Does anyone else want to live like this?
http://www.cornerstonesimi.com/sermons/audio/2008-11-23_francis_chan_living_a_life_that_matters_pt5.mp3 (Audio)
http://www.cornerstonesimi.com/sermons/video/2008-11-23_francis_chan_living_a_life_that_matters_pt5.mov (Video)
I really want to want to.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Monday, November 24, 2008
Youth Ministry Should Not Exist (Part 1)
God holds men accountable for their wives and for their children. 1 Timothy 1:3-4 says the criteria for a pastor in the church includes watching them to see how well they pastor their own family. You go to the wife, "does he love you as Christ loves the church? does he care for you? does he provide for you? is he a good teacher? does he pray with you?" You go to the kids, "does your daddy read the Bible to you? Does he pray over you?" Because that’s what God does, that’s what a good pastor does, and that's what a good man does. Foolish men would rather their wives live their own lives so they do not feel responsibile for them or their actions. The current trend is separate bank accounts, separate cars, separate missions, and separate lives. Foolish men would rather their children live their own lives so they do not feel responsible for them or their actions. Regardless of whether the men are taking responsibility, God still holds the men responsible (Genesis 3:9). God sees us as one. One mission, one motive, one calling, one life.
As the church in America is emasculated and women are the majority in attendance, the men stay home drinking beer and watching the game, while the kids are dragged to church to be taught their doctrine from surrogate fathers. Paul warns in 1 Timothy 5:8 that if men do not provide for the needs of their family or they have denied the faith and are worse than an unbeliever.
Youth ministry exists because Christ-exalting, God-honoring men do not.
Out of the 32 boys attending my youth ministry in 2006, only one of their father's attended the church. This trend permeates American churches. One out of four boys grow up without a father. On average, the other 75% are given only 5 minutes per week of their father's time. Youth pastors are expected to act in the place of fathers by teaching boys to become men through 1 hour sermons once a week throughout the length of the child's teenage years.
I believe it is Mark Driscoll who says "if you win the men, you win the war."
The church fails when the men are ignored, because ultimately, the majority of sons will replicate the lifestyles of their fathers.
Paul tells Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:2 to entrust what he has learned to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.
Teach the men to be good husbands and good fathers, and the wives and children will follow.
*Edit: No, I'm not proposing your church ditch youth ministry. Until we meet our perfect Father, there will always be a great need to take the gospel and training to youth, it's one of my greatest passions.
*Edit #2: I am limiting the phraise "youth ministry" to the average American church program consisting of an age-specifc audience being addressed by a youth pastor.
As the church in America is emasculated and women are the majority in attendance, the men stay home drinking beer and watching the game, while the kids are dragged to church to be taught their doctrine from surrogate fathers. Paul warns in 1 Timothy 5:8 that if men do not provide for the needs of their family or they have denied the faith and are worse than an unbeliever.
Youth ministry exists because Christ-exalting, God-honoring men do not.
Out of the 32 boys attending my youth ministry in 2006, only one of their father's attended the church. This trend permeates American churches. One out of four boys grow up without a father. On average, the other 75% are given only 5 minutes per week of their father's time. Youth pastors are expected to act in the place of fathers by teaching boys to become men through 1 hour sermons once a week throughout the length of the child's teenage years.
I believe it is Mark Driscoll who says "if you win the men, you win the war."
The church fails when the men are ignored, because ultimately, the majority of sons will replicate the lifestyles of their fathers.
Paul tells Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:2 to entrust what he has learned to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.
Teach the men to be good husbands and good fathers, and the wives and children will follow.
*Edit: No, I'm not proposing your church ditch youth ministry. Until we meet our perfect Father, there will always be a great need to take the gospel and training to youth, it's one of my greatest passions.
*Edit #2: I am limiting the phraise "youth ministry" to the average American church program consisting of an age-specifc audience being addressed by a youth pastor.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Christian or activist?
