Ed Stetzer interiew on sub•text

Speaking of sub•text, there is a new interview with Ed Stetzer over there.

A highlight:

Q: What are some common mistakes churches in the suburbs make?

Ed: I think there are probably several.

First, they assume that nice shiny clean people have nice shiny clean lives. When you work in an urban context, you can sometimes see the sin and trouble with greater ease. It is better hidden in the suburbs. Thus, we think that people need sermons on how to improve their lives. They don’t. They need messages on how to be transformed by the gospel. (emphasis added)

Read the whole interview.

Why is this semester so ridiculously difficult?

Perhaps you have encountered some unexpected hardship as a seminary student this semester. Lost a job? Seen unexpected expenses creep up. Seen a side of your anger you didn’t realize was there?

God is not surprised. Nor should we be (at least not in general).

The hidden seminary class

We may not have noticed the class on our course schedule, but it is there. In fact, I’m convinced that without this class seminary would be a waste, or at least ineffective. It is the class of Sanctification, the one where the Holy Spirit works inside us, by using every means possible to perform His eternal work (Romans 8). Our character is deeply affected, we see our true selves, and often are not happy with what we find. Let the transformation begin.

Have you experienced the inconvenience of little things like there not being a computer available to print the course notes or a time-sensitive assignment, or locking the keys in our car, or an important document disappearing from your thumb drive? Or perhaps you did what I did last Spring, leaving my laptop in class and getting almost home, then racing back only to find the building locked for the night (and not planning on returning to class until the next week, after a break).Yeah, Kari was in the car with, and I was not what they call a “happy camper” right then. I repented when I got back in the car, and through the experience God showed us one practical way to shift our schedule and create a healthy margin as to not run ourselves ragged.

Those experiences build our character, but they also reveal it. We start to see who we really are. Or perhaps the trials are “outside” of seminary, with the loss of a job, not connecting well with your spouse in daily mis-communication, or an issue with a child, health complications, or financial worries (welcome to seminary!) — the list goes on and on. I can say I’m big on all-of-life-being-preparation, but do I embrace trials as being from God?

God is actively shaping us into the type of people who love Him more than we love His gifts, and to reflect Jesus’ worth, work and ways. (Reflectors don’t have light in themselves, they just reveal the real light, reflecting it.. Can you relate to this shaping experience?

One constant thread through all my problems

So, why is it so hard? Perhaps part of the answer lies in the common denominator in all my problems:

• Me.

Yep. More than learning skills and getting some neat letters to place after my name, God is rescuing me from myself. Oh, thank You Jesus that You are the only One able to do so! (Romans 7:24-25). Paul Tripp has some helpful words on the subject:

“The good news of the kingdom is not freedom from hardship, suffering, and loss. It is the news of a Redeemer who has come to rescue me from myself. His rescue produces change that fundamentally alters my response to these inescapable realities. The Redeemer turns rebels into disciples, fools into humble listeners. He makes cripples walk again. In him we can face life and respond with faith, love, and hope. And as he changes us, he allows us to be a part of what he is doing in the lives of others. As you respond to the Redeemer’s work in your life, you can learn to be an instrument in his hands.”
- Paul David Tripp, Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands: People in Need of Change Helping People in Need of Change (Phillipsburg, Pa.: P & R publishing, 2002), 16.

This added class on our schedule of life is the work of a gracious God who loves us too much to leave us unchanged. We can press on through these trials (see Phil. 3 to see what Paul considered worthy to press on towards). In fact, God purposes, not only to help us navigate through the various stages of seminary, but more than that: to become the kind of people who love Him more than the journey. That’s why this semester is so ridiculously difficult.

(By the way, this hidden seminary class is not an elective. Enjoy!)

Helps for faithfully sharing the Gospel

sub•text is a recent addition to the web and blogosphere world, headed up by pastors Joe Thorn and Steve McCoy. It may be a helpful resource for all of us who live on the outskirts of the City (and for those who live anyone, for that matter).

Description from the site: sub•text is a discussion on the preaching and practice of the gospel in the suburban context.

