Francis Chan and Evangelicalism’s “Middle Road”



HT: Mike Pohlman

Pastors and Reading Time: Ask Doug



HT: Ian Clary

Panel Discussion – A New Kind of Christianity? – Brian McLaren Recasts the Gospel

By R. Albert Mohler, Jr., Moderator, Jim Hamilton, Bruce Ware, Stephen Wellum, and Gregory Wills

CENTRE FOR MENTORSHIP AND

THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION

“The Cross is Our Theology” – Martin Luther

Apologetic Preaching & Evangelism

Date: Thursday, June 10, 2010

Time: 6:30pm – 9:30pm

Venue: Van Norman Centre, Tyndale University College & Seminary, 25 Ballyconnor Court, Toronto, ON

Speakers:

Dr. Ravi Zacharias, Centre Senior Churchman Award Recipient

“Apologetic Preaching: Prospects and Problems in Canadian Context”

Dr. Dennis Ngien, Founder, Centre for Mentorship and Theological Reflection

“Apologetic for the Attractiveness of Jesus Christ”

No registration needed; no parking fee

Come earlier; late comers will not be admitted.

For further information, please contact Dr. Dennis Ngien at: dngien_center@yahoo.com.

Social Gospel vs. Proclamation Gospel

Social Gospel vs. Proclamation Gospel from Harvest Bible Chapel on Vimeo.

For those viewing by email, you will have to go to my website to view this video.

Addressing the Damaging Effects of Professionalism in the Local Church

"The way to fix a church suffering with professionalism is not to do away with the gifted, well-trained, and experienced ministers but channel their ministry in a different way. This is the genius of the early church leaders. They understood their calling not as ministers but equippers. Their end goal was to have apprentices who can duplicate their life, work, and calling so that as the church continues to grow and multiply, there are new laborers and competent leaders for the mission."

Read more: http://timmybrister.com/2010/03/16/addressing-the-damaging-effects-of-professionalism-in-the-local-church/

HT: Trevin Wax

Quote of the Day: Ben Patterson

“We must learn that prayer is our chief work. Only then can our work become prayer: real service, real satisfaction. This simple truth alone explains why so many workers in the church find themselves exhausted, stretched to the breaking point, and burned out” (Ben Patterson, Deepening Your Conversation With God).

Quote of the Day: Phillip Jensen

The precision with which I preach the Bible will be the precision with which my congregation treats the Bible.

-Phillip Jensen

Canada's Best Preaching Workshop Coming Near You

Imagine spending two and a half days in community being refreshed, renewed, and strengthened as you soak in the Scriptures. You will interact with other like-minded pastors, elders, and Bible teachers as you wrestle with the text and share your insights with each other in a small group setting. You will sharpen your skills as listen to excellent instruction on preaching a specific genre of the Bible. You will be inspired as you hear great model expositions from the Scriptures.

This year their will be various workshops offered throughout Canada that you can take advantage of:

1. Preaching Apocalyptic Literature in Toronto, ON: March 3-5, 2010

2. Preaching Hebrew Poetry/Wisdom in Vancouver, BC: April 21-23, 2010

3. Preaching Hebrew Poetry/Wisdom in Calgary, AB: April 27-29, 2010

You will not be disappointed.

Ian Clary, one of last year’s participants writes:

his was one of the best conferences I’ve ever attended. Practical, soul searching, biblical, affective, encouraging. I was very blessed to have been there and I learned a lot...

I highly, highly recommend that if a Simeon Trust workshop comes within a five hour radius of you that you attend one. You will not be disappointed! Your preaching will improve and your congregation will love you for it. Even if you’ve been at the game for thirty years, you will still benefit from a gathering such as this!

Grab a friend and come together. Register today at www.simeonworkshops.com.

May God richly bless you in your very important ministry.

Quote of the Day: Darryl Dash

"When Jesus came down from the mountain, he didn't find a golden calf. He found technique-driven, prayerless ministry. Same thing (Mark 9)."

Dear Friend,

It seems that an invitation to a conference or seminar arrives every day. We have limited time, and most of us feel like we’ve gone to every conference going.

