Daniel Darling's Blog, page 53

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

The Way Home – Episode 15 featuring Bruce Ashford

Today on the podcast I have a conversation with my friend Bruce Ashford, who joined me in the studio during our recent Leadership Summit on Racial Reconciliation.  Bruce is Provost and Associate Professor of Theology and Culture at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, NC.

Bruce and I are going to discuss his latest book, Every Square Inch. I love this book for a variety of reasons, mainly because it recovers, I believe, a biblical view of culture. I’m particularly interested in the way Bruce help us reshape our view of work. Bruce is one of the leading thinkers on the intersection of faith and culture.

Before we begin, I want to let you know about two really cool things at ERLC. First, our 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.

Secondly, I want 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.

I also have a coupon code for this conference as well.  When you register put the coupon code: WAYHOME and get a special 15% discount.

Listen to this week’s episode of The Way Home

 
Show Notes


Twitter: @bruceashford
Website: betweenthetimes.com
Book:  Every Square Inch: An Introduction to Cultural Engagement for Christians

Why Christians Should Be Clear

This week I’m over at the Lifeway Church Leader’s blog opining on three essential traits for countercultural Christian leaders: courage, clarity, and civility (how’s that for some serious alliteration?). This comes from 1 Peter 3:15. Here is what I said about that second point:

The second thing Peter urges for counter-cultural leaders is clarity. “Have an answer for every man” doesn’t just mean “speak up whenever you feel like it.” Instead it implies a seriousness, a soberness, a thorough grasp of theology and an ability to speak well into whatever culture you are serving.

Sometimes well-meaning, but uninformed speech actually hurts the cause. I think we saw this clearly in the latest firestorm over religious liberty. Some of the politicians called on to defend good legislation were overmatched by the questions they faced. They were not adequately prepared to give answers and defend the rights of conscience. This resulted not only in defeat, but actually retreat on the issue of religious liberty.

This is sadly the case in many areas of gospel proclamation and cultural engagement. It’s not enough for us to have the courage to stand up for what we believe. We also must work hard, study, and understand what it is we are trying to communicate. What’s more, we should continually work on honing our message in such a way that it is communicated in a way that people can understand. Frankly, we shouldn’t speak into areas where we are poorly informed. It doesn’t help the cause if we don’t know what we are talking about. Clarity matters, even more so in an increasingly hostile culture.

Consider that Paul asked the Church at Ephesus to pray for him to have clarity in his gospel presentations. If Paul was concerned about clarity, shouldn’t we care about it and pray for it? I think this should be a primary focus for the Church in the 21stcentury: praying that God would raise up courageous leaders with courage and clarity. This is what we need in an age of confusion.

You can read the whole thing here:

The Way Home – Episode 14 featuring Johnnie Moore

My friend Johnnie Moore joins me to discuss ISIS and the persecution of Christians. Johnnie is the former Vice President for Executive Projects and Media Relations and Campus Pastor of Liberty University. He has been an outspoken advocate for persecuted Christians in the Middle East and has a new book, a must read, Defying Isis. I’m grateful that Johnnie took time to join me and update us on the status of displaced Christians and how we can get involved in the effort to help our suffering brothers and sisters.

Listen to this week’s episode of The Way Home

 
Show Notes


Twitter: @johnniem
Websites: defyingisis.com and cradlefund.org 
Book:  Defying ISIS: Preserving Christianity in the Place of Its Birth and in Your Own Backyard

On the podcast I mentioned that ERLC will have a booth and be hosting an event at the Southern Baptist Convention in Columbus, Ohio, in June where we will also be hosting an event with 9Marks ministries. We encourage you to stop by and say hello and pick up some resources for your church.

I also want you to mark your calendar for August 5, 2015, we will host our second annual National Conference. This will be held in Nashville, Tenn., at the Music City Center. This year’s theme will be “The Gospel and Politics.” Russell Moore and other evangelical leaders such as Samuel Rodriguez will be discussing what Christian cultural engagement should look like, especially as we head into another heated presidential election.

If you register for this conference be sure to use coupon code: WAYHOME and get a 15% discount.

Should Pastors Have Good Friends From their Church?

At Leadership Journal I discuss the advice I received, upon ordination to ministry, to not become good friends with people in my congregation. It was well-meaning, but wrong advice, I thought at the time. Here’s an excerpt of the article:

I don’t see a detachment from people in Jesus’ public ministry. Yes, Jesus took time to get away from the crowds and be alone—something too few pastors do—but this is the same Jesus who purposefully chose, discipled, and cultivated 12 men to walk closely with him for three years. What’s more, Jesus further winnowed his inner circle to three: Peter, James, and John and had perhaps a best friend in John, often described as “the Apostle whom Jesus loved.”

So Jesus, the Good Shepherd, had good friends. He chose a best friend. How can we do less? Of course, there are a few considerations. Unlike Jesus, by choosing and forming deep friendship with a few parishioners, we can form an unhealthy bubble and be isolated from real issues and legitimate criticism. We can also send a signal that we favor, both in our preaching and in our service, certain people over others. Jesus didn’t allow his close friendships to keep him from ministry to others—and neither should we.

You can read the whole thing here.