Today In TheologyRelating Theology To Our World Today! |
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newfrontiers speakers 1Posted by Adrian Warnock - July 3, 2008 on 9:21 am | In Biblical Counseling, counseling | No Comments
SERMON - How to be Missional Every Day by Tope KoleosoPosted by Adrian Warnock - July 2, 2008 on 10:56 pm | In Biblical Counseling, counseling | No Comments I recently posted what I trust will be a series which will be about sermons that have changed my life. It is way too early for me to claim that this past Sunday's talk by my pastor and dear friend, Tope Koleoso, will be one of those. But I could do a lot worse than allow myself to be shaped by a talk like this. I have previously shared a list of talks Tope has given that are available online, but much as I loved those talks, I believe this may be the best sermon I have ever heard him preach. I don't want to give too much away because I want to encourage you to listen to this talk. He weaved such well-remembered verses as "Go into all the world ...", "I am not ashamed of the gospel ..." "How will they hear ..." and "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few ..." into a compelling tapestry that felt fresh and deeply impacting without condemning. He acknowledged that it IS easier to mix with people who are in your own "tribe"— your Judea as it were.He challenged us that if we are not going beyond that, if all our friends are still very similar to us, we haven't yet allowed the gospel to have its full impact on us. He laid down the challenge that the gospel has two calls to it. There is a call to come, to receive from God. But then there is a call to go. In that going we are called to worship God and to be a witness. He spoke of our mission to reach the world one person at a time. He also spoke of our message. He explained that our message was nothing more complicated than a person—Jesus. We are to teach his cross, his resurrection, the call to repentance, and a promise of forgiveness. Still, today some demand signs and wonders, and others clever reasoning and wisdom, but we preach Jesus and him crucified. Tope also spoke of our methods and our motivation of love. My favorite line in the whole talk was, "If you want Jesus to go with you, go and make disciples." I was profoundly moved by this talk. What was also exciting is that, once again this Sunday, a number of people made a response to the gospel. We are in the middle of a prolonged season where we have been seeing such responses on a weekly basis. Please pray for us that such things continue, and that as a church this sermon may indeed help to turn our focus outward and that we will see many more genuinely saved. The message is available to download or listen to here:
INTERVIEW - John Lanferman on Reformed Charismatic Churches in the USAPosted by Adrian Warnock - July 2, 2008 on 10:50 pm | In Biblical Counseling, counseling | No Comments As we drew to the close of the first segment of my interview with John Lanferman yesterday we began to speak about reformed charismatic churches. Today I begin by asking him if he believes there is a hunger for such churches in the USA. You can also download the audio of this interview.************************* Adrian Yeah, that’s so important, isn’t it? So as you look out over the nation, do you feel that there is a hunger in the US for these kind of churches, a desire to see them? John Absolutely. I think especially an emerging generation, the 20’s and 30’s generation, pretty much in the US left the church. But we’re seeing a lot of these people coming back into the church.  In our own church, that would be the largest demographic. And these are young people who really have a value of the foundations of the past, historical Christian faith would be important to them, but also a mixture of what the culture has created—a desire to experience something in the Spirit. They’re not afraid of that. So you have this desire to be rooted in something that’s stable—historical Christian faith—but at the same time, wanting to experience something of God in the Spirit. And are not afraid of spiritual manifestations; in fact, they’re hungry for that. Hungry to experience the very real presence of God for themselves in a very tangible way.Adrian Yeah. It’s interesting because a lot of people are talking about that kind of resurgence of reformed faith in the US in the 20’s and 30’s [age group]. It’s interesting to hear you saying that a lot of those guys are also looking for something quite experiential. John Absolutely. Adrian I guess people like John Piper are probably a major part of that, aren’t they? Because the way he preaches—it’s all about knowing God, and [having] a kind of relationship with God, and valuing God, rather than just purely as an intellectual thing. John Yes, and he’s taken some fairly strong stands. He actually is not a cessationist. He actually does believe . . . Adrian Most people are really surprised when they hear that. What? John Piper is not a cessationist? You’re kidding! John That’s true. And he has huge influence in our nation among the evangelical community. I think his welcoming in of people like C. J. Mahaney, and even embracing guys like Mark Driscoll . . . Adrian Yes! John . . . and just to see what’s happening there encourages me quite a great deal. One of the negative things that’s happening in the US as well—you have the emerging church. On one end of it you have a very orthodox guy like Mark Driscoll, and a bit colorful as well. (Adrian laughing) While on the other end you have people who have a greater degree of relevancy, so doctrine and theology is kind of fluid, and they want to adapt that to culture, and so that leads to heresy. And that’s a frightening thing. But there’s a wing of that emerging church that is very much moving in that direction as well, as you probably well know. That’s a frightening thing in the US because there’s quite a large following of that group as well. Adrian That’s right. And I think some of those historic doctrines are being questioned . . . John They are! Adrian . . . in a way that you’d be surprised at. But that’s not unique to the US either. As you know, we’ve had some issues over here with that, particularly with regard to the atonement and things like that. I mean, is the atonement such a big issue in the US as it is over here in the UK, would you say? John It’s not with mainline evangelical groups, but I think with the emerging church, the people who are on one side of that very much—that’s one of the questions. And even the desire to be culturally relevant and accepting of alternative life styles has led people to make an adjustment as to how they approach that. And they won’t make categorical statements any more. So they’re standing on sand rather than the solid rock of the Book. So I think that’s a concern as well. These guys are fairly media savvy, and it’s a subtle thing . . . to find a way into churches. Adrian I think that’ right. With the advent of the media and the Internet, well, I know this only two well. It’s possible for people to hit above their weight. I mean, Here am I — just some guy in a church in London whose blog is read all around the world. And I think that happening with a lot of people, and you can have influence, either for good or not good, far above, actually, what you are accomplishing on the ground in that sense. Or over what you feel you should have influence. John Yes, absolutely, that’s true. Adrian I think it is a bit concerning, isn’t it? How some people are causing us to drift away from truth. John The thing that’s concerning about it is that—not [only] are they gifted and charismatic, but in actuality, there’s the element of Christianity about them. So you’re dealing with something different than people who are totally secular. So it’s a subtle thing. A lot of people are not very scripturally astute. It’s easy to be pulled along in that train. Adrian Don’t you think that it’s quite interesting when you look [at it] historically? A lot of these ideas have been tried before, haven’t they? John Yes, they have. And the thing is, they always end up on a dead-end street. They don’t have a long cycle. They come around, but ultimately God is very protective of his Church. He is very zealous for it. And the church that’s rooted in biblical value and persuasion continues on. I’m very encouraged in America about the uptick in church planting. I don’t know if you want to talk about that or not . . . Adrian Yeah, church planting is great, yeah. John In the US, over the last two decades, there has been a deterioration in people who are committed to regular church attendance. It’s averaged a 10 per cent decline in each of the last ten years—so 20 per cent less are now involved in church activities, or even actually community activities, than before. But now, groups like Acts 29, and on a much, much smaller scale, but I like to say, Sovereign Grace, and Newfrontiers, and various other church planting movements, Global Net—these groups that are coming to the forefront planting churches, training people, are based on orthodox Christian faith with a real sense of mission. So missional churches are emerging among us, and many of them are growing, seeing lots of people saved. So I actually—while we have these rather alarming trends, I see much to be very excited about in the US. Adrian Yes, oh yes. Just for the sake of those out there—I know some people sitting out there are thinking, “What exactly is a missional church, John?” How would you define that? John A church that understands that it exists for the express purpose of carrying the gospel to the next door neighbor, to the person in the next block, to the person in the next city, state, and nation, and they exist for the purpose of being carriers of the gospel. So they are involved, not only in proclamation, but they are involved in changing the whole culture of a community. They would be people who would be involved in cross-cultural evangelism. They would be people who would be involved in changing the social justice—be involved in that ministry to the poor—so they have a desire to see the whole community that they are involved with, the towns they are involved with, changed and made into a kingdom community. It’s people who understand, “We do not exist for ourselves, but we exist for them.” So the way we spend our money. the way we staff our churches, the way our churches feel, the way they operate, have that outward appeal. And it’s a God-centered approach to humanity rather than an inward, “What about me and my needs?” It’s a man-centered approach. Adrian That’s very good. So that’s really very much what’s on your heart as you go across the nation, isn’t it? I guess