Category Archives: Mission

Make Disciples not Programs

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This week The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary began their first ever Great Commission Lecture Series; there are several more lectures to come please check that link for updates over the next month.  Starting the series off was David Platt, lead pastor of the Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham, Alabama.  In his lecture he offered the following criticism of the lack of biblical vision in SBC churches and followed it up will a practical exhortation to recover the mission of God.

“When you ask a pastor to describe his vision and we say things like, ‘my vision is to have this many hundred or this many thousand people in church, or to have this many buildings,’ when we say things like that we show that somewhere along the way we have lost our pursuit of Christ in the pursuit of stuff and the church. Christ should be our vision. . . .  One of the greatest challenges that I, and the staff that I lead, face is trying to reorient our thinking: the purpose of the staff is not to plan events or to provide services. The purpose of the staff, of church leaders, is to equip people, to build people, to love Christ and proclaim the glory of Christ to the nations” (emphasis added).

An article by the Towers Online is available here and MP3s of the lectures are available below.

·         “The Presence of Christ in the Great Commission”

·         “The Command of Christ in the Great Commission”

·         “The Authority of Christ in the Great Commission”

2008-09-08 The Brief

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News

·         The Death of Paper – Are printed magazines, newspapers, and books nearing their demise?  Check out this article and make the call.

Politics

·         The List: McCain’s 10 Worst Ideas – Foreign Policy is doing a two part series on the ten worst policy proposals for the two presidential hopefuls.

·         The List: Obama’s 10 Worst Ideas – Foreign Policy is doing a two part series on the ten worst policy proposals for the two presidential hopefuls.

·         On Faith – The panelists at The Washington Post and Newsweek’s forum, On Faith, have recently been asked: “Women are not allowed to become clergy in many conservative religious groups. Is it hypocritical to think that a woman can lead a nation and not a congregation?”  As you can imagine this question has generated a varied number of responses and heated debate in the forums.  You can read the responses from all the panelists here; however, I would recommend the following panelists’ responses, and not necessarily because I agree with them:

Albert Mohler Jr. – President, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Brian D. McLaren – Leader in the Emergent Church movement and author of A Generous Orthodoxy

Richard Mouw – President, Fuller Theological Seminary

Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite – Professor, Chicago Theological Seminary

Deepak Chopra – Founder and president of the Alliance for a New Humanity

Theology

·         Lost/Found in Translation? – Ed Stetzer has posted a helpful article concerning the language a church chooses to use and how this shapes missional thinking.

·         Insufficient Responses- A Thought on Nehemiah 1.4 – You need to read this post.

·         Is Divine Election Unfair? – John MacArthur gives a brief explanation of why this doctrine of grace is truly gracious.

·         Six Study Essentials – Mark Driscoll gives six simple yet very helpful essentials to Bible study.

The SBC

·         Pry the Baton Out of Their (C)old, Dead Hands- An Opinion on Age Trends in the SBC – Todd Burus has posted on age trends in the SBC there has  not been a lot of discussion on this post and I know Todd, as well as myself, would love to hear your thoughts.

·         Convocation marks start of “year of living dangerously,” Mohler tells students – Dr. Albert Mohler’s fall convocation address at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary challenges students to live dangerously (click here for MP3).  From the address:

“I want us to be an institution that scares people,” he said. “We are gathered here at this place, with so many of us — it appears — who are committed to the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ; this is a dangerous place. The forces of evil and darkness and the enemies of the Gospel have more than met their match. Not because of who we are, but because of who Christ is. Not because we have any tactical skill, but because we follow a Lord who is going to vindicate His Gospel.”

2008-08-12 The Brief

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Blogroll

Todd Burus has been blogging since late 2007 but I want to bring his blog, “For the time that is past suffices…”, to your attention.  Todd has one of the keenest minds that I know from mathematics to politics to theology Todd is profoundly intelligent and his blog comes highly recommended.

Justin Sok recently left the blogsphere and shut down his blog Marvelous Light.  This was a devastating blow from the man who inspired me to blog.  Luckily none of us will have to do without his thoughts for much longer as this weekend he rejoined us with the aptly titled In Medias Res.  Like Todd Justin has a keen mind and provides solid insight on just about any subject.  Other than Al Mohler Justin is the widest read individual I know and I love engaging him in discussion.  I am excited to see where Justin takes this new blog and I hope you are as well.  For those of you who were as sad to see ML go as much as I am let me know and I will e-mail you a .feed-ms file that contains all of Justin’s posts.

Books

Re:Lit, of Crossway, has several new books out and coming out in the near future that you would do well to check out.  See the links below.

·         Death by Love: Letters from the Cross (click here for Amazon)

·         Practical Theology for Women: How Knowing God Makes a Difference in Our Daily Lives

·         Vintage Church: Timeless Truths and Timely Methods

Tim Challies offers a brief review of Serve God Save the Planet: A Christian Call to Action by J. Matthew Sleeth, MD in his cleverly titled post “Serve God, Save the Planet.”

