Missio Dei Suburbia

Ephesians Study Guide

We're starting a new teaching series through the New Testament letter of Ephesians. As a help to everyone, we've created a study guide to go with the series that includes:

• Why we chose Ephesians
• Introductory material on Ephesians
• Several articles on how to read the Bible
• A method for memorizing Ephesians
• Introductions to each week of our study
• Links to additional print and audio resources in Ephesians.

You can download the study guide here:

Download eph_final2.pdf

Post-Game Interview - August 24, 2008

Someone suggested taking a few minutes after our sermon on Sundays to answer a few questions and build on what we said during the worship gathering at Christ Church. So here's this week's post-game interview...

Q: What are you hoping people walk away with from this morning?

MCA: Hopefully, Jonah 2 taught us that every problem, struggle and challenge we face in life comes down to a question of whether we believe the gospel. Particularly when it comes to evangelism, our struggle to engage people with the gospel can't simply be resolved by trying harder or learning new strategies.

Q: Do you like talking about evangelism?

MCA: Yes and no. Yes, because we were created to tell this story to whomever God gives us the opportunity to talk with. No, because the topic usually sets people off.

Q: What do you mean?

MCA: Two things in particular. I basically said that evangelism is something we should all be doing but that we aren't supposed to do it in the same way. So some people will struggle with the first part of that, wondering if it's true that we're all supposed to do evangelism or share our faith. Other people will struggle - not with the idea that different people do evangelism in different ways - but thinking that we're discounting or dismissing a particular type of evangelism.

Q: Yeah, I was wondering if you thought some people thought you were going after certain kinds of evangelistic programs?

MCA: It wouldn't surprise me because anytime you say things like 'beach evangelism is awkward and can feel artificial', you could take that to mean that therefore, that kind of evangelism is unhelpful or even wrong. I don't know what to say except that's not what I mean. I think God uses lots of different ways to communicate the story of the gospel to people - and I'm pretty sure I said this - I never doubt the intentions and motivations of people who are trying to find ways to tell that story and help other people tell that story. But what I'm also dealing with is the reality that no single approach works for everyone and that a lot of people end up on the sidelines because they think the only way they can talk about the gospel is by using ways that are really foreign to their personality and context. So this particular sermon was easily one of the hardest I've had to deal with since I've been here.

Q: Why's that?

MCA: Because I've got friends who probably think I sold them out this morning. I've got a couple of people who really struggle with the whole concept of evangelism who want to talk this week because what they heard is - all Christians evangelize. And I'm pretty sure I'll hear from some of my friends involved in ministries I care deeply about who heard me say they're doing something wrong in the way they do evangelism.

Q: So what are you going to tell them?

MCA: I hope they heard both sides of the coin - that yes, we should all be engaged evangelistically but in very different ways because of who we are and the people who are around us. So to my friends who are really nervous about evangelism, what I hope they see is the tremendous opportunity they have to communicate the gospel in ways that are authentic to who they are and the people in their pathway. That might be a very confrontational approach or a very relational approach - God uses both.

And to anyone who thinks I cut their legs out from under them and dumped on what they do, I hope they hear me saying that we share the same goal of seeing more and more Christians engage people around them with the story of the gospel. My concern after fifteen years in ministry and lots of conversations with people inside and outside the church is that our current approach to equipping people evangelistically isn't producing the results we all want.

Q: By results, do you mean conversions?

MCA: Good question...and no. I simply mean that with the emphasis we've put on evangelism, we'd expect more people to be active in sharing their faith. But they're not - why? Maybe because there's a disconnect between how they were trained and how they function with other people. Evangelism isn't a matter of being introverted or extroverted but it does feel sometimes that things breakdown along the lines.

Q: So is there anyone to blame for this?

MCA: I'll tell you what frustrates me - people who look back to evangelistic training they received in a church or in a campus ministry and blame the person who trained them for their lack of evangelistic activity. There's not anyone I know in any group I know that has anything other than the best intentions in mind when they set out to train people. But sometimes things get lost in translation and you end up with people who feel cheated and burned and like they're JV Christians because they struggle to do evangelism the way they were trained.

