, adore and, cheer on. And he loves us too. We are his beloved children. His kids. His girl. His boy.

GOD’S COVENANTAL LOVE

One of the things I told Ezra when he was born was that he never has to work for my love. That I love him with a covenantal love. I choose to love him forever. It is a love that is not based on his performance. This is the love our Father loves us with. It is an everlasting covenant.

He chooses us, adopts us, creates the way for us to be in his family forever, and loves us in spite of our performance and rebellion. This is a love we do not deserve, and it is a powerful and perfect love. He is not ashamed to love us as he loves us and doesn’t care who knows it!

It can be so easy to forget this covenantal love when you feel the weight of trying to perform — trying to prove yourself to the world and to others and ultimately to God. I remember feeling this way not to long ago. I can often slip into this feeling, and it is heavy and exhausting. One day, I was feeling this weight and some friends prayed over me. One of them had a vision of God looking at me and saying – “I love you. You are my boy. Rest, Jake. The Father loves you. You don’t have to perform, as I am already here with you.” I wept under the freedom of these powerful and loving words. My God is a relational God. He is a Daddy that loves me. And I get to run to him, hug him, and cheer him on – “Go Daddy!”

WHO’S YOUR DADDY?

Knowing our Father helps us know who we are. As Christians we are sons and daughters of a holy and perfect Father. We are not alone. We belong to a heavenly family and will live together for eternity. We don’t have to take on life’s pain and struggles like a cowboy in a Clint Eastwood movie, but instead we get to share our  triumphs and trials as a church praying together to “our Father who art in heaven.”

If you are feeling the weight of loneliness or the pressure to prove yourself, I want to encourage you to confess it to God and to your church family. I want to encourage you to run to your Father’s arms and let him embrace you and tell you the truth of his love for you. Praise and thank him that you are not alone and that you don’t have to perform for his love. Tell some of your church friends to remind you of these truths — that you have a perfect daddy. Rest in this beautiful truth and when the world asks you why you have such peace and rest in a chaotic world, point them to your loving Father!

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Jake Chambers is a member of Jesus’ bride - the church, husband to his beautiful bride Lindsey, and a daddy to his boy Ezra. Jake is passionate about seeing the gospel both transform lives and create communities that love Jesus, the city, and the lost. He currently serves Red Door Church through leading, preaching, equipping, and pastoring. You can read more of his writing at reddoorlife.tv.

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For more in-depth reading about family discipleship, see Family Worship, by Winfield Bevins. 

For more free articles about loving our children with the love of the Father, check out Ways to Love Your Children, by Patrick Morley, and Kids in the Family of God – Part One and Kids in the Family of God – Part Two, by Ben Connelly. 

Kony 2012, Sex-Trafficking, and the Christian Response to Justice Issues

I’m not sure there’s a more amazing piece of storytelling than the Kony 2012 video. It’s worth the 30 minutes as long as you are prepared to cry, be angry, and get fired up. [WATCH: KONY 2012 from INVISIBLE CHILDREN on Vimeo]

As I’ve spoken with a few people about the Kony video and how Christians should respond, I’m struck by a few thoughts.

There is so much brokenness in the world, how can you ever identify where to get involved? It seems that various winds of doctrine have been joined by various winds of mercy and justice initiatives. Paul obviously has negative connotations for the winds of doctrines and it is rare, though not unheard of, to have heretical justice initiatives. Nevertheless, being tossed about by doctrines or justice opportunities can make us completely ineffective if we do not assess ourselves before jumping in.

Every day we are confronted with a terrible issue in our world, whether it be sex-trafficking locally and globally, the Invisible Children, the global orphan crisis, racial inequality, and global poverty. Every time we see a new issue we could jump at the need to get involved but constantly be shifting our focus.

Living in New York City with 8.5 million people, it is easy to both see and be overwhelmed by the need. How should we respond? How should we approach involvement? Are we supposed to be involved in every justice issue? How does the church or the individual Christian approach these initiatives?

The Gospel Motivates and Empowers us to Mercy and Justice

Imagine pockets of people giving themselves to seeing brokenness restored, injustice ended, and local/global issues resolved. This is not our creation of the church, this is Jesus’ vision and mission for the church. We are inspired by these issues because we were created to embody our God’s character toward these issues. When we engage the brokenness of the world we are reminded of God the Father who sent Jesus, publicly declaring His passion in action to initiate the end of brokenness, suffering, and ills caused by the selfish desires that live inside of us. (Ed Stetzer has some good scriptural evidence for us)

Christian faith gives us a view towards the Kingdom of God where Jesus is King and eliminates all tears, pain, and injustice. There is no greater motivation or means of empowerment.

It also means we have responsibility. None of us can stand on the sideline and avoid issues of justice and needs for mercy. We must engage and we must do so led by the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Don’t Just “Like” Everything - Settle On and Do Something

Now that Facebook is integrated into everything in the world, I am guily of hitting the “Like” button and settling into armchair advocate of a cause. Causes aren’t changed simply by web-interaction. It helps with exposing people to ideas, making an idea viral, but personal involvement and engagement of the issue is what rallies people to a cause. So choose a cause and focus on it.

Get Informed Beyond a Moving Video

Joe Boyd had a great article about a Christian response moving beyond emotive acceptance to informed action. Storytelling is powerful, so we must be careful to not enter an issue naively assuming we know the simple solution to an often complex reality.

Invest Deep More Than Wide

Real change happens over a generation. The moving video of Kony 2012 was a decade just in the making and could be a decade in accomplishment.

A sustaining impact comes from commitment to the idea which requires that we move our excitement and emotions to lifestyle-changing action.

The diversity of the body of Christ allows for us to find peace in addressing deeply a few issues rather than addressing broadly every issue on a surface level. We need to encourage people to develop discernment in line with their gifts, talent, and passions to mobilize more people for more issues.

These types of movements make me excited about heaven where we will get to celebrate Jesus’ destruction of injustice. I can’t wait.

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Cross-posted from Logan's personal blog.

Gospel Discipline

My oldest daughter is made in her father’s image. She has my personality — good and bad. Maybe that’s why I get frustrated so easily with her. My knee jerk reaction is to respond swiftly and often in anger. So much of what frustrates me is more about my own hurt pride than anything else. We’ve all been in the store where the child is screaming - whether it’s your child or not. It’s easy as a parent to grit your teeth and smile and say something like “When we get home, you’re gonna get it!” and rush out of the store.

