5 Days!!!

The Act of Marriage

Yesterday I finished Tim and Beverly LaHaye's 'The Act of Marriage." I must confess my hesitancy to read this one. For one, I am not a dispensationalist, and personally think that Tim Lahaye needs to chill out. Also, I read this quote from LaHaye on the back of Dave Hunt's horrible attempt to refute Calvinism:
Calvinism...comes perilously close to blasphemy. And that is why I congratulate Dave Hunt for writing this excellent clarification of the doctrine that has its roots more in Greek humanism, from where it originated, than it does in Scripture...Every evangelical minister should read this book. If they did, we would see a mighty revival of soul-winning passion that would turn this world upside down as multitudes of people saw the real God of the Bible, not the false God of Augustinianism and Calvinism.

I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. I thought maybe he spent all of his time mastering sex and the rapture and didn't have much time to study the rest of the Bible. I am really glad I read it. I am sure that Alicia will be glad too. I thought that I knew a lot about sex, but I was wrong. I would recommend this book to every married couple, specifically husbands. To the single men, I would wait to read this one until you are very close to getting married. I think many a wives are being short-changed in the bedroom due to uninformed men. Of course you will not agree with everything LaHaye offers. He leans on a lot of psychology. Christians, and pastors need to talk about sex a lot more. Anyway, I enjoyed the book. It caused me to anticipate the future, and thank God for the gift of sexual pleasure within the marriage covenant. How creative he is! "...there is no other known purpose for the clitoris than to provide you with sexual stimulation. Your heavenly Father placed it there for your enjoyment." (350)

Driscoll on the emerging church

More Confessions from Driscoll, speaking of the emerging church:
"I am particularly concerned however, with some growing trends among some people: the rejection of Jesus' death on the cross as a penal substitute for our sins; resistance to openly denouncing homosexual acts as sinful; the questioning of a literal eternal torment in hell, which is a denial that holds up only until, in an ironic bummer, you die and find yourself in hell; the rejection of God's sovereignty over and knowledge of the future, as if God were a junior-college professor who knows only bits and pieces of trivia; the rejection of biblically defined gender roles, therby contributing to the 'mantropy' epidemic among young guys now fretting over the best kind of looffah for their skin type and the number of women in the military dying to save their Bed, Bath and Beyond from terrorist attacks; and the rejection of biblical names for God, such as Father, which is essentially apologizing before the unbelieving world for the paryer life of the flamboyantly heterosexual Jesus, who uttered the horrendously politically incorrect 'Our Father' without ever having the decency to apologize for being a misogynist patriarchal meanie. This is ultimately all the result of a diminished respect for the perfection, authority, and clarty of Scripture, all of which was written by patriarchal men." (22-23)

Mark Driscoll's Confessions

Last night I went solo camping at the dazzling Coleman lake. It was sweet. I finished Driscoll's ever-so controversial book 'Confessions of a Reformission Rev.' The book is the history of his church. The subtitle is 'Hard Lessons From An Emerging Missional Church.' People have seemed to begin slandering without reading the title of the book. The point is to show how much he messed up, and how God has built the church in spite of him. Challies reviewed it, and was blasted with 174 comments, most of which were slandering Driscoll and his ministry. If you read Challies, be sure and read Jollyblogger's take. His is the best but there is more here, here, here, and here. I agree that Driscoll pushes the envelope in many places. This book has red question marks all through it where I asked myself, 'Was that really necessary?' Usually it wasn't. He is very sarcastic, and irreverent at times, which is a problem. But I really appreciate a lot of what he is doing. I believe him when he says, 'My deepest desire is to be fruitful for Jesus' (183). For one, he is reaching people in Seattle who usually wouldn't be caught dead in church. If that was it, I rejoice. More than that though, he is reformed in his theology, expositional in his preaching, his church is led by a plurality of elders (and it takes at least a year to become an elder), they baptize believers, they are very missional, huge on church planting (see Acts 29), complimentarian, continuationists, and they have a very strict membership process. I can't argue with that. I hope he continues to write, and he mentions in the book plans on writing books on election, male headship, and church leadership. I'd buy them. Peep it:

'..emerging and missional churches see the church's primary task as sending Christians out of the church and into the culture to serve as missionaries through relationships, rather than bringing lost people into the church to be served by programming.' (26)

On Congregationalism: 'As I studied the Bible, I found more warrant for a church led by unicorns than by a majority vote.' (103)

'I wanted a church filled with missionaries, Christians who were learning how to become missionaries, and lost people. I would not accept a church filled with Christians who did not give, serve, or reach lost people, because they invariably make themselves and their selfish desires the mission of a church and kill innovation and momentum.' (112)

Gospel-Centered

There are a few men whom I love for the clarity and emphasis on the centrality of the gospel in the lives of believers. These include Tim Keller, Jerry Bridges, C.J. Mahaney, and Jay Wetger. Most have probably heard of the first 3. I found Jay Wetger through an OPC church I used to visit. He is great at applying the gospel to our lives. I have only read a handful of his articles, but they have all been sweet. Check out 'Gospel Reasoning', 'The Doctrine of Justification by Faith: Understanding So Great a Salvation', and 'The Cross-Centered Life.' If you do not have the habit of preaching the gospel to yourself, treat yourself with these brief articles.

