February 1, 2010 • 2:52 pm
I’ve talked to a lot of church planters. I’ve been to the conferences. I’ve been personally involved in the leadership of two church plants and one multi-site start-up. I’ve graduated from one of the more academically challenging seminaries in the US. I’ve been assessed and successfully “passed” inspection and recommendation for church planting. I’ve got the support and backing of my wife, extended family, and friends. But two weeks after becoming a first-time father, I suddenly feel like the least prepared, least-able person to do anything.
Perhaps it’s that “new-father stupor” that so often accompanies these things, clouding my ability to think and process clearly and leaving my feeling utterly incapable of doing anything. Perhaps this is too personal for a blog, but last night I felt as though I reached my breaking point; it took every ounce of supernatural grace to keep me from breaking something. The combination of a week and a half without significant sleep, the ongoing pattern of difficult 10 PM feedings, our five-hour attempt to quiet Kellon, followed by waking grandma only to watch her induce coma-like sleep in 10 minutes flat was too much for me to take. It all left me returning to bed wanting nothing to do with my son.
Not my proudest father moment…
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Filed under: Church, Church Planting, Faith, Fatherhood, Ministry, Theology
January 18, 2010 • 8:00 am
READ ECCLESIASTES 1:1-11
If there’s a single phrase or line that stands out when we turn our attention to Ecclesiastes it’s the constant repetition of verse 2, “Meaningless! Meaningless! Everything is meaningless!“ One thing’s for sure, the author – whom we only know as “the Teacher” – seems hell-bent to beat us down and get us feeling as hopeless as possible. Not the most uplifting way to end this Lord’s Day.
Ecclesiastes is classified as Hebrew wisdom literature. We usually don’t think much about what kind of literature we’re looking at when we study anything part of the Bible. But there is a place for doing that. For one, we probably shouldn’t read Revelation literally – there are a number of characteristics to the book that suggest it’s best to read it rather figuratively. This morning I talked a little about how we read the gospels; I mentioned that the gospels have more in common with the opinion column of the Seattle Times than a front page story.
The same holds true for Hebrew wisdom literature. Such parts of the OT were written in poetic form which means that all those rules you learned in high school about how to read and make sense of guys like Thoreau and Frost and Shakespeare apply. The basic goal is to understand what the big picture idea is, rather than dwell on the details.
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Filed under: Bible Study, Christian Living, Church, Culture, Discipleship, Faith, Ministry, Original Languages, Preaching, Sermon, Theology
January 15, 2010 • 9:03 am
READ MATTHEW 4:1-11
I’m sure nearly everyone here is at least vaguely familiar with the story of Jesus’ temptation. Each of what we call the synoptic gospels – Matthew, Mark, and Luke – contain an account of Jesus temptation.
There’s a tendency when looking at something like the temptation to take all three accounts and combine them together to get at the classic theological interpretation and meaning of Jesus’ temptation. To be honest with you, I’m really not all that interested in getting at the theological explanation of our text; I’m more interested today in understanding what Matthew specifically is trying to accomplish and his reasons for including this story.
We tend to view the gospels in much the same light as newspaper accounts of the same thing. In journalism, the primary goal is to simply offer a fact-based, objective report of the events. We want our news to be unbiased, opinion-free, and take the lead of Sgt. Joe Friday, demanding “All we want are the facts, ma’am.”
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Filed under: Bible Study, Christian Living, Discipleship, Faith, Ministry, Original Languages, Preaching, Sermon, Theology
January 14, 2010 • 8:25 am
January 13, 2010 • 8:00 am
Church discipline has gotten a bad rap. And it’s leading to other problems in the church…
Think about it: while church attendance may be steady, church membership has taken a serious dump in the last 10 years. The struggle that many congregations are experiencing with membership numbers is in large part due to the fact most people simply don’t see the value of membership, and it’s easier to walk away and avoid the discipline stuff whenever they want.
For who-knows-how-long now, the prevailing view of church discipline is that it’s way for the leadership to maintain control and power over the people. Often times, the thought of church discipline (which I’m just going to refer to as “ChD” from now on) is associated with a corrupt clergy who wants nothing more than to ensure that people keep giving money or that no one voices a dissenting opinion. Historically, church discipline was a means of ensuring that members of the congregation were walking in right relationship with God and that usually took the form of weeding of “heresy” and correcting false doctrine. False doctrine was defined as anything contrary to what the leadership “knew” was absolutely the Word of God.
The thing is ChD has gotten a bad rap because it’s been poorly practiced and carried out. The result is that many churches simply don’t practice ChD anymore out of fear that people will start leaving and go somewhere else. And so the cycle continues…people refuse to become members because they don’t want to be disciplined, congregations fail to practice discipline because they don’t want to lose people, and the whole time Jesus’ words in Matthew 18 are being ignored.
Here’s what the J-man has to say:
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Filed under: Bible Study, Christian Living, Church, Culture, Discipleship, Leadership, Ministry
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