that’s what you’re saying—to see those kinds of churches multiplied. John Absolutely—if we can get outstanding churches in each of these 100 large cities, and out from that, begin to reproduce ourselves. Because I’m fanatical on reproducing churches. We must not just plant churches, but we [want to] see churches that view themselves as reproducing churches, multiply themselves, raise up leaders, give themselves away, spread out in the communities and the nations beyond. Adrian It’s just so exciting to see what God is doing in a nation, but also what he’s doing around the world, and to be able to link up with that. I guess we’re back to the conference in a way. Because that’s what this is all about, isn’t it? Together on a Mission. John Yes, it is. And I think what’s interesting is how we help each other. The different nations, different men, bring different things into the pool. I’m receiving from others. I’m receiving from my friends in Africa, or my friends in India, and so it’s even the in-between times when we’re kind of sharing ideas back and forth and getting on board how we can assist one another. Because it’s just not about our own little patch. It’s us owning the world together. It’s us saying, “We want to see the gospel of the kingdom of Jesus Christ grow and expand to all the nations of the world. So, I have just as much a vital interest in what’s happening in Africa, or what’s happening in Europe, as I would even in our own place. Because we have to own the whole vision of God. I do know that I have a particular responsibility for a sphere. Adrian Yeah. John But God has called us to work together. I think that’s the joy of what’s happening here in this conference, and who we are in Newfrontiers as well. Adrian Yeah. And I guess when we gather together like this, significant words can come as well, that shape us really. John It’s true. I think it’s in the worship that God is speaking to us. It’s in the preaching as well. But also in prophetic words that come to us. And you can just see the impact that’s happening across the room . . . Adrian Yes! John . . . guys coming together and buzzing about this, and what God is saying. So it’s quite helpful actually. Adrian If my readers are sitting there in America somewhere thinking, “You know what?” This all sounds great. I’d love to be in a church like that.” How would they find out more? John Well, they can come to our website, of course. Just type into the search engine Newfrontiers USA, and there, of course, they can find us, and where our churches are located. Of course, I would welcome any contact there in St. Louis where we are based. Adrian Excellent. Do you run any conferences, or anything like that, there in the USA? John Yes, we do. We have an annual Leadership Conference that’s hosted by us there in St. Louis. But we have also moved out regionally. Originally we were just a small cluster of churches in Missouri, but now we have established cluster churches in New England, and we’ve moved into the Pacific Northwest, and now we’ve moved into the Southeast as well. So we’ve established regional events because we are a family of churches, just not a fraternity of leaders. So churches come together there for envisioning, and leadership events happen, as well as 20’s conferences, and events for teenagers. Just this next week, we’re gathering several hundred teenagers, not just to go to a camp and somehow be refreshed and go back all enthusiastic for a couple of weeks, but actually to be involved in a mission and social action. We’re going to go out into the streets. We’re going to get with children in the neighborhoods. We’re going to begin to work into that community. So we have lots of events by which we’re bringing people together. There’s something that can happen when a group of churches come together that simply cannot happen with a church on its own. And there is just a combined strength of coming together around the singleness of vision and purpose that not only helps with what we do together, but actually helps when people go back to their own churches. They’ve caught something, see? And they take it back with them. So we have several events like that. And men’s conferences and ladies conferences that are happening throughout the nation. So immediately when I go back, we will have a One Blaze event, which is the teen event, in St. Louis. And from there, I’ll leave the next week and go up to New England, and we’ll have a big family camp out there where we gather the churches. We bring in international speakers, as well as myself, and we’re envisioned. Adrian Great. Sounds great. It’s just so exciting to hear about what God’s doing over there in the States. Thank you so much for joining us, John. Is there anything else that you’d like to share with my readers before we close? John I’m very much enthused about what God is going to be doing in the US, and what he is doing now. I’m thrilled when I see the moving of his Spirit in more prononced ways, as well as the value of the Word. I’m particularly encouraged about missional churches that are sprining up all across our nation. So, I wouldn’t want to end here just with some of the other things we’ve talked about—alarming trends, etc. I’d like to says that I’m actually more encouraged today than I’ve ever been in my life in regard to what God’s doing in raising up his Church in the US. Adrian Excellent! Praise God for that. We wish you all the success in the future, John, and I look forward to hearing more about what goes on in the years to come when you’ve reached those 100 cities. John Yes, thank you, Adrian. Adrian Praise God. Thank you.
INTERVIEW - John Lanferman of Newfrontiers USAPosted by Adrian Warnock - July 2, 2008 on 10:27 pm | In Biblical Counseling, counseling | No Comments Next week the main Newfrontiers International conference of the year starts. To whet your appetite, I thought I'd share the transcript of an interview I did at Together On A Mission 2007 with John Lanferman. The audio for this interview is also available here.John oversees a team of leaders who serve the churches in the Newfrontiers—USA family. His primary focus is leadership training, church planting, and supporting churches in the States. John and his wife, Linda, are a part of Jubilee Church in St. Louis, Missouri. His blog is at http://johnlanferman.blogspot.com/. If you can't make it to this year's TOAM conference, I will once again be live-blogging it right here. It's still not too late to arrange to listen to one of Mark Driscoll's other speaking engagements in the UK. ************************* Adrian Hi everyone. This is Adrian Warnock here again. I’m here at Together on a Mission, together with John Lanferman. John leads the work of Newfrontiers in the USA. I would like to ask him a little bit about the conference, and also his work overseas, because I’m aware that a lot of you are probably thinking, “Well, this Newfrontiers thing—it’s all well and good because it’s over in the UK” — where things are perhaps a little bit different. So, John, first of all, how are you enjoying the conference? John I think it’s magnificent. The preaching has been outstanding. The worship is amazing. God’s presence is here. He is speaking personally to people. He’s speaking to us as a family of churches as well. It’s wonderful to welcome 53 different nations into this setting. Adrian Yes, I think it’s so important to underline that, isn’t it, because people probably think, “Oh, it’s just a British thing,” when really it’s almost like a world conference, isn’t it? John Absolutely, it is. And just to make connection with people and find out what’s happening in their nations, and to see that we’re really on the same page as it relates to the kingdom of God. There’s not really a national distinction there when it comes to that. Adrian Yeah, I know. It’s been great. Some of the preachers have come from South Africa and . . . John Absolutely. Adrian You’ve got guys from Africa, other parts, all over, haven’t we here? John Yes, it’s wonderful. Adrian I guess really as well, this conference is perhaps a little bit different to some other conferences, isn’t it, in terms of the family feel. I don’t know how easily we can get that across to people who are at home reading the blog. John I think that’s the interesting thing. When you come together and you see people, and some of the people, of course, we know as well. But even in meeting new people, there’s a sense of community that seems to be automatic, and it’s just great to see people mixing it up, enjoying each other. Adrian Yeah, I think that’s right, because that doesn’t happen everywhere we go in conferences, does it? John No, I know some conferences that you may visit, and some I’ve visited in the US — I mean, you arrive. If you don’t know anyone or if you have a friend or two, you’re really not connected. There’s not a sense of togetherness on the mission . . . Adrian Yeah . . . John . . . and you break off, you go to lunch, or you go to your hotel room. There’s a sense of — you’re there to pick up information primarily and download information that maybe you can employ in your own situation. Adrian Yeah. John But here it’s a totally different feel. Adrian That’s right. And there’s all these kind of little mini-meetings going on in all the breaks, isn’t there? I mean, the little breaks sort of get eaten up, don’t they? John All the time. Adrian (Laughing). And we’re sitting here and we’ve got what? I don’t know—another hour or so?—before the next session. And you squeeze in a meeting, don’t you? John That’s right, you do. Adrian But it’s good fun. John So it’s a pleasure, I think, as well, the in-between meeting times to connect relationally, talk to each other, find out what’s going on. It’s all part of the whole package. Adrian Yeah, exactly. John, I particularly wanted to chat with you because you head up the work of Newfrontiers in the USA, and so many of my readers are from that nation. So, are there many other Americans here at the conference? John Yes, there are several actually. We have four of our own local elders from St. Louis who are here, and some of our other staff members as well. But besides that, across the nation, we have representatives who lead churches that are here with us. Adrian So are there many Newfrontiers churches in the US? John Actually, there’s not at the time. We now have 23 churches in ten different states, but it was just a few years ago, like ten years ago, we had 7 churches in one state . . . Adrian Right. John . . . so these were churches that already had a history. Terry [Virgo] came over and spent a couple of years and left. It was in that setting, then, that we began to actually formulate who we were together, come together with a real sense of mission. We have churches that have a history, and we’ve been drawn together around Terry, and around the mission there, but obviously there are residual issues, so I think in the first few years there was a need for us to really come together to construct that all through, which we did, of course, and now we’re planting churches all across the nation. Adrian Okay, excellent. How do you decide where to go and plant a church? John I have, on my laptop, 100 cities, and I won’t be content until the top 100 cities in the U.S.