However, it’s much harder but much more beneficial for parents and children to patiently and loving discipline while using that as opportunity to share the gospel with our children. What’s even more important is what we do in the days and weeks and months leading up to these incidents. Those moments will impact our response and the discipline we give out.

I don’t have all the answers for disciplining children, but the gospel empowers us to patiently and loving use those moments and informs how we must disciple our children.

Foundational: The Gospel for All of Life

The gospel must inform all of our family life. Being Christian in name only must not be tolerated in our churches, families, and communities. We must not compartmentalize our lives. The death and resurrection of Christ is a dramatic climax in the one Story and that singular event should reverberate through out our own story. Moses understood something about this. God had just dramatically displayed his power and glory by delivering his people out of their slavery in Egypt. He then commanded them:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. - Deuteronomy 6:4-9

Your knee jerk reaction may be that’s Old Testament. But the story of Israel’s redemption out of Egypt is meant as a type of our own redemption (for more development on this theme read Mike Wilkerson’s Redemption or Tom Holland’s Contours of Pauline Theology). More importantly Deuteronomy is a packed full of gospel truth. Darrel Bock in his Deuteronomy NIVAC calls the book "the gospel according to Moses." Through Moses, God commands parents to rehearse his covenant faithfulness in redeeming his people from Egypt to their children. Likewise, we must rehearse the covenant faithfulness of God in redeeming the church by the blood of Christ.

This habit must be foundational for our family. The gospel story should saturate our family’s interactions - when we’re walking, hiking, eating, driving, helping with homework, and disciplining. It’s this foundational gospeling which allows us to weave our children’s story - both before their salvation and after - into the one Story.

Before their salvation we speak of the covenant faithfulness of God in Christ. We share our stories and give testimony of the power of God to save. We speak boldly about our former condition as those dead in our sins and the new life and power we have in Christ. We share that we are united with him - adopted as sons and daughter. We do not strive for peace and right-standing with God. He has justified us. We now live out of gratitude and joy by the power of the Spirit pursuing the holiness, which is ours in Christ.

We can also echo the one Story in the way we interact with our children in other ways. For instance, my older daughter’s birthday just passed, and we promised her we would go to the aquarium. She asked us many times in the days leading up to our trip if we were really going to the aquarium.

I'd ask her, “Did daddy promise we would go to the aquarium?”

“Yes,” she'd reply.

I then explained that when I promise her something I work as hard as I can to keep that promise. But guess who never breaks a promise? God. Even when daddy tries his best sometimes unexpected things happen. But nothing catches God off guard. He’s planned everything out in advance and is in control. And he’s promised that anyone who comes to him in the name of Jesus will not be turned away. He’s also promised that if you ask him to forgive your sins and place your trust in Christ that you will be adopted into his family.

We share these gospel truths and confidently tell our children these promises are their promises if they place their trust in Christ.

After their salvation, we remind them of the mind of Christ, which is theirs already (Philippians 2). We rehearse the promise of God in Christ and encourage them to lay hold of those promises in faith daily for encouragement as they struggle to walk worthy of their calling in Christ. Especially with children who may profess Christ early this is important. We do not point them back to a moment of time or the sincerity of their profession. We point them back to the promises of God. “God has said he would do this. Do you believe that promise? It’s yours then.”

What about Discipline?

At this point you may be asking. OK that’s well and good but what does this have to do with discipline? Paul admonishes the Ephesians:

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.” Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. - Ephesians 6:1-4

First, Paul tells the children to obey the parents. This command is not a bare command. He’s not just saying kids obey because I said so. These household codes are connected with the gospel foundation he’s laid at the beginning of the book (Ephesians 1-3). Second, Paul tells the parents not to provoke the children to anger. Both commands are rooted in the gospel.

The instruction is what I’ve already laid out. It’s the daily gospeling. It’s the faithful living in light of that truth. Christian parenting should look like the faithful stewarding of our Lord’s children. We sacrificially serve him by disciplining them. They are first and foremost people created in his image, and if they are saved they are especially his bride. We should not lose sight of either of these truths.

What’s more. We do this particularly by not provoking them to anger. If the gospel doesn’t inform our parenting, it will be hard to love our children and discipline them with out expressing our frustration and anger. The gospel reminds us that our sins were serious enough to send Christ to the cross - preventing our anger from seeping out. But it also reminds us that our children’s sins are serious enough to require a Savior which informs the way we discipline.

If you do not rehearse the gospel story faithfully like Moses in Deuteronomy commands then when these volatile situations arise, sinner(s) (parents) plus sinner (children) will equal anger and frustration for both parties. However, if the gospel informs all of our family life then those truths will inevitably transform the way in which we discipline our children. It will prevent us from provoking them to anger and on the occasions where we do let our anger and frustration out, it allows us to ask for forgiveness admitting humbly it was a sin against God and them.

Practically, you might say something like “The way you treated your sister was very unkind. This is the type of sinfulness that Jesus died to save us from.” Insert appropriate discipline. “Now come sit with daddy and let me give you a hug and a kiss. I want to tell you that I love you even when you disobey and if you’ll place all your trust in Jesus he will take your dirty heart and give you a new heart so you no longer have to sin.”

Or for children who are saved, “The way you acted in the store was sinful. You acted selfishly. Jesus covered your sins on the cross and put your old dirty heart to death and gave you new life. Let’s pray that the Spirit would continue to transform your heart making you more like Christ.”

Gospel Discipline

By God's grace, we can make discipline less about us and more about God. We must create an atmosphere in our homes where the gospel informs all of life - allowing the covenant love and faithfulness of God to impact the way we love our children. When that moment comes when our children disobey, the gospel is in the forefront of our mind and our children’s. We’ve already established our love for them which empowers us to approach them calmly and places our discipline in the context of all the gospeling we’ve already done.

It turns a potential powder keg for resentment and anger into a discipleship opportunity. An opportunity to share the gospel with our children instructing them through the discipline. And hopefully as they grow older, mature, and place their faith in Christ (if they haven’t already). These times will be a positive experience--which provides you leverage to speak the gospel into their lives as they have more difficult circumstances and life choices to make.

