Jared C. Wilson's Blog, page 55

Your Best Links Now – 2/18/14

(I’m really glad I didn’t decide to call this feature “Your Best Links at 8:30 A.M.”)

Standing with That Sinner Martin Luther

Matthew Block writes an important piece over at First Things on this, the 468th anniversary of Luther’s passing. “This truly is why we remember Luther: not because he was always nice, not because he was always good, and certainly not because he was always right. He wasn’t. Instead, we remember Luther because he directed attention always away from himself to Christ. It is to Christ we look for salvation, not our own holiness. Indeed, this is the context of Luther’s oft-quoted and much-maligned ‘sin boldly’ comments . . .”

We Don’t Find Grace, Grace Finds Us by Tullian Tchividjian

“The Gospel is not a story of God meeting sinners half-way, of God desperately hoping to find that one righteous man on whom he can bestow his favor. The news is so much better than that . . .”

The Government Has Built An Entire Fake City in Virginia

With a sports stadium, bank, school, and subway system. I bet it’s a pretty creepy place to wander around in. Also because this is where they no doubt keep the mutants.

5 Ways to Improve Congregational Singing by Keith Getty

“It seems curious that in a generation that has produced innumerable conferences, articles, blogs, and even university degree programs on “worship,” the topic of congregational singing hasn’t been raised more often. But even if we had been discussing congregational participation, would we know what goal we’re aiming to hit each week?”



Beaker Meeps “Ode to Joy”

It’s exactly what it says.

Sermons: The Further I Go, The Longer I Get

No, I’m not talking about the length of the sermon, but of course that might apply too.

What I’m talking about is sermon composition.

When I was first starting out preaching, I didn’t manuscript my sermons; I outlined. These outlines usually ran about 3-4 pages and were the result of week-long prep in study and composition. Back then, I assumed that the more experienced I got at preaching, the shorter my outline would get. I would be better at preaching from memory and rely on my notes less.

I’ve actually found the reverse true. I dare not say whether I’m a better preacher now, although I suspect I am — things like this being somewhat relative — but I have found the pages I take to the pulpit with me to preach increasing and containing more and more composition. I am not quite at the “word-for-word” manuscript stage, but I am definitely heading that direction. I typically take a 6-7 page manuscript with me and largely stick to what is written. Where I speak extemporaneously tends to be in the way of illustration or joke or remark to somebody in the congregation related to the subject at hand or an appropriate quote that suddenly comes to mind.

I cannot entirely explain this, except that the more experienced I’ve become, the more I value forethought and less I trust my ability to speak “off the cuff.”

I would also note, interestingly, that the further I go in preaching, the less time I actually spend in the composition of the sermon. Isn’t that odd? It used to take me a couple of days to produce a 3-4 page outline. Subtracting the study time in preparation, it now takes me about 3 hours to compose my 6-7 page manuscript.

Preachers, what’s your experience been like over time?

Related:

Here’s a compelling piece from Jeff Medders on why you should manuscript, a summation of his ebook on the subject.

Your Best Links Now – 2/17/14

Courtship Culture on Trial by Jesse Jost

An in-depth analysis and critique of evangelicalism’s “purity culture” from one raised up in it (and who still resonates with its aims, unlike most of the movement’s critics). Jost writes, “For me, there was the temptation of being so obsessed with marriage that the purpose of friendship was reduced to being a way to evaluate which girls were good marriage material. Wow, this is embarrassing to admit. But my friendships would have been healthier if I could have been more focused on blessing and serving these girls as sisters in Christ rather than just selfishly evaluating their potential!”

Carman’s Cancer Cured Just in Time for Tour

Is it just me, or is there an underlying tone of skepticism in this CT piece about CCM performer Carman? (And I’m not even saying it is unwarranted.)

Eerie Photos of an Abandoned Bible Theme Park

Holy Land U.S.A. was a Christian amusement park in Connecticut. Now it’s one of America’s quirkiest ghost towns.