—87 per cent of the nation’s population reside in these cities—so, one by one, we want to tick off these cities. When Newfrontiers started in the US, we were primarily a rural movement. We didn’t have any churches in any major cities. So, first of all, to come together around a mission and then begin to train leaders and set up training programs, to begin to envision people, and then see people move from the rural settings—although we’re very, very grateful; we’re still planting the rural settings—begin to make that big step into city centers. Kansas City was our first church plant; St. Louis (the one I led) was our second plant, and now we are in seven major cities. We’re in Seattle-Tacoma. We’re in Boston. We’re in Chicago. We’re in Nashville. We’re in Atlanta. We’re planting churches one by one into these major city centers, and we want these churches to become reproducing centers, so out from them churches are planted. So we have a fairly ambitious vision. Adrian Yeah, it sounds like it. So, what is it about a Newfrontiers church that is, say, different to other churches in the grand? Because I know some people might say, “Well, why bother planting churches? Surely we should just strengthen the ones that are there already.” John I think the thing that really draws us together is our sense of mission. Now there are other things, of course, that draw us together. Our very real value of Word and Spirit. We’re an interesting group because, in the US, you have evangelicals and people from various denominational persuasions. You have people who are charismatics. We’re a bit different because we are evangelical in that we are rooted in historic Christian faith. Most of our people would have a reformed theological perception. But we have a charismatic experience. And that’s quite unusual in the US. I think it sets us a bit apart from most other groups—not that there aren’t others that way—but it makes us different, I think, from what you would normally find in the US. Adrian Yeah. I sometimes have people writing to me, saying, “Is there a church like that in this place or in that place?” And I often wonder what other groups are there out there that are similar to Newfrontiers in some way. Are there other groups? John I would say Sovereign Grace would be similar to us. We’ve had good fellowship with that group. But there’s an interesting phenomenon that’s happening as well because in mainline evangelical circles, people that would have name recognition—guys like John Piper or Mark Driscoll—are, of course, well established in orthodox faith, but as well, are very open to and accepting and believing in certain charismatic expressions. So, it’s an interesting move that’s happening in the US in that regard. Adrian Yeah. So there’s a kind of—like what you’re saying—a coming together of the Word and the Spirit in a way. John I believe that’s exactly true. We do have other things. It’s a big country. The Christian television market, religious television market, and radio waves are fairly dominated by charismatics that would have a very experiential and often times a man-centered approach . . . Adrian Right. John . . . rather than a God-centered approach, which of course, is not helpful to be labeled in that particular camp because our root is indeed orthodox evangelical Christianity with a charismatic experience and expression. Continued in part 2 . . .
INTERVIEW - John Piper on Prayer and Bible StudyPosted by Adrian Warnock - June 30, 2008 on 9:45 pm | In Biblical Counseling, counseling | No Comments Yesterday, in the second part of my interview with John Piper, he talked about passionate preaching. Today, John talks about prayer and Bible study, and in particular, his personal "rhythm" for this important discipline. The video of this part of the interview can be seen here.************************* Adrian So, what you’ve described — I suspect there may be many preachers out there saying, “Okay, I get what you’re saying, but how do I get to that place?” You mentioned prayer. I know prayer is important to you. You often talk about prayer in your books. Could you talk a little bit about what your own prayer life looks like? How you get, if you like, connected to God in that way you’re describing? John I’ll try without disobeying the Lord’s injunction in the Sermon on the Mount to go into your closet . . . Adrian Yeah . . . John I surely am not a model to hold up for prayer because I have models and I fall short of them. But, my life is a combination of private prayer, family prayer, corporate prayer at church—it’s a rhythm of those things. I try to be with the Lord every morning for an hour or so. The way it works for me is mingling together Word and prayer. I don’t read the Bible for twenty minutes and pray for twenty minutes, or forty and forty, whatever. It’s in and out and in and out. I learned that basically from George Mueller, who said he made the big mistake in his early Christian life of trying to pray for an extended period of time, and his mind inevitably went everywhere except toward the Lord, so he began by whispering up a one minute prayer for help, and then he took the Word and turned everything he’d read into prayer. He said I laid sixty things before the Lord this morning, and I laid them through the Word. And that’s pretty much the way I go about it.  When it comes to praying for things, besides what’s in the text, I pray in concentric circles. The most needy person I know is me. Therefore I pray about me first, because if I can’t be fixed, I won’t fix anybody. I won’t bless my wife or children or the Church. So I pray about this soul and my passion for God here, and then I move out to my wife and my children. I pray for them about whatever was in the text. Then I move out to my elders and my staff, and I name all the staff every day and our elders. And then I move out to the church, and move out to the city, and the nations. That’s the way I pray. And that can fill up a lot of time as God brings different things. I use helps. I have lists. I have lists of the names because I can’t even remember the names of 34 elders sometimes, and I have to say those. And then I use things like Operation World to pray for the nations. I keep it on my computer. I keep it in the book beside my old prayer bench at home.By the way, I have a place of prayer. In my study there’s a little corner with a built wall, like this—it’s got a bench, it’s got books, it’s got a Bible. So I can kneel, it’s got a little rug. In 1975, so it’s now thirty-two years ago, I realized when I finished graduate school and owned my first home that this home should have a prayer place in it because otherwise, I think if you don’t have a place that’s designated that’s relatively secure, you tend to kind of sit on the couch, cross your legs, put some coffee beside you, and go to sleep, and call it prayer time. You don’t tend to do that if you have a place that’s just set aside for prayer. Then there’s the family—my wife and I and my daughter—pray and have devotions in the morning. And then we do it in the evening. And then my wife and I pray before we go to bed at night, and read a little devotional called “Daily Life.” So that’s the rhythm—morning, evening, wife. And then there are eight prayer meetings at our church, and I go to four of them plus the staff prayer meeting. They are thirty minute prayer meetings. That’s all they all. We don’t talk at all. We just sit down—bang! We start praying, and bang! Thirty minutes later we stop and go our separate ways. It’s very . . . and that way they last. I’ve been to one of these prayer meetings for probably over twenty years. The Friday morning 6:30 prayer meeting has been going on for twenty years and I hardly ever miss it, except when I’m on vacation, and there’s absolutely zero conversation, zero nonsense. It’s just you’re there; it’s 6:30, let us pray! It’s 7:00—bang! We’re done! Everybody disappears. And it’s really precious! It’s powerful! So, those are my rhythms, personal, family, corporate, and lots of others sprinkled in. Paul said, “Pray without ceasing,” so I’m always crying for help. So, “Right now, Lord, help me in this interview!” Adrian (Laughing) Yeah! You and me both! So, you pray. Obviously you study the Word. And I suspect most of what you do is fairly standard on that. But do you have any particular hints about how to study the Bible that would help people maybe? John H-m-m-m. I’m not a good example there either. My life has kind of been taken out of my control in the last years. I feel like I’m governed by what other people want from me, pretty much, than what I want to do sometimes.  A combination of three things, I would think, is what a pastor would want. One is general reading. And there—what can you say? There’s a billion things to read. You let your own heart and good recommenders, good bloggers, tell you what’s good. And then you don’t waste your time reading what’s bad. Somebody else better read it first. Don’t read it first. And probably you should read something that’s 200 years old, 300 years old, because the new stuff is here today and gone tomorrow by and large. So READING.Secondly, some more or less systematic way of growing in your knowledge of Scripture. The Bible says, “Grow in the knowledge of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ,” so some regular reading and rigorous effort to broaden your understanding of the scope of Scripture. The third is preparation for what you do. That’s where most of my effort is right now. I languish in the other two and I flourish here. I don’t begrudge myself that too much because what I have found (and this might be encouraging to any of the younger guys pondering what they’re going to do with their lives)—when I left academia—six years of teaching Bible college to do pastoral ministry, I thought, “I’m giving up all my summers (teachers have all their summers to study and write), I’m giving up a small amount of teaching and a large amount of writing opportunities—I’m giving that up for a life of pressure, and administration, and crises, and crunch, and just normal pastoral labors, so will I languish in my ability to see Scripture?” Continued in part 4 . . .
