My sermon prep begins with me, a cup of coffee, and my Bible. Only the coffee is optional. While I know my Bible well enough to have an opinion on a given text’s meaning and how it fits into the overall story of the Bible, I like to focus and pray through specific words and phrases in the passage. This helps me “steep,” or soak in the text so I can encounter God through the text. – Darrin Patrick

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Darrin Patrick, pastor of The Journey Church in St. Louis, shares some helpful reflections on his own spiritual journey wiht prayer and Scripture reading. He points us to George Muller, a great man of faith who started five orphanages on Ashley Down and filled them with hundreds of abused, neglected, and abandoned children. He had the faith of ten thousand church planters, but beneath his great faith and prayer for God’s provision was a goal even more noble that housing and caring for orphans, a goal greater than ministry or church planting. This goal was to be happy in God, and to bring others into that happiness. Darrin shares some of Muller’s thoughts on this:

Darrin on Mueller

I have always struggled with prayer as a Christian. I was sharing my frustration one day with my seminary professor and spiritual disciplines guru Don Whitney. Dr. Whitney shared with me a quote for George Müller, a godly giant of the faith who also struggled with prayer. This is from an entry in George Müller’s diary, dated May 7, 1841.

Mueller on Happiness in God

I saw more clearly than ever that the first great primary business to which I ought to attend every day was, to have my soul happy in the Lord . . . not how much I might serve the Lord, . . . but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished. For I might seek to set the truth before the unconverted, I might seek to benefit believers . . . and yet, not being happy in the Lord, and not being nourished and strengthened in my inner man day by day, all this might not be attended to in a right spirit. Before this time my practice had been . . . to give myself to prayer after having dressed myself in the morning.

Now, I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God, and to meditation on it, that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed; and that thus, by means of the Word of God, whilst meditating on it, my heart might be brought into experimental communion with the Lord.

Here is the first audio session from the recent Austin Stone Missional Community Conference. Darrin Patrick gave a solid message on cultivating a gospel-centered community.

The Austin Stone and Acts 29 are hosting a Missional Community Leadership Conference on Feb 6-7 at Great Hills Baptist. This is the kind of conference that is long overdue and will deliver on Gospel, Community, and Mission for the practitioner.

Main Speakers:
Matt Carter: Leading your Community to spiritual health
Darrin Patrick: Leading your Community to gospel repentance
Alan Hirsch: Leading your Community to missional discipleship

Breakouts:

There are too many to list, but include topics like Missional Leadership, City-wide Networking, Discipleship, Communication & Conflict.

More Info here. Register there.

Tonight we had our first of three sessions on deacon training. I was moved by the number of quality of potential deacons sitting in our house. God has been so kind to Austin City Life! In preparation for training our deacons, I did the following:

• Studied the deacon passages of Scripture
• Read Alexander Strauch’s Ministers of Mercy and re-read Mark Driscoll’s A Book You’ll Actually on Church Leadership.
• Re-read Darrin Patrick’s notes on developing-elders-deacons-members.
• Read Bob Thune’s paper, Deacons: A Theological Study
• Read Tim Keller’s section on Leadership Development in the Redeemer Church Planting Manual
• Oh, I found this deacon outline after the training, which is quite good. I agree with most of it.

Then I wrote and mailed a letter of invitation to potential deacons, gave them a copy of Driscoll’s booklet, and developed a teaching outline for our three session Deacon Training. In all of this I borrowed heavily from Bob Thune and David Fairchild. Thanks guys! Here’s the list of topics we are covering each month:

October 5, 2008 1^st training meeting @ Dodson’s house

Discussion topic: A Theology of Deacons

Assignment: One Page Reflection Paper on 1 Tim 3:8-13

November 2, 2008 2^nd training meeting @ Dodson’s house

Discussion topic: The Practice of Deacons

Assignment: One Page Dream Ministry Description

December 7, 2008 3^rd training meeting @ Dodson’s house

Discussion topic: Holding to the Mystery of Faith

Next Assignment: One Page Summary of the Gospel

December 8-14, 2008 Interviews and Installation

A friend recently asked me for a list of books on Pastoring. Honestly, I have found very few that are worth our time. Here is are the few I have found:

Darrin Patrick on Eldering and Pastoring

The Reformed Pastor, Richard Baxter

Pastoral Trilogy by Eugene Peterson (Angles, Stones, Plant)

On Church Leadership, Driscoll

Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, Piper

The Art of Pastoring, Hansen

Here is an Acts 29 link to three MP3s that cover the history, lexicography, and good/bad/ugly of Emergent Church movement.

See also my article “Emergent Theology: The McLaren Method of Interpretation“

Here is an Acts 29 link to three MP3s that cover the history, lexicography, and good/bad/ugly of Emergent Church movement.