"Most churches make the mistake of selecting as leaders the confident, the competent, and the successful. But what you most need in a leader is someone who has been broken by the knowledge of his or her sin, and even greater knowledge of Jesus’ costly grace. The number one leaders in every church ought to be the people who repent the most fully without excuses, because you don’t need any now; the most easily without bitterness; the most publicly and the most joyfully. They know their standing isn’t based on their performance."
-Tim Keller
I’ve been reading the book and am challenged on a number of levels. My soul and mind resonate with the subtitle: “A radical reshaping around Gospel and community.”
A helpful quote from Chester:
One of our catchphrases is “ordinary people living ordinary life with gospel intentionality.” It means doing the chores, having meals, watching sports, and so on with an intention to talk about Jesus, to pastor one another with the gospel, and to share that gospel with unbelievers.
May God allow us to serve in the church with this trajectory.
Biblical truth is in the closed hand. (It doesn’t change!)
But changing methodologies and adapting to culture is in the open hand. (It can change.)
Keeping that in mind will be helpful when giving younger leaders are given opportunities to lead in the church.
Mark Driscoll briefly discussed this in preparation to the 2006 DesiringGod conference. He makes a point that if younger men feel stifled and are not able to venture out and lead in creative ways, well, they will probably leave.
On Sunday I was privileged again to preach in Wilsonville at Canyon Creek Church . This time the text was Philippians 3:1-11 , and my title: "Worthless Doing and Priceless Knowing ."
Asked to give a little synopsis for the church bulletin, this is what I wrote:
We have natural bent towards religion. That is, we tend to find our identity by what we do, rather than in Who God is. It is easy to think we have done so much on our own, for our "gains" are clearly seen by looking at our own religious resumes and feeble good works — especially by comparison with others. Yet, in the Gospel, the ground has become level for everyone, from the talented and motivated to the least gifted. The common thread is God’s grace in Christ, and our response in humility (looking out to Him, not into ourselves).
The Gospel of God’s glorious grace is the only means God has designed to set us free from empty religion. We no longer come to our Creator as ones holding our great accomplishments in our hands. Instead, we along with the Apostle Paul, can rightly say, "whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ" (Phil. 3:7 ). Our empty doing is traded for priceless knowing. We now can know, love and enjoy Jesus our Savior as the supreme object of our affections and the true desire of our hearts. Does that describe your trajectory?
Knowing I would be speaking to (almost?) all Christians, I was quick to remind us that the Gospel is for Christians to. We never outgrow our need for Christ, and the good news of His glorious grace. Aimed at helping us all discover grace-renewal in the God of all grace, and be people who "worship in the Spirit" ( Phil. 3:3 ), I wanted us to see that knowing, loving and enjoying our Savior above all else is the goal of God in the Gospel.
We can truly say to Jesus, "Nothing compares to the greatness of knowing You."
Only a few dozen pages into the new Total Church book. It arrived this week in the mail — 4 weeks before it’s official publishing date — and I was hoping to dig into it this weekend if possible. Last night I couldn’t put it down. Looking forward to interacting with the UK authors’ concepts, as they try to unfold what they mean by the subtitle: "A radical reshaping around Gospel and community."
The publisher gives a summary:
"As two pastors outline the biblical calling to make both the gospel and community central in the Christian life, they apply this dual focus to evangelism, social involvement, church planting, discipleship, youth ministry, and more, urging the body of Christ to rethink its perspective and way of life."
Here’s a sampling from chapter one, a quote I sent this morning to a friend about the both/and of being Word-centered and Spirit-centered (not either/or). I think they nail it on the head.
"Spiritual experience that does not arise from God’s word is not Christian experience. Other religions offer spiritual experiences. Concerts and therapy sessions can affect our emotions. Not all that passes for Christian experience is genuine. An authentic experience of the Spirit is an experience in response to the gospel. Through the Spirit the truth touches our hearts, and that truth moves our emotions and affects our wills.
This also means that Bible study and theology that do not lead to love for God and a desire to do his will — to worship, tears, laughter, excitement or sorrow — have gone terribly wrong. True theology leads to love, mission and doxology (1 Timothy 1:5, 7, 17 ). We should not expect an adrenaline rush every time we study God’s word. We all express our emotions in different ways. But when we study God’s word we should pray that the Spirit of God will not only inform our heads but also inspire our hearts.
Part of our problem is that we often assume an experience of God will be some kind of revelation — a dream, an inner voice, a guiding sense of peace, an encounter, a word. This assumption is reinforced by mysticism and existentialism. But we have no reason to need or expect a revelation from God. God as revealed himself in his Son and in his word. And God’s word is whole adequate and sufficient. But the Bible does lead us to expect other experiences of God through the Holy Spirit — love for God, love for others, assurance, joy, confidence, peace, and so on. Word and Spirit give us a new desire for God (Romans 8:5-9; 4; 17 ; Galatians 5:17 ).
