A couple of my friends at Stephen Ministries—Ken Haugk and Pam Montgomery— were interviewed for a special report that aired on PBS over the weekend. Very well done.

Tags: Stephen Ministry

My earliest memories of worshipping with God’s people are at the former First Free Will Baptist Church of Berkeley, Missouri. At one time, it was the largest Free Will Baptist church west of the Mississippi. My first pastor was Rev. Clarence Burton, about whom it is impossible to say too many good things. He was an outstanding preacher, and no one ever cared for his congregation more than Brother Burton did. My family was also blessed to serve with Rev. Bill Van Winkle and Rev. Nicholas Hollis.

Anyone who attended the Berkeley church in the 1970s and 80s (or Trinity Church in Bridgeton in the 90s and 2000s) will remember the children’s choirs led by Gary and Linda Walls. I sang in their children’s choir at Berkeley, and then each of my three children have had the privilege of singing in their children’s choir at Trinity. Few people, other than my family, have had a greater impact on my life (and my children’s lives) than Gary and Linda.

One of the things I remember best about going to the Berkeley church when I was little was how excited everyone was when the Bill and Glenda Fulcher family came home on furlough from the mission field in Panama. Glenda had attended the Berkeley church as a child, and they often came back to Berkeley when they were in the states. It was a real treat, not only because of the stories they could tell, but also because we had fun playing with their children, especially Michael and Susan who were closest to my age.

In 1991, the First Free Will Baptist Church in Berkeley was forced to sell their property due to the expansion of Lambert Airport in St. Louis. Relocation was cost-prohibitive, and so the church agreed to disband and assimilate into other Free Will Baptist churches in the area. Much of the money from the sale of the property was given to international missions accounts and the rest was designated for a conference center for Missouri Free Will Baptists. The only stipulation was that if the money were not used for a conference center, it would be given for mission work.

On Easter Sunday, while my family was in St. Louis, we attended morning worship at Trinity Church, where Gary and Linda Walls still serve. After the service, Gary asked me to stay around for a minutes, because “he might have some news” for me. After a quick meeting, he told me that those left from Berkeley had decided to go ahead and disperse the remaining money in the account and that they wanted it to be used in such a way as to carry on the “legacy” of the Berkeley church. They had decided to split the remaining portion between two church plants associated with “Berkeley kids”—The Heights Church in Noblesville and the Castle Rock project (Colorado) where Susan Fulcher Burke and her husband Donnie will soon be planting a church. The gift to each mission church was in the amount of $15,000.

Gary said they couldn’t think of a better way to carry on the memory of Berkeley church than to give the money to help start two new Free Will Baptist churches. The Heights team greatly appreciates the donation, but even more the partnership in ministry that it represents.

I waited to share this news, because the Burkes were scheduled to be at Trinity the following Sunday, and I didn’t want to ruin the surprise for them. But now that they know what’s going on, I wanted to say a big public thank you from The Heights team.

A decade ago, I was in the midst of writing my master’s thesis at Covenant Theological Seminary (CTS) in St. Louis, the national seminary of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). The thesis addressed Jesus’ condemnation of the Pharisees in Matthew 23, taking particular note of the views of E.P. Sanders and N.T. Wright.

My introduction to N.T. Wright came from my faculty advisor at CTS, which is ironic since Wright’s name is anathema in so many parts of the PCA today. First, I read Jesus and the Victory of God, then The New Testament and the People of God, and since that time I’ve read and re-read nearly everything that Wright has put in print. It would be hard for me to overestimate how much N.T. Wright has shaped the way that I think about the Bible and the Christian life today.

So I’m excited to hear N.T. Wright speak in person for the first time this weekend at Wheaton College in Chicago. I understand that it is a sold-out conference, with 1300 participants. They have also reserved the school’s gymnasium to simulcast Wright’s presentations to those who weren’t able to get a ticket. Beyond Wright’s presence, the other speakers on the agenda are impressive as well:

• Richard B. Hayes, Duke
• Markus Bockmuehl, Oxford,
• Jeremy Begbie, Duke
• Marianne Meye Thompson, Fuller
• Kevin VanHoozer, Wheaton
• among others.

While in Chicago, I will also take in a game at Wrigley Field between the Astros and Cubs. The last time I was there was Mark McGwire’s first appearance there in a Cardinal uniform in 1997 (and yes, he hit an opposite field home run).

Later in the month, I’ll be in New Jersey, just outside of Philadelphia, leading a Stephen Ministry workshop. Between travel, freelance writing, church planting, working, and having a family, my blogging will be sporadic at best in the next couple of weeks. But I will put up an occasional post here and there.

Tags: N.T. Wright

This is part six in a series called “What Every Christian Needs to Know about the Kingdom.”