If we fail to disciple our children through gospel-centered discipline. If we do provoke them to anger, they will look back at these times of discipline with resentment and anger. They will distrust us and we may not have the opportunity or leverage to speak into their lives later. Don’t lose hope - it’s never too late. You can start discipling them now by asking for their forgiveness and then demonstrating how the gospel has and will impact your relationship with them moving forward. Don’t miss out on the joy of sharing the gospel with your children. The great commission starts in our homes.

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Mathew B. Sims is the Editor-in-Chief at Exercise.com and has authored, edited, and contributed to several books including A Household Gospel, We Believe: Creeds, Confessions, & Catechisms for Worship, A Guide for Advent, Make, Mature, Multiply, and A Guide for Holy Week. Mathew, LeAnn (his wife), and his daughters Claire, Maddy, and Adele live in Taylors, SC at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains with their Airdale Terrier. They attend Downtown Presbyterian Church (PCA). Visit MathewBryanSims.com!

Defining Gospel Centered Mission

Editor's Note: This is a repost of Mission. It appears here with the writer's permission. ---

A lot of Christian terms get thrown around. "Mission" is defiantly one of those terms. Mission is key to the church, and should be valued and practiced by a church that wants to be faithful to Scripture.

Gospel centered mission can be defined as: Glorifying God by proclaiming the gospel of Jesus for the sake of gathering God’s people to him.

There are four key truths about mission throughout the gospel of John that will help us be better missionaries for Jesus in our context.

1. Incarnation (Example of Mission)

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’”) For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. (John 1:14-16)

Jesus is the greatest example of a missionary. The incarnation of Jesus (God becoming a man) gives us the example of contextualization. Jesus came from the culture of heaven to the culture of earth. He ate their food, wore their clothes, spoke their language, went to parties, had friends, and worked a job. He learned the culture, and engaged the people in his context. He also helps us understand we are to come in grace and truth. This means that we come humbly and full of compassion. We listen to people, show interest in them, and care for them just as Jesus did. However, this also means we will call out sin, hate sin, fight against the culture's idols, and proclaim the redemption of God through Jesus. We need to dwell among the people in our city, proclaiming God’s grace and truth.

2. Salvation (Heart of Mission)

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” (John 3:16-17)

These two verses show us God’s heart behind his mission. He wants to see people saved. God desires that people believe in the life, death, and resurrection of his Son for eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to condemn us (for we already were because of sin), but to save us.

3. The glory of God (Purpose of Mission)

“Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17:24)

Our purpose for mission should be aligned with Jesus' purpose for mission: to glorify God. Our main motive for spreading the gospel is to see people come under the rule of Christ. We want to see the glory of God made known to the world. God desires that the world be full of the knowledge of his glory. When we join him on mission we faithfully desire to see him glorified through the proclamation of the gospel.

4. Spirit empowered (Power of Mission)

Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending “you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” (John 20:21)

We receive authority from Jesus himself because he himself has all authority (Matthew 28:18-20). Just as the Father sent the Son, and the Father and Son send the Spirit, so the Son and the Spirit send and empower us for mission. This is our source of power for the mission. We have the Holy Spirit of God to empower us to witness to the nations of the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ.

Faithful in Mission

Gospel centered mission is key to the vibrancy and health of the local church. We are commanded by Jesus to be faithful missionaries who understand our context, have passion to see the lost saved, for the glory of God, and by the power of the Holy Spirit.

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Garrett Ventry is a church planting intern at Vintage 21 Church in Raleigh. He serves under the regional director of the Acts 29 Network's southeast region. He is also a student at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He and his wife Megan live in Raleigh. Twitter: @GarrettVentry

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To read more on sharing the gospel, see Unbelievable Gospel, by Johathan Dodson.

For more free articles on gospel centered missions, see Missional Living in a Complex World, by JD Payne, and What is Missional Culture & Why Does It Matter? by JR Woodward.

Biblical Prayer

Editor's Note: This is a repost of On Prayer. It appears at GCD with the writer's permission. ---

Prayer is the great privilege and joy of the believer in Christ, but it can also be a source of frustration and mystery as we seek God. In one sense prayer is quite simple to define – it is coming before God to speak with him and interact in relationship with him. On the other hand, it is hard to carve out time to pray and to understand how prayer functions. In this essay, we will look briefly at the vast subject of prayer in Scripture and in our lives. For those who want to read more, I highly suggest Paul E. Miller’s new work, A Praying Life.

For our brief purposes here, we will take the following path together. First, we will look at some pagan understandings of prayer and how believers in Jesus can at times treat prayer in the same manner. Second, we will look at a few ways in which prayer is described in Scripture. Then we'll close with some guiding principles and practical suggestions relating to living a life of prayer.

Pagan Prayer

In many religions and philosophies of the world, prayer is used to either please or appease some deity. Those who believe in multiple gods have always believed in prayer.  If you prayed the right way, at the right times, with the right trinkets you could get a god on your side. Not a bad gig save one problem: There is one God who is sovereign ruler of the world, and he does not exist to obey our commands or be manipulated by our “prayers” and rituals. There are several ways prayer becomes pagan, even in the mouth of believers in Jesus. We’ll just look at three.

1. Pinata Prayer. Humorously coined by Mark Driscoll, piñata prayer treats God as if he is a big piñata in the sky. If we whack him with the stick of prayer, lots of candy and goodies fall out. Prayer is not just trying to get goodies out of God, but many times we approach it this way.
2. Dancing Prayer. When I was a little kid we had a dog -- a short haired miniature schnauzer named Gretchen. My brother and I loved to make that dog dance in order to get a treat from us. We would make her jump on her hind legs, spin around and do back flips (well, maybe not). When she performed, we would give her a treat. Many times we think if we do the right things, say the right prayers and dance a little, that God will give us a reward for our performance.  This is an odd way to see God: If I pray 'correctly' then God will give me treats.
3. Trading Places. In the early 1980s, there was a movie where Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd “traded places” in life. Murphy was a homeless con man who became the rich tycoon and Aykroyd became the homeless guy. Sometimes, we think by praying we can “trade places” with God. We act as if we are God and can give orders to get what we want. Remember, we are his servants and we exist for his glory, not the other way around. I know it is silly to think of prayer as telling God what to do, but that doesn’t keep us from doing it. There are even preachers on TV that encourage this sort of thing.

