Those of you who are skeptical, critical, or doubtful about the work of church planting will be encouraged to read what revered Christian leader Al Mohler had to say about the pastors of Acts 29. He doesn’t name us by name, but Scott Thomas does.

Dave contends that the biblical, God-honoring idea of ambition has been all but lost. In its place we’ve substituted a false definition of humility (humble people shouldn’t have ambitions, aspirations, visions, goals). Some insightful observations from Dave’s talk:

• We chase what we love. Our problem is not the pursuit of glory, but the pursuit of the wrong kind of glory.
• Ambition begins with perceiving the value of something. We must perceive the value of the glory of God.
• After we perceive God’s glory, we must prize it — we prize what we perceive.
• One we perceive it, and prize it, we will pursue it.
• We need to have the kind of ambition that spurred Paul in Romans 15:19-20 not to sit back and rest on the fact that he had “fulfilled the gospel” from Jerusalem to Illyricum, but spurred him to the continued ambition to “preach the gospel where Christ has not yet been named.”
  

Listen to or watch the entirety of Dave’s talk at the A29 website. You can also follow live-blogging from the Ambition conference at the Acts 29 website. Tomorrow Kevin Cawley is speaking at 10:30 AM and me at 11:30 AM.

I’d appreciate your prayers as Kendal and I head to Louisville this week. We’re excited about kickin’ it with our good friends at Sojourn Church, who are hosting the last Acts 29 bootcamp of this year. I’ll be speaking on Wednesday morning on “Discipleship and Ambition,” and Kendal will be gleaning worship and liturgy insights from the likes of Sandra McCracken, Kevin Twit (Indelible Grace), Tim Smith (Mars Hill), and Mike Cosper and Neil Robins (Sojourn Music). You can check here and here for more detailed schedule info.

Acts 29 Boot Camps are church planting conferences open to the public that focus on the vision of church planting, the calling of the planter, the mandate to multiply churches, and the theological foundation for gospel-centered church planting. This one is packed out with over 400 registrants, including 30 would-be church planters who are seeking evaluation of their calling and gifting through Acts 29’s rigorous church planter assessment.

Your prayers are appreciated as this opportunity comes at a particularly taxing time for me. Pastors always carry the burdens of their flock as they do the work of counseling and spiritual leadership. But this past month has stretched Walker and I to the breaking point with difficult situation after difficult situation. Confidentiality requires vagueness, but the pain and emotional cost of some of the burdens we’re carrying is great. Pray that in spite of my spiritual weariness, God will allow me the grace of being helpful to some young church planters for the sake of His kingdom and glory.

While in Louisville, we’ll have the privilege of meeting up with former Coram Deo elder JD Senkbile. We’re gathering with some other pastors to strategize together for church planting in southern Africa. Coram Deo sent JD and Michele to South Africa a year ago to serve as church planting liaisons for Acts 29. Since then, God has made it clear to them that the best way to fulfill that vision is to actually plant a church in the city-center of Cape Town. You can read more at the new Vox Church website. And, since JD is cooler than me, you can also follow him on Twitter, which might be a great way to stay up to date and connected with what God is doing in Cape Town.

Of course, the hard work of the week (strategizing, teaching, assessing, and the rigorous preparation for all of these) will be mitigated by fine food, good beer, and the smell of a good pipe, as Acts 29 brothers tend to enjoy feasting together as a celebration of our unity in Christ and a foretaste of the coming kingdom of God.

Thanks for standing behind us in prayer and for owning the vision of church planting. It’s a privilege to represent you and to share the evidences of God’s grace among us these past four years. To God be the glory!

Operation Christmas Child is an exciting venture by Samaritan’s Purse which seeks to give every child living in poverty a shoe box filled with gifts by the time they reach the age of 14. In countries where poverty is rampant, most kids are not allowed to go to school unless they provide their own school supplies. Including things like pens, pencils, sharpeners, and paper in your box can provide a child with the opportunity to be educated, which is crucial to survival in many areas of the world. Coram Deo is excited to be participating in these efforts as a community this year.

How do you start?
Decide if you’d like to pack a box for a girl or a boy, and then select an age category: 2-4 yrs, 5-9 yrs, or 10-14 yrs. Make sure to include the label (gender and age) with your box. For each box packed, include $7 in cash or check to cover shipping costs.

What should you pack in your shoe box?
School supplies, small toys (such as jump ropes, cars, dolls, kazoos), flashlights (with batteries), hygiene items, toy jewelry, clothes, hard candy, gum, etc.

What NOT to pack:
Do not include any used or damaged items, war-related toys or figurines, chocolate or food, medications, vitamins, liquids, or breakable things.

If you’d like, you can also include a personal note to the child and a photo of your family. These shoe-box gifts are distributed to children around the world, mostly by local churches or church leaders in the community.

For more instructions on packing a shoe box or to print off labels for your box, you can look at this handout.

*** Bring your shoe boxes to Coram Deo’s Sunday gathering and drop them off in the back next to the resource table on any Sunday now through November 22. ***

The next installment of our monthly Film & Theology sessions is this Friday starting at 6:30pm. We will once again be hosted by our kind friends at The Foundry, and as always there will be some popcorn, drinks, and comfortable seating. The film we have chosen for this month is Friday Night Lights; you can go here to view some details (including rating) about it. Hope to see you there!

