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Check out this interview with Matt Chandler from the SBC Pastor's Conference. He talks about how a pastor can refocus his church on the gospel and how cancer has affected his family.
Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe is available now. Read a free chapter and find out more.
Recently I sat down with David Platt, Pastor of the Church of Brook Hills in Birmingham, AL, and author of Radical, at the Advance the Church 2010 Conference. In part one of our conversation, David shares his thoughts about the spiritual landscape of the South, his counsel for younger leaders, and his "one thing" for pastors.
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A few years ago, I heard an interview with a Christian college professor. Having logged three decades in the classroom, he was asked to compare college students today with those of the past. Decades ago, he indicated, incoming freshmen arrived sporting some serious aspiration. If asked, they could (and would!) become the leaders, innovators, and agents of change for industry, government, and commerce. Their ideas would influence society and determine the course of civilization. Yep, humility was weak but ambition ran strong and deep.
But over time the professor detected a shift. Where postmodernism flourished, ambition went AWOL. Students grew ambivalent. Gone were the dreams for making an impact. In their place was the ethos of “Whatever!”—student-speak for, “believe in nothing, care for nothing, interfere with nothing, and live for nothing.”
The professor knew something vital had been lost.
Ambition cannot survive without dreams for the future. “To be ambitious,” notes author Joseph Epstein, “is to be future-minded.” But what happens when the future-minded energy of ambition meets the future-ambivalent morass of postmodernity? Ambition stalls. Life becomes the experience of perpetual randomness. We jettison ultimate truth unaware of its connection to hope and the capacity to dream.
But that’s not all. With the cultural dive into postmodernism, future-dependent values like courage, vision, and enterprise also take a hit. Progress and goals give way to indifference and immediate gratification.
We face a generation of young men and women missing a transcendent vision. The engine of ambition lies silent—a quaint artifact from a bygone era.
In The Social Worlds of Higher Education, Mark Edmundson observes this lack of transcendent vision: “It’s a lack of capacity for enthusiasm that defines what I’ve come to think of as the reigning generational style. Whether the students are sorority fraternity types, grunge aficionados, piercer/tattooers, black or white, rich or middle class, … they are, nearly across the board very, very, self-contained. On good days, they display a light, appealing glow; on bad days, shuffling disgruntlement. But there’s little fire, little passion to be found. . . . This is a culture intensely committed to a laid-back norm.”
Colleges are not the problem; they simply reflect the problem. Where postmodernism flourishes, passion never reaches above the level of critical anger at things that don’t seem right. Causes have momentum only to the extent that they have viral cachet. And everything matters right now, only so far as it is right now. The future is not intentionally snuffed out. Postmodernism just hangs a “Do Not Disturb” sign over doors of opportunity. Few risk the hassle of knocking. Fewer still exert the energy to walk expectantly through the door.
God wants to rescue ambition. But not to build future monuments to our own glory. I’m talking about an instinct that looks for new ways to glorify God through our dreams. Paul said, “But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Phil. 3:13–14).
Think about it: Paul’s got one thing in view. He wants to forget all that once defined him and press forward into future exploits. For Paul the future was so essential he pressed towards it with dreams and desires, with fiery ambition!
I want the kind of ambition he describes. What about you?
As Christians do we see the opportunity in postmodern culture for the life-transforming message of Jesus Christ? Is there anything more toxic to apathy than the heaven or hell implications of the gospel? The more I study Scripture and the culture around me, the more I see a world of people who have not only run out of answers, they have run out of questions.
We need ambition—godly ambition that lives grateful for past success while stretching and straining forward to what lies ahead. An ambition that will not rest until more churches are planted, more marriages helped, more art created, more people reached, more businesses started, more disciples made. An ambition aware of postmodernity but living for eternity.
You can learn more about godly ambition in Dave Harvey's new book Rescuing Ambition.
Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe is available now. Read a free chapter and find out more.
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What should Americans learn from the post-Christian culture of western Europe? In this short interview, Steve Timmis talks about how the church is God's mission strategy and why Americans should learn from Europe.
Tim Chester and Steve Timmis present a vision for churches centered on gospel community. Find out more.