Our practice should flow from our position in Christ. Our actions ought to reveal our redeemed identity, not form our identity. Consider the danger of mistaking your newly-formed habits for who you are. For instance, do you think of yourself now as an environmentalist or as a citizen of Zion with an environmental conscience? Do you draw significance from being a "pro-lifer" or from being new creation in Christ Jesus? Ask yourself, "Am I confusing my practice with my position?" or "Am I finding my significance in what I do instead of who I am in Christ?" Guard yourself from subtly allowing cultural convictions to take the place of your identity in Christ. Ground your identity in the gospel and your practice will be more redemptive and more honoring to the Lord."
Very insightful post this morning from Jonathan Dodson at Resurgence.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
vague
business, as usual
friday night i slept half the night on a twin mattress on the floor of a room decked out in spray painted bob marley lyrics and broken skateboards.
last night i slept in a king size bed in a room where they fold the towels to look like little suits and ties and flowers and crap.
saturday i ate a free hotdog from a church rummage sale, a red bull, and some of kage's french fries.
yesterday i ate at red lobster, coldstone, smokey bones, and starbucks, where i was served more food than half of the children in the world see in a year.
when i was inducted into delta mu delta, my professor said of me in my introduction "chris priestley is a walking contradiction."
Galations 1:10
how long oh Lord, how long? how long must we sing this song?
Friday, November 14, 2008
proflections...
Tonight: Dinner with Jesse and Jacob in Charleston.
Saturday: Pwning the Beckly skatepark with Kage, Davis, Adrian, Blake and Matt.
Sunday: Gathering at Crossroads in Morgantown, hitting up Sabraton skatepark with Ian and Andrew (this will be awesome!), and leaving for Blacksburg, VA.
Sunday-Thursday: Working in VA. Dave K. will be leading Plugged-In: Ephesians, during my absence Wednesday.
I miss my lovely wife already!
edit: the trip just got extended until Friday :\ hopefully i'll make it home in time for Open Mic at SoZo's
Saturday: Pwning the Beckly skatepark with Kage, Davis, Adrian, Blake and Matt.
Sunday: Gathering at Crossroads in Morgantown, hitting up Sabraton skatepark with Ian and Andrew (this will be awesome!), and leaving for Blacksburg, VA.
Sunday-Thursday: Working in VA. Dave K. will be leading Plugged-In: Ephesians, during my absence Wednesday.
I miss my lovely wife already!
edit: the trip just got extended until Friday :\ hopefully i'll make it home in time for Open Mic at SoZo's
Monday, November 10, 2008
honestly
i have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. i wish that i myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers (Romans 9:1-3).
sometimes truth feels horrible.
sometimes truth feels horrible.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Dear Church Planters
Be unapologetically tethered to the Word, and unconditionally loving of your community. This will likely cause the community to hate you for speaking the truth, and the local churches to hate you for loving the “enemy,” but it's nonetheless the only way God breaks through the barriers of liberalism and conservatism and reveals *Jesus* to people instead of religion or activism.
The great flaw of the Pharisees and the majority of the modernist evangelical community was--and often continues to be--ignoring people and only focusing on performance. Screw the world, it's all about me and my Deity and my performance in making my Deity love me and do good for me. This religion often ignores people--and always ignores compassion--and ultimately leads to either pride or depression. Pride being "I performed well, I made it, look at me, I'm better than all those sinners who aren't meeting my standards," and depression being "I can't do it, I'll never meet those standards, I'm a complete failure with no hope."
The great flaw of the emergent church is "the Word is offensive and spanks my inner-child, let's get together and love people, build community, fingerpaint our feelings, and worship incarnational Jesus as the sky faerie in lavender tights who exists to give us back rubs and free ice cream cones." Ultimately this attracts people to us but not to God, because it ignores the sin condition, and regardless of how many confession sessions we have with one another, until we understand we are failures and rebels against God and are reconciled to God through the atoning work of Christ on the Cross, we cannot please God or have relationship with Him. God is love, but love sure as Hell is not God.