If the crucifixion of the Messiah was a huge surprise, his resurrection was an even bigger one. Despite the hints he gave his followers during his ministry, once Jesus was in the grave, no one seems to have expected him to return from it. With the benefit of hindsight, however, we can see that it had to happen this way. Here are just a few of the ways the resurrection plays a key role in the kingdom of God.

1. The resurrection was a powerful vindication of Jesus’ claim to be the Messiah. The crucifixion was a denial of the gospel that the kingdom of God was at hand, first by the Jewish religious elite and then by the Roman empire. By putting Jesus to death, Israel and Rome collaborated in denying that he was the Messiah, the king who would make everything right again in a world that is marred by sin and rebellion. By raising Jesus from the dead, God emphatically reversed the decision of both the Jewish Sanhedrin and the Roman empire. They condemned him to death; God raised him to life again.

2. The resurrection was a decisive victory against the forces of evil. We like to talk quietly in our modern world about invisible spiritual forces and powers. But it does not take a great deal of imagination or faith to believe that in this world there are evil powers at work that twist and deceive, corrupt and destroy the best and worst intentions of humanity. All the powers of the evil spiritual realm were arrayed against Jesus on the cross; the resurrection was his victory over every force for evil in the world. They attacked him with everything they had, and he submitted to their onslaught. But then he rose victorious from the grave, demonstrating that all their power together was and is insufficient to defeat the king.

3. The resurrection was a preview of events to come. By the time of Jesus, the Jewish people had developed a doctrine of resurrection. This can be seen in some of the intertestamental literature, such as the books of Maccabees. Those who were faithful to God were to be raised to life again at the end of time, so they could experience eternal life in the kingdom of the Messiah. This is why Paul describes Jesus’ resurrection as the “firstfruits” of the kingdom (1 Cor. 15:20). Jesus was the first to experience what every member of the kingdom will one day experience—resurrection to eternal life in a redeemed, physical body.

As with the cross, there is much more that can be said regarding the resurrection. By no means am I claiming to exhaust its meaning with these few words. Yet we must not say less than I have said above. The bodily resurrection of Jesus, as a historical event, was God’s proclamation that Jesus was the chosen one to redeem and restore humanity from its sin and to establish God’s reign and rule over the entire world.

Next, we turn our attention to how we can live out the resurrection in our lives—how we can live now as if the kingdom were already come in its fullness.

Tags: Kingdom, Resurrection

The Go10 Walk for the World is a 2500-mile walk that is designed to challenge young people to consider their role in reaching the nations with the gospel in their generation. The walk begins a week from today on Monday, April 5.

I’ve written a devotion titled, “Your Mission, Should You Accept It,” for the Go10 Walk 40-Day Spiritual Journey. You can read the devotion by going to this link and clicking on “Day 26.”

The power of God is not in our wisdom or in our techniques; those things threaten to empty the cross of its power.
—Thabiti Anyabwile

The more the gospel transforms our lives, the more our lives will touch other lives. Out of that, God, not us, will build his church.

Our modern leadership mindset demands that we see exactly how the process (A) will proceed through various stages and objectives (B) to achieve the desired results (C).

But, instead, the gospel gives us a process (A) that seems like foolishness (service, hospitality, proclaiming the gospel in public, baptizing, discipling, etc.) and the desired result (C) that seems way out of proportion to the process (a growing community of believers/missionaries), and then demands that we have faith that the Spirit of Jesus will take our foolish efforts and create the results he desires.

In other words, it's not up to us to figure out (B). It's up to us to do (A) and let the Spirit take us from (A) to (C).

I know this is way countercultural in the modern church. But search the New Testament. If you find anything you feel contradicts what I've said, let’s talk about it.

Now, if we add our own desires and demands to (C), then we're going to have to add some of our own objectives or techniques (B) to make sure it all turns out the way we want. I'm not saying that God might not still bless it if we add our own demands or desires. But, really . . . guess which is the better option.

For the last several months at The Heights, I’ve urged patience and waiting on the Lord’s timing. But at the same time, I’ve continually urged us to find ways to make genuine relationships with those who don’t know Christ, offer hospitality, and, as opportunities arise, present the gospel. Those are the things that, for whatever reason, the church in our culture finds difficult to do. But they are also what, in my understanding, the New Testament demands.

Tags: Church Planting, Gospel, Church Marketing

This is part five in a series called “What Every Christian Needs to Know about the Kingdom.”

The cross is the centerpiece of human history. It is a crucial pivot point that changed the world forever. To truly understand the kingdom, we must learn how and why the cross changed everything.

