Back in the Day: When Vinyl Was It!

For those of you who have heard me talk lately about the resurgence of vinyl, here's a really cool video that explains just why vinyl is making a comeback. Kind of make's burning CD's seem so . . . . 2008.

Help For Dad's on Father's Day

Having just finished sharing with you from God's Word about what it means to be a dad in light of what the Bible says, Mark Driscoll has written a short book taken from his message to father's a number of years ago. Even though it is short (for some of you that will be a welcomed thought!), it is packed full of insight and is summarized well by the title, Pastor Dad. For those of us that consider being a father of great importance in regards to how we serve Jesus, this is a very helpful and economically sound resource.

Evidence of Grace #2

As I am on this topic of evidences of grace, I would like to talk about one major evidence of grace that I have seen in the past year. Although I am committed to preaching through books of the Bible, this can sometimes prove to be difficult if the book repeats itself (as I have found in Deuteronomy), or if there are a number of difficult passages in a row (as I have found in Deuteronomy), or if it is a long book (as I have found Deuteronomy to be). On this basis it may appear that I am disappointed with our present series, Obey & Conquer, where we are preaching sequentially through the book of Deuteronomy. That is actually opposite of what I have found. Over the past year, I have had numerous positive comments on some of the things that Jesus is doing through the preaching of this great Old Testament book. For me it has helped to do a number of things. 1) It has clearly shown the need for Jesus Christ by showing us the depth of the law and the great grace of Jesus to save us from having to follow the nuances of the various difficult (not the moral law found in the 10 commandments), thereby showing us how great Jesus really is, 2) It has helped to shape the vision for this church in this community at this time, 3) It has touched on issues that I would never choose to preach on until I had more life experience (a.k.a. divorce), 4) It has helped our entire church family get a very real grip on a book of the Old Testament. That all of this has happened simply by preaching through a book has been for me a very real evidence of the grace of Jesus. 

Evidences of Grace #1

As I shared at the devotional for our annual meeting, the first evidence of grace that I have seen is that over the past two years, our church family has seen at least 5 professions of faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. I define a conversion as a genuine understanding of what it means to be a sinner and a genuine understanding of what it means to need a Saviour who not only forgives sinners of sin, but provides for them new hearts that they serve Jesus and His mission with (Jeremiah 31:33,34 & Matthew 28:19,20) I am not by nature a pessimist and reading Canadian sociologist Reginald Bibby reminded me that the Christian horizon in Canada is not as bad as one might think (read his short article here).  However, statistically, most churches that are over 25 years old have a very difficult time growing via new conversions. Statistics Canada says that while Protestant Christianity is growing, it is not quite keeping up with the population growth, and thereby losing ground slowly. This means that some, if not many churches will eventually die without conversion growth. All of this to say, 5 genuine conversions in the past year is evidence that God works through His Word, He has been answering our prayers, and it is possible for churches that are almost 50 years old to experience new believers who freshly understand and experience the power of the gospel. This has been a great encouragement to me and is one of the evidences of the grace of Jesus in our church family in 2008.

It's been a long time.

I know, I know, a blog is supposed to be updated regularly, but the truth of it is, I haven't been totally sure what to write about these past couple of weeks, well months. It has been a good season of ministry over the holidays and now in the new year, although it is hard to believe that February is almost gone. I thought I would start everything up with the fact that over the last few months I have been reflecting much on evidences of God's grace. About this time last year I was at a conference where one of my favourite preacher's, C.J. Mahaney challenged us with something out of 1 Corinthians. He described the Corinthian church as it is described in that letter--messed up. However, something about the way that the book is introduced that is striking; Paul refers to the Corinthian church as, ' . . . called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our LORD Jesus Christ . . .', and Paul always, ' . . . gives thanks to my God for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus'. (1 Corinthians 1:2,4) If you read the rest of the book, it hardly feels like this is a church that is worthy of these kind of statements. That's because, as Mahaney so passionately points out, Paul trained himself to look for evidences of God's grace. If you were at the BEMC annual meeting this past February, you know that I pointed out a number of evidences of grace that I have seen in this church family in the past year. Over the next couple of days I will try to share with you some of these evidences that I have seen. Stay posted.

Here's C.J.'s message.