My good buddy from seminary, Todd, is the buyer for the bookstore. For the past few years he’s made sure this isn’t  your typical Christian bookstore filled with precious moments figurines. This is a store stocked with solid books.

Visit the store.

Buzzard Blog readers,

After four fantastic years at Central Peninsula Church, I’ve decided, in concert with our elders, to leave a church I love (see: 14 Reasons Why I Love My Church). This week the news has been made public. Below is an excerpt from a letter that Mark Mitchell, our Lead pastor and my close friend (the above pic is of Mark and me on a mission trip in Cambodia during my 2nd week on staff at CPC), sent out to our church body this week.

I will share more details later. For now, please pray that God would clearly guide me and Taylor as we try to decide between two wonderful church planting opportunities/cities. And join me in praising God for Central Peninsula Church–this body of believers has been our family the past four years, and leaving them is far from easy.

I am sure we would all agree that change is necessary at times, but it is also hard. This is especially true when change involves long-standing and treasured relationships. Change like this happens in families, business, and even churches. While we usually enjoy the influx of change that new people bring to our church family, we also grieve the loss of those who the Lord moves to other places. This is such a time for us at CPC. The Lord has chosen to bring change to us through the departure of two treasured staff members: Kim Fenech and Justin Buzzard.

…Justin joined our staff four years ago as our Twenties Pastor. In four short years he has grown our Twenties ministry to include close to 150 people. Justin’s wife, Taylor, has also worked side by side with him in this ministry. It’s not an exaggeration to say that our Twenties ministry is the strongest of its kind on the San Francisco Peninsula. Justin has also regularly fed our entire church body through his Sunday morning preaching. His passion for the Scripture and the Gospel has had a tremendous impact on all of us and will never be forgotten at CPC. At this time, Justin has a strong desire to plant an independent church where he can serve as Lead Pastor. Our CPC elders have affirmed these gifts in him and look forward to how God will use him in this capacity. Justin will preach his last Sunday here on May 23. The Twenties will host a lunch for all who want to say goodbye to the Buzzards after the 11:00 am service that day. Justin’s last day on staff will be June 6.

As I said before, change is hard, but sometimes change is necessary. As we work through the sadness and sense of loss these staff changes bring, it is important for us to remember that we are part of a larger, worldwide work of Kingdom building that the Lord is accomplishing through His people. He is the Lord of the harvest. He has every right to move His servants where He needs them the most. He is our Rock. These times of change force us to trust in the One whose promises and character never changes. He is also our Provider. He will provide for them and He will provide for us. We encourage all of you to be praying for the Fenechs and the Buzzards, as well as for CPC as we all seek God’s direction and provision in the midst of the challenges that change brings.

Mark Mitchell
Lead Pastor

Bulletin pdf._Jan14

I have a fantastic team of leaders who lead 20s along with me. Here’s picture of my team from our Good Friday Feast this past weekend.

• Nearly 400 people (mostly twentysomethings) from across the Bay Area showed up for our TGC: Bay Area; Christ, Sex, & The City Conference with Peter Jones.

• It was a great night.

• It was encouraging to see this many people gathered together in the Bay Area to hear a message about responding to the sexuality of our culture with the gospel.

• Now we’re working on plans for the next conference.

Now you can also purchase Commit online and read a sample article or two.

Peter Jones is our keynote speaker for our The Gospel Coalition: Bay Area conference on March 18.

Below is an interview Mark Driscoll recently conducted with Peter Jones:

CPC 20s Video from Central Peninsula Church on Vimeo.

I’m excited about what’s happening with The Gospel Coalition: Bay Area. My fellow TGC: Bay Area board members (Jeff Louie. Travis Marsh. Toby Kurth) and I have been working hard towards putting on our second regional conference. Below is all the information. I hope you can join us. Pastors/church leaders, I hope you can join us for the pre-conference. Get more information about this conference and about what we’re doing in the Bay Area at The Gospel Coalition Website.

Christ, Sex, and The City
Discussing the Vital Relationship Between Jesus Christ, Sex, and Our Cities

Yesterday I spent some time thanking God for my church. I decided to turn my thanks into a blog post, 14 reasons why I love my church:

1. In arguably the most unchurched region in America, CPC has maintained a faithful gospel witness for over 40 years. If you’ve ever lived on the San Francisco Peninsula, you know what a challenging (and exciting) place this is for living as a Christian and doing ministry. This place is filled with unique pressures. I may write a series of blog posts on this in the future.

2. CPC has created a culture where the preaching of God’s Word is central to all of church life, community, and mission. Sunday’s sermon on Revelation 6 by our lead pastor, Mark Mitchell, moved me to tears as the sovereignty of God was winsomely and boldly proclaimed. It’s a joy to be part of a community that’s being built on such a rich vision of God.

3. Our church is led by elders who are godly, wise, humble, grace-saturated men.

4. CPC is advancing the gospel globally, supporting many ministries across the globe that are reaching people with the good news of Christ crucified.

5. Our church is full of amazing people who are quick to serve and love others. You should see what happens around this place when a sudden need arises—it’s like crazed fans storming the football field after their team has won.

6. Since coming on staff as a young 28 year-old 3+ years ago, I’ve been given tremendous opportunity, encouragement, guidance, and freedom to be myself and use and develop my gifts to preach and lead. I wish every young pastor could have the kind of opportunity and support I’m given here. I can’t believe the church pays me money to study the Bible, preach the gospel, shepherd people, and disciple men.

