Category: Missional Church

Deacon Interviews

Posted on February 6, 2009

I am finally getting around to some overdue Deacon candidate interviews. After three sessions of training (I, II, & III), I am meeting with each candidate. In preparation I am praying for each candidate, re-reading their reflection papers, and formulating candidate specific questions. During the interview I am looking for their understanding and commitment to Gospel, Community, and Mission.

In general, I begin by catching up with them and asking them the following questions:

  1. Communion with God: Describe your walk with the Lord. How is it going?
  2. Office of Deacon: From what you have learned about the office of deacon, what are you concerned and excited about in potentially serving the church in this way?
  3. Purity of Life: Are there any areas in your life that are out of step with the character of a deacon? Do you struggle with impurity in any particular area?
  4. The Gospel: Describe how the gospel is shaping your life and decision-making.
  5. Mission: How are you currently living out the mission of Christ?

These have been influenced by Tim Keller.

From Planting to Movements

Posted on February 6, 2009

This Saturday I will be co-presenting a workshop at the Missional Community Leader Conference on moving:

From Planting to Movements: The Role of City Networks

The purpose of the workshop is to explore and narrarate the role of city networks in facilitating a movement from church planting to a movement resulting in city renewal. We will share from theory and practice in order to inspire and equip people to think beyond their own church plant into movement ministry.

I will post our workshop notes after the conference.

Piper's Potential Writing Projects

Posted on February 6, 2009

  1. Make a serious beginning on a longer book on divine providence, perhaps called something like Sightings of the Sovereignty of God. The idea here is to encompass all of Scripture and show from it the hundreds of ways God reveals his absolute sovereignty over all things. This would probably take more than one writing leave.
  2. Write a shorter book called perhaps Reasoning with Jesus: Thinking for the Glory of Christ.I have most of the raw material for this already on paper in several messages. The idea would be to provide a plea, perhaps especially to younger people, to devote their best mental efforts to understanding and living out the Christian faith.But it would be for everybody and would be different from lots of books about the intellectual life in that it would be largely expositions of Scripture. What does it mean to love God with our minds? How important is education (which is not the same as “school”)? What are people doing with their minds today that makes Jesus angry?
  3. Preparing the Ruth cycle of Advent poems for publication without Christmas endings so that in the next year we can put together a suite of materials on Ruth including the book I just finished (Ruth: A Sweet and Bitter Providence) and a set of video messages on the book to be recorded next December.
  4. I dream of writing a children’s book. It may be as small as one of the old Arch Books, retelling biblical stories in poetry form. Or it may be a little longer and more substantial in parabolic form.
  5. There is churning in me a book on issues of race and ethnicity in the church and in America. If I live, it will be done. It’s a matter of timing. I never feel qualified to write it. But, as with marriage, I may just have to do it anyway and let the chips fall where they may.
  6. I might be stirred to do one more book on justification.What needs to be done to complete the picture I have drawn in the first two books (Counted Righteous in Christ and The Future of Justification) is a biblical exposition of how “works” function in relationship to justification. This would involve a treatment of the nature of the faith that justifies, and how it relates to works.
  7. Make a serious beginning toward publishing the Romans sermons in four volumes, possibly editing one volume per year for four years.

Read the whole thing here.

Preaching and Holy Hypocrisy

Posted on February 4, 2009

Ministers are noteworthy of their calling. All preachers are vulnerable to the charge of hypocrisy. In fact, the more faithful preachers are to the Word of God in their preaching, the more liable they are to the charge of hypocrisy. Why? Because the more faithful people are to the Word of God, the higher the message is that they will preach. The higher the message, the further they will be from obeying it themselves. ~ R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God

Are you teetering closely to the edge of holy hypocrisy or are your sermons doable bits of moral advice? Are we pressing into the Word of God to encounter his holiness and grandeur or finessing deliveries to impress men with our personal insights? We have to ask ourselves, are we preaching higher and higher messages that threaten our discipleship with the promise of sanctifying joy or are we preaching lower messages that promote a numbing nominalism?