INTERVIEW - John Piper on Other Preachers and His Call to MinistryPosted by Adrian Warnock - June 30, 2008 on 9:42 pm | In Biblical Counseling, counseling | No Comments Today I wrap up my interview with John Piper in this last segment. It is based on the video version of the interview, which can be viewed here. John talks about preachers he listens to and describes the circumtances which led him to the pastorate of Bethlehem Baptist Church. The three previous parts to the interview can be read at the following pages: AdrianWe have just been talking about studying the Word, and obviously books, but I guess for most preachers, they like to listen to other preachers as well. I guess you’re probably no exception to that. So who have you got on your iPOD that you’re actually listening to? John I do have an iPOD. It happens to sit in my speaker base in my bedroom as kind of an alarm clock. But my computer is in my study, and my treadmill is in my study. That’s the only time I ever listen to preaching—when I’m running. So three times a week, for thirty minutes or so, I’m listening to other people speak. So I download them from the Web, usually. Who are the last ones I listened to? I listened to [Don] Carson. I listened to R. C. Sproul. I listened to Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Somebody gave me the whole series of MLJ on Romans. I listen to C. J. Mahaney. I listen to John Sailhammer on the Old Testament. I listen to Carl Trueman on, what’s the topic? I can’t remember. A little while back. Basically, I’m looking for two things—one, contemporary relevant issues that I might want to dig into, or model preaching. So, whoever at that point, and they’re not always the same people, the model preachers and the ones who are talking about the things I feel like I need to get to know about. Adrian Okay. You’re obviously deeply committed to preaching and to pastoring, and you’ve been at Bethlehem an awful long time. I wonder, first of all, how did you make that decision to join Bethlehem, and was it a lifetime commitment at that moment, or was that something that evolved? How did it then develop into a long-term thing? John  I was teaching Bible and Greek for six years at Bethel College from 1974 to 1980. I had a sabbatical and I was working on Romans 9—the book on justification of God—the odyssey basically, Romans 9. And while I was doing that, the Lord, I believe, just kept saying through the words of that chapter, “I will be proclaimed and not just analyzed.” And I couldn’t resist it after awhile. Finally, I began to ask those who knew me best, “What would you think if I left academia and took the pastorate as a preaching pastor?” And they all said, “Do it.” So, in December of 1979, I gave my resignation and started looking for a church. I said, “I’d like to spend ten years here.” Well, they said, “Ten years would be good.” And ten years went by like that. And now it’s twenty-eight. And I have no intention of going anywhere else until I’m done.Adrian Do you think that kind of longevity is important for a pastor? John It’s important, at least in volatile urban settings. In other words, where there’s a lot of change in the people, there needs to be less change in the pastoral ministry. Where the people are stable, say in a small town that has very little coming and going, the stability lies very much in the people. In an urban setting of growth, with a lot of people in and a lot of people out, there’s no stability in the people. And if it isn’t in the staff and elders, then it’s not going to be anywhere. So the degree to which there is movement among the people, it seems to me to be good. And I think it’s healthy for the pastor himself to press on in preaching in a way that doesn’t redo the same stuff over and over again. I mean, after the first five years I thought to myself, “I would not want to do this anywhere again.” I mean, those first five years are hard. You’re figuring out everything; you’re rebuilding everything. You’re trying to make some changes. And to start all that over again instead of building on it would have felt very discouraging to me. Adrian So for you the pull of the church was a stronger pull than the pull of Bible college or seminary? John Yes, oh yes. And the reason in that day was because, in the college, I felt like, year in and year out, I had the same age group (18-22). They were culturally basically the same. Their questions were, every year, the same. They always revolved around Calvinism and free will and sovereignty, and whatever. And in the church you’ve got cradle to the grave. You’ve got ethnic and cultural differences. You’ve got people all over the spiritual map on their questions. You’ve got dying and birth. You’ve got weddings and funerals. The reality of the totality of life—what that said to me was — “If this is real, if this Book is real, it will relate to all of that instead of this little slice of humanity that comes to college.” And I just wanted to see the Word of God take root in a people. Adrian That’s really interesting. Would you say, then, that part of your development as a pastor and as preacher is just being there in the long-term and seeing that kind of development?  JohnAbsolutely. I had probably preached fifteen times in my life when I came to this church. I was 34 years old and I was a teacher. I taught Sunday School. I didn’t preach around. Most of my colleagues preached on the weekend in addition to teaching. I said, “I’m not going to do that. I’m going to be with my family in church, sitting with my children at my side and my wife, listening to the Word of God every weekend, and I’ll teach a Sunday School class.” So I had done a few weddings, and I had done a few little sermons here and there. But I was an absolute green preacher when I came to Bethlehem. So all of my development as a preacher has been through these 28 years in the same pulpit. Adrian Okay. So, you’re a busy guy because you’re a preacher there, you preach regularly. You go to all these conferences. And I’ve noticed you almost always bring, if not a completely brand new message, at least a newly reworked version of it, perhaps slightly different . . . How do you manage to find all that time? Or is it just that you prioritize that and don’t watch too much TV? John I don’t watch any television. I don’t have a television. Adrian That’s what it is probably. John That certainly helps. And I have a wonderful wife who tolerates a very absent husband, even when I’m home. I ask her—I’m always taking her temperature as we do our dates on Mondays and go out. “How we doing, Noel? Do you want to make any changes?” She’s just so incredibly flexible that I married the right woman. And ever since we’ve been married, I’ve always worked, both in the day and in the evening. I’ve raised four sons, and now I’m working on one daughter. And they’re all married, and they have sons, and they’re following the Lord. So I feel some deep, deep gratification about that. But I always took from 5:30 to 7:00, and that was their time. I ate with them and then we had play time. We were kicking the ball around in the backyard or we were building towers and knocking ‘em down — this is your time. And I went to all their ballgames. A pastor has his own time. He can do whatever he wants. So 3:30 in the afternoon, while other guys are working, I’m banging my fists at the soccer match, or you’d call it football, to make my son, Benjamin, run faster . . . Adrian You played soccer? John I didn’t — I watched it. Adrian But, no, still, I mean . . . John Oh, I love it. We try, we try! (Laughing.) Adrian You have David Beckham now, of course. John Well, he did score a goal the other day. I think it was headlines. One goal out of this billion dollar deal. So . . . where were we? Adrian We were talking about football playing . . . you were just talking about all the time . . . . John  Oh, the time to do things, yeah. The point was that even though I work in the evenings (at 7:00 I’m back in my study or with a book in my hand or at some meeting) and Noel is doing her handwork, or working on her projects, and I’m working away. But, really, the key is — I’ve been in the church long enough that they let me do what I want to do. And we’ve got such diversification staffing, that I’m the preacher guy. They want me to feed this flock on the weekend, and they want me to provide vision for the staff. That’s my title — Pastor of Preaching and Vision. I’m here in Wales, and I’ll be back to preach next Sunday, and most of them won’t even know I was gone.Adrian Yeah, sure. You write books. What would be the three books that you’ve written that would be your most important books, in your opinion? Three most important books you’ve written, or three significant . . . John I will be interested to watch from heaven to see what the answer to that question will prove to be, because I don’t think my answer really has any authority. I don’t know. Don Carson told me he thought Pleasures of God was the most important thing I’ve done, so I think I would put that in the top three. I’m going to put Desiring God there just because it’s the seminal book from which everything else flowed. And after those two, God’s Passion for His Glory maybe. That’s my [Jonathan] Edwards—Edwards is half of that and I’m half of that. And because Edwards is so important, and that essay, The End for Which God Created the World, is so absolutely foundational to everything I do and what I think, that may be the other one. Adrian Great. Well look, thanks very much for joining us, John. It’s just been wonderful to have a few moments here just to pick your brains . . . John Yeah. I wish we had more time. Thank you very much! Adrian God bless.