World News

“How Putin Wins” by Foreign Policy is a brief yet insightful post on the war in Georgia.

The Olympics

Michael Phelps is making Olympic history.  There are countless articles on the web about this so I will just refer you to this article over at CNN.  But seriously if you have not been watching the Olympics you are missing out, both in terms of history and hilarity.

John Mark Reynolds, Associate Professor of Philosophy, at Biola University, looks at the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics and reflects on the worldview imagery displayed there.  I appreciate his post, “The Religious Olympics Opening,” as it reminds us to focus on being philosophically and culturally discerning.  At the same time I think he has either underestimated China’s cultural pride or overestimated the historical pride and intelligence of most American’s.  Why did China’s opening ceremony make “much of what contemporary Americans do in our public ceremonies look decadent and without cultural confidence?”  Simple, most Americans are ahistorical slobs to whom decadence sells.  For me a particular irony is this: throughout the news coverage of this Olympics China’s human rights record has been a constant topic of discussion and yet despite this record China’s citizens have displayed a tremendous amount of nationalistic pride.  On the other hand if the US were to end poverty, bring peace to the world, and ensure democratic process to all large numbers of American’s would still hate their country and find no sense of pride in anything remotely American.  So why would the US never produce an opening ceremony as pervaded with imagery from US history as the ceremony in Beijing?  Because not only are most Americans ahistorical but a lot of them are aAmerican as well.

Theology

In Ed Stetzer’s post “Saturday if for (Baptist) Friends” he looks at the ever aging SBC and notes both how the convention will not survive if this young generation of pastors/missionaries/etcetera is lost and then asks how this generation can be reengaged.

Timmy Brister has a great post up about word-driven church planting movements entitled “Word-Driven Movemental Christianity.”  Give this a read and then give Tim some feedback, I think you will really enjoy his post.

2008-07-31 The Brief

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Blog Updates

Check out the Resources page as I have recently added some new papers.  There are more updates on the way and I hope to have the new Links page up and running sometime this month.

Culture

CNN asks “Black and single: Is marriage really for white people?”  This article is incredibly interesting and demonstrates how events in culture, such as being black and single, which appear to be normative eventually become accepted as being right.  Truth however is not determined by the whims of the polis.  Why do you think this is the cultural norm and how does one address such an issue?

In “The Feminization of the American Male From Top to Toe” Dr. Randy L. Stinson reflects on Tony Glenville’s Top to Toe: A Comprehensive Guide to the Grooming of the Modern Male.  Such a book would seem trivial at best; however, Dr. Stinson does a fantastic job connecting the philosophy of this book to deadly patterns that have emerged in the church.

From the article:

Men reading Glenville’s book will only be encouraged in their sinful tendency to look out for themselves.  If men are focused on such trivial things as dry skin and pampering themselves with long baths, it will be all the more difficult to expect them to lead, provide, and protect. . . . What we need is a church culture that will require boys and men to do hard things, to cultivate toughness, resilience, and courage, top to toe.

Economics

“Exxon posts new profit record:” Nothing new here; it seems that every quarter they are posting record earnings.  I don’t typically buy into conspiracy theories but I do remember a time when gas prices rising over $0.90 was outrageous.  If you have not begun already then I suggest that you start saving your cash for an electric/hydrogen car.

Theology

John MacArthur has taken a brief look at Martin Luther in a short, but fantastic post, entitled “No Compromise.”

Joe R. Miller has interviewed Eric Bryant about his recent book Peppermint Filled Piñatas: Breaking Through Tolerance and Embracing Love.  Check out the interview here.

The Olympics

Foreign Policy has an article up about the real meaning behind the summer Olympic Games.  Toss your altruism aside because the Olympics are all about one thing: profit.  Take a look at “Prime Numbers: Rings of Gold” for all the dirty details.

2008-07-21 The Brief

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History and Culture

Pulpit Magazine has a fantastic review of Stephen J. Nichols new book, Jesus, Made in America: A Cultural History from the Puritans to the Passion of the Christ.

Missiology

Ed Stetzer has posted a presentation that he did several weeks ago at Every Nation ministries entitled Movemental Christianity Presentation.

Eric Bryant has posted an outline of a recent teleseminar entitled “Catalyzing Community;” for those of you interested in listening the audio is below.

Both of the above posts are great examples of similar missional paradigms and I would love to hear your thoughts on them.

Seminary

Earlier this year I came across an article written by John M. Frame in 1972 and later published in 1978.  The article, “Proposal For A New Seminary” is extremely intriguing, especially coming from an individual such as Dr. Frame.  What makes it more interesting are the postscripts from Dr. Frame as he reflects upon his own writing.

Theology

John Piper has received much attention lately on the theme of baptism and has now posted the second installment of a three part series on church membership and baptism.  This week’s sermon “What Is Baptism, and How Important Is It?” is particularly insightful on several counts.  I am waiting to hear the final sermon in this series and then will likely devote a post to reflecting on it.