Many of you have kindly inquired about my leave of absence and how I will be spending my time during this season. Before I give you an update, I want to take this moment to thank each of you who have expressed your encouragement and your support in prayer.
Some of you have asked where I will be attending church during my leave. That’s a good question, as it’s not uncommon for pastors to take a leave in a church that is away from their home congregations, and this seems wise. During my leave of absence I will be attending Capitol Hill Baptist Church where Mark Dever is the senior pastor. After seeking counsel about this decision, I’ve concluded that this is the best place for Carolyn and me to receive care and counsel, to examine my life and leadership, and to consider my future during this season of reflection. I want to learn all I can during this season, and I pray that this time will benefit not only me but Sovereign Grace as well.
Mark and I have a rich history of friendship. I met Mark thirteen years ago and since then we have become very close friends. Mark has been not only a unique friend but also a mentor to me. I want to continue to take advantage of our friendship and his mentoring as much as possible during this time, benefiting from Mark’s unique pastoral wisdom and his gift of leadership. I am deeply grateful for his kindness and this opportunity. Actually, other than my wife Carolyn and those with whom I have served closely in Sovereign Grace Ministries, no one has had more influence on my life in the last ten years than Mark.
This leave of absence from my role as president of SGM will allow me the time necessary to process the valuable feedback I have received (and continue to receive), and to devote time to consider how I can best serve Sovereign Grace Ministries in the future. I’m seeking and benefiting from the advice of the SGM board and a number of leaders in the broader church—men I admire and who have become my friends over the years. I am approaching this task without making any assumptions or presuming upon any particular outcome. By God’s grace and the kindness of these men I am not lacking wise counsel as I seek to discern the will of God about how I might most effectively serve when this leave of absence concludes.
So for those who have kindly asked, I hope this information is helpful. I deeply appreciate the encouragement and support of so many at this time. I simply do not know how to adequately express this, but I trust you feel my deep gratefulness for your support. And I would appreciate your prayers, given the importance of the decisions before me and their impact on Sovereign Grace Ministries, the pastors I respect the most and the people of our churches for whom I have the deepest affection.
Finally, many of you know that this spring Dave Harvey, Jeff Purswell, and I were invited to speak at a pastors conference in the Dominican Republic. We are currently in Santo Domingo and the conference (Por Su Causa 2011) begins tomorrow morning. Please pray for us and for this very strategic conference. Earlier, during this same trip Jeff and I, along with Al Pino, visited the pastors that Sovereign Grace Ministries are honored to serve in Cuba. I was deeply humbled by the men and women I met, all of whom display remarkable joy and trust in God. I believe we will be sharing more about this trip on the Plant & Build blog later. In the meantime, please pray for our friends in Cuba and the Dominican Republic and for our friend Al Pino, who represents Sovereign Grace in our work with these remarkable saints. Please pray that Christ would be glorified in their midst and the gospel would go forth in these countries.
With gratefulness,
C.J.
June 22, 2011 by C.J. Mahaney
Categories: Conferences | Sermons
I appreciated and benefitted from all the messages at the Next 2011 conference in Orlando. I would encourage you to set aside some time to listen to all of the messages (you’ll find the main sessions here and the breakout sessions here). But if listening to all these messages is not possible, I would particularly commend Kevin DeYoung’s message, “Who Am I? Humanity in the Eyes of the World and the Christian.”
Kevin structured his message to answer five important questions about ourselves:
- Are we here by chance or by design?
- Are we free to create ourselves or to reflect God's image?
- Are we basically good or fundamentally flawed?
- Are we ethically excusable or morally culpable?
- Are we destined for a happy heaven or a blessed extinction, or are we on the way to heaven or hell?
Kevin summarized his conclusions to these questions like this:
Here are two views of the human person:
According to the world we are here by chance, free to create our own self, basically good, ethically excusable, and destined for a happy heaven or a blessed extinction.
According to God we are here by design, created to reflect God’s image, fundamentally flawed, morally culpable, and destined to worship God in heaven or face his wrath in hell.
You can listen to the whole message here.
Over the next couple of days on the blog I plan to post a few choice excerpts from Kevin’s message.
April 15, 2011 by C.J. Mahaney
Categories: Conferences
From the time I entered public ministry 37 years ago, I was attending conferences. The sum total of conference messages I’ve heard and taught—by my rough estimate—is somewhere near 1 gazillion (which is 1,000 zillions).
Some conferences were average, some good, and some excellent. But Next is special. Here are a few reasons why.
First, the Next conference was designed, and is very effectively led by Josh Harris and Grant Layman, to reinforce several important, theologically informed objectives for college students and young adults. These include transferring the gospel to the next generation, reinforcing sound doctrine, building a biblical worldview, spreading a passion for the local church, and encouraging personal evangelism.
The Psalmist captures the priority of entrusting the gospel to those coming after us: “One generation shall commend your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts” (Psalm 145:4). At my age, whatever remaining moments, days, years, decades I have left, I want to represent one generation commending the works of God—and in particular the gospel—to another generation.
