New Life Baptist Church, College Station Texas

Mem­ber­ship classes at New Life will begin this Tues­day, June 2 at 6:45. We will meet in room 200 at the Liv­ing Hope build­ing. Please sign up this Sat­ur­day at wor­ship. We will have a sign up sheet at the Fel­low­ship Meal. The mem­ber­ship process will con­sist of 3 manda­tory meet­ings, fol­lowed by a short, per­sonal meet­ing between each prospec­tive mem­ber fam­ily and one of the elders. The meet­ing dates for the classes are June 2, 9, and 16. The per­sonal meet­ings will be sched­uled while at the first class and will occur on the 23rd and 30th of June.

There will not be any food pro­vided, but there will be child­care avail­able if you desire it. Fur­ther details will be pro­vided this week­end at Cor­po­rate worship.

The mem­ber­ship classes are open to any­one whether you were part of the Core Group plan­ning or not.

Let us know if you have any other ques­tions. We are excited about this and look for­ward to see­ing you there!

Stay­ing focused on the Great Com­mis­sion should not be a goal for a local church; it should be the goal, Tim­mis and Chester assert. And they believe the best way to stay focused is through church planting.

The more healthy churches that exist within a com­mu­nity, the more oppor­tu­ni­ties there are to con­nect with the lost and dis­ci­ple the saved.  Large churches, such as Mars Hill and The Vil­lage, have main­tained their mis­sional focus by reg­u­larly open­ing new cam­puses and plant­ing new churches.   This helps to ensure that “mutual dis­ci­ple­ship and care can real­is­ti­cally take place” (93).

One of the most com­mon argu­ments against church plant­ing is that it will weaken the send­ing church.  In fact, when Liv­ing Hope, our found­ing church, decided to plant two new churches at the same time, many peo­ple told them that was not a good idea.  In Tim­mis and Chester’s expe­ri­ence, though, “Far from weak­en­ing a send­ing church, church plant­ing is a vital oppor­tu­nity to refo­cus the life of the church on the gospel” (96).

Vod­die Baucham, pas­tor of preach­ing at Grace Fam­ily Bap­tist, has stated that his goal is to plant 10 churches in 10 years.  While we may not set a sim­i­lar goal, it is my hope that New Life will be just as faith-filled in our expec­ta­tions.  It may seem lofty, but as Tim­mis and Chester note in the con­clu­sion, “…we need to cre­ate a cul­ture in which trans­plant­ing is nor­mal.  Every local church should be aim­ing to trans­plant and raise up church planters” (98).  And this we will do, by God’s grace.

God has brought many gifted men and women to our body.  I want to be a faith­ful stew­ard of these broth­ers and sis­ters, equip­ping them, bless­ing them, and send­ing them out.   I would ask you to pray with us and for us as we seek God’s will not only for our future, but for other churches we will plant in the years to come.

John Piper speaks prophet­i­cally on so many issues, and this one is no dif­fer­ent.  We live in a day and age where enter­tain­ment and fun are at the cen­ter of every­thing we do.  If some activ­ity is not enter­tain­ing, most men and women (espe­cially those my age and younger) see it as a bur­den to bear until we can return to hav­ing fun, which we have come to believe is where life really is.  Sadly, work is seen not as some­thing that we do for God’s glory and our sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion, but so that we can earn money to do “fun things.”

I encour­age you to read John Piper’s com­ments on the Desir­ing God blog and con­sider how you can break free from any enter­tain­ment addic­tion you are…well, entertaining.

Social involve­ment is the sub­ject mat­ter of the fourth chap­ter of Total Church, and I will be the first to admit that this chap­ter made me uncom­fort­able.  It made me uncom­fort­able because although I was able to say, “Yes, I agree with that,” at many points I could not say, “And I am being obe­di­ent to this Scrip­ture by doing this or that.”

On page 76, the authors note, “Evan­gel­i­cal­ism has become a largely middle-class, pro­fes­sional phe­nom­e­non.  When we invite peo­ple to our din­ners and our churches, we invite our friends, our rel­a­tives, and our rich neigh­bors.  We do not invite the poor, the crip­pled, the blind, and the lame.  What is at stake is the grace of God.”