C. J. Mahaney on People God Killed - A Sermon That Changed My LifePosted by Adrian Warnock - June 30, 2008 on 9:17 pm | In Biblical Counseling, counseling | No Comments If you are an avid C. J. Mahaney listener, you may well have heard of a series of talks he did many years ago on people in the Bible who God killed. In which case, I've got a real treat in store for you! But first, let me set the context.I would like to share with you a few sermons over the coming weeks or months that have impacted me so much that I still remember them. I am convinced that the gentle "drip drip" effect of being continually exposed to good teaching over many years is as important as the moments of great impact and decision. But, by the nature of things, we don't remember those sermons! Some messages do consciously shape us, however, creating a moment of transaction between us and God. Often we remember how we felt when we heard them as if it were yesterday, even years afterwards. This is one such talk. I would love to hear from others about sermons they remember as having transformed them in a similar way. To set the scene, I was still a young boy. I had somehow persuaded my parents to let me go into the adults' meeting in a tent at Downs Bible Week, an early Newfrontiers conference. Mahaney was a phenomenon even back then. He was funny, engaging, easy to understand, and truly passionate. He was speaking about the holiness of God, and by honing in on the people God killed, certainly got my attention. This was a side of God I hadn't really given much attention to.  This talk was very well received. In fact, you could have cut the air with a knife that night because of the sense of the presence of God in the room. It was one of the very few times in my life when I caught something of the smell of revival. That night I experienced for the first time a sense of the weighty presence of God in all his holiness that both attracted and terrified me. I knew then that this was what a revival would feel like. If I had known how seldom I would experience the same sensation in the ensuing years, I would not have wanted to leave that tent. Sometimes today I cry out to God that he would reveal himself in such a way again. When we pray for revival, I'm not entirely sure we know what we are praying for.Judging by the heavy sense of conviction in the room, many of us were totally undone that night. I know that for me, I would never be able to treat God as flippantly or irreverently again. That night kindled in me a healthy respect for God which has never left me. The Bible both commands us to fear God, and then tells us not to be afraid of him. Or, as Newton puts it: 'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved. One of my most enduring memories of that evening all those years ago was speaking to a member of our church who, with eyes brimming with tears, said that they felt they had just begun their Christian life all over again—if that were possible. There were many who felt the same way, wondering if they had ever been a Christian up until that point. The sermon seemed as though it was lost to the sands of time. But in response to my appeal for old sermons, I like to imagine that someone was rummaging through their attic and finding an old tape. As a result, here it is! I think it's a VERY important talk and am glad I have been able to (with permission) unleash it on the world once again. You can download it here or listen online using the embedded player: Here are some extracts from the talk—the first was in the context of talking about whether God's punishment of Adam's sin was excessive. "I don't in any way believe that that was too harsh.There was also an endearing moment, when in the midst of some hilarious Mahaney jokes, he turned to my mentor, Henry Tyler, who was on the stage beside him and said, "Henry, I don't think Martyn Lloyd-Jones would have approved of this exegesis, do you?" It was a funny and intimate moment that nicely offset the conviction and passion of much of the sermon. While I am not sure that Lloyd-Jones would have approved of the humor, I like to think he would definitely have approved of the life-transforming effect on one young boy, and I suspect many others sitting in that circus top tent on a racecourse at Plumsted that evening. Do you remember this sermon or one of Mahaney's other ones on God killing people? What impact did it have on you? ******** This talk is reproduced with the permission of Newfrontiers. Visit their website for further free downloads from a variety of Newfrontiers events.
INTERVIEW - John Piper on Passionate PreachingPosted by Adrian Warnock - June 30, 2008 on 10:13 am | In Biblical Counseling, counseling | No Comments Yesterday we began sharing the transcript of my interview with John Piper at New Word Alive. Today we continue with John Piper talking about passionate preaching. The video of today's segment can be seen here.Adrian People do talk about you, John, as having a real sort of passion about you. It’s almost like a zeal, I guess. In fact, particularly when you’re preaching, I certainly experience that, having actually only heard you for the first time in the flesh last night, and so many people afterwards were saying the same thing. I was just blown away by the passion, and also by a sense of the presence of God that you brought when you were preaching. I guess that’s probably the best way of describing it. Is that something that you’re aware of in some way for yourself? Is that something you can explain a bit as to why you feel that other people experience that? Is it something you feel yourself when you’re preaching as well? How did that come about? Because I know, for example, that Lig Duncan said that when he heard you preach at Together for the Gospel, he felt, “Boy, I’ve never preached before. I’ve never done it.” So what is it about you? Is there something special about you? Do you have some kind of secret you can share with the rest of us? John I don’t usually feel that way when I’m done preaching, okay? I talked to Don Carson one time, and I regard Don as a very effective communicator and a brilliant person.  He mentioned to me that he regularly walks away from his events feeling that he’s blown it, which made me feel better, because I don’t think you can ever quite know what God’s doing. At the times that I have felt bleakest about the way I did what I was supposed to do, others have testified to being helped. And the times I felt liberated, free, engaged — Did anything happen in them rather than just in me? So, I’m very suspicious about the way I feel about my preaching. I doubt myself regularly that my assessment of what just happened is accurate. Which helps me and hurts me. It means I never feel very excited about what I’ve just done, and it means I don’t fall out the bottom because I say, “Well, God can do what he wants to do. You know, Balaam’s ass can accomplish what he wants, so he might use that, even though I felt terrible about it. So I’m a lousy judge when it comes to saying, “Was there a presence of God, or was there an anointing, or was there an effect?”I just know that what I want is the gift of self-forgetfulness in what I would call a full engagement, a full passion, a full zeal with what’s there in the text, and the reality of God in and through the text. I want to see him, and know him, be engaged by him, be thrilled by him, say it with whatever effectiveness I can, and let the chips fall where they will. And that, as far as my own subjective awareness goes, that rises and falls. One Sunday I feel thrilled. I feel met. I feel carried. I feel helped. And others I don’t. But that doesn’t correlate necessarily with what God is doing in the people out there. So, to me, an effective, experienced sermon would be when I forget myself. I’m not thinking, “Oh, I’m doing well here,” or “I’m doing badly here,” or “That was an effective comment,” — anything like that ruins it for me. The gift is when you’re not outside yourself watching yourself. You’re so here—you’re so here that you’re not at all conscious—there’s no two of you, there’s just one of you, and God and the people, and a transaction is happening that’s a miracle. Because you can’t choose to forget yourself. The act of choosing to forget yourself is self-awareness. So it’s a gift. It’s a phenomenal precious gift in the moment. You pray for it ahead of time, and it may come for twenty minutes and then you lose it for ten, and you’re thinking about your hands, and you’re thinking about your notes, and you’re thinking about the faces out there, and it’s all discombobulated, and then it may be taken away in the moment, and you’re free to . . . you go, and you wake up ten minutes later and — What was THAT? You know? That was free!! So that’s what I’m after. I think there are ways to cultivate what I’m talking about. It basically is cultivating God-centeredness. It’s cultivating prayer. It’s cultivating a serious engagement with the Word. It’s cultivating asking certain kinds of God-centered, Christ-exalting questions. There’s a focus and a preoccupation. And then my root Christian hedonism, I mean, my root philosophy of life — whether you are satisfied in God really does make a difference as to whether you can glorify God! That’s a huge thing! It’s a theoretical construct that I think is in the Bible, but it has a practical effect because I really believe that if you’re not passionate about God, you won’t glorify him as much. If you’re more passionate about football than God, you glorify football. If you’re more passionate about food or cooking or sex or money or work or the stock market than you are about God, then that’s what gets glorified. God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. That construct of reality has an effect on how you pray about your life and how you live you life. Continued in part 3 . . .