True Christian experience is experience that arises through the Spirit from by the revelation of God in Jesus contained in the Bible. God rules through his word, and the Spirit applies that word to our lives. The Spirit opens blind eyes to see the truth and melts cold hearts to respond to God’s word. The word of God comes in the power of the Spirit (Acts 10:44; 1Corinthians 2:4; 1Thessalonians 1:5-6 ). If we want to see the Spirit of God at work, we must proclaim the word of God.
We might say that being word-centered is synonymous with being Spirit-centered. The difference is that we cannot control the Spirit. We cannot determine or even predict when and how he will work (John 3:8 ). Our role is to read, hear, proclaim, teach, and obey the word. The Spirit’s role is to do the work of God through that word. Through the Spirit our words become the living word of God (2 Samuel 23:2 ). And so we center our lives and ministries on the word of God while praying that God’s Spirit will do the work of God through that word."
This weekend Kari and I are privileged to be able to preach God’s Word. She is heading down south to teach the womens retreat for Calvary Chapel of Corvallis . She has (as usual!) poured over God’s Word and prayed and studied diligently. The four session titles — centered around the theme of "Expectancy without Expectations" came out as:
The God of Disappointment, Identifying Expectations (Friday night)
Processing Pain, Identifying Fear (Saturday morning)
Enjoying Fulfillment, Worshiping God (Saturday night)
Her notes are close to 40 pages single-spaced, and I look forward to going through them at the same time she teaches many miles away. They will provide specifics to pray for and about. She will probably have some reflections to blog about when she gets home and rested again.
On this end, I’ll be flying solo with the Dutcher (with family help), and having good discussions with our boy about how wonderful his Mommy is. Privileged again for the opportunity to preach in Wilsonville another time at Canyon Creek Church . This time the text is Philippians 3:1-11 , and the title will be "Worthless Doing and Priceless Knowing ."
It is amazing how difficult it is to distill a whole message on a couple paragraphs down to that length, just a paragraph or two. I was asked to give a little synopsis for the church bulletin; this is what I wrote:
We have natural bent towards religion. That is, we tend to find our identity by what we do, rather than in Who God is. It is easy to think we have done so much on our own, for our "gains" are clearly seen by looking at our own religious resumes and feeble good works — especially by comparison with others. Yet, in the Gospel, the ground has become level for everyone, from the talented and motivated to the least gifted. The common thread is God’s grace in Christ, and our response in humility (looking out to Him, not into ourselves).
The Gospel of God’s glorious grace is the only means God has designed to set us free from empty religion. We no longer come to our Creator as ones holding our great accomplishments in our hands. Instead, we along with the Apostle Paul, can rightly say, "whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ" (Phil. 3:7 ). Our empty doing is traded for priceless knowing. We now can know, love and enjoy Jesus our Savior as the supreme object of our affections and the true desire of our hearts. Does that describe your trajectory?
Hoping to help us all discover grace-renewal in the God of all grace, and be people who "worship in the Spirit" (Phil. 3:3 ), knowing, loving and enjoying our Savior above all else.
Tim Keller has a new article out in the latest edition of the Vineyard’s Cutting Edge magazine. It’s called "Process Managing Church Growth ." I have seen it before, but the dynamics of my current church life and leadership made me more attuned to what he has to say this time.
A couple excerpts:
"Every church has a ’size culture’ that goes with its size that has to be accepted. Most people probably have a size-culture that they prefer. However, many people ‘moralize’ their favorite size culture and treat other size-categories as spiritually and morally inferior. They may insist that the only Biblical way to do church is to practice a differ size-culture despite the fact that the church itself is much bigger or smaller than they desire it to be."
"Generally, in small churches, policy is decided by many and ministry is done by a few while in the large church, ministry is done by many, and policy is decided by a few."
Starting tonight I have the privilege and joy of teaching our 3-week crash course in practical hermeneutics, starting tonight, at Foothills Community Church: Enjoying the Bible for All Its Worth
(6:30pm at our building ; let me know if you want to come join us!)
I designed the course to be helpful for any and all Bible readers (even for those who don’t yet read it!) It should be beneficial for those who have plunged the depths of its truth for years as well as those still looking for that dusty Book on their bookshelf. All will benefit, and as Kari and my pastor remind me, I will attempt to "put the cookies on the bottom shelf."
