Wish I could go, but timing and distance doesn’t work out.

Iowa Court Approves Gay Marriage

Vermont Legislature Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage

Eastern Michigan University sued after grad student allegedly dismissed over religious beliefs on homosexuality

As predicted by Ed Stetzer, homosexuality and gender inclusion will be two of the primary issues that churches will have to wrestle with to reach the young lost . The key?

Churches that thrive will have addresses issues of homosexuality, marriage, pornography, and other sexual issues and they will have done so in biblical ways– not simply caving in to the culture.

I got an email last night from Daniel Yang, who found me online and is a web programmer and a prospective church planter in the Detroit Area who is getting assessed by Acts 29. Kind of like looking in a mirror

I’m constantly amazed how much smaller the Internet makes the world. The challenge, then, is to remember the bigness of God and the need to find ourselves in Him, not in our connections.

Here’s Daniel’s ministry site – http://dwellindetroit.com

Keep him in your prayers as the Spirit works through him and his church to reach Detroit with the Gospel.

From SojournKids.com, part of Sojourn Community Church in Louisville, KY. This is the kind of thoughtful, cross-centered worship that our churches, and our people, need.

EASTER MUSIC LITURGY (15-20 minutes)

Singers introduce themselves.

Singer 1: This month we celebrate Easter!  Why do we celebrate Easter?  What is Easter?  Allow children to answer: Jesus died on the cross.  Jesus died for my sins.   Jesus is risen from the dead.  Fill in any part left out and encourage right answers. Gently correct wrong answers.
Let’s start this morning by remembering the Easter story and saying, “HALLELUIA!”

Call and Response:
Singer 2: Hallelujah means, “Praise the Lord!” Say, “HALLELUIA!” (HALLELUIA)
Now say, “PRAISE THE LORD!”  Listen to what I say and when I pause say, “HALLELUIA!”
Leader: Jesus is God! Jesus is Lord!
Children: HALLELUIA!
Leader: Jesus suffered and died on the cross for my sins!
Children: HALLELUIA!
Leader: Jesus was dead! But death could NOT keep Jesus!
Children: HALLELUIA!
Leader: Now Jesus is alive! Jesus is risen! He rose from the dead!
Children: HALLELUIA!
Leader: Jesus is the champion! Jesus is victorious! He is the winner!
Children: HALLELUIA!
Leader: Now stand up and let’s shout, “JESUS IS ALIVE!” (”JESUS IS ALIVE!”) Repeat several times.
Have children jump up and down chanting, “Jesus is alive!”

1. “The Cross Is Not The End,” Words and Music by Bill & Courtney Bell.
© 2009 Bill & Courtney Bell/ Sojourn Music

Singer 2:
We are going to sing a song to help us memorize a Bible verse, Romans 5:8. “But God demonstrates His own love for us in this, while we were still sinners Christ died for us.”  So how has God shown us He loves us? (Answer: While we were still sinners Christ died for us.) Yes! “God demonstrates His own love for us in this, while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” Let’s sing this together!

2. “Romans 5:8 (NIV) Scripture Memory Song,” Music by Mark Altrogge
As Recored on “A Ransom For Many,” Hide The Word, Volume 2
© Forever Grateful Music

Guitarist: Jesus is risen! (Have kids answer again: ALLELUIA!) JESUS IS RISEN! (Have kids answer again: ALLELUIA!)
Singer 2: Let’s pray! Let’s fold our hands quietly, close our eyes, and talk inside our hearts to God. God sees in our hearts and He hears us:  Jesus, You are the winner! Death did not win! You died on the cross for our sin. Thank You, Jesus. Jesus we want to love you and follow you all of our lives. Amen.”

3. “Low in the Grave He Lay,” Words and Music by Robert Lowry (1826-1899) 
(Traditional Hymn… but jazz up the refrain! Sing verses slow. Jazz up and sing the chorus VERY LIVELY! Make sure the kids do the motions.  Have the kids down on the floor crouched down singing the verses, then stand up and jump up and down for the chorus, “Up from the grave He arose…” You may need to help teach them the song a bit the first time as they probably won’t know it. Then add in the motions. If they seem too bored, just do it all together and repeat as needed to learn it.)

