From Colin Adams via PJ Tibyan.

“Preaching through Bible Books -  This is from a conference in 2003 called, “Katoomba Christian Conference Centenary (Sydney, Australia).”  D.A. Carson lectured on 12 points in preaching through a book of the Bible.  You can listen to the audio by downloading the message here (left-click).  This is taken from The Gospel Coalition website.

1. 1. (1:38 ) – Read and re-read and re-read and re-read and re-read the book. – It’s a mistake to read the book once and then start reading commentaries (Read it in English and the original language).(3:11) – Ideally start the process early. Give time to re-reading, meditation, and saturation.
   2. (4:58 ) – Eschew the division of head and heart.
   3. (6:14) – Early on attain sufficient grasp of the book that you can succinctly state
      1. what the book is about,
      2. what this book contributes to the canon that overlaps with what other books bring to the canon,
      3. what distinctive things this book brings to the canon. (All these things need to be thought about simultaneously. This is what brings clarity and precision). Scan biblical theologies on the book to get a large scale picture of the book.
   4. (11:10) – At roughly the same time determine
      1. the number of sermons you’ll devote to the book
      2. the large scale outline of the book insofar as it impinges on your text boundaries for each sermon (11:10).
   5. (19:27) – Start working on individual sermon preparation (either in advance or week by week). Ideally work on the text first.
      1. (23:26) – Ideally develop note taking techniques. This keeps your tools sharp and keeps your files for resources for future ministry (writing, preaching, evangelism, etc.);
      2. (29:32) – from these detailed exegetical notes (Note for young preachers: you must determine and discipline yourself to leave stuff out). You need to know what to leave out. The sermon is the best of the material and the highlights of what you learned. The aim is to think through what contributes to the burden of that text;
      3. Work on the text’s structure. Work on it so that it is fresh and appealing and helpful.
   6. (32:27) – Each sermon must simultaneously stand alone and constitute a part of the series.
   7. (33:34) – Remember the different contributions of a Paul House (corpus/book) biblical theology and a Charles Scobie (thematic) biblical theology.
   8. (38:11) – Recognize that there may be special study and focus necessary for certain books (historical, cultural, literary genre, etc).
   9. (42:32) – Ideally try to make your sermon material reflect in some way the genre of the book you are treating.
   10. (44:24) – Remember constantly that this is not an exercise in artistic creation. The sermon is not an end in itself, but it is a re-revelation of God to his people. This means that as you prepare you ought to be thinking about the people to whom you are ministering.
   11. (50:28 ) – ideally keep revising, praying, preparing so that it is not so much that you have mastered the material as that it has mastered you. There is a way of preaching that projects an image of being an expert and an image of being captured by the text.

From Thom Rainer, president and CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources.

… in our studies of churches that are reaching people and retaining them through biblical discipleship we have seen a very clear pattern develop, especially in contrast to leaders in other churches that did not meet our criteria.

Keep in mind that it is the total and the composition of these traits that distinguish the effective leaders from other leaders. Many of the less effective leaders share some, but not all, of these traits. I will refer to these leaders as pastors, though some of the churches used other nomenclature, such as ministers.

1. Fierce biblical faithfulness. Without exception, these pastors held to the total truthfulness of God’s Word. Not only did they believe the veracity of Scripture, they passionately lived out their beliefs.
2. Longer tenure. The leaders we studied are willing and even want to have long-term ministries at one church. While longer tenure itself is not the key to effective leadership, a series of short-term pastorates rarely allows one time to establish lasting leadership in a church. In one of our national surveys of pastors, we found the average pastoral tenure to be 3.6 years. But in different studies of effective leaders, those pastors had an average tenure ranging from 11.2 to 21.6 years.
3. Confident humility. In our subjective interviews with effective church leaders across the nation, our interviewers repeatedly reported that the leaders had a clear and compelling confidence about their own leadership. But that confidence was not arrogance. To the contrary, their confidence centered more on what God was doing and less on their own inherent abilities.
4. Acceptance of responsibility. We did not hear of excuses for ineffective ministry from these effective leaders, even though many of them experienced prolonged periods of struggles. Instead, these pastors accepted the leadership responsibility that comes with their position, and they refused to blame circumstances or others when the inevitable times of conflict and challenge occur.
5. Unconditional love of the people. Ministry can be dirty and Christians can be jerks. It is often difficult to love those who complain and attack you. But these effective leaders, with no claims of perfection, still expressed an intense love for the members of their congregations. In some measure, they have learned to love as Christ loved us.
6. Persistence. Because these leaders have a long-term perspective of their ministries at the churches where they serve, they are able to lead toward progress one incremental step at a time. That is not to say they have a laissez-faire attitude; to the contrary, these pastors are incredibly persistent.
7. Outwardly-focused vision. An integral part of the lives of these effective leaders was their passion and vision to reach people who were not Christians and who were not a part of their churches. To say that these leaders are evangelistically focused would be an understatement. They are passionate about reaching the lost and unchurched, and the visions they communicated inevitably reflected this priority.
8. A desire for a lasting legacy. The ambition and drive of these leaders cannot be denied. But that ambition is not limited to their personal successes. They are ambitious for their churches to be thriving and healthy well beyond their ministries and even their lifetimes.

