From the recent sermon Jesus Loves Sinners. Here's the full sermon:
Click through to the Resurgence if you can't see the video.
The current Mars Hill sermon series traces the life of Jesus through the Gospel of Luke. Watch the preview.
Every opportunity comes with opposition, and we must rely on God’s wisdom to proceed with any opportunity. This involves a careful examination of time and energy, which begs the question: Do you know your priorities?
Many of us wrestle with people-pleasing and a reluctance to say “no,” but sometimes it’s the only possible answer.
If you say yes to everything, you will spread yourself thin and perhaps miss truly beneficial opportunities while fulfilling less meaningful requests. You’ll see better opportunities come and go; with no margin available you’ll be trapped by foolish commitments.
On the other hand, if you don’t know your priorities you may never confidently commit to the work God’s called you to, out of fear that a better opportunity may come along. In other words, inaction and action can both be sinful.
Aligning your decision-making with a set of pre-determined priorities is critical. If your priorities aren’t defined up front, then when the opportunities come you’ll respond hastily—usually adding another plate to the pile.
“Yes” is the right decision sometimes, but how do you know? For starters, consider whether or not the opportunity compromises or enhances your priorities.
In its simplest form, the Christian’s priority list is:
If you clarify your priorities ahead of time, you’ll be able to reject empty opportunities much faster and consider helpful opportunities more wisely. You may not do as much, but you will do it better.
Jamie Munson is the Lead Pastor of Mars Hill Church. You can connect with him on Facebook and Twitter.
The first offering from Re:Sound is the Rain City Hymnal. Listen online and get the record from the Re:Sound website. Find out more.
How should Christians read the news? Like non-Christians, only with a radical sense of belonging to God’s story, insofar as God himself has revealed it. In other words, there’s a huge overlap with non-Christians. We’re all created in God’s image, fallen, and sustained by God’s common grace. As Luther and Calvin said, non-Christians have a huge understanding of “things earthly,” even if they do not embrace God as he has revealed himself in his Son through the gospel. More importantly, Paul said it in Romans 1 and 2.
We have to distinguish between the Great Commandment (calling us to love God and neighbor), which is the common commission of all human beings, and the Great Commission (calling us to preach the gospel, baptize, and teach). Both are essential, but they’re really different.
The newspaper is a form of the law. It draws on common wisdom and data. Even its editorials reflect both the fact of God’s general revelation and its suppression in unrighteousness. Obviously, this natural law isn’t as clear as God’s revealed will in Scripture, which goes deeper in its analysis of our fallen condition. Yet when we read the newspaper, we’re neighbors loving fellow neighbors.
In this era between Christ’s two comings, God sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. If he shows his common grace toward all people and a common interest in all affairs, these issues should concern us for more than merely practical reasons. We share with non-Christians in the same joys and disappointments of temporal life.
However, the gospel isn’t announced in the newspaper. For that, we need heralds who bring the most important news of all. I won’t mention names (like Pat Robertson), but people who expect the Bible to be a special code for the meaning of the daily news (or vice versa) aren’t taking either one seriously enough.
Too many Christian leaders stumble, burn out, or veer off track. Learn how to endure from a seasoned pastor and leadership coach in Leaders Who Last.
Click through to the Resurgence if you can’t see the video.
How can you know if you’re called to plant a church? Called to preach? Called at all? The Seattle Boot Camp in March 2009 welcomed speakers from all over the world to weigh in on the topic of calling, including PJ Smyth of GodFirst Church Johannesburg. Get all the audio and video at the links below.
Session 1: The Calling of the Planter – Mark Driscoll
Session 2: Great Commision Call to Plant Churches – Scott Thomas
Session 3: The Call to Preach – Matt Chandler
Session 4: The Call to Proclaim the Gospel – PJ Smyth
Session 5: Your Vision is Too Small – Dave Bruskas
Session 6: The Call to Endure – Mark Driscoll
Also from Seattle Boot Camp 2009, check out Seven Seasons of a Church Planter Part 1 and Part 2 with Hunter Beaumont (Lead Pastor of Fellowship Denver and Resurgence contributor), and Russ McKendry (Lead Pastor of L2 Church, Denver).
A fresh approach to 12 ancient hymns. Listen online and get the album from Re:Sound. Find out more.
Click through to the Resurgence if you can't see the video.
