SBC 2009 Annual Meeting = Great Comedy

The SBC (Southern Baptist Convention) is the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S.; therefore, it is always the source of much controversy and hillarity. Anytime you get that many people together, there are bound to be a few nuts in the room. From what I have read, the SBC Annual Meeting was encouraging overall; however, this doesn't mean that some ridiculous statements weren't made.

In good news, the Great Commission Resurgence motion passed (this motion should help to refocus the convention on the Gospel). On the crazy side, here is a short list, provided by Alan Cross, of the more bizzare motions:

In the afternoon motions at the SBC, someone made a motion that Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, WA - that his books be banned from Lifeway stores.

(Update as of 9:15 CST, June 23, 2009 - Thankfully, the more outlandish of the following motions did not make it out of committee. All of the "charges" so to speak against Mark Driscoll, the controversial pastor from Seattle who is gaining influence through his popular Acts29 church planting network, were dropped and the motions against him were denied. He was not banned, per se, but there were motions brought up that would have banned his books from Lifeway, the Southern Baptist bookstore, if they had been accepted. I am thankful. We should focus on more important things.)

• Someone else made a motion that Ed Stetzer of Lifeway Research and Alvin Reid and Danny Akin be investigated because of their relationship with Driscoll and the issue of alcohol. Huh?

• Another motion concerns the fact that Pepsi is advertising for Gay and Lesbian issues and the motion desires to keep them neutral in the culture war - if not, they want to boycott Pepsi.

• Another motion was made to remove books by T.D. Jakes, John Hagee, Catholics, and The Shack from Lifeway.

• Yet another motion was made to adopt the American Christian flag to unite us together as believers and a bunch of other stuff in the longest sentence ever uttered - sorry, I couldn't follow. Wow.

• A lady stated that if anyone drinks alcohol or uses an inappropriate word, they cannot be involved with SBC entities.

• Another motion asked for a clarification by the SBC on a distinction between the use of the alcohol, which is a matter of individual conscience and the practice of getting drunk, which is clearly a sin. The man wanted the SBC to try and settle this issue biblically.

• Another motion on the KJV of the Bible.

• Another motion asking that the SBC refrain from the use of secular music in their promotional materials.

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Driscoll's Sermon this week: 2 Peter 1:5-15

Here are some of his points that I needed to hear:

• Busyness doesn't equal fruitfulness. Don't fool yourself into thinking that just because you are busy, that you are fruitful.

• Information doesn't necessarily equal transformation. Information + Obedience = Transformation; however, information without obedience just leads to pride.

• It is foolish to continue to soak up more information without acting on the information that you already have. Do something! (James 1:22)

• Stop waiting for the great book, sermon, or conference that is going to change your life. If you're regenerated, then God has already changed your life. Go do the things you should be doing (2 Peter 1:5-15).

• Stop talking about, praying about, planning to, and looking forward to doing something. You're gonna be dead before you ever move forward in obedience.
  

Now, I just need to go do something about what I heard.

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Highlights from Advance 09

Piper, enough said:

"Don't let your theology get in the way of the Bible . . . . God has ordained that nails get into board by hammers—and that people get saved by prayer and gospel-telling . . . . Jesus LOVED Lazarus, so he let him die—that he might let him see his glory. It is more loving to see Jesus' glory than to live . . . . Prayer is not the work of missions; preaching is. The preached gospel is the frontline spear into unreached hearts."

Chandler's Introduction was worth the entire price of admission. He could have stopped after the first 10-15 minutes, and nobody would have felt shorted. Then, the rest of his session was vintage Chandler, great exegesis and application:

"We've heard this all before. If anything you have heard at this conference is new to you, then you shouldn't be a pastor (He wasn't disrespecting the other speakers, he was making the point that the evangelical elites continue to gather at conferences and discuss theology or church practice, but nothing ever seems to change) . . . . I'm not anti-pragmatics, but where today are the men whose heart is aflame for God with a holy angst? . . . . Repent of your cold, pragmatic heart that loves ministry and barely loves the King of Glory . . . . How to you cultivate repentance In a church? Preach the cross . . . . If you contextualize the gospel so much that everyone likes it, you're not preaching the gospel."

Driscoll's Conclusion to his second session was unapologetically blunt.  I think we all needed to hear it:

"You will become like Jesus as you worship Jesus . . . . You're an idolater--that's the problem (and then he just turned and walked off the stage)"

J.D. Greear had some good things to say, although I would like to hear what he originally had prepared:

"People's hearts have always been hard; it's always taken a miracle; 'There's no such thing as nearly dead.' . . . . Over time religion seeks to choke out the gospel among God's people . . . . The religious emphasize secondary things. 'Error is often truth out of proportion' (DA Carson) . . . . We need bold, courageous leadership; and if they fire you, plant a church."