Q: So...

MCA: Sorry, didn't want to interrupt but one of the things I prayed for all week and will be praying this upcoming week is that the Enemy doesn't get hold of this and use it.

Q: How do you think  he'd do that?

MCA: I can tell you how he does it now. I have a good number of conversations with people who used to be involved in this campus ministry or that evangelistic training program through a church that are hostile towards those groups. And because I'll say things like, 'there are other ways to do evangelism besides XYZ,' they think they've found an ally to talk trash about this guy or that group. Not to discount their pain or frustration, but I do feel like most of the time that's coming straight from the pits of hell.

Q: Why do you think that?

MCA: Mainly because when I ask them, 'so how are you sharing your faith now,' they've got nothing. And that plays very well into the plans of the enemy. I mean, what's his goal? No evangelism...no one share their faith; nobody preach the gospel. And if you're so mad at so-and-so that you don't do any evangelism at all? Score one for the bad guys.

Q: So where do we go from here?

MCA: Hopefully we learn the story of the gospel together, growing in our love for the gospel that leads to gospel-saturated lives that do things like evangelism in very different ways so that very different people can communicate the same gospel in very different settings.

Q: What's coming next week?

MCA: Well, I want to try to put my money where my mouth is and talk about some ways that we can engage evangelistically in ways that ring true with who we are and where God's placed us in this world. So we'll see what happens.

The 'Sin' Sermon

On Sunday, I continued our 'Question Everything' series on four big worldview questions (Who Am I? Why Am I Here? What's Wrong With The World? How Does It All Get Fixed?) by talking about the reality of sin as the vandalism of God's perfect world.

In addition to Peter O'Brien's commentary on Colossians (the sermon text was Colossians 1:19-21), I was greatly helped by Tim Keller's Gospel Christianity material and Cornelius Plantinga's Not the Way It's Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin.

How Important Is It To Understand The People You Preach To?

This is pretty much basic, get-out-of-the-rain common sense from Driscoll. Why in the world anyone thinks contextualization is wrong-headed or necessary is beyond me.

Preaching Is Not Practical Advice

On occasion, I'll get asked why my sermons aren't more practical - meaning that I rarely take the time in a sermon to lay out precise steps for putting into practice a particular principle from the Scriptures. Certainly there are a number of guys who stand up in front of people on Sundays and are very successful in gathering crowds to hear them pass along very good advice about how to live. And while I think there's certainly a place for equipping people to live, I'm pretty sure that preaching isn't the place for that to happen.

My reason for thinking that has everything to do with hitting a baseball or tying your shoes. Which do you think woud be more helpful - to tell you how to hit an 87 MPH slider, maybe laying out the specific steps in tying a double knot? Or would you be more helped by me showing you with few (if any) words how to do both of these. My point being that preaching is simply not intended to be an environment for providing a 'life lab.' Such environments exist, usually in smaller groups or one-on-one relationships where dialogue and conversation can take place in the context of modeling, apprenticing, coaching and letting people go and do their thing. For instance, our church believes that the most effective environment for biblical applicaiton of the most precise kind is in our small groups where you're not dependent upon only one other person's perspective but are with a handful of people who can focus on your growth and maturity.

If our concern in preaching is the gospel - and it most certainly is - and if the gospel is always the proclamation of a salvation that has been purchased in full on the cross, then preaching must be far more concerned with telling that story and helping both religious and non-religious people see how this radical revolution called the kingdom of God is created by the massive transformation of the gospel. In that it is immensely practical - no less practical than laying out five steps towards a healthy marriage or three stages of biblical parenting. This means that preaching must focus its attention on what the gospel fixes its gaze upon - the good news of what God has done in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Preaching is not good advice; it's the heralding of the greatest story ever told.

Acts 29 Regional Audio

Drew Goodmanson has posted the audio from the recent regional Acts 29 Boot Camp in San Diego. Some fantastic stuff that resonates with Chris Wright's missional hermeneutic, as well as sessions on gospel-centered preaching and the values of The Acts 29 Network. These are audio streams, not downloads, but definitely worth your time.

