Bad ride home from Bootcamp

The Acts 29 Chicago Bootcamp went really well, but my ride home just sucked. I left Chicago at 2pm, and got home at 10pm...yeah, 8 hours. The weather was terrible (most of Illinois is getting covered with 6-12 inches of snow). I got stuck for 45 minutes on the 55 south exit of off 294. But the worst of it was when I got to Bloomington, a mere hour away from home, I hit a patch of ice, fish tailed all over the highway, and crashed into the concrete wall (on a bridge no less). Here's what my Blazer looks like:

My only thought as I was spinning around was that I didn't want to hit too hard and flip over the wall. And had I hit another 20 or so feet further down the road, I would have hit a metal barrier, smashed through that and would have been down in the hill in a ditch. All in all, my truck got the worst of it. My neck and back are a little sore. Major thanks to my buddy Scott for coming and fetching me and bringing me home to my family.

A29 Bootcamp in very cold Chicago

I'm currently up in Chicago (Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, to be exact) for the Acts 29 Network Bootcamp. What we do is basically provide large-group training, networking opportunities, and assess potential church planters for the Network. It's been a great time being with my A29 brothers and meeting new guys around Illinois who are wrestling through a call to church plant.

Nasty winter weather blew in last night. We saw the temperature drop over 40 degrees yesterday, and winds gusting to over 40 MPH, and got 3 inches of snow. When I woke up this morning, the normal temperature was -1 with a wind chill of -20. When you go to Chicago in January, this is what you get!

I've heard great messages so far from my friends Darrin Patrick, Mark Driscoll, and Ed Stetzer. Mark Dever will be speaking today, as will Mark again, and the A29 director, Scott Thomas will be as well. Within the next month, these message will be posted on the Acts 29 site for your listening pleasure as well.

This is also a good time for a reminder of Delta's church planting vision: 8 church plants in Central Illinois by 2018. We feeled called to be a church planting catalyst in Central Illinois as we seek to train, resource, network, and coach men who want to bring the Gospel to the 217 area code (you can read Mark 2:17 for our inspiration).

Anyway, I've got to warm up and drink a lot of coffee...baby, it's cold outside!

Defeating Idolatry

I'm currently up in Chicago for the Acts 29 Bootcamp...I'll write an update on that in the next day or so.

1 John 5:21 "Little children, keep yourselves from idols."

This past Sunday at Delta we explored idolatry. Idolatry is pretty much anything, anyone, any idealogy, any whatever in your life that takes the place that only Jesus deserves, which is #1. Theologian FF Bruce defines idolatry as:

“[Idols] are false conceptions of God. Any conception of Him that is at variance with His self-revelation in Christ is an idol."

When a person has an idol, he is pretty much settling for something immediate and accesible in order to find happiness and temporal fulfillment. It's basically reaching for something that very well may be good instead of going after what's best. For example, money is a good thing and does bring an amount of happiness to a person's life; but money will never bring the lasting joy that only Jesus provides. But things like money, possessions, relationships, etc are only "surface level" idols - the real idols are deeper. There are four of them:

Comfort – deepest desire is to escape stress, and have freedom
Sensory driven; look to “feelings”…people find comfort in food, possessions, no accountability. If you typically feel bored, comfort may be your deep idol because there’s no risk in your life

Approval – deepest desire is to be affirmed, accepted
Relational driven; look to people…find approval in relationships, respect, lack of conflict. If you typically feel fearful, approval may be your deep idol because you are terrified of rejection and being alone

Control – deepest desire is for self-discipline, certainty, maintaining standards
Authority/mastery driven; self driven, but impose your control on others…find control in your schedule, independence, religion/irreligion. If you typically feel worried, control may be your deep idol because deep down you know you can’t control everything

Power – deepest desire is to succeed, win, be influential
Achievement driven; find power as you’re in charge, your ideology/cause/race/culture has power. If you typically feel angry, power may be your deep idol because you’re just ticked off that there are others in the world that have more influence than you do

