Missional-Life

In about 2 hours time the family and I are on the road again heading to Peterborough for another fun packed weekend with Nene Family Church (part of the Newfrontiers family of churches).  We can’t wait!

Please do take a moment to visit our new church website:

http://www.christcommunitychurch.co.uk

The following video clip is from  the Worship God 09 conference. C.J. Mahaney & Bob Kauflin (Sovereign Grace Ministries)  discuss the leadership lessons and dynamics of working together to lead God’s people in coroprate worship. It is really intresting video!

Lessons Learned from Three Decades of Leading from Sovereign Grace Ministries on Vimeo.

The following is a great quote:

“If I had a hundred top notch trainable leaders today, I could be in a hundred cities tomorrow, because leaders find money, they find resources, they find God and they’re going”

(John Lamferman, USA)

On Sunday I’m going to be preaching at Christ Community Church on ” A New Heart” which is part of our new series on Philippians. This week as I have been studying and preparing I’ve be overwhelmed afresh with the way Paul’s fatherly heart is so clearly displayed in Phil 1:3-11. Paul was unquestionably a mighty pioneering church planter and a brilliant theologian. However, he never abdicated his primary responsibility to be an under-shepherd of THE shepherd. As someone privilege to have leadership responsibility in a local church, I’ve been challenged afresh, do I display this same fatherly characteristic?

Below is Philippians 1:3-11 in the MESSAGE translation:

Every time you cross my mind, I break out in exclamations of thanks to God. Each exclamation is a trigger to prayer. I find myself praying for you with a glad heart. I am so pleased that you have continued on in this with us, believing and proclaiming God’s Message, from the day you heard it right up to the present. There has never been the slightest doubt in my mind that the God who started this great work in you would keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears.

^7–8 It’s not at all fanciful for me to think this way about you. My prayers and hopes have deep roots in reality. You have, after all, stuck with me all the way from the time I was thrown in jail, put on trial, and came out of it in one piece. All along you have experienced with me the most generous help from God. He knows how much I love and miss you these days. Sometimes I think I feel as strongly about you as Christ does!

^9–11 So this is my prayer: that your love will flourish and that you will not only love much but well. Learn to love appropriately. You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your love is sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush. Live a lover’s life, circumspect and exemplary, a life Jesus will be proud of: bountiful in fruits from the soul, making Jesus Christ attractive to all, getting everyone involved in the glory and praise of God.

Only five days to go till we head over to Peterborough to spend a weekend with the church family from Nene Family Church. More follow on this later in the week!

As you may be aware the family and I are in the process of moving to Nene Family Church (Peterborough). As a way of keeping people up to date with of our news and prayer requests Lorna and I have set up a facebook group. You can join the group by clicking here…

Dallimore the author of the great two volume biography of George Whitefield expressed a deep longing for a fresh generation of whitefild-like preachers:

“Yea… that we shall see the great Head of the Church once more… raise up unto Himself certain young men whom He may use in this glorious employ. And what manner of men will they be? Men mighty in the Scriptures, their lives dominated by a sense of the greatness, the majesty and holiness of God, and their minds and hearts aglow with the great truths of the doctrines of grace. They will be men who have learned what it is to doe to self, to human aims and personal ambitions; men who are willing to be “fools for Christ’s sake”, who will bear reproach and falsehood, who will labor and suffer, and and whose supreme desire will be, not to gain earth’s accolades, but to win the Master’s approbation when they appear before His awesome judgement seat. They will be men who will preach with broken hearts and tear-filled eyes, and upon whose ministries God will grant an extraordinary effusion of the Holy Spirit, and who will witness “signs and wonders following” in the transformation of multitudes of human lives”

Arnold Dallimore, George Whitefield (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1970), 1:16.

John Piper…

“The gospel is a message in words. Paradoxically, words are heard and glory is seen. Therefore, Paul is saying (see 2 Cor 4:3-4) that we see the glory of Christ not mainly with our eyes but through our ears.” (p. 112)

John Piper …

“God did not ordain the cross (Luke 22:22) of Christ or create the lake of fire (Matthew 25:41) in order to communicate the insignificance of belittling his glory. The death of the Son of God and the damnation of unrepentant human beings are the loudest shouts under heaven that God is infinitely holy, and sin is infinitely offensive, and wrath is infinitely just, and grace is infinitely precious, and our brief life–and the life of every person in your church and in your community–leads to everlasting joy or everlasting suffering. If our preaching does not carry the weight of these things to our people, what will? Veggie Tales? Radio? Television? Discussion groups? Emergent conversations?”