Daniel Darling's Blog, page 53

The Way Home Episode 20 – Chaplain (LTC) Derrick Riggs

Today my colleague Lindsay Swartz and I join, live from Afghanistan, Chaplain (LTC) Derrick Riggs. Chaplain Riggs is the Command Chaplain for Special Operations Joint Task Force and NATO Special Operations Component Command in Afghanistan. He is also a member of First Baptist Church in Columbia, South Carolina.

Chaplain Riggs shared the unique challenges of ministry on the battlefield, the toll that wars take on military families, and how the church can minister to the military community.

Listen to this week’s episode of The Way Home

 
Show Notes

If you are planning on being at the Southern Baptist Convention in Columbus, I want to encourage you to stop by our booth where we will have many free resources to give away. You will also want to make plans to attend a special FREE event we are doing on Monday, June 15th at the convention with 9 Marks Ministries on Connecting Church and Culture. This will be a really cool event, with Dr. Mark Dever and Dr. Russell Moore taking questions on church and culture.

August 5 is our second annual National Conference. Our theme this year will be “The Gospel and Politics” Dr. Russell Moore and other evangelical leaders such as Samuel Rodriguez, Ross Douthat, Michael Gerson, David Platt and others will be discussing what Christian cultural engagement should look like especially as we head into another heated Presidential election. When you register put the coupon code: WAYHOME and get a special 15% discount.

Baptist Press story on Chaplain Riggs

Finding the Story Behind the Story

Every story, whether in movie or music, has a story behind the story. I’ve learned a lot about this from the work of my friend Mike Cosper, who I’ve interviewed several times. Another voice is Kevin Harvey, who has written a new book, All You Want to Know about The Bible in Pop Culture: helping Christians see gospel themes in pop culture. This doesn’t have to be in a ham-handed way, but in a redemptive way, tracing the thin lines of the big Gospel story in the stories we tell ourselves.

I had the chance to interview Kevin this week for Leadership Journal. Here is one of the questions I asked him:

Sometimes Christian themes are overt, sometimes they are subtle. What motivates otherwise secular artists, filmakers, and songwriters to include Christian themes?

Just like the psalmists in the Bible were simply communicating to God, sharing their hearts through their art, today’s writers are doing the same thing. If you want to know what is on someone’s mind, look at their art. Look for what they’re writing, not just saying. But beyond what they are intentionally communicating, a secular artist, whether he believes it or not, has been created by God, made in his image, and has a hole in his heart that can only be filled by a relationship with his creator. I believe that perhaps without being able to connect all the dots, a writer recognizes the need for redemption, grace, and forgiveness in each of our lives. He realizes that we cannot save ourselves and that some things in life can only be explained through supernatural means. Themes such as sacrificial love and forgiving the unforgivable hit home with everyone, because we were created with a need for them in our lives.

Read the rest of the interview here:

The Way Home – Episode 19 featuring Charles Stone

When you are thinking of Christian leadership, rarely does brain science come to mind, but my friend Charles Stone says it should. Charles, besides being a popular author and pastor, has done extensive research on neuroscience. His findings are interesting and affect the way we think about spiritual leadership. He joins me today on the podcast to talk about his book Brain-Savvy Leaders: The Science of Significant Ministry. You’ll enjoy this conversation. Charles Stone is an old friend who, like me, once pastored in the Chicago area. He’s currently the senior pastor of West Park Church in Ontario, Canada.

Listen to this week’s episode of The Way Home

 
Show Notes

If you are planning on being at the Southern Baptist Convention in Columbus, I want to encourage you to stop by our booth where we will have many free resources to give away. You will also want to make plans to attend a special FREE event we are doing on Monday, June 15th at the convention with 9 Marks Ministries on Connecting Church and Culture. This will be a really cool event, with Dr. Mark Dever and Dr. Russell Moore taking questions on church and culture.

August 5 is our second annual National Conference. Our theme this year will be “The Gospel and Politics” Dr. Russell Moore and other evangelical leaders such as Samuel Rodriguez, Ross Douthat, Michael Gerson, David Platt and others will be discussing what Christian cultural engagement should look like especially as we head into another heated Presidential election. When you register put the coupon code: WAYHOME and get a special 15% discount.

Twitter: @charlesstone
Website: charlesstone.com
Book:  Brain-Savvy Leaders: The Science of Significant Ministry

What The Stories We Consume Say About Us

Have you ever watched a good movie, read a good book, or heard a popular song and wondered, “What is this saying?” This is the questions we should ask when we consume media. What questions are being asked by this particular piece of pop culture and what answers does the gospel offer?