The surface level idols are sign posts to the deep idols. And how do you defeat these idols? Paul simply tells us to "flee" from them (1 Corinthians 10:14). But we need to run with purpose and toward a goal: the person of Jesus Christ and his word. Jesus overcame idolatry when tempted by Satan (Matthew 4:8-10). Here are some scriptures to run to in your quest to defeat your idols:

If you have a Comfort idol, take comfort in these truths:

Jeremiah 31:13
2 Corinthians 1:3-4
2 Thessalonians 2:16-17

If you have an Approval idol, find your approval in these truths:

1 Thessalonians 2:4
Hebrews 11:6
Ephesians 2:4-5

If you have a Control idol, remember who is really in control;

2 Corinthians 5:14
Galatians 5:22-23
2 Timothy 1:7
Hebrews 2:8

If you have a Power idol, remember the source of ultimate power

1 Chronicles 29:11
Mark 14:61-62
Acts 1:8
2 Corinthians 10:3-4

God desires for you to have the best - and that's Jesus; not any cheap imitation. Don't settle for cheap happiness...go after true joy.

Happy Birthday Delta!

Today marks the official 1 year birthday of Delta. We launched our Sunday services on January 21, 2007 on a very cold January day (not something I would recommend). Yesterday as we celebrated, it was eerily familiar as the temperature was hovering somewhere around 10 degrees. But we had a good crowd, some new visitors, and I was able to finish up our "Foolishness" mini-series by exploring craziness of church planting and where Delta is heading this next year as well as the future.

Yesterday evening we also had a special "constituting" service where we got to baptize a couple people, have our members officially adopt and sign our church constitution, and we installed our first Elders, yours truly and my good friend Charles Campbell. It was a great time to hear testimonies about how God is transforming lives in the Delta community and how God has knitted together this church. Our story really is the story of many people (which I likened to the highway system around Atlanta - very chaotic) and how God has intersected our journeys at just the right time and place.

So, happy birthday Delta! I look forward to see how God continues to work in and through us as we seek to love Him, see people's lives transform because of the Gospel, and watch us change the world.

Some good research

Check this out from the missional yoda, Ed Stetzer:

http://blogs.lifeway.com/blog/edstetzer/2008/01/new_research_on_the_unchurched.html

Foolishness

This week leads up to Delta's 1 year Anniversary on January 21. One year ago I was going in wide-eyed into the "public" phase of church planting. I've been personally celebrating the occasion this whole month by preaching through 1 Corinthians 1:18-2:5 talking about the "foolishnes" of the cross, the church, and my church, specifically.

Not that I think that the cross is foolish...but Paul makes the argument that those who are perishing - the spiritually disconnected - do indeed think that the Christian faith is a bit foolish. He then goes on to talk about how God intentionally chose the foolish of the world (namely, people; the church) to be the main way that he would expand his kingdom. Paul then opens up chapter 2 very personally admitting that he didn't show up in Corinth with anything fancy about himself, but he just told people about Jesus and His death and resurrection.

It does indeed seem to be a foolish thing to plant a church. You're trying to gather people together to create a community based on what one Man did 2000 years ago, have them live sacrificially in regards to their time, their abilities, their money, and then have them go find others to add to the mix. And we're not doing this in some mover-and-shaker city like Chicago, New York, or L.A., but we're in the middle of corn fields in Springfield, Il.

It's all rather foolish.

But I can't imagine doing anything else. Wanna join us?

Classic Piper

You gotta love John Piper...especially when he gets riled up!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ukcV-xtU3hc

I'm back...bigger & better

We're in the midst of redesigning our Delta's website, and the blog I moved over there will now be moved back here, but we're losing the cheesy "Adventures in Abe-Town" title as well as the also lame "Delta Devotional". As you can now see, the new title for my blog is "Transformissionary." This lines up much better with Delta's mission of "Loving God, Transforming Lives, and Changing the World." Because, we're just not that great and we really need Jesus to transform us all.