Our first church-planting conference, [CO]MISSION UK, was held July 8–10 at Christchurch in Newport, Wales. Dave Harvey spoke at the conference along with Pete Greasley, senior pastor of Christchurch. Pete is responsible for international church planting and care on behalf of Sovereign Grace Ministries in Australia, Germany, Africa, India, Sri Lanka, and the UK.

For an update on the [CO]MISSION UK conference, I asked Pete a few questions.

C.J. Mahaney: I’ll begin with a broader question. Among young pastors in the U.S. we see a trend toward what is commonly referred to as “young, restless, and Reformed.” What is the theological climate among the young pastors and church planters you see in the UK?

Pete Greasley: In recent years, I’ve become increasingly aware of a stirring among young men in the UK to “do something” for the gospel. There’s been a gradual growing in awareness—particularly amongst men in their early to mid twenties—for the need to plant gospel-centred churches both here and elsewhere in the world. I’m also aware of many guys who have already planted churches and desire encouragement and input in how to best apply the gospel in their church situations. From my perspective, this is an exciting time!

CJM: So last month you hosted the [CO]MISSION UK Conference. I hear it was well attended. Were you surprised by how many attended?

PG: Very much so. We anticipated about 30–40 men, partly due to the specificity of the conference (men who believed they may be called to church planting or who were already leading a church plant), and also because we didn’t think that Sovereign Grace was that well known over here. When 120 men booked in we were extremely surprised and genuinely humbled that such men of calibre were willing to take time off work and travel to the conference.

CJM: Who showed up and what do those guys represent?

PG: There was a real spectrum of attendees, from experienced church planters to new university graduates exploring a sense of call to church planting. But the unifying factor amongst them was a desire to play a part in seeing new churches planted and wanting those churches to truly represent the gospel and still be here in 10, 50, 100 years time! I was particularly encouraged by the sobriety, as well as the passion, that these men demonstrated in desiring to build churches that glorify God. God was kind to us in allowing us to influence and be influenced by these passionate men.

CJM: What immediate fruit did you see from the conference? What long-term fruit do you hope for?

PG: As the conference drew nearer, our prayer was that it would be the beginning of relationships that God would use for the furtherance of his kingdom. God was pleased to answer that prayer—we met some remarkable men, and our hope in the short term is that these relationships will provide a context for us to continue to learn from and serve these men. But in the longer term, I hope that we’ll be able to play a strategic part in the birthing of new churches throughout this country. Our desire is that in God’s providence, he would use [CO]MISSION UK to inspire men to plant churches that will bring much glory to God and will stand the test of time. If we can serve towards that endeavour, even in some small way, it will be an incredible privilege. Soli Deo Gloria.

Thank you, Pete.

The audio and video recordings from the conference can be downloaded from comissionuk.org.

For more about Pete, see my interview with him: Meet Pete Greasley.

Kevin DeYoung has written one of my favorite books on the local church (Why We Love the Church: In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion) and recently he delivered what is now one of my favorite sermons on loving the local church (“The Church”).

The content of the sermon was excellent. And not only could I not take notes fast enough, I wanted all those in Sovereign Grace who were not in attendance at the Next conference to benefit from it. Therefore we decided to take some excerpts from the message in hope that they will create an appetite to listen to the message.

Who should listen to the message?

• Pastors
• Church members
• Those who love their church
• Those whose love for the church has been diminishing
• Those who think of involvement with the local church as optional
• Those who have left the local church
  

There is stuff in this message for us all.

In this first excerpt Kevin addressed the inevitable reality of disappointment in the local church. At some point we will all be disappointed with the church. Rather than being surprised by this we should be prepared and we should be ready to respond in a God-glorifying way.

At one point in his message Kevin introduced the various problems we read about in the church in Corinth:

Here you have a church with evidences of grace, but you have the church with all manner of problems. They have divisions and controversies and sexual immorality and power struggles and money issues and authority issues and marriage issues and anything else you can think of. That is the church.