Christ prayed for us that we would not be taken out of the world, but that we would be protected from the evil one. This is a prayer against radical conservatism (modern church) which says "the world is yucky, let's stay in our Christian bubbles and remind ourselves we're right while the world lives homeless, starves to death, and spends eternity in Hell," and against radical liberalism (emergent/post-modern church) which says "there is no evil one, there is no hell, everything is good, let's just accept and love everybody and never feel bad about ourselves." Christ then prays that we will be made like Him by the Truth, the Word of God. The Word causes us to move toward holiness and our love--or rather Christ's love in us--causes us to be involved in the world.
Post-modernity is in large part a response to modern thinking which said there's one way to do things (capitalism, legalism, etc) and if it isn't working we need to do it harder. It is easy to get disenfranchised with the church of the previous generation and say "they did things this way, and it sucked; therefore, we will do things this way, and it will own." Lots of rules last generation? No rules this generation. Right-wing conservatives last generation? Liberal democrats this generation. Modernists last generation? Post-modernists this generation. My prayer is that your movement would never fail to be a response primarily to the Word of God and not merely the culture or previous generation. If we are relevant, may it be because Paul walked through Mars Hill and studied the culture, the poets and the religion, and ministered accordingly, not because our parents' church was irrelevant. If we are loving, may it be because Christ was loving and not because the church we attended as children was not.
The church should not be a replica or reflection of culture, but rather should create culture within the church and use the existing culture as a conduit for evangelism outside of the church (church being movement of people, not building of bricks).
To quote Mark Driscoll the church exists to be a city within the city. A city that loves Jesus, knows their Bibles, and literally creates a culture that can bless other nations/cultures by loving and serving them. In this way, as the Word is preached through culturally relevent and accessable mediums, and as God opens eyes and hearts to see Jesus and causes them to respond in repentance, those outside the church will see this counter-culture doing life differently and say "hey, I want that," repent of their sin, trust in Jesus, and become adopted into the church where they expand the growth of this city within the city.
If the church is loving Jesus and living by His Spirit and Word, it will reflect a small, flawed reflection of what shalom in Eden looked like and what the new humanity will look like when Christ returns... absence of sin, war, strife, and suffering but also the presence of love, peace, harmony, and health (Acts 2-ish)... If that's what the church looks like, than those outside the church will want to join in. If the church does not value anything different than the city, then it will offer no appeal to culture, it will not reflect the Body of Christ, and it will not bring Glory to God. Because it always sucks when God looks down at his Body and says “that looks nothing like me.”
Therefore, as Christians we must use every cultural medium as a conduit of the gospel--i.e. media, txting, facebook, coffee houses-- to start conversations and share the Word with others. But as the church we must not allow the culture to influence us to the extent that we are also individualistic when the Bible screams community, that we are also materialistic when the Bible screams simplicity, that we are also prejudice when the Bible screams racial harmony, that we are all apathetic sinners when the Bible screams repent, and that we are all religious pricks, when the Bible screams love your neighbor as yourself....
Ultimately, may your hearts be engulfed in a passion for Christ to be treasured supremely above all things in every heart in your community in a response to the faithful teaching of Scriptures by any cultural means possible for the Glory of God and the good of His people.
The great flaw of the Pharisees and the majority of the modernist evangelical community was--and often continues to be--ignoring people and only focusing on performance. Screw the world, it's all about me and my Deity and my performance in making my Deity love me and do good for me. This religion often ignores people--and always ignores compassion--and ultimately leads to either pride or depression. Pride being "I performed well, I made it, look at me, I'm better than all those sinners who aren't meeting my standards," and depression being "I can't do it, I'll never meet those standards, I'm a complete failure with no hope."
