5 Things New Preachers Should Know

Posted on July 4, 2012

We recently started a new Preaching Group to train future preachers at Austin City Life. Before beginning, I shared these  five things to take into account as they explore the call to preach God’s Word.
  1. Your Privilege: I’m excited about this group because we’re talking about communicating God’s Word more effectively to God’s World. We’re strategizing to spread the gospel of grace further and better. Preaching isn’t a right; its a privilege.
  2. Your Responsibility: It’s an honor to preach. Treat it like that. Come prepared, humble, Christ-centered, and eager to learn and contribute. There’s nothing worse than a proud preacher; it’s an oxymoron.
  3. Your Qualification: Go ahead and accept the fact that you will never be Tim Keller, John Piper, Haddon Robinson or Charles Spurgeon. These men are unique and uniquely anointed. The best thing you can do is be yourself in Christ and preach from deep security and sanctification in Christ.
    • See page 22 of 360 Degree Preaching for further qualities of a preacher that you need to cultivate.
    • Moltmann said something like, “The best thing we can give the church is well-prepared preacher not just a well-prepared sermon.” The medium affects the receptivity of the message.
    • You don’t qualify yourself to preach; the Spirit qualifies you through Christ. Then, the church recognizes the Spirit’s qualifying work in you (2 Cor 3:5-6). Who is adequate for preaching? Only the Spirit through Christ can make us adequate as minister of the new covenant!
    • If you’re not currently pastoring/discipling people, then you really don’t need to consider preaching. Preaching is not an event to communicate ideas; it is the shepherding of a people with God’s Word.
  4. Your Voice: Keller says you don’t know how to really preach until you’ve given 200 sermons. I’ve preached around 300 sermons. Im comfortable with my voice; that took some time to develop. I don’t love my voice; I don’t preaching; I love Jesus Christ and his gospel. That is why I preach.
  5. His Word: Tremble at it. Study it. Weep over it. Pray over it. Love it. Bleed it. Counsel it. It is the one reliable truth that will remain when everything else in your life fades away or is shaken to the core. People need His Word more than anything else in this world.

New GCD eBook Store!

Posted on June 16, 2012

We are putting the finishing touches on the new GCD eBook store. It looks awesome (HT: Josh Shank). Our goal is to continue spreading great, free and inexpensive content to help make, mature, and multiply disciples of Jesus.  The store will enable us to distribute more efficiently as well as stay in step technologically. We are also hoping the store begins to generate enough profits to support the ministry of GCD.

We will have 8 new eBooks ready for download with more on the way. The books are formatted for all eReaders: Kindle, iBook, and PDF. The image gives you a sneak peak at the store to open on Tuesday!

Come out on Tuesday, peruse the store, and buy a book or two!

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P.S. If you responded to my personal invitation to get a pre-release review copy of Unbelievable Gospel, please leave your name and email address in the comments.

Unbelievable Gospel [Preview Excerpt]

Posted on June 15, 2012

I finished Unbelievable Gospel: Sharing a Gospel Worth Believing last night. It drops next week as an eBook in the new eBook store at www.gospelcentereddiscipleship.com. I wrote this booklet to help people rethink evangelism. Here’s a taste:

Unbelievable Gospel

Most of us share an unbelievable gospel. We cough up memorized information about Jesus that has little apparent meaning for life. If we’re honest, we don’t exactly know how Jesus is good news for others; we just believe he is. The problem with this is that non-Christians don’t share the “advantage” of mindless belief. “Just believe in Jesus,” we say, but what we tell them is so unbelievable! In their bad news, they can’t conceive how a dying Jewish messiah could be good news to them. Alternatively, their best news seems to trump our good news. This is where our calling to “do the work of an evangelist” comes in (2 Tim 4:5).

The workplace crusaders and angry street preachers who campaign to convert co-workers to their doctrine or recruit bystanders to their politics are also unbelievable. Even the well-intentioned evangelical who looks to get Jesus off his chest and into conversation is unbelievable. Too many Christians look to clear their evangelistic conscience by simply mentioning the name of Jesus or saying that he died on the cross for sins. Saying Jesus’ name in conversation earns us a check. Mentioning what Jesus did (on the cross) earns us a check +. This performance-based approach to evangelism is incredible because it fails to embody the truth we preach. Dismissing people’s struggles, fears, hopes, and reasons for unbelief, we plow onward with our name-dropping. This is unbelievable.

Sharing the Gospel

This is a book on evangelism, though I struggle to use that word because of all its baggage. More importantly, it is about the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel is both bigger and smaller than we think. Sometimes we can’t imagine the scope of the gospel, as news so good that it changes everything—society, culture, and creation. People really need to hear this. This vision of reality is better than anyone can imagine. The good news of the gospel is better than the best news people can conceive. Others times, we can’t imagine the subtlety of the gospel, that it brings us exactly what we need in Christ: acceptance, approval, forgiveness, newness, healing, worth, purpose, joy, hope, peace, and freedom, all in Jesus. The gospel is bigger and smaller than we think, as big as the cosmos and as small as you and me. It is the good and true news that Jesus has defeated sin, death, and evil through his own death and resurrection and is making all things new, even us! I have limited the scope of this book to the smaller expression of the gospel. It is mainly practical, focusing on how we can better communicate the gospel better to others. True to the original meaning of evangelism, this book is about how we herald the good news of Jesus Christ.

Beautiful Speaker Cabs

Posted on June 15, 2012

I love it when people throw themselves into making great culture, whether it is a hobby or vocation. Dane Gudde has started his own business. He specializes in custom speaker boxes (aka “cabs”) but also makes podiums.

Dane’s Description

This cab is 100% handmade from Poplar Lumber.  It is loaded with 2 Warehouse Guitar Speaker Veteran 30’s (Vintage 30 Clones) that are rated at 60 watts tube power each.  This 2×12 cab can handle 120 watts of tube power.  It’s all made by me in my garage, and it is a very punchy, LOUD cabinet.  Dovetail joints hold the cab together, and minimal internal bracing was used to secure the baffle to the cab.

 I am currently taking orders for any custom cabinet project, made from any type of wood (Dane Gudde: eldaneo@me.com)