Anyone who knows me very well knows that Tim Keller is one of my heroes. Why? Because he is radically captured by the Gospel and it comes through so clearly in his teaching and preaching. In Fall 2005 he preached a sermon on the Prodigal Sons that is amazing! If you take only one piece of advice from me, please listen to it: http://www.redeemer2.com/visioncampaign/index.cfm?page=vision_sermons&week=1
The other messages from this series can be found at:
http://www.redeemer2.com/visioncampaign/index.cfm?page=vision_sermons&week=1
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Funky Presbyterian: This is what the gospel looks like.
In contrast to the firefighters: This is what the gospel looks like. from my friend Greg's blog
What does it look like to embody the antithesis of the Gospel?
This article was shocking to me!
Feb 16, 2006
Mo. Firefighters Refuse to Help Non-Member
MONETT, Mo. (AP) -- Rural firefighters stood by and watched a fire destroy a garage and a vehicle because the property owner had not paid membership dues.
Bibaldo Rueda - who was injured battling the flames Monday - offered to pay the dues as the fire blazed away, but the Monett Rural Fire Department does not have a policy for on-the-spot billing, Sheriff's Detective Robert Evenson said.
Fire Chief Ronnie Myers defended the no-pay, no-aid policy, saying the membership-based organization could not survive if people thought the department would respond for free. The department said it will fight a fire without question if a life is believed to be in danger.
Rueda used a garden hose and buckets to fight the flames while firefighters stood by on the road, watching in case the blaze spread to neighboring properties owned by members. The fire eventually burned itself out.
Rueda said no one told him about the dues policy when he moved in 1 1/2 years ago.
With this happening in rural Missouri, I would almost be willing to bet most of the firefighters were churchgoers.
When we understand and increasingly believe the Gospel and God's radical love for us revealed in it, we will begin to embody it in missional living. A failure to believe the Gospel in the stuff of life leads to self-centered, I'm-only-going-to-help-you-if-you-pay-your-dues type living.
Feb 16, 2006
Mo. Firefighters Refuse to Help Non-Member
MONETT, Mo. (AP) -- Rural firefighters stood by and watched a fire destroy a garage and a vehicle because the property owner had not paid membership dues.
Bibaldo Rueda - who was injured battling the flames Monday - offered to pay the dues as the fire blazed away, but the Monett Rural Fire Department does not have a policy for on-the-spot billing, Sheriff's Detective Robert Evenson said.
Fire Chief Ronnie Myers defended the no-pay, no-aid policy, saying the membership-based organization could not survive if people thought the department would respond for free. The department said it will fight a fire without question if a life is believed to be in danger.
Rueda used a garden hose and buckets to fight the flames while firefighters stood by on the road, watching in case the blaze spread to neighboring properties owned by members. The fire eventually burned itself out.
Rueda said no one told him about the dues policy when he moved in 1 1/2 years ago.
With this happening in rural Missouri, I would almost be willing to bet most of the firefighters were churchgoers.
When we understand and increasingly believe the Gospel and God's radical love for us revealed in it, we will begin to embody it in missional living. A failure to believe the Gospel in the stuff of life leads to self-centered, I'm-only-going-to-help-you-if-you-pay-your-dues type living.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Book Recommendation: The Other Six Days by R Paul Stevens
The Other Six Days: Vocation, Work and Ministry in Biblical Perspective by R. Paul Stevens is another really good book. It is quite provocative (and I don't agree with some of his views: but do I agree with any book without exception? But I digress....) yet much of what he brings up about the calling of every Christian is compelling.
Here are a few quotes:
"a theology of the whole people of God must encompass not only the life of God’s people gathered, the ekklesia, but the church dispersed into the world, the diaspora, in marketplace, government, professional offices, schools, and homes" (8)
John Stott: “It is safe to say that unbalanced notions about either clergy or laity are due to unbalanced notions of the Church. Indeed, to be more precise, too low a view of laity is due to too high a view of clergy, and too high a view of clergy is due to too low a view of the Church” (50) [qtd from Stott, One People, 18]
“Our ordinary occupations find their true meaning in something larger than personal fulfillment. They are callings taken up in what the apostle Paul calls ‘my purpose’ (2 Tim 3:10)…. the Christian doctrine of vocation—so central to the theology of the whole people of God—starts with being called to Someone before we are called to do something” (72)
“We live in a post-vocational age. Without any theology of vocation we lapse into debilitating alternatives: fatalism (doing what is required by ‘the forces’ and ‘the powers’); luck (which denies purposefulness in life and reduces our life to a bundle of accidents); karma (which ties performance to future rewards); nihilism (which denies that there is any good end to which the travail of history might lead); and, the most common alternative today, self-actualization (in which we invent the meaning and purpose of our lives, making us magicians). In contrast the biblical doctrine of vocation proposes that the whole of our lives finds meaning in relation to the sweet summons of a good God” (72).
