The Strongest Evangelist in Our Church
Right now the strongest evangelist in our church is Sameer, a former Hindu who was converted through the ministry of Garden City Church just three Sundays ago. Immediately after Jesus saved Sameer, Sameer began sharing the gospel with other people and inviting them to church on Sundays and to our mid-week Neighborhood Groups. People in our church who have been Christians for decades are learning evangelism from watching Sameer, a fifteen-day-old Christian.
Friends, Jesus saves. Believe it. Preach it. Pray it. Share it.
I’m preaching my guts out at Garden City, banking on the truth that Jesus makes dead people come alive and that Jesus builds his church.
Garden City Church is ten weeks old, and Jesus is on the move. And Sameer is a fifteen days saved, and he’s begun writing about it on his own blog. Click here to read Sameer’s story in his own words. Below is the lead in:
I attended Garden City three weeks ago as a guest with my childhood friend John. It was an ordinary day and I wasn’t expecting much. During the sermon, I heard the gospel for the first time. My legs were trembling, and my heart was sweating. I felt Jesus for the first time.
Photo: Michael Ziegler
Philippians: The Gospel Changes Everything
This Sunday we start a new sermon series at Garden City Church, Philippians: The Gospel Changes Everything.
Join us this Sunday at 4pm.
Folly, Grace, And Power: The Mysterious Act of Preaching
Preachers, get your hands on this new book, Folly, Grace, and Power: The Mysterious Act of Preaching by John Koessler. Below is the endorsement I wrote for the book.
John Koessler reminds us that preaching is nothing less than raising the dead. This book makes me want to preach! Folly, Grace, and Power will give you fresh courage to preach your guts out through the power that Jesus supplies.
Preaching That Hits The Spot
When I enjoy a great meal I say, “that hit the spot.” Good preaching should hit the spot.
Preaching isn’t only about preaching a biblical text or preaching the gospel from that text. When you preach you should always have a spot in mind–a target. As you study your text, also study your people and your culture. Pay attention to the tension points your text exposes in your own heart, in your church, and in your culture. A spot emerges. Focus your sermon, focus the gospel, on hitting that tension spot.
You want your hearers coming away from your sermon saying, “that hit the spot.” They don’t say this because you’ve told them exactly what they want to hear and now they’re full and satisfied. They say this because you’ve shown them how Scripture, how Jesus, is the only way to resolve the tension spots of pain, desire, guilt, fear, hope, etc. that mark our lives and culture.
The More You Enjoy Your Work, The Better You Will Do At It
Over one hundred years ago Phillips Brooks stated a truth that should be central to the process of considering and pursuing a vocation. Though Brooks addressed this to preachers, this correlation between enjoyment and effectiveness applies to all vocations:
I think, again, that it is essential to the preacher’s success that he should thoroughly enjoy his work. I mean in the actual doing of it, and not only in its idea. No man to whom the details of his task are repulsive can do his task well constantly, however full he may be of its spirit. He may make one bold dash at it and carry it over his disgusts, but he cannot work on at it year after year, day after day. Therefore, count it not merely a perfectly legitimate pleasure, count it an essential element of your power, if you can feel a simple delight in what you have to do as a minister, in the fervor of writing, in the glow of speaking, in standing before men and moving them, in contact with the young. The more thoroughly you enjoy it, the better you will do it all.
This is true of all preaching. Its highest joy is in the great ambition that is set before it. , the glorifying of the Lord and saving of the souls of men. No other joy on earth compares with that. The ministry that does not feel that joy is dead. But in behind that highest joy, beating in humble unison with it, as the healthy body thrills in sympathy with the deep thoughts and pure desires of the mind and soul, the best ministers have always been conscious of another pleasure which belonged to the very doing of the work itself. As we read the lives of all the most effective preachers of the past, or as we meet the men who are powerful preachers of the Word today, we feel how certainly and how deeply the very exercise of their ministry delights them. -Phillips Brooks, Lectures on Preaching.
Video: God is Bigger Than Your Biggest Fear
I don’t think I’ve ever posted a video of me preaching. In this message I share my vision for church planting in the Bay Area and tell the story of why last year was the hardest year of my life. This is from last Sunday, guest preaching at a large church in San Jose that’s supporting Garden City Church.
Justin Buzzard from WestGate Church on Vimeo.
Preaching Prep
Preachers, read this helpful and interesting preaching prep Q&A by Mark Driscoll. Driscoll’s approach, though unique and not likely to be imitated by many, is refreshing to read and parts of his approach should be adopted by those spending endless hours in sermon prep.
How Much Do You Have to Hate Somebody To Not Proselytize?
Athiest Penn Jillette (of Penn and Teller) states that he doesn’t respect Christians who don’t share their faith. This is sound and convicting:
I’ve always said, you know, that I don’t respect people who don’t proselytize. I don’t respect that at all. If you believe that there’s a heaven and hell, and people could be going to hell, or not getting eternal life or whatever, and you think that, well it’s not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially akward…How much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize? How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that? If I believed beyond a shadow of a doubt that a truck was coming at you and you didn’t believe it, and that truck was bearing down on you, there’s a certain point where I tackle you. And this is more important than that.
HT. Baptist Press
Preach It Until You Feel It
Most of us live life feeling our way towards an action, rather than acting our way towards a feeling. We have it backwards.
Instead, we ought to act our way towards a feeling, trusting that healthy emotions will follow healthy belief and action.
There is no more important arena for exercising this action-precedes-feelings order than in the talking/preaching you do to yourself and others.
The great John Wesley wrestled with this dynamic at a crucial juncture in his ministry. Wesley had come to believe the biblical gospel, to believe the staggering good news of justification by faith alone. This was the gospel he was preaching to himself and to the crowds. His brain believed this gospel, but he wasn’t feeling it and so he doubted whether it would be authentic of him to continue preaching the gospel while lacking the accompanying emotions of joy and feelings of freedom. Fortunately, John Wesley had a friend who gave him a single sentence of counsel that set him free. Below is their historic conversation.
John Wesley: “I see it clearly with my head but I do not feel it, and I had better stop preaching it until I feel it.”
Peter Bohler: “Do not stop preaching it, but go on preaching it until you do feel it.”
Peter Bohler’s ancient counsel to Wesley is my counsel to you, especially when it comes to the discipline of preaching the gospel to yourself and to others.
DO NOT STOP PREACHING IT, BUT GO ON PREACHING IT UNTIL YOU DO FEEL IT!
Today, don’t feel yourself towards an action, act your way towards a feeling. Don’t wait for the joy in order to act, go get the joy! Preach more gospel to yourself. Speak more gospel to others. Do not stop preaching it, but go on preaching it until you do feel it.
When I was 21 I Pulled a Dead Body Out of a Lake
When I was 21 years old I pulled a dead body out of a lake. That experience changed my life.
I tell the story in this sermon I preached last week at CityLife Church in Boston: Believe the Blessing, Then Go Change the World (Genesis 32:22-31).
