Conflicts are to be expected in marriage. But why do they happen in even the most mature marriages?

At a recent monthly gathering with the Pastors College students and their wives, C.J. abbreviated his sermon on James 4:1–3 and shared a recent example of how the passage protected his marriage from conflict during a date night.

Listen to C.J.’s 7-minute message here:


Cravings, Conflict, and Marriage
C.J. Mahaney
Dec. 4, 2009
7 minutes
Download here (7.9 MB)

Gaithersburg, MD—The strength of Sovereign Grace is hitched to the strength of the local churches. And the strength of the local churches is hitched to the health of its preaching.
 
That was the gist of the opening exhortation from Pastors College dean Jeff Purswell as he opened our first Expository Preaching Practicum last week (Jan 12–14). The Sovereign Grace Pastors College hosted the practicum, a modestly sized three-day preaching lab with 22 senior pastors invited from various regions including the suburbs of Phoenix, north Philadelphia, California, and Wales. The men gathered to sharpen their preaching skills through instruction, preaching, evaluation, and discussion.
 
Jeff Purswell led the practicum. He opened the week with these words:

I have an intense excitement about this week. We [Sovereign Grace] participate in a lot of conferences, but this is just a small gathering of a few of us, and hardly anyone knows about this. But the potential effects of this week will be vastly disproportionate to its visibility. I'm not sure that we can do much that is more strategic… Why are we doing this? As preaching goes in your church, so goes your church. If preaching declines, your church will decline. And more broadly the same is true. If preaching declines in the churches of Sovereign Grace, Sovereign Grace will decline.

After the brief exhortation the work of preaching and evaluation began. Ten of the men were prepared to preach a sermon before the group. After each sermon was delivered, the other 21 men completed detailed sermon evaluation forms covering everything from faithfulness to the text, the use of illustrations and application, clarity of organization, and strength of delivery.
 
Jeff then led a 90-minute period of discussion and instruction for each sermon. The group discussed the sermon’s strengths first, then its weaknesses. At C.J. Mahaney’s request, Jeff offered sermon structure alternatives and instruction on various aspects of preaching and Bible interpretation. C.J. added comments on the sermon and on pastoral leadership in general.

In attendance for the practicum was Eric Turbedsky, senior pastor of Sovereign Grace Church Orange County (Pastors College class of 2001). Eric was one of the ten fortunate men selected to preach. When asked if he was nervous to preach before the dean, a sage who can spot exegetical bloopers like a hawk spots field mice, he said, “Are you kidding me? I was terrified. I want to know who drafted me to preach! But seriously, who is going to complain about Jeff, C.J., and 20 guys who preach regularly, devoting concentrated time to encouraging you in your strengths and to offer hope for your weaknesses? It was clear from the very outset of the week that everyone in the room was for me…and about half of them were feeling the pain, too. I left way more aware of the grace available to preach and the joy of partnering with a hawk like Jeff.”

Although hosted in a classroom, the format was anything but merely academic. “The type of learning that occurred is something that could never be gleaned from a book or a lecture context,” Jeff said. “It was both stimulating and encouraging to hear such a wide range of types of preachers with different styles and different gifts, all effective in their own ways. It is encouraging for a guy to know that he can preach within the framework of the unique character and gifting that God has given him. And just by watching the diverse preaching styles and strengths it was suggestive and instructional for guys.”

Ian McConnell, who serves as pastor for preaching and vision at Grace Bible Church in north Philadelphia, was surprised by the format. “I was surprised that although it was in an academic environment, it was so much more than that,” he said. “It turned out to be an environment where God’s Spirit met with us through the preached Word and ministered grace to our lives in some very dynamic and discernable ways. I heard nine exceptional messages that filled my heart with greater faith and deepened affections for the Savior! I was not only challenged to preach better, I was challenged to live my life in deeper conformity to the Word of God for the glory of God.”

To Jeff, the most unexpected fruit of the week was watching relationships nurture. “Unlike a conference when you catch up with friends between sessions, the practicum enabled guys to build relationships as they worked together,” he said. “The week was intense. These men put themselves on the line by preaching and by receiving evaluation from other men. They were engaged together, working together on text after text, getting their hands dirty together. This relationship building during the week was of a different kind than I’ve experienced before in a typical conference setting.”

Collectively the week was a great success according to C.J. “This practicum was eight years in the making,” he said, “and it was a peculiar joy to see this dream come to fruition. I sat in the classroom listening to the sermons and the valuable feedback and imagined the thousands of sermons these men will preach in the future and how those sermons—and my sermons!—will be affected and improved by our investment this week. In seeking to strengthen the local church, our week could not have been more strategic or significant for the health of the local churches represented.”

The Pastors College plans to host future practicums with the goal of hosting all the Sovereign Grace senior pastors and later hosting all the pastors.

