I still remember the occasion when God began giving me a desire not just to be in the ministry but to be a pastor. I was sitting in the preaching lab at Beeson Divinity School listening to a visiting speaker talk about the church. He spoke intelligently and biblically and passionately about God’s plan to put his glory on display through the church, about how Jesus Christ gave his blood for the church, about how the church was meant to function. God stirred my heart. I began to experience a love for the local church that I had never had before, and in time I knew that God meant for me to be a pastor.
The man I heard speaking that day was named Mark Dever. Mark is the pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington D.C., and the leader of 9Marks Ministries. I’m thankful to God for Mark’s influence in my life and am honored to call him a friend. And I’m nearly beside myself to announce that Mark and three other leaders from 9Marks Ministries will be hosting a regional workshop at our church in October.
Concord, make plans now to attend the workshop. You can read the info here. (Note: the fee for Concord members is only $20.) You will want to attend in order to:
(1) understand me better;
(2) understand the church better;
(3) either thank Mark or blame him for his influence on my life.
- The Missions Committee has been working for 2 years to develop a strategic missions strategy for Concord, exploring many options including, but not limited to, Canada, North Peru and South Peru.
- The Missions Committee will continue to explore where Concord can invest significantly in international missions for the sake of the nations whether or not the Missions Committee pursues adoption in South Peru or not.
- The Yauyos Quechua people group is within 14 hours travel via air and ground from Chattanooga.
- The number of participants needed to invest in multiple trips to the Yauyos Quechuas may only slightly exceed the number of participants who served on foreign mission trips this year (21 people). (more…)
Suppose a well-known financial investment firm entrusted you with $10,000. The money is not to be used for yourself, but rather, is to be used to strengthen the company’s influence in the financial sector. You are given two options and the only instructions are that you take the money and invest it in an opportunity that would yield the greatest return. Neither option is necessarily wrong, but one will potentially produce a greater return in the end.
The first opportunity involves a wide range of diverse short-term investments that would stimulate far-reaching exposure, diversity, and knowledge within the investing company about these varied financial markets, but would likely net marginal return in the investment for either the investor or investee. In other words, the company would benefit from learning more about all of the benefits of these particular markets, but the short-term investment would not lend itself to significant long-term benefit to either the investor or the investee. In the end, there would be very little way to measure the productivity of this kind of investment.
The second opportunity involves a focused, strategic long-term investment on one particular financial market. The risk in this investment is greater. This investment will require more intimate communication between the investor and investee, greater commitment from the investor toward this one particular market, patience to watch the investment grow, and willingness to lose some of the investment for the sake of greater gain in the end.
Both investments are wise. The question is: which is the wiser investment? (more…)
This morning my mother emailed me and asked me to pray for the family of Buddy Wagner, a 63 year-old man from her church who suddenly died this week. He went to his dentist for a root canal and developed a serious infection which required hospitalization for five days. They sent him home with a prescription for antibiotics, and once he completed the antibiotics they put him on a blood-thinner to prevent clotting. He apparently then suffered a stroke, and because he was on blood-thinners, he bled out and went to meet His Savior Jesus. This request reminded me of the complexity of issues grieving family members are confronted with when their loved ones become seriously ill or die.
Interestingly, today I also received a “Fresh Words” email from Desiring God that offered some very helpful advice about how family members can plan for these complicated end of life issues. While very few of us like to talk about death, it is important that we thoughtfully consider how to care for our loved ones during the sufferings of serious illness, as well as how best to meet our obligations to them, since Scripture clearly states that the way we care for our suffering loved ones is an indicator of the legitimacy of our faith in Jesus (1Tim 5:8). Check out John Ensor’s advice below. He offers nine questions which his family recently asked his aging mother, first gauging her preference then responding as caring sons and daughters. (more…)
There is a million dollar question in evangelical Christian circles. Do you know what it is? “How can I discover God’s will for my life?” We often ask this question when trying to make decisions about situations where it is impossible to measure and evaluate every variable we are confronted with. Life is fluid and unpredictable, constantly throwing us all kinds of off-speed pitches such as:
- A job opportunity in another city;
- A broken-down vehicle that leaves us wondering whether we should buy new or used for our next car purchase;
- The decision to send your children to public, private or even consider homeschooling;
- Wondering whether or not you should request an increase in compensation from your employer;
- Whether or not we should take a romantic relationship with the opposite sex to a higher level of commitment;
- Whether or not we should take out a $500,000 or $1,000,000 life insurance policy;
And there are, of course, hundreds of more examples. There are some things in life where there are no easy answers to the questions we have about how we should proceed. This is the challenge of honoring God in all of life. (more…)