OCU Student Solves Hundreds-Year Old Artistic Mystery

Basically, an Oklahoma Christian University student is the first person to ever transcribe (and perform) the microscopic sheet music on a guys’ butt in an old painting. “Amelia Hamrick may be the first person to ever play a song, hidden in a centuries old painting. She says she made the discovery by chance and never expected the reaction she’s now getting. When you first look at the painting, created more than 500 years ago, it takes your imagination on a journey . . .”

The Dangers of Entrepreneurship in Pastoral Ministry by Matt Svoboda

“Like with professionalism, not all aspects of an entrepreneurship are bad. In many ways it is quite helpful to have pastors that have some entrepreneur in them. The danger is in putting too much stock into entrepreneurship. A danger that can really dig against the true nature of calling and spiritual leadership in pastoral ministry. Here are some examples of what I mean by ‘dangers’ . . .”

Bible On My Phone

The two yahoos behind this video (Ben the actor and Josiah the director), are cousins of mine. I am equally amused and embarrassed by this.

Your Best Links Now – 2/14/14

Biblical Womanhood for Pariahs by Wendy Alsup

This is an important post. “Our understanding of Biblical Womanhood has to include such women. The divorced. The widow. The single mom. The working single mom. The single woman with no kids.”

Identity Thieves by Jeremy Wilson

My brother, a college and young adults pastor in Houston, writes on how Paul’s doctrine of union with Christ speaks to the “cause culture” prevalent on Facebook (and everywhere else, really).



Theology Research Paper Title Generator

This handy flow-chart will help you sound like you is smart. I can’t wait to read your journal entry on “The Poetics of Temporality: Myth as Politics in the Work of Steve from Down the Road.” And cheese biscuits are always nice.

Are These Alien Skulls?

Yeah, no.



Are You Cutting the Crust Off Of Worship? by Jeff Medders

“Man, I loved the worship.”

“I won’t be at worship today.”

“As we begin worship….

“Ok, when the worship is done, let’s show a video…”

“Let’s do some more worship after the sermon.”

Can we please stop having the micro-machine view of worship? Worship is more than a song.

New U2 Single

I think.

What We Talk Like When We Talk About God

But the Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him.

– Habakkuk 2:20

Do you know the Greek myth of Echo the Oread? She was a nymph who loved hearing her own voice. And, as the mythology goes, she fell into a romance with Narcissus.

I think a lot of the rejections in evangelicalism today of God’s sovereignty and biblical infallibility are not unrelated to the more recent conversations about the need to attend regular local church services. They are all simply manifestations of a rejection of authority, and while of course those who make these rejections will not say they are rejecting God — but rather the artificial or modernist fabrications of those who claim to speak for God — the treasured principle nevertheless does not seem to be what God has actually said but what one feels in the heart (or some similar thing). I think it’s because we don’t want anyone being the boss of us, and because doctrines like biblical infallibility (and biblical perspicuity) and experiences like church services are too restrictive, too conforming, too narrow a space for “me to be me.”

Frank Viola wrote back in 2011:

I know a lot of very well-known teachers and preachers . . . What’s interesting is that many of them don’t belong to any church. None at all. And neither do their families. Nor are they part of any ministry team wherein there is close-knit fellowship and mutual submission.

There’s probably lots of reasons for this, but some of them are teased out in Donald Miller’s recent post where he triple-downs on his admission of not attending church services. It has something to do with embracing the “agency” taught in Hebrews apparently, and embodying the “organized chaos” of Acts. You know, the Hebrews where we’re told not to forsake the regular worship assembly and the Acts where we’re told the church gathered regularly in devotion to the apostles’ teaching and to hear a guy preach.

And so I think we ought to see the talk about agency and enjoying the church outside formality and institutions and the traditions of singing songs and listening to monologue teaching for what it really is: self-worship. A self-indulgent love of our own voices and preferring of them above all others. In church, after all, no one can hear you tweet.