Tim Keller helps to answer this question by observing that the standard pattern of evangelism in the New Testament centered around the oikos (Greek for household). But the word household in NT times was much broader than we tend to think of it. “In the Bible, evangelism does not happen primarily through programs… it happens naturally through one’s oikos, or household… A household was not just your family, but… a fairly tight-knit, close set of colleagues, kin, friends, neighbors. It was understood that when you became a Christian, you had been called to be a steward, evangelistically speaking, of your oikos.”*

In our day, Keller suggests that the biblical term oikos applies to at least five networks: your kinship network (family and relatives), your neighborhood (those who live near you geographically), your colleagues (co-workers or co-students), your affinity network (people with a shared special interest), and your friends (those from the other 4 networks whom you develop a close relationship with). The relative strength or weakness of these five networks varies based on your context.

What it means to live missionally, then, is to have authentic friendship with people in these networks. That’s it. If Jesus is truly important to you, and if you have real friendships with people, then Jesus is going to come up sooner or later in the natural course of sharing life. You shouldn’t have to artificially shoehorn Jesus into every conversation, nor should you feel the need to hide or downplay your affection for him. Those in your oikos will get to know Jesus as they get to know you.

So – is missional living primarily about your neighborhood, your co-workers, your hunting buddies, or your non-Christian family members? The answer is: yes.

[*Quoted from "Evangelism and the Steward Leader," mp3 audio from Redeemer Presbyterian Church.]

According to Divine Design (a leadership assessment tool developed at Covenant Seminary and used at Coram Deo):

• Teaching is the ability to understand and communicate the Christian faith so as to make the truth clear to others. The result of this gift is the equipping and maturing of others in the body of Christ so that they will grow in grace and be more effective disciples.
• Prophecy or Preaching is speaking what God wants said with clarity, creativity, and power. The primary ministry in this gift is not prediction, but in confronting people with the truth about God and man—with conviction and empowering as the result.
• Exhortation is the gift of being able to encourage others by well-timed and wise counsel. This gift builds the Body of Christ by helping new, young and adolescent disciples to turn from sin and believe in the power of the Holy Spirit. Also called the gift of Counseling or Encouragement.

Here’s how these gifts play out in various arenas:

• Missional Community/Small Group Leadership: The best MC leaders are usually those with the gift of teaching, because they’re not content to communicate information; they want to see people learn and grow. On the other hand, prophets tend to preach to their MC, while exhorters want to turn it into a counseling session.
• Discipleship/Spiritual Formation: The best disciplers are usually those with the gift of exhortation, because they know how to speak a timely word (Prov. 15:23) and how to draw out what people are really thinking and feeling. Teachers tend to turn discipleship into “content dump” while prophets often talk at people instead of to them.
• Rebuke/Confrontation: The best people to confront sin effectively are usually prophets, because they care less about what people think than about the truth. Teachers tend to instruct instead of confronting, while exhorters can be so encouraging that the rebuke isn’t appropriately felt.
• Preaching: Prophets make the best preachers. Teachers can also be effective from the pulpit when they play to their strengths (clarity, equipping, disciplemaking); in fact, one pastor gifted in prophecy and another gifted in teaching often makes for a great 1-2 punch. Exhorters can also be effective preachers because of their great insight into people; however, they should invite the input of teachers and prophets for help with structure and clarity.

Of course these are over-generalizations. No one should be pigeonholed into a particular area of service, because with appropriate skill development and maturity, people can minister effectively outside their area of gifting. But in general, it’s a good idea to find a role in ministry that leverages your God-given gifting for the good of His body and the progress of His mission.

It should also be noted that progress in sanctification (or lack thereof) can strengthen (or conversely, weaken) the effectiveness of these gifts. Teachers or prophets who haven’t learned to be “quick to listen, slow to speak” (James 1:19) tend to delight in airing their own ideas without considering whether they fit the circumstance. Exhorters who are not well-traveled in the disciplines of prayer, meditation, and Bible study can end up dispensing moralistic advice instead of good news. The fact that you have spiritual gifts doesn’t mean you’ll use them well. Don’t neglect your need for progressive sanctification.

(By the way, if you’d like to take the Divine Design profile to get a better “read” on how God has uniquely gifted you, let us know.)

This causes me great angst as a pastor. I want to see more people show up to pray. At the same time, I despise legalism. I refuse to bind people’s consciences. Showing up at Wednesday night prayer doesn’t merit God’s favor, nor does it necessarily indicate a healthy prayer life. People may come because they’re motivated by guilt or they want to look good to others. People may stay home and yet be deep and vibrant in prayer.

In calling people to corporate prayer, I have erred on both sides. I have given off shades of performance: “If you really love Jesus, you’ll come to prayer.” I have been apathetic and passive: “The Lord will bring whomever he wants.” Even now, I confess that I am mystified about the proper biblical approach to this subject. The parable of the persistent widow (Luke 18:1-8) and the radical promises of Jesus (John 15:7, 16) convince me that prayer matters more than we think it does. On the other hand, “performance praying” is a classic mark of a Pharisee (Matthew 6:5).

So here I am, gingerly stepping out in a blog post to address the matter. I will begin by airing some of my frustrations. I will end with personal narrative, explaining why corporate prayer is good for my soul. I’ll leave it to the Holy Spirit to do what he needs to do in your heart.

