Month: October 2020

Episode 098: An Interview with Dr. Derwin Gray // The Good Life: What Jesus Teaches About Finding True Happiness

In this episode we sit down with our good friend Dr. Derwin Gray to talk with him about his new book, The Good Life: What Jesus Teaches About Finding True Happiness. Grab a copy for yourself here.

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In 2014, we were a four-year-old church plant, and I started discovering that regardless of race or social class, people were not happy… so I started wondering, “What did Jesus say about happiness?”

Hiding in plain sight, in the greatest sermon ever preached, by the greatest preacher that ever preached, Jesus (in the beatitudes) teaches us about true happiness…

Jesus outlines eight characteristics that are actually a living portrait of himself… and we are invited to enter into Christ and his story… happiness is not about perpetually having good things happen… it’s about God making us good for the world…

Happiness is the divine birthright of every child born into the kingdom of God… but it is a happiness that is better than feelings… it is something that happens to you as you become like Christ… the beatitudes turn us into people we would want to be friends with…

Jesus is not a product and the church is not a corporation… we’re not selling a product to a group of consumers to help them fulfill something that THEY need fulfilled in their lives…

So much of the modern church has been built on a consumeristic understanding of Jesus… a Jesus that is merely used for what he can give us is not a Jesus that we can adore… and a Jesus we cannot adore is a Jesus we cannot worship…

The good news is that there is a new king, who is the true Lord of all and has launched his kingdom on earth, and now is welcoming us into his kingdom to fulfill the purpose for which we were created…

We will never treat someone above the label we give them… and “neighbor” is how Jesus describes humanity… we are called to treat everyone like Jesus died for them, because he did…

Episode 097: Leadership During Turbulent Times: An Interview with Dr. Ben Witherington

In this episode we sit down with New Testament scholar Dr. Ben Witherington to talk about church leadership during turbulent times.

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My parents were devout Christians and raised me in church… I was there every week and those people really shaped me… and I had some wonderful pastors along the way who were a big encouragement to me…

As I got older, there were a couple years where I didn’t really attend church… the churches seemed very formal… so I wandered until the Lord called me back through some friends into InterVarsity… that did me a world of good during a very turbulent time…

One of the things that is clear to me about right now is that when you have a crisis, you find out which people have a civic religion and which people have a genuine Christian religion… there is a sort of winnowing effect in a crisis, and you find out where people really place their trust…

I think what I want to say to pastors right now is that they need to take half-baked Christians and put them back in the oven… you don’t get to wear the big ‘C’ on your forehead if *this* is what you think about race, disease, etc…

We have a teaching moment right now, an opportunity to raise the level of biblical spirituality and sanctification, because people are struggling… we learn more from trial and tribulation than we do from other times, so: carpe diem—seize the day and let people know how Christians are supposed to behave…

We need more solid, meaty biblical preaching and teaching that’s bringing the text to bear on the situation at hand… a good preacher knows how to do this… I’m not talking about speaking to the issue du jour, but giving people the tools to fight off sub-Christianity…

It is time for us to redouble our efforts to make sure our ministers are well-equipped to equip the saints for the works of ministry…

With fallen human beings, sins like the sin of racism don’t go away; they keep resurfacing… we need to look to genuinely people like (civil rights leader) John Lewis who lived his faith out in day to day life… to Christians who will call us to action…

To the pastors of today I want to say: you are a long way from being finished… read 1 Kings 18 and 19: now is no time to give up; now is the time to redouble your efforts…

Episode 096: 10,000 Fathers

In this episode we sit down with a new addition to our staff, Aaron Keyes, to talk about the mission of his organization 10,000 Fathers and how to raise up worship leaders as genuine pastors in our churches. You can find out more about 10,000 Fathers at worship.school.

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I was never a great musical performer or singer… what I was able to do as a worship leader was to open the Scriptures and invite people to try it out… people came alive to that… I started realizing how rare it was to be led in worship by Scripture…

The stuff that pastors are trained in now is very different than what worship leaders are trained in… the apprenticeship and training that is required for being in pastoral leadership in the church doesn’t really exist for worship leaders…

Big songs will only carry small leaders so far… and that’s what’s happening… but the problem is more with the system—we’re hiring people because they know how to play guitar, and then we’re mad at them because they ONLY know how to play guitar…

The reason we started our worship school was to address this need… my wife and I and our pastor started praying and decided to bring worship leaders from around the world in to come and live with us… we wanted to do discipleship in the context of life together…

We’ve shifted it now to an 18-month thing where people don’t have to move… our goal is to raise worship leaders up who can be elders in the church for years to come…

We’ve had pastors call us to say that having worship leaders who can help them make disciples is such a gift… and that’s what we want to see…

Many worship leaders live with anxiety about their relevance… when they’re no longer relevant, they exit ministry… 10,000 Fathers is trying to equip people so that when their stage value starts going down, their spiritual and practical value to the church goes up…

Worship leaders are easy targets… but most of them want depth and want to be helpful to the church for a long time… most would jump at the opportunity to be equipped for that…

Episode 095: A Conversation on Church Discipline

In this conversation, we sit down to talk about the issue of church discipline, what it is, and why it is so important.

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I have children who are now 19 and 21… I can’t imagine what kind of human beings they would now be without rules and safeguards, without discipline…

When I was a young pastor, we had to subject a man to church discipline… when we came back to church the next Sunday, there was a palpable shift in the air… we had regained the ethos of our community…

Let’s not be surprised: if we start treating people like customers, they are going to start acting like customers… we have a sacred responsibility to make sure that the atmosphere inside our congregations is as healthy as we can make it…

Two of the lenses we can use to think about church discipline are: is it threatening the unity of the church, and is it threatening the witness of the church?

Everything is highly relational and gentle, as the Holy Spirit is with us… we’re not talking about coming in with an iron fist, but about loving one another enough to keep people from going off the cliff…

Jesus doesn’t say “get behind me Satan” because he hates Peter but because he loves Peter… this is part of the ministry of Jesus…

To be holy is to be healthy, so if we’re not concerned with holiness, we’re not concerned with health… church discipline needs to be a ministry of healing…

What we want is our congregation to take ownership of this… this is the Matthew 18 model… it’s not until “step 3” that the church gets involved…

I want 98% of the correction in the church to happen within relationships where trust has been forged… the elders are called in when grassroots correction doesn’t work…

No matter what size of church you have, there is a core group that is helping you lead… your core is like the engine of your car: if your engine is broke, your car is useless…

I believe the reason that most church leaders don’t get involved in church discipline is that they know that the first person to be judged will be them… so they ignore the topic altogether…

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