A Year in Review: From Student to Intern

The last year has been a time of growth and transition.  In May I graduated with my B.A. in Biblical and Theological Studies from Boyce College.  This achievement signaled a changing of seasons.  I made a distinct move away from academia and toward what I would call gospel-community care.  This transition was obviously caused in part by my educational exodus, but the role of my immediate gospel-community in this transition cannot be overemphasized.

When I say I have moved towards gospel-community care, I mean I’ve moved my time and resources towards intentional and structural leading, care, and counseling for those in my immediate gospel-community.  What I call gospel-community I speak of the church writ small; the gathered group of believers that meets at 930 Mary St. and goes by the name of Sojourn Community Church.

Over the last two years I have loved, learned, and served with these brothers and sisters.  My ability to serve increased this year when I was asked to come on as a Sojourn Intern under over our Pastor of Group Life, Chad Lewis.

I started in August and have grown exponentially in knowledge of both my personal and ministerial shortcomings.  I’ve been blessed with a church whose leaders are not afraid to challenge one with hard responsibilities, all the while being willing to help me learn through these.  As of now my primary avenues of responsibility lay with helping lead our Recovery Ministry as well as helping a dear friend and deacon over our College Community Groups in thinking through how to best reach and minister to college students in Louisville.  I’ve also been helping with baptism interviews; the necessity of my help in this a testimony to the Lord’s work in our community.  A few weeks ago we baptized 13 and have at least 7 we are meeting with to talk about getting baptized in two weeks!

As an intern there is a line that I must walk carefully.

On one side of the line is the temptation to think that I’m the next best thing for Sojourn, a hot-shot know-it-all fresh out of bible college with his bible degree and unique exegetical genius.  My self-justifying mind can easily run wild:  ”I’ve served my dues in “medial” ministry at Sojourn, led community groups and deserve to be listened to.”  On one hand this is hard because like all breathing people, I enjoy spending my spare time thinking higher of myself than I ought.  On the other hand however, I’m surrounded by men and women who are more gifted than me in experience and knowledge.  My experience of failure also keeps me humble and grounded.

On the other side of the line is the temptation to think that I have nothing to offer.  I’m tempted to think that my ideas are worthless and that no one wants to here what I have to say.  Let’s be honest, while I might be tempted to think of myself higher than I ought, the other pastors, staff, and members of Sojourn see a 23 year-old with little to no life or ministerial experience.  What could I offer to men so experienced and gifted?  Once again this is easy to think on one hand because of all the gifted and experienced men and women I’m around every week.  On the other hand its hard because these same men and women listen to me.

The gospel humility shown from my peers and mentors is refreshing.  They understand that (to steal from Schaeffer) there are no little people in the kingdom of God.

So this line is what I’ll be walking for the next four months.  This blog will hopefully be an outlet for stories, thoughts, frustrations, and questions I’ve gathered along the journey.  I would enjoy your prayers and encouragement as I walk this line, all the while preparing myself to be a godly husband to my now fiancee Sara.  (Jan. 16th!)

Shalom,

Matt

O that Dickens. . .

As was his niche, Dickens’ eloquent prose describes what we all feel and desire. . . redemption for this broken world.

“To the eye it is fair enough, here; but seen in its integrity, under the sky, and by the daylight, it is a crumbling tower of waste, mismanagement, extortion, debt, mortgage, oppression, hunger, nakedness, and suffering.”

“Hah!” said the Marquis again, in a well-satisfied manner.

“If it ever becomes mine, it shall be put into some hands better qualified to free it slowly (if such a thing is possible) from the weight that drags it down, so that the miserable people who cannot leave it and who have been long wrung to the last point of endurance, may, in another generation, suffer less; but it is not for me. There is a curse on it, and on all this land.”

- Book Two, Chapter 9

image:Phiz (Halbot K. Browne) Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities All the Year Round (July 1859), No. 2.

What Theological Camps do I Fall in?