FRUSTRATIONS; OR, STUFF THAT NEEDS TO BE SAID

1. It is not legalism to call people to spiritual disciplines. Many Christians have a nervous twitch toward anything that smacks of fundamentalist rigor. Anytime someone uses the word “should” (as in “you should gather with other Christians to pray”), we accuse them of legalism. But this is foolish and misguided. The New Testament is full of imperatives. Telling, urging, commanding someone to do something is NOT legalism. Legalism is what happens when we forget the proper motivation (gospel grace) or when we measure God’s acceptance of us by our good performance.
2. You cannot have a healthy prayer life without corporate prayer. Some people assert that they pray in private instead of gathering with others to pray. I question whether these people are very mature in their practice of prayer. Corporate prayer shapes you in a number of ways that private prayer cannot. It makes you humble yourself and engage with the prayers of others. It forces you to quiet your straying mind. It forces you to confront your judgmental attitudes toward that guy across the room who prays too long or that person who just asked for something completely selfish. Corporate prayer is an essential component of spiritual formation.
3. Yes, prayer meetings are often lame and feel like “a waste of time.” I’m happy if we experience a unique sense of the Spirit’s presence one out of every four Wednesdays. Sometimes prayer is lame. That’s OK. It’s still shaping. And isn’t the nature of relationship about “wasting time?” We live in a very production-oriented society, where everything is measured by efficiency and productivity. Except friendship. When you are with friends, you expect to “waste time” together. To those who are “too busy” to commit an hour of the week to corporate prayer, I would simply ask: what other time-wasters do you commit an hour to? Facebook? Revising your fantasy football roster? Watching television? Talking on the phone? Arguing with friends about really life-altering issues like who should have won American Idol or which Avett Brothers album is the best?

SELF-DISCLOSURE; OR, WHY I MAKE IT A WEEKLY DISCIPLINE TO GATHER WITH OTHERS FOR CORPORATE PRAYER

1. My soul needs it. By Wednesday nights I am often beat down, dejected, and spiritually tired from pastoring and teaching and discipling and counseling and rebuking and problem-solving. An hour of praying with others recharges my heart, refreshes my vision, and renews me in the promises of the gospel.
2. It’s too easy for me not to pray. I need a regular weekly rhythm to keep me disciplined. Otherwise I could easily go months without really devoting myself to prayer, keeping alert in it (Col 4:2).
3. I meet with God. Regularly I experience a deep sense of God’s presence while praying corporately with others. I feel a greater sense of burden and urgency than I do praying alone.
4. It’s a rebellion against my flesh and my culture. We live in an entertainment-saturated, convenience-driven culture that idolizes work and busyness. Setting aside one hour of my week for corporate prayer is one way for me to live counter-culturally. It’s rest. It’s reflection. It’s dependence. It’s admitting my need. It’s worship.
5. It humbles me. I’d far too easily drift into thinking that Coram Deo is successful because of something I’m doing. Prayer reminds me that I can do nothing apart from him.
6. It shapes me. When I pray with others I have to learn to listen, not speak; to trust, not doubt; to believe the best, not assume the worst. Over the past decade God has graciously made me slower to speak and quicker to listen. Much of that spiritual formation has come through corporate prayer.
7. It’s the most important part of our mission. We are out to see people repent of sin and trust in Jesus. And yet that’s not something we can make anyone do. If we’re going to succeed, we’re going to succeed on our knees. Because unless God works, our work is useless.
8. I’m trying to set an example. Too many Christians think that spiritual leadership is about doing something to lead others. But spiritual leadership is primarily about being a certain kind of person. A worshipful, prayerful person. I’m doing my best to become that kind of leader, so that those who follow me will become those kind of people.
9. I like it. For all the reasons above and many more, I look forward to Wednesday evenings from 8 to 9 PM. It’s one of the highlights of my week. Even when it’s lame and awkward and laborious… I like prayer.

I’m praying that this post might spur more of you to join us on Wednesday nights. We meet at Lane’s house, near 97th and Maple. Ask around in your MC, or call the CD offices for specific directions.

Additionally, I’d be interested to know: what hinders you from corporate prayer? Or – what motivates you toward it?

1. Prayer. Mondays are sermon prep day. I begin the day with an hour of personal communion with God through Bible reading and prayer. If I don’t, preaching prep becomes toilsome instead of worshipful.
2. Mechanical Outline. I ponder the text for the week, analyze its structure, and lay it out in a mechanical outline on my whiteboard. Fee and Stuart: “A text can’t mean now what it never meant then.” A mechanical layout makes sure I’m following the logic of the passage and not importing my own.
3. Subject. I ask the first question Haddon Robinson taught me to ask: what is this passage talking about? (i.e. what subject is the original author writing about?) Subject of Col 2:1-5: Paul’s struggle/burden/longing for the church at Colossae and the others near it
4. Big Idea Statement: I ask Haddon’s second question: what is this text saying about what it’s talking about? (i.e. what is the original author saying to the original audience? How would you summarize the text in a sentence?) Big Idea of Col 2:1-5: Paul longs for the church to know (riches/assurance/understanding /knowledge) Christ, so that no one will delude them with persuasive arguments.
5. Fallen Condition Focus (FCF): I think through Bryan Chapell’s question: what aspect of our human fallenness does this text address? Or, to be more precise: What is the mutual condition that contemporary believers share with those to or for whom the text was written that requires the grace of the passage? FCF of Col 2:1-5: our tendency to be deluded by persuasive arguments
6. Proposition: How would I restate the raw material of the FCF and the Big Idea in terms of a proposition? What am I asking people to think/feel/do? What is at stake? What am I saying to the person out there thinking, “so what?” Proposition for Col 2:1-5: Because we can be deluded by persuasive arguments, we must know Christ, in whom is all wisdom and knowledge.
7. Contextualization: What do I need to do to connect this passage to my audience’s world? Contextualization for Col 2:1-5: what modern arguments are most persuasive to me and to the people of Coram Deo? (This step often requires the most work… for instance, this week, I had to think through the common arguments and find quotes and research to support them. I always want to state arguments a) in the person’s own language; b) with appropriate supporting documentation (i.e. I researched this in the library, NOT on Wikipedia) and c) in a way that would be fair and charitable if they were in the room. So, for instance, this morning I wanted to say things in a way that Richard Dawkins would consider fair if he were present.)
8. Querying the Text: What about this text doesn’t make sense to me? What bugs me? What seems unclear? If it seems unclear to me, it will probably seem unclear to the people I’m preaching to. Stuff that bugged me in Col 2:1-5: the effeminate-sounding phrase ‘that their hearts may be encouraged,’ the ways Christians have used this text to justify a ‘fortress mentality’ that simply ignores or avoids the persuasive arguments of the surrounding culture.
9. Gospel Connection: How does this text necessitate, foreshadow, or elucidate Jesus’ person and work? Gospel Connection in Col 2:1-5: knowing Jesus [and knowledge in the Bible is almost always existential/personal, never abstract/conceptual] is the key to not being deluded by persuasive arguments
   
