In this area of confusion across the Missouri Baptist Convention concerning Acts 29 other conservative groups, these words from Dr. Mark Dever ring not only true but are much needed. Dever offered them this week while speaking at the Acts 29 Boot Camp in Chicago, IL.

Our differences are enough to separate some of my friends—your brothers and sisters in Christ—from you. And perhaps to separate them from me, now that I’m publicly speaking to you. And I don’t want to minimize either the sincerity or the seriousness of some of their concerns (things like: humor, worldliness, pragmatism, authority).

But I perceive some things in common which outweigh our differences—which the Lord Jesus shall soon enough compose between us, either by our maturing, or by His bringing us home. I long to work with those, and count it a privilege to work with those whom My Savior has purchased with His blood, and with whom I share the gospel of Jesus Christ. I perceive that we have in common the knowledge that God is glorified in sinners being reconciled to Him through Christ. This is not taught by other religions, nor clearly by the ancient Christian churches of the East, or by Rome, by liberal Protestant churches, by Mormons, the churches of Christ, or by groups of self-righteous, legalistic, moralistic Christians. And not only do we together affirm the exclusivity of salvation through faith alone in Christ alone—we agree on the sovereignty of God in life and salvation, the regenerate nature of church members, the importance of church membership and discipline, the baptism of believers alone, the priorities of expositional preaching, and evangelism, the importance of authority and a growing appreciation for the significance of complementarianism. These are not slight matters. And they only fire my desire to encourage you and cheer you on, until you cross that finish line that the Lord lays down for us.
HT: Timmy Brister

Pastor Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle gives some very good advice for preachers as they think about planning their messages. I’ve reproduced the article below. I am working towards annual preparation, but still have a bit of a way to go. I hope this is encouraging to you.

If you want to view the article in its original form, you can do so by clicking here.

In light of the New Year I wanted to share some advice with fellow preachers. One of the best things a preacher can do to improve their preaching ministry is to plan out what they are going to preach at least a year in advance. This allows the preacher to begin their research and study well in advance so that when the week of a sermon arrives, they will be well on their way to speaking as God intends.

In the early years of my preaching I was not prepared far enough in advance. As a result, many weeks I was scrambling for study time amongst emergencies and disruptions of various sorts and kinds. Additionally, without knowing when I would be out of the pulpit, I ended up trying to squeeze vacations in, did not get enough time off (which started to take a toll), and did not have alternate preachers lined up far enough in advance to have adequate time to prepare well.

At present, I am blessed to actually have my preaching schedule lined up through both 2008 and 2009 so that I can preach well, get my vacations in with my family, take the study breaks to prepare and write as I need, and also give the other preachers in our church sufficient time to prepare for the weeks I am out. One of the most helpful insights I have received on preparing a preaching schedule came backstage at Ed Young Jr.’s church in Dallas. Being the son of a great preacher, he had learned which Sundays were the best for a preacher to take a break from the pulpit without hurting momentum. According to Ed, the following Sundays tend to have a lower attendance and are good times for a preacher to consider taking a break for vacation, study, or whatever else they need to do:

1. The first Sunday of the year
2. Daylight Savings weekend in the spring
3. Memorial Day weekend
4. Fourth of July weekend
5. Labor Day weekend
6. Daylight Savings weekend in the fall
7. Thanksgiving week
8. The weekend after Christmas

For most churches the likely time to get an influx of visitors is generally from the start of school in September through November, as well as January through Easter. So, it is often wise to start a new book of the Bible or series in September and January for momentum.

Today has been a pretty good day. We had a good time at church this evening. I spent the evening with our students and really enjoyed myself. I’m going to be with them for the next few weeks. I got home, though, and was reading the local news, as is my custom, and came across good, good, good, no great, news! According to this article in our local paper, the St. Joseph News-Press, Chick-Fil-A has announced plans to have a restaurant located less than 3 miles from my home!

For those of you reading who are from St. Joseph and have never had Chick-Fil-A, trust me, CFA is the greatest fast food restaurant in the history of mankind. This is a good day in the life of St. Joseph. I can’t wait, just 4 months and then that delightful food will be available.

I’ve got a couple of videos to throw out there, in case you might be interested. The best one is a video posted on my wife’s blog. That’s right, she’s now a blogger! I’m very excited about this turn of events. We’ve struggled with what to do with our family site for a while and she’s decided to use it to post videos and pictures for our family in particular to see. She posted her first video tonight. It’s a hilarious video of our youngest daughter Kessed singing and then trying to avoid the camera. You need to check it out. You can see it here.

The second video is a recent message from Frederick Boulevard. We’re still trying to work out the glitches with posting videos on our new website. For some reason we cannot get this video formatted to show on that site. So I’m posting it here if you are interested. It’s not the highest quality yet, we’re working on that too, but it’s here if you are interested. This message has been one of the more popular ones that I’ve delivered at Frederick. The monkey story at the beginning seems to have been a big hit with a lot of folks.

Click To Play

I apologize that I haven’t blogged as much lately. I simply have not had time. I’ve got a number of serious issues I’d like to write about but I’ll need a bit more time to compose articles. Having said that…

…we’ve got a few exciting things that are coming up in the life of our church that I wanted to share about, especially for those who are part of the Frederick Family. This coming Sunday is our big move to two morning services. This is a move that has been a long time coming but with the Worship Center sitting at about 90% occupancy each Sunday, it is sorely needed. Our ushers tell me that we only had 24 open spaces in our parking lot this past Sunday. As such we’ll begin the new schedule this week. This is a great time for you to begin thinking about inviting unchurches friends to join us for worship. Whether it is the 8:30 service or the 10:15 service, it should be an incredible time of worship. We need to pray that we will continue to see growth however. The hope is that 2 services will only be sufficient for a short time. Let’s pray together that we can see a third service beginning in the near future as well! Wouldn’t that be exciting?!!

This Sunday, along with our two services, we have two baptisms. Both of the candidates are fantastic young ladies that have come to faith recently. One of them is the granddaughter of a lady who was a matriarch for many, many years in our church, Ona Lea Dewey. During these baptisms we’ll be showing video taped testimonies of the ladies, which is an exciting new addition to our services. I know, though, that you’ll be excited to hear how One Lea helped lead her granddaughter to Christ even after she went home to be with the Lord.

Also, we have one more month in the Bible and the Bush series. It has been exciting to see people respond to God’s word. I trust that the next month will be even more amazing. As soon as this series is finished, however, we have another exciting series beginning. We’ll be teaching for a series of weeks on the topic of living in community. The series is entitled “life” and will begin the first of March. It should be a fantastic opportunity for us to consider how we are to live together as the Body of Christ.

HT: Tom Brager

…here come the Gators.

It’s time to again remind everyone of the upcoming conference designed with the leadership of small Southern Baptist churches in mind. Les Puryear has gone way above and beyond to offer something that has been often requested, and that is a leadership conference that helps those in the small church setting which make up the majority of our convention. I hope you would avail yourselves of the opportunity to attend . The lineup of speakers is a very strong one, with speakers from NAMB, the IMB, LifeWay, Southeastern Seminary as well as Dr. Frank Page, SBC President. Registration is merely $50 per person in an attempt to make it affordable to all those attending.

If you are a small church pastor, consider asking your church to sponsor your travel costs so that you can attend. Even in the churches that I’ve worked in that run less than 50, they can usually afford this conference. If you are a layman at a small church, make sure your church provides an opportunity for your pastor to go. This will be a one of a kind opporuntity for small church pastors to get tools that they need to enhance their ministry in the local setting.
I’ll look forward to seeing many of you there!

Click here to register.