Because I said so

John Ortberg wrote the following on the Monvee blog:

Where this vision is lacking, we can try to push people into all kinds of methods of spiritual growth. We can flood them with classes and bible studies and small groups and services, but it is like pushing noodles up Mt Everest.

We might think of four quadrants:

• Where people have methods but no correct vision, there is legalism.

• Where people have vision but no wise methods, there is frustration.

• Where people have neither vision nor methods, there is apathy.

• Where people have right vision and effective methods—there is growth.

So I find myself thinking a lot about spiritual vision these days. It poses two questions:

Am I teaching this vision? I’m constantly trying to find ways to teach so that people understand that what Jesus offers really is the only way to what they want the most, in their best selves.

Am I living this life? There is no talk in the world captivating enough to speak louder than my life. It was Jesus’ life that made people want so desperately to hear Jesus’ message.

Here’s a piece from MSNBC that lists the worst and best states for getting speeding and other driving-related tickets.

The state ranked the worst based on 17 factors, including:

• Speed limits.
• The use of red-light or speed cameras.
• Laws banning cell phone use while driving.
• Whether speeders are allowed jury trials.
• The number of speed traps (weighted by population).

The worst five:

1. New Jersey
2. Ohio
3. Maryland
4. Louisiana
5. New York

The best five:

50. Wyoming
49. Idaho
48. Montana
47. Nebraska
46. Kentucky

My home state of South Dakota is #42 and my current state of Minnesota is #44.  The only speeding ticket I have received in my 18 years of driving was in South Dakota (1998).  I think my wife must be seeking out the police in Minnesota! 

(HT FMF)

From USA Today:

The findings are the first to examine bedtimes’
effects on kids’ mental health — and the results are noteworthy.
Middle- and high-schoolers whose parents don’t require them to be in
bed before midnight on school nights are 42% more likely to be
depressed than teens whose parents require a 10 p.m. or earlier
bedtime. And teens who are allowed to stay up late are 30% more likely
to have had suicidal thoughts in the past year.

The differences are smaller but still
significant — 25% and 20%, respectively — after controlling for age,
sex, race and ethnicity.

A team led by Columbia University Medical Center
researcher James Gangwisch examined surveys from 15,659 teens and their
parents who took part in a National Institutes of Health (NIH) study of
adolescent health. Previous research has established a firm connection
between teens getting less sleep and feeling depressed or suicidal.

The NIH survey found that kids whose parents
called for a 9-10 p.m. bedtime said they were in bed, on average, by
10:04 p.m. They slept for 8 hours and 10 minutes on average, compared
with 7½ hours for kids allowed to stay up past midnight.

The lesson for parents is simple, Gangwisch
says: Try as much as possible to sell teenagers on the importance of
getting enough sleep — even if it seems that they don’t need as much as
younger children (actually, they need as much — about nine hours — but
usually get only 7½ hours or so, according to the NIH).

“We feel like we can just eat into our sleep time,” he says, “but we pay for it in many different ways.”

The new data come from analyses of NIH surveys
from 1994 to 1996, but Gangwisch believes the disparities between teens
with and without prescribed bedtimes are even greater today, given
greater distractions in their lives. In 1996, for instance, teens
couldn’t stay up late texting friends and checking Facebook pages.

“I would guess that there are more kids getting less sleep,” he says.

Gangwisch is presenting the findings in Seattle
at SLEEP 2009, the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep
Societies.

READERS: Does your teen have a bedtime? Did you? How can you enforce it? Would you like to see school start times pushed back?

Pastor James MacDonald of Harvest Bible Fellowship has some wisdom for new and young pastors about preaching.  I’m totally feeling him on the time limit, as that is one I try to keep in mind (usually).  This Fireproof series has killed my time limit, but I intend to keep my messages more compact for the rest of the summer.  It is clear when I run over and loose my audience.  Some of that is me, some of that is the culture of our church, but either way I have to keep it in mind as I prepare my sermon for the week.  And he’s right, preaching is definately learning via trial by fire, and thankfully my church has been quite gracious with me.

