Missio Dei Suburbia

Matt Chandler on Walking With God

Here's an excerpt from an interview with Matt Chandler:

In this short video Matt highlights two main elements of a personal walk with God:

1. Answer the questions "how will I do this?" and "when will I do this?" when it comes to Bible reading, prayer, & solitude. Most men never get that far, never make a plan, and their walk with Jesus is sporadic at best.

2. Keep a watch on what stirs or stifles your affections for Jesus. Matt carefully watches his heart to see what increases his affection for Jesus - and he makes more room for these things (for example, getting up early and going to bed early are personally important for him). He also looks for those things that steal his affection from Christ or deaden it, and intentionally removes those from his life (his example was that he has to not follow sports closely because he starts caring too much).

Monday Is For Fighting - Matt Chandler on Making War

Leadership Journal interviews Matt Chandler - one question that fits well with what we deal with in Fight Clubs:

LJ: What does warring against sin look like?

MC: Sanctification here at The Village begins by answering two questions. What stirs your affections for Jesus Christ? And what robs you of those affections? Many of the things that stifle growth are morally neutral. They're not bad things. Facebook is not bad. Television and movies are not bad. I enjoy TV, but it doesn't take long for me to begin to find humorous on TV what the Lord finds heartbreaking.

The same goes for following sports. It's not wrong, but if I start watching sports, I begin to care too much. I get stupid. If 19-year-old boys are ruining your day because of what they do with a ball, that's a problem. These things rob my affections for Christ. I want to fill my life with things that stir my affections for him. After a funeral I walked around the cemetery and found a grave of a guy who died when he was my age. I felt my mortality in that moment and it made me love the Lord. It really did. Some types of epic films do that for me, and so does angst-filled music.

We want our people to think beyond simply what's right and wrong. We want them to fill their lives with things that stir their affections for Jesus Christ and, as best as they can, to walk away from things that rob those affections—even when they're not immoral.

Read the whole interview here.

Gospel, Community, Mission - Questions for People Who Struggle

Here are three questions I've started asking people who are struggling with life:

• Who's walking through this with you? (Big Idea: you were created for community)
• Who are you serving this week? (Big Idea: you were created to join God in his mission)
• Are you moving closer to or further away from Jesus? (Big Idea: you were created for Jesus)

These serve as basic ontological questions for those of us who suffer - reminding us of both our identity and purpose. They've been helpful with other Christians but last week I had two opportunities to ask these questions to people who aren't part of Jesus' family...yet. Both conversations were fruitful - both for the present situation and in providing open doors in the days ahead.

Discipleship Begins At Home

Dream: to see churches disciple children more effectively.

Making that dream possible: churches who equip parents to disciple their kids.

Winfield Bevins provides parents with a helpful list of practical ways to pass along the Christian faith to their children:

• Find a good children’s Bible.
• Remember to have fun with your children while learning the Bible.
• Keep the time brief to hold the child's attention.
• Recite the verse several times a day in your child's presence so it becomes familiar to them.
• Make flash cards with Scripture on one side and the book, chapter, and verse on the other.
• Put the verse to music or rhythm. Your child will enjoy singing and clapping their hands.
• Think of fun activities to make the verse fun and easy to remember.
• Tell them you are proud of them and have them recite it to someone else, like a grandparent or teacher.
• Pray with your children every day at meals and before they go to bed at night.

Check out Winfield's entire series of posts on discipleship in the home here.

Fight Clubs - The Book

When our staff at the church was developing an environment for life-on-life discipleship, conversations with Jonathan Dodson were critical in helping us shape what eventually became Fight Clubs. After beta-testing the groups this spring, we're rolling them out with a major push this fall.

Fortunately for us - and for you - Jonathan has put all of his thoughts in a book entitled Fight Clubs: Gospel-Centered Discipleship. You would do well to pick up a copy and seriously consider adopting this model. For us, it provides an organic process for people to follow Jesus together - using the Scriptures to find and fight sin by placing our faith daily in Christ.

I have a great deal of admiration for Jonathan and the work he's doing in Austin - this is a gift to the Church that you should enjoy.