One of the best discerners of culture is my friend Mike Cosper, pastor of Worship at Sojourn Community Church in Louisville, KY. I had the chance recently to sit down for a video chat:

The Way Home – Episode 18 featuring Jeff Goins

Excited to feature my friend Jeff Goins on the podcast. Jeff is a prolific author and blogger. Jeff has helped many people improve their writing and think through their calling from a Christian perspective. My discussion with Jeff focused on the craft of writing, finding your calling, and why art and work are not mutually exclusive.

Listen to this week’s episode of The Way Home

 
Show Notes

On the podcast I mentioned a couple of exciting things. First, if you are at the SBC, don’t miss our special free event with 9 Marks Ministries on Monday, June 15th. Mark Dever, pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church and Russell Moore, President of ERLC, will discuss “Connecting the Church and Culture.”

I also encourage you to check out our second annual National Conference. Our theme this year will be “The Gospel and Politics” Dr. Russell Moore and other evangelical leaders such as Samuel Rodriguez, Ross Douthat, Michael Gerson, David Platt and others will be discussing what Christian cultural engagement should look like especially as we head into another heated Presidential election. When you register put the coupon code: WAYHOME and get a special 15% discount.

Twitter: @jeffgoins
Website: goinswriter.com
Book:  The Art of Work

When I was hungry

One of the more interesting books I came across lately is written by Daniel Ryan Day: 10 Days Without. In this book, Day chronicles his experiment in experiencing the suffering of those who are less fortunate. Each day he gave up a personal item, such as a coat, a meal, technology. The items were carefully chosen, items that are luxuries for people in the developing world, items first-world people easily take for granted. I had the chance to interview Day for my weekly Leadership Journal blog. Here was one of the questions:

If you could speak to pastors and church leaders about what you learned in this process, what would you say?

The biggest lesson learned during this process was how to define the terms of making a difference. I don’t know about you, but I feel a lot of pressure to make a significant difference in “the world”—to make a huge impact that affects a huge number of people. This pressure became very clear during 10 days without a coat.

The reason I went without a coat, was because I found out that my local community needed 5,000 coats for single moms and their kids. We live in Colorado, and it gets really cold during the winter. It gets so cold that homeless people often pass away from the frigid temperatures. At the time, single moms and their kids was the fastest growing population of homeless people in our community, yet the rescue mission projected that they only needed 5,000 coats.

I decided to go 10 days without a coat to see if I could make a significant dent on the need (part of me naively thought that I may collect all 5,000). From a P.R. perspective, the challenge went amazing! I ended up on two local news programs, a Sunday school class in a different state participated, and a lady I didn’t know brought a bag of kids’ coats to my office. Yet at the end of the 10 days, I had only collected 100 coats! I felt like such a failure. I came up 4,900 coats shy of the mark!

Yet the Lord encouraged me with the following thought process: “Daniel, if you were able to go to the rescue mission, find one of the ladies who received a coat for her son or daughter, and ask her, ‘What did it mean to you to have a coat for your 5-year-old little girl for the winter?’ How do you think she will respond? Do you think she might say, ‘It meant the world to me?’” There’s that “the world” phrase again. The message I think the Lord was communicating to me was this: instead of trying to change the world, make it your daily goal to change someone’s world.

All of us can get so caught up in trying to change the world, make a huge impact, and reach the biggest number of people possible, that we forget the call God placed on our lives. He didn’t call us to save the world, he sent his son to do that. Instead, he has put us in a place to give food to the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothes to the naked, help to the sick, and friendship to the stranger and those in prison.

Some Of My Recent Articles: 5/8/2015

Here are a few of my recent articles:

I wrote for The Gospel Coalition on “Why You Can’t Escape from the Culture Wars.” The title is intentionally provocative, as I’m arguing against a “culture war timeout” that, in my view, would a) be impossible and b) show a lack of compassion:

The shape of our witness may change, and the culture we serve may look different than it did a generation ago. But if we care about obeying all that Jesus commanded us, we will have to die to our desire to be liked and recommit to doing as the early church did, “obeying God rather than man.”

Read the whole thing here:

I also interviewed Daniel Ryan Day for my weekly Leadership Journal blog. He’s got an interesting story. He intentionally went without one important luxury item every week in order to better acquaint himself with the suffering for marginalized people around the world. It was a fascinating interview. You can read it here.