In this interview, Acts 29 Director Scott Thomas shares some great wisdom on the top 5 qualities for a successful church planter, some wisdom for those considering planting, and his “one thing” for church planters.
This one is a “can’t miss.” Tweet it up.
Be sure to check out Pastor Scott's recent post Am I a Church Planter? on the new Acts 29 site for more on the qualities of a successful church planter.
For more from Dustin Neeley, check out Church Planting for the Rest of Us.
A network of churches planting churches for the glory of Jesus. Get more info.
Why Your Pastor Should Outsource His Mind series: Click | View Series
The last post showed why a pastor should outsource his mind by hiring an assistant. This post will offer some guidance on how to choose a good pastoral assistant.
If outsourced properly, your assistant should have at a minimum two basic giftings: adaptability and discernment. These may be the counter to your weaknesses, allowing for a fuller response to the needs of your ministry, or they may be enhancements to the collection of talents and gifts the Lord has given you.
Church plants are static in only one area—change. At Mars Hill we have found the only constant in our work here in Seattle (and now Albuquerque) to be never-ending, always-fluctuating change. For assistants, the ability to take the changes that are sure to come and approach them with a correct heart and mind is a priceless gift.
An assistant’s job is to build systems to catch as much work from the pastor he serves and to carry out the tasks quickly and efficiently. As the work in the ministry changes, those systems are made obsolete. A correct approach to this inevitability is to simply start from scratch and build new systems if the ones that were created weeks or months ago are now outdated.
An incorrect approach is to stubbornly hold onto old systems, now defunct, simply because they are how things have been done. God brings new things into our ministries to test and shape us; to respond to the new issues in the same manner as the old is a foolish way of doing his work and will result in frustrated pastors, assistants, and church members.
An assistant should know who needs to have contact with the pastor served. A proper understanding and sometimes a Spirit-directed knowledge of who is truly in need of the pastor's time is crucial.
It is easy for an assistant to read over hundreds of emails and letters and to file each request in its appropriate box: “He needs to read the website,” “She needs to take the membership class,” “They need marital counseling and the pastor I serve doesn't have that responsibility,” “He needs a half-hour phone conversation,” “A simple form email will suffice for these people,” “This guy is Satan and ‘delete’ will work just fine.” The workday continues in this vein because, hey, the systems were built for efficiency and strength of the ministry, so let's use them.
In this routine and task-completion mode, discernment is indispensable as the Spirit nudges an assistant toward a particular email that could easily be handled personally by the assistant or directed to another staff person, but is truly meant for the pastor. I have seen this many times at Mars Hill. God has brought many men forward to carry the counseling load for our people and relieve Pastor Mark of this role, so he can focus on the pulpit and future of the church. Yet when I served as his assistant, there were emails that came into his inbox that I knew could easily and quickly be directed to someone else, but the Spirit led me to pass them on to Pastor Mark instead. The fruit that comes from these instances is great and simply confirms that discernment is needed.
Read A Message to Garcia by Elbert Hubbard. This title has been highly recommended reading for assistants at Mars Hill Church. "A Message to Garcia" shows a great example of the type of person each pastor should pursue as his assistant.
Remember that the job description is written by you. This article is general because the tasks that Mars Hill assistants carry out are specific and tailored to each pastor. For some, the qualifications and job description include budgeting, tech support, and scheduling; for others editing, research, proofreading, and inventory; for others still, project management. The point is that for each pastor a specifically tailored assistant was found and is now leveraged to make the ministry more efficient and sane so that the gospel can go out.
If you do not yet have an assistant I would recommend that you squeeze your budget like you haven't before and hire one. The benefits we see at Mars Hill are great. As a member of this church it is good to know that the pastors are working in their giftings and that there are men and women in place to enhance their ministries. These people were hired based on the strengths and weaknesses of each pastor, so the resulting assistants vary in skill, experience, and gifts. There is no cookie-cutter model, so trust and pray that the Lord will bring you the help you need in just the right way.
Know that we pray for you and your churches constantly and love being a part of the greater movement God is working out in our country and world.
Listen to Humble Service: The Ministry of Timothy. This Mars Hill sermon deals with the topic from a scriptural standpoint and gives a reference point for those seeking to be an assistant.