Also, check out one of the posts, “Gospel Connections in Suburbia.”

Google is 10

Happy 10th Birthday to Google. You have changed the internet for good.

Six Preacher’s Notes

Josh Harris recently post the last of six preacher’s notes in a series. The most recent one is Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle. Mark’s notes as he preached from John 17? Two post-its in his Bible. One of expository notes on the text, another as a reminder to himself.

• Mark Dever
• Mike Bullmore
• C.J. Mahaney
• Ray Ortlund, Jr.
• Tim Keller
• Mark Driscoll

It would probably be difficult to emulate the last two’s notes and be an effective preacher — at least for most of us. Each of these men is uniquely designed by God, and gifted as a preacher and pastor.

Enjoy!

(I particularly found Ray Ortlund’s a joy to read.)

Faithful Life, Thought, and Belief

While you are in seminary, it is likely that you will come into contact with the term “worldview.” If you have really smart professors or fellow students who want to impress you with their knowledge, you might hear them use the word Weltanschauung instead. That is the German word from which we derive the term worldview. What the idea of worldview basically denotes is the foundational beliefs and principles that govern your life. As it is, everybody has a worldview, whether they are conscious of it or not.

We live in an age of declared relativism, where people confess the right to believe whatever they want. You are undoubtedly familiar with those who put together their own religion—a veritable smörgåsbord (there, now you have learned both a German and a Swedish word) composed of a host of differing parts from various religions that they find attractive. Truth becomes a hazy standard that is entirely up to the individual to determine, and no one truth need apply to anyone else but that individual, let alone a community or society.

Those of us who are Christians all share the very same basic root of our worldview–the person and work of Jesus Christ–but from there we are confronted with a great deal of diversity in our interpretations of what it means to live with that as our foundation. There can be just as much diversity within the Christian faith in terms of worldviews. This post is not meant to try and convince you that one or another Christian worldview is the one you should follow, but instead to encourage you to work to ensure that your worldview is comprehensive and coherent.

I have a number of regular people who remind me of the need to determine the validity of my worldview on a regular basis. I hear it quite regularly from professors, see it in many of the books I read, and talk about it with friends. Some of today’s leaders in the Church decry things like systematic theology as outdated and irrelevant for Christians in the 21st century. However, I am of the firm conviction that systematic thought of any sort is certainly not without its place. The fact is that if you assume a set of beliefs and principles that guide your life and you do not apply those consistently to each area of your life and thought, glaring contradictions will emerge in short order. Look at the way we criticize politicians when they say one thing and do another. So it is when people look at us as Christians and see contradictions. If you believe something, you need to live like you believe it.

Certainly, it is challenge to work towards a comprehensive worldview. But as a Christian, it is essential. If you are going to claim Jesus Christ as your Lord, he needs to be Lord of your entire life. Someone I know—a bit of dilettante poet, I suppose—once said, “Jesus Christ is Lord of all, or He is not Lord at all.” You might interpret this in a different way than I do, but what it boils down to is that you cannot relegate his rule to only one part of your life. It has to impact all of it. I am constantly confronted with the fact that I do not live like this, but instead live sinfully before the face of God, giving my allegiance to other things in my life and in this world. I am grateful for those who help me see the idols I inadvertently worship and the misconstrued beliefs that I hold to. Though I often live like it and though our world proudly proclaims it, I am not the sole arbiter of truth, and need the community of believers to guide me in the wisdom of God.

Surround yourself with a community of believers who strives earnestly to discover what it means to live as Christians in this world and how to do that faithfully. Seminary is such an incredibly opportunity to do this. If your current worldview has contradictions in it, work to resolve those. There is no divorce in the Christian faith, no part that is left untouched by the transforming power of the Gospel. How you live and what you believe is not an indifferent matter. A comprehensive, biblically-rooted worldview is essential to living as faithful servants of God in this world.

Note: this is a slightly altered version of a similar post I wrote for my blog in August of this year.