Pastor MacDonald writes:

One of my greatest joys these days is working with young preachers
trying to ‘fast track’ them through some of the lessons I have learned
through almost three decades of preaching. I was blessed to attend some
great schools, but truthfully most of the bit I have learned about
preaching came from painful Sunday afternoons of lamenting the ‘getting
it wrong’ and determining to do it better next time. I am humbled and
blessed by the thought that my lessons learned through much travail can
be given to hungry young preachers just starting out.

Ok so here’s some of the mistakes I made and observe:

The following serves as the confession of faith for both The Gospel Coalition as well as for the ReTrain wing of Resurgence ministries out of Mars Hill Church and Acts29 in Seattle.  It is a very clear and concise document that reflect very well my own personal beliefs.  Credit to these men for writing it, and I am adopting it personally.

As part of the founding council of The Gospel Coalition, Pastor Mark Driscoll was honored to participate in
the authoring of the following confession of faith along with men such as Don Carson, Tim Keller, John Piper,
Mark Dever, Ligon Duncan, CJ Mahaney, Joshua Harris, and James MacDonald. This confession serves as the
doctrinal statement for Re:Train.

The Triune God
We believe in one God, eternally existing in three equally divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit, who know, love, and glorify one another. This one true and living God is infinitely perfect both in his
love and in his holiness. He is the Creator of all things, visible and invisible, and is therefore worthy to receive
all glory and adoration. Immortal and eternal, he perfectly and exhaustively knows the end from the beginning,
sustains and sovereignly rules over all things, and providentially brings about his eternal good purposes to
redeem a people for himself and restore his fallen creation, to the praise of his glorious grace.

Revelation
God has graciously disclosed his existence and power in the created order, and has supremely revealed himself
to fallen human beings in the person of his Son, the incarnate Word. Moreover, this God is a speaking God
who by his Spirit has graciously disclosed himself in human words: we believe that God has inspired the
words preserved in the Scriptures, the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments, which are both record
and means of his saving work in the world. These writings alone constitute the verbally inspired Word of God,
which is utterly authoritative and without error in the original writings, complete in its revelation of his will for
salvation, sufficient for all that God requires us to believe and do, and final in its authority over every domain
of knowledge to which it speaks. We confess that both our finitude and our sinfulness preclude the possibility
of knowing God’s truth exhaustively, but we affirm that, enlightened by the Spirit of God, we can know God’s
revealed truth truly. The Bible is to be believed, as God’s instruction, in all that it teaches; obeyed, as God’s
command, in all that it requires; and trusted, as God’s pledge, in all that it promises. As God’s people hear,
believe, and do the Word, they are equipped as disciples of Christ and witnesses to the gospel.

Creation of Humanity
We believe that God created human beings, male and female, in his own image. Adam and Eve belonged to
the created order that God himself declared to be very good, serving as God’s agents to care for, manage,
and govern creation, living in holy and devoted fellowship with their Maker. Men and women, equally made
in the image of God, enjoy equal access to God by faith in Christ Jesus and are both called to move beyond
passive self-indulgence to significant private and public engagement in family, church, and civic life. Adam
and Eve were made to complement each other in a one-flesh union that establishes the only normative pattern
of sexual relations for men and women, such that marriage ultimately serves as a type of the union between
Christ and his church. In God’s wise purposes, men and women are not simply interchangeable, but rather
they complement each other in mutually enriching ways. God ordains that they assume distinctive roles which
reflect the loving relationship between Christ and the church, the husband exercising headship in a way that
displays the caring, sacrificial love of Christ, and the wife submitting to her husband in a way that models
the love of the church for her Lord. In the ministry of the church, both men and women are encouraged
to serve Christ and to be developed to their full potential in the manifold ministries of the people of God.
The distinctive leadership role within the church given to qualified men is grounded in creation, fall, and
redemption and must not be sidelined by appeals to cultural developments.