When asked what he would say to pastors who will experience the practicum in the future, Ian said, “The week was a very helpful time of receiving evaluation and instruction for my preaching. And it was a wonderful means of fellowship, encouragement, and God-magnifying joy! I expected the week to be great—and it was. I left thinking to myself, ‘I needed this—big time.’ I think you will leave saying the same thing.”

The next set of senior pastors will soon receive invitations to practicum #2, which is tentatively scheduled for June.

Today on his blog Kevin DeYoung posted C.J.’s most valuable reads of 2009. Read about C.J.’s picks here.

 

Video is now online of Dave Harvey’s message “The Pastor’s Mission: What Makes the Great Commission Great?”, recorded at our 2009 Pastors Conference. In this message, Dave gives an overview of our missiology and how we seek to apply it in the U.S. and abroad.

Below are the video and an outline of the message (with timestamps).

The Pastor's Mission from Sovereign Grace Ministries on Vimeo.

Message outline:

Introduction [0:09]

Five reasons the Great Commission is great:

1. Our commission is great because it starts with the finished work of Jesus Christ. [9:07]

2. Our commission is great because it extends to the church. [14:30]

3. Our commission is great because Christ provides the strategy:

Strategy 1: Planting local churches [20:15]

Strategy 2: Sending apostolic ministry [26:08]

“Does Sovereign Grace Ministries want to play a part in reaching unreached people groups?” [31:48]
 
Three lessons learned from our international ministry experiences: [32:46]

Lesson 1: The strategy of relocating westerners to non-western countries seems to have more weaknesses than strengths. [33:18]

Lesson 2: The strategy of investing in indigenous leaders seems to be working. [35:00]

Lesson 3: The Pastors College strategy seems to be working for expansion. [37:25]

4. Our commission is great because we can all participate. [39:40]

5. Our commission is great because it comes with the promise of God’s enduring presence. [54:00]

Conclusion [57:15]

Video is now online of Jeff Purswell’s message “The Pastor’s Teaching,” recorded at our 2009 Pastors Conference in April.

Teaching from 2 Timothy 2:15, Jeff said, “The governing priority for the faithful pastor is devotion to the teaching of God’s Word.” One implication of this governing priority is the important connection between the pastor’s teaching and the pastor’s leadership of a church.

What follows is the video and an outline of the message (with timestamps).

The Pastor's Teaching from Sovereign Grace Ministries on Vimeo.

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

Message outline:

Introduction [2:25]

“The governing priority for the faithful pastor is devotion to the teaching of God’s Word” [11:52]

Three characteristics that should mark the life of the one whose governing priority is the teaching of God’s Word:

1. Diligent labor [21:18]

2. Divine awareness [31:03]

3. Careful exposition [37:55]

“Your teaching is the primary expression of your leadership.” [44:53]

Correct meaning and clear communication [48:54]

Minimum standard requirements for rightly handling the Word:

A. Is the biblical text providing the substance for my preaching, teaching, and leadership? [51:33]

B. Am I using individual texts in a way that is consistent with their intended purpose? [53:04]

C. Am I accurately understanding and faithfully communicating the meaning of texts? [53:54]

D. Am I accurately and compellingly impressing upon people the appropriate response to texts of Scripture? [56:53]

Personal implications [58:04]

Team implications:

First, let us set out to create on our pastoral teams a company of expositors. [60:42]

Second, we must preserve the preaching of the Word as the pinnacle of our Sunday meetings. [64:46]

Third, look across the landscape of your church and ask: Is every sphere and ministry receiving regular pastoral leadership in the form of teaching? [66:00]

Conclusion [66:50]

One of the winners in our ESV Study Bible giveaway was Vanessa. How could we not give her a new Bible in light of her original entry?

Hi, my name is Vanessa and I would love to win this for my husband. He left his ESVSB on top of his car on his way to men's study. Not knowing he had done this I left the house and drove over his Bible. He called me later to tell me he thought he had left his Bible on top of his car and at that moment I knew what I ran over. On the way home I picked it up off of the road and, well, let’s just say it was broken. So I hope I can win one for him.

Vanessa
Haltom City, TX

Last week C.J. chose Vanessa’s entry as one of the ten contest winners. Upon hearing that she had won (despite not writing anything about her pastors or church) she was eager to share a second story.

We were so deeply moved by her follow-up email that we wanted to post it so you could read for yourself the important role her church and pastors played during a critical season in her life.

Vanessa writes:

I'm so excited I won even though I entered wrong. I had no clue I had done that until I saw the video, which made me laugh really hard. This is also perfect timing as my husband's birthday is tomorrow.