Digital Works of John M. Frame on Logos Bible Software PlatformPosted by Adrian Warnock - June 30, 2008 on 6:38 am | In Biblical Counseling, counseling | No Comments I'd like to introduce you to the latest addition to my Logos library — The Collected Works of John M. Frame, Volume 1, Theology. For me, the more books I have in my library the better since it increasingly means that I can do all my Bible study without ever opening a book. Thanks to the fantastic resources of the base collections (available with a 25 per cent discount if you order via my link) and the many commentaries and other books I have collected over they years, I am able to simply open Logos, type a Bible reference into the passage guide search box, and hit "Go." A wealth of material is returned that helps me after I have done my own work on a passage. I have customized my results page so that important groups of resources are searched and I can identify what Piper, Lloyd-Jones, and others have to say on a particular verse. Now, of course, Frame will be added to that list. If you have a growing Logos library you will find Frame's works fit into it nicely. If you don't yet own Logos, this is a great place to start. It should be stressed that the DVD will work just fine without any other Logos software, and can therefore be the foundation of what I suspect may become a growing library. You may not have heard of John M. Frame, but he comes highly recommended. For example, Wayne Grudem says of one of these books that it is "A magnificent treatment that will be a standard work for decades. Frame stands in the great Reformed tradition of Calvin and Charnock, Hodge and Bavinck, yet in his treatment of the doctrine of God he surpasses them all with an amazing breadth of knowledge and depth of understanding. In every section, Frame brings fresh insight to old doctrines."Full details of the amazing collection of books that are available can be found on this Bits and Bytes website page. As always with Logos, when considering the price it is vital to remember that the cost in paper form would be much higher. But I hope you will be pleasantly surprised by the introductory price.
INTERVIEW - John Piper on New Word AlivePosted by Adrian Warnock - June 28, 2008 on 10:42 pm | In Biblical Counseling, counseling | No Comments Yesterday was Friday and therefore it was the day that we usually turn to Piper. I have not forgotten that tradition, nor, incidentally, have I forgotten Lloyd-Jones Monday—it's just that there has been a lot of other material to get out there, and I haven't wanted to do more than a post a day at the moment.I actually have another project which I'm currently working on, and which I plan on telling you about in a few weeks or so. Believe it or not, thanks to spending some time planning and writing ahead, and also to the efforts of my transcriptionist and editor, Annette, this past few weeks have actually been quite light blogging work for me. Please pray for me that God would grant me unusual grace, inspiration, and self-discipline at this time. Anyway, today I thought we would share the transcript of the first video segment from my New Word Alive interview with John Piper. The video can be seen at Piper on New Word Alive and Spring Harvest. ************************* Adrian Hi! My name is Adrian Warnock and I’m here with John Piper. We’re here at New Word Alive. I can’t say the name of the town [Pwllheli], but it’s in North Wales in the UK, about six hours away from London. John has very kindly agreed to be interviewed here. But he’s also specifically asked that we would pray together before we start. So, John, let’s just share a word of prayer, shall we? John  Father, we lean on you for words that would come to our mind that might be helpful or useful to other folks. So, for the sake of your name and for the good of others, we ask that you would cause us not to go down any rabbit trails that would be unhelpful, to waste our time, or spin our wheels. And we ask that you would guard us from error or pride or anything that would be dishonoring to Jesus or harmful to the Church. And so draw us into a conversation that will be edifying, I pray, and an honor to the Lord Jesus. We ask this is his name. Amen.Adrian Amen. Well, thanks for joining us, John. John My pleasure. Adrian Really, the whole purpose of these interviews is to try and get a bit of a glimpse of the man behind the preacher, as it were. So just to start with, I’d love to know how you came to the decision to be here. There seems to be a lot of you Americans coming over here—you’re here, Don Carson is here in the UK today at this conference as well, and later in the year Mark Driscoll’s going to be at a conference in Brighton [as well as some meetings in London]. Why do you guys keep coming? John There’s a narrow and a broader answer to that. Let’s go from the broader to the narrow. The broader answer would be—when I was here doing my sabbatical at Tyndale House in Cambridge, I got to know the folks who did the book, Pierced for Our Transgressions. Adrian Oh, yes!  JohnThey asked me to do the forward for it. And that got us into a conversation about the larger evangelical situation in Britain, and for whatever reason, I found myself very very akin to their cause in upholding the penal substitution of Christ—his work on the cross in our place as precious beyond words. I don’t know why, but they thought that my support would be helpful. Why that is—I’m just an ordinary American pastor and nobody over here knows me, I thought—so what’s the deal with doing the forward for this book or whatever? And I discovered that evidently my voice has (and this is ironic to say it here) I thought it had, up to this point, a kind of unifying effect because I’m contaminated with charismatic influence . . . Adrian (Laughing) I like that . . . !! John . . . and I’m reformed to the core—like I say I’m a seven-point Calvinist—that sort of thing. And so that’s an unusual combination. So I’ve been to the Leister Conference with the Banner of Truth books, I’ve been to the Brighton Conference with what, Newfrontiers? Adrian Yes, that’s right. John And I’ve been to FIEC, and I’ve been here now, and that seems to be broad. So evidently my role is to function as a kind of voice that can attract a broad array of evangelicals. [Ed: Piper has also spoken for the Proclamation Trust and other UCCF events.] So that’s the bigger reason. I like serving that purpose, so if I can serve that purpose, I’ll come over. I didn’t know that, but I’m told that, and I’m pleased to help draw exegetically serious, Bible, gospel people, whether charismatic or not, together. I think that’s a wonderful calling. So that’s one. The narrow one is that this event was born out of a tension at Spring Harvest over the whole issue of the nature of the atonement, and I think the place that this conference, New Word Alive, came down on—what Christ achieved for us and how he achieved it in bearing God’s wrath, absorbing it fully, removing it, propitiating it. That historic, traditional vision of what Christ did is exactly right and precious. So, when I was asked, “Would you come help us get this started?”—that question wouldn’t have made any sense to me without the broader piece, but given what I was being told about my voice, I thought, “Well, okay. If you think I can help, I’ll be happy to help, because I believe in the cause.” So those two things coming together—the broader function of my voice kind of spanning certain tensions in Britain, and this issue in particular—made this a very attractive event to me. Adrian Okay. Well, it’s been great to have you. What’s your impression of the event as a speaker, and also as a participant? John Well, I’ve only spoken once, and then I’ve attended one thing ahead of time, too. The responsiveness of the folks has been positive. Now I have to measure my words because British folks (laughter) are less responsive than what I’m used to!! Adrian Are you talking about the stiff upper lip here? John  I don’t know what I’m . . . I don’t know what it is, but I mean, I’m looking around in here during that kind of worship and I’m expecting a great deal more engagement than I’m getting, so I just kind of adjust my expectations to the kind of human being I’m dealing with (Adrian laughing), and if I’m at a more, you know, lively place, I’ll expect that. Here I’m pleased to settle in with my expectations kind of in the middle, and it’s been good!Adrian I think it’s partly a cultural thing. John Oh, it’s absolutely cultural, there’s no doubt that it’s cultural. That’s what it is! Adrian Yeah, because I guess some people are more or less expressive in worship based on who they are. John Exactly. It’s partly genetic, partly cultural, partly religious and convictional. Adrian Yeah, yeah. John So those three factors together make you who you are. We’ll all that way. Continued in part 2 . . .
