Converge Church Planter Assessment - Day 1
Today Kalee and I made our way to Chicago for the Converge Church Planters Assessment. According to the Converge Worldwide website, the Converge assessment is:
An intensive four-day event staffed by trained assessors to encourage and observe church planting candidates. Candidates have the opportunity to preach, cast vision, work in team settings, and meet with counselors and assessors to prepare for life as a church planter. Assessors provide a personalized and thorough assessment of church planting candidates.
Essentially, it’s a process designed to help discern whether or not I am qualified, called, and equipped with the tools and gifts necessary to plant a church.
As we enter into this process, we’ve been absolutely overwhelmed with prayers and support from friends, family, members of the 2 Pillars community, Converge Heartland pastors, and complete strangers. I’m hoping to keep you all updated by posting a “quick and dirty” recap/debrief after each day of the assessment here.
Some notes and highlights from today:
- It’s been a long day—we woke up at 3:30 this morning to catch our flight to Chicago.
- The assessment is being held at Missio Dei Chicago, just a few blocks from Wrigley Field. The Cubs played a home game tonight, so we were able to enjoy a bit of game-day atmosphere as we walked to our hotel at the end of the day.
- I’m glad that today is over. I had two major presentations: a 10-minute mini-sermon and a philosophy of ministry presentation. The mini-sermon was followed by a brief description of my “call to church planting” and Kalee and I were asked to share five adjectives that describe one another. Q&A followed each presentation as well.
- Finally, the day ended with a Biblical Knowledge Survey exam.
Fortunately, there are no more presentations to anticipate in the coming days.
Alright, I’m cutting this post short. It’s time for bed as we have another long day ahead of us. Thank you to all of you who are faithfully lifting us up in prayer this week.
More tomorrow.
How to Overcome Temptation
In this video from Desiring God, Ben Stuart discusses temptation and two ways to overcome it:
James 1:12–18:
Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.
Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
Link List for March 27, 2014
Noah: Five Positive Facts about this Film | Ed Stetzer (Part 1) Dr. Jerry Johnson, President of the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB), shares some positives of the new Bible film, due out this week.
Noah: Five Negative Features about this Film | Ed Stetzer (Part 2)
Dr. Jerry Johnson shares some negatives of the new Noah movie.
Noah: Application for Christians and Hollywood | Ed Stetzer (Part 3)
Dr. Jerry Johnson answers the question, “Should we go see the Noah movie?”
OmniFocus 2 for Mac Resumes Testing
The Omni Group announced yesterday that OmniFocus 2 for the Mac will ship in June 2014 and is now ready for its final round of testing. I’m using the latest release full-time now and I like it—a lot. Read the entire post for more information about joining the private test waiting list.
Women Are Not Men | David Murray
David Murray pulled some interesting stats and tidbits from a recent episode of the Freakonomics podcast on the differences between men and women.
The Missing Mark of Leadership | Ryan Huguley
We don’t need anymore proud leaders - the world is filled with them. What we need most are humble leaders, following the leadership of Jesus who humbled himself to the point of death for those he led (Phil. 2:9). Imagine what Jesus would do with an army of hard working, humble leaders. Your family, neighborhood, workplace, school, and church would never be same.
Roll Your Own Podcast Feed with Huffduffer
I’m a big fan of podcasts. Big fan.
In any given week I spend more time listening to podcasts than I do music. In Downcast, my preferred podcatcher app for the Mac and iPhone, you’ll find a rather long list of subscriptions to a wide variety of podcasts.
Now, most of the audio content I consume comes from these podcasts. Every now and again, however, I run across something that I want to listen to outside of these feeds. It might be an episode of a podcast that I’m not subscribed to or a stand-alone audio file. Regardless, this causes problems since Downcast is central to my audio-listening workflow. Simply put, if it isn’t in Downcast, then I’m probably not going to listen to it.
Enter Huffduffer.
Huffduffer is a service that allows you to turn those mp3 files that you run across on the internet into a customized podcast feed. When you find audio that you want to mark for later listening, simply “huffduff it” using the handy Huffduffer bookmarklet or Chrome extension. This adds the audio to your podcast feed as its own episode. Subscribe to your podcast feed and you’re set.