Certainly one can be self-centered inside a church gathering, but the church gathering is nevertheless where all the sinners ought to be at the appointed time, smack-dab in the middle of a congregational experience specifically organized against the idolatry of personal preference. Not just because God says to do it — although that’s reason enough — but because it is good for us to have our singular voice lost in the sea of corporate praise and it is good for us to shut our social-media-motor-mouths for a bit and hear “Thus saith the Lord.” We should go to church — not mainly, but nevertheless — because it confronts and stunts our spiritual autonomy and individualism. We should go lest we become Cainites, saying “I’m not my brother’s keeper.” Or reverse Cainites, “My brothers aren’t my keepers.”

Of course most of us prefer to worship at the First Church of Hanging Out With My Friends at The Coffee Shop. Of course the more elite of us prefer to worship at My Own Speaking Engagements Community Church. Because, we believe, we “learn better” when we’re the ones doing the talking.

But something happens when you stop submitting to the communal listening of congregational worship and start filling the air with your own free range spiritual rhetoric. Your talk of God starts to sound less like God. He starts sounding like an idea, a theory, a concept. He stops sounding like the God of the Bible, the God who commands and demands, the God who is love but also holy, gracious but also just, et cetera. He begins to sound less like the God “who is who he is” and more like the God who is as you like him.

In his sermon on Genesis 3, as Martyn Lloyd-Jones details the origin of sin in human history, the deceit resulting from the question, “Did God actually say…?”, he talks about the fellow who talks about God with his hands in his pockets and a cigarette in his mouth. I don’t think he means at all to say one could not speak rightly about God in casual clothes or even in a casual position, but he means to say that the fellow could easily be speaking about the weather or politics or the local sports team. There is no evident reverence. “The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth blog about how cool he is with, you know, whatever your deal is, man.”

Awe and reverence. Authority and submission. Proclamation and supplication. Command and obedience. We fear these dynamics because we fear losing our selves, but we know what Jesus said to do to find yourself. If what Jesus says is true, maybe saving reverence for God is lost in the refusal to put one’s self in positions of difficulty, vulnerability, self-denial. Maybe seeking to find our own true path away from the “stifling confines” of the “traditional church” has actually taken us out of the garden of worship and into the wilderness, right into the rubble of Babel in fact.

What you talk about when you talk about God outside the self-denial and obedience God calls us to doesn’t sound like God. It sounds like your god is you.

In Nehemiah 8, “all the people gathered as one man,” it says (v.1), to hear Ezra preach. One guy doing the talking. And he essentially just read them the Law. While they stood there in the morning sun. For about a four-hour sermon reading. So if you think your church service is long and stifling, keep Nehemiah 8 in mind.

Nehemiah 8:3 says that “the ears of all the people were attentive.” I suppose this would include those whose spiritual learning styles were more wired for dialogue or, I guess, whitewater rafting or whatever. But they were a people who valued “Thus saith the Lord,” who thought “Thus saith the Lord” might be vital for them to hear and that being quiet could help them hear it. And the response to the sermon is telling. Verse 9 tells us they wept when they heard the Law. They didn’t object; they didn’t scoff; they didn’t cry out, “Yahweh’s not the boss of me!” (Or “You either, Ezra, acting so high and mighty up in that pulpit!”) No, they wept out of conviction, out of despair of themselves, out of reverence for “Thus saith the Lord.” When they talked about God, they did it through sobs.

But Ezra tells them to stop crying, to go home and feast (v.9). He tells them to eat fatty foods and drink wine and to share those things with others. See, God is not withholding such joys from us. He doesn’t want us out of the coffee shops or the pubs or wherever else it is we suppose we’d rather be than hearing “thus saith the Lord” from some religious spokesperson. He simply wants us there through the cross.

