A few years ago I was sitting in a church history class in seminary. The professor was lecturing on the debate between Athanasius and Arius regarding the divine nature of Jesus Christ. A fellow student raised his hand, identified himself as a future missionary, and asked with, no small level of disdain, how this would help him be a better missionary. The professor did a fine job of explaining how theology undergirds ministry--but I'm not sure the student bought it.

I never saw another incident like that while I was at seminary. I remember it because I understand it. My mind gravitate toward that which is obviously and immediately relevant. Being a Christian (and certainly a Christian serving as a missionary) requires us to reflect upon who Jesus is and what he has done even before we answer how this affects us. We must answer the latter, but we must first dwell on the former. Read more

 Do you struggle with envy? Nobody wants to admit this--especially Christians. And yet if you are anything like me, you know what it is like to see another person and covet his looks, his salary, his friends (real, not Facebook), or his talents. Paul may have been speaking of material possessions when he instructed Timothy, "godliness with contentment is great gain," but the application is much more broad. If we are not content with the gifts God has given us then we are, fundamentally, not content with the God who gave us those gifts.

The psalmist's honesty in Psalm 73 is overwhelming. He admits his struggle with envy: "For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked" (v. 3).Read more

  
I'm not sure I'm the best person to write on music. With the exception of Sunday morning, music is something I listen to when I'm doing something else: driving, writing, sometimes even reading. This morning, as I prepared a Bible study, Leonard Bernstein was my background music. It was beautiful. In the early nineties, Huey Lewis and Billy Joel accompanied me from my hometown of Hillsboro to my college town of Eugene, Oregon, and back again. Read more

In 1994, a couple years after it was published, and before I had really done any intentional, theological thinking, a friend gave me Chuck Colson’s book, Being the Body. It is a book about the church. He described the church as a “new community” – and this was new to me. Colson wrote: 

Yet according to Scripture, Christianity is corporate. This is why we speak of the body with its different parts, the community of the redeemed, the holy nation and royal priesthood—or, as Carl Henry calls it, “the new society of God’s people, the new society of the twice-born.” 

By God’s grace, I eventually became a part of this “new society of God’s people”—and my life changed. I gathered and prayed and sang and listened to the Word in the context of a local church. I experienced deep relationships, sincere friendships, and spiritual growth. When I went to seminary for a few years, I found another church, got plugged in, and pursued a similar course of Christian maturation rooted in a local church body.Read more

After his wife died, Richard Baxter wrote a brief account of her life. A summary of these events and excerpts of this writing are found in J. I. Packer's A Grief Sanctified: Through Sorrow to Eternal Hope (Crossway, 2002). I think it is safe to say that Baxter, well known for his work on ministry, The Reformed Pastor, as well as his reflections on heaven, The Saints' Everlasting Rest, is not so well known for his marriage. And yet, it is a sweet, sweet story.

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  A few weeks ago I shared with my church the experiences that led me to love being part of a local church. I find it interesting that this happened. As a child and until my senior year of high school (in Hillsboro, Oregon) I had little to no exposure to Christianity. All that changed in May of 1990 when a friend shared with me the Gospel. She talked about hell--and she really believed it existed. I was dumbfounded because I knew she was no fool and yet she actually believed that Jesus is Lord. Sometime in the next few months the Lord saved me. 

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I had the privilege to write for an online evangelical journal. Because the editing process was so intense, the articles finally published often bore little resemblance to the pieces originally submitted. Week after week, as “my” work was dramatically changed or, sometimes, cut altogether, I learned the importance of humility. I also learned a valuable lesson in encouragement.

First, let me explain the process. Several editors and writers gathered around a table. Someone read an article aloud. Then it began. We scratched words. We cut paragraphs. We changed the tone. We dug deeper into Scripture. We worked harder at application. Silence was usually reserved for pieces either so good they were ready for publication or so bad they didn’t deserve the dignity of a trial before execution. Most articles wound up in the middle. They were made ready for publication only after an extended conversation. Editors suggested change after change, working on each piece with the intensity of a sculptor leaning over a piece of carved wood.

What does this have to do with encouragement? 

In 1992 Juliet B.Read more

For at least a few more posts, I’m going to use this time and this space to reflect upon the early days of my pastoral ministry at Mount Vernon Baptist Church in Sandy Springs, Georgia, just north of Atlanta. I remain relieved that the process of writing my dissertation has come to an end as well as overjoyed that a local church has seen fit to grant me the privilege of preaching week in and week out. Sure, there are all sorts of difficulties involved in a move like this. My wife and I still miss our church from Louisville, Third Avenue—and that’s the way it should be. We cried when we left Capitol Hill Baptist for seminary in 2000, and we cried when we left Third in 2008. We made connections there, we served there, and we grew there.

I started preaching at Mount Vernon in June, 2008. In many ways I’d been preparing for this day for years. I served as a pastoral assistant and then an elder at Capitol Hill. Then, in Louisville, I helped transition the church to a plural elder model, became an elder, and preached regularly (especially during several times the past few years when we were without a full-time pastor). However, none of these experiences fully prepared me for what I’ve experienced in even three months of ministry at Mount Vernon. So, let me briefly share a lesson that I’m really just beginning to learn.Read more

It finally happened. After years of prayer and preparation, on Sunday, June 15, 2008, I preached my first sermon as the pastor of Mount Vernon Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. Both the church and the city are new to me. For years, my wife and I expected that we would end up in the Northwest. I even wrote a piece for Common Grounds to that end many months ago. God had different plans. He opened a door among a congregation here, and it seemed wise to enter. Now the journey begins.

What follows is an attempt to describe some of my fears as I embark upon this ministry. However, embedded in each fear is the anticipation that God will do something great.Read more