Jesus Came to Save Grimace and Hamburglar

Kevin DeYoung, one of the authors of "Why We're Not Emergent" responds to this McDonald's ad on his blog, taking a swat at today's hipster church culture in a way us country folk can appreciate:


"So much that passes for spirituality these days is nothing more than middle class, 20something coffee culture. If you like jazz, soul patches, earth tone furniture, and lattes, that's cool. But this culture is no holier than the McNugget, Hi-C, Value City, football culture that most people live in. Why does incarnational ministry usually mean hanging out at Starbucks instead of McDonalds?

Jesus came to save Grimace and Hamburglar too. "

Doug's Top Books Read in 2008

I think one of the ways that we can be of great service to one another is to share suggestions of resources that have most helped us. This last month has seen the usual surge of "Top Book" lists and I figured I'd throw mine out there and ask that you do the same. These books weren't published in 2008 necessarily, but books that I finally got to last year. I left off classics such as John Owen's Communion With God which was absolutely fabulous - which I assume that we will all draw from in due time, and stuck to more modern works.

I read more than these, but found these, in particular, to be most helpful.

In no particular order:

The Courage to Be Protestant by David Wells

Spirit Empowered Preaching by Arturo G. Azurdia

Worship Matters by Bob Kauflin

The Cross and Christian Ministry by D.A.Carson

The Gospel and Personal Evangelism by Mark Dever

An Ordinary Pastor by D.A. Carson

Do Hard Things by Alex and Brett Harris (written for teens- but a great read).

Why We're Not Emergent by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck (as a related note, I read Rob Bell's Velvet Elvis and Brian McLaren's A Generous Orthodoxy both of which were enough to tell me why I couldn't be emergent- you ought to read them with a discerning mind and then weep for the church).

Reforming Marriage by Douglas Wilson (read for the umpteenth time as I've been using it in premarital counselling- excellent!!!)

Handbook of Church Discipline by Jay Adams


Well, I'll stop there since that is ten.

How about you?

Maybe we could share favorite commentaries and classics as well....

-Doug

Book Recommendation

Keith Mathison put together his top 10 books of 2008 list over at Ligoneir and on it he included a book that I have touted-"The Courage to Be Protestant" by David Wells, and he also included a book that has been on my radar screen because of the buzz it has generated. Check it out- sounds perfect for planters:

• Michael Horton. Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church (Baker). Michael Horton's new book Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church is a very important wake-up call to a church that has effectively substituted therapeutic moralism for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This is a book that ought to be read, and read carefully, by every pastor and seminarian.

Questions to Be Asked

Over at Reformation 21, Carl Trueman writes of his concern that modern culture sets the agenda for today's churches.

He shares about how he was discussing his concerns over Mel Gibson's movie "The Passion of the Christ," (particularly the depiction of Christ on the big screen) with a student and how he had no intentions of taking the church youth group to see it. The student responds that he felt sorry for Trueman because his qualms about the movie was making him irrelevant to modern ministry.

Trueman writes:

"What shocked me in this encounter, however, was not that we had different views on the matter, but that the student could not even see that there was any question to be asked. For him, the question of the meaning, relevance, and application of the second commandment was not even a question. He just thought it was obvious that anything which generated interest in Jesus was a good thing; thus, my concerns about the visual depiction of Christ revealed me as an irrelevant old hack, a superannuated puritan who simply didn't get it. To me, this was a most dramatic symbol of how culture had come to set the theological agenda even within a conservative, confessional, reformed tradition, and to define the plausibility structures not simply of the answers but even of the questions. My question arose out of my concern to see what the Bible said to our cultural situation, and that refracted through centuries of discussion of this point; but this student did not even have the categories to see that there was any question to be asked."

That last line stood out to me: "this student did not even have the categories to see that there was any question to be asked."

To me this is one of the biggest problems facing the church planting movement today- we charge ahead with our ministry plans without asking the important questions because we do not even recognize that there are questions to be asked.

I'd like to do a poll on how many church planters have given much thought to the regulative principle. Do most even know what it is? Once they have heard what it is, do they give it a second's thought to its validity?

How do we define this principle?
Simply put the principle is that everything we do in worship must be divinely worship must be divinely warranted. And since Scripture is the sufficient Word of God, everything we do in worship must be prescribed in Holy Scripture.

In the fabulous book Give Praise to God, Ligon Duncan writes that "The key benefit of the regulative principle is that it helps to assure that God- not man- is the supreme authority for how corporate worship is to be conducted, by assuring that the Bible, God's own special revelation (and not our own opinions, tastes, likes, and theories), is the prime factor in our conduct of and approach to corporate worship" (pg. 24).


Is that not worth contemplating? Does this not present questions that we should be asking?

Dismiss it if you will, but I believe you owe it to yourself, and to God, to at least grapple with the question before you do.

Christian Consumerism

Hey brothers,

I hope you all are doing well. I was watching "The White Horse Inn" and they were talking about Christian Consumerism....Ken ford makes a good observation about church planting about 10 to 10 1/2 mins into the video. Let me know what you think.

-Matthew

Listen to This to Start Your New Year Right

Brothers,

I've listened to this before, but I needed something to occupy my ears while removing wallpaper yesterday and put it on again and it struck me as if I'd never heard it before.

Do yourself a favor and listen to Mark Dever's talk at the 2006 Together for the Gospel Conference entitled "The Pastor's Understanding of His Own Role" (click on the title for a free download).

EXCELLENT in so many ways. I was convicted all over again and encouraged to center my ministry on the Gospel. What a blessing.

Doug