From Jared Kennedy at SojournKids.com via Bryce Butler and all the material is from Covenant Life.

Parenting Ages 19 to 22

By Bob Kauflin | May 16, 2009

• Hopes and Goals | Audio
• Rules and Relationships | Audio
• College and Careers | Audio
• Question and Answer Session | Audio
• Overall Outline (PDF, 160kb)

Parenting Ages 15 to 18

By Kenneth Maresco | April 18, 2009

• God’s Role and Our Role | Audio
• A Teen’s Relationship with God | Audio
• The Importance of Relationships in a Teen’s Life | Audio
• Question and Answer Session | Audio
• Overall Outline (PDF, 232kb)

Parenting Ages 11 to 14

By Greg Somerville | March 14, 2009

• Changing Relationships | Audio
• Emerging Convictions in a Changing World | Audio
• Changing Bodies and Minds | Audio
• Overall Outline (PDF, 244kb)

Parenting Ages 6 to 10

By Kenneth Maresco | Jan. 17, 2009

• Biblical Principles of Parenting | Audio
• Shepherding Toward Conversion | Audio
• Shepherding Your Child’s Heart | Audio
• Overall Outline (PDF, 168kb)
• Additional Resources: “Sowing Plan” (PDF, 56kb) | Plan to Overcome Complaining (PDF, 54kb)

Parenting Ages Infant to 5

By Brian Chesemore | Nov. 15, 2008

• Training, Discipline, and the Rod | Audio | Outline (PDF, 136kb)
• Biblical Principles of Parenting | Audio | Outline (PDF, 104kb)

When I visited Capital Hill Baptist in Washington, DC last September for a 9Marks Weekender, I was struck by the amount of silence in the service. There actually was silence, which stands in stark contrast to most churches where there’s always sound and background music. I really enjoyed it and found it helped me to focus, contemplate, and seek God. Here is Senior Pastor Mark Dever’s explanation of why CHBC works at silence

One of the most frequently commented upon aspects of the morning Lord’s Day service here at Capitol Hill Baptist Church is nothing we do.  Or rather, it is the nothing we do.  It is our moments of silence.

There’s silence between various aspects of the service. I encourage service leaders to NOT do the “no-dead-airspace” TV standard of busy-ness. We LIKE “dead air space.”  “Dead air space” gives us time to reflect.  To collect our thoughts.  To consider what we’ve just heard or read or sung.  The silence amplifies the words or music we’ve just heard.  It allows us time to take it all in, and to pray.  We have silence to prepare ourselves.  We have silence between the announcements and the scriptural call to worship.  We even have a moment of silence AFTER the service!  I pronounce the benediction from the end of II Corinthians, invite the congregation to be seated.  And then, after about a minute of silence, the pianist begins quietly playing the last hymn that we had just sung.  During those few moments, we reflect and prepare to speak to others and depart.  We do business with God.  We prepare ourselves for the week ahead.

I’m a sound addict.  Even as I write about silence now, I’ve got Paganini blasting in my study!  But yesterday morning in church during one of our silences, I became aware of how corporate a labor such public silence is.  Everyone works to be quiet.  People stop moving their bulletins or looking for something in their purse.  There’s no movement.  We, together, hear the silence.  It engulfs us.  It enhances our unity.  It is something we all do together.  Together we consider what we’ve just heard.  Together we contribute to each other’s space to think.

