Missional-Life

Over the past few weeks I’ve been dipping in and out (more out than in) of the Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr.. It is a very intresting read! However yesterday I came across King’s view of preaching. It was very

“I feel that preaching is one of the most vital needs of our society, if it is used correctly.. There is a great paradox in preaching: on the one hand it may be very helpful and on the other it may be very pernicious. It is my opinion that sincerity is not enough for the preaching ministry. The minister must be both sincere and intelligent… I also think that the minister should possess profundity of conviction. We have too many ministers in the pulpit who are great spellbinders and too few who possess spiritual power. It is my profound conviction that I, as an aspirant for the ministry, should possess these powers.

I think that preaching should grow out of experiences of the people. Therefore, I, as a minister must know the problems of the people that I am pastoring. Too often do educated ministers leave the people lost in the fog of theological abstraction, rather than presenting that theology in the light of the people’s experiences. It is my conviction that the minster must somehow take profound theological and philosophical views and place them in a concrete framework. I must forever make the complex the simple.

Above all, I see the preaching ministry as a dual process. On the one hand I must attempt to change the soul of the individuals so that their societies may be changed. On the other I must attempt to change the societies so that the individual soul will have a change. Therefore, I must be concerned about unemployment, slums, and economic insecurity. …”

Me teaching on the metanarrative of the Bible at the HUB Bible School in Belgrade.

“The people that make a durable difference in the world are not the people who have mastered many things, but who have been mastered by one great thing. If you want your life to count, if you want the ripple effect of the peebles you drop to becomewaves that reach the ends of the earth and roll on into eternity, you don’t need to have a high IQ. You don’t have  to have good looks or riches or come from a fine family or a fine school. Instead you have to know a few great, majestic, unchanging, obvious, simple, glorious things–or one great amm-embracing thing–and be set on fire by them.” – John Piper, Don’t Waste Your Life, Pg. 44

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.

On Sunday I had the privilege of preaching at King’s Church (Norwich). It was a great to be with such a large number of people all delighting in God together!

I preached from Colossians 1:15-20 on “Who is this Man?”

You can download my preach at the King’s Church Website. In addition Goff Hope (Lead Elder at King’s) has written a short blog following the preach. Click here to read it.

Yesterday I preached at Christ Community Church  from 1 Samuel 14:1-23 on adventuring with God.

Here are my 5 main headings:

1. Adventurous faith is a risk-taking faith (v1-2)

2. Adventurous faith is a knowledge-based faith (v6)

3. Adventurous faith is not presumptuous faith (v8-12)

4. Adventurous faith is infectious faith (v7)

Here’s the story I also opened my preach with…

Larry Walters was a 33-year-old man who decided he wanted to see his neighborhood from a new perspective. He went down to the local army surplus store one morning and bought forty-five used weather balloons. That afternoon he strapped himself into a lawn chair, to which several of his friends tied the now helium-filled balloons. He took along a six-pack of beer, a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, and an air pistol, figuring he could shoot the balloons one at a time when he was ready to land.

Walters, who assumed the balloons would lift him about 100 feet in the air, was caught off guard when the chair soared more than 11,000 feet into the sky — smack into the middle of the air traffic pattern at Los Angeles International Airport. Too frightened to shoot any of the balloons, he stayed airborne for more than two hours, forcing the airport to shut down its runways for much of the afternoon, causing long delays in flights from across the country.

Soon after he was safely grounded and cited by the police, reporters asked him three questions: 
”Where you scared?”  “Yes.” 
”Would you do it again?” “No.” 
”Why did you do it?”  “Because,” he said, “you can’t just sit there.”