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.

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Photo source: Southern Seminary Communications

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Did Paul preach the gospel of Jesus?

Dr. John Piper sought to answer this question during his general session at the recent T4G conference. 

At one point Piper connected the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18:9–14 to Paul’s testimony in Philippians 3:4–9. Piper says, “When we listen to Paul in Philippians 3:4–9 we are tempted to think he was the Pharisee in Jesus’s parable in Luke 18:9–14.”

Read them for yourself:

Jesus (Luke 18:9–12):

He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’

Paul (Philippians 3:4–6):

If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

Jesus (Luke 18:13–14):

But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Paul (Philippians 3:7–9):

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.


Paul preached the gospel of Jesus because it was the gospel of Jesus that had forever changed his life.



Piper’s entire T4G message—“Did Jesus Preach Paul’s Gospel?”—can be read, listened to, or viewed online here:


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It can be awkward, but only sometimes. It happens in certain conversations with other church-planting guys whenever the topic turns to vision for the future. Usually it goes something like this.

Church-planting guy (not me): So how many churches would you Sovereign Grace guys like to plant over the next ten years?

Me: Mumble, mumble, mumble… (sounds of me stuffing chips in my mouth to avoid answering)

Church-planting guy: We’re believing God for thousands of churches planted over the next few months. We’re calling it maniacal multiplication. So how many churches do you guys have right now?

Me (having no more chips to protect me): About 80, or maybe it’s 90—I forget exactly.

CPG: Wow, that’s great. How long have you guys been planting?

Me: Since “We Are the World” came out.

CPG: Wow, that’s incredible.

Me: The first one.

CPG (doing math in his head): Oh…I’ll pray for you dude.

End of conversation. Awkward.

Let me say something at the outset here. First of all, I am so grateful that there are church-planting groups who love the Savior and love the lost so much that they are willing to take the risks and send men so that many gospel-preaching churches can be planted quickly. That’s bigtime faith! And make no mistake, it’s being hurled at a bigtime need. I have no doubt God will bless those efforts. But as much as I’d like to see Sovereign Grace churches so widely and thickly planted that you couldn’t spit from a freeway without hitting one, that isn’t what God is calling us to. At least for now.

Since our inception, we’ve had a clear sense from the Holy Spirit that we were called to be slow and patient builders. That was crucial because we were trying to sort out who we were, and therefore what we were trying to build. Had we exported quickly, we could’ve really wreaked havoc. And back in the day, church planting was kind of an odd thing anyway—old as the New Testament, but not really something people talked a lot about. You didn’t have churches and denominations dedicated to it—and no websites helping you learn how it’s done.

When it came to church planting, what mattered to us was that real, solid, gospel-loving, local churches would bloom. Churches that had shared values, relational connection with each other, and common purpose. We didn’t want to plant churches and walk away from them, or have them walk away from us. We call ourselves a family of churches because that’s what we’ve been. We wanted to build slow and plant slow because we wanted every church to apply the gospel and be a healthy contributor to the mission of church planting for years to come. We’ve made tons of mistakes along the way, but that’s what we’ve tried to do.

Slow and patient doesn’t come easy to us. In fact a little over a year ago, the Sovereign Grace leadership team went on a retreat to revisit a familiar question: How aggressive should we be in planting churches? We talked about ways we could expand more rapidly without diluting what makes us distinct. We asked, “How do we take advantage of the growing number of opportunities that are coming our way from both inside and outside of Sovereign Grace Ministries (and increasingly this includes genuine possibilities beyond the U.S.), without compromising the quality of care for leaders and churches in Sovereign Grace?”

As a result of this retreat, we came back more firmly committed than ever to being as aggressive and creative as we can to plant churches—we want to plant tons of churches! But we also realized that the Lord had deeply ingrained in us some clear values that would act as governors to control the rate of our growth.

What do I mean by a governor? Growing up, our family vacations always took us to the Jersey shore. It was a kind of religious pilgrimage; my family held a deep-seated belief that the ocean summoned us. The beach town where we stayed had go-karts, which loops us back to governors. A governor is a device that regulates the speed of the go-kart engine. It caps acceleration, controlling how fast the go-karts fly around the track. To a ten-year-old, governors stink. To the parent who pays for health care, they rock.

What’s interesting is that the purpose of the governor was to go slower than what the engine might ultimately allow. To go-kart track owners, other values like safety, passenger protection, and bloodless family times were important. Speed was sacrificed so other values could be promoted.