So I guess this just means I’m confused:

What’s your theological worldview? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Reformed Evangelical You are a Reformed Evangelical. You take the Bible very seriously because it is God’s Word. You most likely hold to TULIP and are sceptical about the possibilities of universal atonement or resistible grace. The most important thing the Church can do is make sure people hear how they can go to heaven when they die. Reformed Evangelical 86% Neo orthodox 82% Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 75% Emergent/Postmodern 71% Fundamentalist 46% Roman Catholic 39% Classical Liberal 25% Charismatic/Pentecostal 25% Modern Liberal 0%

Legit “Christian” Music

From one of my favorites, Andrew Osenga:

New SBJT, Harold Best at Sojourn, & G.K. Beale Resources

• The Spring 2008 edition of the SBJT (Southern Baptist Journal of Theology) was just released today.

The Journal articles include:

• • Editoral: Stephen J. Wellum, “Reflection on the Kingdom of God”
  • Graeme Goldsworthy, “The Kingdom of God as Hermeneutic Grid”
  • Peter J. Gentry, “Kingdom Through Covenant: Humanity as the Divine Image”
  • Jonathan T. Pennington, “The Kingdom of Heaven in the Gospel of Matthew”
  • Brian Vickers, “The Kingdom of God in Paul’s Gospel”
  • Russell D. Moore and Robert E. Sagers, “The Kingdom of God and the Church: A Baptist Reassessment”
  • Todd L. Miles, “A Kingdom without a King? Evaluating the Kingdom Ethic(s) of the Emerging Church”
  • The SBJT Forum

The articles linked can be viewed online in PDF format; to inquire about getting the entire journal e-mail journaloffice@sbts.edu

• Harold Best, former emeritus professor of music and dean emeritus of the Wheaton College Conservatory of Music, will be lecturing at Sojourn Community Church as a part of their Cultivate Beauty art and film festival. Dr. Best is a renown lecturer, artist and author of the books, Unceasing Worship and Music Through the Eyes of Faith. (HT: Sojourn Music)

• The guys at Christians in Context provided a really neat link to some resources by G.K. Beale on Revelation and Biblical theology which also includes a list of good books on the topics.

Tax Return and Booksale, not a good combo.

The title says it all; I picked up one of the new personal size single-column ESVs and the other stuff below. Pretty excited about it. I think I’m going to post another one of my papers up on the papers page as well. Classes are over and finals are next week, praise the Lord.

Spring Break

So I posted my spring break plans on Carver 319; I’m pretty excited about it.

Paperage

I posted a portion of my paper from my Adv. Herm. class on the Carver 319 blog.  The whole thing is on the Articles page there.

p.s.  School makes it hard to blog.

Carver 319

Hey guys, the community blog that I’m a part of, Carver 319, just went through a little bit of a facelift, so go check it out.

I also have a new post on there which is hopefully the first in a series of posts on the New Perspective on Paul.  The post is titled: ”From the Old Covenant to the New:  1st Century Judaism and Paul’s Understanding of Salvation (Pt. 1).”

There have also been rumors of a vodcast coming from Carver 319. . . we’ll see what happens.

Resurgence Vodcast, It isn’t a fishing reel, but it is really good.

    Just recently I began re-watching a Video Podcast (or Vodcast for the cutting edge tech-geeks out there) put out by Resurgence. By their own proclamation, “Resurgence is a movement that resources multiple generations to live for Jesus so that they can effectively reach their cities with the gospel by staying culturally accessible and biblically faithful.” I would recommend three lectures given by Tim Keller at the Reform and Resurge conference in 2006 entitled “Being the Church in our Culture,” “Preaching the Gospel,” and “Doing Justice.” Tim Keller has a gift of speaking with prophetic clarity about the church’s role in culture today. His ministry and lectures are always Gospel-saturated, challenging the church to rethink the way we preach and do ministry and helping us to remain faithful to Scripture’s focus on the good news proclaimed in Jesus Christ. The Resurgence vodcasts can be seen here, or subscribed to by their iTunes podcast. I would also recommend to you the videos (or audio) from the latest conference put on by Resurgence entitled “Continuous Worship.” I’ve listened to one of the lectures by Harold Best, author of Unceasing Worship and former dean of the Conservatory of Worship at Wheaton College, entitled “Continuous Worship: Jesus the Sole Mediator of Worship and the Helplessness of Music.” The lecture was incredibly convicting. I’ll leave you with Best’s closing comment:

There is a thing called musical gluttony in worship, where we just over-music, too much in the diet and we have this kind of theological cholesterol that clogs the veins through which the blood of true worship should flow and continuous worship with no high point anywhere except as the Holy Spirit chooses to bring it down.