The great flaw of the emergent church is "the Word is offensive and spanks my inner-child, let's get together and love people, build community, fingerpaint our feelings, and worship incarnational Jesus as the sky faerie in lavender tights who exists to give us back rubs and free ice cream cones." Ultimately this attracts people to us but not to God, because it ignores the sin condition, and regardless of how many confession sessions we have with one another, until we understand we are failures and rebels against God and are reconciled to God through the atoning work of Christ on the Cross, we cannot please God or have relationship with Him. God is love, but love sure as Hell is not God.
Christ prayed for us that we would not be taken out of the world, but that we would be protected from the evil one. This is a prayer against radical conservatism (modern church) which says "the world is yucky, let's stay in our Christian bubbles and remind ourselves we're right while the world lives homeless, starves to death, and spends eternity in Hell," and against radical liberalism (emergent/post-modern church) which says "there is no evil one, there is no hell, everything is good, let's just accept and love everybody and never feel bad about ourselves." Christ then prays that we will be made like Him by the Truth, the Word of God. The Word causes us to move toward holiness and our love--or rather Christ's love in us--causes us to be involved in the world.
Post-modernity is in large part a response to modern thinking which said there's one way to do things (capitalism, legalism, etc) and if it isn't working we need to do it harder. It is easy to get disenfranchised with the church of the previous generation and say "they did things this way, and it sucked; therefore, we will do things this way, and it will own." Lots of rules last generation? No rules this generation. Right-wing conservatives last generation? Liberal democrats this generation. Modernists last generation? Post-modernists this generation. My prayer is that your movement would never fail to be a response primarily to the Word of God and not merely the culture or previous generation. If we are relevant, may it be because Paul walked through Mars Hill and studied the culture, the poets and the religion, and ministered accordingly, not because our parents' church was irrelevant. If we are loving, may it be because Christ was loving and not because the church we attended as children was not.
The church should not be a replica or reflection of culture, but rather should create culture within the church and use the existing culture as a conduit for evangelism outside of the church (church being movement of people, not building of bricks).
To quote Mark Driscoll the church exists to be a city within the city. A city that loves Jesus, knows their Bibles, and literally creates a culture that can bless other nations/cultures by loving and serving them. In this way, as the Word is preached through culturally relevent and accessable mediums, and as God opens eyes and hearts to see Jesus and causes them to respond in repentance, those outside the church will see this counter-culture doing life differently and say "hey, I want that," repent of their sin, trust in Jesus, and become adopted into the church where they expand the growth of this city within the city.
If the church is loving Jesus and living by His Spirit and Word, it will reflect a small, flawed reflection of what shalom in Eden looked like and what the new humanity will look like when Christ returns... absence of sin, war, strife, and suffering but also the presence of love, peace, harmony, and health (Acts 2-ish)... If that's what the church looks like, than those outside the church will want to join in. If the church does not value anything different than the city, then it will offer no appeal to culture, it will not reflect the Body of Christ, and it will not bring Glory to God. Because it always sucks when God looks down at his Body and says “that looks nothing like me.”
Therefore, as Christians we must use every cultural medium as a conduit of the gospel--i.e. media, txting, facebook, coffee houses-- to start conversations and share the Word with others. But as the church we must not allow the culture to influence us to the extent that we are also individualistic when the Bible screams community, that we are also materialistic when the Bible screams simplicity, that we are also prejudice when the Bible screams racial harmony, that we are all apathetic sinners when the Bible screams repent, and that we are all religious pricks, when the Bible screams love your neighbor as yourself....
Ultimately, may your hearts be engulfed in a passion for Christ to be treasured supremely above all things in every heart in your community in a response to the faithful teaching of Scriptures by any cultural means possible for the Glory of God and the good of His people.
Friday, November 7, 2008
In God we DO NOT trust
I'm totally bummed about this election... and not for the reasons most of you probably expect.
I'm wholly dissappointed by the reaction of many "Christians" in the last week. Is your faith in God or in your favorite right-wing, conservative, depraved politician? I'm pretty sure, if the Bible is still true, nothing can come against the plans of the Lord, and it is He who sets up kings and takes them down. If you disagree with policies, then disagree with policies, but if I see one more melodramatic blog or one more facebook status proclaiming we've elected the wrong candidate and now we are doomed to receive nothing but condemnation from God, i'm going to throw up.