A couple of years ago I received an invitation like this one. I was skeptical, and the timing was not great, but I decided to attend. It was simply the most biblical and helpful workshop I had ever attended.

I’m not alone. Last year, others attended the 2009 Simeon Trust Preaching workshop. They commented on how helpful it had been, and how they wished they had known about it sooner. I heard from one attendee who said it has changed his ministry.

Ian Hugh Clary writes:

I know that I often speak in exaggeration, but I can honestly say that this was one of the best conferences I’ve ever attended. Practical, soul searching, biblical, affective, encouraging. I was very blessed to have been there and I learned a lot...

I highly, highly recommend that if a Simeon Trust workshop comes within a five hour radius of you that you attend one. You will not be disappointed! Your preaching will improve and your congregation will love you for it. Even if you’ve been at the game for thirty years, you will still benefit from a gathering such as this!

Charles Price, pastor of The Peoples Church Toronto, states:

The preacher must ask three progressive questions of a Biblical text: What? So What? Now What? ‘What?’ is exposition. ‘So What?’ is implication. ‘Now What?’ is exhortation. The most fundamental of these is the ‘What?’ question. What does the text actually say and mean? If the foundation of our preaching is faulty, the implications and exhortations will be distorted – guaranteed! This seminar addresses the disciplines of good exegesis, which is the skill of first importance to the preacher.

We are pleased that another workshop will take place next March 3-5 at Bayview Glen Church. Once again, David Helm, Lead Pastor of the Hyde Park congregation of Holy Trinity Church in Chicago and chairman of Simeon Trust, will be instructing us. The topic this year is preaching apocalyptic literature.

The Workshop will be divided into three sections. We will receive instruction on preaching, we will prepare two sermon outlines which will be evaluated by our peers and we will hear modeled for us clear and inspiring preaching of God's Word.

Let me encourage you to set these two and a half days aside to hone your preaching skills and be encouraged and motivated in the work of preaching to which the Lord has called us.

For more information or to discuss the details of the workshop please feel free to contact Pastor Doug Kelley at 905-873-0249 or doug@togetheratgac.com.

To register go to the Charles Simeon Trust website (http://www.simeontrust.org/).

We have made arrangements for discount rates in a nearby hotel, so please be sure you check your registration confirmation for this important information.

I hope you can attend.

Sincerely,

Darryl Dash

Pastor

Jonathan Edwards on Spiritual Pride

Spiritual pride is: "the main door by which the devil comes into the hearts of those that are zealous for the advancement of religion.... Spiritual pride disposes us to speak of other persons' sins, their enmity against God and His people, the miserable delusion of hypocrites and their enmity against vital piety, and the deadness of some saints, with bitterness, or with laughter and levity, and an air of contempt; whereas pure Christian humility rather disposes, either to be silent about them, or to speak of them with grief and pity. Spiritual pride is very apt to suspect others; whereas a humble saint is most jealous of himself; he is so suspicious of nothing in the world as he is of his own heart. The spiritually proud person is apt to find fault with other saints, that they are low in grace, and to be much in observing how cold and dead they be, and crying out of them for it; and to be quick to discern and take notice of their deficiencies; but the eminently humble Christian has so much to do at home, and sees so much evil in his own heart, and is so concerned about it, that he is not apt to be very busy with others' hearts; he complains most of himself, and cries out his own coldness and lowness in grace, and is apt to esteem others better than himself"

[Jonathan Edwards as quoted in D.A. Carson and John Woodbridge, Letters Along the Way: A Novel of the Christian Life (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1993), 264].

Wesley's Covenant Prayer

"I am no longer my own, but thine. Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt. Put me to doing, put me to suffering. Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee, exalted for thee or brought low for thee. Let me be full, let me be empty. Let me have all things, let me have nothing. I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal. And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it. And the covenant which I have made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven. Amen" (Wesley's Covenant Prayer as used in the Book of Offices of the British Methodist Church, 1936).

No Other Foundation with Dr. Michael Haykin

Learn the History of Christianity in one day with world class scholar Dr. Michael Haykin: No Other Foundation at Ajax Alliance Church, October 17th, 2009, 10am-3:45pm. Cost: Free. Click here for more info.

