• You can Pre-Order with Amazon
• Crossway will publish it as an eBook
• Those looking for my self-published Fight Clubs will find that material & much more in the new book (8 chapters, 176 pp)
• Book Samplers have been printed w/ the intro and ch. 2. Keep an eye out for where you can get one soon!
• Here’s one of the endorsements:

“Refreshingly honest and realistic, Dodson shares from experience the struggles and the blessings of making disciples. He does not give us a rule book, but practical teaching that can help every follower of Christ more effectively live out the gospel and the Great Commission.”

Robert Coleman, Distinguished Professor of Evangelism and Discipleship, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, author The Master Plan of Evangelism

Evangelism or Social Action?
Take a few minutes to read my review of Michael Frost’s helpful book The Road to Missional over at the Gospel Coalition. His book is helpful in addressing whether we should prioritize evangelism or social action.

Gospel Discipleship

Check out the three new articles at GospelCenteredDiscipleship.com by Tim Chester, Bill Clem, and Jared Wilson:

• Change is a Community Project
• Worship Distorted
• 6 Gospel-Awakened Resolutions

Apologetics for Faith

In preparation for my Spring sermon series on FAITH: Is Christianity Worth Believing, I’ve been helped by:

• Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism, by Alvin Plantinga
• The first, not second chapter, on “Faith” by C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity
• “Noah and the Reasons for Faith” sermon by Tim Keller

I’ve been pleasantly surprised with a number of books I’ve read at the close of the year. Here are a few of them:

The Road to Missional (Frost) – This is one of those clarifying books for the missional conversation, especially on the topic of evangelism vs. social justice. I’ve marked quite a few lines and have a review forthcoming with Gospel Coalition.

The Holy Spirit in Mission (Tyra)- A book I would have been proud to write. It integrates biblical theology, pneumatology, and practice of mission well. Very clear and compelling.

Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, & Naturalism (Plantinga) – Plantinga writes with such cogency, that’s half the joy of reading him. The book is much more than well-written prose, however. He argues well for a distinction between Science and Naturalism, the latter having all the trappings of a religion, offering answers for religious questions and requiring faith. He also demonstrates a deep concord between Science and Faith, particularly Christian theism.

The Meaning of Marriage (Kellers) – It opens with a nice apologetic for marriage on both cultural and theological grounds but moves quickly into the specifics of a marriage constructed on the gospel, truth and love, between husband and wife. In the chapter entitled “The Power of Marriage” the Kellers uncorks the Spirit of Truth as the power for a gospel-centered marriage. Refreshing but conservative on the Spirit. Here’s a video intro. There are some inspiring vistas and deep pools of wisdom in The Meaning of Marriage.

Ahh, Christmas the most wonderful stressful time of the year! C. S. Lewis had a hard time with Christmas too. In fact, in several essays he denounces the contemporary celebration of Christmas. In “What Christmas Means to Me” he lists four reasons he condemns commercial Christmas.

1. It gives on the whole much more pain the pleasure…Long before December 25th everyone is worn out…They look far more as if there had been a long illness in the house.
2. It is predicated on involuntary gift-giving. The modern rule is that anyone can force you to give him a present by sending you a quite unprovoked present of his own. It is almost blackmail. Consider the despair and resentment when an unexpected person gives you a gift at the last minute!
3. The waste of money and human skill in buying gaudy and useless gadgets. Have we really no better use for material and of human skill and time that to spend them on all this rubbish?
4. The nuisance of it all. It is in fact merely one annual symptom of that lunatic condition of our country…in which everyone lives by persuading everyone else to buy things. I’d sooner give them money for nothing and write it off as charity.

Read this helpful excerpt from an interview with Tullian Tchividijian regarding his new book: Jesus + Nothing = Everything.

Legalism: The Enemy of the Gospel

There’s a common misunderstanding in today’s church, which says there are two equal dangers Christians must avoid. On one side of the road is a ditch called “legalism”; on the other is a ditch called “license” or “lawlessness.” Legalism, they say, happens when you focus too much on law, on rules.

Lawlessness, they say, happens when you focus too much on grace. Therefore, in order to maintain spiritual equilibrium, you have to balance law and grace. If you start getting too much law, you need to balance it with grace. If you start getting too much grace, you need to balance it with law. This dichotomy exposes our failure to understand gospel grace as it really is; it betrays our blindness to all the radical depth and beauty of grace.

2 Legalisms

It’s much more theologically accurate to say that there is one primary enemy of the gospel–legalism–but it comes in two forms. Some people avoid the gospel and try to “save” themselves by keeping the rules, doing what they’re told, maintaining the standards, and so on (I call this “front-door legalism”). Other people avoid the gospel and try to “save” themselves by breaking the rules, doing whatever they want, developing their own autonomous standards, and so on (“back-door legalism”). In other words, there are two “laws” we can choose to live by apart from Christ: the law which says, “I can find freedom and fullness of life if I keep the rules,” and the law which says, “I can find freedom and fullness of life if I break the rules.” Either way, you’re trying to “save” yourself, which means both are legalistic because both are self-salvation projects. So what some call “license” is just another form of legalism.