INTERVIEW - Don Carson at New Word Alive, Part 1Posted by Adrian Warnock - June 26, 2008 on 11:44 pm | In Biblical Counseling, counseling | No Comments I had the great privilege of talking to Don Carson in April at the New Word Alive Conference, when this interview was recorded. I have already shared the video of the interview here.************************* Adrian Hi! I’m Adrian Warnock. I blog at http://adrianwarnock.com/. and I’m also privileged to serve as part of the leadership team of Jubilee Church in London. I’m here at New Word Alive, together with Don Carson, who has kindly agreed to answer a few of my questions. Thank you for joining us, Don. Don My privilege. Adrian Excellent. So, Don, you’re obviously a busy man. You do all kinds of things—write books and lecture, and all the various things you do—and yet you, and John Piper, and later this year, Mark Driscoll, all sorts of American guys keep coming over here. Why do you think that is? Why do you come? Don  The Church of Christ is world-wide at the end of the day, and partly because of Trinity’s reach, we serve many countries, and partly because of my own roots over here (I lived here for nine years, my wife is English), and partly because there is a camaraderie in the ministry itself. Not only do we come here, but there are a number of Brits who come to where we are, and then we might even meet up in Kuala Lumpur. That’s the way the Church is, increasingly. There’s a global reach, and we lean on each other, gain support from each other, and try to bring glory to Christ in different ways in different parts of the world.Adrian Fantastic. Well, we’re certainly glad you’re here. I have very much enjoyed listening to your talks. What’s your impression of the conference as a whole? Don The buzz I’m hearing (but I’m the outsider) is that people are really grateful for the Bible teaching, not only in the big sessions, but also in a lot of the seminars and so on. After John’s material last night, for example, on suffering, there was one woman in a wheelchair who said that she had found this one of the most encouraging things she had ever heard in her life, and the whole conference is worth it just for her, isn’t it? Adrian Yes! Don And then when you realize there are five thousand people who are receiving blessings from God from his Word in one way or another, it’s something for which to be incalculably grateful. Adrian Yes. I guess there’s no real substitute for gathering people to hear God’s Word, is there really? Don That’s right. That’s right. Adrian Whatever context it’s in. And it’s interesting because I’ve just been talking to John, who obviously gave up theological life to become a pastor. And I guess you’ve devoted your life to training pastors. Is that a fair way of describing it? Don Yes. I started off in pastoral ministry. He started off with theological . . . Adrian So you did it the other way around? Don I went the other way around. And there are dark moments when I wish I hadn’t. But you can’t second guess either yourself or God all the time. It’s not right. But about fifteen years ago I almost left Trinity to go to a church. It was a church near a major university and I wanted to do the sort of thing that John is doing. I had two or three senior men in the ministry, both already at that time in their early 70’s, descend on me and tell me in very authoritarian terms that I just must not do it because they were afraid that if I did I wouldn’t reserve enough time to do some of the writing I was doing. Now whether that’s right or not, I don’t know. You offer yourself up to God and try to do what’s right. But I would say that the front line is the local church. And there is a sense in which seminary is a back-up slot. The front line is the local church, and the first impetus towards ministry and towards stamping people for what ministry ought to be should be within in the context of the local church. And then a good seminary, a good theological college, helps to provide the kind of training and further exposure to more technical knowledge, a grasp of the languages, and this sort of thing. Virtually no local church can provide that, and yet it’s really important for those who teach in such places, nevertheless, to be pastors first, because if they think of themselves of teachers and scholars first, then they tend to produce teachers and scholars. So there’s a stamping, not simply from the course material, but from your own values, what you dream about, what you think about. So, at our seminary, we always want to hire a certain percentage of faculty who wish they were in the pastoral ministry, or else quite frankly, we don’t want them. Now, they have to be academically competent and all the rest, but we don’t want people who just want to be in a seminary. We want people who in many ways would prefer to be in the local church. So, that’s as close as I can come to explaining where I’m at. Adrian Oh, that’s good. So, of all the many books that you’ve written, Don—this is again a question I asked John about his books—but of all the books that you’ve written, what would you say would be the most important two or three books—the ones that perhaps people should start with reading, let’s say? Don I have no idea how to answer that because people find books are important for different reasons. So for some people working through the front end of post-modernism, the 1996 book or whatever date it was, The Gagging of God, they found very helpful at the time. On the other hand, widely read by pastors was my John commentary, for example. I just don’t know how to answer that sort of question. Adrian I guess it’s what fits that person. Don That’s right. And as you say—What should they read first? Well, an awful lot depends on who they are. If they’re a lay person, [they] might start off with a book like Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount or something like that. I just don’t have a formulated answer for that.  For pastors today who are in small churches and sometimes feel discouraged and wonder if their life is worth it, what I’d now recommend is the one that came out just a month or two ago called Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor. It’s short—only 160 pages— and it’s really on my dad. He was a quintessential, ordinary pastor in many ways. He never preached in another country. He never wrote a book. He was never a conference speaker or the like. Most of the congregations most of his life were 30 people. But he exemplified faithfulness in some pretty grueling circumstances. He nursed my mother through the Alzheimer’s years. He was a church planter cross-culturally moving from the English to the French side of Canada, and had a passion for faithfulness in all kinds of small ways. Yeah, it’s not so much a critical history as a collection of our memories of him and a lot of his diary entries and so on as he struggled with these kinds of things and tried to be faithful in small corners.Adrian I’m guessing that he was probably one of the main influences on you growing up and into ministry, was he? Don Not directly. When I left home I had no intention of going into the ministry. In some ways I was closer to my mother. Nevertheless, his pattern certainly has stamped me. But I started off in chemistry and mathematics. I had no intention of going into the ministry. That came about by other things. But, undoubtedly, in all kinds of subliminal ways I scarcely recognized, his pattern has affected me. But it wasn’t a kind of direct thing—“Oh, I want to be like Dad!” sort of thing. It wasn’t that at all. Adrian So who did influence you most to make that kind of jump from chemistry to theology? Don That wasn’t a single step either. I worked in a research lab in Ottawa for the federal government in air pollution. I discovered that the people in this lab—I had a good budget, I had a good project, I enjoyed what I was doing—but most of the people in the lab were either resenting it and waiting for retirement or, alternatively, chemistry was their god. And I didn’t fit in either camp. I was enjoying it, but at the same time another chap and I were trying to start a Sunday School in a new church in the upper valley, and that became more and more important to me as time went on. I remember a chorus that I learned as a boy playing out in my mind again and again: By and by, when I look on his face,And in that autumn, I heard a sermon from a man—I think I’ve only ever heard him preach two or three times—a sermon on Ezekiel 22, where God says, “I sought for man to stand in the gap before me for my people, but I found none.” And God used that in a powerful way in my life so that I wanted to cry with my whole being, “Here am I, send me!” But none of that was planned. Another earlier step was the minister of the church I was [attending] in Montreal said that he wanted me to be his assistant one summer. And I said he had confused me with a theological student—I was chemistry. I never did go and do it, but it was the first time I started thinking about it because some minister had tapped me on the shoulder and said I ought to be thinking about it. So there were many different things that God used providentially to woo me away from chemistry and science and towards vocational ministry. Continued in part 2 . . .
