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p120.mov Watch on Posterous

p122.mov Watch on Posterous

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So what is the proof that the Spirit is being poured out on us? The voice of the church rings with prophetic clarity. The people of God are no longer passive, intimidated, unresponsive, uncertain. They are no longer preoccupied with self, convenience, comfort.  They are no longer complaining, whining griping.  Instead they become outspoken in God's praise and gospel truth, 'declaring the wonders of God' (Acts 2:11).

From Ray Ortlund's book When God Comes To Church

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Father, 

By the power of the Holy Spirit enable us, whom you have appointed to this ministry of yours at all times and in all places to call on you without condemnation and without offense, with the testimony of a pure conscience; that you may hear us and be merciful to us, after the multitude of thy great goodness, for all glory, honor and worship befits you, the Father, the Son, and your Holy Spirit, now and for ever, and world without end.  Amen. 

John Chrysostom 

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Over the next few weeks I've decided to write a manifesto of sorts about a few convictions I've picked up lately about ministry and the vocation of a pastor.  Each one of these is an attempt to concretely state what I believe about being a pastor and how I will approach the ministry of the gospel God has called me to.  Some could call it a "philosophy of ministry" and if that's the case, fine, they are what I believe and how I will live and labor.  I will arrange each of these "articles" of my manifesto theologically.  I think you will see why in time.  

Article I: God 

The pastorate is no place to play around, no place to be glib or trite or foolish about God or what the stakes are in eternity or people's souls.  There is no room to waste time, goof off or seek to entertain people with my winsome personality or self-inflated ego. The pastorate is first and foremost about God.  If I read my Bible right that means I stand before a God who is absolute in His holiness.  I minister on behalf of a God who is a "consuming fire," a "warrior... majestic in battle," one who "comes in fire and His chariots like the whirlwind."  I display to the world the glory of God by my life and by my words.  I cannot be trite about God.  

And yet there is a pressure and preoccupation (or distraction as I prefer to think of it) in many people's minds not to treat ministry as that serious.  I'm not saying that because of God's transcendent and all-powerful glory that I should never have any fun or enjoy a good laugh with God's people or be lighthearted and joyful.  What I am saying however, is that I can't represent God as a goof-off.  I can't by the way I speak of Him, the way I minister, or the focus I have push Him to the peripheral in my work.  And yet that is the temptation that swings my way almost daily.  People want a pastor who first and foremost puts the people at the center. Many people have the idea that the pastor is paid to meet their social or spiritual needs. How many in our churches act like it is the pastor's job to keep their people happy and entertained and engaged and enthused?  We act as if the pastor is the one who should make sure we have something to do midweek, and of course on the weekends.  Oh, and the pastors have to keep our kids coming back... otherwise.... 

Yet the pastoral vocation first and foremost isn't about people; it's about God.  It's a man declaring with his words and displaying with his life and directing with his time people to God.  It's one who is made in the image of God, gifted by the Holy Spirit of God, called by the Word of God and burdened with the gospel of God to show and say who God is.  And if this is the case concerning pastoral ministry then the pastor, then I, must be attentive to and knowing God first and foremost.  My time should be with God.  My words from God.  My counsel, God's counsel.  My worship unto God.  My life fixed and devoted to God.  The pastorate is about God.  Any other center or focus is an idol, and God doesn't share glory.  

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Monday seems to be a good day for me to compile a little list of some interesting links and articles that I've come across in the week on the Internet.  Occasionally I might kick in a book or some sort of physical media that I've read but for the most part these will be articles and such that I can directly link to.  Enjoy reading

• It seems I'm not the only one thinking about the over-glorification of urban ministry.  Carl Trueman says it better however.  [See my post about the issue too].
• If the pastor's primary responsibility is to see to the preaching of the Scriptures why do we saddle them with so many other things?  Derek Thomas asks a provocative question. 
• Kevin DeYoung gives us some excellent principles for corporate singing in the church.  Check out Part 1 and Part 2.
• My friend Jeremiah is giving an airtight argument on why the Cubs should fire their general manager, Jim Hendry.  Exhibit A and Exhibit B are conclusive enough.   
• The most recent 9Marks journal on the pastor an his staff is excellent.  Here are two posts every lead pastor and associate pastor should read.  Actually, just read the whole journal.  Good stuff.

That should keep you busy this week.  Feel free to comment with your own articles or link that you think I would benefit from reading.  I'll try and keep this up each week as I come across helpful or interesting things.  

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Yesterday I posted about a trend I have noticed in the last few years of the major influencers in evangelical Christianity today sounding a call to return to the city and give yourself to its service and betterment.  In arguing against an idolatry of the city for the sake of its inherent bigness I committed the logical fallacy of moralizing two amoral positions.  The argument works like this;  if Proposition A is undesirable then its opposite, Proposition B is not only superior but morally upright as well.  I see this fallacy all over the place. 