The Fall
We believe that Adam, made in the image of God, distorted that image and forfeited his original blessedness—
for himself and all his progeny—by falling into sin through Satan’s temptation. As a result, all human beings
are alienated from God, corrupted in every aspect of their being (e.g., physically, mentally, volitionally,
emotionally, spiritually) and condemned finally and irrevocably to death—apart from God’s own gracious
intervention. The supreme need of all human beings is to be reconciled to the God under whose just and holy
wrath we stand; the only hope of all human beings is the undeserved love of this same God, who alone can
rescue us and restore us to himself.

The Plan of God
We believe that from all eternity God determined in grace to save a great multitude of guilty sinners from every
tribe and language and people and nation, and to this end foreknew them and chose them. We believe that
God justifies and sanctifies those who by grace have faith in Jesus, and that he will one day glorify them—all
to the praise of his glorious grace. In love God commands and implores all people to repent and believe,
having set his saving love on those he has chosen and having ordained Christ to be their Redeemer.

The Gospel
We believe that the gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ—God’s very wisdom. Utter folly to the world, even
though it is the power of God to those who are being saved, this good news is christological, centering on the
cross and resurrection: the gospel is not proclaimed if Christ is not proclaimed, and the authentic Christ has
not been proclaimed if his death and resurrection are not central (the message is Christ died for our sins . .
. [and] was raised”). This good news is biblical (his death and resurrection are according to the Scriptures),
theological and salvific (Christ died for our sins, to reconcile us to God), historical (if the saving events did not
happen, our faith is worthless, we are still in our sins, and we are to be pitied more than all others), apostolic
(the message was entrusted to and transmitted by the apostles, who were witnesses of these saving events),
and intensely personal (where it is received, believed, and held firmly, individual persons are saved).

The Redemption of Christ
We believe that, moved by love and in obedience to his Father, the eternal Son became human: the Word
became flesh, fully God and fully human being, one Person in two natures. The man Jesus, the promised
Messiah of Israel, was conceived through the miraculous agency of the Holy Spirit, and was born of the
virgin Mary. He perfectly obeyed his heavenly Father, lived a sinless life, performed miraculous signs, was
crucified under Pontius Pilate, arose bodily from the dead on the third day, and ascended into heaven. As
the mediatorial King, he is seated at the right hand of God the Father, exercising in heaven and on earth all
of God’s sovereignty, and is our High Priest and righteous Advocate. We believe that by his incarnation, life,
death, resurrection, and ascension, Jesus Christ acted as our representative and substitute. He did this so
that in him we might become the righteousness of God: on the cross he canceled sin, propitiated God, and,
by bearing the full penalty of our sins, reconciled to God all those who believe. By his resurrection Christ
Jesus was vindicated by his Father, broke the power of death and defeated Satan who once had power over
it, and brought everlasting life to all his people; by his ascension he has been forever exalted as Lord and has
prepared a place for us to be with him. We believe that salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other
name given under heaven by which we must be saved. Because God chose the lowly things of this world, the
despised things, the things that are not, to nullify the things that are, no human being can ever boast before
him—Christ Jesus has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness, and redemption.

The Justification of Siners
We believe that Christ, by his obedience and death, fully discharged the debt of all those who are justified.
By his sacrifice, he bore in our stead the punishment due us for our sins, making a proper, real, and full
satisfaction to God’s justice on our behalf. By his perfect obedience he satisfied the just demands of God
on our behalf, since by faith alone that perfect obedience is credited to all who trust in Christ alone for their
acceptance with God. Inasmuch as Christ was given by the Father for us, and his obedience and punishment
were accepted in place of our own, freely and not for anything in us, this justification is solely of free grace, in
order that both the exact justice and the rich grace of God might be glorified in the justification of sinners. We
believe that a zeal for personal and public obedience flows from this free justification.

The Power of the Holy Spirit
We believe that this salvation, attested in all Scripture and secured by Jesus Christ, is applied to his people
by the Holy Spirit. Sent by the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit glorifies the Lord Jesus Christ, and, as the
other Paraclete, is present with and in believers. He convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment,
and by his powerful and mysterious work regenerates spiritually dead sinners, awakening them to repentance
and faith, baptizing them into union with the Lord Jesus, such that they are justified before God by grace
alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone. By the Spirit’s agency, believers are renewed, sanctified, and
adopted into God’s family; they participate in the divine nature and receive his sovereignly distributed gifts.
The Holy Spirit is himself the down payment of the promised inheritance, and in this age indwells, guides,
instructs, equips, revives, and empowers believers for Christ-like living and service.