10. Gospel Implications: How does the grace of Jesus in the gospel help us to live out the teaching of this text? Gospel Implications in Col 2:1-5: ‘in him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge’ – in Christ we are freed from our idolatry of knowledge, so that we may experience the true riches of knowledge and wisdom. As a result, through the gospel, we are able to hold true knowledge with confident humility and gracious certainty.
    

Some weeks this process is easier than others. Sometimes I do a better job and sometimes a worse job of thinking through all these facets of a sermon. I am an intuitive person and so I don’t walk through this checklist from 1 to 10. But in general this reflects my basic process.

Much of the textual work takes place on Mondays. Lately I’ve been gathering with a group of leaders on Tuesday mornings to talk through the text and the sermon, so that helps to clarify and crystallize my thinking. This week’s sermon prep took place: all day Monday; one hour Tuesday morning; two hours Thursday afternoon; six hours Saturday afternoon/evening; and two hours Sunday morning before church (which are mainly devoted to prayer and practice). Sometimes it takes more work than this; sometimes less.

Now I want you to remember a few things about the pastorate. Being a pastor today involves more than merely teaching and preaching. You’ll be the comforter of the fatherless and the widow. You’ll counsel constantly with those whose homes and hearts are broken. You’ll have to handle divorce problems and a thousand marital situations. You’ll have to exhort and advise young people involved in sordid and illicit sex, with drugs and violence. You’ll have to visit the hospitals, the shut-ins, the elderly. A mountain of problems will be laid on your shoulders and at your doorstep.

And then there’s the heartache of ministering to a weak and carnal and worldly, apathetic group of professing Christians, very few of whom will be found trustworthy and dependable.

Then there a hundred administrative responsibilities as pastor. You’re the generator and sometimes the janitor. The church will look to you for guidance in building programs, church growth, youth activities, outreach, extra services, etc. You’ll be called upon to arbitrate all kinds of problems. At times you will feel the weight of the world on your shoulders. Many pastors have broken under the strain.

If the Lord has called you, these things will not deter nor dismay you. But I wanted you to know the whole picture. As in all of our Lord’s work there will be a thousand compensations. You’ll see that people trust Christ as Savior and Lord. You’ll see these grow in the knowledge of Christ and his Word. You’ll witness saints enabled by your preaching to face all manner of tests. You’ll see God at work in human lives, and there is no joy comparable to this. Just ask yourself, son, if you are prepared not only to preach and teach, but also to weep over men’s souls, to care for the sick and dying, and to bear the burdens carried today by the saints of God.

My own experience affirms that Bill Piper’s counsel is spot-on. And countless young pastors like myself are eternally grateful that Dr. Piper made the decision he did. More at Justin Taylor’s blog.

A friend in Hollywood pointed me to an article in today’s LA Times that chronicles the  madness:

Marilyn Wann of San Francisco is among the nation’s fat activists. She became passionate about defending the rights of fat people when she was denied health insurance based solely on her weight. …She now does corporate training to promote fat acceptance in the workplace. She’d like to change two beliefs: that people chose what they weigh, and that weight equals health. Both are false, she says.

Size tolerance, fat-acceptance activists say, should be right up there with religious tolerance, ethnic tolerance and gay tolerance. “It’s the culture that has to change,” says Judith Matz, director of the Chicago Center for Overcoming Overeating. “I look forward to the day when fat phobia becomes as intolerable as racism.”

Really? more here

For this purpose I labor, striving according to his power, which mightily works within me. (Col. 1:29)

The presence of God’s power does not preclude Paul’s personal struggle or energetic striving or laboring. Rather, it makes it possible. God’s power is not designed to eliminate our responsibility to work hard but to enable us to fulfill it. Paul is able to work hard because God is working hard. The latter doesn’t destroy or undermine the former.

J.I. Packer perhaps put it best when he said, “The Holy Spirit’s ordinary way of working in us is through the working of our own minds and wills. He moves us to act by causing us to see reasons for moving ourselves to act. Thus our conscious, rational selfhood, so far from being annihilated, is strengthened, and in reverent, resolute obedience we work out our salvation, knowing that God is at work in us…”

Thus we see that God has chosen to operate not independently of but only through and by means of human effort and labor. God’s energy doesn’t fall from heaven haphazardly and amorphously, but comes to us through human ministers and ministry, via human toil and struggle.

