Must See Video For Men
Last week Darrin Patrick shared the video trailer for his new book, Church Planter, at an event in the Bay Area. This is not simply a video for church planters or pastors, every man reading this blog post and every man you know should watch this 4 minute video. Women, watch it too. Then go make a man in your life watch it.
PS. My endorsement for the book/in the book lists me as a church planter in Phoenix. See here for why I’m not in Phoenix and still live in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Seven Years of Marriage & Praying Widows
I took my wife on a date today. Today’s our 7th wedding anniversary. This was a different kind of a date, I brought my sons along.
I wanted my sons to see the place I married their mommy. I wanted my wife to walk down that isle again and remember the that day when she was 23 and I was 24 and we started our new life together.
So, I drove the family to the South Bay, to the beautiful church where we were married and where I served as a youth pastor for 4.5 years in my early twenties. Taylor and I hadn’t been there in 4 years, since having kids.
My boys climbed on the pews while I told them the story of marrying their mom and showed them the pulpit I used to preach from. Then I heard voices of prayer coming from the room adjacent to the sanctuary… I had forgotten about the Monday morning prayer group.
For over 30 years a small group of women from this church have met every Monday morning for an hour of prayer, praying for the advance of the gospel and for needs in the church and in the community. Many of these women treated me like their grandson during my time there. From time to time I’d join Margaret, Doris, Pat, Winnie, Marilyn, and the other ladies (all women in their 70s, 80s, and 90s) for these prayer meetings. Three of the women have lost their husbands since we last saw each other.
It was so fun to surprise these ladies. They met my sons for the first time. We exchanged big hugs.
As the ladies asked questions we told them about some difficulty we’re facing. They didn’t want to talk about it. They wanted to pray about it. Doris sat us down and led the ladies in praying for our family.
After prayer, Winnie (the shortest and sweetest old woman you’ll ever meet) said something. She told a story. She reminded me/the group of the time I came to the Monday morning prayer meeting 7.5 years ago, dejected and in need, because Taylor had broken up with me and I didn’t know what I was going to do because I was sure this was the woman I was to marry. Winnie talked about how the ladies gathered around and prayed for me. Winnie told of how a few days later we were back together, a few months later she sat in the pew and watched us get married, and now 7 years later we were standing before them with our two boys and a third boy in Taylor’s womb.
What was Winnie’s point? Trust God and trust the power of praying widows. I may owe my marriage to a group of faithful old women who banged the doors of heaven on my behalf.
Revival
…the thing above all else that accounts for the fact that the masses of the people are outside the Christian Church today, is the condition of those of us who are inside the Church. Read the story of any revival that has ever taken place and you will find that the beginning of it is always the same. One man, or sometimes a number of people, suddenly become alive to the true Christian life, and others begin to pay attention to them. The world outside is stirred and begins to pay attention. Revival always begins inside the Church, and the world outside seeing it, begins to pay attention.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression, p. 108
Building A Messy Church
This is a guest blog post from my good friend, Toby Kurth. Last year Toby planted ChristChurch in San Francisco. Toby is a great pastor, writer, and thinker. Enjoy his post.
“Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean, but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox.” Proverbs 14:14
We are about a year into our church plant and have become increasingly convinced that a healthy church should be messy. If we really believe what the Bible teaches us about ourselves and others, how can it be any other way? Church is not just a meeting or an event; church is real people. Real people that have been saved by Christ and that are being transformed into his image. We all know that we have sin and struggles, but so many of us have gotten really good at hiding it.
The reality is that life comes with mess, mess that is produced by the work that God is doing in our lives. Work that can be painful and hard, but it is good. I think we are more or less resolved to accept that mess comes with our physical life, but what about spiritual life? Are you as quick to accept that? Do you believe that spiritual life is supposed to be messy?
God wants us to embrace the mess and work that comes with spiritual life because He wants to do real work in our lives. God calls us to acknowledge the mess of our own lives and the lives of those around us. He meets us in the mess. We grow in the mess. Christ redeems the mess.
We all face the temptation to present ourselves better than we are, to deny our sin and failure. We are often driven more by what people might think of us than reality. We slant stories to make ourselves look better. We hide our weaknesses from our friends and spend a lot of time reinforcing pretense. The more we do that, the more we drift from an active awareness of our dependence on Christ.