I don't want to miss the opportunity to honor my pastors. They have been such a huge blessing in our lives. We had been attending our church for a little over a year when we discovered that I was 19 weeks pregnant with conjoined twin girls. We learned that our girls were facing each other, joined from the chest to the stomach. They shared one liver and one heart (which had only one ventricle). They had a zero chance of survival. In fact my doctor believed I would miscarry.

We continued with the pregnancy knowing that is was God who was forming Melody and Madison in my womb. He created them and He would decide when they left this earth. I am so thankful for our pastors because they taught us the hard truths of God's word. Because of their teaching we were not scared that Satan was controlling our lives but rested knowing that God was sovereign over our babies' lives and my life. Everything that was happening God was allowing for His glory and our good.

I ended up going into labor when I was 32 weeks pregnant on November 11, 2008 and—glory to God!—our daughters were born alive and lived for one hour. We were able to spend that time with them and we have a ton of pictures. The mourning process has been hard but a blessing at the same time. God has used our pastors to encourage us and stand alongside us during this most difficult time in our lives. I don't know what we would have done without them. Thanks for the opportunity to honor these men that God has placed in our lives.

To our pastors, Jay and Emilio, we love you guys and praise God for allowing us to sit under your teaching.

I am now 27 weeks pregnant with a healthy baby and we continue to praise God and give Him all the glory!

Vanessa
Haltom City, TX

Thanks to everyone who submitted a note of appreciation and entered the ESV Study Bible giveaway. The giveaway generated 200 entries, and this stack of entries represents a bunch of fruitful churches, faithful pastors, and grateful members like you. C.J. selected the winners, choosing four entries to read and randomly selecting another seven winners. To see if you’re one of the winners, watch this 8-minute video:

ESV Study Bible Giveaway from Sovereign Grace Ministries on Vimeo.

Each winner will be notified via email.

Thanks again for entering the giveaway!

The Cheap Seats blog recently got ten copies of the ESV Study Bible (retail $75) to give away.

If you haven’t seen it before, the ESVSB has wonderful study aids for young and mature Christians alike: book overviews and outlines, detailed illustrations, 50 articles, 20,000 study notes, and about 80,000 cross-references. It’s something we’d recommend for every Christian hoping to understand their Bible more, so it’s exciting to have a few to share with our readers. As C.J. wrote in his endorsement, “I can’t imagine a greater gift to the body of Christ than the ESV Study Bible. It is a potent combination indeed: the reliability and readability of the ESV translation, supplemented by the best of modern and faithful scholarship.”

Since the Study Bible was created to serve the church, this giveaway is built around highlighting God’s grace in your particular local church. We want to hear from you about what God is doing. To enter the drawing, just write a note describing what you most appreciate about your pastor or your local church.

Email this note to us and—voilà—you are entered in the drawing.

RULES—

• The deadline for submission is 11pm on Wednesday night, November 4.

• Entries must be at least three sentences but no longer than a page.

• Include your first name, last initial, hometown, and the name of your church.

• Please submit one entry per person.

• Email those entries to blog AT sovgracemin DOT org with the subject line: ESVSB entry.

OTHER FINE PRINT—

• We’ll only ship the Bibles to addresses in the United States or Canada.

• If we like your entry a lot, we might post it (or part of it) online.

• Winners will be selected at random and announced on the blog on Friday (Nov. 6).

• We’ll appreciate it if you reference a Bible verse to frame your entry, but it’s not necessary and won’t affect your odds of winning.

• Winners will choose between these seven editions:

TruTone Classic Black

TruTone Natural Brown

TruTone Mahogany, Trellis Design

TruTone Brown/Cordovan, Portfolio Design

TruTone Forest/Tan, Trail Design

Bonded Leather, Black

Bonded Leather, Burgundy

Thanks for participating in the ESV Study Bible giveaway!

 

A compilation book of the messages delivered at the 2008 Together for the Gospel conference is now available. Titled Proclaiming a Cross-Centered Theology (Crossway, 2009), the new book is authored by Mark Dever, Ligon Duncan, Albert Mohler, and C.J., with contributions by Thabiti Anyabwile, John MacArthur, John Piper, and R.C. Sproul and one additional piece by Greg Gilbert.

What follows is a glimpse at the contents, a link to each original conference message audio recording, and a brief comment on each message/chapter taken from Dever’s introduction to the new book.

Chapter 1: Sound Doctrine: Essential to Faithful Pastoral Ministry (Duncan). Message audio. Dever: “Ligon Duncan begins this volume as he began that conference. He entered the lists asserting that systematic theology is a worthwhile task. Indeed, in days when the narrative form of biblical theology is attracting great (and deserved) attention, it is too often being pitted against systematic theology. Ligon defends the usefulness and necessity of systematic theology with clarity and vigor. A pastor must remember the truths in this chapter or risk losing the gospel itself” (pp. 12–13).