Driscoll's first session offered some very practical clarifications and advice for pastors:

"(Driscoll reading Acts 2) 'See, Calvinism is very old.' . . . . We preach Jesus. We are a band with one song--Jesus--and we sing it until we see him . . . . "Evangelistic sermons" are a mistake; if a sermon is about Jesus, it's good for everyone . . . . if you don't have unbelievers coming to your church, it may be because 1) you don't talk about Jesus or 2) you have Sunday school . . . . Don't be so creative you become a heretic; I would rather be faithful than cool."

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Advance Audio Available

The audio for the Advance Conference is being uploaded to DesiringGod.org. You need to go download these messages. The first two days have been excellent, very convicting. I would recommend Matt Chandler from Thursday night and Driscoll's second session on Friday afternoon.

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Book Review: VINTAGE CHURCH

I just finished Mark Driscoll’s newest book, VINTAGE CHURH. It was an enjoyable and beneficial read. I would recommend it to any Christian. I would also recommend it to any non-Christian who is simply curious about this well-known pastor or the explosive growth at Mars Hill Church, in Seattle.

The greatest strength of this book is Driscoll’s transparency regarding the practices of Mars Hill Church. He clearly lays out the practices of the church and the reasons for those practices. This aspect of the book will prove to be extremely valuable to church planters and young leaders. Even if you don’t agree with every structure or practice at Mars Hill, you will at least be forced to think through all of these issues. Some of the issues that I found most useful were his section on the process of appointing elders, women in ministry, multi-site practices, the Lord’s Supper, and baptism.

Another strength of this book is learning from Driscoll’s experience in planting and growing churches over the past twelve years. He planted Mars Hill with a few other people and grew it into one of the largest churches in America. This knowledge combined with his experience as the founder of the Acts 29 church planting network amount to a lot of valuable advice for pastors and planters. He knows what it is like to lead a church at every stage of a church’s life-cycle.

As you can tell, I learned a lot from this book; however, do not mistake this book for a full-blown ecclesiology. Driscoll hits most of the high points, but really camps out in the areas that he has the most to say about; this is obvious by the fact that the chapter discussing “What is the Church?” is the same length as the chapter discussing multi-site churches.

Overall, any pastor, elder, planter, or church member will benefit from this collection of Driscoll’s beliefs, practices, and experiences. Also, this book does contain much of the vintage Driscoll humor, but nothing that crosses the line into vulgar or inappropriate territory. I know this is a concern for many people, but I hope this book and his last effort, Death by Love, represent a maturing Mark Driscoll. I welcome more of his insightful experience.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes:

Jesus' ministry included feeding the hungry, healing the sick, loving the outcast, and befriending the sinner.  But we must never forget that Jesus's ministry began with preaching. (88)

For us as missionaries in culture, the tip of the spear for our war against Satan, sin, and death is the sermon, if rightly preached with authority for the purpose of gathering God's people for instruction before sending them out on mission with passion. (101)

Pursuing potential rather than calling gets a church off mission... Bluntly stated, most churches are doing too much and doing it poorly.  To get and stay unified, church leaders must focus their resources (e.g., people, dollars, facilities, emotion, technology) on accomplishing a few things [we must remain gospel-centered] if they hope to accomplish anything. (146-47)

In the days of Nehemiah, God's people rebuilt the wall encircling their city with a trowel in one hand and a sword in another.  With the trowel they built, and with the sword they defended [to paraphrase his next few sentences, this means that today in our time, we must both build the church and defend it]... In keeping with this analogy, formative discipline [teaching and training] is trowel work and resotrative discipline [church discipline, which means correction and casting out wolves] is sword work. (171-72)

Because we have limited resources (time, energy, money) we must allocate those things to what we consider most important or glorious to us and in so doing make sacrifices for our functional god.  Whatever we hold in the position of highest glory is by definition our god(s). (204) [The goal is to have Christ in this position]

[One problem according to Driscoll is that many churches have] slipped into an attritional ministry philosophy focused almost solely on bringing people into church buildings and events. Such churches lacked a missional philosphy focused on sending Christians out of the church into the world to evangelize and disciple people. Subsequently, the Western church had, sadly, become overly attached to and defined by buildings, programs, staff, services, and institutions that only strategize ways to do "attractional" ministry. To correct this problem, the term missional was adopted to emphasize that the church exists to go into the cultures and nations of the earth and live sacrificially for the good of others. (218)