If we do not want to pray in these ways, we must look at how Scripture presents a life of prayer. We’ll look at this issue by describing biblical prayer then close with some practical stuff.

Biblical Prayer

In Scripture we find descriptions of people praying, recorded prayers, as well as commands and instruction about prayer. Although this will be far from complete, there are several ways we see prayer described in the Bible.

1. Prayer is approaching God and desiring to be relationally in his presence. In Psalm 42:1-2, we read the following: "As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?" We see the same idea in the New Testament. We are encouraged to "approach the throne of God with confidence to find mercy and help in our time of need" (Hebrews 4:16). So prayer involves approaching God, through Jesus Christ, in the middle of the joys, pains, triumphs, and sufferings of every day life.
2. Prayer is seen as intercession and supplication -- coming to God with petitions and requests. Philippians 4:6-7 teaches us not to be anxious about anything, "but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God." We must remember, we do not come into the presence of God to command him, but rather to find mercy and help in our lives. Yet prayer does include making requests of our Father.
3. Prayer is a time to share our hearts cry with the Father. The Psalms are full of both thanksgiving and lament (sadness expressed). In 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, we are commanded to rejoice and give thanks in all circumstances, whether good or bad. We can have confidence that nothing in our life is meaningless; even our suffering or the evil done to us by others can be redeemed by God. If we belong to Him, he will work it all out for his purposes in the end. Romans 8:28 says, "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose." We need to know this truth before times of suffering come, when we are disoriented in our pain. When our friends are mourning we are instructed to “mourn with them” and not treat others’ suffering with frivolity. Yet Romans 8:28 is no trite phrase in the Bible; it is our greatest hope and his great promise in a world full of madness and sin.
4. Prayer is confession, where we come before God to get honest about our sins and shortcomings. Confession is not telling God some secret that you are hiding from him. Believe me, God knows all things, even the mistakes we make and the sin we commit against him and others. The word confession is actually a compound of the Greek prefix homos, which means “same”; and logeo, which means “word.” Confession literally means, "to say the same word." To confess means to agree with God about something, to say the same thing about our sin that he does, and turn from our sin. It is to come clean and experience the grace and forgiveness of God purchased by Jesus. Confession restores closeness in relationship with God and keeps us from drifting away from him over time.
5. Finally, prayer is the fuel and language of relationship. Just as Paul begins Ephesians 1 in praise to God for his saving work, he follows it with praying for his friends that they would know God. Prayer is coming to God in hope, as he is our Father. We come near to him; he draws near to us. In the ups and downs of our lives, what we need more than anything is a close relationship with God.  He is the anchor in every story, the author of our journey and the one we trust to bring us safely home to his Kingdom in the end. Prayer is the expression of the human soul crying out for its creator. In Jesus Christ we have access to God as his kids and there is no other power who has greater control over our lives. As a brand new Christian, I found myself wanting to pray, wanting to talk with God, wanting to learn his ways. Yet I didn’t have a clue.

Prayer Principles

The following are just a few principles I have learned along the way that have helped me understand a life of prayer.

1. The first principle to keep in mind as we pray is that we are seeking the will of God for our lives, not just our own purposes. So many times we can hear “the will of God” and immediately jump to thinking about a detailed road map for our future. This is not what I mean by “seek the will of God.” What we ought to seek is how God desires our life to be lived in whatever circumstances as well as what sort of people he wants us to be. We find the will of God in his character and commands as revealed in Scripture. Jesus taught us to pray for God’s will to be "done on earth as it is in heaven" (Matthew 6:9-13) and 1 John 5:14-15 promises that God hears and answers prayer that is according to his will. Here are some simple examples of prayers that would be according to the will of God: God, make me a good friend. God, help me be more patient and kind. God, help me to serve others. God, help me leave my selfishness. God, help me be a thankful person. God, help me rejoice in you, even when my life seems to suck. God, give me wisdom for the choices and decisions I face tomorrow. God, provide for my basic needs. God, open a door for your gospel with my friends. God, help me be a better wife/husband, mother/father, sister/brother, daughter or son. God, make me more like Jesus in my character and actions.
2. We need to come to God with the right motives. James 4:2-3 teaches us that we should not come to God with a selfish heart, simply asking God for stuff to fit our current passions. Oh God, if you don’t give me a boat, you must hate me! James teaches, "You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly."
3. When we pray, we must believe. We trust he is our good father who wants to hear from us and answer in the way he deems best for us.
4. Finally, we should not just come to God trying to get a spiritual buzz.  Sometimes there are deep spiritual experiences, other times there are not.  God’s presence is not your emotions. Paul E. Miller sums this up well in A Praying Life: "You don't experience God; you get to know him. You submit to him. You enjoy him. He is, after all, a person."

As we close, I want to just drop a few practical ways to help us to pray amidst our hurried lives.

Prayer in Practice

Did you know that Jesus’ friends actually asked him to teach them how to pray? His reply, found in Matthew 6:9-13, has been called “The Lord’s Prayer” or “Our Father.” Though many say this prayer from memory, Jesus' response is actually a pattern to follow. Looking at this pattern, we find several things we can include in our prayers:

• Hallowed be your name. We want to praise God in our prayers for who he is.  We want to love him, respect him and honor him. Tell God what you love about him as you get to know him better.
• Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
• Give us this day our daily bread. Thank God for life and provision.
• Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. We ask God to lead us in what is good, right, and true.

The acrostic ACTS has helped many to remember some basics about prayer that are seen in Jesus’ pattern. The acrostic stands for Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication, and can be helpful in praying.

• Adoration—praising God for who he is, that he is our treasure and joy
• Confession—coming clean with our Father and receiving grace and forgiveness
• Thanksgiving—thanking him for good times and hard times
• Supplication—bringing your needs and the needs of others before the Father.