We didn’t consult a go-kart mechanic on this one, but as a movement we at Sovereign Grace Ministries saw that to remain healthy and to endure, we needed governors of our own. Don’t get me wrong; we love growth. But rapid growth could not come at the sacrifice of other values we hold dear—values that make us who we are.

So here’s where I’m driving this. In a couple of upcoming blogs, I want to pop the hood on Sovereign Grace church planting and check out the governors. I think it might be great to understand some things that help us grow at the pace that God would have us grow…and still remain Sovereign Grace Ministries.

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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.

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How does a pastor prepare a church for suffering?

This was one question addressed at the recent T4G conference in Louisville. Jointly, C.J. and Matt Chandler provided answers to this often-neglected pastoral topic.

C.J. opened the session with a brief explanation of why this topic is critical in the life of the local church. He then invited Matt to share the story of the Thanksgiving Day seizure that led to his hospitalization, the discovery of a mass in his brain, and his surgery eight days later to remove a portion of his right frontal lobe. Before the 7,000 attendees Chandler recounted this unexpected and frightening time of his life and looked back at God's grace in the midst of his recent suffering.

What sustained me through it all? Where did I find my feet landing over and over again? In the doctrines, in the theology, and in the beauty and magnificence of Christ and his salvation. There my feet could rest and there I had the ability to put my confidence in him and him alone. This has had ripple effects in the Village Church, which has had ripple effects in the evangelical community at large, where men and women who have not theologically lined up with necessarily where I am and where my heart is, all of the sudden are drawn in and want to have discussions around the beauty of God’s sovereign will.

Matt's testimony and example were moving. Later, when reflecting on Matt's role at the conference, C.J. said, "God's grace is evident in Matt's life in a profound way. His personal example of trusting God in the midst of severe suffering is compelling. I experienced this with Matt in private conversation at the conference and I think everyone experienced it as he shared publicly. His time with us was unforgettable and it will serve conference participants in an enduring way, long after the other conference messages are only a distant memory." 



C.J. followed Matt's segment, briefly addressing an important question: How do pastors provide this foundation for their people before suffering arrives? In the remaining time allotted for the session, C.J. encouraged pastors to consider five points:


1. Prepare your church for suffering through the preaching diet. For the task C.J. commended the books of Job, Habakkuk, and 1 Peter.
2. Draw your church's attention to living illustrations of people suffering well in the church.
3. Develop a curriculum of supplemental books, chapters, articles, and audio messages on the topic. C.J. recommended:
   • D.A. Carson, How Long, O Lord? Reflections on Suffering and Evil
   • John Piper’s sermon series “Treasuring Christ and the Call to Suffer” (parts 1, 2, 3, 4, Q/A)
     
   • Joni Eareckson Tada and Steve Estes, When God Weeps: Why Our Sufferings Matter to the Almighty
   • Jerry Bridges, Trusting God: Even When Life Hurts
   • David Powlison, “God’s Grace and Your Sufferings,” a chapter in Suffering and the Sovereignty of God
   • C.H. Spurgeon, Beside Still Waters: Words of Comfort for Your Soul
4. Point your church to the suffering Savior in the gospel. C.J.: “The great mystery is not why do I suffer? The great mystery is why would the sinless Son of God suffer as my substitute on the cross for my sins, receiving the wrath that I deserve, so that I might be forgiven and declared righteous?”
5. When suffering arrives, be at their side. C.J.: "By God’s grace, when we care for people in the midst of suffering, they will never forget the difference we make. Their gratefulness will be deep and it will be profound and it will be unending."

   

The 50-minute session is available as an mp3 download and a video on Vimeo. You can watch the entire session here:

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The nine main sessions from last week’s Together for the Gospel conference are now online. Those main sessions can be downloaded as mp3 audio files here and they can be viewed here:

General Session 1:

“The Church Is the Gospel Made Visible”

Mark Dever

General Session 2:

“The Defense and Confirmation of the Gospel — What I Have Learned in 50 Years”

R.C. Sproul

General Session 3:

“How Does It Happen? Trajectories toward an Adjusted Gospel”

Albert Mohler

General Session 4:

“‘Fine-Sounding Arguments’ — How Wrongly ‘Engaging the Culture’ Adjusts the Gospel”

Thabiti Anyabwile

General Session 5:

“The Theology of Sleep! (Mark 4)”

John MacArthur

General Session 6:

“Did Jesus Preach Paul’s Gospel?”

John Piper

General Session 7:

“Did the Fathers Know the Gospel?”