Tim­mis and Chester assert that we must reach out to peo­ple who are unlike us and with whom we have lit­tle in com­mon.  They rightly note that peo­ple do not want to be projects; they want some­one to come and take an inter­est in their lives.  In other words, “They need the Chris­t­ian com­mu­nity.  They need the church” (80).

In order to help us under­stand how we should pur­sue social action, the authors give three assertions:

1. Evan­ge­lism and social action are dis­tinct activ­i­ties.  Many today, espe­cially those in what is refer­rred to as the Emer­gent church move­ment, equate evan­ge­lism with social action.  In other words, by feed­ing the poor, vis­it­ing the orphan and widow, and cloth­ing the naked we are preach­ing the Gospel.  That is untrue.  We are car­ry­ing out Scrip­tural direc­tives by par­tic­i­pat­ing in these activ­i­ties, but we are not shar­ing the Gospel just by doing them.

2. Procla­ma­tion is cen­tral.  With­out the procla­ma­tion of the Gospel as revealed in Scrip­ture, we are “like a sign­post point­ing nowhere,” or that the Gospel is really about doing good works that make one right with God.

3. Evan­ge­lism and social action are insep­a­ra­ble.  The authors state mis­sion takes place through rela­tion­ships, and rela­tion­ships have mul­ti­ple dimen­sions to them.  So while it may be true that some­one needs finan­cial help, if they have not repented and belived the Gospel they also need spir­i­tual help.

So what can you do to get involved?  Start by search­ing the Scrip­tures; you’ll find ref­er­ences all through­out the Bible (espe­cially in the Proverbs and the Book of James) to help­ing the poor, the oppressed, the orphan, and the widow.  Then start talk­ing to believ­ers you are con­nected with and learn how they are (or aren’t) putting these things into practice.

You will find that no one is doing this per­fectly, but every believer should be involved in car­ing for the mar­gin­al­ized spir­i­tu­ally, phys­i­cally, and emo­tion­ally.  Talk­ing with peo­ple who already are involved in the lives of these men, women, and chil­dren will pro­vide you with a great oppor­tu­nity to get started yourself.

Yes, you read that right — Anson Hen­drick, the old­est son of the Hen­drick fam­ily, has offi­cially been hired as the New Life Mar­ket­ing Coor­di­na­tor.  In school today, Anson had to write a per­sua­sive para­graph.  He chose to write about New Life, and here is what he had to say:

“New Life is fun.  You get to eat there.  The food is very good.  You get to meet nice peo­ple.  If you are strug­gling with some­thing they love to love on you.  You get to learn about Jesus.  If you believe in Him you will get to go to the best place ever.  Find out more about us today.”

In less excit­ing but still impor­tant news, we offi­cially called his dad, Aaron Hen­drick, to over­see wor­ship and media at our busi­ness meet­ing last evening.  We also approved our State­ment of Faith and Church Covenant.

If you have been attend­ing New Life and plan to join the church or would like to learn more about who we are and what we believe, mem­ber­ship classes will begin on June 2nd and will run through­out the month.  Praise God for all he is doing at New Life!

“Peo­ple want a form of evan­ge­lism they can stick in their sched­ule, switch off, and leave behind when they go home,” Tim­mis and Chester note in the third chap­ter of Total Church.  Unfor­tu­nately for many believ­ers, evan­ge­lism is seen as a scary activ­ity that gets planned out, car­ried out, and for­got­ten about.  In this phi­los­o­phy of evan­ge­lism, peo­ple are seen as projects rather than as unique indi­vid­u­als made in the image of God.

The authors sug­gest a vastly dif­fer­ent model of evan­ge­lism, which is so sim­ple I’m tempted to apol­o­gize for them.  It includes three aspects:  build­ing rela­tion­ships, shar­ing the Gospel, and intro­duc­ing peo­ple to com­mu­nity, which they have illus­trated as a rope with three strands.

These three aspects can hap­pen in any order, but all three should be a part of our evan­ge­lis­tic efforts.  For exam­ple, you may fre­quent the same local cof­fee shop.  As a result, you begin build­ing a rela­tion­ship with one of the baris­tas.  After a while, you invite him to join you and your friends for din­ner or to a fun event.  At some point, you or another Chris­t­ian friend will have the oppor­tu­nity to share the Good News about Jesus with him.