For instance, when it comes to educational choices, I've seen some argue in favor of public schooling because of the missional impact it can have.  In demonstrating the superiority of their position they moralize the discussion and in so doing make everyone who doesn't send their kids to public school to be people who don't care about the lost.  The home-schoolers do the exact same thing.  In showing how much better it is to homeschool your children the issue becomes a moral one (usually centered around a misinterpretation of Deuteronomy 6), and anyone who doesn't homeschool their children is "feeding them to the wolves", or so the argument goes. 

How does this apply to my post yesterday? Well, I realized about 2:45pm yesterday that I had played the ultimate trump card in my attempt to illuminate the idol of urban ministry being better ministry.  I moralized the issue in Jesus' name.  Basically I argued that because Jesus didn't predominately hang out in the cities the implication that I brought to out is that our missional strategy should reflect that.  Jesus didn't start there, neither should we.  

However this is silly and wrong on my part.  We need both.  We need strong, robust urban ministry and a deep influx of church planters and churches in the heart of the urban core.  Many missiologist are right, the Bible ends in a city, the City of God.  However we need the same strong, robust rural and suburban ministry as well.  We need a movement of church planters and gospel-centered churches in the small towns, villages and outskirts of the cities.  Much of the Bible takes place in the little places.  Simply put we need both, and we can't and shouldn't make villains out of the other side.  Those who have an idolatry of the big city and think that God only (or most powerfully) works in the city need to repent and recognize God's grace in the little places.  Those who have an idolatry of the small town and think that purity and holiness are preserved only in them need to repent and rejoin their brothers' efforts at the advance of the gospel in the city.  In either case we cannot reject the other.  

I'm not going to redact my post yesterday.  I think it is still helpful for us to be careful not to forget the little places and hopefully that post will serve as a reminder of that.  I do, however, want to call your attention to how you logically argue for a position that is amoral, or without inherent morality assigned to it.  If it is not an issue of right and wrong, do not make it one that is.  Educational choice, music styles, what you wear to church, or issues like urban vs. rural in no way need to be argued from a position of "moral rightness."  Why?  Because they are all right, and they can all be wrong too.  Grow in wisdom and you'll be able to figure out which is which.  

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These are some shots from last nights firework show. The ones of Allison are my favorite.

See the full gallery on Posterous

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There has been a lot of talk these days about the church being influential in the midst of a large urban core.  Instead of evangelicals abandoning the city centers and moving out to the suburban and rural areas of our country the predominate thinking is that the river should flow the other way.  Plunge into the city — that is where the people are.  Dive into the heart of a city — that is where the cultural influencers are.  All for the city! That is where the artist who will make it all beautiful live. Run into the city! Everything else runs the other way. 

Now, in no way am I against the city and the efforts of many today to go into the hearts of the city and reach the lost with the gospel.  I am grateful that actually there is a renewed interest in urban mission.  While I lived in inner-city Chicago I knew there was a place and people that desperately needed the gospel.  The elite rich lived to the east of me.  The destitute, ghetto poor lived directly to the west of me.  The cities need a gospel advance in a deep way. 

However there seems to be a growing idolatry of the city.  Maybe it has to do with American value of "big equals success" and therefore big churches equals big success and the sure-fire way to get that influence, prominence and notoriety is to be around a city.  But was that Jesus' methodology?  As I read the Gospels this week I'm noticing something about Jesus.  Unless he absolutely had to, he avoided the cities.  Jerusalem was the primary city in his region and it seems like He couldn't stand to be there.  If you look up the places where Jesus ministered they were the rural villages and towns of the Northern country.  Places of agrarian and pastoral life.  Nazareth probably wasn't more than a couple hundred people.  Capernaum, the largest town in Galilee and the regional base of Jesus' ministry was by best estimates no more than a thousand folks.  In fact most of Jesus' three and a half years of ministry was not spent in the cities hanging out with the influencers and financiers while reaching the artist and "culture-makers."  The bulk of Jesus ministry was spent with fishermen, shepherds, towns people in small and seemingly insignificant places.

The city wasn't a refuge or strategic center for Jesus.  His strategy wasn't to reach the wise, strong, rich, proud, or famous.  He lived amongst the forgotten, weak, marginalized, poor, every-day-man.  Instead of the river flowing from city to village, Jesus turned it backward.  He worked through the little and river flowed the other way.  By influencing the small and powerless the river went upstream and the large and influential cities of Jerusalem and Corinth and Rome were impacted by the gospel.  Shouldn't our mission strategy reflect the same?  My recollection of the book of Acts tells me the apostles continued working from the small up to the city.  Maybe the river flows the other way?  Maybe we've forgotten.  

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Nothing says patriotism quite like this. 

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Today I am submitting my final written project for the Masters degree program I have been enrolled in at The Resurgence Training Center over the last year.  The project itself is a subject for another post but thinking about really being done with Re:Train has led me to reflect on what the last year of higher education has taught me and more importantly how I have been changed as a result.  A few reflections on the entire year have emerged:

Reflection #1 – Having a Gospel Coach Could Save Your Life
For me at least on three occasions that I can recollect off the top of my head the man that Gospel Coached me this last year literally kept me from making terrible decisions and choices that would have not only brought harm to myself but to my family and even others that I was leading.  Re:Train not only taught me Gospel Coaching, but provided a Gospel Coach to help shepherd me in my own walk.

