Culture Vulture (1.75)

So I was listening to the 9Marks podcast, and Mark Dever was talking to this Aussie -- Phillip Jensen, Dean of St. Andrews in Sydney -- and Jensen said this:

"You can't preach the Gospel to people you are afraid of."

That, my friends, is a statement that ought to change the way we view the "culture" discussion.

How the church works

I just got an e-mail that looks something like this. I have edited it for the sake of the privacy of those it speaks of:

A single mom would be interested in visiting [our church], but needs transportation. She is legally blind. She has a [high school] daughter, [name1], and a [grade school] daughter, [name2]. [name2] also wants to come to Awana. If anyone would be willing to pursue this and help with transportation for this family to attend church, or if a Community Life class would take this on as an outreach, please contact the church office to get connected to them.

Some of you might want to rail on against the limited scope of this "outreach". Tell you what: you make a list of the blind single moms your church ministers to in your way, and if it's longer than the list at our church, you can look over the top of your reading glasses and down your latte cup at us.

The church works when it is joyfully rescuing people from hell, meeting their earthly needs, making them glad in God, and doing that with a kind and serious pleasure that makes CHRIST look like the treasure He is.

Yes, I stole that from Piper. Inasmuch as he is an imitator of Christ, I will imitate him.

Not Funny

Two years ago today, the largest and most costly natural disaster to strike the USA ravaged our town. And if you're tired of hearing about New Orleans and the impact of Hurricane Katrina, just imagine how difficult it is for us living here to endure the seemingly non-stop silliness and negative press.

The reality, however, is that God sovereignly ordained this tragedy for His glory and purpose, and part of that intention is that His gospel be proclaimed and lived out before men.

It is to that task that we set our minds and plows.

With your help, we seized this unprecedented opportunity to plant an outpost for truth in a very dark region that revels in sin and open abandon. Together, we took up the call and established an anchoring. Now, as we press on amidst the rebuilding and related hands-on ministry with a handful of long-term volunteers, we ask for your renewed help.

Our main needs are:

* Prayer for wisdom, perseverance and God's continued provision. * Skilled workers (carpenters, drywallers, painters, plumbers, tilers, etc.) to help put people back in their homes. * Skilled finishers to help put our relief operation into its new building. * Financial support for long-term volunteers, fuel, supplies and materials.

For further details, see our Sovereign Grace Homeland Missions news blog.

By His grace and for His glory,

Charles Busby and Eddie Exposito
Elders, Sovereign Grace Fellowship Slidell, Louisiana

A loose end I forgot about

Hello? Anybody still have a feed open?

This is a picture of the Dickson family. Matt and Jenna used to be members of our church, but they moved. The reason they moved is an interesting story -- they sold their big house in order to live is a smaller house; they wanted to live in a smaller house because they wanted to serve God with their money, rather than to serve their money.

That's an interesting idea, isn't it? Serve God with your money.

However, that's not why I'm violating the hiatus to post this. I linked to this video about a month ago:



In 2 weeks, Matt is slated to start work in Carrollton, TX, with Gospel for Asia.

Because 100% of all money given to Gospel for Asia for missions work is sent to the mission field, the home team missionary staff must raise their own financial support. The Dickson's goal is to raise a total of $3,600/month in support to meet their family's salary and insurance needs. This support is provided by those who feel led by God to partner with them in helping reach the 2.7 billion people who have never heard the Gospel.

Today, they have sufficient support in one-time gifts to make the move, but they are short by about a third in continuing dollars. Rather than overwhelm you with what a third looks like, here's what I'm thinking. Go to their blog, read their story, watch the video a second time (you didn't watch it the first time? One of my readers?), and send them a commitment for on-going support.

Now, under normal circumstances, about 300-400 people a day read the blog. With the hiatus being all official and what-not, there are maybe a couple-hundred hard-core hangers-on who are reading today. In that, I'm going to make two specific requests:

[1] Al Sends: contact Matt and Jenna and see if you can plug them on your radio show, dude. If you can't support them with $20 a month for the next 5 years, maybe you can get their story into the ears of 50 people who can. Even if they are Presbyterians.

[2] The rest of you: Think about $10/month to support this family who is going to serve God rather than money. Matt is giving up a great job -- the kind most of us are still clawing up the ladder to get -- in order to go and serve the Gospel with the talents he has. Jenna is, well, following him there, and taking 3 boys under the age of 10 without any questions. If 100 people can commit to give $10/month for the next 5 years, it will be a foothold for the Dicksons in their new life in world missions.

This of it this way: there are usually about 22 week days in any given month. Get a jar, and label it "Jesus Loves Matt and Jenna". Every week day, when you come home from work, drop 2 quarters out of your pocket change into that jar rather than dropping those quarters in the ash tray of your car. And when you drop that money in there, pray like this: "Father -- I'm grateful that at the end of the day I have a place to stay safely, and I have more than enough to live on. These two quarters are a gift which I usually take for granted, but today I'm not going to treat the extra you gave me as if it was worthless. Bless this money and the work of those it is going to support. Keep the Dicksons safe, and thank you for their example about what my priorities ought to be. I love you, God, and I am glad I can remember your grace even in this small way. May your name be glorified in this. Amen."