To close, I want to be honest with you. Prayer is hard. We are busy people who are surrounded by the hum of cars, trains, cell phones, IM, chats, and social media. Furthermore, human beings are so intent on living apart from God that we don't naturally want to pray. We pray when things go bad and ignore God when things are good. I am often amazed by my own self-centeredness and desire to do life on my own without the guidance and wisdom of God. Yet when I come to God in prayer, I find life, relationship, and hope for the day. I will leave you with an excellent quote from Miller about the effects of a prayerful life on the soul:

The quest for a contemplative life can actually be self absorbed, focused on my quiet and me. If we love people and have the power to help, then we are going to be busy. Learning to pray doesn't offer us a less busy life; it offers us a less busy heart. In the midst of outer busyness we can develop an inner quiet. Because we are less hectic on the inside, we have a greater capacity to love ...

When Paul began his letter to Ephesians, he reminded them of the great work that God had done in saving them. Then he prayed. He prayed that they would have the most important thing in life — depth in relationship with God and an understanding of every good thing we have in him. We ought to pray in the same way for one another — that all of us would deepen with God.

I am praying for you to that end and hoping that you seek your Father in prayer.

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Reid Monaghan is doing graduate work in Applied Apologetics at Southern Seminary. With a team of friends, he is currently planting Jacob’s Well, a theologically driven and culturally engaged church in Central New Jersey. He is also a speaker, addressing students and athletes on campuses throughout the United States. He thanks God for the gift of his wife Kasey (married 1996) and kiddos Kayla (circa 2001), Kylene (circa 2003), and Thomas Reid (circa 2006). Twitter: @reidSmonaghan

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To read more about prayer, check out Prayer Life, by Winfield Bevins.

Also see Bevins's free article, Spiritual Warfare Prayer.

Provocative Thoughts on the Precious Puritans

*Editor's Note: This was #6 on our Top Posts of 2012. _

The talented Christian rapper Propaganda just released "Excellent," a strong new album on the Humble Beast label (buy it here).  Humble Beast is the home of Beautiful Eulogy, the group from Portland, Oregon that put out an excellent album this summer.

Propaganda is equal parts slam poet and rapper.  He hits hard in his content and is one of the most provocative rappers around.  I've listened to him since his Tunnel Rats days, and I've always enjoyed him.  His skill is undeniable, and he loves the Lord.  His new album, "Excellent," includes a fiery song on the Puritans.  Here's a sample (complete lyrics here):

Pastor, you know it’s hard for me when you quote puritans. Oh the precious puritans. Have you not noticed our facial expressions? One of bewilderment and heart break. Like, not you too pastor. You know they were the chaplains on slaves ships, right? Would you quote Columbus to Cherokees? Would you quote Cortez to Aztecs? Even If they theology was good? It just sings of your blind privilege wouldn’t you agree? Your precious puritans.

On Joe Thorn's site, there are also some comments from Propaganda about this torch of a song (see some helpful historical thoughts here).

This song raises some very big issues for evangelicals.  It confronts us with our past, one that is chock full of racism and racist oppression; it asks us to think hard about how Christians of different backgrounds perceive one another; it wonders out loud how much we should listen to past Christians who sinned publicly; it drives us to think about how edgy to be in our quest to influence and edify one another.  I'm glad that Propaganda raised these kinds of questions.  His honesty is needed in evangelicalism.  Racism is real and awful, historically and now.

There is a danger here.  Specifically, I wonder if Propaganda isn't inclining us to distrust the Puritans.  He states his case against them so forcefully, and without any historical nuance, that I wonder if listeners will be inclined to dislike and even hate them.  He groups all the Puritans together, which is problematic.  Not all of them were chaplains on slave ships, as he says later in the song.  Many were not.  But Propaganda blasts them so hard that, though he's not ultimately dismissing them, it sounds as if he is.  He qualifies his words on Joe Thorn's blog--pretty strongly, in fact--but what about all the people who hear his song but won't read that specific blog?

Some people will respond by saying, "Well, he's an artist.  He's supposed to provoke.  That's like the Old Testament prophets."  It is true that artists can provoke reflection that might not otherwise come.  I am a rapper myself.  I love art.  I love creative expression.  I love hard-hitting exhortation.  But the motive of edification does not justify any level of critique.  Artists are not exempt from giving account to God for every word they speak (see Matthew 12:36-37).  I don't know when that idea got in the evangelical bloodstream, but it's there, and it's not helpful (this is not a veiled reference to Jefferson Bethke, whose controversial videos I liked).  Let me say it again: artists will give account.

Let me be clear: If young men are failing today, strong critique and exhortation are needed.  But as a Christian, there must be grace in the mix.  I am not justified at being so edgy, so angry, so authentically steamed, that I take my fellow sinners off at the knees.  I fear that, though Propaganda ultimately points the finger on himself in the last verse, he has been harsh against the Puritans, sinful as they were in being racist and not opposing racism in the power of the gospel.

Look--I'm for public criticism of evangelical "heroes" on this point.  See the biography of Jonathan Edwards that Douglas Sweeney and I wrote for Moody.  We strongly critiqued Edwards for owning slaves, as we should have.  But that doesn't mean that we should tear him down.  He is a sinner like us.  Furthermore, if being a sinner in even a deeply regrettable way disqualifies you from being referenced by modern evangelicals, we are going to have a very difficult time finding anyone to emulate.  Luther was anti-Semitic; Calvin could be preening and cold; Edwards held slaves; and the list goes on.

Racism is awful.  Horrible.  Reprehensible.  It must be called out and condemned.  But one must do so carefully.  To tear the Puritans down with very little nuance of the kind I've offered here is problematic.  Propaganda wrote that he has learned a great deal from these forefathers despite their sins.  I fear that people who don't have his prior appreciation will not do the same.  They will write them off.  That would be a mistake.  It would also seem to be counter to the general spirit of Galatians 6:1.  This is not a passage about who to lionize, but there's a principle that seems to apply here:

Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.

And we take note of this:

Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.

Fighting with Scripture

*Editor's Note: This was #4 on our Top Posts of 2012. _

I am a child of the Southern Baptist Convention. I attended my first SBC service en utero. Not only that, I am a child of the Conservative Resurgence. I am extremely grateful to men like Adrian Rogers, Paige Patterson, Judge Pressler, and others who helped pave the way for my generation. I love that the conversations I have with my peers almost always center around biblical theology and methodology. Due to the diligence of the men who came before us, we no longer even wonder about each other’s commitment to the infallibility and inerrancy of Scripture. For those in my circles, this is a given.