Benefits of the Conference
And there are plenty of immediate benefits to the conference as well. In my experience, young adults who attend the conference will experience God’s nearness during corporate worship, the gift of illumination during each sermon, and opportunities to cultivate friendships with other young adults.
Preaching is a priority at this conference (as it should be). The preaching at this conference is excellent. It makes an immediate impact and has an enduring effect, too. Although world-class teachers are invited to address those at the conference, the conference leaders recognize and express their appreciation for local pastors—those who are doing the most important work. The conference is carefully designed not to build young men and women into well-known speakers, but to build them into their pastors and their local church.
Next and the Local Church
The effects of the conference continue as young adults return home from Orlando, inspired to invest in their local churches. And that is why, when I was pastoring Covenant Life Church, I used the New Attitude/Next conference strategically. I viewed this event as a unique opportunity for college students and young adults in the church to be equipped to serve the church. So I did all I could to inspire them to attend, knowing the difference this conference would make in their lives and the life of the church.
I would encourage pastors to announce this conference, feature this conference, encourage all to attend this conference, and find ways of supporting young adults in their churches who are limited financially from attending.
The Next conference will not only prove formative in the souls of those who attend, but will also transfer the gospel to the next generation, and I think you will find it to be a fruitful investment in the future of your church.
The Next conference runs May 28–31 in Orlando, Florida. For more information, see the website: http://www.thisisnext.org/
I would recommend all of the messages at our recent Plant conference. But I would recommend that you get started by listening to the excellent message by my good friend Mark Dever titled, “The Great Commission and Church Planting” (Matthew 28:16-20). The message will help you understand the relation between the Great Commission and church planting.
The message was dense in content and Mark’s rate of speech was, as it normally is, warp speed. I’m saying you cannot comprehend all this with a single listen. But you can try by downloading the message here.
I doubt a single listen will be sufficient.
And here are a few notes and an outline that may help you follow along:
The Great Commission and Church Planting (Matthew 28:16-20)
Mark Dever
March 25, 2011
Plant Conference (Glen Mills, PA)
Introduction: “I want to pose six questions to help us think about the Great Commission and church planting.”
Question 1: How are we to fulfill the Great Commission? “A true church is marked by the right preaching of the Word of God, and the right administration of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and the preaching of the gospel. In the lives of those baptized and coming to the Lord’s Supper then a corporate witness begins to appear. A church is planted as people begin to see this group of people as followers of Jesus.”
Question 2: What is the big picture? “We find that the big picture in the Bible, from Israel to the redeemed in heaven, seem to show us a pattern of God wanting to be known as faithful and having community around him which knows him and praises him as one who is faithful and just and true.”
Question 3: What has God done? “So God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is involved in church planting far more profoundly than any person in this room will ever be involved in church planting—far more profoundly than the Apostle Paul was involved in church planting! The church is not something which in the most fundamental sense is a human idea or a human creation, but it is fundamentally God’s idea and God’s work. This is what he is about. God is a great church planter.”
Question 4: What did the apostles understand? “Friends, the sort of church-centered ministry where you go out and evangelize, but you do it specifically with the hope and trust and understanding that God intends to bring these Christians back together in local churches, is what this book of Acts is full of.…The New Testament shows the Great Commission being fulfilled by church planting.”
Question 5: What does that mean for us? “Here are eight practical exhortations and implications aimed at pastors of churches:”
- Focus your mission efforts on church planting.
- Consider who you are sending out.
- Consider what you have trained them to do.
- Consider how you are going to support them.
- Build into your church culture a desire to see the kingdom of God expand in your area and beyond.
- Encourage other evangelical church planters around you.
- Consider reclaiming existing churches.
- Pray for the spread of healthy churches.
Here are five things I want to build into the culture of our church:
- Discipleship
- Personal evangelism
- Missions
- A desire to strengthen other churches broadly
- A desire to encourage gospel growth in my own area
Question 6: What is our goal in fulfilling the Great Commission? “The glory of God in the church.”
Conclusion: “The local church is where the authority of Christ is exercised. The local church is where disciples are made and baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. The local church is where Christians are taught to obey everything Jesus commanded us. To this end, Christ promised us his Spirit until he returns. And so we see that church planting is the normal business of the local church. The Great Commission is normally fulfilled through church planting.”
John Loftness is among the finest pastors I know. Between 1981 and 2007 he pastored at Covenant Life Church. I treasure the time of service with John over those years and I am deeply grateful for his friendship that continues to this day.
In 2007 John became the senior pastor of Solid Rock Church (Riverdale, MD). So what was it like moving from a church of a couple thousand to a church of 200? John talked about the transition to a smaller church, and the advantages of a small church, in his message at our recent Pastors Conference: “The Advantage of the Small Church.”
John identified three specific advantages:
- Small forces you to focus on the fundamentals, but with flexibility.
- Small allows you to build one interconnected community.
- Small allows you to expand.
Here are few selected quotes from the message:
“What is a small church? I don’t think it is about numbers. I think it is about relationships. A small church is a church in which every member is able to participate personally with every other member.”
