Fight Club, the booklet

Posted on July 8, 2009

After a two month delay, I was able to pick up the Fight Club: Gospel-centered Discipleship manuscript again. I have now finished the first draft. Several people are reviewing it. I will then edit it and we should be about two weeks away from going live with it. We will epublish it free first at The Resurgence, with a print on demand option. We are also working on a website that will expand upon the book through interaction, blogs, and articles. Then we’ll look to publish it hard copy. Here is a description of the chapters from the Introduction:

Chapter One lays out a biblical case for fighting the fight of faith, which I hope stirs you up to fight the fight of faith. Once the fighting begins, it is easy to slide into fighting people instead of sin. We start beating one another up with judgment, fighting the wrong things with the wrong motives. We fight against the church instead of with her.

Chapter Two explores where we go wrong in our fighting by uncovering legalistic and licentious patterns in discipleship.

In turn, Chapter Three calls us away from these extremes into a gospel-centered discipleship. With the gospel at the center of discipleship, we can live as Jesus intended—fighting the good fight of faith which leads to true change. However, if weren’t not careful we’ll start to fight on our own. Failure to grasp the community focus of the gospel can cut us off from the grace God gives through his people, the church.

Chapter Four reminds us that discipleship is a community project because the gospel is community focused. Jesus created and redeemed us as people in relationship, people who need one another in the fight of faith. Instead of fighting against the church, we can fight with her, to live a life that is motivated by all that God is for us in the Spirit and the Son.

In conclusion, Chapter Five offers a practical way to apply the gospel to everyday life. It is a call for Fight Clubs—small, simple, biblical, reproducible groups of people who meet together regularly help one another keep the gospel at the center of their discipleship. Fight Clubs have been crucial in my life and my church. I hope and pray that you’ll find them helpful too, that you’ll form a Fight Club and start fighting with the church, in the gospel, on mission, for the glory of God.

Live Backwards

Posted on July 7, 2009

Busyness often gets in the way of contentment. Conflict becomes inconvenient. People are reduced to obstacles. Efficiency replaces love as the highest virtue.

Are you driven by work, family, success? Are you more concerned with managing conflict than being sanctified by conflict? How can you begin to care less about results of vocation and more about discipleship through vocation? If we want to imitate Christ, periods of reflection and prayer will be important. Imagine if we became so obsessed with God’s agenda in our conflicts, challenges, and vocations that others appreciate our Christlikeness more than our “work.”

What if we started living backwards, with the wisdom of an 80 year old? I am willing to bet we would live more slowly. That’s what this brief article is about I recently wrote for The High Callling.

Books That Don't End: Death By Love

Posted on July 3, 2009

You know the kind of book that is so good you don’t want it to end? I typically experience this with fiction, but this year there have been a few non-fiction books I have read slowly and not finished–because they are so good! Over the next few weeks, I’ll share from some of my reading in the books that I don’t want to end.

Death By Love – This is easily Mark Driscoll’s best book yet. Death By Love is a series of actual letters Mark wrote to people struggling with serious sin and suffering. Here are a few of the chapter titles:

  • “Lust Is My God”
    Jesus Is Thomas’s Redemption

    “My Wife Slept with My Friend”
    Jesus Is Luke’s New Covenant Sacrifice

    “I Am a ‘Good’ Christian”
    Jesus Is David’s Gift Righteousness

    “I Molested a Child”
    Jesus Is John’s Justification

    “My Dad Used to Beat Me”
    Jesus Is Bill’s Propitiation

    “He Raped Me”
    Jesus Is Mary’s Expiation

Chapter after chapter is charged with honesty, empathy, and wisdom. Rich in practical counsel and biblical theology, this book should be required reading for all courses in Pastoral Ministry. Driscoll takes categories from systematic theology and applies them using biblical theology in a very practical way. Brilliant and grace giving. A basic outline for counseling I use was coined by David Powlision: 1) Listen to their Story 2) Empathize with their Story 3) Redemptively retell their Story. I’ll use this to frame Driscoll’s counsel for a victim of abuse:

  • Empathize with Story: “I think I understand what you are trying to say. For a man to devastate his family like your father did means that his simply saying ‘sorry’ is not enough to erase the list of sins he has accrued or the damage h has done. I hope to untangle some of the conflict you are living in…”
  • Listened to Story: “you spoke of building forts in the backyard and pretending you lived there instead of in the house with your father because you longed for the day you could move out and never return.”
  • Redemptively Retell Story: “Bill, you must realize that not only could God’s active wrath be poured out on your father, but it just as easily could have been poured out on you…not only is your father a sinner who needs his sins propitiated, but you too are a sinner who likewise needs his sins propitiated…not only did Jesus suffer like you; in a very real sense he suffered at the hands of both you and the father at the cross…therefore, therefore you need not merely let your father of the hook because he became a Christian. Further, you need not punish him…I know that you fear forgiving your father…However, because God is sovereign and good, through that evil you have been given one of the deepest appreciations and insights of the doctrine of propitiation of anyone I have ever met.”

Free preview here. More info at ReLIT.