Simplicity. That word keeps popping up! It comes up in conversations I’ve been having. I hear it used in movies and in books. It’s something people desire but have given up hope of ever experiencing. But I long for it—long to live a simple, uncomplicated and focused life, a life that is not moving too fast where I try to do too much. A life that is not allowing the Tyranny of the Urgent to take over and run me ragged physically and emotionally.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about living simply—keeping my life and ministry simple. Recently, the concept of simplicity has quietly and forcefully surfaced in my Bible reading (some examples include Luke 14:11, 1 Cor. 2:1-2, and 1 Tim. 2:2).
When I think of simply being myself, of operating simply in life and ministry, I am not thinking of being semi-retired, or of joining Henry David Thoreau on Walden Pond. I'm thinking of focusing on a few things in ministry and life, and practicing the advice of Steven Covey: “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” It's about priorities and concentration.
Leaders I work with struggle to consistently keep things simple—to clearly know what they are about, what they are called to, and gifted to do. They bounce from one thing to the next, filling their schedules with lots of activities, being more reactive than proactive. Author and speaker Fred Smith says that “busyness is the new spirituality.” Many leaders are not content with who they are, where they are, what they are doing, and what Jesus is doing. They long to be someone else, be somewhere else, and do something else.
Whatever happened to simple contentment? Life seems to hurl a lot at us. Go there, do this, buy that, help with this, commit to that. I find it so easy to be distracted from the simplicity of who I am and what I am about. I’m often tempted to cave in to the expectations and demands of others—especially those whose opinions matter deeply to me. At times it’s difficult to hear the voice of God in the midst of all the noise of life.
In my next post I'll give you 7 things I'm doing to simplify my life.
To be continued.
Too many Christian leaders stumble, burn out, or veer off track. Learn how to endure from a seasoned pastor and leadership coach in Leaders Who Last.
An e-book by Dr. John S. Bohannon
Note: We've updated this book to a smaller, more convenient 6x9 trade paperback size.
The emerging church movement has significantly influenced contemporary Christianity. Evidence abounds—the creation of blogs, conferences, seminary classes, doctorate programs, and the birth of an entire class of literature. In recent years much has been written to help the church better understand this latest Christian phenomenon. However, a deficiency still exists when it comes to understanding the role of preaching within the movement. Since preaching is God’s appointed means to convert sinners and preserve the church, then an understanding of this movement’s preaching is of vital importance to the church and the culture it serves.
"An absolutely superb treatment. Dr. Bohannon's critique and evaluation is thorough, even exhaustive! It is also judicious and compelling. This book is a must read for those who care about the importance of theological conviction and its impact on the contemporary ministry of the Word. Not all who read this work will agree with his conclusions (I do!), but all will be forced to carefully consider what he says."
—Danny Akin
President, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary
"If you're passionate about preaching and want to discern what preaching should look like in emerging contexts, you'll want to read this book. Bohannon provides the reader an exhaustive and insightful look into the preaching ministry of four of the emerging church movement's most colorful and sometimes controversial leaders. There are things to affirm and others to reject, and now, thanks to Bohannon, we have a helpful tool to help us discern the difference between the two."
—Ed Stetzer
President of LifeWay Research
"Much has been written about the emerging church, but little thought has been given to the preaching of this movement. John Bohannon offers us a thorough taxonomy of the homiletics of the emerging church, showing how the movement's leaders measure up as expositors. In so doing, he offers each of us the opportunity to take the pulse of our own preaching. If the health of the church depends upon the quality of its preaching, we will want to pay attention to this critique."
—Kenton C. Anderson
Professor of Homiletics, ACTS Seminaries of Trinity Western University; author of Choosing to Preach
John S. Bohannon (Ph.D., Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary) is the cofounder and preaching pastor of Water's Edge Community Church in Lake Country, Virginia. He has authored publications on preaching and church planting and serves as an adjunct preaching instructor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. John resides with his wife and three children in Lake Country, Virginia. To learn more about him, visit his blog.
Here is the full video of our interview with Dr. Michael Horton.
To watch or share shorter clips from the interview, use these links:
If you want to be in missional ministry, you need training. World-class theological and practical ministry training at four strategic locations: retrain.org.