So we ought to be realistic and I know many of you have disappointments that run very deep—deeper than I have experienced—and many of them are legitimate and people have hurt you, maybe pastors have hurt you. I am sorry. …

This is no way to excuse our own sinfulness, but it is to give us a realistic appraisal that saints and sinners we will always be. We will be disappointed at times.  

He goes on to explain the reason behind these disappointments:

I think one of the most important doctrines that is missing in younger generations today—and it is the reason that people can get so tired of the church so quickly—is the doctrine of original sin. The doctrine of original sin teaches that every single human being whoever was, is, or shall be—save for Jesus—inherited from Adam a sinful nature that makes us predisposed to wickedness and rebellion.  

“No one is righteous” (Romans 3:10).

“All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).  

“The human heart is deceitful above all else and desperately sick” (Jeremiah 17:9).

The natural man is “dead in the trespasses and sin” (Ephesians 2:1).

By nature we pass our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another (Titus 3:3).

“All we like sheep have gone astray” (Isaiah 53:6).

It is there over and over again in the pages of Scripture. And it is this doctrine with the related teachings of indwelling sin and the divided self that need to be recovered if we are to have a biblical, realistic appraisal of the local church.

So is your attitude and perspective of the local church informed by the doctrine of original sin? Is your appraisal of the local church realistic or idealistic? Please don’t misunderstand. There can be a time and place to transition from a particular local church. But prior to that decision we need to be informed by the content of Kevin’s message.

To download and listen to “The Church”—or any of the conference messages—visit thisisnext.org.

One of the great features of the Next conference each year is the stories about how the gospel and local churches are affecting individual lives. Four such testimonies were featured at the 2010 conference and each testimony was distinct and deeply moving. If you invest 24 minutes of your day watching them you will be personally edified and freshly reminded of God’s grace at work in your own life.
 
Here are the videos:
 
Ian Marshall

 
Update: Ian was drafted in the 40th round of the Major League Baseball draft by the Atlanta Braves.
 
Heather Evans


Erin Hill

 
Casey Frazier

The recent NEXT conference in Baltimore was outstanding. I had the privilege to sit in the front row for the whole thing and I benefitted big time from the worship and the excellent teaching.

For the next couple of weeks I want to return to my notes from those teaching sessions to stress a few points that I think are especially important. Of course I cannot cover every important detail from each session—you had to be there! But I do want to highlight three of the messages.

The first is Mark Dever’s message titled “The Doctrine of Christ's Work Accomplished and Applied.” In it, Mark opened by asking “What’s new about the new atheism?” He began his message with a quote from atheist Christopher Hitchens:

“Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience.”

That is Christopher Hitchens from a book he wrote recently called God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (McClelland & Stewart, 2007; page 56)….From Richard Dawkin’s book The God Delusion to Sam Harris’s book The Letters to a Christian Nation, the bookstores these days are just full of irreligion. I saw one even faintly religious irreligious book, The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality.

Are books like these selling? Well, several days this week, I typed “God” at Amazon.com. What is the first thing that pops up? Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion. That is like typing “Maryland” into Google and getting “Duke.”  

People call this the New Atheism. But they only call it the New Atheism because they want to sell books, newspapers, and magazines. There is nothing new about this.

Two hundred years ago Thomas Paine was making these same assaults on Christianity: “Whence arose all the horrid assassinations of whole nations of men, women, and infants, with which the Bible is filled; and the bloody persecutions, and tortures unto death and religious wars, that since that time have laid Europe in blood and ashes; whence arose they, but from this impious thing called revealed religion, and this monstrous belief that God has spoken to man?” (The Age of Reason).

So, Christian, you and I know that the message we see in the Bible is universally true, but we also know that it is not universally accepted. And it never has been. Don’t be surprised by this new wave of criticisms. I want you to understand. There is nothing new in these new criticisms. These new criticisms are as old as Christianity itself.

This hostility towards Christianity is true today, and increasingly so in locations not previously as hostile to the gospel, as evidenced by Mark’s recent experience.

