Tag: colossians

Colossians Reading

Posted on September 16, 2008

Here is the recommended book list for Colossians from Sunday.

  • Sam Storms, The Hope of Glory – a hundred devotional readings through Paul’s letter to the Colossians.
  • Bartholomew/Goheen, The Drama of Scripture – a good introduction to the grand story of Scripture, helping us to read the Bible as a whole story that hangs together, not in bits and pieces.

Introducing Colossians & a Second Service?

Posted on September 15, 2008

We launched Colossians this past Sunday with standing room only. Had to pull out chairs from the coffeeshop and create a new row on the fly! It’s encouraging to see people in Austin coming to worship Christ, hear the gospel preached. Now, if we can just convert them to being the church! Two things we will do to make the second gathering less of a service and more of a stepping stone into community:

  • Partner Class: I ripped “Partner” off from the Austin Stone. I avoids the Country Club, consumeristic, elistist baggage of Southern Baptist Church “Membership”, while also giving us language to redefine what it means to be Spirit-led disciples who follow Jesus. The month of October we will have a home-based, weekly partner class that clearly explains the vision and practices of Austin City Life. We will do four weeks on: Vision, Gospel, Community, Mission. There will be no certificates handed out at the end of the class. People will become partners once their City Group leader has signed off on their active participation in the City Group, proof that they are partnering with us in the gospel for the city.
  • Plant Missional Disciples: The second service will be a missional expression, forged around some of our solid, missional core people, with the aim of treating the second service/gathering as an incubator for a new church, kind of like redeveloping a core team but in reverse. This service may be different from our first service in order to accomplish that goal.

I really struggled with how to introduce Colossians. Background only? Cover 1:1-2? Which themes to address in the letter? How to prepare our people to read a first centruy letter in community without giving them a lecture in hermeneutics? How to preach the gospel while covering a lot of mundane information? If you listen to the sermon or read the manuscript, feel free to give me your thoughts. I’m pretty happy with what I came up with, but know it can be improved upon. The most encouraging thing was that I had person after person come up to me and tell me how excited they are about Colossians! In the end, my hope is that Jesus is Lord.

Colossians and Missiology

Posted on September 12, 2008

This Sunday we launch our Fall long series in Paul’s Letter to the Colossians. Due to the insignficance of Colossae and its peripheral location in the Roman empire, Biblical commentator J.B. Lightfoot remarked that “Colossae was the least important church to which any epistle of St. Paul was addressed.” It is curious that Colossae would be percieved as the lowest of the churches when its letter contains some of the highest Christology of the New Testament! Why would Paul present such a creative, compelling theology of the resurrected Christ to a such an unimportant church?

Several reasons.

Missionary Priority. Paul includes robust christology precisely because Colossae was “out there,” philosophically and geographically. Colossae’s remote location from the Western trajectory of Paul’s missionary activity placed the church on the edge of the early church planting movement. Though the neighboring cities of Laodicea and Hierapolis both had churches, Colossae was less significant and further east. We should give our best theological efforts to frontier churches, whether in Austin or Burma.

Multiply Theological Influence. The letter to the church at Colossae was to be circulated: “And when this letter has been read among you, have it also read in the church of the Laodiceans; and see that you also read the letter from Laodicea” (4:16). The robust theology set out in this letter was intended for chruches not a church. Paul intended the Colossian hymn in chapter one to be sung by many saints, for the ethics of chapter three to shape many communities, for the gospel-centered counsel of chapter two to change many hearts. We should strive to multiply our theological influence through many mediums, provided that we spend more time developing and articulating our theology than we do creating websites, podcasts, videos, and so on.

Jesus Christ the Lord. Nothing is more central to the Christian faith that the supremacy of Jesus Christ. The great task of the follower of Jesus is to grow in comprehending and integrating the lordship of God in Christ in every facet of life. The Colossians were no exception. In fact, given the diverse philosophies and religions in that part of the Roman empire, an authoritative Christology was critical. Paul responds to their needs with some of the most exalted Christology in the NT. When engaging cultural issues we must be careful not to exalt culture over Christ, but rather, to demonstrate how Christ can be both exalted and distorted by culture.

Moo's New Colossians Commentary

Posted on August 27, 2008

I’ve been eagerly anticipating Moo’s new commentary on Colossians and Philemon. For my Th.M thesis I wrote about 150 pages on this letter, which has profoundly shaped my theology, ministry, and everyday life. I did email briefly with Moo about getting him to review my thesis for the commentary, but alas, the manuscript was already dedicated. I am moving towards publishing an article on my research, and will be eager to see how much I line up with Moo. His Romans commentary is among the best single volumes on that letter.

Anyway, I called Eerdmans yesterday and got a copy shipped within 24 hours of the book being published, fresh off the press. Amazon doesnt even have it yet! Excited to take and read; I’ll be preaching through Colossians this Fall.