That is why we need the gospel. The gospel tells us the truth about ourselves and gives us the grace to embrace reality. The gospel tells us that left to ourselves we rebel against a good God and His ways, but that despite our rebellion God pursues us through Christ. The gospel is not a sales pitch. It is not a promise that everything will be neat and clean, that you can have your best life now. The gospel is grounded in reality. We all struggle to varying degrees and we are all desperately dependent upon the grace of Christ every moment of every day. God gives grace to us as we humble ourselves before Him and each other.
Living honestly is also a far better representation of the gospel to an unbelieving world. When we pretend that we are entirely with it and have no struggles, we make the gospel appear inaccessible to those that are not. When we live honestly we demonstrate that the gospel provides real hope for real people. If you are a follower of Christ you are not the way you are merely because you try to be a good person. It is because the Almighty Creator of the Universe is at work in your life to help you grow in the midst of the mess that is your life. A life without mess is a life without work. God is more interested in the fruit of your life than your comfort and reputation.
How to Leave a Church Well
How to leave a church well:
There’s much more to it than this, but this might be the main thing.
Walk into the church auditorium and find that place where you got on your knees 4 years ago on your first day on the job.
That spot of carpet under the big cross.
Go to that spot and get on your knees again.
Survey the big cross above you, just like you did before.
Pray, praising God for the prayers he answered from 4 years ago.
Give God all the glory, all the credit.
Be amazed at all he has done.
Thank him for his faithfulness, his kindness, his lavish generosity.
Smile as you pray.
Then entrust to his care the people that have been under your care.
Then tell him how desperately you need vision and help from above for the new adventure ahead.
Decide to trust him for it.
Then get up and walk away.
Next, turn in your key and your final paperwork, then drive home.
Get up early the next morning and take your family on a long vacation in a far away place.
At least that’s what I just did/what I’m doing.
Farewell Photos
For our farewell Sunday at CPC our photographer friends, Vitaliy and Candace Prokopets, took some fun photos of the day: photos of my family, of me preaching, of our church family enjoying lunch together, and of our elders laying hands on us and sending us off. Here are a few of the photos. Be sure to check out the Prokopets Studio website–everybody around here loves their photography.
Train Your Men to Preach
Train your men to preach.
2 Timothy 2:1-2 “You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.”
In the ministry I lead to Bay Area twentysomethings I’ve trained up 6 other men to preach God’s Word to us. Here’s a brief introduction to these 6 men.
-Francis: Church ministry intern, student, and c0-flower shop owner. Mid twenties. Married. Christian for 4+ years. Chinese. Raised in the Bay Area. Preaches 4-5x per year.
-Ryan: Architect. Mid twenties. Married. Christian since childhood. White boy. Raised in the Bay Area. Preaches 2x per year.
-Daniel: Engineer. Mid twenties. Married. Christian since childhood. Chinese. Raised in Sacramento. Preaches 1x per year.
-James: Coast Guard pilot. Mid twenties. Married. Christian since adolescence. White boy. Raised in Minnesota. Preaches 1x per year.
-Victor: Contractor. Mid twenties. Married. Wife pregnant with their first kid. Christian for 3+ years. Palestinian & Japanese. Raised in the Bay Area. Preaches 1x per year.
-Mike: Personal Trainer. Mid twenties. Married. Christian since adolescence. White boy. Raised in San Diego. Preaches for his first time tomorrow night.
It’s been a joy to train up these 6 men to preach the Bible to us (some needed/need more training than others). God has used them in a mighty way among us. Some of these men will be carrying some of the load as I now leave my role at Central Peninsula Church. I’m so thankful these faithful men are in place, entrusted with the gospel and able to teach.
City
If even ten percent of the evangelicals of our nation moved into the largest cities and lived out their lives of love, truth, and servanthood, the culture would be fundamentally changed.
-James Montgomery Boice, Two Cities, Two Loves. p. 165
Thursday Nights
A number of you have asked me questions about what we do on Thursday nights at 20s, about what our Thursday night gatherings look like. Below are a few images and a pdf of one of our weekly bulletins. This should give you a good picture of what we do.
