Random Wisdom on Spiritual Warfare, Shared Leadership, and Parenting

Helpful thoughts here from pastor Chan Kilgore.

Something at Your Church Needs to Change

Kevin DeYoung:

Here’s the kind of situation I’ve been presented with many times. It’s what I assumed was behind the question at this recent conference.

You are at a church that doesn’t share your theology or seems to be heading in the wrong theological direction. Naturally, you are concerned and want to do something about it. You are sad to see your church change for the worse or sad to see your church less than what it should be. You wonder what you can do to help get things on track.

This situation usually arises for one of two reasons. Either you have recently come to a better theological understanding yourself and now see deficiencies in your pastor and in your church which you didn’t see before, or your church recently brought in a new pastor who is setting things on a different theological trajectory. There are, of course, variations to these two scenarios. Maybe you were brought on staff at a theologically weak church. Maybe your pastor has been drifting in recent years. Maybe your church just allowed something you disagree with (or just disallowed something you agree with). There are several permutations to the problem, but the basic contours stay the same: either you’ve changed or the church has changed, and the result in both cases is that the two aren’t lining up like they used to.

So what should you do?

Read the rest.


Books by Kevin DeYoung:

• The Hole in Our Holiness: Filling the Gap between Gospel Passion and the Pursuit of Godliness
• Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will
• What Is the Mission of the Church?: Making Sense of Social Justice, Shalom, and the Great Commission
• The Good News We Almost Forgot: Rediscovering the Gospel in a 16th Century Catechism
• Why We Love the Church: In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion

This is a Picture of True Christian Leadership

Jared Wilson:

Our oldest was up most of the night last night throwing up. She was not running a fever, so we are praying today it’s more something she ate than a bug of some kind. Becky stayed up with her, continually cleaning and emptying the receptacle kept by the bedside when sprinting to the toilet was a bridge too far. It’s a special thing, cleaning up somebody’s vomit.

Last night I was reminded of the first few months after our move to Vermont in fall of 2009. Because our house in Tennessee hadn’t sold (and still hasn’t, by the way, although that’s a saga for another time), Becky stayed there, keeping her job to help us keep covering the mortgage, while our girls and I made the long trek northwards. We were 9 long months apart, and it was heartbreaking for all of us. Our girls kept getting sick with various viruses and what-have-you in those months. It was bizarre and trying.

One night our friends Elder Dale and Mrs. Elder Dale were over keeping me company. The girls were already in bed. Our oldest wandered into the living room groggy-eyed to inform me that our youngest (who was in the top bunk) had thrown up her pepperoni pizza dinner (and more) all over the floor. From her prime position, she managed to get vomit on nearly everything.

And then something amazing happened. Elder Dale asked me, “How are you with this stuff?” I said, “Well, I’ve cleaned it up plenty of times but it’s always really rough. It’s all I can do to keep from throwing up myself.” Dale responded, “I’m pretty good with it.”

And then he proceeded to clean up my kids’ throw-up. And there was a lot of it. A lot of it on a lot of things. And this man who I’d only known for a few months cleaned up my daughter’s foul expectorant. It was at that point that I realized we were never leaving this church.

Elders who will clean up your kids’ vomit, who can find? They are more precious than rubies.

Jared's Books:

• Gospel Wakefulness
• Gospel Deeps
• Your Jesus is Too Safe

(HT:  Aaron Armstrong)

Is Planting a Church With a Partner a Bad Idea?

Brian Howard thinks so.  He gives some good reasons why this is a bad idea.  You can read his posts here.

• Don’t Plant a Church with a Partner
• Don’t Plant a Church with a Partner (Part 2)
• 6 things to do Instead of Planting a Church with a Partner (Part 1)
• What to do Instead of Planting a Church with a Partner (Part 2)

I tend to agree with his position.  That said, when we planted The Vine almost three years ago we did the exact opposite of what he recommends and I can say that planting as a team, for us, has been the biggest blessing of the whole experience.