Huffduffer also allows you to tag audio, follow other Huffduffer users, and discover content using search and tags.
everPresent Review
I met Jeremy Writebol a few years ago when I was making monthly trips to Seattle, WA as a Re:Train student. Despite his fondness for the Missouri Tigers[1], Jeremy, a fellow student, emerged as a great friend. He recently asked if I would read and review his new book, everPresent: How the Gospel Relocates Us in the Present. Of course, I was more than happy to do so.
Read on…
Place Matters
Where are you?
Jeremy bookends everPresent with this seemingly simple question. The answer is obvious, isn’t it? Right now I’m here, sitting in front of my computer at a neighborhood coffee shop writing this blog post.
Yet, Jeremy challenges the Christian to answer this question carefully, on purpose, and in light of gospel truth. Our answer to this question matters. It matters because place matters. Place matters because we were created in the image of an omnipresent God. To use Jeremy’s words, “Place matters because God made it matter.”
Dislocation and Relocation
Place matters, and yet, we live in a “world of dislocation.” Things simply aren’t as they should be. Our world is full of pain, suffering, and death. Something is wrong.
Our own lives are no different. We’re often distracted, overcommitted, anxious, and weary. Our world is dislocated and so are we.
The root cause of this dislocation is sin. Jeremy explains:
The fact that this world where we live does not reflect the glory of God well is because our souls have been dislocated.
This dislocation began with Adam and Eve and plagues us still today. It affects our relationship with God. It affects our relationship with one another. Though we love to try, we’re powerless to relocate ourselves and make things right. We need someone to intervene. We need a Savior to relocate our dislocation and to reconcile us to God.
The Implications of Our Relocation
Once Jeremy establishes this vital foundation of the gospel, he spends the last half of his book exploring the practical implications of our relocation in Christ in everyday life. In doing so, he does the important work of deconstructing the idea that there is somehow a dualistic divide between the sacred and profane, the holy place and the secular place. All places matter.
As a new parent, I was encouraged and helped greatly by Jeremy’s chapter on the ever-present gospel in the home. His application to the workplace addresses, what I have observed to be, one of the most difficult places to live out one’s gospel identity. Finally, the final two chapters on social environments and the city challenged me to develop and pursue a bigger, more intentional vision for engaging my city and neighborhood context with the good news of the gospel.
Be Relocated
I’m really excited about this new resource and I look forward to getting it into the hands of others. In a world full of distractions, it’s more difficult than ever before to actually be present. Yet, our mission as God’s sent people demands it. In _everPresent, _Jeremy confronts our tendency toward dislocation and invites us to be relocated by the gospel in the present.
Pick up the everPresent paperback from Amazon or the ebook from Gospel-Centered Discipleship.
- In case you’re wondering, Nebraska won that year’s matchup with the Tigers, 31–17. ↩
Neither Do I Condemn You
I’ll be preaching this Sunday, week 17 of our current sermon series through the Gospel According to John. Specifically, I’ll be preaching from John 7:53–8:11, the story of the woman caught in adultery.__
As I was doing some reading for this weekend I ran across this passionate quote by Bruce Milne[1]:
It is surely a remarkable fact that he who is the embodiment of divine holiness, the ‘I AM’ who met the people of God at Sinai in fire and thunder (Ex. 19:16ff.), should say to a self-confessed sinner with the guilt of the broken commandment heavy on her conscience, neither do I condemn you. Here is the miracle of the grace of God. There is no greater wonder than this. The turning of water into wine, the healing of a dying lad by a word, the feeding of five thousand and more with a snack lunch, the walking on a storm-tossed sea; none of these, nor all of them together, compares with this, that Jesus said neither do I condemn you. In this sentence, and in the heart of mercy which lay behind it, is all our hope and all our salvation for ever.
The miracle of the grace of God indeed!
- Bruce Milne, The Message of John (The Bible Speaks Today; ed. John R. W. Stott; Accordance electronic ed. Downers Grove.: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 123–127. ↩