At the end of the first month, you can send the Dicksons $10, and you can keep $1 for an ice cream cone or something -- maybe the hardcore among you will give that $1 to your church as a love offering. But listen: even though this isn't Katrina or anything, this is the time we have to answer the question about who we serve.

Hiatus

I've been on vacation for almost two weeks, which was nice. However, part of that time was spent assessing personal priorities, and it turns out that as much as I like blogging and believe I have something to say, it's at the bottom of the list of personal priorities -- and things which I say I value more than the blog are getting pushed out.

For example, I have a lot of weight to lose; you can't lose weight if you don't exercise, and I only have a fixed number of hours in the day. I also have two children who deserve to have a better Dad than the one who sits in front of that stupid flat screen monitor half the time, and I have a wife who works much harder than the average wife who deserves not to have to work that hard -- she deserves to have a better husband than I am.

There are also the issues of whether I am doing in real life what I blog so passionately about here, and again there being only so many hours in the day, you get the idea. What about my church? What about that trailer park? What about my pastor? What about the Gospel and lost people?

So that all said, thanks to you loyal readers. Keep your powder dry. booyah.

More on this soon

You can do more for the Dicksons than watch their video in your undies by clicking here.

The Better Covenant

One of the most edifying and personally-challenging series of sermons I have been listening to recently has been the Desiring God Radio series through Romans, particularly as Dr. Piper has been advancing through Romans 9. I commend it to you no matter who you are or what you believe if you want to get a grasp of the Gospel and its implications for real assurance regarding the goodness of God.

However, there is a real gem in the introductory remarks to today's installment which is not necessarily in the body of the sermon. The excerpt that struck me as especially powerful goes like this:

Surrounding that sacrificial system was a system of cultic practice of clean foods, and certain keeping of certain holidays, and circumcision. Those three things in particular – the food laws, the circumcision laws, the festivals – those are all gone, and wiped away by Jesus' decisive work. [also] Israel was a political, ethnic entity, governed, therefore, by a constitution laid down in the Torah which had the death penalty for several dozen things. You curse your parents, you're dead. You sleep with a woman, you both are stoned. Those things have gone. Jesus didn't require the death penalty for these kinds of things – in fact, he pointed the other direction. And the reason they're gone is because the church is not an ethnic, political entity located somewhere in the world with a capital: the church is permeated through all governmental structures, and all societal structures so that it isn't governed, per se, the way the Old Testament people were with statutory laws that govern all of our legal repercussions to misbehaviors. Rather, we live under various regimes, we operate there, and we show, we teach, the Biblical morality but we don't exercise, as though we were a political entity, the right to do capital punishment.

It is interesting that Dr. Piper here underscores that what is evident in the church ought to be something which transcends the merely political and ethnic.

Think about that today rather than fester resentment because I haven't gotten to the next part of the Zens paper.

Overheard in the SBC yesterday

Instead of people following Jesus in discipleship, there are a lot of people today who are just following Jesus around.

-- Tad Thompson, Senior Pastor, Harvard Avenue Baptist Church.

Blog and Dale

Good morning -- or maybe afternoon. I was going to post a somewhat-cryptic appeal to my readers for a person in Ft. Smith, AR, to take up being the beautiful feet of the Gospel today, but as you can see from the Google Analytics map, above, I don't have any readers in Ft. Smith, AR.

Yes: we have a bevvy of Baptist unrest in Newport and Jacksonville, and some subversives for the Gospel in Mountain View, Paragould and Jonesboro, but not a soul in Ft. Smith.

Just in case naming the city gets some traffic today -- and this would only be of any earthly or heavenly use today or tomorrow -- I spent my Sunday on a short-term mission trip for a single person, and I need a helper today or tomorrow who can drive and has a spare $40 to demonstrate the glory of God.

e-mail me if you are willing and able. If you are only willing but not able, or if you are unwilling, please go find something else to do today which will mean something to somebody.

For those who are invasively-curious, I have monkeyed with the date and time settings on this post so anything else I post today will post under it. The above request is totally serious and totally meaningful.

UDATED 9:30 AM 5/21: WOW. You have not because you ask not, people: I have a reader in Ft. Smith who checked in today and says he is willing to help. I will keep you updated as we finish this work.

Beautiful Feet

Robert Morrison set sail for China 200 years ago this weekend:

He served for 27 years in China with one furlough home to England. He married Mary Morton in 1809. She died in 1821 when Morrison was 39. He married Eliza Armstrong in 1825. Morrison died nine years later at the age of 52 in his son’s arms in Macao.

After baptizing the first Chinese Protestant Christian on May 14, 1814 (seven years after his arrival!), Morrison wrote prophetically in his journal, “May he be the first fruits of a great harvest, one of millions who shall come and be saved on the day of wrath to come.”

I'll be he didn't make a lot of money doing that.