Keep in mind, I would never recommend our experience with planting to other church planting candidates unless I had a chance to sit down with them and figure out how they are truly the exception to the rule.  There are always exceptions and sometimes the exceptions are beautiful.

When we planted the Vine Church almost three years ago, we started from day one with three pastors/elders. We embodied a true plurality of elders with no lead pastor.  Myself and one other guy are the co-lead pastors. We shared the preaching as a core preaching team of three and made all key decisions collectively.

So why did it work for us?

A mutual commitment to humility. This should be a given for men who love the gospel, but sadly it is not. The two other men I planted with are two of the most humble dudes I know. They don’t have a track record of flying off the handle or stubbornly digging their heels in when they don’t get their way. This has been proven over years in ministry. This makes all the difference.

Experience. All of us were in our mid to late 30’s when we planted. We had a combined ministry experience of over 40 years. This is not to say that we have it all figured out. It’s just to say that we are not 25 anymore and fresh out of seminary. Experience helps you to know who you are and what your gifts are. It helps you figure out what battles are worth it and which ones are not. It helps you calm down when the heat is on because you have seen these situations before.

Very clearly defined roles. We set these boundaries early on before we launched. It’s easy for guys to get territorial and nothing will expose your insecurities faster than church planting. When those insecurities set in you start groping for your territory. This can get messing in a hurry and is a reason why most people would say that it’s not wise to plant as a team. We experienced a bit of this early on but having clearly defined roles helped alleviate the weirdness that can creep in via pastoral insecurity.  See point #1 on humility as well.

Complementary personalities and gifts. Of the three dudes, I am probably the only one who has a more classic type A personality. The other guys are more laid back in varying degrees and we simply compliment each other really well. If all three of us were type A drivers, it simply wouldn’t work. But because we compliment each other so well, it does work.

A proven track record of past ministry collaboration. From 1999 to 2004 one of the other pastors/elders and I worked together as the music staff at a large church. We worked really well together back then and it was proven over five years. This gave us a high degree of confidence that it could work well together in church planting.

We deal with any tension quickly, honestly, and humbly. We take our elder team relationships extremely seriously. We believe that apart from our wives, our relationships on the elder board should be the most sacred in life. As a result, we don’t let things fester. We fight for peace. We deal with things. We practice repentance and humility. It has been beautiful. One of the biggest challenges of solo planters is feelings of isolation and loneliness in leadership. We have not experienced that. It has been nothing but a blessing.

We started as bi-vocational pastors.  I wrote quite a bit about this here and here.  It certainly was a factor as to why this model has worked well.

We raised a ton of money.  Paying three pastors is hard to do.  Especially when it's a church plant.   Our third guy is planting in 12 months and will be off our pay role in six months.  That being said, paying two pastors, who collectively have nine kids, when you have 150 people at your church, is a big challenge.  Having a very strong support base from outside the church has been instrumental to our vitality as a church.

You Won't Know Until It's Too Late

Kevin DeYoung:

Most pastors won’t tell you this, but they can preach a passable sermon with almost no preparation. We know how to string sentences together. We know more about the Bible than almost everyone in the church. We can cheat our prep time and no one will know. Not right away.

But over time, church members will think to themselves, “Something’s missing. There’ some power not here that used to be here. There’s some gospel connecting no longer at play. I can’t put my finger on it, but pastor doesn’t preach like he used to.” It happens slowly but surely. Maybe the emails seem more pressing this week, or maybe it’s a meeting, or this administrative thing. It’s not one massive thing, but a mountain of molehills. And then one day, Acts 6:4 is gone. The elders don’t pray. The pastors don’t study.

We must all fight for the ministry of the word and prayer. Elders and pastors must fight to keep it and congregations must fight to support it, to encourage it, to give time for it. Because most pastors and most parishoners don’t notice Acts 6:4 is missing until it’s too late.

Read the rest. 