The Kingdom of God
We believe that those who have been saved by the grace of God through union with Christ by faith and through
regeneration by the Holy Spirit enter the kingdom of God and delight in the blessings of the new covenant:
the forgiveness of sins, the inward transformation that awakens a desire to glorify, trust, and obey God, and
the prospect of the glory yet to be revealed. Good works constitute indispensable evidence of saving grace.
Living as salt in a world that is decaying and light in a world that is dark, believers should neither withdraw
into seclusion from the world, nor become indistinguishable from it: rather, we are to do good to the city, for
all the glory and honor of the nations is to be offered up to the living God. Recognizing whose created order
this is, and because we are citizens of God’s kingdom, we are to love our neighbors as ourselves, doing good
to all, especially to those who belong to the household of God. The kingdom of God, already present but not
fully realized, is the exercise of God’s sovereignty in the world toward the eventual redemption of all creation.
The kingdom of God is an invasive power that plunders Satan’s dark kingdom and regenerates and renovates
through repentance and faith the lives of individuals rescued from that kingdom. It therefore inevitably
establishes a new community of human life together under God.

God’s New People
We believe that God’s new covenant people have already come to the heavenly Jerusalem; they are already
seated with Christ in the heavenlies. This universal church is manifest in local churches of which Christ is
the only Head; thus each local church” is, in fact, the church, the household of God, the assembly of the
living God, and the pillar and foundation of the truth. The church is the body of Christ, the apple of his eye,
graven on his hands, and he has pledged himself to her forever. The church is distinguished by her gospel
message, her sacred ordinances, her discipline, her great mission, and, above all, by her love for God, and by
her members’ love for one another and for the world. Crucially, this gospel we cherish has both personal and
corporate dimensions, neither of which may properly be overlooked. Christ Jesus is our peace: he has not only
brought about peace with God, but also peace between alienated peoples. His purpose was to create in himself
one new humanity, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both Jew and Gentile to God through the
cross, by which he put to death their hostility. The church serves as a sign of God’s future new world when its
members live for the service of one another and their neighbors, rather than for self-focus. The church is the
corporate dwelling place of God’s Spirit, and the continuing witness to God in the world.

Baptism and the Lord’s Super
We believe that baptism and the Lord’s Supper are ordained by the Lord Jesus himself. The former is
connected with entrance into the new covenant community, the latter with ongoing covenant renewal. Together
they are simultaneously God’s pledge to us, divinely ordained means of grace, our public vows of submission to
the once crucified and now resurrected Christ, and anticipations of his return and of the consummation of all
things.

The Restoration of All Things
We believe in the personal, glorious, and bodily return of our Lord Jesus Christ with his holy angels, when
he will exercise his role as final Judge, and his kingdom will be consummated. We believe in the bodily
resurrection of both the just and the unjust—the unjust to judgment and eternal conscious punishment in hell,
as our Lord himself taught, and the just to eternal blessedness in the presence of him who sits on the throne
and of the Lamb, in the new heaven and the new earth, the home of righteousness. On that day the church
will be presented faultless before God by the obedience, suffering and triumph of Christ, all sin purged and its
wretched effects forever banished. God will be all in all and his people will be enthralled by the immediacy of
his ineffable holiness, and everything will be to the praise of his glorious grace.

(This version was taken from the ReTrain Catalog)

This just posted on the Mars Hill Church web site:

This summer, City on a Hill Church in Albuquerque will become a Mars Hill campus. We will partner together in an effort to reach as many people as possible with the gospel of Jesus. Over the past three months, the Executive Elders of Mars Hill and the pastors of City on a Hill have spent many hours in discussion, prayer, and study in order to reach this unanimous decision.