[Regarding large or multi-campus churches] If some churches with good names in their community can multiply and use their good name to compel more people to worship Jesus, then even if you do not consider that ideal, it is better than unknown, empty churches, which are so common. (260)

To begin with, before worrying about how to distribute gospel content, you must have good content and lots of it.  Just as it makes no sense for a horrible band to play on an expensive sound system because it only amplifies the awfulness, so increasing the channels for content distribution is in vain if the content (e.g., preaching, teaching, worship music) is not biblical and well done. (273)

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Vintage Driscoll

I am currently reading Vintage Church and I am constantly reading Driscoll's blog posts and listening to his sermons and other media, so I am honestly not sure where I got these quotes. All I know is that I wrote them down over the past couple of weeks and have his name beside all of them. These are vintage Driscoll.  Enjoy.

When is the last time you have just asked, "God, please fill me with your Spirit. Holy Spirit, I need you to teach me."  You should pray this every time you open the Scriptures, because we all have a proclivity to suppress the truth due to the unrighteousness of our deeds (see Romans 1).

If you wanna be a heretic, just stop preaching repentance, that's all it takes. - Driscoll summarizing J. I. Packer

The importance of the cross to the church is that apart from Jesus' death on it in our place for our sins, the church does not exist and has no good news to tell.  It cannot be overemphasized that where the cross of Jesus is not exalted and proclaimed as the central act in all of history and in our own redemption, THE CHURCH IS NOT PRESENT.

I can imagine the pharisees saying that we who preach in jeans without tucking in our shirts dishonor God.

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Driscoll on Athanasius

Over at the Resurgence, Driscoll has begun posting what appears to be a series of posts which briefly discuss some the great church leaders throughout history. He appropriately posted about Saint Patrick today, or actually yesterday now. He also posted about Augustine and Athanasius, two of the greatest theologians of the early church. Here is a link to his post on Athanasius. I am linking to that post, because he is my favorite Early Church Father.

If you don't understand how anyone could be such a huge fan of this lesser known figure in church history (less known than Luther, Calvin, or Augustine), then you obviously haven't read On the Incarnation. Do yourself a favor, download this writing from Google books and set aside several hours to work through it. This work will change your life. If you want more information about Athanasius, then check out Desiring God. Piper has a great audio resource on the life and ministry of Athansius, and he also has a book, Contending For Our All, which discusses the impact of this great theologian.

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Advance Conference 2009

This should be a great conference. The speakers include John Piper, Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler, and Ed Stetzer. If you live within a few hours of Durham and you don't have unalterable plans for June 4-6, then you should definitely consider attending.

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Sanctification Through Podcasts

I don't know a lot about God's means of sanctification. I do know that he uses whomever and whatever he chooses to accomplish his purposes in all of creation, and this includes my personal sanctification. A couple of guaranteed means of sanctification are wives and children. My wife and children challenge, encourage, and inspire me on a daily basis. They are also the best method of accountability, because they see the places in your life that are less than perfect (or less than average). Anyway, moving on to the point of this post.

I can't be sure of exactly of how or when my sanctification will be furthered. What I do know is that prayer and reading Scripture are two activities that the Bible indicates as being part of the Christian life. These also seem to be to definite methods of doing your part to attempt to become more Christlike. However, if you are like me, then these two activities are easier described than accomplished. I truly have a desire to pray and study the Bible daily, but sometimes life gets in the way. Most of the time, my life is far more hectic than I would prefer, and this makes is easy for my flesh to make excuses for my lake of diligence.

One method I have found for giving myself time in prayer and the Scriptures is to take advantage of my commute each morning and evening. It takes me about 35-40 minutes each way, so this is a great time to spend praying. However, I find it distracting to read the Bible while driving (I hope you do to). Nonetheless, I did find a way to feed myself a steady diet of Scripture while driving. I started downloading sermons and podcasts. This is a great way to fill your mind with Scripture and exegesis of that Scripture. This is also a great way to redeem your commute, which most of us do not enjoy.

Here is a list of the podcasts (some are sermoncasts) that I subscribe to

John Piper's Weekly Sermon (Bethlehem Baptist)

Mark Driscoll's Weekly Sermon (Mars Hill)


Matt Chandler's Weekly Sermon (Village Church)

The White Horse Inn (Michael Horton and friends)

Christ the Center (some PCA guys from Westminster)

Ask Pastor John (bitesize Piper)

Renewing Your Mind - R C Sproul


Let My People Think - Ravi Zacharias

The Albert Mohler Program

The first four are my favorites, but the rest are definitely worth your time. If you have any other podcasts to recommend, then please leave a comment. I am always on the lookout for something new.

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