4.  “His Love Will Last Forever,” Words and Music by Chandi Plummer
© 2009 Chandi Plummer/Sojourn Music
Rock it out!

From the Pepperell Christian Fellowship’s Elder’s Blog comes this excellent list of links to church membership covenants from around the country. Quite a diverse list of churches.

• Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, MN
• Christ Fellowship Baptist Church, Mobile, AL
• Capitol Hill Baptist Church, Washington, DC
• Grace Baptist Church, Woodbridge, VA
• Mars Hill Church, Seattle, WA
• Saddleback Valley Community Church, Lake Forest, CA

Here are some others

• The Village Church Highland Village, TX
• Covenant Life Church Gaithersburg, MD

PlantR is a church planting network in the Austin, TX area, and one that serves as a model for a someday-in-the-future plantingintreetown.org. Jonathan Dodson, of Austin City Life, is a founder and recently posted notes from George Patterson’s recent presentation.

Dr. George Patterson is Adjunct Professor of Intercultural Studies at Western Seminary and possesses 35 years of missions experience. At age 76, he is lively, insightful, and pastoral. It was a remarkable privilege to spend time with him. Making light of academics, his stated goal was to “easify church planting.” Patterson’s interactive discussion revolved around a 6 pointed star diagram that depicts seven non-negotiables in church planting movements.

This diagram helpfully brought together the elements of evangelism, worship, organizational structure, financial support, reproducible growth, leadership training all under the rule of Christ. As we worked our way around these points, Patterson provided refreshing, field-based stories and missiological insights. Instead of commenting on each one, I will offer a few of his insights here. We hope to get a U-tube video up soon.

Rabbit and the Elephant

Patterson pointed out there are three main types of churches—rabbits, elephants, and rabi-phants.

Rabbit churches are small churches that reproduce quickly. If rabbits were killed as quickly they would quickly outweigh all the elephants in the world.

Elephant churches are big churches that have longer gestation periods and reproduce much more slowly, but they are powerful. All too often the rabits and elephants compete instead of partner.

A rabiphant church combines elements of a traditional, larger church with smaller missional units of non-tradtional missional churches. He averred that we need all three. This is often not the message we hear from micro/organic/house church voices, so that was refreshing.

Reproducibility

When asked what impedes reproducibility, Patterson offered a variety of insights:

When the sun rises and sets on the pulpit. Quoting from Jonathan Edwards, he  remarked: “A churches greatest weakness is invariably its greatest weakness taken to excess.” Pulpit can strangle mission and evangelistic reproducibility.

Pastoral training by apprenticeship not seminary. Noting that this practice has been effective throughout church history. He was quick to point out that seminary is not the problem, but the way students respond to formal education conditions them for churches that are not highly reproducible, low in cost, and missional.

A group small enough to do the one-anothering and fast reproduction is typically too small to be the church. Small groups cannot have all the gifts of Ephesians 4, nor can they sustain reproducibility. Therefore, the small groups need to rely on one another. There need to be strong relationships between small groups and lots of interaction in order to promote healthy, missional churches.

I appreciate Jonathan’s notes and Dr. Patterson’s thoughts, especially the idea of small groups needing to rely on one another. Too often, small groups are very isolated and “individual”, even though there are diverse people in the groups. I long for a church where everyone is on mission together.

Tedd Tripp, author of Shepherding a Child’s Heart and Instructing a Child’s Heart recently spoke at The Crowded House. Here are Tim Chester’s notes

‘Above all else, guard the heart for it is the wellspring of life.’ (Proverbs 4.23).

Parenting must be heart-centred for the heart is the wellspring of life.  The heart in the biblical terms is not simply the seat of emotions. We think, discern, fear and so on with our hearts. Our heart is our inner self. (1 Samuel 16.7; Deuteronomy 10.12; 1 Chronicles 28.9; Proverbs 3.5-6; 2 Chronicles 16.9; 1 Kings 8.57-58.; Matthew 15.8, 17-20;
Luke 6.43-45.)