Dave Bruskas is the lead pastor at City on a Hill, which has been a part of the Acts 29 Network since 2007. He is a proven, seasoned pastor and a gifted teacher. He is a loving husband, and a devoted father to his four daughters. Dave will be the Albuquerque campus pastor and serve as a regional director for both Acts 29 and Mars Hill, starting new campuses, starting new churches, and continuing to lead the local congregation.

The transition from City on a Hill to Mars Hill Church will be official in the next few months, and the new campus will celebrate its grand opening this fall. In the meantime, the local leadership will help shepherd the congregation through the transition, and Mars Hill pastors will spend some time onsite to provide training and fellowship as we get better acquainted with this new extension of our church family (for example, Tim Smith, our lead worship pastor, will visit next weekend, and Pastor Mark will preach live at City on a Hill on May 24).

Getting Acquainted

• The congregation meets in the Lobo Theater. Built in 1939, it’s the oldest theater still standing along the historic Route 66.
• At present, City on a Hill’s average attendance ranges between 300 to 400 adults and children.
• Seven pastors serve the City on a Hill congregation.
• City on a Hill Church was founded in April 2001, and replanted as an Acts 29 church in July 2007.
• The vast majority of the church falls within the 24-35 range and mirrors the multicultural make-up of metropolitan Albuquerque.
• The location is in the cultural heart of Albuquerque, a short distance from the University of New Mexico, which is the largest state campus in the US with a majority minority enrollment.
• Albuquerque is the #1 “Creative Class” city among medium-sized cities (Seattle is #5 on the large city list).
• City on a Hill Church shares Mars Hill Church’s commitment to be a “city within the city, living for Jesus.”

Before President Barack Obama spoke from Gaston Hall at Georgetown University last week, his advance team requested that the university hide or remove any religious symbols or signs while the president was on stage. Of the more prominent was a monogram IHS, whose letters in Greek spell out the name of Jesus and which normally perches above the stage in Gaston Hall. During the address, the monogram was covered with what appeared to be black wood.

Georgetown is a private Catholic institution founded by Jesuits in 1789. The auditorium in which the president spoke is normally adorned with religious imagery, but only the symbols directly on the stage — those likely to be picked up by a television camera — were obscured.

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, accused the university of “cowardice” for acceding to the While House, and criticized Obama’s team for asking a religious school to “neuter itself” before the president made his address. “No bishop who might speak at the While House would ever request that a crucifix be displayed behind him,” said Donohue.

The White House said that the backdrop, which included blue drapes and a host of American flags, was standard during policy speeches and other events.

Though the advance team asked that the religious signs be veiled, the president himself included in his message an analogy from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount as he outlined his plans for an economic recovery. “We cannot rebuild the economy on the same pile of sand,” he said. “We must build our house upon a rock.” [FoxNews.com]

The Gospel Coalition National Conference Webcast

As a reminder, The Gospel Coalition National Conference webcast, “Entrusted with the Gospel: Living the Vision of
2 Timothy,” begins Tomorrow, April 21 and runs through Thursday, April 23 at Christianity.com.

After the conference all videos will be available for FREE
on demand at Christianity.com.

I will be following this conference online as time allows over the next few days.  The timing wasn’t right for me to go in person (bummer!) but at least I will get to watch it live and learn from these great leaders and teachers!

Gospel Coalition, Church Conference, Gospel Coalition National Conference, John Piper, Tim Keller, Phil Ryken, Bryan Chapell, Ajith Fernando, Don Carson, Mark Driscoll, Ligon Duncan, K. Edward Copeland, Webcast, Chicago, Leadership, Pastors, 2 Timothy, Entrusted with the Gospel, Jesus

I forgot to mention that I had an article published this past Wednesday in our local newspaper - the Waseca County News.  You can read it online.  It’s titled “The Amazing Grace of Easter”.

(my dad sent this to me.  I have a dumb foot!)

You have to try this please, it takes 2 seconds. I could not believe 
this!!! It is from an orthopedic surgeon…. This will boggle your 
mind and you will keep you trying over and over again to see if you 
can outsmart your foot, but, you can’t.