Why has the church forgotten this?  Our culture knows it.  At the most solemn moments, we have a minute of silence.  And everyone listens to the silence.  And thinks about why we’re being silent.  Why don’t we do this in the church.

In the last century, E. M. Forster, in A Passage to India, referred to “poor little talkative Christianity”.  Perhaps there was a day when all Christians did was gather to listen to the Bible read and preached, and to prayers.  But that day is long gone in most evangelical churches.  These days we gather more to watch than to listen.  And to sing.

But in all the noise of our choirs, and drums, and electic guitars, and organs, and praise bands, where is the solemnity?  Where is the dignity and majesty that is so often indicated in the Bible by a stupified silence, soaked in awe and covered with wonder?

Ecclesiastes 3:7 tells us that there is a time to speak and a time to be silent, but we seem to have forgotten today that there is a time for silence.  God calls his people before Him in silence:  “the LORD is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him,” (Hab. 2:20).

Certainly as Christians we have much to rejoice over–loudly and joyfully and expectantly!  But is no part of our regular assemblies to reflect the weightiness of our sinful selves before a holy God, the silence of conviction, even of sorrow?  Furthermore, is no part of our regular assemblies to reflect the stunning weightiness of our forgiveness in Christ, the silence of marvel, and even the humility of some incomprehension?

We silence ourselves exactly because God has not kept silent.  We silence ourselves in order to hear God speak in His Word (cf. Deut. 27:9)  We silence ourselves to show our assent to God’s charges against us (cf. Ps. 39:9).  We silence ourselves to show respect and obedience and humility and restraint (cf. Zeph. 1:7;
I Cor. 14:34; I Tim. 2:12).  We silence ourselves to search our hearts (cf. Ps. 4:4).

We silence ourselves in our own times of prayer, reading and meditation on God’s Word.  And we should also silence ourselves in our periods of corporate worship.  Making silence together builds and unifies the church, witnesses to the majesty of God and tacitly proclaims His greatness to all who hear.

From Michael McKinley at the 9Marks Blog

Recently, the elders at Capitol Hill Baptist put together a process for recruiting and sending out church planters.  I found it interesting and helpful, you might too.  Here’s a link for you to download a one-page summary:

Download Candidate Recruitment Process

If you’re interested in being a CHBC church planter, just call the church office and ask for Matt Schmucker. Don’t be discouraged if he doesn’t call you back, just keep calling.  It’s the way they weed out the uncommitted.

This is a very helpful form and a process that should be duplicated at every church

From Bruce Ashford at Between The Times

Ecclesiology

• John Hammett, Biblical Foundations for Baptist Churches: A Contemporary Ecclesiology
• Mark Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church
• J. L. Dagg, Manual of Church Order

Classic Church Planting Texts

• John L. Nevius, The Planting and Development of Missionary Churches
• Roland Allen, The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church: And the Causes That Hinder It
• David Hesselgrave, Planting Churches Cross-Culturally: North America and Beyond, 2d ed.,

Five Streams of North American Missiology

1. Reformed & Contextual

• Tim Keller & Allen Thompson, Church Planting Manual
• Mark Driscoll,  The Radical Reformission: Reaching Out without Selling Out
• Mark Driscoll,Confessions of a Reformission Rev.: Hard Lessons from an Emerging Missional Church

2. Purpose Driven:

• Rick Warren, The Purpose-Driven Church: Growth Without Compromising Your Message & Mission
• Ron Sylvia, Starting New Churches on Purpose

3. Missional/Incarnational:

• Michael Frost & Alan Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21 Century Church
• Ed Stetzer, Planting Missional Churches
• Alan Hirsch, Forgotten Ways, The: Reactivating the Missional Church
• Michael Frost, Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture

4. Organic/House Church:

• Neil Cole, Organic Church: Growing Faith Where Life Happens
• Jonathan Campbell, The Way of Jesus: A Journey of Freedom for Pilgrims and Wanderers

5. Miscellaneous Contemporary

• Steve Sjogren, Community of Kindness
• Ralph Moore, Starting a New Church: The Church Planter’s Guide to Success
• Bob Roberts, Glocalization: How Followers of Jesus Engage a Flat World
• Bob Roberts,Transformation: How Glocal Churches Transform Lives and the World
• Bob Roberts, The Multiplying Church: The New Math for Starting New Churches