Ligon Duncan

General Session 8:

“Preparing Your Church for Suffering”

C.J. Mahaney with special guest Matt Chandler

General Session 9:

“Ordinary Pastors”

C.J. Mahaney

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If you want some serious encouragement, check this out. Remember those small churches in south central Burma I posted about a few weeks ago? We recently received another email from David, the Pastors College student I talked about in that post. He sent some further prayer requests, and included a few photos from these remote churches that are safe to share online.

David writes,

Believers continue to meet faithfully even in the midst of some severe pressure….Our church plant in the Delta continues to witness to the gospel to the…people and many more families send their children to our preschool, even though the majority of these parents initially rejected us. Our churches in [another region] also continue to witness some growth.

Please continue to pray for [our church-planting center]. Many of these works are now taken up by…senior students. We now begin to see the fruit of the training we provided.

Believers meet in a house church

A local pastor prays

Praying for fellow believers

Will you pray with us for these brothers and sisters in Christ? Please pray that the gospel will continue to advance in Burma. Pray for wisdom and boldness for David and the pastors he works with. Pray that many would be saved to the glory of God.

If you’d like to support Sovereign Grace Ministries’ work outside the U.S., you can make a designated gift by clicking here.

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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.

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As this blog post gets published, I’m hopping on a flight (along with about 7,000 others) to the Together for the Gospel conference. Maybe you’ll be there too. But while we’re enjoying three packed days of teaching, nestled in hotel and air-conditioned meeting spaces, let’s not forget to pray for pastors who serve in challenging places outside the U.S. Some of these guys may never attend conferences like this.



For example, we recently heard from some pastors that we work with in south Asia. Would you join us in praying for them?
 


India



Our friend Wilson leads a network of around 350 churches in western and northern India. The pastors of these churches are boldly preaching the gospel of Christ in many settings, from remote rural villages to the slums of a fast-growing industrial city. Some of them have been imprisoned, or beaten, or seen their church buildings torched. But you know what? They are seeing conversions and many churches are multiplying. One pastor reports that 20 people are meeting weekly; another church has 24 people who usually attend, four of whom are not yet believers. Other pastors are spearheading a children’s education program in a slum area, in partnership with a church there that now has 60 believers.
 


Wilson also leads a school for pastoral ministry. In December, he hosted pastors Greg Gill (Grace Community Church, Kingsville, MD) and Joel Rishel (Sovereign Grace Church, Joppa, MD) to teach a week-long session on biblical leadership and pastoral ministry. Sixty pastors from eight Indian states attended the course. Now that may not seem like a large crowd compared to T4G, but this “small” class in western India was equally strategic. It provided not only pastoral equipping in gospel truths, but also an opportunity for these pastors to be encouraged through fellowship with each other. 



Sri Lanka

For several years we’ve had the privilege of working with a small number of pastors in Sri Lanka, who together lead more than a dozen churches. Instability in Sri Lanka has made ministry difficult, and the churches are facing persecution. And it’s not just hardship from without; one of these pastors is caring for his wife as she is suffering severely from a terminal illness. 
 


But in spite of these challenges the gospel of Christ is advancing, and churches are growing as people are being saved. For example, an inner-city church was recently planted that already has 60 new believers.


It’s hard to believe we get to partner with leaders throughout the world who are making a vital difference through the gospel. If you’re wondering how you can support their cause, let me offer one simple word: Pray

How to pray



When it comes to prayer, specifics help. So here goes.

Please pray:


• that God would protect believers in India and Sri Lanka and grant them boldness to proclaim the gospel of Christ
• that God would open doors for the gospel among Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims, and that many would put their faith in Christ
• that God would grant wisdom and strength to pastors in India and Sri Lanka
• that stability, peace, and justice would increase in both of these countries
  


Thanks for remembering them by praying with us!
 
If you’d like to support Sovereign Grace Ministries’ work outside the U.S., you can make a designated gift by clicking here.

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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.

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Coming to T4G? Stop by our church-planting booth.
 
As part of Sovereign Grace’s commitment to planting gospel-centered churches, in the last few years we formed a team called the Church Planting Group. As the name implies, this four-person team exists to serve church plants and church planters affiliated with Sovereign Grace Ministries, both in the United States and internationally.
 
This month at Together for the Gospel, the Church Planting Group will be manning a booth for Sovereign Grace Church Planting in the general-session hall. If you’re coming to the conference and have ever considered planting a church through Sovereign Grace Ministries, we invite you to stop by, say hello, and let us answer any questions you have.  
 
In the meantime, you can learn more by visiting the Church Planting section of our website, reading related blog posts, or emailing us.
 
See you in Louisville!