So how might we know when God is energetically and powerfully working in us? If, when you are slandered, you respond by entreating (1 Cor. 4:13), you can rest assured that divine energy is working mightily in you. If, when you are reviled, you bless instead of curse (1 Cor 4:12), you can rest assured that divine energy is working mightily in you. If, when you are persecuted, you endure (1 Cor 4:12), you can rest assured that divine energy is working mightily in you. When you are afflicted but not crushed, are perplexed but do not yield to despair, are struck down but not destroyed, you can rest assured that divine energy is working mightily in you (2 Cor 4:8-9). When you are sorrowful and still rejoice, possess nothing yet are rich, you may rest assured that divine energy is working mightily in you (2 Cor 6:10). If, when you are in poverty, you give generously and joyfully (2 Cor 8:1ff), you may rest assured that divine energy is working mightily in you.

You probably won’t feel anything. There’s no guarantee that your body will vibrate or your appearance will change. But if you find yourself responding and thinking as Jesus would, if you find yourself acting and choosing contrary to every fleshly and sinful impulse, you may rest assured that divine energy is mightily at work in you. Only in this way can we, like Paul, continue to serve and love and minister and not lose heart.

– from Sam Storms, The Hope of Glory (Crossway, 2007), 137-138.

…We have analyzed the working schedules of hundreds of executives and found that working harder and longer does not make them more productive. In fact, once a person passes a certain number of hours worked in a day, he or she actually becomes less productive. The mind dulls. The eyes gloss over. Focus strays.

You can only work so hard and do so much in a day. Everyone needs to rest and recharge. Unfortunately, too many corporate cultures encourage overwork. Managers drill it into their underlings, prodding them with dreams of cash and promotions. Many senior leaders at organizations work amazingly hard, but our research suggests that the most successful ones who last longer at the top also make considerable time to relax.

To get the most out of employees, companies need to let those employees be more efficient. How?

First off, most working days are incredibly inefficient. The 80-20 rule once again prevails: We have found that most executives waste 80% of the day and get most of their work done in the remaining 20%. For someone with an eight-hour workday, most gets done in just 96 minutes.

Companies should strongly recommend times for leaving work, so that executives don’t feel guilty going home even if their bosses are still working. Obviously, executives simply have to work longer hours sometimes. But if there are too many deadlines that keep people working late every night, you probably need to hire more staff.

Companies should also implement the No BlackBerry Rule after certain hours and on weekends. Being continuously connected seems great at first, but even one innocent e-mail on a Sunday morning stops a mind from truly resting.

Many top people do clue into the fact that working too hard just isn’t worth it. They leave businesses so they can be more productive and spend more time with their families–businesses they would have stayed at if they’d had more balanced lives there. One of the top reasons people quit companies is to find better work-life balance. That doesn’t mean such executives are lazy and don’t want to work hard. On the contrary, it means they want to work more productively and efficiently so they can enjoy life. Companies that have more flexible work arrangements that let executives catch their kids’ games or work from home while nursing tend to have the greatest employee loyalty and attract the best talent.

Read the full article here

Upon reading that post, one of my good pastor-theologian friends had his research assistant dig out an obscure essay by John Frame, who was one of my favorite seminary profs precisely because of his deep love for Christ and his zeal to serve the church. In the essay, Frame makes many of the same arguments I did in the post. He also proposes a way forward (or backward?) that, if followed, would change the course of theological education in America for the better. Here are some excerpts, abridged for simplicity:

In the early days of American Protestantism, the training of ministerial candidates was carried on by pastors of churches. [Eventually], for some reason or other, theological training was institutionalized, and at the same time academicized. As a result, young men [now] receive no training at all in many crucial areas. Most do not even become good scholars, for they learn the results of scholarship without learning how to think and do research in a scholarly way. Worst of all, it seems to me that most seminary graduates are not spiritually ready for the challenges of the ministry. Seminaries not only frequently ‘refuse to do the work of the church;’ they also tend to undo it. Students who arrive expecting to find a ‘spiritual hothouse’ often find seminary to be a singular test of faith. The crushing academic workload, the uninspiring and unhelpful courses, the financial agonies, the too-busy professors, the equally hard-pressed fellow students all contribute to the spiritual debilitation.

After this frank assessment of the problem, Frame turns to Scripture to establish three biblical propositions: 1) the qualifications for the ministry are spiritual (character, skills, knowledge – all seen through the lens of discipleship to Jesus, not academic prowess); 2) training for the ministry is itself a ministry of the Word; and 3) training for the ministry is the work of the church. On this last point, Frame observes:

Teachers have official status in the church as elders and are entitled to remuneration by the church (1 Tim 5:17). If, as we have argued, the training of ministers is a form of teaching the Word, then such training ought to be carried on by these church teachers. And such church teaching ought (as in the New Testament) to be recognized and administered by the church. A seminary which does not ‘do the work of the church’ does not ‘train men for the ministry’ either.

But the genius – and the danger – of Frame’s article isn’t in his identification of the problem or in his biblical observations. It’s in his bold proposal for a model of ministerial training that would render the current Christian seminary establishment obsolete. Maybe that’s why this essay is buried out of sight, in the relative obscurity of a distant theological library?

I propose that we dump the academic model once and for all – degrees, accreditation, tenure, the works. The academic machinery is simply incapable of measuring the things that really matter – obedience to God’s Word, perseverance in prayer, self-control, the ability to rule without pride, the spiritual power of preaching in the conversion of people and the edification of the church. The actual training, the development of ministerial qualifications, must take place in a non-academy.

But dropping the academic model does not require the dropping of institutional training. Here, then, is my alternative to the academic model. A church establishes a kind of “Christian community” where teachers, ministerial candidates, and their families live together, eat together, work together. It is not a monastic escape from the world; rather, each teacher, student, wife, and child is to be deeply involved in the work of planting and developing churches.