My hope is that the five dozen people attending think and feel with God. And that I talk less and less as the first, second and third weeks come. At the start I will be talking more, and then we will move to all of us doing Bible interpretation and application to our lives.
My prayer is that it will be God speaking, and not me.
Here’s the (albeit a bit aggressive) general table of contents we’ll be tracking with starting tonight. Not all will be covered (e.g., the appendices), and more to follow in the next couple of weeks.
Enjoyment is Not Optional
Enjoying God
Enjoying the Bible
How Much is the Bible Worth?
What is the Bible About?
The Story—Understanding the Story Line of the Bible
OT: Promises Made
NT: Promises Kept
What Challenges do we face when Reading Our Bibles?
Bible Reading as a Lifestyle
I-O-U-S
Hermeneutics 101
The Importance Of Hermeneutics
Context
The Time Challenge of Interpreting the Bible
Allowing the Author + Text to Speak
Meaning Flows from the Top Down
Levels for understanding
6 Steps for Understanding the Bible
A Method Of Hermeneutics
1. Identify the genre of the biblical passage
2. Read the Bible book for the big picture
3. Determine the structure (or outline) of the Bible book
4. Make observations about the book or passage
5. Meditate on the book or passage and upon your observations, and interpret the meaning of the passage
6. Apply the passage to your own life (seeing how it relates to other people especially)
Bible Genres
Appendix (definitions, notes on a Bible reading plan, and some short articles for further reading)
Lots of illustrations/diagrams in the notebooks, and plenty of room to take notes. We’ll be getting into some texts ourselves to see how to both understand (think) and enjoy (feel) God’s thoughts after Him.
We’ll also be diving into a few texts, one of them being James 1:2-4 .
Open Bibles, open minds and hearts. God, help us to read Your Word well and see the worth, work and ways of Jesus through every page.
Yesterday we three ventured out for our first ‘08 hike in the woods. The single track trails were closed due to winter erosion but the old logging roads provided a good and wide path for us to let Dutch loose on the trails. We set out to go about 4 miles round trip, but that was cut short by an impatient little 16-month-old. In Kari’s words :
We did do our hike, although it is now confirmed that Dutch does NOT like hiking. That is, he loves hiking, as long as he’s the one hiking. He doesn’t like being stuffed into a backpack. So, our hike was significantly truncated because about 1/2 through we had to let him hike on his own. That meant going as fast as his little 16-month-old legs could carry him. It went something like this: step step step (stop to pick up a stick and wave it around) step step step (stop to pick up a bug, mom grabs it before it goes in the mouth) step step step-TRIP, BOOM, WAHHHHHHH!!!!! (tears, hugs, scraped hands…sniffs, whining to be put down) step step step (veers over toward cliff, daddy scoops him up and plops him in middle of trail). Anyway, you get the picture. But it was fun nonetheless. We just need to plan to hike one mile in three hours.
“God created both soul and body, and the resurrection of Jesus shows that he is going to redeem both the spiritual and the material. Therefore God is concerned not only for the salvation of souls but also for the relief of poverty, hunger, and injustice.
The gospel opens our eyes to the fact that all our wealth (even wealth for which we worked hard) is ultimately an unmerited gift from God. Therefore the person who does not generously give away his or her wealth to others is not merely lacking in compassion, but is unjust.
Christ wins our salvation through losing, achieves power through weakness and service, and comes to wealth through giving all away. Those who receive his salvation are not the strong and accomplished but those who admit they are weak and lost. We cannot look at the poor and the oppressed and callously call them to pull themselves out of their own difficulty. Jesus did not treat us that way.”
The two Greek words de ("but") and Theos ("God") are the first two words of Ephesians 2:4: "But God, who is rich in mercy..."
Because of God's great love and grace extending to us in Jesus Christ, we are forgiven, redeemed and able to know, love + enjoy God more fully, ever-increasing and forever.
This site contains the thoughts and conclusions and journeys of the Patterson family -- Jeff, Kari and Dutch -- who have experienced the front-end of God's amazing grace, and continue to delight in His unfailing love.
Read more about us, and what we hold most precious.
Starting tonight I have the privilege and joy of teaching our 3-week crash course in practical hermeneutics, starting tonight, at Foothills Community Church: Enjoying the Bible for All Its Worth 
Yesterday we three ventured out for our first ‘08 hike in the woods. The single track trails were closed due to winter erosion but the old logging roads provided a good and wide path for us to let Dutch loose on the trails. We set out to go about 4 miles round trip, but that was cut short by an impatient little 16-month-old. In 
“God created both soul and body, and the resurrection of Jesus shows that he is going to redeem both the spiritual and the material. Therefore God is concerned not only for the salvation of souls but also for the relief of poverty, hunger, and injustice.