Pastor AJ Hamilton is the Executive Pastor for Mars Hill Church’s Albuquerque campus. You can watch his amazing testimony and read his previous Resurgence posts here.
Get the latest content from Mark Driscoll, the preaching pastor at Mars Hill Church. See More.
I recently had the privilege of guest lecturing at the University of Texas on the topic of the Resurgence of Mission & Reformed Theology in America. Eileen Delao-Flynn, Professor and Religion writer for the Austin American-Statesman, was kind enough to extend me the invitation to address her Journalism & Religion class. The entire lecture would be too long to reproduce here. However, I have included a section on “Resurging Calvinism” below.
In an article entitled “10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now,” TIME magazine numbered the "New Calvinism" as the third most influential idea changing the world in 2009. In an effort to explain this "New Calvinism," New Calvinists are laboring to shake off a fundamentalist, religious image and articulate the old gospel in fresh, biblically faithful ways. They are making five important distinctions:
New Calvinists point out that the Gospel is not Religion. This came as a surprise to some of the students. Religion says, “You must impress God,” but the gospel says, “Jesus impressed God for you.” Religion says, “Perfect yourself and God will be happy.” The gospel says, "We are all imperfect people, but Christians cling to a perfect Christ who obtains the pleasure of God for them." The gospel is good news, but religion is burdensome news. Religion tells us to perform for God, but the gospel reminds us that Jesus has performed perfectly on our behalf. The Gospel is not Religion.
The Gospel makes a distinction between arrogant separatism and humble evangelism. It doesn't exaggerate an Us/Them mentality. New Calvinism doesn't evangelize out of superiority but empathy. We recognize that we all need Jesus before the judgment of a holy God. The only difference between true Christians and non-Christians is that Christians are recipients of God’s grace in Christ. But we all are equally in need of that grace. There's not one person in this world who needs God's saving grace more than anyone else. The New Calvinism does not pit the human race against one another—Us versus Them—but views all humanity in light of our standing with God.
New Calvinism is recovering a gospel that is bigger than "fire insurance" from hell. It is articulating the gospel as “good news” for the whole world—society, culture, people, and the environment. The gospel is not an LCD, a lowest common denominator of the bare minimum facts you have to believe to get into heaven. Rather, it is a TOE, a theory of everything that addresses God’s purpose for humanity, society, culture, cities, environment, justice, and the future. It possesses an explanatory power that addresses everything from human motivation to environmental concerns. New Calvinists are embracing all goodness, truth, and beauty as God’s truth, goodness, and beauty, and redemptively engaging those things that are false, ugly, and evil. The gospel is much bigger than people think, but it is not smaller than personal redemption.
New Calvinists are distancing the gospel from politics. They are not preaching a political gospel, though the gospel does have political implications. In short, Jesus is not a Republican or a Democrat.
New Calvinists are returning to the city, to engage the beauty and brokenness of urban life. They are recovering a commitment to justice and mercy in the city, returning to cities from the white suburban flight.
These distinctions are the direct result of a high view of the sovereignty of God—his reign over all of life, not just in so-called religious matters. These distinctions flow from a big gospel that can be articulated as the good news that Jesus has defeated sin, death, and evil through his own death and resurrection and is making all things new for those who hope in him. The dying-rising-from-the-dead Messiah alone has the power to break the back of evil, redeem sin, and exchange life for death. It is the gospel that awakens us to this marvelous news.
Much more could be said regarding this resurgence. One student asked what remains the same between the "Old Calvinism" and the "New Calvinism." There is much more continuity between the New Calvinism and John Calvin than with some of his followers. However, what essentially remains the same is the soteriological core—God's sovereign grace in redeeming broken sinners, which has been popularly captured by the TULIP acronym: total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints (limited atonement appears to be more negotiable among the New Calvinists). This understanding of God’s sovereignty over salvation extends into a life lived under his sovereignty post-salvation.
The TULIP is flowering more vibrantly than it has for some time in the U.S. The Reformed resurgence has led to a missional resurgence that is set on holding the formerly "liberal" and "conservative" agendas together with the gospel, promoting robust engagement of social, cultural, and spiritual spheres of life. In this regard, the New Calvinism has more in common with the Calvinism of Abraham Kuyper, who argued that Calvinism is not merely a soteriological system, but an entire life- and worldview. The New Calvinism is broader than some of its narrower conceptions. All in all, I believe this resurgence is a very positive resurgence, a winsome Calvinism for the 21st century that advocates a whole gospel for the whole person and country.