Books by Kevin DeYoung:

• The Hole in Our Holiness: Filling the Gap between Gospel Passion and the Pursuit of Godliness
• Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will
• What Is the Mission of the Church?: Making Sense of Social Justice, Shalom, and the Great Commission
• The Good News We Almost Forgot: Rediscovering the Gospel in a 16th Century Catechism
• Why We Love the Church: In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion

Live a Visible, Exemplary, Everyday Life

Jeff Vanderstelt writes a great post for church leaders on the unspoken, yet common ways that leaders often lives their lives in such a way as to disqualify themselves from ministry.

How Important is Complementarianism? A Response to Carl Trueman

Interesting post here from Denny Burk.

Complementarianism for Dummies

Mary Kassian:

Essentially, a complementarian is a person who believes that God created male and female to reflect complementary truths about Jesus. That’s the bottom-line meaning of the word. Complementarians believe that males were designed to shine the spotlight on Christ’s relationship to the church (and the LORD God’s relationship to Christ) in a way that females cannot, and that females were designed to shine the spotlight on the Church’s relationship to Christ (and Christ’s relationship to the LORD God) in a way that males cannot. Who we are as male and female is ultimately not about us. It’s about testifying to the story of Jesus. We do not get to dictate what manhood and womanhood are all about. Our Creator does. That’s the basis of complementarianism.

Read the rest.

Get the book - Biblical Manhood and Womanhood

(HT:  JT)

What is GospelResourceNetwork.com?

Bob Thune:

It’s basically an “app store” for gospel-centered Christian resources. It makes high-quality, downloadable, PDF-format resources available at a fraction of the cost of traditional print resources.

Working in a gospel-centered, missionally-minded, church-planting church, we were frustrated by the lack of gospel-driven resources for “everyday” church ministry. Major publishers do a good job of cranking out book-length publications… but where do you go to find a gospel-centered premarital counseling resource? Or an elder training workbook? Or a financial stewardship study? Our solution was to start writing them ourselves.

The people in our church liked them. Other churches and leaders started asking for them. And we began to meet other pastors who were also writing their own resources. We decided to create a website where we could gather quality, ministry-tested resources and market them broadly and inexpensively. And so began the Gospel Resource Network.

GRN has three aims:

• To offer well-written, visually appealing, gospel-centered print resources
• To make these resources available to local churches and ministries in an easily downloadable, transferable, and adaptable format
• To use a web-based publishing strategy that allows us to offer our material at a fraction of the cost of traditional print resources

Celebrity Pastors and Holy Heroes

John Piper:

Philippians 3:17 shows us four generations of imitation: you ➔ those ➔ us ➔ Christ. So that clearly implies God wants us to find good examples, to watch them, and to be encouraged and inspired.

Yes, it can be sinful and dangerous. And it can be wonderful.

Anytime a preacher is a draw, two things are happening.

(1) There is a carnal attraction to Apollos-like eloquence, or logic, or turns of phrase, or personality that people like. And they don’t go through it. They don’t go through it to God. They don’t go through it to Jesus. They don’t through it to the Holy Spirit, to be broken by him and have their lives turned upside down, so if that pastor died they would have Jesus, and he would mean everything to them. No. They just stop with the preacher. That’s carnal.

(2) But there are other people. A word lands, for whatever reason, that person meets Jesus, and God condescends to make that sermon on that day a miracle. The sinner in the pulpit has miraculously been made the instrument of grace (1 Cor. 3:6-7).

And there is no way to weed that out ahead of time. You cannot put a sign on the church door: “All of you who are coming here for carnal reasons, stay away. All of you who are coming here because you meet God here, come.”

Therefore, it behooves elders watch that leader, rebuke, counsel, and correct, hedge in, and protect that leader from himself. And it behooves the pastor to be reminded that the Day will disclose his work (1 Cor. 3:13).

But don’t be afraid to have heroes. I think that’s why Hebrews 11 is in the Bible.

(HT)