I figured out last night why I have a problem "praying continuously." Prayerlessness is the natural result of either pride or lack of faith, usually both. You fail to pray, instinctively, because you are too proud to realize you need God or too unbelieving to grasp God’s willingness to help.
I’m prayerless because I’m full of pride and unbelief.
When the Gospel has cultivated humility and faith in you, you will obey that verse in 1 Thessalonians, "Pray continuously," instinctively.
Thanks to Kevin DeYoung for this thought.
On Nov. 18, Aaron Coe, one of our church planters and pastor of The Gallery Church in NYC, will be here to cast vision for City Uprising RDU. We will be hosting a lunch at the Summit (Brier Creek Campus) at noon that day, featuring a talk by yours truly. The heart of City Uprising is to "propel the chuch" in order to "prosper the city" - something that we resonate deeply with.
You do not want to miss this exciting opportunity! Be sure to check out this video for more info:
The Details:
Who: All Church Leaders (pastors, student pastors, etc)
What: City Uprising Vision Lunch
(Lunch is provided Free)
When: November 18 at noon
Where: Summit Church (Brier Creek Campus)
2335 Presidential Drive
Durham, NC 27703
Please RSVP to Shannon Simoneau (ssimoneau@summitRDU.com)
I found this to be a stirring analysis of a lot of contemporary ministry:
"I can’t help but feel that lurking beneath the surface in much of the current disillusionment with the church is a dis-ease with the traditional message of salvation. People are passionate about the poor, the environment, and third-world debt. But they seem embarrassed by a violent, bloody atonement for sin, let alone any mention of the afterlife that hangs in the balance.
My observation is that as people grow tired of hearing about the atonement, salvation, the cross, and the afterlife, they grow tired of church. Because the more that sin and redemption and heaven and hell recede into the background, the more the church becomes just one among several options for making a difference in the world.
So as much as the church has been nothing but a holy huddle at times and as much as I admire zeal for good works, there is a danger in much of the missional literature that the gospel of God’s grace toward sinners gets swallowed up in urgent calls for world redemption and cultural transformation. There is a danger of centering our churches on adopting schools and offering parenting classes instead of being centered on the message of a heavenly Father who adopts unworthy children of wrath through the work of His Son on the cross. There is a danger that we find our unity in doing good missional deeds for our community and not in the good news of the gospel. There’s a danger our Christianity becomes all imperative and no indicative, all about what we need to do with God and little about what God’s done for us. There’s a danger that when people get disinterested in the gospel, they get disinterested in the church. And once they leave the church, they’ve left the only institution whose mission aims for eternity and whose gospel is truly good news."
- Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck, Why We Love the Church, pp. 50-51
In a very morbid kind of way, I found this quite humorous. This is a group of atheists who, for a modest fee, agree to take care of your un-souled pets in case of the rapture. Of course, if the rapture did occur I do wonder if these atheists would have the presence of mind to be concerned about your pet. They might be kind of rattled. And if they did persist on in unbelief... would they really be conscientious enough to care for your pet? If they didn't, who would sue them? You aren't there to hold them account, and they don't really believe there's a God to hold them account...
OK, I've thought way too much about this. Headed out to California for a couple of days with Leadership Network.
I enjoy listening to the guy who is creative in how he packages and presents his messages. I also enjoy the guy who really knows how to do "exegesis," i.e., can get into a passage, walk me through it, unpack it carefully, and make me feel, when he's done, like I really understand that passage much better than I did before.
Unfortunately those two guys are rarely the same person.
Some preachers astound me with their creative ability to perceive spiritual questions people are really interested in, apply biblical principles to their lives, and package their teaching in ways that capture the attention. Often, however, I feel like they are not letting the Bible drive their content--their messages are more driven by their experiences and creative genius. I also feel like if I sat under their preaching for a while that I would not really be getting the full scope of what God has left for me to know in the Bible. And rarely do I feel like I understand passages of Scripture much better as a result of their preaching.
Other guys astound me with their ability to perceive what a text is saying and unpack it. However, quite often they bore me, and fail to make me see how a particular passage is absolutely essential for my life. Yet, often they don't package in a way that captures my attention; they are usually only decent in application, and they almost always suck in introduction and approach. Quite often they ramble on way too long in too many scattered directions (usually, they excuse this by saying they are just going wherever the text itself goes).