Summary

If you’ve struggled to follow Jesus by veering away from the gospel into duty-bound legalism or moralistic indifference, then this book is for you! Fight Clubs is a radical call to fight the fight of faith in the strength of the gospel. Jonathan Dodson calls us to join the fight against sin, legalism, and license by looking to Christ and His gospel. Fight Clubs equips us to fight the fight of faith by exposing the fleeting promises of sin and drawing us into the grace-saturated promises of God. Displacing defective forms of discipleship, Dodson keeps the gospel central by tapping into various layers of biblical motivations that promote joyful obedience to Christ. The book also provides a strategy to fight sin as the church—small fighting communities called Fight Clubs. Read this book; form a fight club; and start fighting in the strength of the gospel.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Why Fight?: The Call to Fight

2. Fighting for the Church: The Failure of Accountability

3. How to Fight: Motivations for Discipleship

4. Fighting with the Church: The Three Conversions of the Church

5. Fight Club: Practical Gospel-centered Discipleship

Appendix 1: Gospel-centered Questions to Ask

Appendix 2: Gospel-centered Resources

Get the Book

Download the e-book in PDF format

Buy the book

NT Wright on Everyday Life

Short interview with NT Wright on how individuals and churches honor God in everyday life.

You must always come back to prayer, worship, and Bible study. Make sure that Christians are not going hollow in the middle individually or corporately.  But, then let it flow out. First, focus on mission. Second, grow leadership. Third, encourage discipleship.  Then, act collaboratively. That means the church helps the local education authority, the local housing committee, the police force, whatever it may be. Let’s work with everyone who we can. 

You can read the entire interview here.

Money's Tight, Nothin' Free. Won't Somebody Come and Rescue Me?

Thanks to SRV for the post title - here's a bit of background music for you.

As people experience the psychological and financial impact of a recession, here's a summary of what we've laid out at our church to help people think through what to do about money.

The Scriptures are deadly serious about money - take the same approach.

There's a reason Jesus talks so much about money in the gospels. In my estimation, the most comprehensive resource on what the Scriptures teach about money is Randy Alcorn's Money, Possessions and Eternity.

What you do is driven by who you are.

Your identity shapes your activity. For us as a church, that means we make decisions about money in the light of our identity as missionaries in community empowered by the gospel.

What you do with money is a community project.

Because we are so easily deceived about what constitutes what we need versus what we want, we need other people who know us and love us enough to listen to us and ask good clarifying questions.

Pursue simplicity and generosity.

The biblical pattern when finances get tight is not to maintain and save. Without dismissing the issue of savings, the pattern throughout the Scriptures is to live simply and generously.

Take one more step.

Biblical simplicity and generosity pushes the envelope of what culture considers to be normal. If the gospel creates a people who cut against the grain of societal standards, that means that the followers of Jesus will be more rigorous in their pursuit of simplicity and more lavish in their generosity than their friends and neighbors who don't know Jesus.

Depend on the grace of God in the gospel.

Rigorous simplicity and lavish generosity is impossible apart from God powerfully rewiring how we think and feel about money. And the issue seems to come down to this - money exists as currency that purchases our greatest security, comfort and satisfaction. The question is whether we find those things in a life that is centered on God or some other source of hope and delight.

Driscoll on Building A Theological Library

From The Resurgence:

Building a Theological Library

• Glynn, John. Commentary and Reference Survey: A Comprehensive Guide to Biblical and Theological Resources
• Longman, Tremper, III. Old Testament Commentary Survey

Reading through the Entire Bible

• Mears, Henrietta C. What the Bible Is All About
• Fee, Gordon D, and Douglas Stuart. How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth

How to Study the Bible

• Doriani, Daniel M. Getting the Message: A Plan for Interpreting and Applying the Bible
• Duvall, J. Scott and John Daniel Hays. Grasping God's Word: A Hands-On Approach to Reading, Interpreting, and Applying the Bible
• Longman, Tremper, III. Reading the Bible with Heart and Mind