The musical arm of the Resurgence offers music that is theologically unified, stylistically diverse, and musically excellent. Find out more.
Is God's law a delight, or a drag? You would probably say the answer is a little complicated. Many of us who work hard to remain focused on the gospel as our hope before God have an almost visceral reaction to "the law," particularly when it is presented as a means of obtaining or maintaining peace with God. This is good. The law is never our hope. Jesus is.
However, the law is "holy, righteous and good" (Romans 7:12) and Scripture tells us how "blessed" is the man who "delights" in the law (Psalm 1). The Psalmist says, "Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day" (Psalm 19:97). The apostle Paul also says, "I delight in the law of God in my inner being" (Romans 7:22). Why do (should) the people of God love the law? Here are 3 reasons.
God has not left us alone to figure out what is right and wrong. He has graciously spoken clearly, and we now know the difference between good and evil. In the law we see the character of God and his will to be carried out on earth as it is in heaven. For example, we not only know that God calls us to do good to others in some general sense, but more specifically that we should be hospitable, loving, generous, and patient. He tells us what he desires of us. This is itself grace. We can delight that God has been kind enough to tell us what he requires of us (Micah 6:8).
The law of God not only shows us God's will, but it also acts as a mirror that exposes our sin and falsehood. In the law we see God's standards and commands, but we also see how quickly we break them (Romans 7:7-25). As we have broken the law, it breaks us. The law is used by God to afflict our conscience so that we feel the weight of our guiltiness. And this is a reason to love the law, as it can eventually destroy our pride and any confidence we put in our ability to measure up to God's standards.
In showing us the will of God, and our inability to keep it, the law leads us to see our need for mercy and grace. As many like to say, before we can know and embrace the "good news" of redemption and restoration in Jesus, we must first know and embrace the bad news that we are condemned as law-breakers and under the curse of God. It functions as one of the tools that God uses to prepare us to meet Jesus. So, we love the law as it leads us to see our need for grace and the beauty of the gospel against the backdrop of our guilt and corruption.
But here's the rub: we can only love the law after it has been fulfilled by Christ on our behalf. The law will only be a delight to us after we have found life by the gospel.
For without the gospel, in the law we only find standards unmet and guilt without relief. We wind up sharing Martin Luther's frustration with the call to "love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind," and say with him, "Love God? Sometimes I hate him!" Apart from the gospel the law leaves us broken and needy.
It is in the gospel where God's standards are met, his law is fulfilled, sin is forgiven, and we are restored to him. The reality of our justification before God through Christ liberates us from the law's condemning power and produces in us a delight in God's law and a motivation to keep it for God's glory and our good.
Is the law our delight? It really depends on whether the gospel is our hope and boast. If it is, then the law does not condemn us, but guides us. It shows us God's way, reminds us of our need for the gospel, and as we walk in it the law leads toward the good of our neighbors and praise of our God (Matthew 5:16). That is our delight.
The Resurgence Training Center (Re:Train) prepares missional leaders for ministry. View the professors, catalog, and application at retrain.org.
I've been asked several times in the last couple of days about whether I'm upset about the new remix of "We Are the World."
The Christians contacting me about this are disturbed by what they see as a startling omission from the '80s-era song in its 21st century update, performed by artists in support of Haiti relief. Willie Nelson's line "As God has shown us by turning stone to bread..." is gone. These Christians are outraged, and they wonder if I am too.
Well, yes, I am outraged. Willie Nelson should have been invited to participate. He's still every bit as talented as he was in 1985, and if Nick Jonas can be invited, then certainly Willie should've been too.
Oh wait.
That's not what these folks are outraged about. They're afraid this is indicative of the secularization of American pop culture, and that there should be a Christian backlash.
But wait, again.
God didn't turn stones into bread. It was Satan, not God, who suggested our Lord Jesus turn rocks into bread (Matt. 4:3-4). God sends bread down from heaven (Exod. 16), a Manna he ultimately gives to us in the body of Jesus (Jn. 6), signified in the communion meal (1 Cor. 11).