The truth is we need “thus saith the Lord.” We need to talk like God owns us when we talk about God. Even like he owes us wrath. Otherwise all of our talk of grace and mercy and freedom and finding ourselves and whatever else will keep ringing more and more hollow. The people listening to Ezra needed the terror from the declaration of the holy righteousness of God which is damning to get to the boundless joys of the proclamation of the holy righteousness of Christ which is saving. And when you think about what Christ willingly went through to deliver us, losing our autonomy and personal platform in the mess and discomfort of the parts of life in his Body we most want to avoid doesn’t seem like such a huge price to pay.

If your local church is doing things right, it will be seeking to provide a spiritual environment for your growth predicated on God’s terms — which is to say, not yours. Let’s not neglect to approach that holy ground, and take our shoes off in reverence when we get there, even if it means shoving one of them in our mouths.

Your Best Links Now – 2/13/14

Rethinking the Origins Debate by Jonathan Hill

Survey results show Americans’ thinking on creation and evolution is hardly bipolar. “[W]hat does this mean for the church?” Hill writes. “I think it shows that most people, even regular church-going evangelicals, are not deeply entrenched on one side of a supposed two-sided battle. Certainly, the issue divides Christians. But Christian beliefs about human origins are complex. There’s no major single chasm after all.”



Your Spouse Is Not Jesus by Keri Seavey

At the blog for the Biblical Counseling Coalition, Seavey writes, “Both husband and wife often start life together, from authentic love and commitment (and a bit of naïve self-assessment), blissfully aiming to meet or exceed every spoken or perceived expectation placed before them in their desire for a great marriage. They may even maintain their success for a while. Yet, given time, we all bump up against our (and our spouse’s) weaknesses, limitations, and tenacious self-centeredness. This is when things begin to get messy . . .”

21 Fantastic Children’s Book Covers by Artist Erik Blegvad

Blegvad passed away last month. This look at some of his best work is full of whimsical, nostalgic awesomeness. (Note: Link is to Buzzfeed site.)



Annie Leibovitz Shoots Celebs in Disney Scenes

Acclaimed photographic artist Leibovitz lined up a stellar list of performers and cast them as classic Disney characters in some really fun and impressive images. Russell Brand as Captain Hook is probably my favorite, with Rachel Weisz’s Snow White and the trio of Jack Black, Will Ferrell, and Jason Segel as the Haunted Mansion’s hitchhiking ghosts tied for second.

What Makes a Good Commentary?

TGC’s Matt Smethurst interviews The Don.

“Barbara Ann” by the Beach Boys

Straight from the year ninety-sixty-awesome

Your Best Links Now – 2/12/14

The Story That Writes Itself by Kevin DeYoung

On the new “moral” majority’s ready-for-Mad-Libs pontificating, DeYoung writes, “There is no conversation any longer, just condescension. No acceptance of diverse viewpoints, just personal obliteration for anyone who dares to question Oceania’s Ministry of Truth. The talking heads and the purveyor’s of cultural correctness don’t feel the need to make arguments anymore. They don’t feel the need to listen either. After all, who can refute a sneer? No need to prove your dogma when stigma will do.”

Where Do I Like To Write? by BJ Stockman

“Godliness is never an overnight process. Greatness has all the flash, while godliness simmers under the surface. Greatness may make the newspapers of one generation, but godliness has a lasting impact that ripples through many generations. Americans, even Christian ones, crave the great but not the godly. How do we do this? How do we get godly? As pragmatists, we want to know this too . . .”

When I Have a [Talking About] Drinking Problem by Preston Yancey

Yancey’s piece here is a well-written and challenging word begging to be considered by those of us who like to Instagram our booze (and tobacco) and other enjoyed liberties.

UFO Conference Won’t Host the Dead Sasquatch Exhibit

Bigots.

There Are No Ordinary People

Ray Ortlund quotes the famous Lewis passage that begins, “It’s a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses . . .”



Chuck Berry, “Roll Over Beethoven”

Classic greatness.

Crucifying Defensiveness

. . . Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded?