Obama's election did not surprise God. He caused it to happen.
Good Lord, you guys are freaking out about the same thing every other greed-filled, prideful, self-absorbed American is freaking out about... Our hope is not in the economy or in the republican party or in our candidates being elected, our hope is in Christ. If the economy collapses it will be under the Sovereign hand of God, and it will be for His great glory and our good. If the church is brought under persecution, it will be by the Sovereign hand of God, and it will be for His great glory and our good.
Paul had the audacity to sit in a prison cell and say "Jesus put me here." Because he had such a profound understanding and faith in the One he called Savior, he knew that even though the Romans may have arrested Him and thrown him in jail, it was ultimately God who put Him there for His purposes and His glory.
American right-wing, faithless, conservative Christians are already disowning America and claiming "THOSE Americans elected this Obamination and now the church will fail!" as if poor little God had nothing to do with it...
Read your Bibles. God doesn't need you to defend His actions. He would like for you to use this historical, monumental season that He has brought upon us to share the good news that no matter who is in office or what the economy looks like Jesus Christ is our ONLY King, and ONLY Savior and ONLY Shalom. The DOW may plummet 500 points a day, the abortion rate my increase, churches may be persecuted, and you can either point out the evil in the government (the same evil that resides in you), or you can point to the Jesus who is our only hope.
The worst of economic times may be the best catalyst for the Gospel.
The worst of tribulation may cause the Church grow like wildfire.
Your God looks pretty crappy when you freak out and lose hope because your candidate didn't win.
Stop whining about your team losing and start glorifying your Savior, if you truly hope in Him!
//Chris
In God we DO NOT Trust
- Mark Driscoll
--John Piper
I'm wholly dissappointed by the reaction of many "Christians" in the last week. Is your faith in God or in your favorite right-wing, conservative, depraved politician? I'm pretty sure, if the Bible is still true, nothing can come against the plans of the Lord, and it is He who sets up kings and takes them down. If you disagree with policies, then disagree with policies, but if I see one more melodramatic blog or one more facebook status proclaiming we've elected the wrong candidate and now we are doomed to receive nothing but condemnation from God, i'm going to throw up.
Obama's election did not surprise God. He caused it to happen.
Good Lord, you guys are freaking out about the same thing every other greed-filled, prideful, self-absorbed American is freaking out about... Our hope is not in the economy or in the republican party or in our candidates being elected, our hope is in Christ. If the economy collapses it will be under the Sovereign hand of God, and it will be for His great glory and our good. If the church is brought under persecution, it will be by the Sovereign hand of God, and it will be for His great glory and our good.
Paul had the audacity to sit in a prison cell and say "Jesus put me here." Because he had such a profound understanding and faith in the One he called Savior, he knew that even though the Romans may have arrested Him and thrown him in jail, it was ultimately God who put Him there for His purposes and His glory.
American right-wing, faithless, conservative Christians are already disowning America and claiming "THOSE Americans elected this Obamination and now the church will fail!" as if poor little God had nothing to do with it...
Read your Bibles. God doesn't need you to defend His actions. He would like for you to use this historical, monumental season that He has brought upon us to share the good news that no matter who is in office or what the economy looks like Jesus Christ is our ONLY King, and ONLY Savior and ONLY Shalom. The DOW may plummet 500 points a day, the abortion rate my increase, churches may be persecuted, and you can either point out the evil in the government (the same evil that resides in you), or you can point to the Jesus who is our only hope.
The worst of economic times may be the best catalyst for the Gospel.
The worst of tribulation may cause the Church grow like wildfire.
Your God looks pretty crappy when you freak out and lose hope because your candidate didn't win.
Stop whining about your team losing and start glorifying your Savior, if you truly hope in Him!
//Chris
In God we DO NOT Trust
- Mark Driscoll
--John Piper
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