I was stopped this past February in Heathrow airport when I was trying to go over to London to speak. I had been invited to preach there by Church of England Church, an established church in the UK in the middle of London. When I got to Heathrow, new laws had been passed. They wouldn’t let me in. I waited 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes, while they asked me more and more questions. What exactly would I be saying? Finally they let me in, but with cautions…

Friends, I wasn’t talking about anything politically charged in one sense. I had no plans to make any remarks on sexuality or homosexuality. I was just preaching expositionally. But I was a Christian preacher.

This is in the United Kingdom, a place that is not known for religious oppression.

Friends, we live in a world and in a part of that world that is increasingly hostile to Christianity. We need to understand that as we make this decision to follow Jesus.

In light of this introduction, Mark taught us about the Savior and about the Christian life from 1 Peter 2:21–25.

To download and listen to this message—or any of the conference messages—visit thisisnext.org. 

This month our friends at Ligonier Ministries are drawing attention to my favorite worship leader—Bob Kauflin. The July edition of Tabletalk is titled "Worship Matters" and on the first page of the introduction editor Burk Parsons features Bob and T4G. Parsons writes:


As I write this article I'm in Louisville, Kentucky, attending a conference called ‘Together for the Gospel.’ Pastors, elders, and seminarians have gathered together for fellowship and worship around the theme: The Unadjusted Gospel. More than seven thousand men from various evangelical (gospel-preaching) churches with various liturgical traditions are standing together as we sing some of the greatest hymns (from both the seventeenth and twenty-first centuries). 



At the piano helping to lead us in worship is Bob Kauflin, a man who has spent his life considering what it means to worship our holy and just, gracious and glorious God. His blog and subsequent book Worship Matters: Leading Others to Encounter the Greatness of God, are devoted to help the church to worship God in the way He deserves, demands, and delights.

For the remainder of the article see the July issue.

In related news, Bob is writing a new book. Whereas he wrote his first book for worship leaders, he is writing the second one for all worshipers. In his own words, his aim is to help Christians “think more biblically about their responsibility as a worshiper of God, regardless of how they were being led.”



Be looking for Bob's new book—yet to be titled—sometime in 2011.

---------------

Photo source: Southern Seminary Communications

Men who pastor small churches have my deepest respect. These guys are my heroes for the way they quietly and faithfully serve and persevere in difficult and challenging contexts, and do so with joy. That is why, during a panel discussion at Together for the Gospel, I was coming out of my chair as John MacArthur made the following remarks in response to a good question by Thabiti:

Thabiti Anyabwile: I am thinking about folks who are traveling with me. I am deeply encouraged with their being here. And I see other pastors traveling with some of the elders and members in the church. I assume they are likewise encouraged. Any words that you would offer to folks here who maybe aren’t in pastoral ministry? Maybe they are here to support their pastor in the kind of faithfulness you are talking about. Any exhortations to them, practical ways that they can hold the pastor’s arms up in this kind of faithfulness and trusting in God?
 


John MacArthur: What I cherish the most is a true and loving loyalty. This disloyalty, betrayal, undermining, just cuts the heart out of your pastor. When I talk about loving loyalty, I mean when there is an issue that needs to be addressed you go eyeball-to-eyeball, man-to-man, and you confront it. And I love that. I love when guys come to me and say, “John, I think this is a problem. I think you are overlooking this. I think this is a misstep on your part.” Those are the men I cherish. Those are the men I pull to my heart. 



But what is just terribly debilitating is to feign that kind of affection to the man and then undermine that among the people. That is the most difficult thing. It is the betrayal that that brings. I could endure any problem in a church. I am challenged to solve any problem. But it is so hard when the men that you trust betray you behind your back. Because he is God’s man in your midst, you give him your love and you give him your loyalty. Be honest with him, face to face, man to man, open hearted. But understand the burden that he bears, and you need to be his true friend. You really do.

It is especially important for pastors who serve alone. At a different point in the discussion, MacArthur addressed the struggles single-staff pastors face:

I find my joy in the church in the men I work with, in their growth and their partnership and their love and their loyalty and their support of me. 
 
For me, I think that would be the hardest thing about being a pastor at a small church, being there alone and trying to carry that burden by yourself. That is why some of you are here, because you need this. You don’t even so much need what we say—you need each other. You need to feel like you are a part of something way beyond your own thing, and we embrace you fully.
 