The best candidate for a teaching job at our community is a pastor who has trained elders and congregations so that the work of teaching and evangelism is widely diffused throughout the congregation. Upon first arrival, a student will spend much of the time in menial work around the study center. It will be expected that the student manifest the fruit of the Spirit in the sight of all before being accepted as a full candidate for the ministry. The community will evaluate the quality of the student’s devotional life, contribution to the work of the church, testimony to non-Christians, and particularly the ability to accept correction from elders in the Lord. Intensive counseling sessions will attempt to uncover unconfessed sin and traits of character detrimental to the ministry. The quality of the person’s repentance from these will be observed.

Once the community has verified the likelihood of a man’s call to the ministry, he is enrolled formally in the program. He begins to be trained in evangelism, preaching, and pastoral work. At the same time, the man begins to study the formal theological subjects. Teachers and older students will be constantly involved in the work of supervising the labors of younger men. Wives and children of students will also be subject to training and evaluation. There will not be a set “number of hours” after which a person is entitled to graduation. Teachers and older students will meet from time to time for intensive evaluation of each student’s progress in life, skills, and knowledge. These meetings will determine whether a man will be dropped from the program, promoted to new levels of responsibility, or “graduated” and recommended to the churches for ministry. No person will “graduate” unless the teachers are convinced that he has the character, skills, and knowledge which the Scriptures require of church officers.

But: if we follow this proposal, would this not rob us of the most important centers of Christian scholarship, the academic seminaries? Yes, it would. Such a restructuring of the Christian scholarly establishment would, in my opinion, produce, not a dark age, but a renaissance in Christian thought. Why?

1) Many Christian scholars, under the present system, are tied up doing something they are not really equipped for, namely the training of pastors. It is as if all professors of mathematics were involved full-time in the training of accountants!

2) The integration of theory and practice in Christian scholarship implicit in the above suggestion would help isolate those problems which most need scholarly attention in our day. What a challenge to the aridness of contemporary thought, Christian and non-Christian alike!

3) The current structure is inadequate even to train scholars, for in the academic seminaries the results of scholarship are presented without adequate training in the skills of thought and research, leaving the students easy prey to any fad boasting academic support. How marvelous it would be to have a theological leadership in the church which would not be swept around by every wind of doctrine!

It’s great to realize that in my quest for innovation, I’m simply standing on the shoulders of a giant like John Frame. Apparently his proposal, written in 1984, has gained little traction. Hopefully that is about to change. This is exactly the kind of model we’re shooting for with our Church Planting Residency, and with other Acts 29 initiatives like Re:Train and Soma School.

Any of you thoughtful readers want to chime in?

[Here is the bibliography info - good luck finding an original: John M. Frame, "Proposals for a New North American Model," in Harvie M. Conn and Sam Rowen, eds., Missions and Theological Education in World Perspective (Farmington, MI: Associates of Urbanus), 369-386.]

In November I will have the great privilege of joining fellow Acts 29 pastors Darrin Patrick, Kevin Cawley, Daniel Montgomery, Steve Timmis, and Matt Chandler (along with distinguished guests Dave Harvey and Ed Stetzer) to lead the last Acts 29 bootcamp of this year. We will gather in Louisville, Kentucky, at the very cool digs of Sojourn Church, to preach on the theme of AMBITION and to assess potential church planters.

If you are 1) a leader or emerging leader within Coram Deo or 2) a church planter or potential church planter thinking of aligning with the Acts 29 Network, you should consider attending this conference to get a feel for the DNA of Acts 29 and to network with other leaders and pastors. I will have a pretty full week with speaking responsibilities, church planter assessments, and some meetings, but at least one other staff member from Coram Deo will travel with me to help network with any Omaha or Midwest folks who attend. We’d love to have you along for the journey. It’s going to be a great conference, and the people at Sojourn are first-class hosts.

For more info, check the conference website. And please be praying for me as I prepare.

The next installment of our monthly Film & Theology sessions is this Sunday starting at 6:30pm. We will once again be hosted by our kind friends at The Foundry, and as always there will be some popcorn, drinks, and comfortable seating. The film we have chosen for this month is Seven Pounds; you can go here to view some details (including rating) about it. See you there!

Here’s one example: a young man in our church is about to graduate from Bible college and wants to serve in pastoral ministry. Last week, he told a friend of mine that he’s planning on going to seminary next year. Wanting to be helpful, my friend asked what his criteria were for choosing a seminary.

He had no idea.

This isn’t an isolated incident. Christians have a nebulous perception that a seminary degree is like a union card for pastoral ministry. News flash: it’s not. In fact, in Acts 29, we find that church planters without a seminary degree are often more successful than those with a degree.

Readers are going to have to forgive me for some over-generalizations in this post. What I am going to say is not true of all seminaries, all seminary graduates, or all potential seminary attendees. I am not anti-seminary. I have a seminary degree myself, and I cherish the education and the spiritual formation that it provided me. But it’s time for someone to challenge the standard assumptions.

First things first: theological training is a must for anyone called to the pastorate. Pastors who don’t have a deep grasp of history, theology, and philosophy are simply unqualified. Titus 1:9 requires that all who serve in the office of elder (pastor) must be able to “give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it.” According to Richard Lovelace, Christianity quickly lost influence after the Second Great Awakening because “the leadership of lay evangelists without formal theological training… led to a progressively shallower spirituality among evangelicals and to a loss of intellectual command” (Dynamics of Spiritual Life, p. 50). Pastors work in the world of ideas. They are guardians of a storied theological heritage and teachers of a philosophy of life. Education is a must.

