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Corporate Prayer at Crestview

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I love that our church regularly disciplines our time for corporate prayer.  This Sunday (9/30) at 6PM, we will take time to gather together and pray.  Recently, Sinclair Ferguson commented on the importance of corporate prayer in a post entitled Does Your Church Pray Together.  He said:

There is the lack of prayer and of the Church praying. This is to me the most alarming, for this reason: we have built apparently strong, large, successful, active churches. But many of our churches never meet as a congregation for prayer. I mean never! What does that indicate we are saying about the life of the Church as a fellowship?

By contrast, the mark of a truly apostolic spirit in the church is that that we give ourselves to prayer and the Word together (Acts 6:4). No wonder “the Word of God continued to increase and the number of the disciples multiplied” (Acts 6:7). If this is so, it should not surprise us that while many churches see growth, it is often simply reconfiguration of numbers, not of conversion. I greatly wish that our churches would learn to keep the main things central, that we would learn to be true Churches, vibrant fellowships of prayer, Gospel ministry and teaching, genuine mutual love. At the end of the day, such a Church simply needs to “be” for visitors who come to sense that this is a new order of reality altogether and are drawn to Christ.

Will you join us?  Let’s gather and see if God doesn’t do amazing things through these prayers.

E-Mail & Gospel Correction…

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A good word from C.J. and James MacDonald. The intro:

It’s hard enough for a pastor to pour out his heart by preaching God’s Word, then submit to the critique of members standing in line to shake his hand. But what pastor doesn’t dread opening his e-mail account on Monday or Tuesday morning? Why do certain Christians feel the need to review the pastor’s Sunday morning “performance”? This discouraging weekly experience is enough to dull whatever excitement you have to head into church in the morning.

But in this era increasingly dominated by digital communication, pastors are hardly alone in struggling to discern how to use e-mail. When was the last time you sent a message you eventually or even immediately wished you could take back? How often do others misunderstand you? In this video, James MacDonald and C. J. Mahaney confess mistakes they’ve made when using e-mail as a means of correcting others. And they lay out some ground rules for how to employ digital communication for the glory of God and the good of Christ’s church.

DeYoung on The Church

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I would highly recommend your listening to Kevin DeYoung’s sermon from Next entitled “The Church.” Here’s a summary from C.J. that came across my feed reader recently:

To close out his Next 2010 conference message, “The Church,” Kevin DeYoung gave a list of suggestions for how to be a difference maker in the local church. He said:

• Find a good local church.
• Get involved.
• Become a member.
• Stay there as long as you can.
• Put away thoughts of a revolution for a while.
• Join the plodding visionaries.
• Go to church this Sunday and worship in Spirit and truth.
• Be patient with your leaders.
• Rejoice when the gospel is faithfully proclaimed.
• Bear with those who hurt you.
• Give people the benefit of the doubt.
• Say “hi” to the teenager that no one notices.
• Welcome the old ladies with the blue hair and the young men with tattoos.
• Volunteer for the nursery.
• Attend the congregational meeting.
• Bring your fried chicken to the potluck like everybody else.
• Invite a friend.
• Take a new couple out for coffee.
• Give to the Christmas offering.
• Sing like you mean it.
• Be thankful someone vacuumed the carpet for you.
• Enjoy the Sundays that “click.”
• Pray extra hard on the Sundays that don’t.
• And in all of this, do not despise the days and weeks and years of small things (Zechariah 4:8–10).

I cannot recommend this message too highly. Please take time to download and listen to “The Church” by visiting the resource page at thisisnext.org.

I would whole-heartedly agree. Many times when people listen to or give a message on the church, it can seem like a rah-rah message at how people need to do what their pastors say. But this message is very even-handed showing that even weak leaders need followers who are interested in bigger things than their own shallow, capricious ideals. This is the stunning reality we see in Scripture about Jesus’ bride, the church. Listen, be profitable and glorify God.

Weekend Recap – The Church and Her God

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Today’s sermons are now online. In the AM, I entitled the sermon Ecclesiology 101. We were looking at Titus 2:1-8 and how a church that glorifies God ought to function. Specifically, churches ought to teach doctrine so that lives are affected, have specific ministries that equip men and women to be who God intended them to be and, finally, churches are to be godly examples and adorn the Gospel through their actions. It was good to be reminded of how God thinks the church ought to function.

In the PM, we finished up Hosea, looking at Hosea 13:4-14:9 in a sermon I entitled “Love and Justice.” In these two chapters, God’s attributes are on display for us to behold. As we beheld, them, though, I was driven to marvel at the Gospel implications that are found therein. Hosea has been a great study. It is the first time I marched through a prophet, which was a challenge but a very rich thing.

All in all, it was a great Lord’s Day being with the church, learning about the church and marveling at her great God.

Sanctification in Community…

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Matt Chandler, in a sermon on 1/4/09 (2009, Part 2) at the 44:00 mark:

Your relationship with Christ, your spirituality, although immensely personal, was not designed to be private. The more you make your struggles and your victories privatized, you turn sanctification into a crawl. It was not designed to be that way.

Chandler admits he’s banging the drum of Biblical community.

So, how are you in opening up your life to others? Or are you actively pursuing pride?