I have often said the Lord must prefer small churches because he made so many of them. And you guys that are alone in those churches, you are the real soldiers, you are the real warriors. We thank God for you.


At the NEXT conference in Baltimore this weekend, C.J. preached from Philippians 2:12-13. You can download the message—“Sanctification”—as an mp3 here.
 
During his message C.J. shared the following quote from John Murray, a fitting summary of the passage and the message:

God’s working in us is not suspended because we work,
nor our working suspended because God works.
Neither is the relation strictly one of co-operation
    as if God did his part and we did ours
    so that the conjunction or coordination of both
    produced the required result.
God works in us and we also work.
But the relation is that
    because God works
    we work.
All working out of salvation on our part
is the effect of God’s working in us,
    not the willing to the exclusion of the doing
    and not the doing to the exclusion of the willing,
        but both the willing and the doing....
The more persistently active we are in working,
the more persuaded we may be
    that all the energizing grace and power is of God.

[source: Redemption Accomplished and Applied (Eerdmans, 1955), pp. 148-149. Line breaks added.] 

John Piper’s T4G2010 message “Did Jesus Preach Paul’s Gospel?” defended the unity of Paul and Jesus in their understanding of justification and imputation. After his message John joined a panel discussion with Ligon Duncan, Mark Dever, Al Mohler, John MacArthur, and me. The following is an excerpt from that panel discussion.

Ligon Duncan: John, let’s suppose that there is someone here tonight that was wrestling with precisely the issue that you have been thinking about and wrestling with for many years in terms of how to articulate this [imputation/justification] and how to ground it not only in Paul’s teaching, but in Jesus’ revelation of himself and the gospel writers’ revelation of the way of salvation in Jesus. … Where would be some other places that you would point him to read and study and reflect, either in the Scriptures themselves or in the material that you found most helpful, so that he can keep on going?

John Piper: The cluster of texts that I think are most helpful about imputation would be Philippians 3:7–9, 2 Corinthians 5:21, 1 Corinthians 1:30, the flow of thought from Romans 3:20–4:6, especially 4:4–6. Galatians 2:16 and all of chapter 3. As far as biblical texts, that is where I would go.

John Owen is exhaustive on everything and so is his book on justification. If you can handle the kind of density that Owen writes with, I would go there before I would go to Edwards. Edwards becomes so philosophical at a few points that he ties himself in knots I am afraid. So I think Owen is probably a better guide. …  

So many of the books on justification are so doctrinally-oriented rather than exegetically-oriented that a person might do better to take the key texts and then read really faithful Don Carson-like commentaries on them. What happens when you read a big book like Owen or [James] Buchanan is that you just take several steps back from the text and things start to get hazy. Not many people are wired to handle the complexities that these guys go into. And the texts—when you read them all by themselves, with just a little help—they don’t feel that complex. For the average person—this includes me—I need to be right there. I need the text staring me in the face because I get less confident as I move steps away.

Those texts have had a lot of eye-to-eye time with John as evidenced in the two important books he has written on the topic. In 2002 John published Counted Righteous: Should We Abandon the Imputation of Christ’s Righteousness? In an interview from that year he provided an extensive overview of other foundational texts on justification and imputation. You can read the interview here. He also discussed many of these same texts in his 2007 book The Future of Justification: A Response to N.T. Wright. Both books are available online as free PDF downloads and printed books. See the links here:

• Counted Righteous: Should We Abandon the Imputation of Christ’s Righteousness? (Crossway, 2002) [PDF download | Amazon]

• The Future of Justification: A Response to N.T. Wright (Crossway, 2007) [PDF download | Amazon]

One of my greatest privileges in ministry is working with churches in the United Kingdom. Seeing more and more churches planted there is an absolute thrill.
 
That’s one reason I’m stoked about a conference my buddy Pete Greasley (and his mates at Christchurch) are hosting in Wales this coming July. In moments of unbridled condescension predictably inspired by a pub night, Pete will invite an American to share a conference. I guess that’s how I found myself purchasing tickets to be there and help with the teaching responsibilities. I hope he wasn’t joking, 'cause I'm booked and pretty excited. Here's why.