When Christians discuss the significance of the cross, we commonly jump right to the personal benefits. We talk about how Jesus paid the penalty for our sin and rebellion, so that we can one day experience eternal life. This is true, as far as it goes, and we can count on it. However, the Bible paints a much broader picture than one focused on individual salvation.

Not only is the cross the centerpiece of human history, it is also the centerpiece of God’s kingdom on earth. When the nation of Israel was being judged and sent into captivity (see part three), the prophets promised that a day would come when the penalty for its sins would be fully paid and its exile would end. The way that this redemption would happen would be for Israel to go through an even more intense time of suffering and woe, after which God would proclaim that they had endured enough and that their curse had been removed.

Though most people at the time seem to have missed it, Isaiah at least understood that this suffering would be endured by one person, the Messiah, who would take upon himself all the pain and suffering of Israel’s punishment. By doing so, he would inaugurate the coming age, the age of shalom, where God was to make right everything that had gone wrong in the world (see Is. 40–55, commonly known as the servant songs).

On the cross, Jesus paved the way for a new Israel, and, in fact, a new kind of humanity. Those who repent of their sin and rebellion against God and place their faith in Jesus are brought into this new kingdom, the kingdom of God. One of the benefits of being part of this new covenant is eternal life in the kingdom, but this (if you can imagine it) is a secondary benefit. God’s primary goal at the cross, was to deal with the sin problem, so he could form a new nation, a new kingdom, that would represent him to the world and participate, by the power of the Spirit, in its redemption.

There is much, much more that can be said about the cross. I have only scratched the surface. But we must not say less than this: The cross was God’s means of establishing a new covenant, a new kingdom, and a new kind of humanity, redeemed by Christ’s suffering.

The cross, though, as crucial as it is, would lose all its significance if not for the resurrection. That is where we will turn next.

http://www.missionshapedlife.com

Tags: Kingdom, Cross

In nearly every organization, including most churches, you’ll find people who tend to be ideologists and others who tend to be pragmatists.

Ideologists tend to make decisions based on a central guiding philosophy—a core ideology, which comes from a deep understanding of the group’s core values and core purpose. New proposals are judged mostly by how closely they fit with the group’s core ideology. They tend to trust and focus more on the process, believing that the process will produce the desired results.

Pragmatists, on the other hand, tend to make decisions based on what they believe will most quickly produce the outcomes they desire. While they generally care about and respect the group’s core ideology, they are much more interested in attaining more, bigger, and better results. When they encounter an idea that has been tried elsewhere and seemed to produce results, they are eager to try it with their own group.

Ideologists and pragmatists have a notoriously difficult time working together within an organization. Ideologists tire of constantly saying no to ideas pragmatists suggest that do not fit with the group’s core ideology. Pragmatists tire of hearing their ideas, which seem to work so well for other organizations, shot down by the ideologists. So is it possible for ideologists and pragmatists to work together and even thrive within the same organization?

I believe they can, but it requires hard work, plus trust and understanding on the part of both ideologists and pragmatists.

For their part, ideologists need to:
1. value the desire of pragmatists to produce results as a good thing, and affirm that their desire to get things done is admirable;
2. speak the pragmatist’s language, as much as possible, explaining why a proposed course of action will or will not produce the results desired;
3. avoid accusations or insinuations that the pragmatist is somehow less faithful to the group’s mission; and
4. appreciate that, while there are differences in approach, the pragmatist is very motivated to accomplish the group’s mission.

At the same time, pragmatists need to:
1. value the ideologists’ commitment to the group’s guiding philosophy as a good thing, and avoid trying to convince them to temporarily set it aside;
2. speak the ideologist’s language, as much as possible, explaining why a proposed course of action is or is not consistent with the group’s core ideology;
3. avoid accusations or insinuations that the ideologists’ focus on the process means they are somehow less interested in results or in getting things done; and
4. appreciate that, while there are differences in approach, the ideologist is very motivated to accomplish the group’s mission.

When it comes time to make a decision, the group cannot afford to ignore either perspective. An effective decision will be in line with the group’s core ideology and it will have a high likelihood of producing results. If there is a serious question about whether a proposed course of action deviates from the group’s core ideology, it should be tabled or rejected. At the same, if there is a serious question about whether a proposed course of action will produce genuine and timely results, then the proposal should be tabled or rejected.

Since every group has limited time and energy, they should only seek to implement the proposals that are both consistent with their core philosophy and likely to produce the desired results. If you have an effective core ideology, you will have no problem finding courses of action that meet both of these criteria.

Tags: leadership, Church Planting

Readings:

Exodus 8:1–19
Hebrews 11:17–31
Psalms 73 and 121

It’s a busy, busy week, so I will not be posting this week, but back with a full slate of posts on March 22.

UPDATE: LIke I said, a busy week . . .