 

The Way Home – Episode 17 featuring Erin Davis

Is it possible for us to be both connected and lonely? This is the epidemic Erin Davis describes in her new book, Connected: Curing the Pandemic of Everyone Feeling Alone Together. Erin joins me on the podcast, along with my colleague Lindsay Swartz, to discuss how life in Christ and life together in the body of Christ is the ultimate answer for the lonely longings we share.

Listen to this week’s episode of The Way Home

 
Show Notes

Leland House Press just released my ebook, Engage, Maintaining a Christian Witness Online. This is normally $2.99, but if you use the coupon code: WAYHOME, you can get it for free.

I also mentioned saving the date for August 5, for our second annual National Conference. Our theme this year will be “The Gospel and Politics” Dr. Russell Moore and other evangelical leaders such as Samuel Rodriguez, Ross Douthat, Michael Gerson, David Platt and others will be discussing what Christian cultural engagement should look like especially as we head into another heated Presidential election. When you register put the coupon code: WAYHOME and get a special 15% discount.

Twitter: @eringraffiti
Website: erindavis.org
Book:  Connected: Curing the Pandemic of Everyone Feeling Alone Together

Josh McDowell and The Reliability of Scripture

One of the most popular apologetics resources in the 20th Century was the classic Evidence that Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell. In many ways, Josh set the standard for apologetics work that would follow. Perhaps the most compelling evidence for the validity of the claims of Christianity is the increasing volume of manuscripts continually discovered by archeologists.

Well Josh McDowell is back with some new manuscript research. I interview him about this new discovery, about inherency, and his perspective on the future of the evangelical movement. Here is one of my questions:

You commissioned a team to examine these new Egyptian manuscripts. What new light will these shed on textual criticism and translation work?

Some of these discoveries from New and Old Testament fragments I recently acquired are some of the earliest known manuscript passages in existence. I don’t want to over-blow the importance of our part in what is being called an avalanche of new evidence in manuscript discovery in the entire body of Christ. Biblical archaeology is an ongoing pursuit and scientists are continually making new discoveries, literally every week. Each time we discover more fragments such as these, they add to the already massive numbers of Old and New Testament manuscripts. Today, there are more than 24,000 New Testament manuscripts in libraries, universities, and private collections throughout the world, and over 66,000 scrolls and manuscripts of the entire Bible. We expect another 1,000 Greek manuscripts will likely be discovered in the next few years.

Something is happening here that is reinforcing manuscript authority. In my recent discovery in an ancient codex, we found two of the oldest fragments from the Sermon on the Mount: Matthew 6:33 (Seek you first the kingdom of God) and Matthew 7: 4 (Take the log out of your own eye first). These discoveries take us back to around 300 AD. That’s ancient, and it bridges many years of manuscript copies on the Sermon on the Mount. That’s what these manuscript discoveries do; they help us reconstruct the actual wording of scripture and the exact lettering of that time.

In fact, a top Greek scholar of biblical artifacts recently said that in all these manuscripts that are being discovered today, you could now intellectually say that we possess the exact wording of Jesus in the New Testament, though we don’t know exactly what that is yet. With current technology, maybe in five to six years, we could possibly reconstruct a New Testament of the original wording stated by Jesus. I never dreamed this could happen in my lifetime.

You can read the rest of the interview here:

The Way Home – Episode 16 featuring Tony Merida

Today I’m taking to my friend, pastor Tony Merida. Tony is a professor, author, and pastor. He is the founding pastor of Imago Dei Church in Raleigh, N.C. He also serves as Associate Professor of Preaching at Southeastern Baptist Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C. He and his wife Kimberly have five adopted children.

Tony and I discuss his fantastic new book, Ordinary. I highly recommend this book as a really great primer on what active, robust, Christian discipleship looks like. His chapter on hospitality may be the best I’ve seen the subject anywhere.

Listen to this week’s episode of The Way Home

 
Show Notes

As I mentioned on the podcast, Leland House Press just released my ebook, Engage, Maintaining a Christian Witness Online. This is normally $2.99, but if you use the coupon code: WAYHOME, you can get it for free.

I’d also like to invite you to save the date, August 5, for our second annual National Conference. Our theme this year will be “The Gospel and Politics” Dr. Moore and other evangelical leaders such as Sammy Rodriguez will be discussing what Christian cultural engagement should look like especially as we head into another heated Presidential election. When you register put the coupon code: WAYHOME and get a special 15% discount.

Twitter: @tonymerida
Website: tonymerida.net
Book: Ordinary: How to Turn the World Upside Down