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Urban ministry used to mean the gospel to the gritty city. Urban church planters negotiated crime, poverty, and the realities of the hood. But it’s morphed a bit. Urban can now mean urbane—ministry to the more sophisticated single, cultured upper middle class, or maybe the arts community. I’m not complaining about the expansion in meaning—I’m actually excited about it. Everybody needs the gospel! It’s just good to remember that urban ministry can mean many things.

Do you remember Ian McConnell? You met him in a blog post a couple weeks ago. Ian loves the whole city. There’s not much urbane in his neighborhood, but this guy eats, sleeps and breathes urban church planting. And he’s someone I’m learning from. Check out the rest of this interview where Ian writes about hard-learned lessons of city ministry.

Ian McConnell:

I have learned that incarnational ministry is not an option.

OK, I know that “incarnational” is a buzzword these days, and it can mean a lot of things depending on who you talk to. So let me define it the way I’m talking about it. It simply means that when planting an urban church, dwelling among the people we serve is, in my opinion, a serious “must.” Now ideally, a church could be planted with believers who already live in the urban context. But often urban church planting is pioneering work—bringing a gospel-preaching church to an area where there are few, if any gospel-believing people. Church planters should not be commuters, especially in urban areas. Before we moved, we only lived 15 minutes away from the planting neighborhood, but it might as well have been 50 miles, or even Pluto, because the demographic differences were so significant. Living and indentifying “in the flesh” with those whom you are serving is vital. Here are a few reasons why:

• It removes the “us” and “them” barrier that divides so many people in the city.
• It moves us into close proximity to those who need to see the gospel lived out in “dual communities” (church and neighborhood).
• It provides an opportunity for our homes to be places for ministry rather than places to escape from ministry.
• It reflects the Savior’s approach to be among the people he ministered to in word and deed.
• It models pastoral approachability in a radical way.

I have learned that the value of the church-planting team cannot be underestimated.

The pastoral demands of planting in an urban area are so tremendous that if one man feels the weight of all the preaching, administrating, counseling, making neighborhood contacts, reaching out, leading meetings, and so on, he is in big trouble—and so is his family. I think one of the reasons why so many church plants (urban or not) take a long time to lift off the ground is that the church planter is spread too thin. God has not gifted one man to do all that.

One challenge of developing an urban church-planting team is that you not only need folks who have a vision for the city and a willingness to sacrifice; you also need folks with gifts that can help penetrate the area of the church plant and model what it’s all about. In a sense, the ideal church-planting team member would have a radical commitment to sacrifice, demonstrated gifts of leadership and service, mature wisdom, proven character, and humility to accept a role that serves the purposes of the church. Now you’re starting to think it’s a plant team full of deacons and future elders. But that’s not likely to happen, is it? So a lot of the church-planting pastor’s work focuses on getting to know the folks who want to be part of the team, discerning gifts and maturity level, and strategizing to plant the church with both the strengths and weaknesses of the team (and its pastor) in mind.

It is still so humbling for me when I consider all the people who relocated to be part of the church-plant team at Grace. We had a mixture of people from the city and not from the city who came with a sense of calling to help build our church. Very quickly God was hunting down my pride and giving me grace to delegate responsibilities that I would normally cling to because I thought I could do it better. Delegation at the beginning of a church plant involves a lot of risk, but it’s worth it. As much as the young church needs my leadership, it must never depend solely on my leadership. I was initially afraid to let people make mistakes and grow from them. But God has used both the things we’ve done well, and the mistakes we’ve made, to remind us that this is his church and he loves to work inside our hearts so we can take the gospel outside to the city.

I am learning that even though the urban setting is very different, without exception every person has the same need—the message of the gospel!

I know this is like a “duh!” But I’m afraid that some, without meaning to, act like the gospel isn’t enough. It’s a temptation to think that the various challenges of the urban setting call for such a radically different approach to ministry that we become susceptible to not believing that the gospel is enough or that the proclamation of the gospel isn’t our main responsibility. People in the city often appear to have a lot more sin baggage that takes more time and patience to help them see the radical implications of the gospel. Discipleship in the city can get really messy. People who are typically the exceptions in suburban churches are the norm in the city. Practical needs can scream out in ways that make the fundamental problem of rebellion against God seem small by comparison. And when the gospel seems like a secondary consideration for us, we will never be able to communicate it as the primary consideration to lost and dying people. It really is a challenge to find ways to connect with people in our city neighborhoods, but once we do, they need the same thing that every sinner needs—the sin-forgiving, wrath-removing, life-transforming message of the gospel.

Many things are different in the city, but one thing is always the same—people need the gospel more than anything. And that’s where the city and the church planter always find common ground.

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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.

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