Chester and Tim­mis note, “In our expe­ri­ence peo­ple are often attracted to the Chris­t­ian com­mu­nity before they are attracted to the Chris­t­ian mes­sage. If a believ­ing com­mu­nity is a per­sua­sive apolo­getic for the gospel, then peo­ple need to be included to see that apolo­getic at work” (59).  Jesus said that every­one would know we were his dis­ci­ples by our love for one another (Jn. 13:35), and every believer has dif­fer­ent gifts that can be used to ful­fill the Great Com­mis­sion.  If this is the case, why aren’t we more inten­tional about invit­ing peo­ple into our homes, our cir­cles of friends, our lives?

I encour­age you to con­sider how you can build rela­tion­ships, share the Gospel, and intro­duce peo­ple to com­mu­nity.  The Gospel is pow­er­ful, and by God’s grace, the church is a pow­er­ful apolo­getic for Jesus Christ.

Ryan Price, who serves New Life as our interim wor­ship leader, emailed me with a link to a CNN arti­cle on Bart Ehrman, who is a pro­fes­sor of reli­gious stud­ies at the Uni­ver­sity of North Car­olina.  Ehrman grew up in an evan­gel­i­cal home, but after attend­ing Prince­ton The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary to train for a pro­fes­sor­ship, he began to ques­tion the Bible’s author­ity.  This comes as no sur­prise to you if you are famil­iar with Princeton’s teach­ing.  In the last 200 years, it has gone from one of the most con­ser­v­a­tive sem­i­nar­ies in Amer­ica to arguably the most liberal.

William H. Willimon, United Methodist Bishop and author of sev­eral help­ful books on ethics, noted this:  “He (Ehrman) keeps pre­sent­ing this stuff as if this is won­der­ful new knowl­edge that has been kept from you [by] back­ward lay peo­ple.”  What kind of “won­der­ful new knowl­edge” is Ehrman pre­sent­ing in his books, arti­cles, and classroom?

1. “Ehrman says he doesn’t think the res­ur­rec­tion took place. ‘There’s no proof Jesus phys­i­cally rose from the dead, and the res­ur­rec­tion sto­ries con­tra­dict one another,’ he says.”

2. “Ehrman says he immerses him­self in the Bible, though he doesn’t believe in its infal­li­bil­ity, because it’s the most impor­tant book in West­ern civilization.”

3. “Ehrman says he later became an agnos­tic because he couldn’t find the answer to another ques­tion: How could there be a God when there is so much suf­fer­ing in the world?”

So, the “won­der­ful new knowl­edge” Ehrman sets forth denies the res­ur­rec­tion, the author­ity of the Bible, and God’s exis­tence based on the pres­ence of suf­fer­ing.  In other words, he’s pub­lish­ing the exact same argu­ments that have existed since the first cen­tury.  The apos­tles address these very ques­tions in places like 1 Corinthi­ans 15, 2 Tim­o­thy 3 and 1 Peter 1, and the book of 1 Peter, which we are cur­rently studying.

I encour­age you to read the arti­cle and search the Scrip­tures to see if these things are true (Acts 17:11).  None of us under­stand every­thing in the Bible.  How­ever, we can put our faith in the Scrip­tures because Jesus affirmed what had been writ­ten in the Old Tes­ta­ment (Matt. 5:18), what would be writ­ten in the New Tes­ta­ment (Jn. 14:25–27), and authen­ti­cated his claims by his sin­less, mirac­u­lous life and his res­ur­rec­tion from the dead.  Praise God!

We have talked about sub­mis­sion to the gov­ern­ment and gov­ern­ing offi­cials often over the past few months,  and I have got­ten sev­eral ques­tions con­cern­ing how to honor and sub­mit to our offi­cials when we dis­agree with them.

John Piper preached a ser­mon enti­tled “The Baby in My Womb Leaped for Joy” ear­lier this year.  In his mes­sage, he referred to the speech Pres­i­dent Obama gave on the 36th anniver­sary of Roe v. Wade prais­ing the deci­sion and the phi­los­o­phy behind it.

Take a moment and watch the video here. Piper does a great job of stand­ing on truth while still respect­ing our gov­ern­ing officials.

May God give us grace to pray for our gov­ern­ing offi­cials reg­u­larly, and the faith to believe that their hearts are in the hand of the Lord (Prv. 21:1).