A Few More

• Thom Rainer, The Book of Church Growth
• Thom Rainer & Eric Geiger, Simple Church: Returning to God’s Process for Making Disciples
• Ed Stetzer and Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can, Too
• Joel Rainey, Planting Churches in the Real World
• Tim Chester and Steve Timmis,  Total Church: A Radical Reshaping around Gospel and Community

Michael Bell posting at iMonk

Highlights:

• 184 people – Mean size of American church (total # of attenders / total # of churches)
• 75 people – Median size of American church (# of churches larger = # of churches smaller)
• 400 people – 1/2 point (# of people in churches w/ attendance less than is same as # of people in churches w/ attendance greater than)

From Joey Shaw,  the Minister of International Mission at The Austin Stone Community Church.

Matthew 28:18-20, And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

The passage above is commonly known as “The Great Commission”. Jesus spoke these words to his followers before ascending back to heaven to be with the Father. His followers were left to discover the Holy Spirit and to change the world through one simple process – making and multiplying disciples [learners] of Jesus. Many people teach on this passage… most of us don’t regularly obey it. Below are five of the more common myths about the Great Commission that lead us to miss out on disciple making.

1. The myth of accidental discipleship.
   The bottom line here is that the Great Commission will be completed only by intentional action and resoluteness. Jesus commands us today to set our eyes on the goal of disciple making and pursue that goal with stubborn focus. This means, that unless you pray and plan to make disciples, you won’t do it!
2. Crossing cultures is a step beyond the general mandate.
   Jesus left his home (with the Father), his culture, his language, his people (the trinity) to come to our home (earth), to our people, to speak our language, to grow up in a Jewish culture, and so on. Jesus was a cross-cultural missionary and he commands us to follow in his steps, cross any boundary, live incarnationally and make disciples.
3. Jesus wants converts.
   The most interesting thing about the Great Commission is that it does not command us to make converts of Christianity. Instead, we are to make disciples of Jesus. The difference between convert making and disciple making is crucial. Converts change religions. Disciples change masters. Converts follow a system. Disciples follow a Person. Converts build Christendom. Disciples build the Kingdom of God. Converts embrace rituals. Disciples embrace a way of life. Converts love the command to “baptize them” in the Great Commission, but that is all. Disciples baptize others but only in context of “teaching them to observe all that I commanded you”. Converts love conversion. Disciples love transformation.
4. When I am ready and able, I will start making disciples.
   I think Jesus knew the gravity of the command that he was giving in Matthew 28:19-20; he was asking his followers, most of them unlearned and lower/middle class, to go every conceivable people group on earth by multiplying disciples of a Person who is physically unseen (after giving the Great Commission, Jesus ascended to heaven). This is a heavy-duty command! The reason I think that Jesus knew the gravity of this command is that he buffers his commandment here with two powerful promises of His authority and presence. Matthew 28:18, “And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.’” Matthew 28:20b, “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age”. In the Great Commission, Jesus gives a command along with a promise of His power and presence.To completely put off practicing the process of making disciples now in your life because you claim that you need more equipping or growth, therefore, is actually unbelief in God’s promises!  Is having the promise of Jesus’ power and presence not good enough for you to get started in the process of making disciples?
5. Making disciples is great advice.
   The fact is, though, that the Great Commission is a commandment coupled with the commissioning of Jesus. Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). Jesus expressed the same truth inversely, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life;whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (John 3:36, italics added). In other words, the measure of one’s love for Jesus is one’s obedience to Jesus!You cannot love Jesus and not obey him. Stated inversely, you cannot disregard the Great Commission and claim to love Jesus. The command is simple, “go and make disciples”. Ask yourself, “Am I currently making disciples of others?” If not, why not ask yourself, “Will I today commit myself to beginning the process of making disciples of Jesus?”

From ChurchWebsiteGuide.com. Very interesting. Since people don’t seem to go deep into sites, its important to make as much content as possible visible.

Churches larger than 1000

Churches between 501 and 1,000 attendance

From Darrin Patrick of The Journey Church in St. Louis.

Especially helpful is his recommendation to divide your schedule into 3 time periods

1. 7 a.m. to 12 p.m.
2. 12 p.m. to 5 p.m.
3. 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.

and only work 2 of those periods each day. That’s very wise advice to manage a schedule that could easily take all hours in the day.