Reflection #2 – There is Great Value In Being In A Community
One of the genius designs of Re:Train was not only the program content, but the design of the program to put me into a small group of ten to share my life with.  The "Global Massive" Cohort (as we labeled ourselves) was another measure of God's grace to me in the entire Re:Train process.  As I began the program I was convinced that I wanted to hang out and spend as much time with the Acts 29 church planters at Re:Train as I could so I could discern my own call to planting.  At one point on the first day of the program I even tried to jump ship on the cohort I was assigned and find another more focused church planting team.  However it was the good Providence of God to keep me in the cohort I was assigned, and to ultimately find a group of men who love Jesus deeply and are really going to impact the world with the gospel.  I was placed alongside men both young and old who are from and are going to places all over the globe.  I love these guys and am grateful for the joy of learning and being blessed alongside them.  

Reflection #3 – A Good Learner Reads Outside of His Tribe
Before coming to Re:Train I was pretty constrained to who I would read or what publishers I would read from.  A bit of this was my own desire to be fed well from the books I was reading, a larger portion of it was my own pride and stupid ideas of separation.  As I worked and read this last year I found myself on a few occasions reading people I wouldn't usually have read. What I discovered in them is that even though I might not be theologically or  philosophically compatible in every degree of doctrine and practice they still can be wise in Scripture and helpful in my leadership and development as a pastor.  So I have to broaden the base and platform from which I can read.

Reflection #4 – I Am Not Defined By My Job, Church, or Successes and Failures
Probably the greatest benefit I received from Re:Train is a clearer understanding and love for the gospel.  I don't know why it took so long for me, probably because I am slow and dumb, but it seems like this year the truth of the gospel and the identity that I have in Jesus as the defining factor for who I am before anything else has come into view.  Through several successes and several failures this last year the Lord humbled me to remember I am not defined by what I do, where I work, how many people I preach too or even how monumental my failures are.  In Christ I am defined as a son of God, holy, chosen, adopted, beloved.  The gospel, Jesus' redemptive life and work on my behalf, is the very thing that defines who I am.  

I could probably write another ten reflections of the last year, but these will suffice as the top four for now.  I am so thankful to the Lord for allowing and providing for me to go to Re:Train and the change He has affected in my life as a result.  The education, gifting and skills He has given me and I am eager and excited to be using them for the glory of Jesus and the advance of the gospel. 

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I'm in the midst (almost half-way) of a two month leave of absence that my church has given to me finish the writing portion of my final Masters degree project.  Recently I have been thinking about the nature of the church, my soul and pastoral ministry.  I guess being away from the occupation that has defined me for the last decade is bringing some reflection and maybe a dose of clear thinking about it all.  Maybe not.  

One of the major threads running through my head is the deeply complicated way "Church" in America is.  As comedian Louis C.K. says, "everything is amazing, and nobody is happy."  We've got more programs, more content, more sermons, more music, more bible studies, more service projects, more mission trips, more, more, more, more.  And in all the "more-ness" that we have, we have pushed aside the essential.  Prayer. (Which, by the way, I don't hear too much about "more prayer gatherings.") Hospitality. (Who has time to be with your neighbor, have a meal, and know them when you're too busy running to another church thing?) Scripture. (Lots of books about it, but little attentiveness to it.) 

On top of this, the pastor's vocation has become less about being a holy man of God before the people of God bringing God to bear upon their lives through Scripture, prayer and direction and more about being a "leader of leaders" who "vision-casts", "dynamically communicates relevant truth" and "organizes and builds an emerging church."  Frankly the job descriptions of most pastors today looks like a side-show circus clown trying to make a name for himself than the shepherd-leader role found in the Scriptures. Where is the prayer? Where is the Scripture?  Where is the man who is so affected by the holiness and glory of God that the church burns brightly with zeal for that same God, not because another program happened, but because when the church gathered they saw God? 

You see this is where I think the church has become too complicated.  A billion-and-a-half programs from infancy to rigor mortis isn't helping.  Prayer. Scripture. People.  I think that's about as complicated as the Bible gets about the church.  As Eugene Peterson describes it, prayer brings us to attention before God, Scripture helps us attend to God's words and ways, and we sit in the attention to people in which God is working and redeeming daily.  This forms the triad of church life and pastoral vocation.  Simple. 

This is the first volley of my thinking on this... more will follow. 

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Stephanie and I were married six years ago today. My wife is one the greatest gifts of grace in my life the Lord has given me. In the last 12 months Stephanie has given birth to a second child, endured me finishing an intensive graduate school degree, worked a full-time job, labored to care for an infant and preschooler, served the church by leading women's ministry, acted as a home nurse during the winter of stomach bugs and was my best friend and encouragement to me day by day.  I'm deeply humbled and graced to have such a wonderful wife.  She truly is my "great thing" and I'm thankful for six wonderful years of marriage.

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