These Christians mean well. They don't want to see the gospel disrespected. But there's something parabolic here, I think. It's the same sort of thing we see when Stephen Colbert interviews a U.S. Congressman who wants to legislate the Ten Commandments in federal courthouses but can't name them. We'd almost rather have the affirmation than the revelation.
Why are we so desperate to see "God" affirmed by the outside culture, even when the "God" they're talking about more closely resembles Zeus (or, as in this case, Lucifer) than Yahweh? When we reach this point of perpetual outrage, are we closer to identity politics than gospel proclamation? I'm afraid so.
Could it be that the problem is we really want the reassurance that we're "normal"? We'd like a shout-out in our pop culture and our political speeches to signify that we're acceptable, that Christianity isn't really all that freakish. But, if that happens, apart from submission to the Cross, is it really Christianity anymore (Jas. 4:4)?
What if, instead, we loved the world the way God does (Jn. 3:16), and not the way the satanic powers ask us to? What if we loved the world through verbal proclamation and self-sacrificial giving, not by seeking product placement for the Trinity? Rather than expecting our politicians and musicians and actors to placate us with platitudes to some generic god, let's work with them where we can on "doing good to all people" (Gal. 6:10). Let's proclaim the God of a crucified and resurrected Lord Jesus. And let's teach our kids and our converts the actual content of the biblical revelation.
That project is more difficult than signing Facebook petitions. But it's more Christian than pouting when our culture mavens misspell "Elohim" on the golden calves we've asked them to make for us.
You can find Dr. Moore’s writing and preaching at Moore to the Point.
Subscribe to the Resurgence RSS feed and have all our content delivered straight to your feed reader. Find out more.
In an interview, sociologist Peter Berger observed that in the U.S. evangelicals are shifting from being largely a blue-collar constituency to becoming a college educated population.
His question is, will Christians going into the arts, business, government, the media, and film
How do Christians relate to Muslims when we live side by side in the same society? The record in places like Africa and the Middle East is not encouraging! This is more of an issue for the Western church in Europe than in the U.S., but it is going to be a growing concern in America as well.
How can Christians be at the very same time a) good neighbors, seeking their good whether they convert or not, and still b) attractively and effectively invite Muslims to consider the gospel?
The demographic center of Christian gravity has already shifted from the West to Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The rising urban churches of China may be particularly influential in the future. But the West still has the educational institutions, the money, and a great deal of power.
What should the relationship of the older Western churches be to the new non-Western church? How can we use our assets to serve them in ways that are not paternalistic? How can we learn from them in more than perfunctory ways?
The basic concepts of the gospel—sin, guilt and accountability before God, the sacrifice of the cross, human nature, afterlife—are becoming culturally strange in the West for the first time in 1500 years. As Lesslie Newbigin has written, it is time now to 'think like a missionary'—to formulate ways of communicating the gospel that both confront and engage our increasingly non-Christian Western culture.
How do we make the gospel culturally accessible without compromising it? How can we communicate it and live it in a way that is comprehensible to people who lack the basic 'mental furniture' to even understand the essential truths of the Bible?
With the economic meltdown, the question is, will housing values, endowments, profits, salaries, and investments go back to growing at the same rates as they have for the last twenty-five years, or will growth be relatively flat for many years to come? If so, how does the Western church, which has become habituated to giving out of fast-increasing assets, adjust in the way it carries out ministry? For example, American ministry is now highly professionalized—church staffs are far larger than they were two generations ago, when a church of 1,000 was only expected to have, perhaps, two pastors and a couple of other part-time staff. Today such a church would have probably eight to ten full-time staff members.
Also, how should the stewardship message adjust? If discretionary assets are one-half of what they were, more risky, sacrificial giving will be necessary to do even less ministry than we have been doing.
On top of this, if we experience even one significant act of nuclear or bio-terrorism in the U.S. or Europe, we may have to throw out all the basic assumptions about social and economic progress we have been working off for the last 65 years. In the first half of the 20th century, we had two World Wars and a Depression. Is the church ready for that? How could it be? What does that mean?
Copyright © 2010 by Tim Keller. Used by permission.
Check out more content from Dr. Keller at Redeemer City to City.
Re:Lit is a ministry of Resurgence. There you will find a growing line of books to help guide the resurgence of the new reformed. Find out more.
The Resurgence is a reformed, complementarian, missional movement that trains missional leaders to serve the Church to transform cultures for Christ.