Recently, though, I’ve been thinking through our commitment to Scripture's veracity. More specifically, I have been searching my own personal commitment to the integrity and efficacy of Scripture. As I have thought through this, it occurs to me that although the fight for the reliability of Scripture is much different in my day than it was 20 years ago, it certainly still remains. See, when I grew up, the great enemy of the gospel was almost always known as “liberalism”, or possibly, “moderate theology”. Today, however, it seems that we must equally be on guard against a different enemy. This new enemy is just as old as the first, but it is often more difficult to spot. Of course, it would be the enemy of legalism.

These two polar opposites of liberalism and legalism both stand apart from each other, in a sense, but in a very real way, they both accomplish the same goal; that of undermining God’s word. Liberalism, of course, reduces God’s word, and in doing so attempts to make a mockery of those who would dare take that word at face value. It assumes a position of great authority, in fact it could be argued that it assumes a position of greater authority than scripture itself as it attempts to “rectify” the “errors” found in the bible. Legalism, however, is also guilty of reducing the power and authority of God’s word, albeit in a much more insidious manner. While liberalism takes away from God’s word, legalism adds to it, and although it is different in practice from liberalism, it is essentially accomplishing the same goal, that of assuming authority over God’s word. While liberalism claims that scripture says too much, legalism claims that scripture does not say enough.

In all of this, however, I often find myself wondering if legalism might not be a greater danger to the Gospel, than the danger that liberalism itself poses. Liberalism is often easy to spot, and certainly within SBC circles, is easy to ridicule. Legalism is not nearly so easy to highlight, and often seems to find a more comfortable home amongst us. As I have thought through this fight that we must engage in if we love the gospel, I have noticed a few particular dangers inherent within legalism.

First, legalism is a difficult to diagnose cancer. All too often legalism is a subtle, creeping cancer that masquerades as holiness. In Matthew 23, Jesus points out that the Pharisees were guilty of adding “heavy loads” to the backs of their disciples. In Philippians 3 Paul points out that the Judaizers were “dogs” who “mutilated the flesh” in their pursuit of holiness. Both of these groups were guilty of affirming Scripture and yet adding to it in a further attempt to clarify their brand of “holiness”. When we take our personal convictions and apply them unilaterally, regardless of their clarity in Scripture, we may be guilty of this same creeping legalism. To oppose this vision of “holiness” is difficult, because to do so may cause others to paint you as a hater of all things holy. To oppose legalism can be seen as embracing the profane, which most often, could not be further from the truth. Because legalism masquerades as holiness, we can often struggle with whether or not we are right to identify it as a false gospel.

Second, legalism leads to a diminished recognition of sin. While some might find this to be a strange response to legalism, I think it is an accurate one. Notice, if you will, how many times in the New Testament we find the Pharisees trying to point out the sin of others, or even better yet, trying to “catch” Jesus in sin. A certain mark of legalism is a capacity to recognize others’ sins while failing to see our own. In his article on a topic similar to this, J.D. Greear cautions us concerning this danger. Good legalists get so busy playing watchdog for the sins of others, that they fail to see their own gross failure. As a result, personal sin is diminished, all in the name of “protecting holiness”. We often see this in our convention today as we get far more emails celebrating the latest boycott, or pointing out the moral lack of those in political leadership, than we do sharing about the hearts of broken Baptists, contrite in spirit and repentant before God regarding their sin.

Third, legalism worries more about “its reputation” than it worries about Jesus’ reputation. You could also say that legalism is uncomfortable with “go and tell” and rather enjoys “come and see” as an evangelistic strategy. As I have studied Jesus’ life, I have come across a really fascinating truth, that is that Jesus often seemed to be comfortable in places, and with people, that we often tell ourselves “good church people” would never go. Legalism worries more about whether someone else saw them talking to that “sinner” than it worries about that sinner actually being engaged with the gospel. Legalism is happy to preach to the sinner, so long as they will clean up and show up at the church on Sunday morning, but it would recoil in horror at the thought of going to the gutter with the person who is far from God. Ironically enough, at this point legalists are terrified of becoming like Jesus as we see Him in Mark 2:16. This unhealthy understanding of God and the gospel undermines the Romans 5:8 nature of the gospel and assumes a false righteousness must precede our ability to respond to the gospel, while also denying our own personal depravity and in doing so it neuters the heart of the gospel.

Fourth, legalism trumpets man’s capacity to do good, and in doing so undermines the depth of God’s grace. Legalism, in its efforts to adhere to the “holiness” code of rules and regulations, assumes man’s ability to “do good” and in doing, pulls the legs out from under the grace of God as exhibited in the gospel. Legalism loves hard work, and lots of it. The more you are able to work, the more holy you must be. Interestingly enough, this kind of pursuit will almost lead to a forced, false spirituality. Legalism judges you on behavior, not the condition of your heart, and therefore can encourage behavioral change, regardless of the heart’s condition. It is because of this that our churches are filled with unregenerate people, who still feel completely at home in our congregations. They have applied the appropriate levels of behavior modification to be found acceptable, so that their dark hearts are rarely if ever noticed.

These are just a few of the many dangers that legalism poses to the heart of the gospel. While liberalism was, is and always will be an enormous threat to the gospel, I would plead with Southern Baptists to recognize the danger that legalism also poses to the gospel. While it is easy to preach about the liberals “out there”, it is probably beyond time that we preach against the legalists who are among us; who often are us.

If we love God’s word, if we desire scriptural fidelity, we will stand equally opposed to liberalism and legalism, understanding that both attempt to stand in a position of authority over God’s word and in doing so, tear at the heart of the word, and inevitably, the gospel itself. We must oppose this kind of danger.

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Cross-posted from Micah's personal blog.

Gospel Lunacy

I've been reading C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters lately and I am continually floored by Lewis' insights into the human condition via his fictional senior demon's advice to his nephew, the junior tempter Wormwood. This quote particularly grabbed me recently:

“Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one -- the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."