Bible Dictionaries

• Marshall, I. Howard. New Bible Dictionary
• Unger, Merrill. The New Unger's Bible Dictionary
• Tenney, Merrill. Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible

Topical Bible

• Nave, Orville J. Nave's Compact Topical Bible

Cross-Reference

• Torrey, R.A. The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

Bible Atlas

• Brisco, Thomas C. Holman Bible Atlas: A Complete Guide to the Expansive Geography of Biblical History
• Pfeiffer, Charles F. Baker's Bible Atlas

Bigger Is Better

One of my best reads in 2008 was Paul Tripp's book, A Quest For More: Living for something bigger than you. Justin Buzzard posted a helpful overview of the book:

I found it helpful how Tripp stated the big idea (he calls it "the bottom line") of each chapter at the outset of each chapter and finished each chapter with a "final question."

Below are both the 17 big ideas and the 17 final questions of the 18 chapter book (above is the table of contents). It's worth your time to work through this list. It's worth your time to work through the whole book.

1. You were created to be part of something big. What is the big thing that you are living for right now?

2. Sin causes us to talk about more, but to settle for less. What is the "less" that tends to capture your attention?

3. Since sin has damaged everything, God calls us to be concerned about everything. Have you treated the size of God's grace as if it were no longer than the size of your personal concerns?

4. Each of our lives is shaped by the war between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of self. What earth-bound treasures and anxiety-bound needs tend to control you and your responses to life?

5. You and I are always being civilized and civilizing others into the culture of some kind of kingdom. In what ways do you try to get the people around you to follow the rules of your kingdom of self?

6. The most dangerous thing about the kingdom of self is how easily it masquerades as the kingdom of God. In your everyday life right now, where are you telling yourself that you are living for God when you are really living for yourself?

7. Sin causes all of us to shrink the size of our lives to the size of our lives. Has the energy of your life been expended in the narrow world of personal wants, needs, and concerns?

8. Big kingdom living mean living with Christ at the center of everything I think, desire, say, and do. What tend to compete with Christ for the center of your world?

9. In calling us to die, Christ is actually rescuing us from death and giving us real life. In your everyday situations and relationships, where are you finding it hard to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Christ?

10. At street level, big kingdom living is Jesus-focused living. What is the focus of your life's energies and intentions?

11. This side of eternity, there should be a dissatisfaction in all of us with the way things are. What are the things that make you groan?

12. God calls us to the vertically interactive lifestyle of living in moment-by-moment harmony with him. Where in your life are you tempted to write your own music rather than making harmonious music with the king?

13. Big kingdom living is all about the humility of seeking forgiveness and the grace of granting it. Do you find joy in the liberating lifestyle of seeking forgiveness?

14. Life in the kingdom of God is like waiting for the love of your life to return. Where in your life are the "other lovers" that compete with your love for Christ?

15. Jesus calls us to offer him everything so that we can be free from the things that have a hold on us. Whose kingdom are you making sacrifices for right now?

16. Life in the big kingdom is all about being good and angry. Right now, where do you live every day, whose kingdom does your anger serve?

17. True hope, the kind that will never disappoint, is never hope in a thing, but hope in a person. Where do you tend to look for daily hope?

Time Well Spent

From the Sovereign Grace blog via JT:

Tony Reinke:

Spanning more than four months on the blog, C.J.’s 17-part series on biblical productivity has finally concluded. Via email and in personal conversations many of you have requested that the series be provided as a single document to make it easier to print and read. And today we are making this entire series available as a single 36-page document. You can view and download the PDF by clicking here (0.6 MB):

Index of posts below:

1. Are You Busy?
2. Confessions of a Busy Procrastinator
3. The Procrastinator Within
4. Just Do It
5. In All Thy Ways
6. The Sluggard
7. Time. Redeemed.
8. Roles, Goals, Scheduling
9. Roles (Part 1)
10. Roles (Part 2)
11. Goals (Part 1)
12. Goals (Part 2)
13. Goals (Part 3)
14. Goals (Part 4)
15. Scheduling the Unexpected
16. The To-Do Lists Are Never Done
17. Self-Sufficient