So I’m not denying the importance of sound, rigorous theological training. I’m simply questioning whether seminary is the place to get it. Here are some of my concerns:

• Seminary pulls pastors “off the streets” for 3 or 4 years to isolate them in a sterile academic environment. While this might be great for paper-writing, it’s really bad for missional living.
• The nature of the business means that seminaries are always juggling the best interests of students, faculty, donors, and accrediting agencies. These players are never in agreement, which means that no one is ever happy.
• Seminaries seek to accomplish theological training apart from immersion in a local church. Though most require their students to be active in a church, seminaries tend to be a breeding ground for Monday-morning-theologians who want to critique the church rather than serve it.
• Because professors are pressured to publish and gain tenure, the classes they teach are often little more than laboratories for their latest projects. One seminary student in our church told me that every one of his classes this semester uses a book written by the professor.
• Seminaries have to pay the bills, which means it’s in their best interests to keep students around as long as possible. Seminaries continue to promote the M.Div. as the “flagship” degree – even though a 2-year M.A. with well-chosen electives is often just as good, and about $15,000 cheaper.
• Seminary graduates tend to exit with heads full of theology, but without worshipful hearts or authentic relationships with non-Christians. I am aware this is an over-generalization. But unfortunately it’s an accurate one.
• Because of a seminary’s need to cater to a diverse student body, most seminaries can’t offer a truly systematic theological education. Students end up having to piece together the fragmented bits of data they’ve accumulated in so many haphazard, out-of-sequence courses. The idea of a cohesive “body of learning” is all but lost in the modern academy.

The seminary model is a tired one that needs to be updated for a post-Christian, technological age. Here’s a possible way forward:

• The primary place for pastoral training and development should be within the local church. Good, theologically astute elders can guide aspiring leaders through a year or two of seminary-level reading and study without ever removing them from their church body. Rather than paying thousands of dollars for a packaged seminary education, aspiring leaders can get exactly the same level of reading and study (minus the classroom interaction) for free, with the added bonus of mentorship and community with others in their local church.
• Regionally influential churches should band together to host theological training academies, similar to what Mars Hill/Acts 29 has begun to do with Re:Train. Cadres of a couple dozen students can fly top-notch professors in, wine them and dine them, and pay a hefty honorarium for their labor, and still come out way ahead of the $400 or $500 per credit hour that seminaries charge.
• Theological students should use technology to access “the best of the best” teachers and theologians. Many seminaries offer lectures for free through iTunes U. Others allow students to audit classes via videoconferencing. If you want to learn systematic theology from Wayne Grudem, church history from John Hannah, and apologetics from John Frame, why not?
• Seminaries should continue to hire and equip the best and brightest academic minds in Christianity to do battle on the field of ideas. We need good theologians doing high-level academic work, and seminaries provide an important context for that. But rather than paying the bills by lassoing directionless Bible-college grads for a 3-year M.Div., they should focus their recruiting efforts on doctoral students, pastors who want ongoing training, and “a la carte” students who would pay to access the wisdom and expertise of the most talented professors in a given field. Seminaries could cut all the “adjunct” faculty and retain only the best and brightest thinkers.

How would this change the face of theological education? Right now an aspiring pastor goes into the poorhouse to fund a 3-year M.Div, only to come out less equipped (in many ways) than when he went in. Imagine if that same aspiring pastor spent 2 years studying theology under the direction of his local church elders, then a third year taking electives from “the best of the best” professors at various seminaries, available through distance-ed or through short on-site intensives. He would avoid debt, stay connected to the local church, continue to grow as a missionary and worshipper (not just a theologian), and still come out with a top-notch education – and a much better pedigree for missional leadership.

When I was a sophomore engineering major at the University of Oklahoma, I contacted a family friend about a potential summer internship. He said, “Yeah, I’d love to have you come work for me – because after you get your degree, I’m going to need you to un-learn everything you’ve learned anyway.” That’s exactly how I feel about seminary graduates who are coming into a missional church-planting movement. The model I’ve proposed certainly isn’t flawless – and if you’d like to defend the current model or propose other alternatives, I’d love to hear from you. But the fact is that seminaries simply aren’t producing the kind of leaders that missional church leaders are looking for. It’s time for a change.

Thoughts? Disagreements? Fire away.

Four reasons why Miller’s book is that good:

1. It’s not simplistic. Miller engages the difficult questions about prayer without falling into naïve God-speak or smug cynicism. As an example, he starts the book by punching the reader in the mouth with this story:

I was camping for the weekend in the mountains of Pennsylvania with five of our six kids… I was walking down from our campsite to our Dodge Caravan when I noticed our fourteen-year-old daughter, Ashley, standing in front of the van, tense and upset. When I asked her what was wrong, she said, “I lost my contact lens. It’s gone.” I looked down with her at the forest floor, covered with leaves and twigs. There were a million little crevices for the lens to fall into and disappear.

I said, “Ashley, don’t move. Let’s pray.” But before I could pray, she burst into tears. “What good does it do? I’ve prayed for Kim to speak, and she isn’t speaking.”

My daughter Kim struggles with autism and developmental delay. Because of her weak fine motor skills and problems with motor planning, she is also mute. One day after five years of speech therapy, Kim crawled out of the speech therapist’s office, crying from frustration. My wife Jill said, “No more,” and we stopped speech therapy.

Prayer was no mere formality for Ashley. She had taken God at his word and asked that he would let Kim speak. But nothing happened. Kim’s muteness was a testimony to a silent God. Prayer, it seemed, doesn’t work.