Much has been said about the state of the American church and our propensity to be distracted, allured to affluence, or encouraged toward various forms of debauchery, but perhaps the greatest threat is modern American Christianity's inclination toward inactivity. Unfortunately, pew-sitting has been encouraged and promoted by far too many pastors without emphasis on the true calling of the gospel to go - carry your cross and make disciples. Because of this, "church culture" has entered a lull that does not produce bold followers of Jesus but rather lukewarm spectators. Dull faith is a painful thing to both watch and experience, but perhaps the most grievous part may not be the Christian's personal spirituality as much as the lost people of the Christian's context.

Screwtape advises Wormwood to set his "patient" not on a trajectory of wild sin and habitual immorality, but to a pointless life that leads to the ultimate end of apathetic belief or no belief at all. Truthfully, most people are willing to settle for the standard moral posture of being "better than that guy" while maintaining a safe distance from conviction from God or anything that may challenge their worldview or self-built justification. And while Christians sit by and watch, non-believers are robotically drudging through life without any milestones, without any signposts.

The gospel is too epic and beautiful to bury within ourselves. While our family members, friends, neighbors, and co-workers play cat and mouse with fantasies of karma and subjective ideals, we must put in work for the Kingdom. We must be aware of the amazing grace that saved us and let that awe for God drive us into the world. Paul is clear:

 Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others. But what we are is known to God, and I hope it is known also to your conscience. ¹² We are not commending ourselves to you again but giving you cause to boast about us, so that you may be able to answer those who boast about outward appearance and not about what is in the heart. ¹³ For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. ¹⁴ For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; ¹⁵ and he died for all,that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.

¹⁶ From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. ¹⁷ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. ¹⁸ All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; ¹⁹ that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. ²⁰ Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. ²¹ For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

- 2 Cor. 5:11-21

Notice how Paul is even willing to be considered a lunatic - indeed we could call him a gospel lunatic - because the love of Christ so controls him. We have been reconciled, and this reconciliation leads to only one logical conclusion: that we extend such a great hope to others. Through reconciliation with God, we become by nature ministers of reconciliation. God has chosen, for reasons beyond our comprehension, to use us as his ambassadors. We must cry out with Paul, "You can call us lunatics, but it is for God's sake!" The message of Christ is not just cultural but anti-cultural, and this will inevitably lead to perceived craziness by some. Do not be the weird Ned Flanders Christian, but do be aware that the more like Christ you are, the more distinctive your life will be perceived by others.

Work, study, serve, love, and forgive like a lunatic. May we not allow the world to settle for the mundane, but show and offer them the greatest party that is beginning on earth and will carry on into eternity.

Discipleship in the Sporting-life

One of the common frustrations I hear from Christians is often tied to a misunderstanding of what discipleship is. For many discipleship is some mystical journey that entails deprivation and discipline in order to reach a stage of enlightenment that few share. For others discipleship involves deep academic study, the mastery of ancient languages, and usually a few diplomas to hang on their walls. Some have made discipleship an add-on option to Christianity, like a sunroof on a new car. I suspect much of what underlies all this confusion is that we’ve twisted the concept of discipleship into something we wouldn’t recognize in ordinary daily life. We wouldn’t know what discipleship was if it stared us right in the face. And yet, we do know what discipleship is. We might not know how to label or categorize it, but discipleship is intrinsically seen in our passions for sports. Furthermore, the multi-billion dollar sports industry shows us just how good at making disciples we really are. The trouble for many of us is that we fail to translate what is common and ordinary for our daily lives into an understanding of what Christianity really looks like.  We’ve deeply separated the concepts of sacred and secular. We won’t allow ourselves to see how discipleship happens in everyday life.

Discipleship is always happening.  It might not be Christian discipleship, but we are always being and making disciples of something.  The question remains how can the sporting-life help us see what Christian discipleship is?

Discipleship DNA

In his book,  Disciple, Bill Clem identifies four strands of discipleship DNA. These traits show-up in the sporting-life on a daily basis. In fact, these four strands of discipleship DNA are lived out almost subconsciously by fans of particular teams or sports. By comparison, they show us what a life of Christian discipleship can really look like. Simply put, a life of discipleship gives us an identity, directs us in worship, gathers us into community, and sends us on mission.

Identity

I like to listen to sports radio. From time-to-time I will laugh about the way fans talk about sports and the teams they like. Inevitably they speak in the first person: “If we would have started a different quarterback, we would have won.”

My favorite is the off-season talk, “We just need to draft that great running back and acquire another hot free agent, and I am sure we will win the championship!”-as if the person talking has any influence in the front-office at all.

Why do they talk that way?  It's because sporting-life can give us an identity - so much so that we include our lives as part of the life of the team. Their victories are our victories. Their losses our losses.

As Christians our discipleship is about an identity as well. We were once defined as “no people” and ” and “children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:1-3). But because of the grace of God and the work of Jesus we are given a new identity.  Peter declares that who we are before God is now defined as a “royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for [God’s] own possession” (1 Peter 2:9). The Scriptures tell us that we are now loved, alive, raised up, God’s workmanship, sons and daughters, and so on (Ephesians 2:4-10).

We have a new identity in Jesus. Just as the sporting-life gives us an identity around a particular team or club, Christian discipleship redefines our identity from sinner to saint. When we think about Christian discipleship, we are calling people to live in this new identity and reality.  We are calling them to “put on Christ,” to receive his grace and turn from lost, dead and doomed to loved, redeemed and reconciled. Discipleship begins with identity.

Worship

Worship? At a football game? Seriously?! Yes, absolutely.  Think about it. Where in culture do thousands gather weekly and cheer, sing, cry, celebrate, and lift up the fame of another? It happens in sporting events all over the globe. Discipleship is about the object of our worship and the sporting-life provides an example of an object of worship.

We will talk about our teams during the week and how great they are. We decorate our homes, vehicles, faces, and kids with colors and logos. We want others in our neighborhood to know exactly who we think is the best and spend our team cheering for them. We cry when our team disappoints us, rejoice when they win, and every off-season deeply hope our team fulfills our wishes and expectations. Worship is a major aspect of discipleship.

So how is worship for the Christian disciple to be any different? We have a greater and better object to celebrate, sing over, rejoice in, declare, and exalt (Revelation 5:9-10). Jesus and his work on our behalf is worthy of much greater song, affection, devotion, and praise than any other object. One reason our worship of God is so anemic is because we don’t see and feel just how awesome and worthy he is. Discipleship gives us an object of worship. Christian discipleship gives us the Greatest One to worship.