1. Without anyone watching you (they will think you are GOOFY……) 
And while sitting at your desk in front of your computer, lift your 
Right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles.

2. Now, while doing this, draw the number ‘6′ in the air with your 
Right hand. Your foot will change direction.

I told you so!!! And there’s nothing you can do about it! You and I 
both know how stupid it is, but before the day is done you are going 
to try it again, if you’ve not already done so.

Send it to your friends to frustrate them too!

Pastor James MacDonald offers an insightful and scathing rebuke of both Brian McLaren as well as those who would defend his aberrant theology.  Below is the beginning, but the whole article is well worth your time!  Pastor MacDonald’s words are strong, but they need to be when it comes to protecting the Gospel.

What an incredibly difficult thing it is to think and act like a Christian when we are so incredibly immersed in our culture.  The job of thinking biblically, while the deafening noise of societal norms rings in our ears and our own personality biases our convictions, can seem impossible.

I receive some interesting comments on this blog, not all of which get  posted.  Especially pointed were several recent comments related to my post about Brian McLaren.  I didn’t specify McLaren’s denials of the orthodox teaching on Hell (see note 1 below), or penal substitution (see note 2), or Scripture (see note 3) because the main audience for this blog is immensely familiar with McLaren’s writing.  Another reason I did not detail his errors is because that has been done extensively in such helpful books as D. A. Carson’s Becoming Conversant With Emergent, and Why We’re Not Emergent by DeYoung and Kluck. (Tim ChalliesDoug Wilson also have helpful reviews of McLaren’s Generous Orthodoxy.) and

I do not view Brian as an ‘erring weaker brother,’ worthy of sympathy or olive branches, but rather as a dangerous false teacher who repackages mainline liberal theology. (Have the past 50 years not been adequate to see how liberal theology empties churches and damns souls?)

More dangerous still is that McLaren packages his false teaching and denials of Scripture as  solutions to some of the excesses currently plaguing evangelicalism—the danger being his winning over of young people who have legitimate complaints about the current church, but who lack the discernment to see that his solutions are often unbiblical even when his critiques are fair.

Read the full post HERE.

Well, let’s start with what the Good News isn’t. It isn’t that you can attend church, that you can fit in with a new social group or that you can pride yourself about how good of a person you’ve become.

Now you might be saying to yourself, “Yeah, sure I knew that. God is love and I’m a pretty good person, sure, good news, great.”

But, that’s not just it.

Now tell me, what have you done for the Creator of the universe lately? He gave you your life, yet what do you do with it? Do you pursue your career? Do you entertain yourself with media? Do you spend your time eating and drinking and making yourself merry?

But we all know such moderately innocent pursuits do not stop there.

Do you lie? Do you lust? Do you obsess over your money? Do you tolerate the Lord’s name to be used as a cuss word? Do you envy what people around you have? Do you yearn for any of your passions above Him?

Take a look at it from His perspective. God is perfect; He created you to be with Him, but how have you received Him? (With indifference) How often have you even thought of your Creator, the all powerful being who loves you? Once a week? Once a month? But we do more than that. We oppose Him. We are daily, hourly committing imperfect acts which we morally smear against God’s face. He loves us and we throw Him on the wayside of our lives collectively spitting in the face of the One who created us.

And what must a perfect Creator do to the creation which constantly dishonors Him? He must separate Himself from it. Just as a judge can’t harbor a criminal, so too, God can not tolerate rebellion. It must be punished. But…

Here is where we get to that Good News. At the same time that we were collectively spitting in the face of the Creator who loves His spiteful creatures, we have a God who set about to save anyone who would come to Him. This is the greatness of the Good News: “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” - Romans 5:8 (ESV)

He did not let the relationship of Creator and creature remain broken. Instead He sent His Son Jesus Christ to die for your rebellion and for your sins. He paid the penalty, He paved the way.

So let me urge you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to the God which you have lived your life against. God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in Him we might be reconciled.

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might BRING US TO GOD…. - 1 Peter 3:18 (ESV)

(Written by Bryan and Caleb at 10:31 Sermon Jams)