Can you relate to this feeling? I can.

2. The author writes as both a fellow journeyer and a spiritual leader. To make me listen to what you have to say about prayer, you need to be skilled enough in prayer to know what you’re talking about, but real enough to relate to the rest of us. Miller walks this line perfectly. He isn’t afraid to claim that he knows something about prayer: “I never started out to write a book on prayer. I simply discovered that I’d learned how to pray. Life’s unexpected turns had created a path in my heart to God; God taught me to pray through suffering.” Okay, I’m listening. This guy has the smell of wisdom. But at the same time, he doesn’t over-promise: “What does it feel like to grow up? It is a thousand feelings on a thousand different days. That is what learning to pray feels like… a praying life isn’t something you accomplish in a year. It is the journey of a lifetime… There is not one magic bullet but a thousand pinpricks that draw us into [a praying life].” And that’s Miller’s stated goal: not for you to make impressive resolutions or pray for only a season, but to help you develop a praying life.

3. The book acknowledges both the poetry and the precision of effective prayer. To those who trust in formulas and structures, Miller has this rebuke: “Many attempts to teach people to pray encourage the creation of a split personality. You’re taught to ‘do it right.’ Instead of the real, messy you meeting God, you try to re-create yourself by becoming spiritual… So instead, begin with who you are. That’s how the gospel works. God begins with you. It’s a little scary because you’re messed up.” On the other hand, just when you start to make “praying like a child” an excuse for laziness, he retorts: “Many people… are suspicious of all systems. They feel it kills the Spirit. Systems seem to fly in the face of what we learned about childlike praying. But all of us create systems with things that are important to us. Remember, life is both holding hands and scrubbing floors. It is both being and doing. Prayer journals or prayer cards are on the ‘scrubbing floors’ side of life. Praying like a child is on the ‘holding hands’ side of life. We need both.”

4. The book is full of powerful sentences. If an author, time and again, grabs me by the throat with a single sentence, I know I’m reading a book that has punch. Hence the reason I enjoy Lewis, Tozer, and Chesterton. Miller is not in the same category as those great writers, but his book does have its share of thought-provoking turns of phrase. Among them:

• Learning to pray doesn’t offer us a less busy life; it offers us a less busy heart.
• If you are not praying, then you are quietly confident that time, money, and talent are all you need in life.
• Less mature Christians have little need to pray… there is no complexity to their worlds because the answers are simple.
• Cynicism is the air we breathe, and it is suffocating our hearts. Our only hope is to follow Jesus as he leads us out of cynicism.
• The persistent widow and the friend at midnight get access, not because they are strong but because they are desperate. Learned desperation is at the heart of a praying life.
• I do not understand prayer. Prayer is deeply personal and deeply mysterious. Adults try to figure out causation. Little children don’t. They just ask.
• Everything you do is connected to who you are as a person and, in turn, creates the person you are becoming. Everything you do affects those you love. All of life is covenant.
• We think spiritual things – if done right – should just ‘flow.’ But if you have a disability, nothing flows, especially in the beginning.
• There is a tendency among Christians to get excited about ‘listening to God’ as if they are discovering a hidden way of communicating with God that will revolutionize their prayer lives… This subtly elevates an experience with God instead of God himself. Without realizing it, we can look at the windshield instead of through it.
• How would you love someone without prayer? People are far too complicated; the world is far too evil; and my own heart is too off center to be able to love adequately without praying.

Whether you’re just learning to pray or seeking to deepen your practice of prayer, do yourself a favor and read A Praying Life. It will feed your soul. We’ll have a few copies available at the Coram Deo book table next week.

Every time I make observations about giving or membership (which isn’t really very often), I can sense that I’m touching the third rail. People start getting defensive. Lots of people seem to feel like they should be able to hang out at a church as long as they want without being challenged to join the mission by becoming members, giving, and serving.

For non-Christians, skeptics, de-churched people, and those still detoxing from bad experiences in American evangelicalism: you bet. Hang out as long as you need. That’s part of gospel hospitality, and that’s what it means for us to be a missional church. (And after all, our whole paradigm for discipleship is relational, so you have to hang around for awhile to get involved.) But for those who don’t fall into those categories, here’s my plea: Don’t spiritualize your lethargy. It gets tiring as a leader to consistently hear things like “I just don’t feel the Spirit leading me that way” or “I’m still praying about it.” Christians are skilled at making excuses that would sound ridiculous in any other context.

In a conversation between services, a thoughtful friend of mine was asking some good questions, and I used a common-sense example that seemed to help. She works at a coffeehouse. I asked, “Suppose someone comes into your coffee shop, camps out at a table, logs onto the wi-fi, and uses the restroom – but never buys anything. That’s not cool, right? I mean, technically, someone can do that – it’s not illegal or unethical. But you would still consider that person a freeloader.”

“Yes,” she replied. Same deal at church. More people showing up means more resources being expended: more volunteers, more materials, more time, and eventually more staff and more space needed to facilitate the work of mission and discipleship. If many of those people are professing Christians who are not practicing biblical rhythms of giving and serving, there’s no difference between them and a coffeehouse freeloader.

So hey, professing Christians: if you are benefiting from the ministry of a church without supporting it, at least have the integrity to say so – and to amend your ways. Don’t spiritualize your objections. If the coffeehouse barista challenged you for taking up space without buying a drink, you’d think that was fair. Give your pastors the same latitude. The work of the gospel may not be as tangible as a cappuccino… but the same rules apply.