When Jesus Destroys the Suburbs

The manuscript from Sunday's sermon on Hebrews 10:32-39 is below. You can listen to the sermon by subscribing to our podcast here.

We will not risk anything until we know that a life of mission and mercy holds no real risk. Because of Christ, we have God and not even the most catastrophic of losses can spill one drop from the eternal well of joy that is ours in Christ. So there is a call here to us to know – head and heart – the glories and riches and infinite value of our God. We are all grasping at straws and oftentimes it feels like we know nothing about God – we know plenty about him but how often do we walk in here feeling like we’re talking about a stranger rather than our infinitely valuable Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer?

So I’ve got to ask you this morning if you know this God in such a way that life becomes a pursuit of leveraging your gifts, abilities, time and financial resources to make much of God in this world by meeting the needs of others. This is not a hypothetical or rhetorical question – is God so valuable that even now you are thinking of risky ways to move towards need away from comfort?

He Has Perfected Those Who Are Being Made Perfect

Here is the manuscript for this past Sunday's sermon at Christ Community Church. We've jumped back into Hebrews in chapter 10 for a series on 'The Perfect Life' that the writer describes for the readers. Yeah, I have a hard time believing anything is perfect too, so trust me that this isn't some kind of Pollyanna snow-job...

You were created by God to enjoy God deeply and pervasively and passionately – perfectly – so that the perfect life we find in Hebrews is an objective reality that is experienced subjectively. Perfection is the universal reality for everyone who belongs to Christ that is experienced in imperfect and varying degrees by those who belong to Christ.

Is Jesus The Only God?

Mars Hill Church in Seattle has launched a new website that includes video of their sermons each week. They've just begun a new series called 'Vintage Jesus,' focusing on the centrality and uniqueness of Jesus in today's world.

Here's the video for the first  sermon - I'd love for you to watch the opening segment with a Professor of Comparative Religion at the University of Washington and use the comments section to interact with his thoughts. And yes, Driscoll is wearing a 'Jesus is My Homeboy' shirt, standing in front of a very nice Gibson SG guitar...

Where The Wild Things Are

Here's the manuscript from our sermon yesterday - when I first read the words of Isaiah 56:1-8, the image I got in my head as I contemplated this community made up of 'eunuchs' and 'foreigners' was the children's book, Where the Wild Things Are. While I didn't pursue that line of thinking in the sermon itself, it is pretty mindboggling that God creates community among those who have voluntarily castrated ourselves in relationship to him, people whose thinking, values and behavior are very much foreign to God in some rather obvious ways.

Oh, one more thing - I want to make sure I give credit and thanks to Tim Keller for his insight into these verses from a sermon he preached in the fall of 2005. I always tell people I'm too dumb to come up with anything insightful or creative, so odds are if something intelligent comes out of my mouth, I'm probably borrowing it from someone who's much more smarter than me...

So here’s the deal – Isaiah 56 is nothing more than God’s vision for you and me and everyone else in the world. It’s a rather simple reminder that God has not saved us to live like Obi-Wan Kenobi hiding out on Tatooine (because everything in life can be taken back to Star Wars, you know). God has hard-wired each of us to do life with other people and to live in community – even those of us who are socially retarded and limit our social contact to MySpace or the guy who carries out your groceries at Publix. As we’ve talked about the gospel and the fact that Jesus saves us and changes us by creating a whole new world of forgiveness and freedom and focus, you and I need to come to grips with the reality that Jesus doesn’t come to create a bunch of little individual Christian planets – he’s coming to create a new community. Here’s what we need to get in front of us this morning – God saves us as part of a new community. God’s vision for his world is not a collection of disconnected individuals with Jesus as the center of their own isolated world, but his vision is that within his world – within each community – there is a dynamic counterculture created by Jesus where recovering self-addicts do life with each other. If you’re here, you were created for community – you need other people and other people need you.

To read the entire manuscript, click here: Download isa5601091706_manuscript.pdf