– 1 Corinthians 6:7

The biggest problem in my life and ministry is me. And the biggest problem among my many idiosyncratic problems is the impulse toward self-defense and self-justification. The Lord has been working well on me over the last several years in this area, and I do think, by his grace, I have gotten better at suppressing this impulse, denying it, even going into situations I know will include much criticism directed at myself having proactively crucified it for the moment. But my inner defense attorney (a voting partner in the ambulance-chasing firm of Flesh & Associates) is always there, crouching at my door, seeking to rule over everybody by arguing in my quote-unquote “favor.”

Crucifying the defensive impulse is so difficult because it essentially means choosing to allow others to misunderstand you, misjudge you, and even malign you. (Of course, many times the painful things said are accurate, and so it’s another difficult necessity to listen well and to “test all things [and] hold fast to what is good” (1 Thess. 5:21).) But many times, especially for those in ministry or in other leadership positions, the criticisms and complaints are inaccurate, sometimes whole-cloth falsehoods, frequently petty, and these little injustices just pile up. The need to cry out in one’s defense rises up. But wisdom knows when to claim one’s rights and when to submit to being defrauded. For me, as I get older, and the longer I minister, the more I find myself being steered toward the latter.

Why would you and I do that? Why would we turn the cheek this way, go two miles with the guy demanding one? It’s certainly not very street-smart. It’s obviously not comfortable. But wisdom directs us this way, ultimately, because we believe that the consolation of Christ now and the compensation from Christ in the age to come will far surpass any “justice” we could gin up with our own self-interested rebuttals . . . even if we’re in the right. If Christ is our treasure, if Christ is our justification, why not rather be defrauded?

In many cases related to personal offenses, if not most, the best defense is neither a good offense nor a good defense, but simply sitting on the bench and, in love, refusing to play the game.

Pastoral Residency Program in Middletown Springs

Introducing the Middletown Springs Pastoral Residency Program!

Middletown Springs Community Church is pleased to announce a call for applications for our new pastoral ministry residence program. We are seeking applicants for two residency positions: pastoral ministry and worship arts ministry.

If you or someone you know may be interested, all the pertinents — including the application form — can be found at the Middletown Springs Church Residency website.

Your Best Links Now – 2/11/14

Real Love Wins by Burk Parsons

“One of the more loving and merciful things Jesus did was preach on hell. He preached on hell more than He preached on heaven, and He did so in order to point the lost to Himself as the way, the truth, and the life apart from condemnation and eternal punishment in hell—which He created. Although most preachers have not denied the doctrine of hell outright, they might as well have, since it is entirely absent from their sermons . . .”

Tim Chester on a Church’s Growing Pains

Good, helpful stuff here, especially in the assist from Tim Keller. It’s good to know, in an odd sort of way, that church angst from the change that growth brings isn’t a new phenomenon.

Is the Vatican Violating Children’s Rights? by Mark Movsesian

Well, perhaps in some ways. But in other ways suggested by the UN’s Committee on the Rights of a Child, we see not so much a violation of rights but a violation of the moral code of the age. Movsesian writes, “[T]he committee stated that the prohibition of abortion ‘places obvious risks on the life and health of pregnant girls’ and urged the Vatican to amend canon law to ‘identify circumstances under which access to abortion services can be permitted.’ It expressed ‘serious concern’ about the Vatican’s policy of ‘denying adolescents access to contraception.’ The Vatican must put ‘adolescents’ best interests’ ahead of other concerns, the committee said. And the committee expressed concern that the Holy See’s disapproval of homosexuality may lead to discrimination against LGBT children and the children of LGBT parents. It recommended that the Holy See amend canon law to recognize diverse family arrangements . . .”

Home of the Great Poet John Milton Abandoned, Frozen in Time

If this place isn’t haunted, the photos sure are.

Live and Let Die by Jen Thorn

“Through Paul God says, ‘Put to death therefore what is earthly in you.’ What is earthly in me?”

Frozen Stars Sing Live