INTERVIEW - Don Carson at New Word Alive, Part 2Posted by Adrian Warnock - June 26, 2008 on 11:35 pm | In Biblical Counseling, counseling | No Comments This is the second part of a two-part interview with Don Carson, which began yesterday. That segment can be read here. I previously shared the video of this interview here.************************* Adrian So obviously from your own story, and also in your current role, you must have seen lots of people come through that path. Do you have any thoughts about how the Church can best develop its future leaders, or how, indeed, those people who might be beginning to feel similar stirrings to you, all those years ago—how do we turn somebody who is keen on God’s Word and might show some potential into a future preacher or future leader? Don It’s hard to answer that in just a few sentences. 2 Timothy 2:2 insists that senior people ought to be looking for junior people who will prove faithful in passing on the gospel yet one more round.  And that means inevitably that they should not only challenge them as to what they are going to do with their lives, but provide them some venue for service, some test of gifts, some beginning ministry, supervise them, mentor them, challenge them. Not just say to them, “Go and give a talk here,” but work on the talk with them, listen to it, offer critique, make sure they are growing, give them things to read, put them in situations where they’re outside their comfort zone and have to bear witness to this sort of thing, see if they grow and are flourishing spiritually and mentally. And then with time, discerning people will begin to see if there really is potential there, and the individual himself may begin to see this as part of God’s gifting and calling. I do think we ought to be more proactive in tapping people, while still recognizing that finally the thing must be confirmed by God himself. Yet, nevertheless, if 2 Timothy 2 means what it says it means, then it seems to me we ought to be a little more proactive than we have sometimes been.Adrian Yeah, I guess that’s right. It’s interesting that so far you haven’t mentioned seminary at all in that. Do you see that as more “down the line” then? That it’s not just a question of pick someone, send them off to Bible college, and you’ve got an instant Church leader then? Don Well, a seminary can’t guarantee that. A seminary can contribute very powerfully some of the components that are there. As I said earlier, there are not many local churches that can give you a really good grounding in Church history, Greek and Hebrew, good exegesis, disciplined reading of the text, and so on. Not many. And the accumulation of a good number of former pastors and missionaries and so [forth] on one campus—you can pick their brains in all of these areas. That’s got to be really important. But some of it is learned on the street. In the Anglican system, that works out in curacies and so on, and ideally it works out in the independent system with assistant pastorates and so on. But even before they go, ideally they should have some exposure, some testing. And that might work through being a staff worker at UCCF or it might be in the context of a local church. But by and large, I’m not too keen on someone working, let’s say, in computer science flat out, and suddenly saying, “I’m called of God. Let’s go.” It’s usually a little more complicated than that. Adrian Right. Don And ideally, there needs to be at least some testing and growth within the context of a disciplined mentored ministry first. Adrian Yes, okay. Is there anything that you think that guys like you can do to help those pastors who, for whatever reason, haven’t been educated at a Bible college, and now they’re right in the midst of preaching every week. How do you see that? I know it’s difficult sometimes to say, “All right church, I’m off!” Don Yeah. There’s no automatic formula. There are some people who are so gifted by God that they can be self-taught and do an excellent job. Who is going to throw stones at a Martyn Lloyd-Jones? But it would also be wrong to think that Martyn Lloyd-Jones is the typical person. There are a vast majority of ordinary ministers who are going to do a lot better if they can have some time for disciplined study. But, on the other hand, if the force of circumstances makes that sort of thing impossible for fiscal or other reasons, then there are a lot of things that can be done. For a start, the English language, above all languages on the earth, is blessed by resources—books, magazines, both in print and now increasingly on the Net—the resources are fantastic actually. So what you need ultimately is some mentor or guide to steer you into the right sort of list, the right sort of priorities—You read this, then you read that, and then you read something else, and so on—and that, of course, was what Wesley did with his young men. He had a list of fifty books that he expected all of his trainee preachers to read and so on. Adrian Do you have a list like that yourself? Don I don’t have a personal list, but I’ve often created them for individuals in particular circumstances. Adrian You prefer to . . . Don To custom make it in some ways. But, increasingly, there are often courses online, too, and maybe weekend or night school courses that are available in a place that’s within driving distance. There are a lot of different patterns that are available today in one fashion or another. Adrian Sure. Don So, for those who are willing to be disciplined enough to take the time and really work at things, setting aside a day a week, or a day and a half a week, for something other than preparation for the next talk and visitation and all of that. Yeah, it’s possible to get quite a lot of upgrading in the context of your own study. Adrian Right, excellent. And I guess, even a conference like this is helpful to somebody to come and be exposed to teachers a bit more than they perhaps would in their local church. Don It’s part of it.  There is a danger at these conferences. You hear a man with a gift of a John Piper, and you will inevitably come away blessed, and you’ve met with God, and that’s a great thing. But on the other hand, most of us are not going to be John Pipers. So it’s also possible to come away feeling a wee bit, in some sense, discouraged or threatened, or “I can never do that!” So it’s important to get the right thing from these conferences. At conferences, in the big marquees, the ordinary pastor does not normally have a voice. And I think that it is important to learn faithfulness in ministry, fully recognizing that most of us will be ordinary pastors . . .Adrian Very good! Don . . . and learn to be faithful in that frame of reference. Which, of course, is why I wrote the book on my dad. It wasn’t that I was trying to write a big critical biography. It’s not that. Get the right priorities, the foundations, in terms of faithfulness, what ministry means, what discouragement looks like, what suffering looks like, and so on, and the joy of the Lord within that matrix, or else you will have a romantic view of the ministry that is almost certainly going to lead to discouragement. Adrian I guess also there’s a lot of people here as well who will never be ministers. Don Yes, of course. Adrian What would you say to them? Don Well, in an event like this, it’s just like a different question in terms of training. At a place like this, the people are going to get somewhat different things out of it. The huge number of students are being exposed to teaching, Bible training, their own student tracks, and the encouragement of meeting with a whole lot of other students, and so on. Some come from small CUs, and just to have a thousand students together is itself a huge blessing. And some come from really small churches likewise, where to have about three or four thousand people singing at the same time and hearing the Word of God—all of that is itself a great encouragement. So there’s not only the content, there’s the sense that “This is the Church of the living God.” And God is calling out his people. They’re not to be discouraged. These are the foundations. This is right. And rejoicing in God in all of his context. It can be an enormous encouragement and anchor, and even vision for what could be for the future. For all of those things, too, we need to be thankful to God. Adrian Yes. So, for anyone who is watching this on the Net thinking, “Should I come to New Word Alive next year?” — what would you say to them? Don Well, I’m not a very good salesman. What I would say is that if you want to have a serious week of serious Bible teaching that is, nevertheless, full of corporate worship and meeting of new friends and an opportunity to pull aside and read and think, as well as listen and study and learn, I’m sure this would be a week well spent. Adrian Thanks very much for your time, Don. I know you’ve got to prepare for the next talk. Thank you for joining us. Don My privilege. Blessings on you.
Pre-Order ESV Study Bible in USA or EuropePosted by Adrian Warnock - June 24, 2008 on 9:51 pm | In Biblical Counseling, counseling | No Comments |