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We make the same mistakes the disciples did when we only focus on building the kingdom, not receiving and being stewards of the kingdom. In this clip, Michael Horton explains the difference.
In this interview series, Mars Hill PR Director Nick Bogardus interviews Dr. Michael Horton. For more information and resources from Dr. Horton, check out White Horse Inn.
The Advance 10 conference will equip leaders to engage the changing culture of the New South with the unchanging message of the gospel. Find out more.
Tyler Jones is lead pastor of Vintage21 Church in Raleigh, NC, and Southeast Regional Director for Acts 29. He will be speaking at the upcoming conference Contextualizing the Gospel in the New South on April 26-28.
There is a 250 year-old cemetery near my house and often my family and I will meander through it. The range of life recorded in this small plot of land is immense. As you may expect, there are gravestones testifying to lives lived that remind us of the few years we will walk this planet. I often find myself captivated by single graves, wondering exactly who those men were. What made them passionate? What did they yearn for, fight for, and die for? The cemetery also bears witness to eras of history. Entire sections contain the graves of veterans, memorializing many lives lost in a few short years.
The events these men died for are markers along the timeline of our country. They shift the politics, well-being and even the mindset of the people. Generations are affected for good and bad; the lives of loved ones are lost, the liberty gained is precious. History scrutinizes each event, large or small, and volumes are written about the heroes and cowards whose actions changed the world.
We are in the midst of a war, and yet there are no records of battles waged in protest, no heroic lives lost. It is not marked by battles or invasions; you won’t hear reports on the news, yet lives are at stake. At this very moment, there is an exodus from the local church and ultimately away from worshiping Jesus—and we are standing by until the graves are marked. In our time and in our place, we—without strategy, without labor, without laying down our lives—are allowing the South to become a boneyard of religious history. This war being waged around us has at its very foundation liberty and eternal life.
I am not attacking the church, nor criticizing the many thousands who labor tirelessly to make much of Jesus—I am immensely thankful for these men and women. Actually, this is precisely the opposite of an attack. My desire is to help the church in the South take an honest look at where we are and how we are laboring to accomplish the Great Commission. I realize calling the South a “religious boneyard” is hard for some to digest. There is a church on every street corner and over 80 percent of people in the South believe in God with absolute certainty. It would seem that the church is healthy and doing well.
It is true that there is a church building on every street corner, in every city of the South. For example, I work in downtown Raleigh, many floors up in an office building, and from my window I can count seven churches in plain sight. In fact, this alone is the best evidence that the South is a boneyard of religious history. There are many, many churches in the South—but most are dying, if not dead already. One of the largest denominations in the South reports that when their churches reach 40 years in existence, those churches enter into a steep rate of decline ultimately ending in death. This same denomination reports that 82% of their churches are older than 40 years in existence.
This is the reality of the South. There are always multiple church buildings in plain sight, and yet they simply represent an ancient age of church vitality that has passed. Many churches must own the fact that they are in steep decline and radically re-orient their very existence. Some churches are dead already; they should disband and give their resources to church planters so the mission can continue. All churches in the South must get serious about the mission and begin to reproduce by planting and revitalizing churches.
The problem the church is facing in the South is much deeper than just older churches that are less effective than they used to be and are dying. There are five or six contributing factors causing the decline of the church. In my next blog post, I will show you how to be Southern is to be religious, and yet Christian faith in the South exists primarily in name alone.
The Advance 10 conference will equip leaders to engage the changing culture of the New South with the unchanging message of the gospel. Find out more.
Click through to the Resurgence if you can't see the video.
Michael Horton agrees with R.C. Sproul about one of the greatest theological challenges facing the next generation of pastors. Watch this clip to find out what it is.
In this interview series, Mars Hill PR Director Nick Bogardus interviews Dr. Michael Horton. For more information and resources from Dr. Horton, check out White Horse Inn.
The current Mars Hill sermon series traces the life of Jesus through the Gospel of Luke. Watch the preview.
The Resurgence is a reformed, complementarian, missional movement that trains missional leaders to serve the Church to transform cultures for Christ.