Community

Sports fans are notorious for the communities they form around their teams and sports. It is estimated that American’s spent eleven billion dollars on Super Bowl parties this year.

We gather in homes, bars, stadiums, or anywhere with a TV so we can see the game. Rarely, do we do it alone. And for the occasional individual who travels to these gathering sites alone it won’t be long before they're surrounded by others cheering on the same team. The sporting-life brings us into community with others.

Christian discipleship is no different. We are not saved into individuality but into community. Our identities are marked as “a chosen race” and a “people for God’s own possession” (1 Peter 2:9). These are plural identities. When we live as disciples of Jesus, we are gathering into community because of his saving work. We identify with others because of the shared life of the gospel. We serve, love, forgive, confess, encourage one another because of the community God has formed by the gospel.

Discipleship is living together as a community in, around, and for the gospel.

Mission

It has always amazed me how sport franchises can have such a global following. Why do people in New Mexico care anything about the Premier Football (Soccer) League in Europe? It has to be because someone made them a disciple of a team. Someone went on mission and told them about the team, showed them some highlights, sat down and watched a game with them.

One person told another and showed them just how great Manchester United is. And the person being discipled believed it. The next thing you know they bought a kit and made the wallpaper on their laptop screen a team logo. They started going to the local sports bars and watching games and discovered there were other fans of the team and started hanging out and talking with them. Shortly thereafter the converted fan was telling his neighbor about the team and inviting the neighbor to watch the game. The next week the neighbor was seen applying a team decal to the tailgate of his pick-up truck. Disciples make disciples who make disciples.

Christian discipleship is the same. We tell people and show people the greatness and goodness of God (Romans 10:17). We live lives of compelling love and speak words of compelling grace to the lost (1 Peter 2:12). We invite them into our lives and our homes and into our communities and show them all that Jesus has done for us and in us and through us (John 13:34-35). We let them see us worshipping Jesus and declaring our affections and devotion to him. As this happens we pray that God would open their eyes to the beauty and grace of Jesus and that He would replace their identity as sinners with a new identity of grace. As that happens the cycle begins again. Disciples make disciples who make disciples.

Discipleship always demonstrates itself in mission. Whether it technological discipleship, celebrity discipleship, athletic discipleship, or Christian discipleship, disciples of something always find themselves on a mission to make more disciples.

Discipleship in the Sporting-life

A question remains though: how do we move and make disciples in a context where sports are the gods that are worshipped? How do we see lives transformed when folks are so captivated by the glory of youth and athletics that the glory of God can hardly be comprehended? A few brief practices are beneficial for walking into the sporting-life on mission for Jesus.

• Inhabit sporting spaces and places - We must be present in the lives of those being discipled by sports. We will never gain traction to earn respect and speak the gospel into the lives of those we never inhabit space and place with. Frequent a sports bar. Coach kids sports leagues. Be present in the lives and rhythms of a sporting community. I coached an under-nine soccer team and was able to get to know the parents. I didn’t know anything about soccer really. I just wanted to have fun with these kids and get to know their parents.  As the season passed, I was able to develop these relationships and see them become a platform for sharing the gospel.

• Invest in those consumed by the sporting-life - I speak of investment on several fronts here. Being involved in the life of another for the sake of the gospel will cost you something. However your investment will demonstrate the seriousness of the gospel. Buy tickets and go to games with lost friends. Spend time with them on their turf watching sports. Sign up to play in the city sports leagues. Wichita Parks and Recreation, for instance, offers all sorts of adult sports opportunities from basketball and volleyball to a wiffleball league. Even if you are not a very good athlete, the goal is to be investing in the lives of others.  Humble yourself and go as a missionary into these cultures. The key here is high relational contact. Be in their world.

• Be attentive to their lives beyond sports - It’s nearly impossible to share the gospel with someone while you are watching the Super Bowl. But the relational traction that you have developed with someone else while inhabiting and investing in them will lead to other opportunities beyond the game to share Jesus. Look for these areas. Don’t merely associate with lost people around sports. Listen to their stories, discover their life rhythms, include them in your everyday life.  Invite them into your story, and more importantly invite them, as your lives connect, into the story of Jesus.  Show them a better identity, a more glorious one to worship, a more faithful community and a greater and more valuable mission for life.

• Be patient, take your time - This is by no means an overnight process or event. It takes patience and endurance. It was two years before a friend that I was investing in through the tools of the sporting-life opened the door for me to talk about Christ with him. We can’t give up after a few weeks or the end of the season. Disciple-making is a long-term, low-key, intentional activity. Stick with it. Continue to inhabit their lives. Continue to invest in them. Pray for them and the opportunity to share the gospel all the while living out the implications of the gospel before them. Let your urgency be in prayer and before God and your endurance be toward your lost friends.

I’m convinced that we have muddled the concept of discipleship. We’ve made it sound like college calculus more than everyday life and have forgotten what ordinary everyday discipleship is. The reality is every human being knows a lot more about discipleship than they think they do. Sometimes is merely takes seeing how discipleship plays out in another context to make it more clear for our own. Jesus didn’t tell Peter he would never fish again. He told him that he would fish for a different catch (Matthew 4:19). In the same way, Christ hasn’t called us to reinvent the wheel when it comes to discipleship, he’s just called us to make disciples of a different nature (Matthew 28:19-20). Let’s use the practices and paradigms of sporting-life discipleship to engage in eternal, Christian discipleship. Let’s be disciples of Jesus who make disciples of Jesus.

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Jeremy Writebol is Christian who really enjoys sports. He is the husband of Stephanie, daddy of Allison and Ethan, and lives and works in Wichita, KS as the Community Pastor at Journey the Way. He is the director of Porterbrook Kansas and writes at jwritebol.net.

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For more resources on how to share the gospel authentically, check out Unbelievable Gospel by Jonathan Dodson.

For more free articles on making the gospel part of your everyday life, read: The Neighborhood Missions Startup by Seth McBee, Messy Discipleship by Jake Chambers, and Plant the Gospel, Plant Churches by Tony Merida.