“The whole of our life has the glorious prospect of living out the great doctrines of the faith. The doctrine of the Trinity, for example, directs God-imaging creatures to live relationally…. The incarnation revolutionizes our attitude to things and promotes a radical Christian materialism. The atonement equips us to live mercifully. Ecclesiology evokes the experience of peoplehood, living as the laos of God rather than a bouquet of individual believers….Eschatology teaches us to view time as a gift of God rather than a resource to be managed” (244-245)
“What makes an activity Christian is not the husk but the heart… What makes a work Christian is faith, hope, and love. This is a crucial point. Orthopaxy is not merely accomplished by the skillful performance of ministerial duties…. I can preach a sermon to impress people; I can fix a shower door at home for the glory of God. I have probably done both” (249).
I will interact with some of the powerful points from the book sometime soon.
Here are a few quotes:
"a theology of the whole people of God must encompass not only the life of God’s people gathered, the ekklesia, but the church dispersed into the world, the diaspora, in marketplace, government, professional offices, schools, and homes" (8)
John Stott: “It is safe to say that unbalanced notions about either clergy or laity are due to unbalanced notions of the Church. Indeed, to be more precise, too low a view of laity is due to too high a view of clergy, and too high a view of clergy is due to too low a view of the Church” (50) [qtd from Stott, One People, 18]
“Our ordinary occupations find their true meaning in something larger than personal fulfillment. They are callings taken up in what the apostle Paul calls ‘my purpose’ (2 Tim 3:10)…. the Christian doctrine of vocation—so central to the theology of the whole people of God—starts with being called to Someone before we are called to do something” (72)
“We live in a post-vocational age. Without any theology of vocation we lapse into debilitating alternatives: fatalism (doing what is required by ‘the forces’ and ‘the powers’); luck (which denies purposefulness in life and reduces our life to a bundle of accidents); karma (which ties performance to future rewards); nihilism (which denies that there is any good end to which the travail of history might lead); and, the most common alternative today, self-actualization (in which we invent the meaning and purpose of our lives, making us magicians). In contrast the biblical doctrine of vocation proposes that the whole of our lives finds meaning in relation to the sweet summons of a good God” (72).
“The whole of our life has the glorious prospect of living out the great doctrines of the faith. The doctrine of the Trinity, for example, directs God-imaging creatures to live relationally…. The incarnation revolutionizes our attitude to things and promotes a radical Christian materialism. The atonement equips us to live mercifully. Ecclesiology evokes the experience of peoplehood, living as the laos of God rather than a bouquet of individual believers….Eschatology teaches us to view time as a gift of God rather than a resource to be managed” (244-245)
“What makes an activity Christian is not the husk but the heart… What makes a work Christian is faith, hope, and love. This is a crucial point. Orthopaxy is not merely accomplished by the skillful performance of ministerial duties…. I can preach a sermon to impress people; I can fix a shower door at home for the glory of God. I have probably done both” (249).
I will interact with some of the powerful points from the book sometime soon.
Book Recommendation: Don't Waste Your Life by Piper
John Piper is another hero of mine. His book Don't Waste Your Life is a very straight-forward, life-giving, and convicting. God is using the book to propel me to be Cross-embracing in the whole of life.
Here are a couple of quotes:
Pressed by the Bible to Know One Thing:
"I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2).”
“The people that make a durable difference in the world are not the people who have mastered many things, but who have been mastered by one great thing. If you want your life to count, if you want the ripple effect of the pebbles you drop to become waves that reach the ends of the earth and roll on into eternity, you don’t need to have a high IQ. You don’t have to have good looks or riches or come from a fine family or a fine school. Instead you have to know a few great, majestic, unchanging, obvious, simple, glorious things—or one great all-embracing thing—and be set on fire by them.”
A Tragedy in the Making
"You may not be sure that you want your life to make a difference. Maybe you don’t care very much whether you make a lasting difference for the sake of something great. You just want people to like you. If people would just like being around you, you’d be satisfied. Or if you could just have a good job with a good wife, or husband, and a couple of good kids and a nice car and long weekends and a few good friends, a fun retirement, and a quick and easy death, and no hell—if you could have all that (even without God)—you would be satisfied. That is a tragedy in the making. A wasted life.”
Here are a couple of quotes:
Pressed by the Bible to Know One Thing:
"I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2).”
“The people that make a durable difference in the world are not the people who have mastered many things, but who have been mastered by one great thing. If you want your life to count, if you want the ripple effect of the pebbles you drop to become waves that reach the ends of the earth and roll on into eternity, you don’t need to have a high IQ. You don’t have to have good looks or riches or come from a fine family or a fine school. Instead you have to know a few great, majestic, unchanging, obvious, simple, glorious things—or one great all-embracing thing—and be set on fire by them.”
A Tragedy in the Making
"You may not be sure that you want your life to make a difference. Maybe you don’t care very much whether you make a lasting difference for the sake of something great. You just want people to like you. If people would just like being around you, you’d be satisfied. Or if you could just have a good job with a good wife, or husband, and a couple of good kids and a nice car and long weekends and a few good friends, a fun retirement, and a quick and easy death, and no hell—if you could have all that (even without God)—you would be satisfied. That is a tragedy in the making. A wasted life.”
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