It is not enough to tackle behaviour through manipulation (bribery, shame, threats etc.). When we only tackle behaviour:

1. The real need is not addressed.
2. We present a false basis for ethics (selfish ethics)
3. The heart is being wrongly trained. E.g. we might teach children to fear others.
4. The gospel will not be central. When we manipulate we appeal to idols in the child’s heart (appealing to pride, greed etc.).
5. Manipulation shows  our idols of our hearts (our idolatrous desire for pride, control, ease, convenience, fear of man).

Where to go with this?

1. The Bible reveals hearts (Hebrews 4.12).
2. There is always a ‘what’, ‘when’ and ‘why’ of behaviour. But we confuse the ‘when’ and the ‘why’. We answer the ‘why’ question by saying ‘when’ – i.e. pointing to circumstances – when the answer is in the heart.
3. We all have a profound need for grace (Ezekiel 36.25-27). Help your children understand their need for the gospel.

We need to help our children understand thir hearts and their need hearts. It’s not that we never address behaviour. If a child is hitting his sister we don’t wait for heart change! But we must have a bigger vision a long-term focus on the heart.

Under five-year-olds

Two-year-olds do not have sufficient self-awareness to address heart issues with them. But we can teach them to live under loving authority and introduce the biblical language of the heart and its motivations.

Most parents give away their authority before even their children go to school as we negotiate with them and let them override our decisions. We shouldn’t teach five-year-olds to be decision-makers – we should model good decisions and obedience to authority. Teach them that it is a blessing to live under wise and loving authority.

How can we regain authority when we have given it away? Start with instruction. ‘Mum and Dad gave gained some new insights from God’s word that will help us as a family. Sorry we didn’t see this before.’ So start with instruction and then set new parametres.

Five to twelve year-olds

We often address behaviour because behaviour is visible. But doing the right thing for the wrong motive is hypocrisy. We also expose our hypocrisy: ‘I can’t believe you’re so selfish!’ = hypocrisy. Instead we can share our common need and our common hope in Christ. We’ll never got to the grace of the gospel if we’re manipulating behaviour.

Goals with our Teenagers

1. Internalization of the gospel. We want them to embrace God’s truth as their own living faith. Shepherd their interaction with God’s word – not just reprimanding, but taking them to God’s word. ‘I didn’t write this book - this is God’s word. Helping them are the vitality and relevance of God’s word.
2. Shepherding through the inevitable periods of doubt. Don’t panic, but talk openly about doubts.
3. Developing a relationship that leads to mutuality as adults under God. We need to move from parent instructing child, to a mutual relationship of care.

Three foundations for teens from Proverbs 1

1. Fear of the Lord (Proverbs 1.7). Show the greatness and excellence of God.
2. Remembering your parents’ words (Proverbs 1.8-9). Remind them that no one loves them like you do. Their friends are fickle, but parents love and sacrifice no matter what.
3. Disassociation from the wicked (Proverbs 1.10-19). The attractiveness with the wicked is camaraderie – a sense of belonging. Make home a great place of belonging.

From Michael Mckinley via the 9Marks blog

First, The Elder And His Work
by David Dickson. This is a 19th work updated by George Kennedy McFarland and Philip Ryken. It’s really quite good and very practical (though be forewarned: it contains Presbyterianism).

Second, The Ordained Servant is a journal put out by the OPC to provide resources for training elders and deacons. I’m not sure if they’re still publishing it, but they’ve to back issues through 2005 online for free! Peter de Jong’s article Taking Heed to the Flock: A Study of the Principles and Practice of Family Visitation is particularly challenging, more as a reminder of our duty than as an exact plan to be followed.

Finally, and more briefly, check out this one page outline of leadership expectations put together for the Edge Network (a part of The Crowded House ). I’m using a modified version of it with a our men’s leadership group tomorrow. Very good stuff.