“My purpose is not to advocate for small churches or to label large churches as inherently bad. Both have their strengths and their weaknesses. I am here to address small church pastors. And here is my big point: In a large church the opportunity is excellence, but the challenge is relationships. In a small church the challenge is excellence, but the opportunity is relationships.”
“Small church pastor, my advice to you is to see that your church—by virtue of its size—has tremendous advantages that allow it to further Jesus’ mission in the world. You can build a God-glorifying, gospel-proclaiming community of interdependent people who bear fruit in the world for Jesus. You can do it with wonderful fruitfulness. You are in no way hindered from effectiveness because you are lacking in people or in certain qualities of excellence. Exploit your relational advantages. And in the meantime I would urge you to drop any program-driven, large-church-wannabe mentality that may be filling your dreams.”
I highly recommend John’s message to any pastor of a small church.
And I highly recommend John’s message to any pastor of a large church. John will help you think carefully and theologically about how you build.
Download and listen to the message here.
November 4, 2010 by Tony Reinke
Categories: Conferences
Our annual Pastors Conference concludes this evening. The following is a compiled list of resources that have been mentioned by C.J. throughout the conference:
- All of the conference audio recordings will be posted on our Plant & Build blog. Many of those messages are already online. See here.
- Os Guinness's book on doubt. Formerly titled In Two Minds: The Dilemma of Doubt and How to Resolve It (IVP, 1976), the book is still in print under a new title, God in the Dark: The Assurance of Faith beyond a Shadow of Doubt (Crossway, 1996). For an introduction to this book, see C.J.'s blog post here.
- B.B. Warfield's article on doubt. The article appears in his Select Shorter Writings (P&R, 2001), 2:655–659. Download the brief article here (pdf).
- John Newton’s letter "On Controversy." This important letter doesn’t appear in the two Newton volumes distributed at the conference, but it can be read online here.
If you attended the Pastors Conference, thank you for joining us. We are praying for safe travels as you return home.
September 28, 2010 by C.J. Mahaney
Categories: Church planting | Conferences
A little over 25 years ago we at Covenant Life Church had the privilege of sending out a group of friends to plant a new church in the Philadelphia area. Little did we know that the church would grow and mature and plant a number of other churches around Philly and beyond. Now that church, Covenant Fellowship Church, is hosting Sovereign Grace Ministries' first church-planting conference—PLANT!
We have been planting churches for decades but we have always wanted to learn from others and improve. Over the years we have learned many things, made plenty of mistakes, and experienced much grace in our humble attempts to advance the gospel through church planting.
But we still have much to learn, which is why we packed this conference with church-planting thinkers from a variety of movements and denominations who each bring significant experience to the mission of the gospel.
My friend Dave Harvey (director of church planting and church care in Sovereign Grace) will be speaking along with Darrin Patrick, Mark Dever, Tim Witmer, Mike McKinley, Daniel Montgomery, Shai Linne, Pete Greasley, and Craig Cabaniss. I will also be speaking.
If you dream about church planting, if you’re doing church planting, or if you are supporting church planting, I think you will benefit from the conference. Come join us in Pennsylvania on March 24–26 for PLANT! and learn with us.
======================
Here are the conference details:
Name: PLANT!
Date: March 24-26, 2011
Location: Covenant Fellowship Church, Glen Mills, PA
Cost: $99/person
Purpose: To gather church planters, pastors, and anyone interested in church planting, inside and outside of Sovereign Grace Ministries, for the purpose of inspiring, teaching, and equipping for church planting. This includes young men in high school, college, or seminary who are interested in church planting, as well as pastoral teams who want to build church-planting churches, and members of churches who want to explore being part of a church-planting team some day.
General-session speakers:
- Darrin Patrick (Acts 29)
- Mark Dever (9Marks)
- C.J. Mahaney
- Dave Harvey
Breakout sessions:
- The Importance of Preaching in Church Planting • Tim Witmer | Associate Professor, Westminster Theological Seminary
- How to Plant an Evangelistic Church • Pete Greasley | senior pastor, Christchurch, Newport, Wales
- How to Build a Church-Planting Church • Craig Cabaniss | senior pastor, Grace Church, Frisco, TX
- Replanting! • Mike McKinley | author, Church Planting Is for Wimps
- Way Finding: A Map for Planting Your Church without Losing Your Soul • Daniel Montgomery | senior pastor, Sojourn Community Church
- Engaging the Urban Context with the Gospel • Shai Linne
Concert:
Shai Linne will perform Friday night.
Registration:
Register at www.sgmplant.org
Early registration: September 14, 2010–December 14, 2010
Regular registration: December 15, 2010–March 15, 2011
The conference is giving away prizes every two weeks to early registrants. By registering early, you are entered to win. Prizes include an iPad, books, and a free hotel stay at the conference. Winners are chosen randomly. See the website for more info.
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Related links:
- Dave Harvey, video, “What Makes the Great Commission Great?”
- Dave Harvey, blog series, “Patience, Pace, and Church Planting” (parts 1, 2, 3, 4)
- Toby Kurth, audio, “Church Planting in Urban San Francisco”
- Dave Harvey, interview, “Lessons from an Urban Church-Planting Dude” (parts 1, 2)
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