The conference is called [CO]MISSION UK, and we’re holding it because we want to equip church planters as well as other men that feel called to ministry, and stir ambition for how God could be glorified through their lives.

If you’re a church planter in the UK, or if you hope to plant a church there someday, I hope you’ll come. You don’t need to be part of Sovereign Grace Ministries—the conference is for anyone who wants to see gospel-centered (sorry, Brits, I meant “centred”) churches started in the UK. 

We haven’t locked in all the details yet, but here’s a look at some of what we hope to talk about:

• Why plant churches?
• How do I know if God is calling me to plant a church? 
• Is ambition a good thing? 
• How do I build a church-planting team? 
• What happens after a new church launches?
  

The conference will be July 8–10 at Christchurch in Newport, Wales. Registration is only £25 if you register by May 31. Plus, students come for free—a pretty sweet deal. You can find more info at comissionuk.org. I hope you’ll join us.

----------------------

Dave Harvey leads international expansion and church planting for Sovereign Grace Ministries and is based in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania. For more information about the Sovereign Grace church-planting process, click here.

One of the many highlights from this year’s T4G conference was John Piper’s general-session message, “Did Jesus Preach Paul’s Gospel?” After his message John joined Mark Dever, Ligon Duncan, Al Mohler, John MacArthur, and myself for a panel discussion. At one point in the conversation the discussion focused in on the doctrine of justification by faith and the Christ who justifies, the importance of doctrine, and the value of music. Although the exchange happened in a few brief minutes, it is an exchange worthy of a second look. 
 

At one point Al said the following:

We are very concerned about doctrine, and self-consciously so. We recognize there is no such thing as a doctrine-less Christianity. We cherish these doctrines because we believe they are the very truths that are taught in Scripture, they are the substance and architecture and superstructure of the Christian faith and without which there is no Christianity. So we believe that.

But I think sometimes we can at least talk as if—to put it bluntly—we are justified by the doctrine of justification by faith. And that is not what we are saying. We’re justified by faith.

And I dare say that most of the believers that I have known in the local church, as I’ve had the opportunity to come to know them, could not pass a systematic theology exam. They trust Christ. And their justification is on the basis of faith alone. They believed and they trusted Christ. I want them to know more, I want them to desire to know more, I want them to be able to know the dots and connect the dots. But I think what you [Piper] did tonight was to display, by your exposition of the text and of the doctrine and of its application, what it means actually to trust Christ and what our justification really means.

It’s good for us to recognize the fact that we do need to talk doctrine and, without any apology, to be the defenders of the absolute necessity of doctrinal fidelity, doctrinal substance, doctrinal knowledge. But at the end of the day the ground of our justification is not a doctrine, it is Christ alone.

So how does a pastor help ensure that doctrinal knowledge does not become an end in itself? To this point Piper added the following comment:


A very practical thing for pastors: I asked that we sing when I was done because I really wanted you to be able to say with the heart “all I have is Christ.” I wanted you to say it and sing it. My suggestion for pastors is that you study the music here, the lyrics, and you do the research and get the gospel songs. Sovereign Grace is serving the evangelical movement incredibly, I think. I’m going to qualify my enthusiasm here. I'm totally there, these are my favorite contemporary songs. And it is a narrow slice of culture, it’s a narrow slice of musicality. Know that, and be okay with that, and maybe not limit yourself to that.…It’s amazing how many churches don’t—from their hearts—sing the gospel, sing the glories of justification, sing the glories of substitutionary atonement, sing the glories of the resurrection.
 


John’s words show us the important relationship between knowing right doctrine and putting that doctrine into lyrics and songs that free our hearts to express our affections to the Savior. And I cannot think about this topic without voicing my appreciation for my friend and my favorite worship leader, Bob Kauflin.

This entire panel discussion is worth a listen and it’s available online here. Audio from all four of the panels is now available online here.

---------------

Photo source: Southern Seminary Communications