7. Many CPC members are strategically placed to make an exponential impact in their workplace with the gospel. Our church is very diverse economically and socially, yet we have a high number of people working in companies where their Christian witness there can have an impact well beyond the Silicon Valley, companies like: Google, Apple, Facebook, Oracle, Visa, Yahoo, Electronic Arts, etc.

8. I’m good friends with the fellow pastors I serve alongside. “Going to work” also means hanging out with some of my closest friends: Jerome, Rob, Mark (guys, I ordered your names from worst-dressed to best-dressed).

9. CPC is building marriages and families on the gospel and a biblical view of manhood and womanhood. This is not a popular thing to do in the Bay Area.

10. CPC cares about the generation most estranged from the church: twenytsomethings. CPC hired me to go after this generation with the gospel.

11. CPC doesn’t ask my wife to be a traditional “pastor’s wife.” Because of the nature of the calling, a pastor’s wife has a unique burden to bear, one that I think only another pastor’s wife can understand. CPC minimizes this load by putting no responsibilities on my wife, recognizing that her main ministry is to be my wife and to be a mom—therein lies her greatest ministry to our church. She’s not expected to play the piano, run the children’s ministry, or bake meatloaf for the all-church potluck.

12. Our administrative staff is incredible. Especially incredible is my administrative assistant, Celia, and our 20s ministry intern, Francis—their service to me and to our church frees me up to do so much more than I could ever do without them.

13. CPC leadership gives me feedback and critique about my character, family life, leadership, and preaching. Young men like me desperately need such feedback in order to be refined and grow.

14. Peet’s Coffee is conveniently located just a mile down the street from our church building and functions as a second office for many of us on staff.

From Wired Magazine:

We’re gluttons for infographics, and a team at Kansas State just served up a feast: maps of sin created by plotting per-capita stats on things like theft (envy) and STDs (lust).

Above is the Greed map. I guess we’re pretty greedy here in the Bay Area. But, Texas, you’ve really got a Gluttony issue:  See the Gluttony map and all the rest

Here in Silicon Valley, the recession has a different face than in Manhattan or Detroit. Our panic is more genteel, softened by balmy California weather, a laid-back attitude, and, OK, the fact that we haven’t had a local industry completely implode. Nonetheless, the meltdown is quite real.

Personal bankruptcies and foreclosures are as high here as in the rest of the country, and established companies are cutting way back on hiring. The Valley lost nearly 10,000 tech jobs in the past year, according to the state’s Employment Development Department, and the trend is expected to continue. If you work in the Valley today, you’re likely as fearful of losing your job as anyone else.

But you need to get over that. In fact, getting fired just might be a good thing.

Here’s why: Valley culture has an unwritten rule that if you don’t like a job, or if you think your company isn’t going anywhere, you leave. Instead of hanging around the office whining, you walk out the door and find something better and cooler to do. Because skilled tech workers are hard to find and interesting companies abound, employees, not employers, call the shots. This was true at Apple in 1984, and it’s still true at Facebook today.

Read the whole thing: Wired Magazine, Paul Boutin, Laid Off? It’s Good for You and Good for the Tech Industry

A guest post from Taylor Buzzard:

I present you with another one of those once-in-a-blue-moon, sporadic posts from me, Justin’s wife!

Today I was at one of the parks in our city. I struck up a conversation with another mother while our young sons played on the slide. She shared with me that she is a school teacher, and that being separated from her son caused her to cry every morning for the first six months of the school year. Now it is summertime, and she is overjoyed to spend every day with her 12 month-old.

She looked at me and said with a bit of longing in her voice, “Do you get to stay home?” I replied, “Yes, I get to stay home with my boys, I’m very grateful. But, well, you know, actually, it’s probably more accurate to say, I choose to stay home. My family lives in a small 2 bedroom condo without a yard. So the trade-off is obvious. But I wouldn’t change my situation for anything.”

I seem to get into this type of conversation semi-regularly. Whether it is someone saying, “We both have to work, there isn’t an option,” or, “I’m so jealous that you get to stay home,” I do my best to gently and humbly correct them. Yes, I am privileged to stay home to raise my children. And, yes, you probably have an option.

In most instances, two full-time incomes are not mandatory. What it primarily comes down to is lifestyle. In America, we are bred to live beyond our means. We are almost brainwashed to believe that children must be raised in a large home, with an expansive yard, with 2 luxury vehicles, with the gamut of extracurricular activities available to them, with a private university tuition covered; and if we don’t provide the aforementioned amenities, we are depriving our children.

But, wait, is it really deprivation not to provide these things to my children? If I re-entered the workforce full-time, we would be better positioned to provide the American-dream upbringing for our children. But, what would the cost be? Everything has a cost, as one of my pastors, Mark Mitchell, recently taught the twentysomethings of our church. The cost to my young children would be spending the majority of their time without either parent in their most formative, impressionable years. I physically carried these children in my womb, and I want to carry them, literally and figuratively, through their childhood years as well.

I am aware that this article taps into a controversial topic, and I understand and respect the fact that in some instances there truly is not an option to be home with your children. But, we must remember that in most cases, it truly is a choice that we are making. And might we make that choice with full understanding of the cost at hand.

UPDATE: The audio below isn’t working. Go here to access the audio.

We had a great turnout for our first The Gospel Coalition: Bay Area gathering last weekend. Over 26 Bay Area churches were represented. We’re excited to see what God does with this group. Here’s the audio from the conference:

What is Gospel Centered Ministry? Part 1. Justin Buzzard

What is Gospel Centered Ministry? Part 2. Mark Mitchell

Why Gospel Centered Ministry? Travis Marsh

How does Gospel Centered Ministry Work Itself Out? Jeff Louie

Panel Discussion