I think both elements, careful exegesis and creativity, are absolutely necessary.
I think the key is knowing what order to employ each of those elements in your sermon preparation. I think you must know how to discipline and harness your creativity so that it serves the text and not trumps the text.
Though both are essential, I think that exegesis must precede creativity.
When I let my creativity precede my exegetical work, then I end up cramming what I want to say into a text. The text serves as I kind of playground in which I find ways to use it to say what I already want to say. That kind of preaching is interesting but, at the end of the day, unfaithful to my calling and unsatisfying to those wanting to know God. The Summit Church does not need my word, it needs God's word.
But when I force myself to do the exegesis FIRST, trying to strip my mind of all creative elements, I can let the Holy Spirit teach me what He was trying to say in a passage first. THEN, AFTER I'm done with that, I can look back at what I've gleaned and allow my creativity to go to work, packaging that content in a way that captures people's attention.
If you stop with the exegesis, you will be right in what you preach, but unfortunately a lot of people will miss what you are saying. Our message is too urgent to be satisfied that we have simply presented the material accurately. No true fisherman consoles himself for catching no fish by pointing out the excellency of his bait.
Weighting yourself too heavily toward exegesis or creativity are both lazy approaches. The first fails to connect; the second fails to be faithful to God's calling. As a teacher of God's word, I am called to do both: to be faithful and connect. I am not called to simply expound a book; I am called to expound it to people.
Sure, if I had to choose one or the other, I'd much rather choose to be faithful to the text... but I do not have to choose.
"But instead of living this way, we've created a whole brand of churches that do not depend on the Spirit, a whole culture of Christians who are not disciples, a new group of "followers" who do not follow. If all God asked for were faceless numbers to fill the churches, then we would be doing alright. Most of us would feel pretty confident. But simply having a good speaker, a service that is short and engaging, a good venue, and whatever else we add to the mix does not make for a "good" or "successful" church. God intended for His bride, those who claim His name, to be much more than this." Francis Chan, Forgotten God
Summit, this is exactly what we have been talking about the last few weeks in the Exodus//Presence series. Looking forward to our final message in the series, "Glory," this weekend. We'll be studying Exodus 33:18 - 34:16. We'll get into the three things missing from Americanized Christianity: presence, passion, and power.
Note: If you missed the first part of this series, given last summer, click here: Exodus//Breakout
Just finishing up another book, this one by Francis Chan, called "The Forgotten God." While I did not find this one as astounding as "Crazy Love," I do think that Chan raises some good questions in the book. Here's a great paragraph that gives you the flavor of it.
"As believers, we ought to experience this same kind of astonishment when the Holy Spirit enters our bodies. We should be stunned in disbelief over becoming a "new creation" with the Spirit living in us. As the caterpillar finds its new ability to fly, we should be thrilled over our Spirit-empowered ability to live differently and faithfully. Isn't this what the Scriptures speak of? Isn't this what we've all been longing for?"
As I asked you last week, do you feel that the Holy Spirit's presence in your life is MORE VALUABLE to you than if Jesus Himself had stayed behind to be your personal discipler? Jesus said that that is how it should be (John 16:7)...
Just finished a fantastic leadership book called The Endurance about the true story of the mind-blowing heroic efforts of a polar explorer (Sir Ernest Shackleton) to save his crew stranded on a remote island in Antarctica. The book reads like an adventure... and, if nothing else, makes you realize that at no point have you been truly "cold" in your life.
Best of all, I thought, were the occasional leadership principles the author, Caroline Alexander, extracts along the way. Here are two, just as examples. The first is taken from the diary of one of the stranded crewmen:
"When occasion demanded he (Shackleton) would attend personally to the smallest details...sometimes it would appear to the thoughtless that his care amounted almost to fussiness, and it was only afterwards that we understood the supreme importance of his ceaseless watchfulness. Behind every calculated word and gesture was a single-minded determination to do what was best for his men."
And this one:
"At the core of Shackleton's gift for leadership in crisis was an adamantine conviction that quite ordinary individuals were capable of heroic feats if the circumstances required; the weak and the strong could and must survive together. The mystique that Shackleton acquired as a leader may partly be attributed to the fact that he elicited from his men strength and endurance they had never imagined they possessed; he ennobled them."