Dallas take Spurs at San Antonio

The Mavs just beat the Spurs 119-111 in Overtime. I have to give props to Diop for shutting Timmy down in OT. I admit I was a little worried but my boys pulled it off. NBA championship here we come.

The Gospel for Real Life

This week-end I finished 'The Gospel for Real Life' by Jerry Bridges. It was excellent. Definitely one of my top five for the year. It is basically the gospel. He does an excellent job of making a lot of soteriology very accessible, with many illustrations, and applications. I highly recommend it, and recommend giving it away. It would be a great gift book for anyone. It would encourage and refresh an aged believer, or really clarify the gospel for someone with a shallow understanding of what Jesus has done for us. His chapters pretty much cover (in different words) the following: sin, imputation, justice, wrath, propitiation, expiation, ransom, reconciliation, justification, faith, adoption, assurance, sanctification, and mission.

'The reality of present-day Christendom is that most professing Christians actually know very little of the gospel, let alone understand its implications for their day-to-day lives. My perception is that most of them know just enough gospel to get inside the kingdom. They know nothing of the unsearchable riches of Christ.' (17)

'Do you want to grow in your own worship of God? That growth will be directly related to your understanding of the gospel in all its fullness..' (124)

Tomorrow I leave for the last conference of the semester. I signed up to go to Image at Southwestern with the college group at my church. It should be fun. Shane and Shane are leading worship, and J.R. Vassar and David Platt are bringin' it. Vassar planted a church in NYC so I like him already. Alicia is out of town anyway, so it will be good to get away. I hope I get to watch the Mavs game. I'll leave you with a pic I saw at Bill Streger's blog that I thought was pretty funny. I especially like #3. Peace!!

The Mavs just beat the Spurs 123-118 in OT to lead the series 3 games to 1. It will be real hard for the Spurs to come back in this one. Go Mavs! It's bedtime.

Sacred Marriage

As my countdown to marriage is now less than 3 weeks, I am finishing up a couple of books on the subject. This weekend I finished 'Sacred Marriage' by Gary Thomas. It was pretty good. It was almost 300 pages, and I think he could have made it about 75. There were some good insights though. The sub-title is 'What If God Designed Marriage to Make Us Holy More than to Make Us Happy?' It is more a book on sanctification, kind of like Scott's 'Exemplary Husband', which I need to hear over and over. "Any situation that calls me to confront my selfishness has enormous spiritual value, and I slowly began to understand that the real purpose of marriage may not be happiness as much as it is holiness." (22)

R. Kent Hughes

This semester I have been meeting up with a group of men to go through Kent Hughes' book 'Disciplines of a Godly Man.' We finished this week. It was pretty good. He has a very high view of Scripture. The chapters were the disciplines of Godliness, purity, marriage, fatherhood, friendship, mind, devotion, prayer, worship, integrity, tongue, work, perseverance, church, leadership, giving, witness, ministry, and the grace of discipline. Hughes is well-read so it had tons of good quotes and stories. Here is a quote he used by Dennis Prager, a Jewish radio talk show host:
'One thing I noticed about Evangelicals is that they do not read. They do not read the Bible, they do not read the great Christian thinkers, they have never heard of Aquinas. It they're Presbyterian, they've never read the founders of Presbyterianism. I do not understand that. As a Jew, that's confusing to me. The commandment of study is so deep in Judaism that we immerse ourselves in study. God gave us a brain, aren't we to use it in His service? When I walk into an Evangelical Christian's home and see a total of 30 books, most of them best-sellers, I do not understand. I have bookcases of Christian books, and I am a Jew. Why do I have more Christian books that 98 percent of the Christians in America? That is so bizarre to me.' (78)

Ouch!!