Humbling ourselves BY casting our cares upon Him

Greek has seemed to be a little disjointed until we arrive in the relative deep-end of participles this semester. I am certainly still wading around in the shallow end, but being pushed further into learning how to swim in this new language (but still with those orange arm-floaties!). Last week I read a couple fascinating notes about the participle of means (”by means of”) while reading Wallace’s Greek Grammar (p. 630).

Humble yourselves … by casting your cares upon Him

The first illustration comes from the oft quoted passage in 1 Peter 5:6-7: “Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God …” Many times I’ve heard the next clause quoted in isolation: “Cast your cares upon Him, for He cares for you.” Do this! Yes, how needed and true it is, for He does care for us. But “cast your cares upon Him” is not an imperative clause (casting is a participle, not a verb). We miss the point when we think of the phrases separate as “Humble yourselves. [And] cast your case upon Him.

The point of the Apostle seems to be that the specific way we humble ourselves before God is to cast our cares upon Him. We show humility by casting our cares upon Him. Dependence and submission in all of life — even the small stuff — reveals an attitude of humility (and creates it too).

He emptied Himself … by taking on the form of a servant

The next illustration came right underneath, where the famous kenosis passage is in view (Phil. 2:6-8). Specifically, in verse 7, where the participle should be translated “he emptied himself by taking on the form of a servant.” Debate has gone on for at least the last two centuries as to what it means that Christ emptied (ekenosev) Himself. Wallace notes the typical pattern of this specific participle, that it follows the verb, and that the verb is vague, even needing (’begging’) to be defined. “By taking on” shows the means of Christ’s emptying Himself. He did not subtract His deity, but rather added the form of a slave, willingly, becoming a man, suffering and dying — even death on a cross (v. 8).

But wait, isn’t emptying normally thought of as subtraction, not addition? Wallace notes that as well, and points out the poetic features of the whole passage (most likely it was used as an early hymn). Earlier in verses 1-4 he commanded them to think and do “nothing from selfish ambition and vain conceit.” The word for conceit (kenodoxian or “empty glory”) is used by Paul to remind them of what not to do. Then Jesus comes along and shows them what to do — what it means to empty His glory (the words almost rhyme) — they are to have that same mind towards one another. Brilliant and powerful insights, Dr. Wallace!

The opposing directions in view in both passages are startling. We receive God favor by humbling ourselves, and specifically by casting our cares and burdens upon Him. (He opposes us directly even second if we go the other way, which is revealed in our not taking our cares to Him.) The antidote to seeking empty glory is to stare at the One who emptied His own glory to reveal His infinite worth in the lowliest form of all, a slave unto death. He will change us. Let this mind be in us, continually, Lord Jesus.

Our work is faithfulness, God takes care of the fruitfulness

I first heard the audio of this short interview with Pastor John Piper about a year and a half ago. (Audio of the whole thing here.)

Apparently one of the pastors in the gathering took a live video of it. Enjoy it, and allow the truth to sink into your soul.

What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.” (1 Cor. 3:5-9)

Also see Kent & Barbara Hughes’ book, Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome.

Proclaiming Our Faith in the Power of the Spirit

Let me say first that we want you all to know that those of us who write things for this site are real people, and our contributions are often reflections both on our experiences in seminary and on the path of faith. With that said, I want to lead off with a bit of a personal story to give a bit of context as to where I’m going with this post.

Apologetics has been something of a theme for me in the past few months. It began when we taught through Tim Keller’s excellent book, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, in our adult Sunday School class at church. Now I have the privilege of taking John Frame’s apologetics course this semester here at RTS. As a result, I’ve been digesting a lot of information and gradually have felt more prepared to interact with those who have questions or objections to our faith.

Or so I thought.

Conversations

Last week, I was sitting in the café area of a local bookstore and I was doing some reading for the apologetics course. There were a couple of people at other tables within close proximity of me. Sometimes when I am on my own in a situation like that, I try to disguise what I am reading so as to avoid confrontation or any sort of conversation that might make me uncomfortable, and somewhat ashamedly I admit that this was one of those times. I felt concerned that, should someone want to talk with me, my witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ would be entirely inadequate. When the bookstore closed, I left and drove home feeling the weight on my conscience for my hypocritical actions.