Chapter 2: Bearing the Image (Anyabwile). Message audio. Dever: “In his address at Together for the Gospel, Thabiti challenged us to recognize that the category of ‘race’ is irredeemable. It brings far more confusion than light, more contention than understanding, more prejudice than impartial judgment. As you turn to that chapter—perhaps the most explosive of the conference—open your mind and get ready to think” (p. 13).

Chapter 3: The Sinner Neither Willing nor Able (MacArthur). Message audio. Dever: “John MacArthur delivered a message on human depravity that was a model of clear thinking. In it, John masterfully assembled the witness of Scripture (in the very way Ligon had encouraged us the previous day) on this vital topic. John showed that a mistake here is a mistake in the foundation of understanding the nature of our problem. He laid out challenges currently facing this doctrine and concluded by calling us to be faithful to this aspect of the message, no matter how hard we may find such faithfulness” (p. 13).

Chapter 4: Improving the Gospel: Exercises in Unbiblical Theology (or) Questioning Five Common Deceits (Dever). Message audio. Dever: “The next message was mine. I had been mulling over for some time the confusion about the content of the gospel. The message came together as I reviewed notes I had made some months earlier about various issues that needed ‘addressing.’ I began to notice that each one evidenced a distortion of the gospel. With encouragement from my T4G brothers—and the Capitol Hill Baptist congregation—I worked and reworked the material until I felt I got close to saying what I wanted to say. I wanted to get evangelicals talking about what the gospel is exactly” (pp. 13–14).

Chapter 5: The Curse Motif of the Atonement (Sproul). Message audio. Dever: “R.C. Sproul brought to the conference what many felt was the most devotionally rich meditation on the sacrifice of Christ. And he did it by meditating upon the curse motif in the Old Testament! In his own inimitable conversational style, with wide learning and profound biblical understanding, R.C. took us on a tour of Old Testament practices, verbally painting scenes before our eyes. Again and again, as we stared into the depth of those practices, we began to see the cross of Christ more and more clearly until, well, let me simply encourage you to read what I heard many call ‘the best I've ever heard R.C.’ And, I promise—it's not R.C. you'll be glorifying when you're done” (p. 14).

Chapter 6: Why They Hate It So: The Denial of Substitutionary Atonement in Recent Theology (Mohler). Message audio. Dever: “This conference in many ways was birthed out of our concern that the atonement is being misconceived and mistaught in too many evangelical books and churches. It was Al who decided to wade into the sea of literature and explain to us what has happened. With a mastery of the literature that is both exceptional and yet typical of our well-read friend, he led us to see the lines of misunderstanding—of attack—that have been laid down against Christ's death being in the place of sinners. His conference message, now here in print, should serve as a guide to the literature and, even more fundamentally, to thinking carefully about the atoning work of Christ” (p. 14).

Chapter 7: How Does the Supremacy of Christ Create Radical Christian Sacrifice? A Meditation on the Book of Hebrews (Piper). Message audio. Dever: “The last day of the conference, John Piper brought the cross into our own lives and ministries. He posed the question, ‘How does the supremacy of Christ create radical Christian sacrifice?’ Looking through the last few chapters of Hebrews, John called for us to live radical lives so as to have radical ministries. He called us to be God's men. He called us to be certain that in such a ministry suffering will come” (p. 15).

Chapter 8: Sustaining the Pastor's Soul (Mahaney). Message audio. Dever: “The final message was once again given by the conference pastor C.J. Mahaney. C.J. preached a wonderful message titled ‘Sustaining the Pastor's Soul.’ He presented Paul as an example of one who suffered without complaint and served with obvious joy, regardless of the circumstances. And he called us to be ‘happy pastors,’ too. What was it he repeatedly said? ‘How striking that the one with the most responsibility was the one with the most joy.’….Even though this message appears as the book's last chapter, if you're a pastor and feeling particularly pressed, let me suggest that you begin there” (pp. 15–16).

Proclaiming a Cross-Centered Theology is a follow-up to the first volume, Preaching the Cross (Crossway, 2007), which developed out of the messages delivered at the 2006 T4G conference.

There are regularly more stories of God’s grace in Sovereign Grace churches than we have space to tell. It seems each month new ministry opportunities continue to develop around the United States and in various countries around the world. Recently C.J. recorded a video to provide a brief overview of a few of the latest developments and give a shout out to all those who make it possible. You can view the update from C.J in this eight-minute video:

A Debt of Gratitude from Sovereign Grace Ministries on Vimeo. HT: Citygate Films.

Note: This film forms one piece of our 2009 Mission Presentation. Two of this year’s films are available online. To view the other film (“Kingdom Life: Bahamas”), see this post from last week.

For more Mission Presentation films from this year (or previous years) click here.