The Shaping of the Things to Come

'Any church that cannot get by without buildings, finances, and paid experts is not fully being a church.' (69)

Quoting Mark Driscoll: 'We need to recover beauty as an attribute of God. Dance, video and music all need to be redeemed. At Mars Hill, we take that redemption seriously. That's why we have candles everywhere. It's why we feature paintings by professional artists in our community. It's why we burn incense, hitting all the senses for a full experience. Everything in the service needs to preach: architecture, lighting, songs, prayers, fellowship, the smell, it all preaches. Being creative is tough work, but we believe art is that region between heaven and earth that connects the two. To experience God is often the highest form of knowing and the entire worship experience must be more than a presentation about God.' (103)

'We need to beware of the anaesthetizing and stultifying effects that Christendom, the tame, nonmissional church, and our safe middle classness have had on us.' (223)

Frost & Hirsch

Today at work I finished 'The Shaping of the Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century Church'' by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch. It wasn't the fastest read, but it was definitely thought provoking. I will go back to it in the future. It was annoying at times, especially with all their trendy adjectives. It did make me think/rethink some issues like membership, reading the gospels through Pauline eyes, bivocational ministry, the need for buildings, distinctive clergy/laity ecclesiology, the 5-fold ministry taught in Ephesians 4:11-13, and so forth. They had some good things to say about our middle classness, our emphasis on right belief rather than right living, and other places where we (evangelicalism) have things a little off. I particularly enjoyed Ch. 7 titled 'The God of Israel and the Renewal of Christianity.' Here are some quotes:

'The missional church is incarnational, not attractional, in its ecclesiology. By incarnational we mean it does not create sanctified spaces into which unbelievers must come to encounter the gospel. Rather, the missional church dissembles itself and seeps into the cracks and crevices of a society in order to be Christ to those who don't yet know him.' (12)

'As Mark Driscoll has said, "I want to prepare like an evangelical; preach like a Pentecostal; pray like a mystic; do the spiritual disciplines like a Desert Father; art like a Catholic; and social justice like a liberal."' (27)

'If by holiness we simply mean no drinking, no smoking, and no dancing, we have a very limited view of the concept.' (54)...'Holiness is primarily defined not by what we don't do, but rather by what we do in our hallowing of the everyday.' (132)

'Ironically, full-time clergy in the traditional attractional churches often find themselves so run off their feet with the busyness of serving on various committees, attending myriad meetings, and running worship services, that they have very few social contacts with unbelievers. We thing this is one of the great blights of the institutional church; it covertly withdraws its clergy from casual, social contact with the neighborhood community.' (59)

Driscoll on emergent

Yesterday I read a great article from the Criswell Theological review by Mark Driscoll. It is titled "A Pastoral Perspective on the Emergent Church" I recommend it to all, but especially to those who are critical of the movement. He mentions Church models 1, 2, and 3. Here is a little piece:

Today, the Church 2.0 model is the dominant American church form, but is being replaced by yet another incarnation of the Church. The Church 3.0 model is emerging, missional, and bound together by the following traits:
-The cultural context is postmodern and pluralistic.
-The church accepts that it is marginalized in culture.
-Pastors are local missionaries.
-Church services blend ancient forms and current local styles.
-Missions is “glocal” (global and local).

2006 DG Conference

Justin Taylor has linked to the new promo video for the next DG National Conference. Tim Keller, Mark Driscoll, and Piper. Nuff said. But I'll keep going: Voddie Baucham, Don Carson, David Wells. The video made my mouth water. Peep it.

John Franke

Last night I finished John Franke's 'The Character of Theology: A Postconservative Evangelical Approach.' I haven't read McLaren's 'Generous Orthodoxy' but I am pretty sure that this is the academic version of that book. Franke's book was mostly postmodern junk. I read it because he claims to be reformed and postmodern and I wanted to see how that worked. It didn't. He has adopted a lot of postmodern philosophy, which is directly opposed to lots of reformed theology. I enjoyed the read for the most part though. It was stimulating at times, nauseating at others. He says that all theology is to be defined socially and contextually. No absolutes. He is a non-foundationalist. Reformed theology says the Scripture is the foundation. He says that the approach of theologians such as Grudem and Henry are lacking because they are "based on the presupposition that the bible, as the entirely truthful self-disclosure of God presented in propositional form, is the sole foundation for theology (88)." He did have some good things to say though, particularly in the chapter on the purpose of theology. "The ultimate purpose of theology is not simply to establish right belief but to assist the Christian community in its vocation to live as the people of God in the particular social-historical context in which it is situated. The goal of theology is to facilitate and enable authentic performance of the Christian faith by the community in its various cultural locations (161).

Exactly one month from today I will be the blessed husband of Alicia Mattox. I am very undeserving! It is June 3 in Abilene. I hope the time flies by. It has so far. If you have some extra flow laying around, we are registered at Amazon, Target, Wal-Mart, Amazon, Bed, Bath & Beyond, and Amazon. Peace!

Here is a picture of the stack of books that I came home from the conference with. These are definitely worth more than what we paid for the conference. I think the grand prize was the Big Mac NASB Study Bible. Thanks to Nelson Publishers!