Get the book    Read Rest of Interview

Things are warming up for the release of Gospel-Centered Discipleship. This book has turned out to be a blend of theology and practice of discipleship. While retaining the core elements of my self-published Fight Clubs, GCD is certainly a new book in many respects.

This Fall, I’m testing out some of the new material on the road (while working out new material at home for a follow up book). I’ll be speaking on discipleship in Georgia and Florida over the next two weeks. So, hopefully these ideas will get good traction for the gospel in those churches and ministries.

For now, I thought I’d throw up some of the promo design Crossway has put together. I really like it. Hope you do too!

I am thrilled to announce the arrival of Austin City Life’s 2nd Worship EP: GLOW on November 13!

These four songs are rich in theological depth and diverse in musical arrangement. From indie folk of “Beautiful Love” to the pop of “You are God and I am Not”, these songs also share a common theme of reflecting the glory of Christ. Drawing on the riches of the gospel, we hope these songs will provoke you to glow with Jesus’ glory.

• Stream “Beautiful Love” now
• Check out the whole EP

I’m excited to announce the Music for the City Album II Release Party this Friday at the Parish. The line-up includes some of the best and upcoming artists in Austin such as: Cowboy & Indian, Black Books, & Miranda Dodson.

Proceeds go to support the great work of Mobile Loaves & Fishes in clothing, feeding, and housing the homeless! Buy your tickets in advance, get an extra for a friend, and come to support a great cause and enjoy great music this Friday!

Friday, October 7th @ The Parish
8 PM
All Ages
$8.00 / $13.00 day of show (All Ages – 3$ Minor Surcharge)
Pre-Order Tickets Here

Featuring music by:

Miranda Dodson
Jason Poe
Courrier
Cowboy and Indian
Black Books

I am very pleased to announce the launch of www.gospelcentereddiscipleship.com (GCD). The mission of GCD is to promote resources that make, mature, and multiply disciples of Jesus. Currently, all our content is free! This week we launched with:

• Exclusive excerpts from Everyday Church, the new book by authors to Total Church, Steve Timmis and Tim Chester
• Over a dozen articles on a range of discipleship issues from Gospel-centered Theology to the Gospel & Neighbors
• 3 Great eBooks on Organic Discipleship, the Holy Spirit, and Gospel-centered Discipleship

If we do not know the gospel and continue in the gospel, we will be dragged away by the love of other things: “I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you… from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them” (Acts 20:29-30). These things, Paul says, are twisted.

Twisting Things

What happens when something is twisted? Its natural shape becomes misshapen, plied into an unnatural form. Men twist the natural order of things quite often. We take naturally good things and adjust them to suit our preference. We take things like a high quality of life, a great career and success, a family, or community and we bend them. We try to make them serve the wrong end–our ultimate happiness. When we bend quality of life, career, family, and community, pushing them to make us happy, we disfigure them. The quality of life has to get higher. The career has to be better. The family more present, never-failing. Our relationships are taken to the point of breaking, where they cannot offer us the love, acceptance, worth, and meaning we long for. Then, snap, they break and we decry their failure. Out with wealth, career, family, and community. But this is twisting! It is plying a ordinary thing into an extraordinary thing. It is placing the weight of the world on the wrong shoulders.

When we twist, we try to make good news out of ordinary news. When the news of movies, bands, food, family, promotions, homes, and personal freedom become our truly good news, what we get excited about, we twist those good things into ultimate things that they were never meant to be. We make them out into a kind of salvation, demanding they save us from our woes (even the greatest spouse cannot meet these demands), and eventually we twist them out of shape, where they are unable to bear the weight of our otherworldly, extraordinary longings.

Untwisting Things

The antidote to twisted things is the gospel of grace. When we replace things with Jesus, when we work his majesty, forgiveness, and grace back into them, they straighten out, and drop a step or two below God, assuming their proper place. When God takes the ultimate place, and his word of grace, the gospel, becomes our good news, we discover true happiness. Suddenly, we are able to lower our expectations for family and friends. Our career, while enjoyable, no longer becomes our source of worth. Quality of life, while desirable, settles in at a far second to the comfort that only Christ can provide, especially through suffering. The wonderful news of the gospel is that it untwists things, placing them back in their proper order. It announces to us that the weight of our longings can be forever held up by an un-pliable Jesus Christ. Jesus bears the weight of our twisted things at the cross, and emerges from the grave in order to bear the weight of our forever longings to be loved, accepted, forgiven, and known. The gospel untwists things.