That night, I had a dream. I was sitting in a coffee shop or bar of some sort with my brother. It was a pleasant environment, peaceful and relaxing, when suddenly out of the blue a young man in the corner started loudly criticizing Christianity in the way that many people in our culture often do. The attention of the crowd turned to him. My brother and I became increasingly bothered by his sentiments, and after a few minutes of listening to him, I mustered the courage to walk over to him and talk with him. I cannot recall exactly what I said in that dream, but I do remember finding out that the generalizations of his views of Christianity were not influenced by interaction or contact with Christians, but instead by the media and popular culture. I encouraged him to sit down and talk with Christians, to find out about their faith and why they follow Jesus and other important questions. He calmed down, thought about the idea, and then told me that he would do so and that he had unfairly judged a group of people he had little familiarity with. We exchanged phone numbers and he said he would call me so we could sit down and talk.

When I woke up in the morning, I felt greatly comforted. God used that dream to show to me that my cowardly actions that evening in the bookstore were unnecessary, and I felt more assured than ever that if such a situation presented itself in real life, His Spirit would be with me to grant me the words to say.

The Greatest Apologetic

I have found that seminary has a sort of double-effect: on the one hand, it gives us a lot of solid answers to a lot of questions. But on the other hand, it can raise a whole host of other questions we never previously considered. Again, it comes down to realizing that the more we grow in knowledge, the more we realize we do not know. This realization crosses my mind whenever I think about engaging with those who do not know Christ. I have been educated enough that I can give pat doctrinal answers to a lot of questions, but that may not be what people are looking for. Talking about the reality of faith and grace can be a lot more difficult than talking about theological concepts like justification. Everyone is different, and every approach will require a different nuance.

If you have read Keller’s book, you would be familiar with the great answers he provides to some of the major questions skeptics of Christianity have. Yet he admits that these answers may not always satisfy, and that sometimes you will need to, in essence, “play it by ear” and simply love them in the hopes that as they witness your testimony to the Gospel in how you live your life, they will be led towards faith. Our faith is not a disinterested confession of a number of doctrinal points, but it is a lived life. It transforms our entire being, and our radical difference from this world should be so blatantly obvious that people are drawn to us to find out what makes us different. While we certainly must know the basics of this faith, that knowledge has to inform how we live, or it is meaningless. We would also do well to remember the words of Francis Schaeffer, who said that the greatest and final apologetic, more effective than words, is the observable love of Christ between Christians. Actions always speak louder than words.

The words are 1 Peter 3:15 are familiar to many of us-”always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” God has given us His Word and His Spirit so that we can confidently, graciously, and lovingly bear witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is our responsibility to immerse ourselves in that Word, and to draw from that deep well. In seminary we find ourselves with a wealth of resources from which to learn from, such as Kari mentioned recently with her post on the un-mined treasure that is the seminary faculty. We have the community of believers to strengthen and uphold us. We have teachers like Keller and Frame who are willing to share their wisdom and insight with us. We have a responsibility to take advantage of the opportunities given to us, and in doing so we can go forward with confidence in the power of the Spirit.

Jesus’ promise to His disciples is no less a promise to us: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). What comfort and what joy.

Let us proclaim the love and grace of our most precious Savior.

Check out the Seminary Survival Guide Sampler

Over at Said at Southern, guest blogger Mark Warnock, General Editor of SeminarySurvivalGuide.com, gives an overview of some of the best posts from his site (SeminarySurvivalGuide.com) in the last few months. Check them out, from making the transition to seminary, to keeping perspective, to starting up classes, and some commentary on “time wasters.” None of those posts will be a waste of time, for sure.

His site gives “a perspective on ministry training from the vantage point of someone in ministry” — originally aimed at helping the several seminary students in his church.

Mark and his writing team write as those who’ve been through seminary; we write here at GTS as those in the middle of the journey.

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