The Cross and Christian Ministry

I recently read D.A. Carson’s The Cross and Christian Ministry.  I picked up this book as a potential text book for a course I am teaching in the summer on 1 Corinthians at Tyndale.  I was very pleased with this book.  It is an exposition of a number of passages from 1 Corinthians.  It is academically sound and could work easily at the level of a quality biblical commentary.  However, Carson’s purpose is to take this exegesis and apply it to current needs in Christian ministry.  He touches on such things as factionalism, leadership and a number of other issues.  The bottom line is that leaders must rely not so much on current ministry fads but on the basic message of the cross.  That is not to say that new ministry ideas have no value but rather all we do must be informed by the message of the cross.  This was an enjoyable book and very useful for Christian ministry today.

Brothers Karamazov

It is the beginning of the month and that means it is time for a new free audiobook download from www.christianaudio.com.  The free audiobook for December 2009 is Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov.  You can download this audiobook here.  This is what I love about www.christianaudio.com.  It is unlikely I would ever pick up the book and start reading this, but this is a book I have often heard quoted and I am looking forward to hearing it.

Online Worship Services

One of the big questions today is the validity of online worship service.  I think that online campuses can be good and helpful but I also strongly believe that it is important to have actual fellowship with other believers, physically worshipping together and partaking of the Lord’s Supper.  CNN has an interesting article on online worship services that you can read here.

Desiring God

I always look forward to the free audiobook download of the month at www.christianaudio.com.  Sometimes I am happy about the selection and other times I am hoping to be pleasantly surprised.  I am very excited about the November selection.  For this month only, they are offering John Piper’s Desiring God.  This is a book I have wanted to read but I have not been sure how to fit into my reading schedule with all my dissertation research.  I am looking forward to listening to this audiobook.  You can download this book for November only here.

Scripture reveals that the great business of life is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever. In this paradigm-shattering classic, newly revised and expanded, John Piper reveals that the debate between duty and delight doesn’t truly exist: Delight is our duty.

Arrow Leadership Program

A number of years ago, I was at the annual assembly of the Canadian Baptists of Ontario and Quebec.  The speaker was someone I was not familiar with named Carson Pue.  I was captivated with Carson’s vision of what Christian leadership could look like.  It was not just about the right skills but about the right priorities and the right relationship with God.  Carson is the president of the Arrow Leadership Program and so I decided to look into this program out of curiosity.  Arrow Leadership focuses on “young” leaders, by which they define as under forty.  I was thirty-eight at the time.  It was obvious that this was something that I could not pray about for the next ten or fifteen years.  I applied and was accepted into the program.  The Arrow program takes place through four week long seminars spread over two years.  It also has a heavy mentoring component.  It was a life changing experience, not just for my role as a pastor but my role as a husband, father, and even a child of God.  I highly recommend the Arrow Leadership Program for all “young” pastors.  They also have an executive stream for those that are in the business world.  You can check out their web-site here.

Preachers Should Think Before They Speak

Funny and true!

LibraryThing

One of the online resources that I have come to appreciate is LibraryThing.  LibraryThing is an online way to catalog your books.  It shows you how many other members have the same book and has links to reviews.  It is useful for searching your own library (if you have a lot of books) but also provides a record for insurance purposes in case anything unfortunate might happen.  You are able to check out other members libraries and connect with people who have similar interests.  The cost for life-time membership is very cheap and well worth the benefits.  It is time consuming to catalog at first but once it is done it becomes habit to automatically add new books.  You can check me out on LibraryThing at this link.

nuChristian

A few months ago, I read an interesting book called unChristian written by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons. It dealt with the perceptions that people outside the church felt toward the church and Christianity. It was a helpful book that both called for greater understanding of those outside the church and some tough soul-searching within the church in order to confront our problems. The authors concluded their book with a call for further conversation on these issues.

Emerging church pastor Russell Rathbun has taken up that challenge with his new book, appropriately titled nuChristian. Rathbun deals with all of the same issues as the earlier book, but from the perspective of his own experience both growing up in a traditional Baptist church, as well as his experience in the emerging church. Sometimes the emerging church is accused of being light on Scripture and yet this book’s strength is the fact that it is solidly biblical. Rathbun reflects deeply on the Bible and the truth that is given us through revelation. NuChristian is much shorter than unChristian and yet it is still very helpful. The short length of the book makes it very readable but also creates some problems. The author makes a quick comment that he does not disagree with homosexuality and yet gives no explanation of how he got there. For this reviewer, that was a great distraction. One of the things that I really did appreciate was the last chapter. As a pastor of a traditional Baptist church, I sometimes struggled with the author’s ideas (although I always valued and respected them). The last chapter is a conversation between the author and his father who is a Baptist pastor. His father expressed some of the issues that some traditional Christians might wrestle with as they read this book. I greatly respected the author for giving voice to those concerns rather than dismissing them. Rathbun asks all the right questions and whether you agree or disagree with them, the issues dealt with are vital to the church’s effectiveness and relevance in today’s society. I highly recommend this book.

Degree Completion Program

If you are interested in theological education but life has taken over and you do not have time for traditional classes, you might find Tyndale College and Seminary’s Degree Completion Program interesting.  It is a way for you to complete a Bachelor of Religious Education in a modular format.  I will be teaching a course on 1 Corinthians in the summer of 2010 for the DCP.

Just Courage

The free audiobook download for October 2009 from www.christianaudio.com is Just Courage by Gary A. Haugen.  For October only, you can download this audiobook here.  It looks interesting and I am looking forward to listening to it.  Here is the description that they give:

International Justice Mission president Haugen has found that “the pathway out of a nearly comatose state of boredom, ineffectiveness and triviality lies in the struggle for justice.” This book describes how to break out of a ho-hum Christian life and see God’s powerful and mysterious ways at work.