Here’s my email to Elders/Deacons at Crestview on 11/13/13:
As we look to wrap up this year and think about what it means to re-engage community, live in the already and the not yet and separate from the outside world (Chapters 6, 11, and 14 in Tripp’s Dangerous Calling), I loved the practical reminders Tripp gives for “vital gospel-in-everyday-life applications that every leader must preach to himself again and again”:
1) I do not have to be anxious that I will never measure up, because Jesus perfectly measured up on my behalf.
2) Because grace allows me to get my identity and security vertically, I am freed from building them on what people think of me.
3) I do not have to be haunted by what may be exposed about me, because everything that could ever be exposed has already been covered by the blood of Jesus.
4) I need to remember that my weaknesses are not in the way of productive ministry, but my delusions of independent strength are.
5) I can rest assured that God didn’t get a wrong address when He called me to ministry. My spiritual neediness doesn’t compromise the message of the Gospel; rather, my need preaches it.
6) There is only one Messiah, and I am definitely not Him!
Rehearse these themes and rest in the liberating truth of the Gospel.