Thy Righteousness is in Heaven

“One day as I was passing into the field, this sentence fell upon my soul: ‘Thy righteousness is in heaven.’ And with the eyes of my soul I saw Jesus at the Father’s right hand. ‘There,’ I said, ‘is my righteousness!’ So that wherever I was or whatever I was doing, God could not say to me, ‘Where is your righteousness?’ For it is always right before him.

I saw that it is not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse, for my righteousness IS Christ. Now my chains fell off indeed. My temptations fled away, and I lived sweetly at peace with God.

Now I could look from myself to him and could reckon that all my character was like the coins a rich man carries in his pocket when all his gold is safe in a trunk at home. Oh I saw that my gold was indeed in a trunk at home, in Christ my Lord. Now Christ was all: my righteousness, sanctification, redemption.”

- John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

HT: Of First Importance

Quote of the Day: C.S. Lewis

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world" (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity).

Bray on Justification

I just enjoyed listening to Dr. Gerald Bray on Justification, John Piper, and N.T. Wright here. It humbled me to think of how easily we can be influenced by popular opinion and popular theology without even realizing it. We need to be deeply rooted in the Scriptures and to understand the history of theology so that we can, by God's grace, see more clearly.

N.T. Wright's View of the Atonement

Lee Irons looks at the issue. The bottom line, according to Lee, is that Wright uses traditional terms with untraditional definitions.

Here's his conclusion after looking at the evidence from Wright's own writings:

• sin is an impersonal evil force, not personal rebellion against God;
  
• sin has bad consequences, but does not elicit God's punitive wrath against the sinner; and
  
• the cross is to be understood as some version of the Christus Victor theory in which Christ defeats evil by letting it do its worst to him, not as a penal satisfaction of divine justice.

HT: JT

Unquote of the Day

"Just because it's in the Bible doesn't mean you should preach it"

(Robert Schuller in an interview with Michael Horton on the Whitehorse Inn).

For a transcript of the interview go here.

HT: JT

Quote of the Day: Suffering for the Gospel

In his newest book Filling up the Afflictions of Christ, John Piper reprints this remarkable letter from John Calvin to five young Frenchman about to be martyred in 1553 for carrying the gospel into France:

We who are here shall do our duty in praying that He would glorify Himself more and more by your constancy, and that He may, by the comfort of His Spirit, sweeten and endear all that is bitter to the flesh, and so absorb your spirits in Himself, that in contemplating that heavenly crown, you may be ready without regret to leave all that belongs to this world.
Now, at this present hour, necessity itself exhorts you more than ever to turn your whole mind heavenward. As yet, we know not what will be the event. But, since it appears as though God would use your blood to seal His truth, there is nothing better for you than to prepare yourselves for that end, beseeching Him so to subdue you to His good pleasure, that nothing may hinder you from following whithersoever He shall call…Since it pleases Him to employ your death in maintaining His quarrel, He will strengthen your hands in the fight and will not suffer a single drop of your blood to be shed in vain.

Your humble brother,
John Calvin

HT: Tullian

Quote of the Day: Missions and Calling

Missionary martyr Jim Elliot:

"Our young men are going into the professional fields because they don't 'feel called' to the mission field. We don't need a call; we need a kick in the pants. We must begin thinking in terms of 'going out,' and stop our weeping because 'they won't come in.' Who wants to step into an igloo? The tombs themselves are not colder than the churches. May God send us forth."

Elisabeth Elliot, Shadow of the Almighty: The Life and Testament of Jim Elliot (New York: Harper, 1958), 54.

HT: Robert Sagers at Between Two Worlds

Quote of the Day

"If ministers wish to do any good, let them labour to form Christ, not to form themselves, in their hearers"

[John Calvin quoted in John Stott, The Message of Galatians (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1968), 118].

When Sin Looks More Enjoyable Than God

Quote of the Day

"Sin tastes sweet but turns bitter in our stomachs. Holiness often tastes bitter but turns sweet in our stomachs" (Gary Thomas).

HT: Challies

Quote of the Day

"It is truth alone that capacitates any soul to glorify God." -- John Owen

HT: Ian Clary